Investigation on spatiotemporal evolution and influencing factors of urban innovation space: a case study of Guangzhou

As innovation is the key driving force of urban development, urban innovation spaces are crucial to stimulate innovative thinking and facilitate the integration of science, technology, and humanities. Existing research on urban innovation spaces focuses on spatial patterns, associated networks, spillover effects, and influencing factors. They are limited to the macro scale and lack of innovation subject perspective. This paper aimed to identify the evolution mechanism of urban innovation spaces. The spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of urban innovation spaces were investigated. New high-tech enterprises in Guangzhou were adopted to indicate these spaces based on the spatial grid unit of 1,000 × 1,000 m. Furthermore, the paper identified multiple factors influencing the development of innovation spaces by multiscale geographically weighted regression. The results indicated that: (1) Guangzhou’s urban innovation spaces were agglomerated in the central district and sparsely distributed in the suburbs with a southeast-northwest orientation. (2) Since 2008, urban innovation spaces of Guangzhou have displayed an apparent point-axis-face structural evolution in stages. (3) The factors influencing the distribution of urban innovation spaces, ranked by their degree of impact, were as follows: vehicle carrying, distances to scientific research institutions, public parks, residential communities, universities, and business hotels, industrial structure height, and the number of metro stations. These findings facilitated the understanding of urban innovation space development and grasped the influencing factors and their functioning mechanisms. They provided references for innovation space planning amidst urban stock development.