Temporal Evolution of Multi-Dimensional Built Environment Perceptions and Street Vitality: A Longitudinal Analysis in Rapidly Urbanizing Cities

Rapid urbanization fundamentally transforms how residents perceive and interact with built environments, yet the dynamic relationships between these evolving perceptions and street vitality remain inadequately understood. As cities undergo rapid transformation, traditional assumptions about fixed perception–vitality relationships may no longer hold, necessitating a deeper understanding of how these relationships evolve over time and space. This study aims to investigate how multiple dimensions of built environment perception influence street vitality and how these relationships evolve spatially and temporally in rapidly urbanizing contexts. We developed a multi-level interpretative framework combining Multi-scale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) with machine-learning-based SHAP analysis to analyze multi-source data from Hohhot, China, spanning 2019–2023. Our approach examined four key perception dimensions—comfort, safety, convenience, and pleasure—and their impacts on street vitality patterns during a period of intensive urban development. The analysis reveals three major findings: first, perception–vitality relationships evolved from highly heterogeneous spatial patterns toward increasing homogenization over time, suggesting urban development standardization effects driven by rapid urbanization processes. Second, several perception dimensions underwent significant transformations, with safety perception shifting from negative to positive influence and convenience perception displaying complex nonlinear threshold effects as urban infrastructure matured. Third, the relative importance of perception dimensions changed over time, reflecting evolving urban priorities and resident expectations shaped by urbanization experiences. These findings demonstrate that perception–vitality relationships are dynamic rather than static, challenging assumptions about fixed environmental effects in urban planning. The study provides empirical evidence for implementing adaptive, context-sensitive urban interventions that acknowledge both spatial heterogeneity and temporal evolution, offering valuable insights for enhancing street vitality in rapidly urbanizing environments worldwide.