Objective  Urban development has transformed in recent years from incremental expansion to stock renewal, and more focus has been placed on the establishment of a high-quality living environment, which proposes a more complex and humane standard for quality improvement of urban public space. Such problems as small data sample size, vulnerability to incidental factors, and doubtful reliability and validity of measurement and analysis results in conventional urban analysis methodologies have been partially resolved by the growth and development of multi-source data, which makes it possible to quantify non-physical factors such as urban quality and vibrancy and opens up more design options for public space renewal. Street condition and crowd vitality can be analyzed in depth using data from multiple sources. From the viewpoint of the street itself and the user object, the relationship between the anticipated and actual beauty of a street can help identify the faults and potentials of the street and then serve as a design guide for the renovation of the street’s public space.

Methods  Taking Ruijin 2nd Road Subdistrict in Shanghai as an example, this research measures 18 factors covered by quality and vitality through field research and data collection from streetscape, points of interest (POIs) and location based services. The street measurement factors selected according to established theories and empirical studies can be basically divided into four dimensions: spatial form, functional attribute, landscape perception and behavioral use. The first three dimensions are related to street quality, and the behavioral use dimension is related to street vitality. There are 9 quality factors, namely pedestrian accessibility, ground floor interface permeability, walking scale, walking accessibility, functional density, functional diversity, night lighting, green visibility, and characteristic building density. There are 9 vitality factors, which are the average hourly street flow during the time periods of 07:00–12:00, 13:00–18:00, and 19:00–23:00 on weekdays, weekends and holidays. Based on the multi-source data of “street space quality” and “crowd behavioral vitality”, an evaluation matrix is built to establish a coupled evaluation system of street quality and people’s vitality for small and medium-scale blocks. By analyzing the correlation between “street space quality” and “crowd behavioral vitality”, the research identify the problems and potentials of street space in detail, and proposes corresponding planning and design paths accordingly, thus linking research and practice.

Results  Combining the real-time and fine-grained nature of traditional data with the efficiency and convenience of new data, the research evaluates the current status of the streets in the research area from the four dimensions of spatial form, functional attribute, style perception and behavioral use, and introduces street types to comprehensively evaluate street quality, finally forming a systematic overall perception of the streets. Based on the score of the “quality – vitality” evaluation matrix, the streets are classified into the four categories of “high quality – high vitality”, “high quality – low vitality”, “low quality – low vitality” and “low quality – low vitality”, and accordingly proposes the four categories of planning and design paths of “detail optimization”, “potential activation”, “quality enhancement” and “overall renovation”. Typical streets in each category are selected for case analysis and street conditions are visually interpreted through the comprehensive street evaluation radar chart, based on which the research proposes corresponding enhancement strategies. The “high quality – high vitality” streets score high in both quality and vitality and are in good condition overall, with the expected attractiveness thereof matching the actual attractiveness, for which the planning and design path is to optimize the details and improve individual weak points. “High quality – low vitality” streets have high-quality spatial environment while being of quite low vitality, which need to be planned and designed according to their respective characteristics and entail the further exploration of potential rather than just the improvement of crowd vitality. Although the spatial quality of the “low quality – high vitality” streets is not high enough, they have the advantage of high crowd vitality, for which it is necessary to further define the factors attracting people flow, and to improve the quality while maintaining the original characteristics. The overall spatial quality of the “low quality – low vitality” streets needs to be improved, for which street renewal is of particular concern and the planning and design path is complete renovation.

Conclusion  The results of the comprehensive measurement of street quality and vitality are basically consistent with people’s impression of the research area, indicating that the spatial quality evaluation system and data adopted are accurate and effective, and can be used as the basis for subsequent planning and design. The “quality – vitality” evaluation matrix for streets can connect design research and design practice, and provide refined technical support for the renewal design of small and medium-scale street public spaces. The design research methodology can be applied to the planning and design of street public spaces at the same scale.