Vitality evaluation of historical and cultural districts based on the values dimension: districts in Beijing City, China

Abstract Historical and cultural districts are an important part of the urban heritage environment, reflecting the urban characteristics and carrying the core value of urban development. At present, most of the research on the vitality of historical and cultural districts mainly carries out quantitative evaluation from the two aspects of material space and time dimension, while the analysis on the value level is weakened, and the content of value type evaluation is also ignored. Value is the main factor affecting the vitality of historical and cultural districts, and it is also the core content to keep them alive. Therefore, this study takes nine historical and cultural districts of three types (cultural, commercial and residential) in Beijing, the capital of China, as examples to form a vitality evaluation framework with value as the evaluation goal, and select three indicators: historical value (including historical environment, cultural environment and spatial environment), use value (including communication environment, business environment and residential environment) and sustainable value (including educational environment, attraction and creativity), which correspond to the past, present and future of the heritage respectively. The literature summary method is used to get the evaluation content, the ranking analytic hierarchy process is used to determine the index weight, experts are invited to score, and the influence degree of each factor is comprehensively ranked and analyzed. Finally, it puts forward the evaluation system of historical and cultural districts. The framework can be used to collect expert opinions, conduct quantitative value evaluation, and adjust various indicators in practice before the protection strategy of historical and cultural districts is proposed. The results show that at present, Shichahai, Nanluoguxiang and Fuchengmennei have the highest vitality among the three types. The blocks that mainly embody cultural value have higher vitality than those that mainly embody commercial value and residential value.