# Diagnosing Urban Street Vitality via a Visual-Semantic and Spatiotemporal Framework for Street-Level Economics

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.19798 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19798/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [UrbanVLP: Multi-Granularity Vision-Language Pretraining for Urban Socioeconomic Indicator Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16831/) (2024)
- [MINGLE: VLMs for Semantically Complex Region Detection in Urban Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13484/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Micro-scale street-level economic assessment is fundamental for precision spatial resource allocation. While Street View Imagery (SVI) advances urban sensing, existing approaches remain semantically superficial and overlook brand hierarchy heterogeneity and structural recession. To address this, we propose a visual-semantic and field-based spatiotemporal framework, operationalized via the Street Economic Vitality Index (SEVI). Our approach integrates physical and semantic streetscape parsing through instance segmentation of signboards, glass interfaces, and storefront closures. A dual-stage VLM-LLM pipeline standardizes signage into global hierarchies to quantify a spatially smoothed brand premium index. To overcome static SVI limitations, we introduce a temporal lag design using Location-Based Services (LBS) data to capture realized demand. Combined with a category-weighted Gaussian spillover model, we construct a three-dimensional diagnostic system covering Commercial Activity, Spatial Utilization, and Physical Environment. Experiments based on time-lagged geographically weighted regression across eight tidal periods in Nanjing reveal quasi-causal spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Street vibrancy arises from interactions between hierarchical brand clustering and mall-induced externalities. High-quality interfaces show peak attraction during midday and evening, while structural recession produces a lagged nighttime repulsion effect. The framework offers evidence-based support for precision spatial governance.