The Staff Live Separated Spatial Structure And Long-distance Commuters Daily Life Of The World,

Along with the deep going of its urbanization and the following widening scale, Beijing is experiencing a serious separation in the spatial structure for work and for living due to the dual effect of single-center city structure and the development of residential suburbanization. This situation is giving rise to a huge group of long-distance commuters whose daily life has been changed or even distorted by long-distance and time-consuming commute. The purpose of this study is to present the real life of long commuters, by which thinking on the drawbacks of long-distance and the urban spatial structure optimization should be caused.By mainly employing quantitative methods, previous relevant researches have examined characteristic of commute life and compared different actions of commutes from different regions. However, despite of its intuitiveness, macro general data usually cause ignorance or simplification of the actual details behind the data. So the research in this paper is based on interview and observation method and is assisted by questionnaire method. Then with qualitative material obtained through the above methods as the main basic reference, this paper presents the real life of long-distance commuters from four dimensions:commuting life, family life, work and personal development, and leisure life. This paper analyses the current situation of urban structure of Beijing and investigate the function of the investigated region in this structure. Beijing's political, economic, and cultural functions are concentrated in certain core urban areas, which have largely assembled most employment in this area. As a small town outside of the east urban area of Beijing, Yanjiao has been promoted by the real estate heat to be a typical residence region within the radiation zone of the Beijing. Under this structure, long distance commuting is bound to become a necessary part of everyday life in the suburbs. Long distance commuting runs throughout the home-to-office journey experience, work, family life and leisure, which impacts their lives in more than a level.Firstly, in long distance commuters' life, long distance commuting itself is an important part of their daily life experience. Yanjiao commuters, according to their own needs and economic conditions, they choose a proper form among public transport commuting, carpool commuting, self-driving commuting, any of which brings a different commuting experience. The longer the distance is, the longer the waiting time is and the harder being crowded is, which lengthen the commuting time and reinforce the negative feelings and then increase the time and spirit cost of commuting.At the same time, family life is also greatly influenced. Long distance commuting from day to day immensely reduces quality time of the family for husband and wife, parents and their children. Even more, some office workers, in order to avoid the hardness of long distance commuting, they choose to live in rental house near their work place. Thus, they become "husband and wife over the weekend" with their spouses and "weekend family" with other family members, exacerbating the separation between jobs and residential locations;. Family life's function of comfort and support, which is based on quality time and communication, is blocked under this condition.Physical and mental fatigue caused by long distance commuting can affect commuters'working state and mentality, and then influence the quality of work. Additionally time after work is supposed to be a good opportunity to learn and to improve oneself, but for long distance commuters this period has been greatly compressed and remains not much left.Finally, with longer commuting leading to leisure time compression, cultural life, social communication, the second occupation and other activities are being crowded out. In addition to the time the commuting itself takes, long reserve time for long commuting and inconvenience of long-distance transportation force commuters to give up certain activities.Under the single central city structure, relying solely on the power of individuals is unable to solve the problem of long distance commuting. While optimization of the urban structure is a temporary solution, development of more centers in one city is a favorable experience in many world-class cities, which is believed to be the best method for Beijing to improve the situation of urban traffic, enhance the quality of long distance commuters'life, and fortify citizens'feeling of happiness.