Metro cultural scene: A new community scale in urban scene research

Cultural scenes are essential units and value collections within consumer spaces, and metro scenes in large cities are a new perspective for cultural scene research. Based on scene theory, we isolated distinct urban metro scenes through the perspective of slow travelling, through which we identified the dimensions of Shanghai’s metro cultural scenes. Furthermore, we identified five patterns of metro cultural scenes through factor analysis and cluster analysis of scene dimensions, namely, mechanically modern, charming and expressive, local and down-to-earth, public welfare and rationality, and ordinary scenes. We found that the names of metro stations could influence scene formation by influencing the category of amenities around the station, while the convenience of the metro stations could significantly promote the formation of some scene dimensions. In addition, urban planning and crowd distribution also have an impact on the metro culture scene. Our study reveals the characteristics and patterns of metro scenes in Shanghai and proposes a pathway by which metro scenes are formed, providing a new direction for urban scene research.