Abstract
The revitalization of traditional villages is shifting from single village to contiguous areas, with a cycling network connecting these villages serving as a key facilitator for the coordinated development of their culture and tourism. However, current rural cycling network planning primarily depends on static, materialized evaluations and fails to leverage the dynamic flow of people in the region, leading to generally low utilization rates. Consequently, this study proposes a method for generating a cycling network based on flow-based attractiveness evaluation. By utilizing Wi-Fi probes to monitor the intensity and stability of people’s movement, we established an attractiveness evaluation for the preliminary cycling route. Based on this evaluation, we incorporated the shortest routes to historical attractions and the concentration of public service facilities to construct an optimal cycling network. The research then conducted an empirical study in the traditional village contiguous area of Tonglu County, China, and found that: (1) the flow attraction of the initial route was highly polarized and unevenly distributed; (2) compared to the original plan, the cycling network generated by this research demonstrated superior overall performance, with improvements in accessibility, connectivity to historical attractions and integration with public service facilities. These findings suggest that the method can be used to create a cycling network that encourages people to remain in traditional village contiguous areas, thereby promoting the synergistic development of culture and tourism.
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Data availability
All data sources have been listed in the manuscript. The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
Authors thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number 51908495) and Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning Project (Grant number 25NDJC158YB) for the financial support of this study.
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S.L.: conceptualization, methodology, writing and review; S.W.: experiment, data curation, analysis and writing; Y.G.: review and editing; Y.Z.: experiment, data curation. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Liu, S., Wang, S., Gao, Y. et al. A method for planning cycling networks in traditional village contiguous areas using Wi-Fi probe-based attractiveness evaluation. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-36085-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-36085-1
