Data-based visualisation analysis of small town landscape in China

China has seen rapid growth in the urbanization which leads to multiple shocks on its small town development. On the one hand, the homogenization in the styles and features of small towns should be given high attention, which means “thousands of small towns with one appearance”. On the other hand, the unique spiritual and cultural characteristics of small towns are gradually disappearing. In recent years, economic development has promoted the construction of new urbanization in small towns. The vitality of streets plays an important role in the development of small towns. For the evaluation and testing of street environment, Pycharm Community Edition has been chosen to analyze the vitality of streets and the characteristics of small towns, so as to study the overall appearance of small towns. The author picked out 767 essays involving city patterns of small towns from CNKI database, and then did research from the five aspects of numbers of published papers, authors, research institutions, research hot spots and cutting edge, and the trend of hotspots for a healthier small town in the vitality of economy, culture, society, and streets.