Abstract: Retail industry is the most dynamic component of urban commercial spatial structure,and a rational and orderly spatial structure of retail industry is essential to promote economic development,improve resource allocation,and meet the needs of residents.As a new spatial data source,POI (Point of Interest) can objectively and accurately identify and explore retail industry spatial structure.Xining City is located in the northeast of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and is an important eastern gateway that links the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau with mainland China,where has the most concentrated population and the most potential consumer market.This study aims to quantitatively identify the spatial pattern characteristics of retail industry using the methods of kernel density estimation,local Getis-Ord G^* index,location entropy analysis and Ripley’s K function based on the POI data in the Xining City.The retailing industry is divided into eight categories:food beverage and tobaccos;textiles,garments and daily consumer articles;culture and sports appliances and equipment;household electric appliances and electronic products;hardware,furniture and decoration materials;medicines and medical appliances;motor vehicles fuel and parts;synthetic retail trade.The results show that the spatial agglomeration characteristics of the retail industry in Xining City are significant and have formed a “multi-aggregation,multi-core” commercial pattern.The density grading is gradually decreased from the central area along the traffic trunk to the periphery.The high-density agglomeration areas are distributed around the block of Shuijing Xiang,Shangye Xiang,Qilian-Beichan Road (Beishan Market) and Wanda Plaza (Haihu New Zone).The agglomeration and distribution of multi-type retail sites have their own characteristics due to their different industry attributes.The retail industry closely related to people’s daily consumption is characterized by community,miniaturization and facilitation,and have a wide range of site selection,such as food beverage and tobaccos,medicines and synthetic retail trade.However,household electric appliances and electronic products,culture and sports appliances and equipment,textiles,garments and daily consumer articles have a smaller location selection space,and they are concentrated in specific areas.The distribution characteristics of the hot spots and cold spots based on the road data in Xining City are significant,which is affected by the factors such as the expansion of urban construction land,population density,traffic accessibility and urban planning.Haihu New District will become the most promising development area.Various types of retail industry have significantly formed different regional specialization functional blocks at the street scale.Generally,more advantage industries are gathered in the mature districts,there are fewer multi-industry gathering areas in Xining City,only Renmin Sub-district.This research,on the one hand,contributes to filling the gap in the study of commercial spatial structure of valley-basin cities on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau based on POI data,on the other hand,benefits for providing some references for government strategy-making,retailers’ location selection and urban planning.

Key words: spatial structure of retail industry, POI data, agglomeration characteristics, Xining City