The vitality of urban public spaces is associated with many positive environmental and socio-economic impacts. From the perspective of reflecting the three basic characteristics of population activity stability, aggregation and diversity, this study proposes an open urban public space vitality assessment framework. Taking the public space of the Huangpu River in Shanghai as an example, using Baidu thermal map data, the intensity of the population activity is expressed by the thermal value level, and the quantitative measurement index of the public space vitality is measured. Then, in the five time-series models, the effects of nine impact factors such as natural ecology, traffic accessibility, functional mixing, and culture on the vitality of public space were measured. The study found that the impact factors have different effects on the spatial and temporal characteristics of public space vitality. This study provides theoretical support and optimization basis for the public space update design of high-density built environment.