ALBERT

Description: Under conditions of climate change, land-use conflicts are a significant challenge for spatial planning, especially in densely populated metropolitan regions. By using a multi-methodological approach, this study aims to identify different stakeholders’ perceptions of these spaces in planning processes within urban areas in Germany. We use an ecosystem service analysis to evaluate the ecological potential of each selected study area and conducted a household survey to gauge how the local population and administration perceive them. The perceptions of these two groups of stakeholders regarding each area’s spatial qualities often differed from their actual ecological potential. We conducted interviews to identify possible conflicts between politicians and administration staff. While cooperation between politicians and the administration staff takes place and works well, the stakeholders involved often evaluate and perceive the cooperation processes in planning differently. Therefore, the authors argue that an integrative and methodologically multi-layered approach is useful for understanding complex perceptions in spatial planning.

Description: With the phenomenon of urban heat island and thermal discomfort felt in urban areas, exacerbated by climate change, it is necessary to best estimate the air temperature in every part of an area, especially in the context of the on-going rationalization weather stations network. In addition, the comprehension of air temperature patterns is essential for multiple applications in the fields of agriculture, hydrology, land development or public health. Thus, this study proposes to estimate the air temperature from 28 explanatory variables, using multiple linear regressions. The innovation of this study is to integrate variables from remote sensing into the model in addition to the variables traditionally used like the ones from the Land Use Land Cover. The contribution of spectral indices is significant and makes it possible to improve the quality of the prediction model. However, modeling errors are still present. Their locations and magnitudes are analyzed. However, although the results provided by modelling are of good quality in most cases, particularly thanks to the introduction of explanatory variables from remote sensing, this can never replace dense networks of ground-based measurements. Nevertheless, the methodology presented, applicable to any territory and not requiring specific computer resources, can be highly useful in many fields, particularly for urban planners.

Description: Since the beginning of the 21st century, most of the forest fires that have occured in Spain have taken place in the northern region of Galicia. This area represents 5.8% of the Spanish territory, but compromises, in certain years, up to 50% of the total number of wildfires. Current research on forest fires is focused mostly on physical or meteorological characteristics, post-fire situations, and their potential destructive capacities (main areas burnt, type of vegetation, economic loses, etc.). However, the academic research to date has not delved into other socioeconomic factors (population structure, density, livestock farms, education, among others), which compromise the existing pre-fire situation in the affected territories, and subsequently reflect the prevailing vulnerability of the population. Indeed, these socioeconomic variables can influence fire occurrence, whether positively or negatively. To fill in this knowledge gap, this article analyzes the relationship between wildfire events and the socioeconomic variables that characterize the Galician municipalities affected. To that effect, first, a thorough examination and selection of the most relevant socioeconomic variables, and their subsequent justification will be carried out. Then, using IBM SPSS statistics 24, a linear regression is executed using the data of wildfires that occurred in Galicia between 2001–2015. The resulting model allows a better knowledge of the importance of the socioeconomic situation in Galician municipalities when wildfires occur. Therefore, this result identifies the existing relationship between the socioeconomic variables and wildfire events, and consequently will help to optimize the interventions that must be done. This may be the best way to carry out prevention actions in order to reduce vulnerability to forest fires.

Description: Participatory action combined interventionist research approaches can offer possibilities for community-based facilities and institutions attempting to re-engage with their communities and assert their presence. St. Cuthbert’s Church is a heritage-listed property, located on a major landholding, right in the heart of the summer tourist town of Lorne, on Melbourne’s peri-urban ‘sea change’ fringe. Its sloping hillside vantage offers spectacular views to the beach and Bass Strait, beyond. The congregation, however, is aging, while the broader community is increasingly secular. In response to these circumstances, the Church is looking to assert its relevance with the procurement of a community centre to be erected on the property. Using an interventionist research approach, with a professional facilitator in ‘participatory action design’, it was found that while both residents and visitors to Lorne were favourably disposed to the idea of a community centre, it was also clear that the locus of power that needed to realise this objective lay outside the congregation’s control. A conclusion of this research is that community-based organisations may have to pro-actively engage in professional marketing and prepare business plans, as well as engage in substantial political lobbying both within and external to the Church, if the project is to progress and succeed.

Description: The objective of this paper is to understand the role of small and medium-sized cities as economic locations, and as potential anchor locations, in grounding processes of regional urbanization in the knowledge economy. Based on quantitative occupational data, the deconcentration processes of knowledge-intensive business activities are analyzed for the Greater Stuttgart Region in southern Germany. The way in which the different knowledge bases used in knowledge-intensive business activities influence spatial patterns of economic activity in the surrounding area of the core city, including small and medium-sized towns, is discussed. The knowledge bases differentiated in this paper are analytical, synthetic and symbolic knowledge.

Description: Despite rapid changes in vehicle technology and the expansion of IT-based mobility solutions, travel habits must be changed to address the environmental and health implications of increasing car dependency. A significant amount of research focuses on commuting, which comprises the largest share of annual vehicle miles travelled. However, non-work trips are also significant, especially when considering trip frequency. Using empirical data (N = 1298) from an urban-rural region and bivariate statistical analysis, the relationship between the land use–transport configuration (6 types) and travel behaviour patterns is examined for 14 non-work destinations. The land use characterisation used in this research includes an updated means of representing a land use mix. By defining the typologies of land use and transport for use in the analysis, the findings can be directed towards contrasting area types in the region. A strong statistically significant association between the land use–transport configuration and mode-share for 14 non-work journey purposes is found. Using regression modelling, income and car ownership are identified as key influences on travel behaviour patterns. The results of both analyses show that, for non-work trips, the transport–land use relationship is as important as key socio-demographic indicators. However, the results for reductions in car travel are relatively small for the area typologies outside the inner-city core. This indicates that efforts to provide alternatives to car travel in order to mitigate car dependency should be prioritised in these outer urban areas. Appropriate management of spatial structure for non-work activity types such that active mode use is possible is essential. This will resolve some of the important environmental and health impacts of car dependency.

Description: Relying mostly on travel time savings, cost-benefit analysis has been widely used in transport project appraisals in the Chilean context, with utility maximisation theory as its background. Nevertheless, subjective well-being advocates have challenged the notion of the rational man underlying this theory by proposing that other trip attributes, individual perceptions and personal features mediate satisfaction with travel, alongside global well-being. Using the recently-opened Line 6 of Metro de Santiago (Chile) as a case study, this research has two main aims: (1) to verify to what extent travel time savings, which support the cost-benefit analysis process, are present after the launching of the new line; and (2) analyse the perception of passengers’ travel time savings, and to what extent this element contributes to the travel satisfaction and to the global well-being at the individual level. Using passive data from smart cards, the results show that travel times decreased by 14% in comparable trips after the launching of Line 6. Furthermore, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) construct is proposed, including travel and life satisfaction as latent variables of the model. This revealed that travel times in the Metro system are highly valued by people. However, this element does not mediate travel satisfaction, as users take low travel times for granted. Waiting times, stations’ design, safety and intermodality are perceived attributes that effectively mediate travel satisfaction. Moreover, the latter variable has a relevant influence on global life satisfaction, revealing that transport conditions mediate in day-to-day well-being. These results challenged travel time savings as the most important driver in transport projects’ appraisal processes, and some recommendations are made in order to incorporate these findings in future appraisals.

Description: Within the broad field of walkability research, a key area of focus has been the relationship between urban form and capacities for walking. Measures of walkable access can be grouped into two key types: permeability measures that quantify the ease of movement through an urban fabric, and catchment measures, quantifying the potential to reach destinations within walking distance. Of numerous street network measures in use, it has been shown that many are poor proxies of permeability and catchment. Instead, two new measures have been proposed: the area-weighted average perimeter (AwaP) and interface catchment (IC), that, combined, better capture the capacities of urban morphologies to enable and attract pedestrian movement. In this paper, we present the QGIS tool AwaP-IC, developed to overcome the difficulty of computing these measures. Unlike GIS tools based on models that abstract streets to axial lines, by employing new algorithms and spatial computation techniques, AwaP-IC analyses actual urban morphologies, based on cadastral maps delineating public and private land. This can empower a new stream of urban morphological studies with the computational power of GIS. As an open-source tool, it can be further developed for use in urban mapping and to streamline the analysis of large datasets.

Description: Records indicate the existence of noted natural places, where several people from various classes used to enjoy the natural environment in a part of present-day city of Seoul during the Korean Dynasties period. This study aimed to clarify the traditional methods of enjoying noted natural places in South Korea’s urban areas by classifying the relationship between the method of enjoyment and the locations of the noted natural places, including their geomorphological features. Literature analysis was employed, and 29 noted natural places were extracted from the descriptions and pictures of old documents. The results revealed that six types of scenery—plants and mountain streams—were enjoyed and the ways of enjoying were classified into 15 subtypes. Additionally, the methods of enjoyment were related to five types of geomorphological features, including mountain streams and rivers, high grounds, etc. In conclusion, it was determined that a combination of scenery and geomorphological features determined the methods of enjoying noted natural places. Knowledge on the relationship between traditional methods of enjoyment and location types is considered to provide important findings to provide urban citizens with various methods of enjoyment and more effectively develop and utilize urban green spaces.

Description: Lima, as the capital of Peru, has become its first megacity with more than 10 million people in an area that extends over 80 km in a North-South direction. As a city of this size, it faces complex mobility issues with a strong reliance on informal transport modes (buses, minibuses, and paratransit vehicles) due to the deterioration of its transit system quality during the 20th century. This paper examines the current urban situation in Lima through an analysis of the city’s structure, with an emphasis on its transport history and the resulting types of walking, transit, and car-oriented fabrics that can be identified. The mobility analysis was made through data collection, including daily trips by public and private modes, annual passenger kilometers and vehicle kilometers of travel, length of exclusive lanes for public transport and freeways, car and paratransit modes ownership, transport emissions, and safety. These data are used to position Lima in a comparative global context showing its relative strengths and weaknesses in urban form and mobility and providing suggestions for a more sustainable transport and land use system. It is asserted that Lima is an informal transit-oriented city, as distinct from recognized transit metropolises (e.g., Tokyo or German cities such as Berlin or Munich), which often involve private companies, operating under an umbrella of strong government regulation, fare setting, and high service standards. Lima is shown to have some important qualities such as a high density, comparatively low car ownership and freeway provision and still healthy levels of transit and non-motorized mode use despite non-ideal conditions for either. These qualities, if combined with effective governance structures, government commitment to higher quality formal transit systems, which better integrate the important informal transit sector, cessation of high capacity road building, greater protection and encouragement for non-motorized modes and some effective controls over growing car and motorcycle ownership, would see Lima develop a more sustainable transport system.

Description: This article explores concepts related to connectivity and usership of the Jordan River Parkway Trail (JRPT) and the North Temple corridor—two locations or nodes that link together in a larger transportation network along the west side of Salt Lake City, Utah, a low-income, racially and ethnically diverse area. The JRPT is a multi-use trail providing regional connectivity for bicycles and pedestrians. It intersects North Temple, a transit development corridor accommodating automobiles, light rail, buses, bicycles, and pedestrians. Although the purposes of each corridor differ, one being recreational and one being commercial, the modes of transportation for each corridor overlap through active transportation—that is, biking and walking. The questions that drive this paper are: (1) How are these two neighborhood assets are connected and form a larger transportation network? and, (2) How can connectivity and usership be improved? The idea of increasing the utilization of the JRPT through increasing destinations along North Temple and vice versa is explored. Community feedback was gathered through a survey which was distributed to 299 residents who live less than a mile from each subnetwork. Extracted from the responses were key aspects of connectivity, accessibility, and the purposes of each corridor for the community as a whole to understand how they are connected and how they affect each other. More broadly, urban policy recommendations that increase active transportation connectivity and usership of two sets of links—that is, regional trails and transit-oriented corridors such as the JRPT and the North Temple corridor are described.

Description: A rapid increase in the world’s population over the last century has triggered the transformation of the earth surface, especially in urban areas, where more than half of the global population live. Ghana is no exception and a high population growth rate, coupled with economic development over the last three decades, has transformed the Greater Accra region into a hotspot for massive urban growth. The urban extent of the region has expanded extensively, mainly at the expense of the vegetative cover in the region. Although urbanization presents several opportunities, the environmental and social problems cannot be underestimated. Therefore, the need to estimate the rate and extent of land use/land cover changes in the region and the main drivers of these changes is imperative. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing techniques provide effective tools in studying and monitoring land-use/land-cover change over space and time. A post classification change detection of multiple Landsat images was conducted to map and analyse the extent and rate of land use/land cover change in the region between 1991 and 2015. Subsequently, the urban extent of the region was forecasted for the year 2025 using the Markov Chain and the Multi-Layer Perceptron neural network, together with drivers representing proximity, biophysical, and socio-economic variables. The results from the research revealed that built-up areas increased by 277% over the 24-year study period. However, forest areas experienced massive reduction, diminishing from 34% in 1991 to 6.5% in 2015. The 2025 projected land use map revealed that the urban extent will massively increase to cover 70% of the study area, as compared to 44% in 2015. The urban extent is also anticipated to spill into the adjoining districts mainly on the western and eastern sides of the region. The success of this research in generating a future land-use map for 2025, together with the other significant findings, demonstrates the usefulness of spatial models as tools for sustainable city planning and environmental management, especially for urban planners in developing countries.

Description: Lima has become the first Peruvian megacity with more than 10 million people, resulting from the migration waves from the countryside throughout the 20th century, which have also contributed to the diverse ethnic background of today’s city. The paper analyzes two neighborhoods located in the inter-district area of Northern Lima: Pampa de Cueva and El Ermitaño as paradigmatic cases of the city’s expansion through non-formal settlements during the 1960s. They represent a relevant case study because of their complex urbanization process, the presence of pre-Hispanic heritage, their location in vulnerable hillside areas in the fringe with a protected natural landscape, and their potential for sustainable local economic development. The article traces back the consolidation process of these self-built neighborhoods or barriadas within the context of Northern Lima as a new centrality for the metropolitan area. The analysis of urban form and mobility, heritage and environmental challenges, governance, and social integration leads to a proposal for neighborhood upgrading, capacity building with participatory processes, and a vision for future local development to decentralize the traditional metropolitan centers, which can be scaled to other peripheral neighborhoods.

Description: A contextual approach to Light-Rail Transport (LRT) needs to be tailored towards specific contexts, in terms of situations or contingencies, such as socio-economic and environmental factors. This research intends to discuss the societal benefits comprised of well-informed contextual factors for policymakers and urban transport authorities, to enable them to be able to formulate objective policies for a city’s socio-economic development. The aim of this article is to analyze the contextual factors in three cities which are responsible for the contextualization of infrastructural innovations of urban light-rail transport from China. The methodology that has been used is a qualitative method using multiple case studies, which includes a pilot and semi-structured interview. The analysis compares the similarities and differences within Nigeria, and between Nigeria and Ethiopia. The most perceptible contextual factors which influence infrastructural innovations in Nigeria include an electric energy supply, modernization of LRT and their stations, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), and seamless integration of LRT with other transport modes. The most conspicuous factors in Ethiopia are emergency ticket shops, seamless integration of LRT with other transport modes, and Non-Motorized Transport (NMT). Nigeria and Ethiopia both share the seamless integration of LRT with other transport modes. Therefore, academically analyzing contextual factors helps to unravel the poly-contextualization and context-specific decision-making processes in LRT implementation.

Description: Affordable housing is increasingly developed, financed and managed by a mix of state, third-sector, market and community actors. This has led to the emergence of various hybrid governance and finance arrangements. This development can be seen as part of a general long-term neoliberal trend in government policies, and social, cultural and economic developments. It is therefore likely that the hybridity and variety of governance and finance of affordable housing will continue to grow. This article discusses innovative hybrid arrangements from Austria, England and Italy, in which governments, private and non-profit actors collaborate to increase the supply of affordable housing. These cases illustrate how the provision of affordable housing in a neoliberal context can benefit from the involvement of market actors and communities. Nevertheless, they also show that governments continue to play a crucial role in initiating and facilitating these arrangements.

Description: In a highly and rapidly urbanized world, the effect of the action of urban development is determinant for the physical, social, and economic conditions of its citizens, among which is inequality. It is even more crucial for developing regions such as Latin America on which this research is conducted. Therefore, the focus of the investigation was to determine the existence of significant statistical relationships between urban development and economic inequality in the region. For this purpose, it was sought to define urban development from the perspective of the praxis of multilateral organizations measured by indicators of extensive use among them. A hierarchical multiple linear regression model was built with six urban development variables predictors of the Gini coefficient as an indicator of economic inequality, in which data of 49 Latin American cities was used. The application of the method allowed us to discover a stochastic behavior of interaction between those multidimensional systems and confirmed the statistical relation. The research allows having a tool for the formulation of public policies that seek to strengthen local governance, promote community organization and participation, and assert urban planning as an agent for concerted efforts to achieve common goals.

Description: This study tests the viability of multiple sorting tasks (MST) as a method to explore perceptions of public space and its potential for people that are vulnerable to loneliness. The procedure integrates qualitative and quantitative aspects and obviates the challenge of people articulating how they interact with their surroundings, especially being aware of what features of their environment are influencing them. Two samples, each with six participants of varying ages and backgrounds, viewed 20 photographs of public spaces in Stockholm. They sorted these into categories based upon the activities they anticipated would occur there. Within each sample, a multidimensional scaling procedure was used to reveal the underlying structure across the combination of the six responses. The results showed coherent structures with interesting variations between people. A set of general multi-purpose places are identified, with others being differentiated in terms of whether they were ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ and ‘open’ or ‘enclosed’. The study also found that people conceptualized public space differently when loneliness was the focus during the sorting process. An assemblage of public spaces relevant for loneliness is also illustrated. This demonstrates the utility of the MST and provides theoretical and practical implications for urban planning and design that addresses loneliness.

Description: Urbanization offers several opportunities for the growth of economic, social, and technology sectors, offering benefits to society in terms of better living and healthcare facilities, as well as employment opportunities. However, some major downsides of urbanization are overcrowding and environmental degradation. In order to realize sustainable and environmentally friendly urbanization, there is an urgent need for comprehensive land use planning and of urban settlements by giving due consideration to create and sustain urban green spaces (UGS) such as parks, gardens, roadside vegetation, etc. UGS play a vital role in reducing air pollution, mitigating climate change, and providing various ecosystem services. UGS are being deteriorated substantially due to booming urbanization in developing countries such as India. This review is focused on highlighting the many challenges in creating and maintaining UGS in the Indian context. It is a compilation of available reports on problems linked with poor land use and/or planning of urban settlements. The challenges associated with the management and maintenance of UGS are described. The poor and irregular watering of many existing UGS is one of the major issues among several others requiring immediate attention to resolve the problem of deteriorating UGS in some cities of India. As the groundwater resources are rapidly depleting because of ever increasing water demand, UGS are being dispensed with poor and irregular watering resulting in their deterioration. A list of possible solutions and prospects of UGS in cities aiming to become smart cities soon are discussed in this review. Efficient wastewater treatment and a non-potable reuse system are possible solutions for better prospects of UGS, and therefore, optimism of better cities with low to null urban heat island effect.

Description: Traditional methods of counting bicyclists are resource-intensive and generate data with sparse spatial and temporal detail. Previous research suggests big data from crowdsourced fitness apps offer a new source of bicycling data with high spatial and temporal resolution. However, crowdsourced bicycling data are biased as they oversample recreational riders. Our goals are to quantify geographical variables, which can help in correcting bias in crowdsourced, data and to develop a generalized method to correct bias in big crowdsourced data on bicycle ridership in different settings in order to generate maps for cities representative of all bicyclists at a street-level spatial resolution. We used street-level ridership data for 2016 from a crowdsourced fitness app (Strava), geographical covariate data, and official counts from 44 locations across Maricopa County, Arizona, USA (training data); and 60 locations from the city of Tempe, within Maricopa (test data). First, we quantified the relationship between Strava and official ridership data volumes. Second, we used a multi-step approach with variable selection using LASSO followed by Poisson regression to integrate geographical covariates, Strava, and training data to correct bias. Finally, we predicted bias-corrected average annual daily bicyclist counts for Tempe and evaluated the model’s accuracy using the test data. We found a correlation between the annual ridership data from Strava and official counts (R2 = 0.76) in Maricopa County for 2016. The significant variables for correcting bias were: The proportion of white population, median household income, traffic speed, distance to residential areas, and distance to green spaces. The model could correct bias in crowdsourced data from Strava in Tempe with 86% of road segments being predicted within a margin of ±100 average annual bicyclists. Our results indicate that it is possible to map ridership for cities at the street-level by correcting bias in crowdsourced bicycle ridership data, with access to adequate data from official count programs and geographical covariates at a comparable spatial and temporal resolution.

Description: Beauty. Christopher Alexander’s prolific journey in building, writing, and teaching was fueled by a relentless search for Beauty and its meaning. While all around him the world was intent on figuring out how to simplify, Alexander came to embrace complexity as the only path to his goal. The Beauty and life of that which he encountered and appreciated—an Indian village, a city, a subway network, an old Turkish carpet, or a campus—lay in its well-ordered complexity. As a designer and maker he found that simplicity came from choosing—at every step—the simplest way to add the necessary complexity. The failure of so much of our modern world, in Alexander’s eyes, was oversimplification, wantonly bulldozing context, misunderstanding the relationships of part and whole, ignoring the required role of time in the shaping of shapes, and ultimately dismissing, like Esau, our birthright of Value in favor of a lentil pottage of mere Fact. Ever elusive, Beauty demands of her suitors a constant return of attention to see what might be newly revealed, and Alexander duly returned again and again in pursuit of the mystery. In this essay—essentially biographical and descriptive of one man’s endeavors—we examine the full arc of his work from dissertation to most recent memoir. We don’t shy away from his failures, and we don’t simplify his journey. We leave work done by other scholars for another day. We reach no conclusion, rather, we invite readers to reflect on what Alexander’s lifelong effort suggests to them about their own path, their own sense of aesthetics and order, innate cognitive shortfalls, and professional blind alleys.

Description: This paper is aimed at investigating the applicability of the notion of Sequent Occupance to the Singapore context. Sequent Occupance as a phenomenon in Human Geography was first theorized by Derwent Whittlesey in 1929 in order to describe the current cultural landscape of a region as a combination of all the people which have ‘sequentially’ occupied that region from the past to the present. According to the Sequence Occupance Theory, the cultural imprint of each civilization is never completely lost and its traces can be seen to the present day. This is a historical phenomenon that occurs in the same region or space, but at different times. Sequent Occupance regards each region as a pattern of many cultural layers laid upon each other, where each layer can be attributed to a particular civilization or culture, which overlaps the ones before it. Singapore, with its multilingual and multicultural context and with its colonial past, is a very important test-bed for Sequence Occupance approaches both in the fields of Historical Toponomastics and Human Geography. This paper aims to apply the notion of Sequence Occupance to the study of Singapore Toponomastics with a focus on Odonymy and Micro-Toponyms. The study discusses the notion of Sequent Occupance in Singapore in the light of several local Toponyms, trying to ascertain if this concept can be applied to the diachronic and synchronic development of the Urban Toponymy of the Lion City. The article also highlights historical processes in the “making” of the multi-layered Singapore society.

Description: Since 2012, Local Climate Zones (LCZ) have been used for numerous studies related to urban environment. In 2015, this use amplified because a method to map urban areas in LCZs was introduced by the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT). However in 2017, the first HUMan INfluence EXperiment showed that these maps often have poor or low quality. Since the maps are used in different applications such as urban modelling and land use/land cover change studies, it is of the utmost importance to improve mapping accuracies and a second experiment was launched. In HUMINEX 2.0, the focus lies on providing guidelines on the use of the mapping protocol based on the results of both HUMINEX 1.0 and 2.0. The results showed that: (1) it is important to follow the mapping protocol as strictly as possible, (2) a reasonable amount of time should be spent on the mapping procedure, (3) all users should perform a driving test, and (4) training area sets should be stored in the WUDAPT database for other users.

Description: In recent decades, municipalities around the world have been developing community policies and seeking to apply them in their cities. They use methods for exchanging information and opinions on decisions, policies, plans and strategies and involve and consult with the community and stakeholders in all aspects of the decision-making process. The application of methods for thoughtful planning has become the goal of policy makers to improve the lives of citizens and stop the expansion of the city into the countryside. The aim of this article is to integrate the notion of sustainability into a methodological approach, taking into account the actors involved in the decision-making phases, the objectives, and the local indicators in an urban redevelopment project (brownfield). Our approach is based on an analysis of 21 articles and on a transversal and cross-cutting view of the interdisciplinary themes of sustainable development by inserting the main actors into decision-making in urban projects and by selecting local indicators. We put in place a methodological approach for the evaluation of urban projects that takes into account local expectations. The goal is to identify and classify the elements that are needed for decision making, including the indicators related to environmental and socio-economic components, in order to develop an effective evaluation tool. This research contributes to the knowledge of project evaluation tools in the specific context of a city.

Description: The research paper investigates the diverse understandings of “landscape”, along with demonstrating the modes of contribution of the European Landscape Convention (ELC) of the Council of Europe (CE) in influencing national spatial planning systems. The paper, interested in considering the efficiency of landscape policy from a territorial perspective, briefly outlines the perception and understanding of landscape as connecting link of nature and culture and conducts a literature review with the aim to support the prospect of a «European model of landscape planning». Lastly, it critically examines the approach to landscape planning and management by the Greek state, revealing the catalytic role of the Council of Europe (CE) in activating the dimension of landscape in Greece, in a mutualistic perspective between environmental policy and spatial planning, mainly through strategic spatial planning tools (i.e., the Regional Spatial Plans, RSPs). The results point out that (a) the ELC gave new impetus to spatial planning in Greece, providing the tool to manage and coordinate landscape policy, positively influencing the evolving spatial planning paradigm; (b) the decentralized approach adopted, identified landscapes of particular value at a regional level, so as to be given priority in terms of the implementation of coordinated governance arrangements and management actions. However, the implementation of landscape policy continues to rely on the underlying spatial planning level (Local Spatial Plans, Special Spatial Plans) and a general conclusion is that both on land and on sea, it depends on the incorporation of evolutionary trends in planning including an evolutionary perspective for landscape itself, viewed as a complex social-ecological system.

Description: In this paper, we revisit the acoustics education program using mobile devices to better understand urban environments. We begin with a summary of our past projects to demonstrate a model case of the concept. In these projects, the output was mainly supposed to be a noise map with measured sound pressure levels (SPLs) and sound spectra. This methodology can obviously be applied to larger-scale urban studies. Including measured sound spectra can be another advantage. Next, current problems in measurement accuracy due to recent device developments are explained and the required examinations are stated. Finally, the accuracy of the current versions of the applications as well as recently available devices are discussed. The results of this study provide information regarding the measurement accuracy of mobile devices, and some suggestions for their practical use are given, which are also useful for additional studies pertaining to the urban acoustic environment.

Description: With support and demand for walkable urban spaces on the rise, there has been growing concern among academics and practitioners of increasing exclusivity, particularly in amenity-rich areas. This study examines equity in neighborhood walkability from the perspective of housing affordability, asking whether more walkable urban neighborhoods have less affordable housing from the viewpoint of both neighborhood residents and households within the encompassing metropolitan region. While considering additional factors that may affect housing affordability, including coastal proximity, crime, rail access, housing age, housing size, and employment accessibility, the results indicate lower housing affordability primarily for renter households already living in walkable neighborhoods, but not for those looking to move to a more walkable neighborhood from within the same metropolitan area. Case studies of three large U.S. urban areas, Charlotte, NC, Pittsburgh, PA, and Portland, OR, highlight local variations in the walkability–housing affordability nexus.

Description: The Japanese city presents a certain number of peculiarities in the organization of its physical space (weak zoning regulations, fast piecemeal destruction/reconstruction of buildings and blocks, high compacity, incremental reorganization). Compared to countries where urban fabrics are more perennial and easily distinguishable (old centers, modern planned projects, residential areas, etc.), in Japanese metropolitan areas we often observe higher heterogeneity and more complex spatial patterns. Even within such a model, it should be possible to recognize the internal organization of the physical city. The aim of this paper is thus to study the spatial structure of the contemporary Japanese city, generalizing on the case study of Osaka and Kobe. In order to achieve this goal, we will need to identify urban forms at different local scales (building types, urban fabrics) and to analyze them at a wider scale to delineate morphological regions and their structuring of the overall layout of the contemporary Japanese city. Several analytical protocols are used together with field observations and literature. The results, and more particularly the building and urban fabric types and their location within the Osaka-Kobe metropolitan area, are interpreted in the light of Japanese history and model of urbanization. A synoptic graphical model of an urban morphological structure based upon Osaka is produced and proposed as an interpretative pattern for the Japanese metropolitan city in general.

Description: In the contemporary era of information, it is a critical challenge for city managers to meet the demands of their citizens at the same pace as the development of its information technology resources. Guarapuava is an example of a centennial town that has been predominantly agricultural and now seeks to adjust to the population density and the new information age. Much like Guarapuava, many cities in Brazil and around the world are in a similar condition. The new reality of many towns is challenging for municipal managers. Strategic digital city is the application of information technology resources in the management of the city. The objective of this paper is to analyse the decision-making processes, strategies, public services, information technologies, and relationships with strategic digital city issues in the city of Guarapuava, Parana, Brazil. Using a survey methodology based on the research variables, we showed that the municipality has informal characteristics of the concept of a strategic digital city. Based on the results, the evidence domain types in the city are predominant for internet and colleagues inside the organization on a daily base. Google scholar is the most consulted research source of evidence. Respondents well know the term methodology. Their attitudes towards scientific research show that it is essential for managers and that managers are aware of how to use that technology. Related to evidence-based management the respondents, in general, agreed that using by evidence-based practices, managers can improve the quality of their work, and that this should be part of their formal education. Citizens should be utilised more as a source of evidence as well, as they are the users of the institutions. The strategies are more focused on the government and its administration, however, these strategies could include areas like science and technology. The city offers electronic public services to improve citizens lives, and to be more transparent in sharing information through these alternative channels. The analysis revealed the effort of the town to include citizens in the digital era, and its attempt to connect with them. The research serves as a reference for other municipalities with an interest in analysing projects related to the decision-making process, strategies, information, public services, and use of its IT resources. The study is also a contribution to academic knowledge in relation to the study of public policies related to urban management. Finally, the study contributes to the field of research related to the study of strategic digital city, serving as a basis for future studies in this discipline.

Description: Finding a new destination for declining industrial communities is a common European trend, wherein local, national and EU interests are intertwined and sometimes contested. New meaning is sought, among other things, in economics, political activity, and images of the past. This article analyzes local development narratives in the case of the “northern periphery”. This paper highlights how the shrinking town of Kajaani, Finland, reacts to the state’s changing role in regional industrial strategies by comparing different local interpretations of future expectations. The research material comprises interviews, city strategies, and editorials from a local newspaper. This paper suggests that the previously dominant narrative of decentralization still holds sway in the minds of the local advocates. However, it is flavored by the narrative of the knowledge-based economy forming three interrelated local narratives: the narrative of the small town; the narrative of closure; and the narrative of traction. The analysis shows that a northern model city of former industrial policy is seeking to reform and develop its original strengths. However, strong links to previous doctrines of state regional policy still frame the potential of local interpretations and make them specifically Nordic development narratives.

Description: Leptospirosis is caused by spirochete bacteria of the genus Leptospira that affect one million and kill 60,000 persons annually in the world, who get infected through environmental mammal-excreted (notably rodent) pathogens. Using qPCR and DNA sequencing approaches, we here examine Leptospira occurrence and diversity in 971 commensal small mammals in urban and peri-urban habitats from south Benin, where socio-environmental conditions are favorable for human contamination. Prevalence reached 12.9% on average, but showed very important variations in both space and time, thus pointing toward a role of local processes in the maintenance and circulation of rodent-borne leptospires in the area. Prevalence peaks may occur during or one month after moderate (100–200 mm) monthly rainfall, suggesting that rodent-borne leptospires may be more prevalent when standing waters are present, but not at their highest levels (i.e., floods). However, this pattern will have to be confirmed through proper diachronic analysis. Finally, an incomplete but significant host-specificity was observed, with L. kirschneri retrieved only in African shrews, and the invasive Rattus norvegicus and the native Mastomys natalensis preferentially infected by L. interrogans and L. borgpeterseni, respectively. Our study highlights the urgent need for investigations on human leptospirosis in the extensively urbanized Abidjan–Lagos corridor.

Description: Residential streets, particularly in automobile-dependent suburban locations, have frequently been perceived as ecologically unsustainable, antisocial, unhealthy, and aesthetically dull from an urban design perspective. However, residential streets can be improved through infrastructure retrofits, particularly by combining green and grey infrastructures and integrating various functions and services. Using a systematic literature review and an adapted landscape services framework, the paper analyses the status of retrofit research and discusses existing composition and spatial integration of green, grey, and green-grey street infrastructure. Findings suggest changing infrastructure compositions in residential streets and a trend toward increased grey and green-grey infrastructure integration. However, functional connectivity is often lacking, and while barriers to implementation have been suggested, few have been tested. While retrofits are potentially able to increase the number and quality of landscape services that support human well-being, more—and possibly longitudinal—research is required to advance and analyze their implementation and provide evidence for their success.

Description: The evolution of urban form is a slow and complex process driven by various factors which influence its pattern of occurrence (time, shape and directions) over time. Given the ever-increasing demand for urban expansion, and its negative effects on travel efficiency and environmental quality, it is imperative to understand the driving forces behind this complex process. This study investigates the role played by transport developments in the expansion of Perth’s urban footprint. Since transport developments are influenced by prevailing economic developments and planning regulations, our analysis starts by deconstructing a timeline of milestones under these three themes, from an urban land development perspective. An overview of the eras of transport evolution is provided, and we discuss the pattern of urban form changes as they relate to these transport advancements. The paper ends by mapping and quantifying changes in Perth’s urban land over the past five decades. The results show that transport had a strong influence on the pattern of urban expansion for a long time, but that trend has now been reversed. Rail constructions have been playing catch-up to residential expansion since the late twentieth century. Meanwhile, the rate of urban expansion has gone down in the twenty-first century, as the city goes for compact growth.

Description: Observing air quality from sensors onboard light rail cars in Salt Lake County, Utah began as a pilot study in 2014 and has now evolved into a five-year, state-funded program. This metropolitan region suffers from both elevated ozone levels during summer and high PM2.5 events during winter. Pollution episodes result predominantly from local anthropogenic emissions but are also impacted by regional transport of dust, chemical precursors to ozone, and wildfire smoke, as well as being exacerbated by the topographical features surrounding the city. Two electric light-rail train cars from the Utah Transit Authority light-rail Transit Express (“TRAX”) system were outfitted with PM2.5 and ozone sensors to measure air quality at high spatial and temporal resolutions in this region. Pollutant concentration data underwent quality control procedures to determine whether the train motion affected the readings and how the sensors compared against regulatory sensors. Quality assurance results from data obtained over the past year show that TRAX Observation Project sensors are reliable, which corroborates earlier preliminary validation work. Three case studies from summer 2019 are presented to illustrate the strength of the finely-resolved air quality observations: (1) an elevated ozone event, (2) elevated particulate pollution resulting from 4th of July fireworks, and (3) elevated particle pollution during a winter time inversion event. The mobile observations were able to capture spatial gradients, as well as pollutant hotspots, during both of these episodes. Sensors have been recently added to a third light rail train car, which travels on a north–south oriented rail line, where air quality was unable to be monitored previously. The TRAX Observation Project is currently being used to provide reliable pollutant data for health studies and inform urban planning efforts. Links to real-time data displays and updated information on the quality-controlled data from this study are available on the webpage for the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah.

Description: Understanding human movements in the face of natural disasters is critical for disaster evacuation planning, management, and relief. Despite the clear need for such work, these studies are rare in the literature due to the lack of available data measuring spatiotemporal mobility patterns during actual disasters. This study explores the spatiotemporal patterns of evacuation travels by leveraging users’ location information from millions of tweets posted in the hours prior and concurrent to Hurricane Matthew. Our analysis yields several practical insights, including the following: (1) We identified trajectories of Twitter users moving out of evacuation zones once the evacuation was ordered and then returning home after the hurricane passed. (2) Evacuation zone residents produced an unusually large number of tweets outside evacuation zones during the evacuation order period. (3) It took several days for the evacuees in both South Carolina and Georgia to leave their residential areas after the mandatory evacuation was ordered, but Georgia residents typically took more time to return home. (4) Evacuees are more likely to choose larger cities farther away as their destinations for safety instead of nearby small cities. (5) Human movements during the evacuation follow a log-normal distribution.

Description: Thermoplastic composites manufacturing could be a potential end-of-life option for separated construction and demolition waste. This study aims to find out how well the established ecodesign methodologies support the choice of recycled composite materials in new product design, and what challenges these materials offer to the designer. A product design case study was conducted by applying the ecodesign methodologies Environmental Quality Function Deployment and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution, to identify the main promoting and demoting factors from the designer’s point of view. The rate of recycled material is the main promoting factor, but biodegradability, recyclability, and the mixing of materials are usually demoting the composite use. The use of multiple criteria analysis techniques can work in favor of the composite, as the mechanical and physical properties are taken into consideration. The paper discusses the potential challenges the designer faces when evaluating the feasibility of using recycled material composites. The design suggests that new uses for waste that previously went to landfill, such as mineral wool, can be found with composite solutions.

Description: Although the importance of urban infrastructure resilience can be inferred, its terminology remains convoluted within the literature due to a lack of systematic review from a sustainable development planning perspective. This review paper was designed to elucidate connected research themes, scientific popularity, and conceptual boundaries of the term infrastructure resilience in an urban context. Three guiding research questions were asked: What does urban infrastructure resilience really mean? What are the most common research topics connected to urban infrastructure resilience? How can humanity further improve urban infrastructure resilience from a sustainable development planning perspective? To answer these research questions, a two-step literature analysis was adopted consisting of: (i) a scoping review to select relevant publications based on a specific search query; and (ii) a content analysis to reduce and synthesize the scoping review findings further based on the three most applicable publishing outlets. The scoping review reduced articles to 535, while content analysis further condensed it to 84 across three key journals. With North America and Europe leading, the findings corroborated that eight connected subject areas establish the conceptual boundaries of urban infrastructure resilience. The eight related research topics in decreasing abundance were: (1) climate change, (2) floods, (3) disasters, (4) environmental policy, (5) ecosystems, (6) risk assessment, (7) emergency preparedness, and (8) adaptation. In conclusion, these research topics should be pursued when creating urban infrastructure resilience strategies for moving towards sustainability.

Description: Propelled by the increasing global competition for location qualities and production factors of (economic) regions in the age of globalization, regional councils have been introduced on sub-national levels in a number of countries. However, the conditions to develop and to govern these regional spaces vary massively in global comparison. Based on three types of elements for the well-functioning of regional councils, in this study, ten regional councils across the globe have been analysed and compared by carrying out qualitative web researches and expert’s interviews. Results show that although huge differences between the political organizations in the globally selected case studies exist, two main forms and two sub-types of councils—with a specific functional orientation—can be identified. The aim of the paper is to provide an analytical framework that can be used in analysing regional councils or in processes to develop regional councils further.

Description: Sustainable development decisions generally require citizen participation in the decision process to avoid public resistance and objections in the long term. Because of the involvement of non-experts, the uncertainty of the decision is increased, and this must be considered in the decision-making process. This paper aims to introduce a sustainable urban transport development problem in which citizens are involved to allow them to express their preferences for improving certain elements of the public bus system. To mitigate the uncertainty of the non-expert evaluations, a fuzzy-analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model has been created and applied. Since the objective of the research is to provide a suitable framework for transport development tenders, only the criteria weights have to be determined; thus, an alternative level has not been applied. The model has been tested on the urban bus transport system of a large Turkish city: Mersin. Based on the application, citizen preference weights could be associated with certain elements of the supply quality; thus, government development source allocation decisions could be supported. The fuzzy-AHP model ensures that the final development implications will meet public demand for bus system improvement in the city.

Description: In recent decades, territorial transformations have occurred on the Spanish Mediterranean coast due to the real estate bubble (1997–2008). The objectives of this research are: (1) to analyse the domestic water consumption trend in the study area (“Beach Sector” of the city of Alicante, Southern Spain) (2000–2017); and (2) explore water use and the characteristics of detached houses and how its residents have introduced water-saving measures to reduce consumption after the economic crisis in the study area. A review and analysis of data on housing and population has been carried out where this urban development type has been implemented. Moreover, surveys of the residents have been conducted in order to determine and analyse water consumption, and the perception and knowledge used to reduce water consumption in detached houses. The results show that consumption decreased between 2000 and 2017 due to different factors and there was no change in the water consumption trend at the end of the economic crisis. In view of the conclusions, it should be mentioned that this reduction has been associated with a greater environmental awareness of the need to save water, the installation of systems that use water more efficiently and water-saving devices. All of this is aimed at reducing the water bill that has been exacerbated by an increase in water prices seeing as this is the type of property that consumes the most water.

Description: In recent decades, manufacturing industries in Europe have undergone a deep transformation due to global market competition, automation, and adaptation to globalized production patterns. The impact of deindustrialization and regional restructuring has been particularly strong on regions outside of metropolitan areas, which may be locked in their specific development path and cannot benefit from agglomeration effects. However, scholars are increasingly shifting their attention to processes of regional renewal, emphasizing the strengths and potentials of such regions. Such potentials holds the concept of Industrial Culture which is defined as a particular cultural setting made up of certain intangible assets, such as skills, attitudes, traditions, tangible monuments, and artefacts. Based on the case study of the district of Zwickau, the authors identify three dimensions of Industrial Culture. These cultural, social, and economic aspects can be underscored by different—albeit often overlapping—actions, opening up new development options for the region if embedded in a broad network of regional actors. Industrial Culture can thus be perceived as a strategic concept to form a coherent approach of regional development by integrating various existing activities in a region.

Description: Autonomous vehicles will significantly affect mobility conditions in the future. The changes in mobility conditions are expected to have an impact on urban development and, more specifically, on location choices, land use organisation and infrastructure design. Nowadays, there is not enough data for a real-life assessment of this impact. Experts estimate that autonomous vehicles will be available for uptake in the next decade. Therefore, urban planners should consider the possible impacts from autonomous vehicles on cities and the future challenges for urban planning. In this context, the present paper focuses on the challenges from the implementation of autonomous road vehicles for passenger transport in European cities. The analysis is based on a systematic review of research and policy. The main outcome of the analysis is a set of challenges for urban planning regarding the features of urban development, the local and European policy priorities, the current lack of data for planning and the potential for autonomous vehicles to be used by planners as data sources. The paper concludes that tackling these challenges is essential for the full exploitation of the autonomous vehicles’ potential to promote sustainable urban development.

Description: Green roof typology can vary depending on buildings structure, climate conditions, substrate, and plants used. In regions with hot and dry summers, such as the Mediterranean region, irrigation plays an essential role, as the highest temperatures occur during the driest period of the year. Irrigation might reduce the heat island effect and improve the cooling of buildings during this period, however, the added cost of maintenance operations and additional energy consumption could outrun the benefits provided by the project. Moreover, in situations where water is scarce or primarily channelled to other uses (e.g., domestic, agriculture or industry) during drought occurrence, it is advisable to implement green roof projects with the lowest use of water possible. The objective of the present work is to investigate solutions to optimize water use in green roofs under Mediterranean conditions, such as those of southern Europe. Two case studies are presented for Portugal, and potential techniques to reduce irrigation requirements in green roofs were tested. These addressed the use of native plant species, including the extreme type of a non-irrigated green roof (Biocrust roof) and techniques for plant installation. Plant drought tolerance was found to be an advantage in green roofs under these climatic conditions and, for the species studied, aesthetic value could be maintained when irrigation decreased.

Description: This paper investigates how institutions in urban settings potentially identify, frame, and operationalise biodiversity conservation policies. It adopts the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IAD) to analyse a case study regarding the retention of ecologically mature trees in urban green space in Canberra, Australia. The research investigates; what are the structural and institutional arrangements that catalyze or inhibit biodiversity conservation in urban green space? Specifically, the IAD framework is applied to explore the institutional structures and the role of key decision-makers in the conservation and management of ecologically mature trees in urban green space. Ecologically mature trees represent an exclusive habitat for many species and are key structures for conserving biodiversity in urban settings. The results suggest the application of the IAD ‘rules-in-use’ analysis reveals that ecologically mature trees are inconsistently managed in Canberra, leading to conflicting approaches between institutions in managing urban biodiversity. It suggests that a more structured and replicable institutional analysis will help practitioners to empirically derive a more comprehensive understanding of the roles of institutions in supporting or inhibiting biodiversity conservation in urban settings. The research finds that developers, asset managers, and other stakeholders could benefit from explicitly mapping out the defined rules, norms and strategies required to negotiate economically, socially and environmentally achievable outcomes for biodiversity conservation in urban green space.

Description: Traditionally, medium-sized cities have been compact urban centres, which have also emerged as satellite nuclei within metropolitan areas of larger cities. However, urban dispersion models have led to growth in population and the increasing urbanisation of large cities’ peripheral areas. This article will analyse medium-sized cities in Spain, as well as their urban areas within the national urban network. Medium-sized cities will be defined herein, and their urban areas of influence will also be established. The increase and growth in area and population of the so-called medium-sized cities draws a new map of urban relationships. Empirical analysis will resort to a nuclear, demographic source, the population of urban areas. Source data will be analysed both statistically and cartographically. Finally, a spatial analysis of Spain’s urban network will be presented as the main method used to obtain results, with a characterisation of Spain’s urban system and the role of cities in such system being displayed. There is a trend which aims at re-balancing the permanent configuration of the country’s urban network. The article concludes with a typology of medium-sized cities regarding their relative position in the territory. This research contributes to the current scientific debate on the dynamics of urbanisation in the environment of medium-sized cities.

Description: The 2008 crisis entailed a turning point in the process of creating and managing cities and territories. There has been a change from a city model, based on expansive growth, which was also speculative and deregulated, had provoked an unprecedented expansion of the outskirts of towns and cities, and the artificialization of thousands of hectares of land, to a model based on the reconstruction of the original city, before the impact of the crisis. Gone are the days of urban mega-projects—source of indebtedness for local administrations- and big urbanizations, which, in many occasions, have not been inhabited. The financial, social, and residential reality requires a better thinking of the city models, as well as recuperating the neighborhoods and recomposing the social gap and conflicts, which had become affected by unemployment, evictions, and austerity policies. In this paper, two models of understanding and managing cities have been presented, as a way of identifying strengths, weaknesses, and impacts on the modern city. Several case studies have been collected at a regional level (Extremadura and Valencian Community), and at an urban level (Las Palmas, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and Toledo), and even at a sub-urban level (via the study of certain neighborhoods).

Description: To identify and evaluate architect Christopher Alexander’s theory of wholeness, this article draws on the work of British philosopher J.G. Bennett, who developed a conceptual method—what he called systematics—to clarify phenomena by drawing upon the qualitative significance of number. A central assumption of systematics is that there is something inherent in number itself that is fundamental to the way the world is and the way we can understand it. For Bennett, each whole number provides different but complementary modes for examining any phenomenon; thus, one-ness relates to the wholeness of the phenomenon; two-ness, to complementarity; three-ness, to relatedness, and so forth. This article draws on Bennett’s interpretation of four-ness, summarized by a diamond-shaped symbol that he called the tetrad. Bennett claimed that the tetrad provides an interpretive means for understanding any activity directed toward a focused outcome, for example, writing a book, designing a building, or planning a new city district. The tetrad is used in this article to probe and evaluate Alexander’s conceptual and practical efforts to recognize and fabricate wholeness, drawing on evidence from his Nature of Order and New Theory of Urban Design. The article first discusses the tetrad broadly and then considers how it helps to clarify Alexander’s efforts to understand and make wholeness.

Description: Human ecology, a stream of planning, was developed by Park, Burgess, and Hoyt. This theoretical model emphasized mobility and assimilation as natural paths to housing. This essay offers an analysis of its influence on urban theory and policymaking in the United States. Using planning-specific analyses, the author interrogates the relationships between structural and ecological interpretations of urban change within early planning theory. A particular focus is given to housing policies and models such as tipping point, segregation, and gentrification. These human ecological interpretations inspired and shaped urban renewal and redlining practices, along with public and affordable housing in the United States. The essay concludes with a criticism of the ecological ideas of spontaneous order and the claims of naturally balancing economic systems and conceptions of personal responsibility and choice.

Description: As the world’s largest urban regions continue to expand, a concomitant rise in non-communicable diseases, particularly type 2 diabetes, poses an increasingly ominous challenge to experts in the field of public health. Given that the majority of the world’s population (54%) resides in urban areas, a figure likely to reach two-thirds by 2050, this issue presents serious implications for medical practitioners as well as policymakers seeking to manage long-term healthcare costs while sustaining historic increases in life expectancy. To explore how these trends are continuing to affect the United States, a multiple regression analysis was conducted using data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through their initiative, 500 Cities: Local Data for Better Health. The regression models revealed that larger cities reported significantly higher rates of type 2 diabetes even after controlling for variables that have been perennially linked to disease onset (e.g., levels of obesity, sedentary behavior). Implications are discussed, most notably the argument for moving beyond the ‘food desert’ paradigm when identifying and explaining which characteristics of larger cities place their residents at increased risk. This approach could help reveal opportunities for intervention that may not have garnered sufficient attention in the extant literature.

Description: In Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC, Vietnam), there is now an urgent need for evaluating access to parks in an effort to ensure better planning within the context of rapid and increasingly privatized urbanization. In this article, we analyze the provision and accessibility to parks in HCMC. To achieve this, the information gathered was then integrated into the geographical information systems (GISs). Based on an Ascending Hierarchical Classification, we were able to identify five different types ranging in their intrinsic characteristics. The accessibility measurements calculated in the GISs show that communities are located an average of at least 879 meters away from parks, which is a relatively short distance. Children have a level of accessibility comparable to that of the overall population. Accessibility also seems to vary greatly throughout the City—populations residing in central districts (planned before 1996) enjoy better accessibility compared to those in peripheral neighborhoods (planned after 1996). Parks located in areas planned between 1996 and 2002 are the least accessible, followed by parks in areas planned after 2003. Our findings suggest possible approaches that could be used to help ensure the quality of parks and their spatial accessibility.

Description: Although a handful of studies have begun to integrate activity space within travel behavior analysis in the European and United States (U.S.) contexts, few studies have measured the size, structure, and implications of human activity spaces in the context of developing countries. To identify the effects of land-use characteristics, socio-demographics, individual trip characteristics, and personal attitudes on the travel-activity based spatial behavior of various population groups in Dhaka city, Bangladesh, a household-based travel diary pilot survey (for two weekdays) was conducted for 50 randomly selected households in the winter of 2017. The study focused on two separate subareas: one taken from Dhaka North City Corporation, and another taken from Dhaka South City Corporation. Two methods—shortest-path network and road network buffer—were used for calculating activity space in a geographic information system (GIS). The daily activity areas for individual respondents ranged from 0.37 to 6.18 square miles. Land-use mix was found to be a significant predictor of activity space size for the residents. Larger activity space was recorded for the residents of one subarea over another due to less land-use diversity. The pilot data showed some specific socio-economic and travel differences across the two study subareas (car ownership, income, modal share, distance traveled, trip duration).

Description: The socio-economic transformation of (post)mining towns takes different forms and follows varied pathways. This obvious fact acquires a different significance in a region that is a polycentric urban conurbation whose growth was based on coal mining and industry. Particularly as concerns small towns, which are a minority in it in terms of numbers. This paper attempts to present the issue based on the cases of two small towns, Lędziny and Radzionków, located in the Katowice conurbation in southern Poland. While having similar mining origins, the towns currently represent two radically different paths of economic development. Both mentioned towns are developing relatively well. However, certain threats to their growth are also revealed: social functional, environmental and even political. A closer inspection of both is important in that the two small towns are examples of two extremities in the region, between which other types of towns undergoing socio-economic transformation are situated. The selected examples also indicate that a small (post)mining town does not necessarily have to be ‘the place that don’t matter’. Additionally, an important conclusion is that despite many objective barriers, a small town in a mining region can follow a line of development based on the industry 4.0 concept.

Description: OpenStreetMap provides a valuable crowd-sourced database of raw geospatial data for constructing models of urban street networks for scientific analysis. This paper reports results from a research project that collected raw street network data from OpenStreetMap using the Python-based OSMnx software for every U.S. city and town, county, urbanized area, census tract, and Zillow-defined neighborhood. It constructed nonplanar directed multigraphs for each and analyzed their structural and morphological characteristics. The resulting data repository contains over 110,000 processed, cleaned street network graphs (which in turn comprise over 55 million nodes and over 137 million edges) at various scales—comprehensively covering the entire U.S.—archived as reusable open-source GraphML files, node/edge lists, and GIS shapefiles that can be immediately loaded and analyzed in standard tools such as ArcGIS, QGIS, NetworkX, graph-tool, igraph, or Gephi. The repository also contains measures of each network’s metric and topological characteristics common in urban design, transportation planning, civil engineering, and network science. No other such dataset exists. These data offer researchers and practitioners a new ability to quickly and easily conduct graph-theoretic circulation network analysis anywhere in the U.S. using standard, free, open-source tools.

Description: Urban transport is critical in shaping the form and function of cities, particularly the level of automobile dependence and sustainability. This paper presents a detailed study of the urban transport eco-urbanism characteristics of the Stockholm, Malmö, Göteborg, Linköping, and Helsingborg urban regions in southern Sweden. It compares these cities to those in the USA, Australia, Canada, and two large wealthy Asian cities (Singapore and Hong Kong). It finds that while density is critical in determining many features of eco-urbanism, especially mobility patterns and particularly how much public transport, walking, and cycling are used, Swedish cities maintain healthy levels of all these more sustainable modes and only moderate levels of car use, while having less than half the density of other European cities. Swedish settlement patterns and urban transport policies mean they also enjoy, globally, the lowest level of transport emissions and transport deaths per capita and similar levels of energy use in private passenger transport as other European cities, and a fraction of that used in lower density North American and Australian cities. Swedish urban public transport systems are generally well provided for and form an integral part of the way their cities function, considering their lower densities. Their use of walking and cycling is high, though not as high as in other European cities and together with public transport cater for nearly 50% of the total daily trip making, compared to auto-dependent regions with between about 75% and 85% car trips. The paper explores these and other patterns in some detail. It provides a clear depiction of the strengths and weaknesses of Swedish cities in urban transport, some key policy directions to improve them and posits possible explanations for some of the atypical patterns observed.

Description: As the number of historical urban cemeteries where interment is no longer available continues to grow, the everyday use and restorative benefit of these spaces (beyond commemoration and remembrance) is worthy of further exploration. This study primarily investigates the everyday use of two historical urban cemeteries in Edinburgh through behavioural observation (N = 185). We also explore further the relationships between cemetery qualities and perceived restorativeness through an interviewer-administered survey (N = 134) and face-to-face interviews (N = 24) at the sites. The survey findings showed that usage and aesthetics in the cemeteries were both significantly and positively associated with various restorative qualities including ‘being away’, ‘fascination’ and ‘compatibility’. The data provided from the interviews and behavioural observations complement the survey findings that the everyday use of urban cemeteries (i.e., using them as an alternative route for pedestrian journeys or simply walking the dog) could facilitate users’ mental restorative process. After controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, provision of facilities (e.g., benches and toilets) was found to have no significant association with any restorative qualities. Using a mixed method approach, this study provides a novel understanding of how the urban population uses, and perceives, old urban cemeteries in contemporary Scotland.

Description: This case report explores the town of Siatista (located in the Western Macedonia Region—Greece), which is designated as a “traditional settlement”. The paper argues that, despite the relevant legislation that designated 400 settlements in Greece as “traditional settlements” and put them under protection, Siatista has no delimited traditional section. Through the years, new house typologies, demolitions, and alterations of its urban form have appeared, and Siatista has lost its identity. Having as an ultimate goal to identify proper planning guidelines and regulations for the preservation of Siatista’s built heritage, the methodology used in the paper includes the following steps: (a) recording and codification of the key legislation for the protection of Siatista, including the official urban plans (and their revisions); (b) identification and mapping of the urban form and spatial characteristics of Siatista (existing land uses, house typology, etc.); (c) identification of the alterations of the urban form and the demolitions, mainly with the use of aerial photos (1960–2014); and (d) creation of a map presenting the remaining built heritage per degree of evaluation. Following the analysis of the existing situation and the identification of the key challenges, the paper ends by defining and delimitating the well-preserved section of the town (proposing stricter rules and regulations for its preservation).

Description: Darwin’s mangrove ecosystems, some of the most extensive and biodiverse in the world, are part of the urban fabric in the tropical north of Australia but they are also clearly at risk from the current scale and pace of development. Climate motivated market-based responses, the so-called ‘new-carbon economies’, are one prominent approach to thinking differently about the value of living infrastructure and how it might provide for and improve liveability. In the Australian context, there are recent efforts to promote mangrove ecosystems as blue infrastructure, specifically as blue carbon, but also little recognition or valuation of them as green or urban infrastructure. Drawing on observational and qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews, this study examines how key stakeholders in Darwin frame and understand mangroves in relation to the urban, and how they are anticipating and responding to governance efforts to frame mangroves and pay for their carbon sequestration and storage services as blue carbon. The push for large infrastructure development and an expanding urban footprint, present serious challenges for mangrove protection, and the study evidences both denial and complacency in this regard. However, although the concept of blue carbon is already taking effect in some circles, it was not viewed as straightforward or as appropriate by all study participants and may very well work in practice to exclude groups within the community. Both clear governance problems, as well as unrecognized and vernacular community connections to mangroves in Darwin, indicate that there are ongoing conceptual and empirical challenges to be considered in recognizing and valuing mangroves as part of urban life.

Description: This paper presents the conceptualisation of the City Data Plan, a data governance policy instrument intended to connect the production and use of urban data in a comprehensive and evolutive long-term strategy aligned with city development goals. The concept of the City Data Plan had been elaborated by taking into account current issues related to privacy and manipulation of data in smart city. The methodological approach adopted to define the nature of a City Data Plan is grounded on the conceptual and empirical parallelism with corporate data governance plans and general urban plans, respectively aimed to regulate decision-making powers and actions on data in enterprise contexts, and the interests of local stakeholders in the access and use of urban resources. The result of this analytic process is the formulation of the outline of a City Data Plan as a data governance policy instrument to support the iterative negotiation between the instances of data producers and data users for instantiating shared smart city visions. The conceptualisation of the City Data Plan includes a description of the multi-stakeholder organisational structures for the city data governance, cooperation protocols and decision areas, responsibilities assignments, components of the plan and its implementation mechanisms.

Description: The purposes of this study were to; (i) estimate the efficiency of local government expenditure by province and city in Vietnam, (ii) test if there was a change in the efficiency of local government expenditure with the rapid development of Vietnam, and (iii) estimate the size of the population that is improving local government expenditures. By using the stochastic frontier cost function method to estimate the cost inefficiency, we found that Vietnam has been improving the efficiency of local government expenditure while achieving rapid economic growth from FY2005 to FY2009. In addition, we simulated a minimum efficient scale (MES) to determine the size of the province population that is improving local government expenditures. We found that the MES in Vietnam is 1,394,859.

Description: Spatial data analytics can detect patterns of clustering of events in small geographies across an urban region. This study presents and demonstrates a robust research design to study the longitudinal stability of spatial clustering with small case numbers per census tract and assess the clustering changes over time across the urban environment to better inform public health policy making at the community level. We argue this analysis enables the greater efficiency of public health departments, while leveraging existing data and preserving citizen personal privacy. Analysis at the census tract level is conducted in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, on hypertension during pregnancy compiled from 2011–2014 birth certificates. Data were derived from per year and per multi-year moving counts by aggregating spatially to census tracts and then assessed for clustering using global Moran’s I. With evidence of clustering, local indicators of spatial association are calculated to pinpoint hot spots, while time series data identified hot spot changes. Knowledge regarding the geographical distribution of diseases is essential in public health to define strategies that improve the health of populations and quality of life. Our findings support that spatial aggregation at the census tract level contributes to identifying the location of at-risk “hot spot” communities to refine health programs, while temporal windowing reduces random noise effects on spatial clustering patterns. With tight state budgets limiting health departments’ funds, using geographic analytics provides for a targeted and efficient approach to health resource planning.

Description: Discovered by Christopher Alexander, living structure is a physical phenomenon, through which the quality of the built environment or artifacts can be judged objectively. It has two distinguishing properties just like a tree: “Far more small things than large ones” across all scales from the smallest to the largest, and “more or less similar things” on each scale. As a physical phenomenon, and mathematical concept, living structure is essentially empirical, discovered and developed from miniscule observation in nature- and human-made things, and it affects our daily lives in some practical ways, such as where to put a table or a flower vase in a room, helping us to make beautiful things and environments. Living structure is not only empirical, but also philosophical and visionary, enabling us to see the world and space in more meaningful ways. This paper is intended to defend living structure as a physical phenomenon, and a mathematical concept, clarifying some common questions and misgivings surrounding Alexander’s design thoughts, such as the objective or structural nature of beauty, building styles advocated by Alexander, and mysterious nature of his concepts. For this purpose, we first illustrate living structure—essentially organized complexity, as advocated by the late Jane Jacobs (1916–2006)—that is governed by two fundamental laws (scaling law and Tobler’s law), and generated in some step by step fashion by two design principles (differentiation and adaptation) through the 15 structural properties. We then verify why living structure is primarily empirical, drawing evidence from Alexander’s own work, as well as our case studies applied to the Earth’s surface including cities, streets, and buildings, and two logos. Before reaching conclusions, we concentrate on the most mysterious part of Alexander’s work—the luminous ground or the hypothesized “I”—as a substance that pervasively exists everywhere, in space and matter including our bodies, in order to make better sense of living structure in our minds.

Description: Christopher Alexander published his longest and arguably most philosophical work, The Nature of Order, beginning in 2003. Early criticism assessed that text to be a speculative failure; at best, unrelated to Alexander’s earlier, mathematically grounded work. On the contrary, this review presents evidence that the newer work was a logically consistent culmination of a lifelong and remarkably useful inquiry into part-whole relations—an ancient but still-relevant and even urgent topic of design, architecture, urbanism, and science. Further evidence demonstrates that Alexander’s practical contributions are remarkably prodigious beyond architecture, in fields as diverse as computer science, biology and organization theory, and that these contributions continue today. This review assesses the potential for more particular contributions to the urban professions from the later work, and specifically, to an emerging “science of cities.” It examines the practical, as well as philosophical contributions of Alexander’s proposed tools and methodologies for the design process, considering both their quantitative and qualitative aspects, and their potential compatibility with other tools and strategies now emerging from the science of cities. Finally, it highlights Alexander’s challenge to an architecture profession that seems increasingly isolated, mired in abstraction, and incapable of effectively responding to larger technological and philosophical challenges.

Description: African cities are at increasing risk for disasters, including floods. Pikine, Senegal—located on the outskirts of the Dakar metropolitan region—has experienced regular floods since 2005 due to a rising water table, dense settlement, and inadequate drainage. The goal of this research was to assess household experiences of floods through in-depth qualitative interviews in one area of Pikine. A total of 44 households were interviewed on the economic and health impacts of flooding and their perceptions of flood mitigation strategies. Our research confirmed that floods create substantial economic and health burdens for families and that infrastructure projects have helped, but not solved, the flooding issues. Our research also had some unexpected findings, particularly relating to concerns over drinking water, land tenure and housing prices, and perception of government intervention.

Description: Analyzing population and employment sizes at the local finer geographic scale of transit station areas offers valuable insights for cities in terms of developing better decision-making skills to support transit-oriented development. Commonly, the station area population and employment have been derived from census tract or even block data. Unfortunately, such detailed census data are hardly available and difficult to access in cities of developing countries. To address this problem, this paper explores an alternative technique in remote estimation of population and employment by using building floor space derived from an official administrative geographic information system (GIS) dataset. Based on the assumption that building floor space is a proxy to a number of residents and workers, we investigate to what extent they can be used for estimating the station area population and employment. To assess the model, we employ five station areas with heterogeneous environments in Tokyo as our empirical case study. The estimated population and employment are validated with the actual population and employment as reported in the census. The results indicate that building floor space, together with the city level aggregate information of building morphology, the density coefficient, demographic attributes, and real estate statistics, are able to generate a reasonable estimation.

Description: In contemporary times, bike sharing programs are gaining importance as an influential transportation mode in both urban and rural areas. They are also used as a vital transportation mode on university campuses which serve as a healthy and environmentally-friendly transportation system. However, having an appropriate location for a bike station is important, so as to maximize the benefits of the service. This study used an origin–destination (O-D) matrix to identify appropriate bike station locations at the Morgan State University campus. The O-D matrix analysis identifies three locations Cumming Hall/University Health Center, Rawling Hall, and Center for Built Environment and Infrastructure Studies as the most appropriate locations to start a pilot, which will serve most of the campus (students, faculty, staff) and connect them to the maximum number of facilities at Morgan State University. The O-D matrix takes into account the occupancy or population of individual buildings based on enrollment over the past four years, the distance to the center of the campus where maximum facilities including the graduate and undergraduate offices are located, and the frequency of the university shuttle connecting most of the buildings. This methodology can be replicated and used on other university campuses and will help further bike sharing programs.

Description: In recent years, ‘sharing cities’ has spread globally, starting in 2012 when Seoul declared its intent to pursue sharing economy strategies [...]

Description: Plot systems (also referred to as “property”, “parcel”, or “lot”) are generally recognised as the organisational framework of urban form that contributes to the economic performance of cities. However, studies that link the spatial form of plots to economic data are limited. The paper builds on the theory of Webster and Lai, which argues that the process of urbanisation is aligned with increased subdivision of property rights (increased division of land into plots, for example) due to the process of economic specialisation that is typical of cities. The aim of the paper is to test this theory by analysing whether there is a correlation between: (a) the shape and structure of plot systems, which are classified as types based on three plot metrics (size, compactness, and frontage index) and b) economic activity, measured as the concentration of retail and food activities per plot. The paper will use statistical analysis to relate plot types to economic activity in three European cities (London, Amsterdam, and Stockholm). The results provide empirical support for our initial hypothesis and Webster and Lai’s theory, which states that plots of smaller size, more regular shape, and smaller frontage generally correspond to a higher concentration of economic activity in cities.

Description: Traffic congestion is one of the most vexing city problems and involves numerous factors which cannot be addressed without a holistic approach. Congestion cannot be narrowly tackled at the cost of a city’s quality of life. Focusing on transport and land use planning, this paper examines transport policies and practices on both the supply and demand sides and finds that indirect travel demand management might be the most desirable solution to this chronic traffic ailment. The concept of absorption of traffic demand through the renaissance of streets as a way for traffic relief is introduced from two perspectives, with some examples from dense Asian urban contexts to demonstrate this. Firstly, jobs–housing balance suggests the return of production activities to residential areas and sufficient provision of diverse space/housing options to deal with work-related traffic. The second approach is to promote the street as a multi-activity destination rather than a thoroughfare to access dispersed daily needs, and to advocate more street life to diminish non-commuting traffic. Based on this, suggestions for better transport planning policies are put forward.

Description: Polycentric development, territorial cohesion, and territorial diversity are some of the main principles supported at the European level for reducing regional disparities and for making territories more resilient and diversified, which strengthens the competitiveness of Europe in the global economy. This research article, starting from the final results of the ESPON Linking Networks of Protected Areas to Territorial Development (LinkPAs) project, considers that the protected areas (PAs) are a territorial unit able to connect—in a polycentric approach—the different territorial aspects (economic, social, environmental) present in an area to implement cross-border public services (CPS) to share in a larger territorial context through a network of protected areas (NPA). Toward this aim, this paper suggests applying the NPA management model developed in the ESPON LinkPAs project to CPS to assess if a soft governance mechanism is able to efficiently and sustainably manage the CPS.

Description: Cultural legacy is a relatively neglected theme in event and sustainability studies, compared to economic or physical legacies with solid evidence. This article focuses on the experience of Liverpool as the 2008 European Capital of Culture. An evaluation ten years on can provide the basis for research on the long-term cultural legacy of a major event, as well as how to achieve sustainability through legacy planning. Five dimensions of cultural legacy are explored, including: Cultural agency and strategies, cultural network, cultural provision, cultural engagement, and cultural image. The results of the study show that the spill-over effect of culture can be achieved through thorough legacy planning. The most important lesson learned from Liverpool is to integrate the event into the city's long-term and culture-led development, which yields a healthy and productive cultural climate.

Description: Human migration involves the relocation of individuals, households or moving groups between geographical locations. Aggregate spatial patterns of movement reflect complex interactions among motivations (such as distance, identity, economic opportunities, etc.) that influence migration behaviour and determine destination choice. Gravity models and radiation models are often used to study different types of migration at various spatial scales. In this paper, we propose that human migration models can be improved by embedding regional identities into the model. We modify the existing human migration gravity model by adding an identity parameter based on three different sets of Dutch identity regions. Through analysis of the Dutch internal migration data between 1996 and 2016, we show that adding the identity parameter has a significant effect on the distance distribution. We find that individuals are more likely to move towards municipalities located within the same identity region. We test the impact of regional identity by comparing randomly spatially clustered and optimised identity regions to show that the effects we attribute to regional identity could not be attributed due to chance. Finally, our finding shows that cultural identity should be taken into account and has broad implications on the practice of modelling human migration patterns at large. We find that people living in Dutch municipalities are 3.89 times as likely to move to a municipality when it is located within the same historic identity region. Including these identity regions in the migration model decreases the deviation of the model by 10.7%.

Description: Rigorous peer-review is the corner-stone of high-quality academic publishing [...]

Description: Shading techniques constitute one of the most passive, beneficial strategies for reducing energy consumption in urban dwellings. Shading affects many factors, for example, the solar gains and radiations falling on the façade, which are considered the most significant in increasing the cooling energy demand in hot climates. This paper conducts a parametric study on external and internal shading devices and establishes their impact on energy consumption, daylight levels, and ventilation. The work was conducted using Integrated Environmental Simulation Virtual Environment (IES-VE) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) numerical methods. The results revealed that optimised shading can influence savings in terms of energy and cooling, in addition to the enhancement of daylighting and reduction of glare. After studying all these factors associated with the different shading techniques investigated, the findings revealed that all shades affect the energy, daylight and ventilation parameters positively. However, despite all external and internal shadings showing improvements, the egg crate shade was determined as that which provided the optimum energy saving, while enhancing daylight and improving natural ventilation for a sustainable building design.

Description: Research demonstrates that homeless individuals use urban space in adaptive and endemic ways. Investigations at city and neighborhood scales would benefit from attention to homeless use of abandoned housing. We employ the pattern language approach developed by Christopher Alexander for twenty-two abandoned houses in Newark, Ohio. We use statistical and geospatial data analyses to evaluate hypotheses related to prospect and refuge site qualities, accessibility, and attractiveness to homeless persons, and the proximity of sites to resources. Factors related to prospect/refuge, accessibility, and resource proximity were consistent with the hypotheses. Results can be grouped into four distinct patterns: ‘Hiding Places,’ ‘Welcome Mat,’ ‘Shelter (Un)becoming,’ and ‘Proximity to Resources.’ Based on these patterns, we conclude with recommendations for officials and organizations addressing homelessness.

Description: Urban sprawl is nowadays a pervasive topic that is subject of a contentious debate among planners and researchers, who still fail to reach consensual solutions. This paper reviews controversies of the sprawl debate and argues that they owe to a failure of the employed methods to appraise its complexity, especially the notion that urban form emerges from multiple overlapping interactions between households, firms and governmental bodies. To address such issues, this review focuses on recent approaches to study urban spatial dynamics from the perspective of the complexity sciences. Firstly, spatial metrics from landscape ecology provide means of quantifying urban sprawl in terms of increasing fragmentation and diversity of land use patches. Secondly, cellular automata and agent-based models suggest that the prevalence of urban sprawl and fragmentation at the urban fringe emerge from negative spatial interaction between residential agents, which seem accentuated as the agent’s preferences become more heterogeneous. Then, the review turns to practical applications that employ such models to spatially inform urban planning and assess future scenarios. A concluding discussion summarizes potential contributions to the debate on urban sprawl as well as some epistemological implications.

Description: Understanding what aspects of the urban environment are associated with better socioeconomic/liveability outcomes is a long standing research topic. Several quantitative studies have investigated such relationships. However, most of such works analysed single correlations, thus failing to obtain a more complete picture of how the urban environment can contribute to explain the observed phenomena. More recently, multivariate models have been suggested. However, they use a limited set of metrics, propose a coarse spatial unit of analysis, and assume linearity and independence among regressors. In this paper, we propose a quantitative methodology to study the relationship between a more comprehensive set of metrics of the urban environment and the valorisation of street segments that handles non-linearity and possible interactions among variables, through the use of Machine Learning (ML). The proposed methodology was tested on the French Riviera and outputs show a moderate predictive capacity (i.e., adjusted R 2 = 0.75 ) and insightful explanations on the nuanced relationships between selected features of the urban environment and street values. These findings are clearly location specific; however, the methodology is replicable and can thus inspire future research of this kind in different geographic contexts.

Description: Living walls (LW) have been widely proposed as a form of green infrastructure to improve aesthetics, energy consumption, and microclimate in urban environments by adding densely-planted vegetation to the outside walls of buildings. Scientific studies using multiple treatments in a single LW face challenges due to the close physical proximity of different treatments, particularly the potential for plants above to influence those below. A study on a west-facing LW was undertaken to investigate 36 unique treatments in Adelaide, South Australia, for nine months. The LW comprised combinations of six native plant species, three soil substrates and two irrigation volumes. The LW consisted of 144 modular trays mounted on a wall in a 12 × 12 grid with four replicates of each treatment. The location of each treatment was designed to account for a cascading carry-over effect that may be present when one plant is placed above another. Carry-over effect of the model designed showed mixed results among the plant groups identified. It was also found that long-form plants can significantly shade smaller plants below them. Experimental research into the performance of plants in mixed species LW should consider the carry-over effect to account for this.

Description: Urban sustainability has been used to cover multiple aspects of urban development. Terms related to sustainability have been generously used to advance ubiquitous and hard-to-measure targets not least in response to global and national sustainable development (SD) targets. However, ad-hoc and governed urbanization processes differ. In addition to different development pathways, local differences in interpretation of sustainability exist. This renders a global urban sustainability discourse disconnected from local practice. In this paper we focus on the Nordic cities, combining what is known about the similarities of the cities and societies, their recent development and highlights. Comparing with the global sustainability discourse spearheaded by the UN development goals (SDGs) we analyze the potential links in Nordic urban development to the global aims, as well as the local action taken via ex-ante review and assessment. With increasing demands for transformative change in urban planning and other institutions due to environmental, social and economic challenges, we demonstrate where strengthening the urban sustainability agenda is particularly needed. Findings show surprisingly little focus on socially just and cross-thematic development pre-SDGs, while it is expected that the dominant technocratic focus will give way to these other aspects necessary to address sustainability under the current SDG framework.

Description: The present study is based on the assumption that the urban heat island (UHI) mitigation appears compelling and urgent in dense cities. To the above thematic area, recent redevelopmental interventions of open space for the microclimatic improvement and thermal comfort have been made through national and international programs at neighborhood scale (local area). One of these recovery processes is the case study of Pavlou Mela in the Greek context, which in the present discussion, focuses on the microspecific investigation through quantitative analysis of the eleven points distributed in the area of the intervention, extrapolating comparative considerations of different configurative factors post-operam. The results of this analysis tend: (i) To identify the degree of accuracy of the two most applied software packages in the scientific community (ENVImet Pro and Rayman Pro) through microclimatic parameters, namely air temperature (Ta) and surface temperature (Ts) comparing them with in-situ measurements; (ii) to evaluate the thermal sensation of man correlated with the mean radiant temperature (Tmrt) by verifying the actual improvement of thermal comfort outdoor with the index, physiologically equivalent temperature (PET).

Description: The concept of residential housing preferences has been studied across multiple disciplines, with extensive literature supporting both stated and revealed preference methods. This study argues that both preference types, stated and revealed, should be assessed concurrently to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of residential housing choices. To provide evidence, this research used findings from a public participation GIS survey that identified the stated housing preferences associated with three categories of urban residents, which were called urban “tribes”. We implemented an analytical framework using fuzzy modelling to relate stated preferences with revealed preferences for the same individuals using empirical data describing the urban structure in Tampere, Finland. Following an analysis of the relationships between residents’ revealed preferences and urban structural variables, we examined the consistency of stated housing preferences with revealed preferences. The results show considerable mismatch between the stated and revealed preferences for the urban tribes that were examined i.e., the preferred housing environment was significantly different from the actual living environment. Further, the stated preferences showed disequilibrium within the current structure of the housing supply in Tampere. The findings can have important implications for housing policy making in Tampere. Further, the use of a novel fuzzy model approach demonstrated a flexible and tolerant method for working with imprecise and variable social data to capture subtle differences. Finally, this study elaborately discusses the remaining limitations and suggests how they should be addressed in future research.

Description: The underlying structure of road networks (e.g., circuity, relative discontinuity) contributes to the travel time perception of travelers. This study considers additional factors (e.g., arrival flexibility, access to traffic information) and tests nonlinearities linking perception of travel time. These factors are linked to four categories according to time perception research in psychology: temporal relevance, temporal uncertainty, and temporal expectancies; task complexity, absorption, and attentional deployment; and affective elements. This study estimates the relationship on data collected from commuters recruited from a previous GPS-based study in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region consisting of trips from home to work and back. For these work trips, the subjects’ self-reported travel times and the subjects’ travel times measured by GPS devices were collected. The results indicate that nonlinearities are present for road network attributes. Furthermore, the additional factors (e.g., arrival flexibility, access to traffic information) influence the travel time perception of travelers.

Description: Gender issues are present in waste management, from daily handling activities through to decision-making processes. In waste education programs, the disregard for views of and contribution by women has resulted in strategies that do not comprehensively address the waste issue, preventing long-standing and sustainable outcomes, while increasing existing gender inequities. Three critical waste matters on education and gender were identified: (1) lack of meaningful involvement and participation of women (and other vulnerable groups) throughout the decision-making processes; (2) lack of inclusion of gender-specific designs and gender-sensitive approaches in the information and education materials; and (3) tendency to devise strategies directed to women only, while exempting the other stakeholders from their responsibilities. This paper presents a closer look into the relationship between waste education and gender, with a proposal of a participatory framework for gender mainstreaming in waste education programs. It includes components to assess the promoting entity of the waste education program and all stages of the program. The framework represents a novel theory and practice contribution for waste education development, to support academics, practitioners, and policymakers, in the quest of achieving equitable and sustainable waste management systems for all.

Description: The usage of greenery systems as nature-based solutions to assist in urban cooling in summer time as well as urban warming in wintertime is considered a scientific validated approach in urban planning. The objective of this research is the investigation and quantification of the role of green roofs and green facade solutions concerning thermal behavior in buildings energy savings by using standardized semantic city models that allow the quantification of such measures on district and city scales. The implemented model uses standardized geospatial data based on the CityGML format, a semantic city model standard, for analysis and data storage. For storage of the thermal properties of the buildings, the behavior of its occupants as well as the sensor measurements the Energy ADE of the CityGML standard was used. A green roof/façades model was implemented to simulate the heat transfer in a building based on the heat balance principle of foliage, soil, and structural layers. This model allows analyzing the thermal influence of plant and substrate layers on the heat gains from incoming solar radiation into buildings and the heat losses. This implementation was validated for cooling solutions using monitoring data from real-time experiments during summer measurements at three locations in Germany. Results from this experiment correspond well with the findings of other relevant studies. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to test the impacts of climate, substrate and plants on the greenery layer performance.

Description: Urban areas are now the dominant human habitat, with more influence than ever on economies, environment and our health. Dynamic urban models are increasingly applied to explore possible future scenarios of urban development to achieve sustainability. However, it is still challenging to use these models for prediction, taking into consideration the complex nature of urban systems, the nonlinear interactions between different parts of the system, and the large quantities of data output from simulations. The aim of this study is to analyse the dynamics of two hypothetical dynamic BLV (Boltzmann–Lotka–Volterra) retail models (two-zone and three-zone). Here, by visualising and analysing the qualitative nature of state space (the space of all possible initial conditions), we propose an alternative way of understanding urban dynamics more fully. This involves examining all possible configurations of an urban system in order to identify the potential development in future. Using this method we are able to identify a supply-demand balancing hyperplane and categorise two causes of phase transition of urban development: (A) change in variable values (e.g., building a new shopping centre) that cause the system to cross a basin boundary, (B) state space change (e.g., construction of a new motorway changes travel costs in the region) causes the containing basin to be modified. We also identify key characteristics of the dynamics such as velocity and how the phase space landscape changes over time. This analysis is then linked with equilibrium-size graphs, which allow insights from state space to be applicable to models with large numbers of zones. More generally this type of analysis can potentially offer insights into the nature of the dynamics in any dynamical-systems-type urban model. This is critical for increasing our understanding and helping stakeholders and policy-makers to plan for future urban changes.

Description: Science and technology spaces around the world are, simultaneously, major physical, technological and symbolic forms, key elements of economic strategy, and sites of international labour movements and knowledge transfer. They are thus the product of multiple imaginations, with multiple, potentially divergent, objectives. In this paper, we compare three international science spaces as ‘ethnoscapes’, emphasising the distinctive perceptions, cultures and identities amongst international science and technology migrants and visitors at these sites. This, we contend, sharpens a sense of the ‘international-ness’ of science spaces in various dimensions, given the particular experiences of scientific migrants and visitors moving into different nations, locations and facilities, their roles in constructing international communities, and their navigation of alternative spaces. It also offers insight into the production of contextual (rather than spatial or physical) localities, as international scientists and technologists experience and constitute larger formations, building on their perceptions of varied and interacting science ’scapes.

Description: This editorial briefly introduces Christopher Alexander, as a theorist, as a design practitioner, as an architect, and importantly as a scientist, as well as his life’s work—The Nature of Order—focusing not only on the trinity of wholeness, life, beauty, but also on his new organic cosmology.

Description: The processes of urban sprawl that have been present over the past two decades in the different strata of the urban hierarchy have also affected, as a whole, medium-sized cities. The urban sprawl has been particularly pronounced during the period of expansive Spanish urbanism, in which many of the municipalities situated in the vicinities of large cities have been affected by major demographic dynamics and (sub)urbanisation development outside the traditional city limits. Sometimes, these processes have been greater than the nearby cities in the urban area where they are inserted. In this study, we examine the general mechanisms identified within an urban crown size (within a radius of 30 km) and at the scale of the municipality, based on an analysis of two distinct periods: one linked to a strong growth dynamic (2000–2008), and another related to subsequent crisis (2009–2016). A group of 23 inner medium-sized Spanish cities has been analysed, taking into account the trends of the population, the surface of unbuilt plots, the built surface, and the amount of housing. We have identified the typologies of their respective urban areas over the two periods considered.

Description: The article delves into the potential application of space syntax methodology to landscape architecture. Anticipating the complexity of the landscape architectural design process, the use of 3D space syntax analysis made it possible to better understand the relations between urban space shapes and their functions. The application of an iterative process of project improvement optimizes the fulfilment of the landscape architect vision, through changes in ground shaping, selection of tree species and their spatial distribution. This article explores the vegetation attributes of vegetation that are necessary to consider in landscape architecture projects in the context of the DepthSpace 3D software, using the case study of an urban park in Maia—Portugal. To achieve this, it was necessary to define the attributes to be inserted in the software. The main attributes of vegetation that can be employed in landscape architecture projects are form and dimension, growth speed, and visual permeability (opacity) of the crown in winter and summer. The software proved itself a useful tool, not only in studying and evaluating the effects of the final design, but also during project development.

Description: In the new paradigm of the smart cities world, public opinion is one of the most important issues in the new conception of urban space and its corresponding regulations. The data collection in terms of environmental noise cannot only be related to the value of the equivalent noise level L A e q of the places of interest. According to WHO reports, the different types of noise (traffic, anthropomorphic, industrial, and others) have different effects on citizens; the focus of this study is to use the identification of noise sources and their single impacts on background urban noise to develop a visualization tool that can represent all this information in real time. This work used a 3D model platform to visualize the acoustic measurements recorded at three strategic positions over the country by means of a sound map. This was a pilot project in terms of noise source identification. The visualization method presented in this work supports the understanding of the data collected and helps the space-time interpretation of the events. In the study of soundscape, it is essential not only to have the information of the events that have occurred, but also to have the relations established between them and their location. The platform visualizes the measured noise and differentiates four types of noise, the equivalent acoustic level measured and the salience of the event with respect to background noise by means of the calculation of SNR (Signal-to-Noise), providing better data both in terms of quantity and quality and allowing policy-makers to make better-informed decisions on how to minimize the impact of environmental noise on people.

Description: The most recent English attempts at decentralisation take the shape of the city region devolution policy agenda. Decentralisation claims to empower localities and address regional growth imbalances, while creating a variety of new temporary and selective fiscal and geographic arrangements in policy-making that have the potential to create the opposite effect. This paper focuses on the relationship between decentralisation and territorial inequalities through the analysis of strategic discourse of six ‘devolved authorities’. A quantitative, qualitative, and comparative approach to this question complements the traditional insights obtained from in-depth case study analysis using actors’ interviews. It focuses on city regions’ official discourse of self-conceptualisation and marketization, and thereby highlights the wider policy and regional theory context of their production to frame the structural factors impacting the rewriting of city regional space. By doing so, we find a number of issues with the current decentralisation approach in competing priorities between localities, an over-reliance on agglomeration economies and urban competition, potential mismatches in scales of policy decision-making and delivery, and challenges regarding inequalities in a post-Brexit England.

Description: We combine the Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure (HSDI) concept developed within spatial history with elements of archaeological predictive modeling to demonstrate a novel GIS-based landscape model for identifying the persistence of historically-generated industrial hazards in postindustrial cities. This historical big data approach draws on over a century of both historical and modern spatial big data to project the presence of specific persistent historical hazards across a city. This research improves on previous attempts to understand the origins and persistence of historical pollution hazards, and our final model augments traditional archaeological approaches to site prospection and analysis. This study also demonstrates how models based on the historical record, such as the HSDI, complement existing approaches to identifying postindustrial sites that require remediation. Our approach links the work of archaeologists more closely to other researchers and to municipal decision makers, permitting closer cooperation between those involved in archaeology, heritage, urban redevelopment, and environmental sustainability activities in postindustrial cities.

Description: This study investigates black ethnic immigrant group differences in residential outcomes between developing and mature suburbs. It evaluates the extent to which foreign-born black ethnic groups’ socioeconomic status (SES) and acculturation characteristics agree with the outlines of the spatial assimilation model. Binomial logistic regression models are calculated, using data from the 2012–2016 IPUMS ACS, to examine the impact of place of birth/nativity status, SES, acculturation, family/household characteristics, and region on residence in developing versus mature suburbs within U.S. metropolitan areas. The results reveal mixed results for the expectations of the spatial assimilation model. On the one hand, and in agreement with the spatial assimilation model, residence in mature and developing suburbs is a function of increments in household income and educational levels. On the other hand, the multivariate results reveal suburban type residential outcomes that vary by place of birth and nativity status. The effects of acculturation also reveal findings that diverge from the expectations of the spatial assimilation model.

Description: Combining multivariable statistics and geostatistics with landscape metrics, we attempted to quantify the spatial pattern of urbanization in the city of Niamey, Niger. Landscape metrics provided local quantification of both landscape composition and physiognomy while the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) yielded a multivariable summary of the main source of landscape metrics variation across the city. We used the variogram (geostatistics) to analyze the spatial pattern of the PCA outcomes and to characterize the associated spatial scales of variation. In Niamey, the main urban structure corresponded to a gradient ranging from highly diversified, fragmented, and both wooded and built-up areas in the city center and along the Niger River, to less green zones gathering steel-roofed houses whose density diminished towards the periphery. This concentric structure centered on the Niger River clearly reflected the history of Niamey. PCA and geostatistics provided appealing quantitative estimates of spatial patterns, scales, anisotropy and intensity of urban structures. Although these different tools are known in landscape ecology, they are rarely used together. The present paper illustrates how they allow characterizing the marked spatial variation of the urban landscape of the fast-growing African city of Niamey (Niger). Such a quantification of the urban landscapes may be extremely useful for future correlative investigations in various fields of research and planning.

Description: A process of land squandering began in Spain in the mid 1990s until the great crisis of 2008. The intensive production of urban land affected the Spanish medium-sized towns. They were characterized by their compact nature and then they underwent an intense diffuse urbanization. However, in some cases there had been previous examples of urban sprawl. In this article, we study one of them, the unique and historic city of Toledo, in the Centre of the Iberian Peninsula. We will show how the city has experienced the land squandering and has been extensively widespread throughout the hinterland, consisting of their peripheral municipalities. We will also check how Toledo has had a previous internal dispersion process in the last quarter of the 20th Century through the called Ensanche (widening). We will use the urban estate cadaster as a fundamental source for evolutionary and present analysis of the city and its hinterland. The field and bibliographic work complete the methodology. The final conclusion is that there have been remarkable urban increments in Spanish medium-sized cities such as Toledo, in external and peripheral districts, under the logic of speculation and profit, resulting in a disjointed space.

Description: In the UK, water supplies are under pressure from climate, population and lifestyle change. Showering is the largest component of domestic water consumption. Young adults are high water-users at a transitional life-stage, when practices are dynamic, and habits shaped. This paper presents the methodology, early findings and reflections on challenges of working with different data types and scales, to explore real-world water-saving through a mixed-methods approach, focusing on showering patterns of first year university students in campus accommodation at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. Combining household meter, logged water-fixture micro-component, personal-use questionnaire, user diary and stakeholder focus group data with the Scottish Government Individual-Social-Material model, typical showering demand reduction interventions were evaluated and insights into alternative interventions were generated. Results indicate Estates’ routine equipment maintenance and database management affect data quality and consistency. Despite these issues a profile of daily student water use was derived (equivalent to 114 litres per person per day) but with high variability between different households (from 83 to 151 litres per person per day). Average shower durations (self-reported 10–12 minutes) were higher than reported UK norms, although frequency was similar to the UK daily shower norm. Average measured shower volumes (51 litres in one house) were not excessive, indicating shower fixtures provided a contribution to water saving.

Description: This analysis examines the spatial fragmentation of the urban landscape with respect to neighborhoods classified according to their racial, demographic, housing and socioeconomic characteristics. The analysis is performed on the 50 largest metropolitan areas throughout the United States from 1990–2010, and looks at both global trends over time using a landscape ecology metric of edge density to quantify fragmentation over time. It then analyzes the spatial clustering of each neighborhood type over time, for each city. Results illustrate an increasingly fragmented urban landscape with respect to neighborhood type, led by Los Angeles as the most fragmented metropolitan area. Decomposed by neighborhood type, both racially concentrated high-poverty neighborhoods, as well as neighborhoods with a highly educated population, have increased in spatial concentration in large cities over time, exposing rises in spatial inequalities even as global patterns suggest a breaking up of neighborhood types. The global patterns are therefore driven by declines in more moderate-income and multiethnic neighborhoods, and a decline in the spatial concentration of newer, white, single-family housing neighborhoods.

Description: As urban populations grow worldwide, it becomes increasingly important to critically analyse accessibility—the ease with which residents can reach key places or opportunities. The combination of ‘big data’ and advances in computational techniques such as machine learning (ML) could be a boon for urban accessibility studies, yet their application in this field remains limited. In this study, we provided detailed predictions of healthcare accessibility across a rapidly growing city and related them to socio-economic factors using a combination of classical and modern data analysis methods. Using the City of Surrey (Canada) as a case study, we clustered high-resolution income data for 2016 and 2022 using principal component analysis (PCA) and a powerful ML clustering tool, the self-organising map (SOM). We then combined this with door-to-door travel times to hospitals and clinics, calculated using a simple open-source tool. Focusing our analysis on senior populations (65+ years), we found that higher income clusters are projected to become more prevalent across Surrey over our study period. Low income clusters have on average better accessibility to healthcare facilities than high income clusters in both 2016 and 2022. Population growth will be the biggest accessibility challenge in neighbourhoods with good existing access to healthcare, whereas income change (both positive and negative) will be most challenging in poorly connected neighbourhoods. A dual accessibility problem may arise in Surrey: first, large senior populations will reside in areas with access to numerous and close-by, clinics, putting pressure on existing facilities for specialised services. Second, lower-income seniors will increasingly reside in areas poorly connected to healthcare services, which may impact accessibility equity. We demonstrate that combining PCA and SOM clustering techniques results in novel insights for predicting accessibility at the neighbourhood level. This allows for robust planning policy recommendations to be drawn from large multivariate datasets.

Description: It is often uncritically assumed that, when digital technologies are integrated into the operation of city functions, they inevitably contribute to sustainable urban development. Such a notion rests largely on the belief that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions pave the way for more democratic forms of planning, and that ‘smart’ technological devices result in a range of environmental benefits, e.g., energy efficiency and the mitigation of global warming. Drawing on the scientific literature that deals with ‘smart cities’, we here elaborate on how both propositions fail to consider drawbacks that could be characterized as ‘wicked’, i.e., problems that lack simplistic solutions and straightforward planning responses, and which often come about as ‘management surprises’, as a byproduct of achieving sustainability. We here deal with problems related to public choice constraints, ‘non-choice default technologies’ and the costs of automation for human learning and resilience. To avoid undemocratic forms of planning and too strong a dependence on non-choice default technologies, e.g., smart phones, we recommend that planners and policy makers safeguard redundancy in public-choice options by maintaining a wide range of alternative choices, including analog ones. Resilience thinking could help planners deal more effectively with the ‘wickedness’ of an increasingly hyper-connected society.

Description: Smart home and artificial intelligence technologies are developing rapidly, and various smart home products associated with artificial intelligence (AI) improved the quality of living for occupants. Although some studies discussed the application of artificial intelligence in smart homes, few publications fully considered the integration of literature and products. In this paper, we aim to answer the research questions of “what is the trend of smart home technology and products” and “what is the relationship between literature and products in smart homes with AI”. Literature reviews and product reviews are given to define the functions and roles of artificial intelligence in smart homes. We determined the application status of artificial intelligence in smart home products and how it is utilized in our house so that we could understand how artificial intelligence is used to make smart homes. Furthermore, our results revealed that there is a delay between literature and products, and smart home intelligent interactions will become more and more popular.

Description: Faced with limited technical strength and resource protection requirements in remote mountainous areas, a remote expert evaluation system was designed based on a cloud service platform. On the basis of the analysis of system users, the remote expert evaluation system was structured, and then the cloud platform service architecture and the system functions were designed. This cloud platform construction could enhance the informatization level of the planning review process and improve the efficiency and the scientific nature of the review process.

Description: The smart active residential buildings play a vital role to realize intelligent energy systems by harnessing energy flexibility from loads and storage units. This is imperative to integrate higher proportions of variable renewable energy generation and implement economically attractive demand-side participation schemes. The purpose of this paper is to develop an energy management scheme for smart sustainable buildings and analyze its efficacy when subjected to variable generation, energy storage management, and flexible demand control. This work estimate the flexibility range that can be reached utilizing deferrable/controllable energy system units such as heat pump (HP) in combination with on-site renewable energy sources (RESs), namely photovoltaic (PV) panels and wind turbine (WT), and in-house thermal and electric energy storages, namely hot water storage tank (HWST) and electric battery as back up units. A detailed HP model in combination with the storage tank is developed that accounts for thermal comforts and requirements, and defrost mode. Data analytics is applied to generate demand and generation profiles, and a hybrid energy management and a HP control algorithm is developed in this work. This is to integrate all active components of a building within a single complex-set of energy management solution to be able to apply demand response (DR) signals, as well as to execute all necessary computation and evaluation. Different capacity scenarios of the HWST and battery are used to prioritize the maximum use of renewable energy and consumer comfort preferences. A flexibility range of 22.3% is achieved for the scenario with the largest HWST considered without a battery, while 10.1% in the worst-case scenario with the smallest HWST considered and the largest battery. The results show that the active management and scheduling scheme developed to combine and prioritize thermal, electrical and storage units in buildings is essential to be studied to demonstrate the adequacy of sustainable energy buildings.