Journal of Urban Management最新文献

Urban system theory seeks to comprehensively capture the complexity of cities. Digital twin cities are “digital mirror images” or symbionts of physical cities, and thus, they form a complex adaptive system. Unlike the reductionist practice of urban informatization and digitalization, digital twins are expected to enable human beings to enjoy the complex beauty of the city for the first time, capable to perceive more information of city and deal with more complex urban problems. Some practical misunderstandings have emerged, however, as a result of simple technical stacking, which is not able to solve urban problems from the root of the problem; has biased thinking about digital twin cities, which treats them as technical tools; and has slowed development of digital twin innovative applications. To solve these problems, we need to draw on basic urban theory. On the basis of complex system theory, in this study, we comprehensively analyzed the characteristics and mechanisms of digital twin cities and constructed a system framework for digital twin cities. We further elucidated the digital twin city and deconstructed it from the perspective of system theory into four subsystems: the planning system, infrastructure system, industrial system, and public service facility system. We then analyzed the subsystem rules and changes in the digital twin city, as well as the principles and development trends that conform to the self-organization and self-adaptive laws of the city.

World cultural heritage (WHS) is of great significance to promoting the sustainable development of cities, and history culture is very important to achieve the goal of sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to construct a cultural heritage evaluation system and to explore and optimize tourist routes. We take cultural heritage sites as the research object, and comprehensively use Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Delphi method and fuzzy mathematics to establish a cultural heritage tourism resource evaluation system. According to the evaluation results and questionnaires, a decision-making system for cultural tourism route planning is established, and additional sites of Qin culture are found, and a complete Qin culture route is established to provide data and theoretical basis for Xi'an's perfect cultural tourism route. The traveling salesman problem is the most basic path problem. In this study, the ant colony algorithm is used to improve the model combined with the actual problem of Xi'an tourist routes, and the optimal solution of the cultural parade route is obtained. Xi'an authorities and managers can strategically use these findings to promote Xi'an as a green destination WHS.

The credibility thesis premises that an institution's endogenous credibility and function, rather than its form, ensures its persistence. Informal rental housing (IRH), an informal housing institution in China, was suggested to serve as a dwelling for low-income residents in previous research on institutional credibility. Combining the institutional functionalism in credibility thesis and the relational and constructivist perspective in the strategic-relational approach (SRA), this research on two distinct SPRH cases in Shenzhen aims to re-examine the credibility thesis, moving the emphasis away from institutional functions toward the interaction between function and dysfunction, and their substitutability in the relation reconstruction dynamics. It reveals that the informal housing institution's credibility rationale has shifted in Shenzhen. Instead of serving a dwelling function, IRH is becoming an investment tool for profit-making and a part of public service for government targets, contributing to the credibility of informal housing and exacerbating the exclusion of the disadvantaged groups from urban areas. IRH's institutional credibility is contingent upon not just the endogenous institutional function, but also on the interplay of the function and dysfunction embedded in its institutional environment.

COVID-19 has disconnected humanity, reduced social interaction in physical urban areas, and led to the new normal, which describes the anticipated changes in human life and professionals due to the impact of the pandemic. In addition, as part of digital transformation, the post-pandemic New Normal includes accelerating digital solutions and new standards for virtual urban exploration and planning. This study applies the concept of digital twin and serious game design and uses Minecraft, a game-based platform that inspires creative, inclusive learning through play, for virtual urban exploration and the development of social interaction among participants. Dadaocheng, a historical area of Taipei city, is then studied as a case study with the Geoboxers application to develop the prototype for a co-creation experiment in Minecraft. The prototype development and the results of the experiment are then used in the Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) method to evaluate a set of influential criteria proposed in this study through pairwise comparisons by expert panelists. The results of the AHP analysis reveal users' simultaneous preferences for urban planning and social interaction with urban characteristics (22.14%), urban exploration (12.29%), and 3D models (11.97%). Subsequently, the research results showed a need to promote the integration of digital twins and serious game applications as digital tools for urban exploration and social interaction, increasing post-pandemic virtual urban planning and applying new urban design techniques. This study also contributes to the acceleration of digital transformation in urban planning and management.

While digitalization is expected to bring benefits in the area of land use planning, it is also redefining planning practices and entire planning cultures. Limited research exists on this digital transformation, and this article aims to narrow this gap through an empirical case study. In Finland, there is an ongoing transition towards information model (IM)-based planning, driven by public government development programs. Its principal focus is to achieve national-level interoperability of plan data. A harmonized IM for local master and detailed plans has recently been developed for use in municipal urban planning in the future. In addition, a national information system (IS) for built environment data is currently being developed. In this article, the perspectives of Finnish urban planners towards the national IM and IM-based planning were examined through a questionnaire. The results indicate that IM-based planning has a strong impact not only on planning outcomes (i.e., land use plans) but also on the planning context (e.g., planning practices and the planners themselves, software and information systems (ISs), and planning law). We argue that the high expectations set for IM-based planning will not be met without paying attention to the viewpoints of planners, planning practices, and the changes to planning culture in a wider sense. In addition to the technological aspects, the focus should also be on the social and contextual elements of planning.

This paper aims to engage with the ongoing debates on the role of planning in future smart cities, to make a case for a reconceptualization of the technocentric notion of the smart city, and to elevate the position of city planning within the smart-city discourse. The central argument made is that the smart city could exploit the synergies between city planning and three techno-scientific domains including Big Data, Geographic Information Science and Systems, and Data Science—which collectively constitute an emerging field known as Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI)— to meet four overarching policy goals: 1) to enhance the efficiency of urban services and functions; 2) to improve quality of life for all urban citizens; 3) to address the pressing societal, ecological and economic challenges that could plague urban systems on different levels; and, 4) to contribute to the production of spatial data, information and knowledge on human-urban dynamics. In addition, the paper defines a human-centered conceptual framework illustrating how the cross-pollination between city planning and the three techno-scientific fields could enhance the planning practice and accomplish the smart-city policy goals. The methodology employed in this study entails a systematic review of the literature. In addition to discussing the latest achievements as well as the progress made on the nexus of city planning and GeoAI, the paper also highlights the barriers to the application of GeoAI in the planning, design and management of smart cities and identifies potential avenues for future research.

In smart city practice, urban policymakers show to focus foremost on the technologies sec. This often leads to quite uniform, technocratic and corporate-led ways of handling urban issues. In contrast, more attention should be paid to the question of appropriateness of smart city technologies. This entails that quite uniform urban issues in different contexts ask for distinctive approaches and as a consequence, for specific smart city technologies. In other words, the context plays a decisive role in the choice for the urban issues themselves and in the ways to ‘solve’ or govern these, and in the choice for specific smart city technologies. This study examines the role of context in the handling of urban issues with the help of smart city technologies in three smart city projects: Hangzhou City Brain (China), Singapore Smart Nation, and Amsterdam Smart City (the Netherlands). The results reveal that the specific contextual factors influence urban city developments and the application therein of smart city technologies. This includes: a technology-driven management approach to fixing Hangzhou's traffic congestion; a mixed technocratic and platform-oriented approach to effecting transformation in Singapore's government services, businesses and urban living; and a platform-oriented, open-minded mechanism to improve Amsterdam's livability and economic prosperity. This paper concludes that rather than treating the technology itself as smart, the real smartness in smart cities is to develop and implement appropriate technologies according to its local context to solve targeted urban issues.

Smart Governance is a key pillar of the Smart City movement and an important pathway to achieving Sustainable Development Goals through digital transformation and technologic tools. However, the digital transformation is highly contextual and solutions from the Global North may not be adequate to the reality of developing countries. We present how digital tools and policies, as part of the broader agenda for digital transformation, can touch upon several sustainability goals when focused on benefitting vulnerable citizens. Examples come from observing the process, stakeholders and products developed during the Digital Transformation of Ceará between 2019 and 2022. We build a framework that further links those examples with the SDGs and the Brazilian Letter for Smart Cities, a national set of guidelines towards equitable smart transitions. By setting the framework vis-a-vis a grounded experience, we seek to present seven components which can be adapted to other contexts as drivers of a Smart and Sustainable Governance. We argue that, by applying those elements to build digital tools that help governance, it is possible to create solutions that are inherently tied to SDGs.

Digital twins have great potential for improving urban management. However, the way that they are formulated seems to vary according to the aims of the urban management taking place. For instance, digital twins are made sophisticated and innovative when the urban manager wants to demonstrate technological prowess; they contribute to generating useful interventionist strategies if social engineering is occurring; they emphasize exploratory and collaborative mechanisms if the urban manager wants to uncover people's attitudes; and they tend to focus upon citizen engagement and mechanisms for social improvements when societal reform is the main aim. Yet those who build digital twins seldom declare their worldviews or specify why they are doing so, and this leads to two problems. Firstly, it becomes difficult to evaluate and compare different digital twins. Secondly, since urban management projects often have several contrasting aims, many researchers construct seemingly pluralistic digital twins which are, in fact, severely afflicted with inconsistency and poorly measured priorities as to what needs to be included and addressed. In order to clarify the situation, this paper comprehensively analyses the research literature to conceptualize different approaches to implementing digital twins. It then assesses three alternative, theoretical paradigms upon which a pluralistic digital twin might be grounded and evaluated, and it concludes that "critical realism", rather than "post-modernism" or "ontological flexibility' is the most appropriate.