Cities最新文献

Information flow within urban networks profoundly affects production modes and the structure of urban agglomeration economic systems. Drawing on the panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model and the mediating effect model, this study examined the effects of information flow on agglomeration externalities, with considerations on non-linear effects, proximity mechanisms, and industrial heterogeneity. The resulting findings revealed that the ability to control information at the city node level exhibited a significant non-linear relationship with the agglomeration externalities of the manufacturing, producer, and consumer services industries. Furthermore, the ability to exchange information promoted the agglomeration externalities of producer and public services, albeit only under specific intensity conditions. The proximity mechanisms demonstrated significant mediating effects at the city connection level. This study highlights the infrastructure-like nature of information flow networks and underscores the unique role of network externalities in reshaping agglomeration externalities. These findings offer insights for governments to improve regional planning and leverage virtual urban networks effectively.

Cities are increasingly prominent on the climate change map because they are more interconnected than ever. This study investigates whether and if so, how the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) network influences corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores. Drawing upon the network embeddedness, we propose that the C40 improves the embedded firms' ESG/E scores. Our international evidence from a sample of 7206 firms across 84 countries confirms our hypotheses. Furthermore, we find that the Paris Agreement announcement can strengthen the positive relationship between the C40 and ESG/E scores, while financial slack can only enhance the C40-E score relationship. This study highlights the importance of the global city network in improving corporate sustainability performance and guides managers and policymakers to pursue a sustainability agenda.

Municipal climate policies tie in closely with sustainable urban development. Land use has far-ranging impacts on carbon emissions from mobility, housing, and consumption; as well as climate resilience, carbon sinks, and biodiversity. While compact city is well-established as the dominant strategy for climate-wise planning, a parallel approach focused on greening and its climate advantages is gaining prominence. However, there is little empirical evidence on how municipal climate policies address the relationship between these often conflicting strategies. This study examines how compacting and greening are motivated and how greening is negotiated in relation to compacting in the six largest cities in Finland. Based on a qualitative content analysis of municipal climate action plans (CAP), we show that the primacy of compacting as a strategy is not questioned, however, the importance of greening is increasingly underlined. We demonstrate that the relationship between compacting and greening policies is framed by three main discourses: 1) compacting while protecting the green, 2) greening the built-up structure for adaptation purposes, and 3) greening as a multifunctional strategy parallel with compacting. The study contributes to the topical debate on the integration of compacting and greening and to the need for cross-sectoral and systemic climate-wise policies in general.

Existing knowledge is limited concerning changes in behavior and preferences for urban outdoor physical activities during the post-COVID-19 period, particularly in the long term before and after COVID-19. In this study, we collected GPS-based trajectory data from social media platforms prior to, during, and following COVID-19 lockdowns (2017–2019, 2020–2022, and after 2023). We utilized multi-source data, multi-level models, interrupted time series models, and seasonal prediction models to analyze changes in Chinese urban residents' preferences for outdoor physical activities and the environment. The study revealed that residents' activity preferences decreased each year during the COVID-19 lockdown policy but increased immediately following the lifting of restrictions, with activity levels significantly exceeding pre-pandemic averages. The study highlights that while safety was the primary concern during the pandemic, preferences shifted towards low-density areas, well-developed urban infrastructures, accessible green spaces, and ocean views in the post-pandemic period. These findings provide valuable insights for urban design aimed at enhancing physical activity and well-being in outdoor settings.

Megacities are major contributors to global road CO2 emissions, highlighting their pivotal role in achieving low-carbon development. However, comprehensive studies on emission patterns and decarbonization strategies in these metropolitan areas remain limited. This study presents a novel and portable big data-based workflow for megacities to reveal their spatiotemporal dynamics of road CO2 emissions and quantify decarbonization potentials associated with inter-city travel and the 15-minute city concept. We take Guangzhou City (China) as a case study. Our results reveal that primary purpose trips produce 17 % more CO2 emissions than secondary trips on average. Inter-city trips account for 36.3 % of the total emissions in the city, and those for primary purposes exhibit closer spatial distributions with intra-city trips. While providing more 15-minute-walk POIs exhibits a marginally diminishing effect on reducing trip average emissions, comprehensive implementation of the 15-minute city concept in Guangzhou can reduce up to 56.3 % of the total emissions from non-home-related passenger trips, with variations observed across different trip purposes (40 %–70 %). A significant “head effect” of decarbonization potential across communities exists for all trip purposes. Our study highlights the environmental limitations of monocentric urban planning models in megacities and contributes valuable insights for crafting effective strategies for sustainable urban development.

In China, neighborhood regeneration has transitioned into a new phase characterized by small-scale rehabilitation, and fostering active resident participation has emerged as a crucial challenge. While numerous studies have focused on encouraging resident participation, they often overlook the fact that, cultivating active resident participation requires establishing trust in the grassroots government as a precursor in the China's top-down governance system context. Grounded on the innovative notion of trust building, this paper aims to explore the formation of residents' trust in the grassroots government and its influence on their participation willingness. The theoretical foundation is rooted in the perspectives of organizational behavior and Social Exchange Theory (SET). Data is collected through a questionnaire survey, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is employed for empirical analysis. The empirical findings indicate that trust propensity, trustworthiness, and place attachment directly impact the development of residents' trust in the grassroots government. In turn, trust influences their participation willingness by shaping their perceived benefits and costs. By adopting the unique perspective of trust building, this paper provides theoretical support and practical implementation strategies for promoting resident participation in neighborhood regeneration in China.

There exists a deep and inherent linkage between the urban residential environment and perceived safety. Nonetheless, evidence on how outdoor play spaces in urban residential areas affect children's perceived safety is scarce. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the impact of urban residential built environments on children's perceived safety, particularly by examining the characteristics of play spaces and their potential influences. Employing multiple regression and mediation analysis, we constructed a model to understand how these characteristics impact children's perceived safety. The findings reveal a significant positive effect of plot ratio on children's perceived safety, surpassing the influence of green space ratios. The abundance of natural materials was identified as the most influential spatial characteristic, followed by different sizes and types of spaces. Contrastingly, vegetation surprisingly showed a negative impact. Furthermore, visual stimulation from environmental characteristics are found to have a more significant influence on perceived safety than challenging aspects of the environment. Notably, the number of playmates plays a crucial mediating role in this relationship. Our research aims to enhance children's free play in urban outdoor spaces, offering evidence-based solutions and interventions for child-friendly urban design and policy regulation.

Existing studies suggest that land financing has given rise to entrepreneurial governance in China because local governments act like entrepreneurs to capture land value appreciation. However, the new land reserve institution has recently forbidden local governments from using land as collateral and centralized the financial management of land reserve projects. Given this profound change in land institutions, we ask whether local governments have become less entrepreneurial. This paper investigates the Shanghai Land Reserve Centre. The funding restriction and declining land profitability make it more challenging to generate land revenue. However, the local government is now adapting to the new land reserve institution, developing new entrepreneurial tactics, and treating land investment as a recurrent income stream. Facing the conjuncture of alarming local government debts, re-centralizing state control, and structural limits of land finance, local governments' entrepreneurial stance is not eliminated, but their entrepreneurial practices are reshaped. Theoretically, this paper contributes to understanding how urban entrepreneurialism evolves in response to changing political and economic conjunctures.

In rapidly growing cities, on-street parking spaces consistently serve as a supplement to urban parking supply. However, prolonged curb occupancy remains a prevalent issue on roadways with limited parking management, leading to reduced traffic flow and safety concerns in non-motorized areas. To support the formulation of fine-grained management strategies based on on-street parking duration (OPD), we investigate the distribution of OPD across various roadway segments and explore the factors influencing it at different scales. Real data are obtained from a newly built-up area of Xi'an, China, and the spatial effects of factors influencing OPD are modeled using a multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) method. Results show that the number of parking events, the number of parking spaces, employment buildings, the parking space location, and the distance to adjacent bus stops spatially significantly affect the OPD on both weekdays and weekends. The lowest parking fee level is positively associated with weekday OPD. The estimated coefficients of the variables for on-street parking lots are spatially heterogeneous, which is discussed with the substantial parking policy implications. This study can inform enhanced parking management policies in cities through spatial effects analysis.

Using longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, we investigate the relation between housing conditions (both internal and external) and health among urban adults aged 18 and above. We find that housing improvement reduces the probability of bad self-reported health by 3.7 %, with more pronounced impacts among females, older adults, those with lower socioeconomic status (low education and income, and the employed females) and residents of the less developed central and western regions. This beneficial health effect is enhanced by longer treatment periods and consistent across several robustness checks. Housing conditions seemingly operate on health via poor macronutrient intake, physical inactivity, and sleep deprivation.