Pub Date : 2025-01-31DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2025.105761
Owusu Amponsah , Otiwaa Boakye , Jacob Nchagmado Tagnan , Gideon Abagna Azunre , Foster Frempong , Stephen Appiah Takyi , Michael Ayertey Nanor
Ecologically sensitive areas (ESAs) support the sustainability of cities worldwide. Nevertheless, their encroachment by grey land uses in cities, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), has led to their sturdy deterioration. The current study assessed encroachers' appreciation of the utility of ESAs towards unpacking their motivation to encroach on these spaces. This has received limited scholarly attention. The study empirically focused on Kumasi, a rapidly urbanising city in Ghana, and adopted the convergent parallel mixed-method design to gather and analyse data. The results indicate that the encroachment phenomenon is not monolithic. Generally, encroachers were more aware of ESAs' provisioning and cultural functions than their regulating and ecosystem services. The results further revealed that urbanisation, the dual system of urban land management, and individuals' ignorance of the importance of ESAs were the main factors that contributed to the overall depletion of ESAs. The study found evidence of both ‘bold’ and ‘quiet’ encroachment where, on the one hand, some actors (particularly property developers) courageously encroached and consolidated their gains via political maneuvers, while on the other hand, ‘ordinary’ individuals incrementally and silently encroached due to limited housing and economical options. The paper concludes by recommending that policies and regulations designed to manage ESAs should move away from a brutal and violent enforcement approach to critically consider the perspective of encroachers. One critical strategy is to educate encroachers to enhance both their awareness and knowledge of the importance of ESAs.
{"title":"Why are ecologically sensitive areas (ESAs) in African cities encroached on? Unveiling the encroachers' outlook","authors":"Owusu Amponsah , Otiwaa Boakye , Jacob Nchagmado Tagnan , Gideon Abagna Azunre , Foster Frempong , Stephen Appiah Takyi , Michael Ayertey Nanor","doi":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105761","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105761","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Ecologically sensitive areas (ESAs) support the sustainability of cities worldwide. Nevertheless, their encroachment by grey land uses in cities, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), has led to their sturdy deterioration. The current study assessed encroachers' appreciation of the utility of ESAs towards unpacking their motivation to encroach on these spaces. This has received limited scholarly attention. The study empirically focused on Kumasi, a rapidly urbanising city in Ghana, and adopted the convergent parallel mixed-method design to gather and analyse data. The results indicate that the encroachment phenomenon is not monolithic. Generally, encroachers were more aware of ESAs' provisioning and cultural functions than their regulating and ecosystem services. The results further revealed that urbanisation, the dual system of urban land management, and individuals' ignorance of the importance of ESAs were the main factors that contributed to the overall depletion of ESAs. The study found evidence of both ‘<em>bold</em>’ and ‘<em>quiet</em>’ encroachment where, on the one hand, some actors (particularly property developers) courageously encroached and consolidated their gains via political maneuvers, while on the other hand, ‘ordinary’ individuals incrementally and silently encroached due to limited housing and economical options. The paper concludes by recommending that policies and regulations designed to manage ESAs should move away from a brutal and violent enforcement approach to critically consider the perspective of encroachers. One critical strategy is to educate encroachers to enhance both their awareness and knowledge of the importance of ESAs.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48405,"journal":{"name":"Cities","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 105761"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143098911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Since the 1990s, many governments have reduced direct funding for social housing. In Northwestern Europe, indirect subsidies and guarantees have allowed private providers to maintain and expand the social rental stock. In contrast, Spain's social rental sector has remained underdeveloped. Amid the current affordability crisis, attention to social housing is growing, emphasized by a new law prohibiting the sale of public land zoned for this purpose. Given public expenditure constraints, Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) have emerged as an alternative to finance new construction. These partnerships involve leasing public land at reduced costs to private entities for social housing development. Despite land availability, financial challenges persist and tenders often fail to attract private sector interest. This paper examines constraints affecting social housing development by exploring a PPP by the Catalan Land Institute. The central research question is: How do institutional dynamics and financial constraints impact the provision of social rental housing in Spain? To answer this question, a mixed-methods approach integrates interviews with a sensitivity analysis of key parameters in a Discounted-Cash-Flow (DCF) model. The findings underscore high financing costs, weak renter protections, and misaligned fiscal policies as significant obstacles. The paper recommends further investigating public-backed guarantors, housing allowances, and fiscal incentives to address these challenges.
{"title":"When land is not enough: Drawing in private investment to increase social rental housing in Spain","authors":"Alejandro Fernández, Marietta Haffner, Marja Elsinga","doi":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105720","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105720","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Since the 1990s, many governments have reduced direct funding for social housing. In Northwestern Europe, indirect subsidies and guarantees have allowed private providers to maintain and expand the social rental stock. In contrast, Spain's social rental sector has remained underdeveloped. Amid the current affordability crisis, attention to social housing is growing, emphasized by a new law prohibiting the sale of public land zoned for this purpose. Given public expenditure constraints, Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) have emerged as an alternative to finance new construction. These partnerships involve leasing public land at reduced costs to private entities for social housing development. Despite land availability, financial challenges persist and tenders often fail to attract private sector interest. This paper examines constraints affecting social housing development by exploring a PPP by the Catalan Land Institute. The central research question is: How do institutional dynamics and financial constraints impact the provision of social rental housing in Spain? To answer this question, a mixed-methods approach integrates interviews with a sensitivity analysis of key parameters in a Discounted-Cash-Flow (DCF) model. The findings underscore high financing costs, weak renter protections, and misaligned fiscal policies as significant obstacles. The paper recommends further investigating public-backed guarantors, housing allowances, and fiscal incentives to address these challenges.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48405,"journal":{"name":"Cities","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 105720"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143099335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-31DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2025.105764
Yingqi Sun , Lu Da , Zhaoqian Yang , Zilong Zhang , Yuliang Wang
Water use efficiency is increasingly influenced by the intercity economic network in the context of flow space. It is crucial to evaluate the impact of intercity economic network on water use efficiency from a multidimensional proximity perspective for urban sustainability. This paper investigated the spatiotemporal changes in water use efficiency and intercity economic network indexed by corporates connection among 283 cities in China, and explored the direct and indirect impacts of intercity economic network on water use efficiency from the perspective of multidimensional proximity by applying spatial Durbin model with panel data. Findings indicate that intercity economic network has transitioned towards to state of polycentricity and equilibrium and has shown positive direct impact on water use efficiency in dimensions of geographical proximity and network proximity. Whereas the indirect impact is significantly positive only when employing the directed network proximity. The impacts transcend geographical boundaries, leading to directional spatial spillover effects. The intercity economic network improves water use efficiency by enhancing innovation capabilities and promoting borrowed size, exhibiting regional heterogeneity in geographical location and population size.
{"title":"Spatiotemporal effects of intercity economic network on water use efficiency in China: A multidimensional proximity perspective","authors":"Yingqi Sun , Lu Da , Zhaoqian Yang , Zilong Zhang , Yuliang Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105764","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105764","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Water use efficiency is increasingly influenced by the intercity economic network in the context of flow space. It is crucial to evaluate the impact of intercity economic network on water use efficiency from a multidimensional proximity perspective for urban sustainability. This paper investigated the spatiotemporal changes in water use efficiency and intercity economic network indexed by corporates connection among 283 cities in China, and explored the direct and indirect impacts of intercity economic network on water use efficiency from the perspective of multidimensional proximity by applying spatial Durbin model with panel data. Findings indicate that intercity economic network has transitioned towards to state of polycentricity and equilibrium and has shown positive direct impact on water use efficiency in dimensions of geographical proximity and network proximity. Whereas the indirect impact is significantly positive only when employing the directed network proximity. The impacts transcend geographical boundaries, leading to directional spatial spillover effects. The intercity economic network improves water use efficiency by enhancing innovation capabilities and promoting borrowed size, exhibiting regional heterogeneity in geographical location and population size.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48405,"journal":{"name":"Cities","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 105764"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143098970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-31DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2025.105766
Soran Mansournia , Claire Freeman , Christina Ergler , Frans J. Sijtsma , Omid Vakili Ch , Rezan Naqshbandi
Cities are complex environments where balancing diverse needs is essential. Despite an increasing urban child population, urban design often overlooks their specific needs. Research indicates that children who interact with well-designed outdoor environments experience better cognitive and physical development. Standardized spatial indicators are essential for assessing child-friendliness of cities, yet systematic, comparative approaches to evaluating urban playability remain limited. This study addresses that gap by providing a scalable method called Playscape-mapper. We collaborated with 1086 children from the Kurdish cities of Mariwan and Sine/Sanandaj to co-create spatial-knowledge using PPGIS-based digital-mapping. The study tested two metrics—HAPiDAYS (Highly-Appreciated Places Index for Days) and SUBindex (Sparkling Urban Blend Index)—to compare child-friendliness of two cities. HAPiDAYS measures the impact of popular public spaces on children's daily routines, while SUBindex assesses the overlap between highly-used and popular areas. Children contributed 634 visualizations and geographically-based stories of their favorite places, enriching planners' insights. Results showed significant differences, with Sine scoring higher on both indicators (HAPiDAYS: 37.5 vs. 29; SUBindex: 49.5 % vs. 24 %). These metrics go beyond simple popularity by incorporating accessibility and Frequency of Visits/FOV and show how digital-mapping can effectively quantify urban child-friendliness and facilitate city comparisons, providing policymakers with effective child-centered tools.
{"title":"Digital footprints of play: Decoding child-friendliness of cities through PPGIS","authors":"Soran Mansournia , Claire Freeman , Christina Ergler , Frans J. Sijtsma , Omid Vakili Ch , Rezan Naqshbandi","doi":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105766","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105766","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Cities are complex environments where balancing diverse needs is essential. Despite an increasing urban child population, urban design often overlooks their specific needs. Research indicates that children who interact with well-designed outdoor environments experience better cognitive and physical development. Standardized spatial indicators are essential for assessing child-friendliness of cities, yet systematic, comparative approaches to evaluating urban playability remain limited. This study addresses that gap by providing a scalable method called Playscape-mapper. We collaborated with 1086 children from the Kurdish cities of Mariwan and Sine/Sanandaj to co-create spatial-knowledge using PPGIS-based digital-mapping. The study tested two metrics—HAPiDAYS (Highly-Appreciated Places Index for Days) and SUBindex (Sparkling Urban Blend Index)—to compare child-friendliness of two cities. HAPiDAYS measures the impact of popular public spaces on children's daily routines, while SUBindex assesses the overlap between highly-used and popular areas. Children contributed 634 visualizations and geographically-based stories of their favorite places, enriching planners' insights. Results showed significant differences, with Sine scoring higher on both indicators (HAPiDAYS: 37.5 vs. 29; SUBindex: 49.5 % vs. 24 %). These metrics go beyond simple popularity by incorporating accessibility and Frequency of Visits/FOV and show how digital-mapping can effectively quantify urban child-friendliness and facilitate city comparisons, providing policymakers with effective child-centered tools.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48405,"journal":{"name":"Cities","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 105766"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143098969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-30DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2025.105763
Jonne Silonsaari
The polymorphous sustainability crisis demands large scale transitions in urban mobility. In many places a lot of expectation is put on urban cycling. Yet, many scholars have argued that cycling transitions tend to cater to the affluent, native, white and in other ways privileged urban areas and people. Mobility researchers have proposed mobility commoning as a key theoretical resource to account for the social justice of mobility transitions, but its practical operationalisations remain scarce. This paper focuses on cycling promotion efforts among an intersectional marginalized group that has received little attention in this research and policy context: lower-class, racialized youths in urban peripheries. The study deployed theoretical understandings from recent mobility justice/commoning literatures to create an action research study on Amsterdam cycling program's efforts to promote cycling among youths in the historically marginalized neighborhood of Bijlmer. The results highlight how even advanced cycling environments might be underpinned by intersectional mobility injustices, and how both, immature and advanced cycling cities should engage with local communities and diverse groups to assemble velomobile commons.
{"title":"Assembling velomobile commons for young people in a marginalised Amsterdam neighborhood","authors":"Jonne Silonsaari","doi":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105763","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105763","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The polymorphous sustainability crisis demands large scale transitions in urban mobility. In many places a lot of expectation is put on urban cycling. Yet, many scholars have argued that cycling transitions tend to cater to the affluent, native, white and in other ways privileged urban areas and people. Mobility researchers have proposed mobility commoning as a key theoretical resource to account for the social justice of mobility transitions, but its practical operationalisations remain scarce. This paper focuses on cycling promotion efforts among an intersectional marginalized group that has received little attention in this research and policy context: lower-class, racialized youths in urban peripheries. The study deployed theoretical understandings from recent mobility justice/commoning literatures to create an action research study on Amsterdam cycling program's efforts to promote cycling among youths in the historically marginalized neighborhood of Bijlmer. The results highlight how even advanced cycling environments might be underpinned by intersectional mobility injustices, and how both, immature and advanced cycling cities should engage with local communities and diverse groups to assemble velomobile commons.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48405,"journal":{"name":"Cities","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 105763"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143098971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-29DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2025.105753
Lilanlan , Heminzheng , Wangcuicui , Yangranran
Domestic Waste Classification (DWC) is an effective measure to address the urban garbage siege. Based on text data of public online petitions and government responses regarding DWC from 278 cities across 31 provinces (cities, autonomous regions) in China, as well as corresponding city-level panel data, this paper employs text mining methods to evaluate the topics, sentiments, and quality of expression in public online petitions about DWC, and regression models are used to explore the factors influencing the government's response to public petitions on DWC. The results indicate that, the government's response quality to the petition topic of “Health threats from garbage incineration” and the sentiment of fear are relatively high. The quality of public online petitions can promote the government's response quality to related topics and sentiments expression. Additionally, there are significant differences in the government response to different topic petitions between eastern and western regions, while in cities with different DWC performance, there are significant differences in the government responses to various sentiments. Also, as the level of government decreases, the trend of selective response to petitions with different topics and sentiments becomes more pronounced. Finally, recommendations were provided for both the government and the public.
{"title":"Revealing the influencing mechanism of the government response to the public online petition on domestic waste classification in China","authors":"Lilanlan , Heminzheng , Wangcuicui , Yangranran","doi":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105753","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105753","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Domestic Waste Classification (DWC) is an effective measure to address the urban garbage siege. Based on text data of public online petitions and government responses regarding DWC from 278 cities across 31 provinces (cities, autonomous regions) in China, as well as corresponding city-level panel data, this paper employs text mining methods to evaluate the topics, sentiments, and quality of expression in public online petitions about DWC, and regression models are used to explore the factors influencing the government's response to public petitions on DWC. The results indicate that, the government's response quality to the petition topic of “Health threats from garbage incineration” and the sentiment of fear are relatively high. The quality of public online petitions can promote the government's response quality to related topics and sentiments expression. Additionally, there are significant differences in the government response to different topic petitions between eastern and western regions, while in cities with different DWC performance, there are significant differences in the government responses to various sentiments. Also, as the level of government decreases, the trend of selective response to petitions with different topics and sentiments becomes more pronounced. Finally, recommendations were provided for both the government and the public.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48405,"journal":{"name":"Cities","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 105753"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143098709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-29DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2025.105765
Qianqian Sheng , Yaou Ji , Chunyun Jia , Ling Jiang , Chun Li , Zhengwei Huang , Chunyan Ma , Xiangyi Zhang , Haonan Chen , Tengyu Wang , Yifan Zhu , Zunling Zhu
The discomfort experienced by residents has increased due to the humid and hot conditions in urban environments. Urban green vegetation communities serve as effective means to regulate the urban microclimate and mitigate the urban heat island effect. However, the optimal threshold for the cooling and humidification effects, as well as the structural parameters of plant communities, remains unclear. This study focused on urban green spaces in the Yangtze River Delta region as the subject of research. Field surveys were conducted on 81 green spaces in mid-July 2023, during which basic information about the plant communities was documented. By utilizing instruments such as temperature and humidity meters, as well as laser rangefinders, the temperature and humidity data of various types of green vegetation communities were measured. This allowed for an analysis of the disparities in cooling and humidification effects among different types of green vegetation communities, and facilitated the quantification of the optimal threshold between these effects and the structural parameters of the community. The findings revealed that square green space and park green space exhibited superior cooling and humidification effects, whereas road green spaces and residential green spaces exhibited inferior effects. Additionally, arbor–grass and arbor–shrub–grass structured communities witnessed more favorable cooling and humidification effects, while arbor–shrub structured communities demonstrated the poorest effects. In terms of vegetation community growth types, the cooling and humidification effects ranked as follows from highest to lowest: coniferous and broadleaved mixed type > evergreen broadleaved type > evergreen and deciduous broadleaved mixed type > deciduous broadleaved type. Furthermore, a significant positive correlation was observed between the canopy closure of urban green vegetation communities and the cooling effect, although no significant correlation was found with the humidification effect. When the threshold of canopy closure fell between 0.72 and 0.88, the cooling effect was notably enhanced, and the cooling rate of green spaces remained above 3.8 %, with an optimal cooling effect observed at 0.74. Moreover, the study determined that both the ExtraTrees model and RF model effectively predicted the cooling effect of urban green spaces. Upon combining the research conclusions, three optimized patterns of plant community configuration were provided, thereby offering theoretical support for urban green space planning and plant application design.
{"title":"Differential effects of cooling and humidification in urban green spaces and thresholds of vegetation community structure parameters: A case study of the Yangtze River Delta region","authors":"Qianqian Sheng , Yaou Ji , Chunyun Jia , Ling Jiang , Chun Li , Zhengwei Huang , Chunyan Ma , Xiangyi Zhang , Haonan Chen , Tengyu Wang , Yifan Zhu , Zunling Zhu","doi":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105765","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105765","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The discomfort experienced by residents has increased due to the humid and hot conditions in urban environments. Urban green vegetation communities serve as effective means to regulate the urban microclimate and mitigate the urban heat island effect. However, the optimal threshold for the cooling and humidification effects, as well as the structural parameters of plant communities, remains unclear. This study focused on urban green spaces in the Yangtze River Delta region as the subject of research. Field surveys were conducted on 81 green spaces in mid-July 2023, during which basic information about the plant communities was documented. By utilizing instruments such as temperature and humidity meters, as well as laser rangefinders, the temperature and humidity data of various types of green vegetation communities were measured. This allowed for an analysis of the disparities in cooling and humidification effects among different types of green vegetation communities, and facilitated the quantification of the optimal threshold between these effects and the structural parameters of the community. The findings revealed that square green space and park green space exhibited superior cooling and humidification effects, whereas road green spaces and residential green spaces exhibited inferior effects. Additionally, arbor–grass and arbor–shrub–grass structured communities witnessed more favorable cooling and humidification effects, while arbor–shrub structured communities demonstrated the poorest effects. In terms of vegetation community growth types, the cooling and humidification effects ranked as follows from highest to lowest: coniferous and broadleaved mixed type > evergreen broadleaved type > evergreen and deciduous broadleaved mixed type > deciduous broadleaved type. Furthermore, a significant positive correlation was observed between the canopy closure of urban green vegetation communities and the cooling effect, although no significant correlation was found with the humidification effect. When the threshold of canopy closure fell between 0.72 and 0.88, the cooling effect was notably enhanced, and the cooling rate of green spaces remained above 3.8 %, with an optimal cooling effect observed at 0.74. Moreover, the study determined that both the ExtraTrees model and RF model effectively predicted the cooling effect of urban green spaces. Upon combining the research conclusions, three optimized patterns of plant community configuration were provided, thereby offering theoretical support for urban green space planning and plant application design.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48405,"journal":{"name":"Cities","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 105765"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143098910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social infrastructure has undergone a profound digitalization process, allowing people to adapt to newly emerged needs, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. From April to June 2022, communities in Shanghai were subject to a rigorous stay-at-home order (SHO), which ruptured residents' routine use of community social infrastructure and constrained their access to resources, possibly inducing mental health risks. Nonetheless, residents developed digitalized social infrastructure as a bottom-up approach to collectively manage the crisis, promoting community social capital and addressing resource insecurity. Based on a timely survey of 60 communities in Shanghai during the SHO, this research enquires how digitalized social infrastructure (re)constructed residents' community experience and how this process was associated with the change in wellbeing. The results showed substantial increases in both the number of neighbors greeting each other and the frequency of group-buying. Furthermore, the digitalized experience of addressing social and material needs was correlated with mental health in different ways. This contextualized research suggests that digitalized social infrastructure has yielded a complicated restructuring of community in both social and material spheres by enabling bottom-up innovation and participation yet excluding marginalized groups during the crisis.
{"title":"Digitalized social infrastructure and mental health during the COVID-19 crisis: Evidence from communities in Shanghai","authors":"Yue Shen , Tingting Lu , Jiang Chang , Xuejie Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105745","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105745","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Social infrastructure has undergone a profound digitalization process, allowing people to adapt to newly emerged needs, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. From April to June 2022, communities in Shanghai were subject to a rigorous stay-at-home order (SHO), which ruptured residents' routine use of community social infrastructure and constrained their access to resources, possibly inducing mental health risks. Nonetheless, residents developed digitalized social infrastructure as a bottom-up approach to collectively manage the crisis, promoting community social capital and addressing resource insecurity. Based on a timely survey of 60 communities in Shanghai during the SHO, this research enquires how digitalized social infrastructure (re)constructed residents' community experience and how this process was associated with the change in wellbeing. The results showed substantial increases in both the number of neighbors greeting each other and the frequency of group-buying. Furthermore, the digitalized experience of addressing social and material needs was correlated with mental health in different ways. This contextualized research suggests that digitalized social infrastructure has yielded a complicated restructuring of community in both social and material spheres by enabling bottom-up innovation and participation yet excluding marginalized groups during the crisis.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48405,"journal":{"name":"Cities","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 105745"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143098912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-29DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2025.105732
Rebecca Monson
Existing scholarship on urban land tenure and climate adaptation in the Pacific has fruitfully exposed multiple threads of law and disrupted state-centric approaches, but its grounding in resilience thinking and social-ecological systems frameworks has contributed to a neglect of the dynamism of land governance and the social and material power that shapes trajectories of adaptation. Drawing on the experiences of Gilbertese people in the aftermath of a tsunami striking Ghizo in Solomon Islands, I demonstrate that abstract structural accounts of land governance are inadequate for understanding how legal pluralism may sustain insecurity for some people while providing multiple avenues for others to secure access to land. In the case of Ghizo, understanding the direction of adaptation in landholding requires attention to histories of racialized land control; the ways land governance reproduces socio-legal identities; and the geopolitics of humanitarian aid and development. Further, urban adaptation must be understood as a contested and multiscalar process in which securing land rights at one social and legal scale may have different and even contradictory effects at different scales.
{"title":"Land tenure, climate adaptation and legal pluralism in a Pacific town: ‘This is the real story’","authors":"Rebecca Monson","doi":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105732","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105732","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Existing scholarship on urban land tenure and climate adaptation in the Pacific has fruitfully exposed multiple threads of law and disrupted state-centric approaches, but its grounding in resilience thinking and social-ecological systems frameworks has contributed to a neglect of the dynamism of land governance and the social and material power that shapes trajectories of adaptation. Drawing on the experiences of Gilbertese people in the aftermath of a tsunami striking Ghizo in Solomon Islands, I demonstrate that abstract structural accounts of land governance are inadequate for understanding how legal pluralism may sustain insecurity for some people while providing multiple avenues for others to secure access to land. In the case of Ghizo, understanding the direction of adaptation in landholding requires attention to histories of racialized land control; the ways land governance reproduces socio-legal identities; and the geopolitics of humanitarian aid and development. Further, urban adaptation must be understood as a contested and multiscalar process in which securing land rights at one social and legal scale may have different and even contradictory effects at different scales.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48405,"journal":{"name":"Cities","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 105732"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143098966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<div><h3>Aim and approach</h3><div>This study aims to analyze and develop effective strategies for climate resilience in the WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) sector with a focus on floods for the urban poor, taking the city of Patna as a case study. Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges we face today, and its effects are evident in events like global warming, variations in precipitation patterns and more. Consequently, climate change directly or indirectly exacerbates various disasters, such as floods, having equal risk for everyone but the marginalized community that already struggles with scarcity of resources and services are more exposed to the disaster. They are very less equipped to address the disasters and hence are more vulnerable. WASH services play an instrumental role in mitigating the effects of any disaster through ensuring continuous water supply at the time of scarcity and providing safe sanitation solutions during flood situations. However, floods also pose a threat to WASH because they can damage water pipelines or inundate toilets, both of which would result in the failure of WASH services. So, it is essential to create strategies that can withstand such hazards in order for WASH services to continue delivering essential functions to the vulnerable population.</div></div><div><h3>Key contributions</h3><div>The city of Patna was chosen as the study area, as it is located near river Ganga and many areas are frequently inundated due to increase in river water level and flash floods. According to the City Development Plan of Patna prepared by the Urban Development Authority of Bihar in 2006, 63.5 % of Patna's population lives in 110 informal settlements. Many of these settlements are located near the river bank and are frequently swamped. Seven slums were chosen for the study after being identified as the most vulnerable among all due to flooding and poor WASH facilities. Several filters including DEM, Slope, level of inundation, Availability of WASH services along with expert surveys were considered to shortlist them. The seven shortlisted slums were Bass Ghat, Naygaon Bari Path, Alamganj Machhua Toli, Gardanibagh Ambedkar Colony, Phelwan Ghat, Paswan Toli and Buddha Colony. The study focuses on the WASH sector of Patna as a city, and then on the WASH assessment for Patna's urban poor, using a range of analyses such as physical vulnerability, socio-economic vulnerability, assets, disruption in WASH, and resilience.</div></div><div><h3>Preliminary results and conclusions</h3><div>Following the identification of the slums, a reconnaissance study was carried out to ascertain their overall situation. Several indicators were identified to assess their physical and socioeconomic vulnerability. Focused Group Discussions and household interviews were carried out and the results, along with the computed weightages, were used to assess the performance of each slum in sectors like housing condition, access to WASH etc. Al
{"title":"Strengthening WASH resilience in flood-affected urban poor communities: Insights from Patna","authors":"Shalini Sharma, Arup Das, Shankha Pratim Bhattacharya","doi":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105758","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.105758","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Aim and approach</h3><div>This study aims to analyze and develop effective strategies for climate resilience in the WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) sector with a focus on floods for the urban poor, taking the city of Patna as a case study. Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges we face today, and its effects are evident in events like global warming, variations in precipitation patterns and more. Consequently, climate change directly or indirectly exacerbates various disasters, such as floods, having equal risk for everyone but the marginalized community that already struggles with scarcity of resources and services are more exposed to the disaster. They are very less equipped to address the disasters and hence are more vulnerable. WASH services play an instrumental role in mitigating the effects of any disaster through ensuring continuous water supply at the time of scarcity and providing safe sanitation solutions during flood situations. However, floods also pose a threat to WASH because they can damage water pipelines or inundate toilets, both of which would result in the failure of WASH services. So, it is essential to create strategies that can withstand such hazards in order for WASH services to continue delivering essential functions to the vulnerable population.</div></div><div><h3>Key contributions</h3><div>The city of Patna was chosen as the study area, as it is located near river Ganga and many areas are frequently inundated due to increase in river water level and flash floods. According to the City Development Plan of Patna prepared by the Urban Development Authority of Bihar in 2006, 63.5 % of Patna's population lives in 110 informal settlements. Many of these settlements are located near the river bank and are frequently swamped. Seven slums were chosen for the study after being identified as the most vulnerable among all due to flooding and poor WASH facilities. Several filters including DEM, Slope, level of inundation, Availability of WASH services along with expert surveys were considered to shortlist them. The seven shortlisted slums were Bass Ghat, Naygaon Bari Path, Alamganj Machhua Toli, Gardanibagh Ambedkar Colony, Phelwan Ghat, Paswan Toli and Buddha Colony. The study focuses on the WASH sector of Patna as a city, and then on the WASH assessment for Patna's urban poor, using a range of analyses such as physical vulnerability, socio-economic vulnerability, assets, disruption in WASH, and resilience.</div></div><div><h3>Preliminary results and conclusions</h3><div>Following the identification of the slums, a reconnaissance study was carried out to ascertain their overall situation. Several indicators were identified to assess their physical and socioeconomic vulnerability. Focused Group Discussions and household interviews were carried out and the results, along with the computed weightages, were used to assess the performance of each slum in sectors like housing condition, access to WASH etc. Al","PeriodicalId":48405,"journal":{"name":"Cities","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 105758"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143098917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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