Cities最新文献

Studying the preservation and reuse of industrial heritage can improve people's knowledge and understanding of cultural heritage, thus deepening their sense of identity and belonging to the local culture. This study applies the theory of placeness to protect industrial architectural heritage, promote the organic revitalization of urban space, enhance local identity, and realize the visualization of tacit knowledge. Based on the theory of placeness, this study constructs an indicator system for industrial architectural heritage renewal strategy. The indicator system includes four primary indicators, namely State of Matter, Policy System, Behavior and Spirit, and 23 secondary indicators. Exploratory factor analysis is carried out using the post-evaluation (POE) method. This study concludes that (1) there are seven strategy combinations for industrial heritage renewal, including artistic expression, landscape and space, humanistic connotation, industrial building, history and culture, architectural features, and construction skills. The combination of strategies can enhance the locality and architectural originality. (2) The strategy combinations can be used in the design, construction, and operation stages of the whole life cycle and have been empirically demonstrated in typical projects in Guangzhou. Building Construction Atlas, Climatic Suitability, Building History/People, and Industrial Equipment have a higher contribution to the renewal effect of industrial buildings. (3) The 23 renewal strategy elements based on placeness provide new ideas for coding methods of historic buildings and modeling of historic building information model (HBIM). These strategy elements can be used to construct a knowledge graph of historic buildings and visualize tacit knowledge to promote sustainable construction and twin city construction.

Understanding the CO₂ emissions and influencing factors of travelers' multiple modes can provide direction for energy conservation and emission reduction, which is of great significance for developing sustainable cities. Previous studies focused on the CO₂ emissions of the transportation sector or individual modes. Which has overlooked the variations of emissions within the transport system. Hence, this study focuses on multiple modes (i.e., car, subway, bus, and bike) in the township in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. This study proposes a framework for exploring the spatial autocorrelation of urban transport emission structure based on ratios (i.e., CO₂ emissions from each mode divided by total emissions) and key factors by combining spatial econometric model (i.e., Moran's I index and Spatial Error Model) and machine learning model (i.e., Random Forest and SHAP model). In addition, the spatial autocorrelation of ratios at different spatial scales is investigated. The results indicate the high spatial dependence in the ratios from each transport mode and Moran's I indices for four ratios are 0.883, 0.886, 0.706, and 0.776, respectively. In addition, subway and car ratios exhibit a negative spatial correlation (−0.798), and subway and bike show a positive correlation (0.570). Population density, road length, and land use diversity are the key drivers of CO₂ emission ratios and have different effects on various transport modes. Furthermore, as the spatial scales expand from townships to distinct and city, the spatial autocorrelation of the ratios decreases. This study could provide policy implications for optimizing urban transport strategies and reducing CO₂ emissions.

Promoting sustainability and resilience is critical for long-term development of cities. However, there are still no consistent approaches to identify and measure sustainability and resilience in urban regions even though many indicators have been widely used. In addition, the relationships between urban regional sustainability and the sustainability of its components are unclear. To address these two knowledge gaps, we have constructed three sets of indicators to measure regional sustainability, transportation sustainability, and urban resilience. We then developed an approach based on Self-Organizing Map to cluster and compare selected US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) with publicly available data, exploring the clustering and spatial patterns and relationships between sustainability and resilience. Our results have shown that regional sustainability and transportation sustainability are not the same but closely related, however, the measures and spatial distribution patterns of MSA sustainability and resilience do not always match. This study highlights the need to investigate the consistency of sustainability and resilience measures before formulating policies to promote sustainable and resilient urban development.

Existing theory of urban growth machine has been criticized for its inherent tendency to over-emphasize the external forces of capital and globalization. Recent attempts have been made to examine the endogenous nature of China’s pro-growth politics, with competing viewpoints stressing intensive central-local fiscal relations as macro-level factors and the micro-level political considerations of local cadres. This research enriches the literature on urban pro-growth politics through an investigation of the uneven development of China's government-pays public-private partnerships (PPPs). It focuses on the individual characteristics of local cadres and critically examines the effects of different sources of promotion pressure on the development of government-pays PPPs. Based on a prefectural-level panel dataset from 2014 to 2018, the empirical analysis shows that the development of government-pays PPPs is driven by the promotion pressure of local cadres for career advancement. However, the promotion pressure of local cadres is mainly derived from their frequent cadre turnover and their inner impulse of competing with others, rather than from the actual improvement of socioeconomic performance. Additionally, the political considerations of local cadres are found to be heterogeneous according to region-specific conditions including the level of economic development, the degree of marketization, and the legacy of state socialism. Findings of this research call for greater attention paid to the variety and effectiveness of local cadres' promotion pressure as the underlying factors influencing their investment behaviors.

Urban resilience is critical to allow cities to withstand the challenges of the 21st Century. One factor that is often overlooked in such assessments is the role of the subsurface. A novel methodology called the Urban Geo-climate Footprint (UGF) has been developed to classify cities quickly and comprehensively from geological and climatic perspectives. The method operates on the fundamental assumption that cities with similar geological-geographical settings will face similar challenges, due to both common geological issues and associated climate impacts. The UGF approach has been applied to 41 European cities in collaboration with 17 Geological Surveys of Europe, the results of the UGF analysis are presented along with a regional classification of the geological resilience indicators. The UGF tool provides a semi-quantitative representation of the pressures driven by geological and climatic complexity for the cities presented, providing for a first time such classification of the urban environment. The advantage of this methodology lies in increasing awareness among non-experts and decision-makers of the interplay between geological settings, climate change pressures, and anthropogenic activities. Furthermore, it facilitates the exchange best practices among city planners to increase resilience, supporting knowledge based decision making to promote actions and policies, that enhance geoscience-informed climate justice.

Enhancing industrial development and building a modern economic system are vital components for constructing resilient cities. This study constructs a theoretical model based on a decentralization model that integrates factor markets and industrial structure to examine the relationship between local government competition and urban industrial resilience. The relevant theoretical hypotheses are then tested empirically with city-level data in China from 2007 to 2020. This study reveals several intriguing findings. First, local government competition significantly inhibits urban industrial resilience, primarily through market segmentation and distortions in industrial structure, thus impeding the construction of resilient cities. Second, producer service agglomeration and intellectual property protection are identified as critical factors that mitigate the inhibitory effects of local government competition on urban industrial resilience. Finally, heterogeneity analysis indicates that local government competition hinders only the enhancement of industrial resilience in resource-based cities without significantly affecting nonresource-based cities. This study not only provides a theoretical foundation and empirical evidence for understanding the impact of local government competition on urban industrial resilience but also offers policy insights for reforming official assessment systems and actively promoting industrial development and resilient urban construction.

Nature-based solutions are informed by how communities think about nature. However, research on how urban communities think about urban nature is seldom carried out across urban contexts. In doing so it can be useful to select specific aspects of urban nature, such as urban forests and urban trees. Our study responds to these needs by measuring the cognitive constructs of values, beliefs, and attitudes towards urban forests and modelling their relationships using a representative survey of >3400 residents living across two different urban contexts: Toronto, Canada, and Melbourne, Australia. Means difference, generalized linear regression, and structural equation analyses, were used to test how values, beliefs, and attitudes differed between metropolitan areas, and how they related to other cognitive constructs, social-ecological context, and demographic factors. We found that resident values and beliefs (more abstract and general constructs) about urban trees were similar across metropolitan areas, but some attitudes (more specific and variable constructs) were different between metropolitan areas, including residents' level of trust in how municipalities manage urban forests and their level of satisfaction with trees and their management. Female residents, and residents who had higher levels of nature relatedness and subjective wellbeing, valued urban forests more. Values, beliefs, and knowledge of trees were significant drivers of resident satisfaction with trees and their management. We discuss implications for urban nature policies.

For more than a century, many practitioners and researchers have argued that municipal politicians are more ideologically moderate – that is, closer to the centre of a unidimensional left-right ideological scale – than their national counterparts. Testing this claim requires direct comparison of politicians who represent similar constituents but who are elected at different levels of government, but comparative data of this sort are rarely available. Here, I use new data from surveys of Canadian municipal, provincial, and federal politicians to rigorously test the “municipal moderation” thesis. Comparing politicians' symbolic ideological self-understandings $\left(N\approx \mathrm{3,000}\right)$ and their latent policy ideologies $\left(N\approx 775\right)$, I find strong evidence that municipal politicians think of themselves as more ideologically moderate, but are not more moderate in their policy beliefs. Further, I leverage variation in the partisan identities of Canadian municipal politicians to show that differences in ideological moderation across levels of government disappear when we remove municipal non-partisans from the analysis. My results reinforce the view that municipal politicians hold non-ideological cultural norms but are embedded in an ideological electoral and policymaking context. My analysis also illustrates the analytical potential for “vertical” rather than “horizontal” comparative research designs.

Digital economy is fundamentally changing the production, life, and governance of cities and reshaping benign interactions between urban systems. Consequently, it has profound implications for exploring resilient city building in the Chinese context. Using panel data of 274 cities in China from 2011 to 2020, this research explores the impact mechanisms and spatial effects of the digital economy on urban economic resilience. The results suggest that digital economy facilitates the building of urban economic resilience. The digital economy is effective in enhancing the economic resilience of smart cities and cities in eastern and central China. The economic resilience of urban agglomerations in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta is prominently affected by the digital economy, while the impact of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei is not obvious. The digital economy mainly enhances urban economic resilience by activating innovation dynamics, catalyzing industrial structure diversification, and accelerating human resource accumulation. Finally, the digital economy has a significant positive spillover effect on urban economic resilience. This research provides valuable guidance for cities to grasp the growth opportunities of the digital economy, scientifically coordinate the synergistic building of urban systems and improve the economic resilience of cities.

Land banking practices in complex informal land markets are growing in developing countries. However, the land banking (LB) literature predominantly focuses on publicly driven land banks operating within formal land markets. Against this backdrop, this study investigates optimal locations for LB projects in Ghana's complex informal land markets from the perspective of private and semi-public real estate developers. Utilising a two-stage research process, first, the study developed a conceptual framework by using: (1) suppositions regarding space under economic geography; and (2) theoretical suppositions on the use of LB and its influence on LB locational choices uncovered from an interpretive hermeneutic literature review. The second stage focused on an empirical assessment of the conceptual framework by taking four urbanised regions in Ghana. The case study stage uses primary data from 30 interviewees selected using purposive and snowball sampling, while secondary data comprised land bank inventories from the regional Lands Commissions of the case study regions. Results revealed land title security as the primary factor determining optimal locations for land banks. There are significant challenges related to land title security in urban and inner parts of peri-urban areas. These challenges are aggravating the transformation of agricultural lands into residential lands in developers' preferred land bank locations. Based on the ongoing land transformation occurrences, the study underscores the need for policy responses that enhance title security to encourage developers to diversify their land banking locational preferences beyond solely greenfield sites to a mix of green and urban brownfield sites.