Cities最新文献

While the impact of land revenue has been widely analyzed, there is little empirical research on the impact of land revenue on government planning horizon, especially government myopia. In response, this study investigates the effects of land revenue on local government myopia within the context of the land leasing system in China. Measuring government myopia with textual analysis and machine learning, we empirically test the hypothesis based on a two-way fixed effects model and a series of robustness checks with instrumental variables (IV) in addressing endogeneity. Our results indicate that local governments with larger land revenue tend to be more myopic, and the greater uncertainty of land revenue increases the likelihood of government myopia, with the evidence that local governments prioritize short-term economic growth over long-term investments in social welfare.

This paper explores the elements influencing and conditioning spatial planning processes for changing their systems based on new wildfire information. The research was approached as an inductive qualitative research, using a multiple case study strategy: the Chilean and the Victorian (Australia) spatial planning systems. The analysis considered the barriers and facilitators for change (willingness, understandings, and capacities), and the stages of processes of knowledge development for changing the spatial planning systems (identification, reframing, and implementation). Based on a cross-case synthesis of the two case studies, analytic generalizations about spatial planning's ability to change its instruments and practices for dealing with wildfires, and elements conditioning this ability, are suggested in the form of theoretical propositions: three overarching propositions, broken down into ten propositions specific to the stages of the process of knowledge development and change. These provide applied understandings of spatial planning mechanisms and processes that hinder or contribute to changing their instruments for dealing with wildfires. Furthermore, they suggest that the success of knowledge development and change processes requires the acceptance and use of the willingness, understanding, and capacity dynamics. Ultimately, this research contributes theoretical and practical insights for promoting wildfire resilience via the planning and governance of cities.

In order to balance the interests of land finance participants and maintain the stability of their capital chain, this paper combines the two levels of local government debt financing and real estate development, incorporates local governments, real estate developers, urban residents and commercial banks into a unified analytical framework, systematically constructs a behavioral game evolution model of the four core participants to analyze the stability of the equilibrium points and the system stability strategies. Meanwhile, the numerical simulation is used to explore the impact of parameter changes on the behavioral game evolution trend and risk profile of each participant. The results show that: (1) The land transfer revenue and other costs of investing in local development have greater impacts on the strategic choices of local governments than the cost of land-transferring, and excessively low land transfer revenue and high costs of investing in local development will trigger a series of financial risks, which is not conducive to the systemic stability. (2) The rise in commercial banks' lending rate will increase the difficulty of real estate developers' capital turnover, so that they have to bear the risks of loan default, delay in construction and so on, however, improving the autonomous repayment rate of real estate developers can alleviate it. (3) The cost of house purchase and the benefits from quality resources acquired by urban residents from purchasing a house have different degrees of influence on the strategic choices of urban residents and work in opposite directions, so the relationship between the two factors should be adequately balanced to help urban residents avoid risks such as increased pressure in life. (4) The probability of commercial banks choosing the “lending to real estate developers” strategy is positively correlated with real estate developers' autonomous repayment rate and commercial banks' lending rate, and the inappropriate value of the two may lead to credit risk. Finally, from the perspective of the game participants, targeted risk decision-making and policy recommendations are put forward.

The duration, frequency and intensity of climate change are increasing. Adaptation to climate change is oftentimes perceived as a local concern. Vulnerable groups at the margins try to find nature-based ways to cope with extreme urban climate change events with diverse direct and indirect adaptive strategies in absence of government interventions. From this study's investigative approach in Cairo, Egypt we draw primarily from interviews with locals and observational walks in three vulnerable areas in the same urban zone. Research revealed that adaptation can be political, demanding that locals sometimes make hard choices, especially during the absence of government intervention. Nevertheless, some of the adaptive strategies observed can be promoted as mainstream sustainable nature-based adaptation. The discussion reflects some social and economic dimensions that affect local adaptation synergies. This study hopefully contributes to the understanding of how the capacity of individual homeowners can help mitigate climate change risk through the implementation of their own physical and psychological adaptive strategies. In addition, it bears relevance not only for countries sharing similar climates, economic conditions or similar social norms, but also for general adaptation strategies that might support ecosystem-based or nature-based adaptation or tailor-made scenarios for locally applicable adaptation to climate change.

As a key feature of digital economy, digital infrastructure plays a prominent role in influencing labor migration across regions. To examine the impact of urban digital infrastructure development on labor migration in China, we first propose the theoretical mechanism of urban digital infrastructure affecting labor migration. Using the conditional logit model, we further analyze the impact based on the data of 165,866 individual data from 2013 to 2018 and the data of 240 prefecture-level cities in China. Empirical results indicate that urban digital infrastructure development has a significant inverted U-shaped effect on labor migration. The individual heterogeneity of the inverted U-shaped effect is significant in the labor migrants. Urban digital infrastructure development is more attractive to labor migrants with low education levels, labor migrants with the rural hukou, as well as female and new-generation individuals. Further research shows that the mechanisms that the inverted U-shaped effect depends on the comprehensive effects of mediating effects including the employment creation, the productivity, the employment substitution, and moderating effects as employment quality. Our findings are helpful to guide the orderly labor migration in the context of the accelerated development of digital infrastructure.

Despite the abundant scientific literature on gender equality, there is a ‘gap’ in women's representativeness in public spaces. This gap is addressed in this article, which investigates how the perception and use of public spaces by their female users should influence their planning, design, management, and uses. The objectives are, thus, to: identify the main characteristics of public spaces; analyse the differences in their perception and use according to gender; and propose measures to render them more inclusive. A dashboard that includes a set of indicators enables the demographic, economic, social and cultural characterization of users, and how they perceive and use these spaces. Portal da Amazónia provides a framework to promote the achievement of gender equality objectives. The data collected and its monitoring should support the implementation of the set of measures proposed, aimed at: participation as a form of belonging; autonomy, diversity and integration; vitality of the surroundings; safety and citizenship; and language and symbolic representation. It is also proposed the implementation of a digital user registration system to monitor use and satisfaction with public spaces (once these measures have been put into practice - which can be generalised to other public spaces in different locations and urban realities.

As newcomers to Amsterdam, Chinese international students arriving during 2020 – 2021 had to navigate a peculiar urban landscape shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather than the pandemic's direct impacts, we highlight the unique spatiotemporal context it mediated – a period characterized by its liminality, or in-betweenness, further marked by ambiguity and uncertainty. The study draws on narrative interviews to investigate the students' urban experiences and socio-spatial engagement, focusing on their sense of belonging and urban citizenship. Citizenship is conceptualized as a ‘lived’ that is practiced and contested, making it affective and contextual. We argue that citizenship is inextricably linked to belonging and center feeling belongingness and familiarity as proxies claiming urban citizenship. The interplay of individual subjectivities, socio-spatial practices, and transnational identities helped produce reflexive spaces of home and recontextualized Chinese dynamics in Amsterdam, demonstrating the transcendent nature of the ‘urban’ beyond physical boundaries. We find that interlocutors often attached meanings to micro-spaces rather than the city as a whole. Experiencing liminal transience and racialized (micro)aggressions impacted, to varying degrees, the participants' desire and ability to become familiar with their urban environments and build citizenship.

This study uses generative AI and public datasets to examine racial and gender disparities in US court case closures from 2019 to 2024. It finds significant disparities using ANOVA, Chi-Square, and Fisher's method, with an increasing trend over time. Gender disparity, though less significant in 2024, persists. Further research is needed to identify root causes and develop targeted interventions. Continuous monitoring is essential to evaluate their effectiveness. Promoting transparency, investing in research, and implementing robust monitoring systems are crucial steps towards a fairer justice system for all.

Mega-regional planning in China is expected to tackle intra-regional unevenness, namely the development gap between regional core cities and the surrounding secondary cities. However, mega-regionalization processes seem to further increase the centrality of cores and push secondary cities towards greater polarization and peripheralization, as they lose socioeconomic vitality, industrial capacity, and political voice. To reflect on why mega-regions are not fulfilling their role of rebalancing regional urban systems, we conceptualize mega-regionalization as a mechanism to coordinate spatial relations within a territory and build a novel framework to analyze the relations between core and secondary cities. First, we show that visions of mega-regional planning regarding core-secondary relations pursue goals of morphological polycentricity, flow multi-directionality, and functional complementarity. Then, we use thematic analysis to evaluate the policy orientations of mega-regional planning to achieve these goals and extract three policy themes governing core-secondary spatial relations - coexistence, connectivity, and cooperation. These can systematically redefine mega-regional planning mechanisms by giving a central role to the spatial relations between core and secondary cities. Emphasizing spatial relations to conceptualize mega-regional governance allows a novel reflection on the challenges of unevenness grounded in the perspective of secondary cities. This deepens our understanding of governance mismatches that keep ideal visions and policy orientations misaligned when seen from secondary cities. Place, priority, and actor mismatches limit the potential of mega-regionalization to respond to their challenges. This research provides a relational understanding of mega-regions, calling for more attention to secondary cities, and the development of more balanced and sustainable mega-regions.

Road networks are typically connected at the national scale, thus investigating a city's road network vulnerability requires defining an urban boundary. However, the choice of boundary varies widely in research, resulting in divergent and at times contradictory findings. Moreover, analyzing larger cities' road networks with expanding boundaries helps to predict road network vulnerability patterns in smaller, similarly structured cities. Guided by these two objectives, this study investigates the gaps in road network vulnerabilities by comparing 1452 road networks from 363 cities in Mainland China across four distinct boundary types. The findings indicate a significant change in road network vulnerability across different boundaries, with the largest gap ranging between 0.5449 and 0.8743. The study further finds these vulnerability gaps correlate with the difference in the structural characteristics of those urban road networks and the urban population covered by different boundaries, with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.362 to 0.755. Notably, the cities' vulnerability rankings show relatively slight variations when adopting different boundaries, with Spearman's correlation coefficients between 0.442 and 0.879. This research offers valuable insights into the influence of urban expansion on road network vulnerability, particularly relevant in the context of rapid urbanization and the expansion of road networks.