Cities最新文献

Promoting socially sustainable mobility services for all social groups is one of the key elements for sustainable development according to the UN's sustainable development goals. Mobility as a Service (MaaS), a rapidly growing smart mobility concept, has the potential to achieve this goal. However, measuring societal impacts of MaaS considering vulnerable social groups' (elderly, disabled, low-income people) needs is still a question for scholars, practitioners, and policy makers. This paper presents a practical 3-stage framework to evaluate the accessibility and inclusion of MaaS systems based on a range of indicators, and a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method. A worldwide experts' view survey was conducted among transportation academics and practitioners with 105 valid responses to prioritise the main and sub-criteria in proving an accessible and inclusive MaaS system. The results of MCDM analysis show that accessible transport services, accessible MaaS platforms, and accessibility data collection have a share of 51 %, 29 %, and 20 %, respectively. The functionality of the proposed framework has been illustrated on a real-world multi-city MaaS implementation within the Solent area, in particular Portsmouth city located in Southeast England (UK). The policy recommendations proposed in this study shed light on guiding stakeholders and policymakers to select and implement an accessible and inclusive MaaS system.

One of the main barriers faced by proposed affordable housing developments is local public opposition. Consequently, this exploratory study seeks: 1) to determine the U.S. public's current top-of-mind perceptions of affordable housing, and 2) to understand which of these perceptions are related to self-reported support for affordable housing in one's own neighborhood. We employ a mixed-methods approach, administering a nation-wide online survey (N = 534) of close- and open-ended questions. While no majority understood definition emerged, through our discursive analysis and natural language process (NLP) topic modeling we uncover common and persisting perceptions of current affordable housing buildings as federally supported apartments that are run-down and in undesirable neighborhoods. Narratives about residents are limited, though when prompted participants have a clear perceived racial profile of residents. Using a conditional inference regression tree (CI-Tree) and NLP language feature associations, we also find that perceptions focused on government involvement, subsidies, and unsafe neighborhoods are significant predictors of lower support for proposed developments. Alternatively, mentioning the financial aspects of affordable housing is significantly associated with higher support. These findings demonstrate the potential of machine learning methods in uncovering pathways to support affordable housing and can be leveraged for effective framing of proposed developments.

Despite the fact that streets are a crucial element in the development of child-friendly cities, existing street planning often overlooks child-friendliness. With the Gulou District of Nanjing as a case study, we used the method of empathy-based stories to assess the perception of children regarding the urban street environment and deep learning to evaluate the child-friendliness levels of streets on a large scale. Furthermore, we explored the effects of different street view elements on the child-friendliness and identified effective improvement strategies. The results showed that the streets in Gulou District generally had low child-friendliness levels, where low-level streets comprised 41.635 %, and extremely high-level streets only comprised 0.407 %. The spatial analysis revealed that areas with higher child-friendliness were concentrated in southeastern Gulou District, whereas areas with lower friendliness were predominantly on its periphery. Our work also indirectly reveals potential differences in the perception of street elements between children and adults. Children tend to favor artificial elements like buildings, walls, and fences. Our research emphasizes the urgency and importance of improving the existing street environment to support the development of child-friendly cities.

The ambitious decarbonization goals of the EU underscore the need to implement strategies that release users from their dependence on energy consumption to meet their comfort needs. Bioclimatic Strategies (BS), tailored to the intricacies of climate conditions and constraints of each location, undoubtedly support these goals. However, their successful implementation also depends on the motivation and support provided to all project teams. The article presents a study on the potential application of Bioclimatic Design Measures (BDM) as part of strategies aimed at achieving decarbonization goals in the existing residential building stock. Yet, assessing specific bioclimatic solutions is complex, as it necessitates advanced simulation tools and specific analysis models that consider detailed information on their characteristics and operating conditions. The aim of this study is to establish a decision-making methodology with a comprehensive global and comparative approach. This methodology precedes the specific and detailed analysis of particular design measures and it is developed and validated within the specific context of Catalonia focusing on the most representative building typology in terms of user volume and territorial presence: multifamily buildings. The study was systematically developed to ensure it can be easily replicated in other geographical settings and building typologies. Its methodology is based on the analysis of fundamental baseline information about a given geographical context, such as climate evolution and building stock characteristics. This approach shows that it is possible to comparatively evaluate the relevance of applying certain design solutions to a specific building stock.

The smart city concept is an increasingly popular urban policy framework, and recent advances in technologies like artificial intelligence are poised to shape this trend in unprecedented ways. As public sector investment in technology accelerates, it is prudent to consider how smart cities shape and are shaped by public trust in government – an issue about which there is a growing body of research but lingering questions. This study investigates determinants of public trust in government technology, including public awareness, government communication, personal ideals and aspirations, and personal perceptions and expectations. Data come from a 2021 survey (N = 1500) about smart cities in Singapore, a country with high developmental ambitions and sufficient resources to pursue advanced smart city programs. This study seeks to deepen scholarly and practical understandings about the mutually necessary but often diverging forces of public trust in technology and public trust in government.

The x-minute city/neighborhood concept has been introduced in numerous cities globally and is considered a new management paradigm to support low-carbon and sustainable non-motorized travel mode. This paper provides the first empirical evidence of the economic benefits of the 10-min neighborhood by investigating the impact of functional diversity, functional density, and street connectivity within a 10-min walking distance on rental prices. Based on approximately 74,000 rental transaction data points in the Munich Metropolitan Area, Bavaria, Germany, spanning from 2015 to 2022, we have identified significant price premiums associated with functional diversity. And the economic significance diminishes when distances extend beyond 10 min. Additionally, in regions characterized by relatively lower levels of accessibility and income, residents pay more for functional diversity in their rents. Our results offer intuitive insights for urban planning on the economic value of the x-minute city/neighborhood, which can also serve as a reference for effectively allocating resources.

As a country that legally guarantees equal access to public space for all residents, China still faces the challenge of abstract public power impeding socio-spatial production and the realization of spatial justice. The article focuses on two case studies of community guerrilla gardening in Nanjing. It employs ethnographic research methods to analyze the green grassroots actions carried out by residents in the community and to demonstrate the differentiated representational spatial production of the residents. The results show that: gardening has an irreplaceable social acquisition value as the production of real matter, is a material carrier and bond of place attachment, and a means of shaping cultural identity. It contains the potential for creative gardening methods and is an important node of access to nature and culture for groups with limited mobility. Guerrilla gardening recycling of collective space by residents in the form of private appropriation. The discussion session analyzes the positive side of the phenomenon of resident's privatization of common public space from the perspectives of social change, the value of use of public space, and spatial justice. The concludes by moving away from the discussion of public and private space toward an everyday, use-value-driven, locally creative initiative for a new aesthetics of collective space.

Detecting the pattern and impact factors of the persistent COVID-19 spread is essential to the national response to emerging infectious diseases in the future. Using the inter-city trajectories of the first confirmed case for each sporadic outbreak, this study constructed a city-level COVID-19 transmission network in China. The exponential random graph model (ERGM) was used to detect the COVID-19 spread pattern and examined the impact of socio-economy, city connectivity, and their interaction on COVID-19 transmission. Results demonstrated that COVID-19 transmission was strongly associated with intensive inter-city population flow, geographical proximity, and quality hospitals. During sporadic outbreaks, road or air port cities became epicentres with strong centrality. The homophily of COVID-19 transmission between natural scenery cities suggested that people wanted to travel once the restrictions were loosened but would avoid densely populated, well-developed cities. According to transmission probability estimation, well-developed cities had a higher import risk than spread risk, while border cities had a higher spread risk. Overall, the COVID-19 transmission network did not form clusters, indicating effective management of the epidemic in China during this period. This study provides valuable insights into the epidemic transmission process and proposes adaptive strategies for combating epidemics in different types of cities.

Plots are hypothesised as the most influential determinant of urban form evolution yet remain understudied. Existing morphological studies exploring plots' influential role lack quantitative methods, while more recent quantitative urban form studies remain largely synchronic, analysing urban form at a single timeframe without offering diachronic frameworks. Addressing this gap, we investigate the relationship between plot types and physical change in three international case studies (New York, Melbourne and Barcelona) over two centuries. Employing a novel longitudinal spatial database generated from historical maps, we present a methodology to measure the configurational character of plot structures and identify multi-variable plot typologies using k-means clustering. Statistical analysis of the relation between plot types and physical change reveals that finer-grained, narrower, and more compact plot types exhibit significantly greater resistance to building replacement compared to coarser-grained, broader, and less compact plot types. Our findings demonstrate the robustness of plot structures' configurational character in explaining physical change dynamics in cities. These data-driven findings can guide policymakers in strategic land subdivision decisions to guide future preservation and development needs and patterns, ultimately promoting more resilient and adaptive urban environments.

Pop-up parks have emerged alongside other forms of temporary urbanism as low-cost, informal, community-engaged interventions that address pressing community needs. This article examines four pop-up parks in Australian cities (Melbourne, Sydney and Perth) that reappropriated street space for pedestrians and eventually became permanent. The article charts the developmental trajectories of these four projects, drawing on local planning documents, interviews with key actors, and government and media reports on how the pop-up parks performed. It uses mapping to analyse the context of built form, activity and movement flows in and around the four sites. The study shows how these pop-up trials served as a ‘proof of concept’ for permanent spaces, tested their impacts, made community consultation more open, engaging and tangible, and increased community support. These originally temporary spaces also facilitated wider strategic urban development outcomes, emboldening local governments to further improve public space in urban intensification areas.