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4D hyperlocal : a cultural toolkit for the open-source city
\"The evolution of digital tools is revolutionising urban design, planning and community engagement. This is enabling a new \"hyperlocal\" mode of design made possible by geolocation technologies and GPS-enabled mobile devices that support connectivity through open-source applications. Real-time analysis of environments and individuals' input and feedback bring a new immediacy and responsiveness. Established linear design methods are being replaced by adaptable mapping processes. real-time data streams and experiential means, fostering more dynamic spatial analysis and public feedback. This shifts the emphasis in urban design from the creation of objects and spaces to collaboration with users, and from centralised to distributed participatory systems.\"--back cover.
BOOK
Examining the distribution of green roofs in New York City through a lens of social, ecological, and technological filters
Green roofs provide multiple benefits including reducing the urban heat island effect, absorbing stormwater and air pollution, and serving as habitat for wildlife. However, many cities have not taken advantage of green roofs as a nature-based solution. In New York City (NYC), approximately 20% of the landscape is covered by buildings, thus rooftops present a substantial opportunity for expanding green infrastructure. Spatial data on green roofs are critical for understanding their abundance and distribution, what filters may drive spatial patterns, and who benefits from them. We describe the development of a green roof dataset for NYC based on publicly available data and classification of aerial imagery from 2016. Of the over one million buildings in NYC, we found only 736 with green roofs (<0.1%), although there may have been others we did not detect. These green roofs are not evenly distributed in NYC - they are most common in midtown and downtown Manhattan, while most other areas have few to none. Green roofs tend to be more prevalent in parts of NYC with combined sewer systems, but some such areas, and those with the most heat-vulnerable communities, have few if any despite their potential to help ameliorate stormwater and urban heat challenges. Though green roofs are providing some benefits within NYC, we anticipate they are filtered based on dynamics of infrastructure, institutions, and perceptions, rather than targeted to address climate and weather-related challenges. There is substantial opportunity in NYC to increase green roofs, and equity of them. The dataset we developed is publicly available and can serve as a baseline for tracking these assets through time, while supporting further research, conversations, and policies related to the benefits and distribution of green roofs. The underlying methods can also be applied to help fill similar data gaps in other cities.
Journal Article
Street Tree Planning to Improve Public Health and Ecosystem Resilience in Urban Areas: A Scenario Analysis Using a System Dynamics Model
Increases in particulate matter in cities threaten both public health and ecosystems. Street trees, which are a corridor-type green infrastructure capable of absorbing particulate matter, have been promoted as one possible solution to this problem. However, planting selected trees solely with the goal of reducing particulate matter may adversely affect street tree ecosystem resilience by inhibiting species diversity. This study aims to investigate urban street tree planting strategies that reduce particulate matter while maintaining ecosystem resilience. To this end, a study site in Suwon, South Korea was selected, and street tree planting scenarios were developed based on the selected site information. A scenario analysis was conducted using a system dynamics model. The model simulated the long-term trends under each scenario regarding the amount of particulate matter absorbed by the trees and the changes in species diversity. The analysis results clearly show that strategic planting of street trees while focusing on only a specific purpose—reducing particulate matter—can adversely affect ecosystem resilience. The scenario analysis also revealed that increasing the number of street trees while maintaining a balance among various species is the best option for reducing particulate matter without degrading species diversity. Additionally, the results support the need to plant evergreen species to consider the winter season.
Journal Article
Spatial Analysis of the Rural-Urban Structure of the Spanish Municipalities
The rural–urban dichotomy is one of the most debated topics by the scientific community in territorial issues. In addition, many public entities and scientific studies have established the distinctive elements of rural and urban spaces by relating the decline of the rural ones with factors such as aging, low birthrate, the primary sector, unemployment, or poverty, among others. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to spatially study the current model of territorial organization of Spanish urban and rural municipalities as well as their demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. To this end, GIS (Geographic Information System) tools were used to carry out a spatial autocorrelation (SA) analysis and to identify homogeneous groups of the variables considered. In conclusion, there are different demographic and socioeconomic realities in Spain, an urban one located on the coast with a positive situation and, on the other hand, a regressive reality composed of rural municipalities, among which there are villages whose situation is worrying, mainly located in the north of Spain.
Journal Article
Comparative Urban Performance Evaluation of Sustainable Urbanization in Four Typical Megalopolises in China
The essence of sustainable urbanization is to take a holistic approach to the harmonious development of economic, social, cultural and environmental protection. This paper applies the urban sustainability assessment system to analyze the characteristics of indicators related to the quality of the built environment and environmental pressure of 91 cities in four major megalopolises in China from 2010 to 2018. It also combines statistical methods to summarize the general features of urban development through a comprehensive urban performance evaluation by comparative and classification analysis for the purpose of scientific guidance on sustainable urbanization. The comparative results showed that in terms of urban sustainability, the Yangtze River Delta performed best, followed by JingJinJi, Pearl River Delta and Shandong Peninsula. Of which, the quality of built environment in JingJinJi and the environment pressure in the Shandong Peninsula require particular attention to improve and decrease, respectively. Moreover, cities can be grouped into six development types through performance clustering including three positive and three negative types. The characteristics of all types are summarized, and the performance of the specific indicators are detailed compared to serve as a guiding basis for making generic recommendations of sustainable urbanization.
Journal Article
Mapping producer services networks in mainland Chinese cities
We analyse the geographies of urban networks created by leading producer services (PS) firms in China. Because of the national regulation of the Chinese state-led economy and the location strategies of global advanced producer services (APS) firms, the geography of global APS in China as examined by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) cannot be studied as a subnetwork of GaWC's global network, but needs an empirical study based on a wide range of leading PS in the Chinese market. We explore the spatial differentiation in the connectivity of Chinese cities based on the location strategies of 323 APS firms in 287 Chinese cities. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen emerge as the primary nodes. The spatial distribution of banking, securities, and insurance services networks appears to be more even than those of non-financial PS firms. Regional disparity exists in terms of polycentric urban development in coastal China, as well as in the centralisation model in central and western areas. We suggest that owing to the continued tight regulation of China's state-led economy and the nature of the location strategies of 'globalised' PS firms, the urban networks created by Chinese PS firms are not only an extension of urban networks at a global scale but also an embodiment of economic activities at other scales.
Journal Article
A Theoretical Framework and Methodology for Characterising National Urban Systems on the Basis of Flows of People: Empirical Evidence for France and Germany
In advanced economies, flows play an important part in connecting urban nodes. This paper sets up a framework for identifying and classifying the pattern of the urban systems from an interaction perspective. Three S-dimensions are proposed (that is, the strength of interaction, the symmetry of interaction and the structure of the network) and a set of indices that are important for characterising network configurations. Using the European long-distance mobility database (DATELINE), the framework is applied to examine the pattern of interaction between functional urban areas (FURs) in France and Germany. The analysis is carried out separately for three journey purposes: business, holiday and leisure. The results reveal that national urban systems embrace a wide variety of constellations and that considerable variation in these constellations can be observed across journey purposes and countries. Overall, the authors are confident that the proposed framework provides a useful analytical tool for characterising the configurations of urban systems.
Journal Article
Measurement of the World City Network
The purpose of this paper is to describe the construction of a set of data that can be used to measure intercity relations. Building on a specification of the world city network as an 'interlocking network' in which business service firms play the crucial role in network formation, information is gathered from global service firms about the size of their presence in a city and about any 'extra-territorial' functions of their offices. This information is converted into data to provide the 'service value' of a city for a firm's provision of its service in a 316 (cities) × 100 (firms) matrix. These data are used to measure the global network connectivity of the cities. In an initial analysis, the paper concludes with a simple correlation exercise that shows New York and London to be 'exceptions' rather than 'exemplars' amongst contemporary world cities.
Journal Article
Tuff city
During the 1990s, Naples' left-wing administration sought to tackle the city's infamous reputation of being poor, crime-ridden, chaotic and dirty by reclaiming the city's cultural and architectural heritage. This book examines the conflicts surrounding the reimaging and reordering of the city's historic centre through detailed case studies of two piazzas and a centro sociale, focusing on a series of issues that include decorum, security, pedestrianization, tourism, immigration and new forms of urban protest. This monograph is the first in-depth study of the complex transformations of one of Europe's most fascinating and misunderstood cities. It represents a new critical approach to the questions of public space, citizenship and urban regeneration as well as a broader methodological critique of how we write about contemporary cities.
eBook
World City Typologies and National City System Deterritorialisation
The research constitutes the first effort to test the claim found in the world city theoretical literature that, as world cities strengthen ties with each other, their linkages with their countries' hinterlands and national urban systems will weaken. This research offers a more nuanced exploration of this hypothesis by taking into account variation in the nature of the state across countries in which world cities are located as well as the source of global capital in the world cities. Specifically, the research reported here suggests that three types of world cities—market-centred bourgeois world cities (MWC), state-centred political bureaucratic world cities (SWC) and dual-role world cities (DWC)—entail different deterritorialisation outcomes. Three countries that have prototypical global cities—Japan (SWC), China (DWC) and the US (MWC) are compared, applying longitudinal network modelling to relational data on national city networks. From 1993 to 2007, more globally connected MWCs weakened their national ties. In contrast, higher global status has no significant effect on the integration of SWCs or DWCs with their national urban systems. This indicates that the type of state, but not the source of capital, conditions whether the world city will deterritorialisevis-à-visits national city system.
Journal Article