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This paper comprehends the global research scenario about incorporating cultural components in contemporary urban planning practice. Various urban cultural elements have been analysed under the umbrella of 'Urban Cultural Dynamics' (UCD). This study aims to identify hot spots and explore influential sources through a bibliometric investigation of the evolutionary patterns of cultural dynamics in urban planning research. Data was collected from the Web of Science core collection (1965-2021). The data mining tools VOSviewer, Biblioshiny, KNIME, and WordStat were used to analyse hot topics, keywords, influential journals, core papers, top authors, and cooperation networks of countries and institutions. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is employed in journal analysis. The analysis showed that publications on UCD increased exponentially between 2016 and 2022. Italy (32), China (26), and Spain (18) are the top countries in total publications. Technical universities of Dresden and Munich have the most significant influence on UCD's research, with 103 and 101 total citations, respectively. Landscape and Urban Planning, Journal of Cultural Heritage, and Tourism Geographies are the top three consistently influential journals. The top ten core papers were identified. The keywords and topic analysis charted out the evolution of multidisciplinary UCD research topics. The hotspot analysis revealed the significance of cultural dynamics in sustainable urban development. The results highlighted the need for intercontinental cooperation between developed countries and the third world. The future scope of research on UCD topics is discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consequences of sustainable and greener mobility have been demonstrated previous year by the pandemic situation. One significant benefit was to reduce the level of noise, dust and air pollution from the traffic in many European countries due to reduced mobility most of the population. Positive phenomena was also recorded in the Slovak Republic. Today's urban mobility offers new, more sustainable ways of transport for residents, especially app-based and shared-ride services, which have become increasingly widespread and very popular. Undoubtedly offer a level of convenience unseen before in the urban mobility systems throughout the world. Although new forms of transport are developed in most Slovak cities, their operation is not very rational and therefore individual car transport still dominates at the expense of sustainable ways of transport. In our paper, we analyze the traffic situation in the city of Nitra, as the large number of trips in the course of the peak-hours often results in severe traffic congestion. Multimodality is one of the solutions to improve the current traffic situation, as it allows urban residents to choose from a range of alternative travel options. The main aim of this paper is to determinate the possibilities of multimodal urban mobility in the city of Nitra in addition to analyze how the potential change in the variability of choice of means of transport affects the urban mobility behaviour. In order to meet stated objectives, a marketing research was conducted. The research findings point to the fact that the current urban infrastructure and overall possibilities are limited, the consequence of which is that travel behaviour of citizens does not demonstrate the features of sustainable urban mobility. Our results point to major differences in attitudes of Nitra´s residents from different urban and sub-urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid urbanization has resulted in the substantial population growth in metropolitan areas. However, existing research on population change of the cities predominantly draws on grid statistical data at the administrative level, overlooking the intra-urban variegation of population change. Particularly, there is a lack of attention given to the spatio-temporal change of population across different urban forms and functions. This paper therefore fills in the lacuna by clarifying the spatio-temporal characteristics of population growth in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) from 2000 to 2020 through the methods of local climate zone (LCZ) scheme and urban–rural gradients. The results showed that: (1) High population density was observed in the compact high-rise (LCZ 1) areas, with a noticeable decline along urban–rural gradients. (2) The city centers of GBA experienced the most significant population growth, while certain urban fringes and rural areas witnessed significant population shrinkage. (3) The rate of growth tended to slow down after 2010, but the uneven development of population-based urbanization was also noticeable, as urbanization and industrialization varied across different LCZ types and cities in GBA. This paper therefore contributes to a deeper understanding of population change and urbanization by clarifying their spatio-temporal contingences at landscape level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waste management is paramount to town planning and ancient civilizations across the world have spent resources and mobilized labor for waste disposal and reuse. The study of waste management practices offers a unique window into the daily lives, social organization, and environmental interactions of ancient societies. In the Indus Valley Civilization, known for its urban planning, understanding waste disposal in rural settlements provides crucial insights into the broader socio-economic landscape. While extensive research has documented sophisticated waste management systems in urban Indus centers, little is known about practices in rural settlements. This gap limits our understanding of regional variations and rural-urban dynamics within the civilization. In this paper, using isotopic and microscopic proxies, we characterize the waste disposed of at the rural Indus settlement of Kotada Bhadli to reconstruct the sources of waste, including heated animal dung, and burned vegetation. We propose that rural agro-pastoral settlements in Gujarat during the Indus Era systematically discarded such waste in specific locations. By characterizing waste produced at Kotada Bhadli, we are also able to reconstruct the natural environment and how the natural and cultural landscape around the settlement was exploited by the residents of the settlement for their domestic and occupational needs. Our identification of the attention paid to waste disposal by the inhabitants of Kotada Bhadli adds significant data to our understanding of waste disposal as an insight into past lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization is occurring at an unprecedented rate in developing countries like Ethiopia, especially with the rapid growth of industrialization. However, this urbanization and industrial development surge puts immense pressure on preparing and implementing city spatial plans. Urban spatial planning plays a crucial role in shaping the development of cities, aiming to create livable and sustainable urban development. The plan-making process and its subsequent implementation often encounter challenges that hinder the realization of planned objectives. Galan and Dukem, cities near Addis Ababa's capital, have seen substantial industrial investment in recent decades. This article explores the challenges associated with urban spatial planning and industrial development while proposing alternative approaches. The paper relies on information gathered from primary and secondary sources, including expert surveys and key informants' interviews. The research highlights that industrial developments have led to significant and uncontrolled changes in urban land use and urbanization in the study areas. Due to the lack of clear planning guidelines and institutional capacity, the study cities are experiencing haphazard development without effective urban spatial plans. Proximity to Addis Ababa has driven the urbanization process through increased investments. The article contends that effective management of urbanization and industrialization can create enjoyable living conditions and foster job growth. Macroeconomic policies, including industrial policies, should pay attention to spatial elements and prevent policy-making processes that are "space-blind". This, however, requires clairvoyance and a high level of expertise, integrating inputs from advocacy planning and community participation to bridge gaps and ensure effective urban spatial plans and industrialization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ming Great Wall Military Defense System is the most complete ancient military cultural heritage in China, which is of great significance to the study of China's ancient military defense mechanism and pattern. Military settlement is an important carrier of this mechanism. The estimation and in-depth understanding of its value can further excavate the profound connotation of the military defense system and the Great Wall spatial pattern in the Ming Dynasty. This paper adopts the AHP-CRITIC weighting approach to determine the weights of the historical value, scientific value, social value, cultural value and artistic value of the settlement heritage, so as to construct the value evaluation model of military settlements, and takes 34 Ming Great Wall military settlements in the Liaoxi Corridor as an example for evaluation. The results of the evaluation identified the priority settlements for conservation and development, and also explored their relationship with historical status, urbanization processes and official policies. The evaluation model constructed in this paper has a certain universality, and can also be followed in the evaluation of other military settlements in the Ming Great Wall Defense System, so as to obtain the overall cognition of the settlement system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban water system theory is an extension of the basin water system science on an urban scale, providing a new systematic solution for the unbalanced human-water relationship and severe water challenges, such as waterlogging, black and odorous water, and ecological degradation caused by urbanization. Most existing studies on urban water systems have focused on individual water cycle processes linked with water supply and sewage treatment plants, but mutual feedback between the water cycle and its associated material circulation and water ecology, as well as human processes, still needs further exploration. In this paper, the concept, theory, and technical methodology of the urban water system were developed based on the water cycle and basin water system science. The Urban Water System 5.0 (UWS 5.0) model was developed by integrating the Time Variant Gain rainfall-runoff Model with Urban water system (TVGM_Urban) in different underlying surface conditions for analyzing the natural-social water cycle processes and their associated water environmental and ecological processes and the influence of multiscale sponge measures. Herein, five major simulation functions were realized: rainfall-runoff-nonpoint source pollutant load, water and pollutant transportations through the drainage network system, terminal regulation and purification, socioeconomic water cycle, and water system assessment and regulation. The location for the case study used in this paper was Wuhan City. The findings showed that the entire urban water system should consider the built-up area and its associated rivers and lakes as the research object and explore the integrations among the urban natural-social water cycle and river regulations inside and outside of the city as well as the effects of socioeconomic development and sponge measures on the water quantity-quality-ecology processes. The UWS 5.0 model efficiently simulated the urban rainfall-runoff process, total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) concentrations in water bodies, and characteristic indicators of socioeconomic development. For the rainfall-runoff simulations, the correlation coefficient and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) fall under the excellent and good classes, respectively. For the TN and TP concentration simulations, results exhibited good bias and the correlation coefficients exceeded 0.90 for 78.1% of the sampled sites. The simulation of 18 socioeconomic indicators provided excellent bias, correlation coefficient, and NSE values of 100%, 83.3%, and 69.4% to total indicators, respectively. Based on the well-calibrated UWS 5.0 model, the source sponge, artificial enhancement, and source reduction-path interception-terminal treatment measures were optimized, which considerably mitigated waterlogging, black and odorous water, and lake eutrophication, respectively. The mitigation performance revealed that the maximum inundated area for a once-in-10-year rainfall event was reduced by 32.6%, the removal ratio of the black and odorous water area was 65%, the comprehensive trophic state index of water bodies was reduced by 37%, and the green development level of Wuhan City in 2020 increased from 0.56 to 0.67. This study is expected to advance the intersection and development of multidisciplinary fields (e.g., urban hydrology, environmental science, and ecology) and offer an important theoretical and technical basis for solving urban complex water issues and promoting green development of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This perspective emerged from ongoing dialogue among ecologists initiated by a virtual workshop in 2021. A transdisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners conclude that urban ecology as a science can better contribute to positive futures by focusing on relationships, rather than prioritizing urban structures. Insights from other relational disciplines, such as political ecology, governance, urban design, and conservation also contribute. Relationality is especially powerful given the need to rapidly adapt to the changing social and biophysical drivers of global urban systems. These unprecedented dynamics are better understood through a relational lens than traditional structural questions. We use three kinds of coproduction—of the social-ecological world, of science, and of actionable knowledge—to identify key processes of coproduction within urban places. Connectivity is crucial to relational urban ecology. Eight themes emerge from the joint explorations of the paper and point toward social action for improving life and environment in urban futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on the expansion of urban ecology from a biologically based discipline—ecology in the city—to an increasingly interdisciplinary field—ecology of the city—to a transdisciplinary, knowledge to action endeavor—an ecology for and with the city. We build on this "prepositional journey" by proposing a transformative shift in urban ecology, and we present a framework for how the field may continue this shift. We conceptualize that urban ecology is in a state of flux, and that this shift is needed to transform urban ecology into a more engaged and action based field, and one that includes a diversity of actors willing to participate in the future of their cities. In this transformative shift, these actors will engage, collaborate, and participate in a continuous spiral of knowledge → action → knowledge spiral and back to knowledge loop, with the goal of co producing sustainable and resilient solutions to myriad urban challenges. Our framework for this transformative shift includes three pathways: (1) a repeating knowledge → action → knowledge spiral of ideas, information, and solutions produced by a diverse community of agents of urban change working together in an "urban sandbox"; (2) incorporation of a social–ecological–technological systems framework in this spiral and expanding the spiral temporally to include the "deep future," where future scenarios are based on a visioning of seemingly unimaginable or plausible future states of cities that are sustainable and resilient; and (3) the expansion of the spiral in space, to include rural areas and places that are not yet cities. The three interrelated pathways that define the transformative shift demonstrate the power of an urban ecology that has moved beyond urban systems science and into a realm where collaborations among diverse knowledges and voices are working together to understand cities and what is urban while producing sustainable solutions to contemporary challenges and envisioning futures of socially, ecologically, and technologically resilient cities. We present case study examples of each of the three pathways that make up this transformative shift in urban ecology and discuss both limitations and opportunities for future research and action with this transdisciplinary broadening of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the impact of urbanization on agricultural development in shrinking areas is important for maintaining food security and promoted agricultural development in China. Based on the measurement results of the shrinking cities in the three provinces of Northeast China, this paper selects 15 shrinking cities as the research object, and constructs a multi-dimensional index system to explore the impact of the urbanization level of the shrinking areas on the agricultural development in the region since 2007–2019, analyzes the influencing factors and their differences by using the geographically-weighted regression model and Geodetector, and proposes a targeted regulation strategy. The results show that: 1) overall, there is a negative correlation between the urbanization level and the agricultural development level in the contracted areas of the three northeastern provinces. The urbanization level in these areas has a certain negative impact on the overall level of agricultural development; 2) regarding the time dimension, the impact of urbanization level on the agricultural development level in the contracted areas of the three northeastern provinces gradually increases over time; 3) regarding the spatial pattern, the overall impact of shrinking urbanization levels in the three provinces of Northeast China on the agricultural development shows a significant distribution pattern of high in the east and low in the west; 4) the total population and natural population growth rate at the end of the year were the main factors influencing a certain level of urbanization on agricultural development in the shrinking cities while population density and the urban fixed asset investment rate were the secondary factors; and 5) the main reasons why the level of agricultural development in different cities was affected by the level of urbanization were different. However, they can be categorized into areas of population loss and spatial construction, which can be further divided into area of population loss in the northeast, areas of negative population growth in the west, and areas of urban spatial change in the south. According to the causes of the impact, this paper adopted targeted regulation strategies and formulated relevant policies and solutions that cater to local conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land provides a foundation for socio-cultural identity, economic survival and political stability in most sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. However, land-related crisis in the wake of rapid urbanization without a corresponding rapid expansion of the urban economy has further taken a toll on access to land and tenure security and made effective urban land governance a challenge. Although many reforms have been enacted in the last few decades to formalize traditional customary landholding system in SSA, insecure land and property rights remain the major issues militating effective urban land governance in the region. This paper provides a new theoretical perspective to achieving effective urban land governance in the context of SSA. This new perspective, based on transcendental critical realism, offers a useful meta-theoretical foundation that looks beyond the discernible but complex social reality about land and the relations it entails to the underlying causal powers and generative mechanisms that have produced these evidential phenomena. Based on a critical analysis of existing literature, the paper argued that if the processes that generate the social phenomenon of landholding are better understood, more appropriate approaches for managing these generative causes can be devised rather than simply mitigating the effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) in the mid-2000s provided a new data format for cities to organize and share digital information on their public transport systems. GTFS feeds store geolocated data on public transport networks, including information on routes, stops, timetables, and service levels. The GTFS standard is now widely adopted by thousands of transport authorities and a wide variety of software applications for different purposes, including trip planning, timetable creation and accessibility analysis. Yet, there is still a lack of tools to parse GTFS data when the objective is to analyze the complex spatial and temporal patterns of public transport systems. This paper presents {gtfs2gps}, a new general-purpose computational tool to easily process static GTFS data that allows one to analyze the space–time trajectories of public transport vehicles at fine spatial and temporal resolutions. {gtfs2gps} is an open-source R package that employs parallel computing to convert GTFS feeds from relational text files into a trajectory data table, similar to GPS records, with the timestamps of vehicles in every trip. This paper explains the package functionalities and demonstrates how {gtfs2gps} can be used to articulate key concepts in time geography to explore and visualize the spatial and temporal patterns of public transport networks. We also present a case study looking at how {gtfs2gps} can be used to examine socioeconomic and spatial–temporal inequalities in access to public transport, providing key information to monitor cities' progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals. The paper is accompanied by a computational notebook in R Markdown to support reproducibility of the results in this paper and to replicate the analysis for other contexts where GTFS data are available. Given the widespread use of GTFS, {gtfs2gps} opens new possibilities for researchers to examine the time geography of public transport systems in urban areas across the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new index that measures the development level of public services for people with disabilities. Based on the framework of territorial justice, the measure examines the equity in the spatial allocation of public service resources for disadvantaged groups. Taking China as a case, this study uses principal component analysis to construct the Public Service Facility Coverage Index for persons with disabilities. It also employs cluster analysis and spatial econometrics methods to analyze the spatial characteristics of public service facilities for persons with disabilities. Findings reveal that public service facilities for persons with disabilities can be divided into four coverage clusters—very high, high, medium, and low—with significant regional disparities among them. This article also found a significant regional spatial variation in public service facilities for persons with disabilities. Specifically, public service facilities for persons with disabilities in eastern regions were obviously higher than in other regions, mainly due to regional differences in financial autonomy, the density of the disabled population, and urbanization. The above shows that the opportunities for accessing public services still differ within a territorial entity. The realization of territorial justice requires strengthening the government's governance capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 40 years, China has witnessed the world's largest urbanization process. In light of its natural and cultural conditions featuring resource scarcity, frequent natural disasters, rich cultural heritage and regional disparities and dynamics, this process aggravates the complex and severe problems faced by urban areas, including resource and environmental damage, security risks and cultural degradation. To address these issues, a shift in national and regional urban spatial layouts from improving economic competitiveness to balancing protection and development as well as security and development is needed. Related theories and research methods should also be adjusted accordingly. Therefore, given China's specific conditions and regional spatial layouts, the paper introduces the "national spatial planning theory," which aims to create a sound living environment. The core concept is "precise adaptation," which ensures the adaption of urban development to natural and cultural conditions. It is the first theory that proposes to develop the national urban spatial layout based on the analysis of ecological environment. It also suggests shifting the focus from eco-environment to security and culture as urbanization progresses and problems change constantly. In addition, a method framework and technical system of "precise analysis, adaptive distribution and dynamic evaluation" is formulated to build an adaptive urban spatial layout on the basis of quantitative analysis of the capacity of spatial resources. The practices of regional planning processes on varying scales in the past 20 years are to illustrate the specific applications of the theoretical approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One important point of interest in urban areas is the food outlet, especially retailers that provide fresh and healthy food. Street markets, or tianguis are an affordable option throughout Mexico. Unfortunately, this type of outlet is sometimes inaccessible or significantly far to reach. This paper provides a vulnerability minimization framework to determine the optimal re-allocation of street markets by considering equity and reachability and the exact walking distance and demand by blocks in a city. The framework introduces new concepts of vulnerability along with a novel implementation of the Facility Location Problem. A case study has been used to exemplify the framework based on actual data from a region in Mexico City's urban zone showing how significant improvements in equity and reachability can be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that the urban systems, in particular cities, display scaling behaviour regarding socio-economic, infrastructural and individual basic services indicators. However, understanding urbanisation and the links between rural and urban areas is fundamental to making the most of the global transformations happening around the world. In this context, it is important to study the scaling laws based on both the urban and rural regions, going beyond cities. This paper explores the extension of the idea of allometric urban scaling law to study the scaling behaviour of Indian districts, with both the urban and rural population. To proceed, we have chosen districts (both rural and urban) of India, a relatively larger local administrative units, which are more or less independently functional within a country. This interdisciplinary work focus on the scaling analysis of various socio-economic indicators (SEIs) corresponding to the size (population) of four distinct urbanisation classes, namely rural, semi-rural, semi-urban and urban districts. The scaling exponents (β ) were estimated for each classes for the years 2001 and 2011 along with their goodness-of-fit measured by the R 2 values. Our rigorous statistical analysis indicates that the scaling laws indeed exist even at the district level for most of the SEIs considered, related to education, employment, housing, health, etc.; the R 2 values obtained for these SEIs are very high (often greater than 0.8 or 0.9) in both the years. Moreover, linearity of the scaling factors have been statistically tested and it has been found, at 95% level of confidence, that not all the SEIs behave linearly ( β = 1 ); some of them are characterised by super-linear ( β > 1 ) behaviour and some behave sub-linearly ( β < 1 ). Statistical hypothesis tests have also been performed to test the equality of two scaling factors corresponding to two distinct classes and two different years to understand the differences in scaling relationships amongst increasing urbanisation classes and their changes over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of marble trade in antiquity has received a lot of scholarly attention in the last few decades; however, numerous deposits of high-quality white marble in the Thracian interior have only recently become pivotal in Bulgaria. Following the establishment of Thrace as a Roman province, investments into transport infrastructure, urban and rural construction works and monumentalizing architecture in marble have led to an increased demand for stone. Local marble quarries close to urban centres and larger imperial quarries were used for civic buildings, villas and sanctuaries. Provenance analysis of marble quarries and artefacts has established a close link between the place of origin and subsequent place of use. This multi-disciplinary study explores marble sources in the Thracian interior via various approaches such as epigraphy, archaeology, and archaeometry regarding urbanization, trade, and transportation. In this paper, we consider and investigate the Berkovitsa marble, a quarry close to Montana in northwestern Bulgaria, and present a broader framework for the marble trade of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dengue is one of the world's most rapidly spreading mosquito-borne viral diseases. As it is found mostly in urban and semi-urban areas, urbanization and associated human activities that affect the environment and larval habitats could become risk factors (e.g., lane width, conditions of street ditches) for the spread of dengue. However, there are currently no systematic studies of micro-scale urbanization-based risk factors for the spread of dengue epidemics. We describe the study area, two micro-scale environmental risk factors associated with urbanization, and meteorological data. Since the observations involve spatial and temporal correlations, we also use some statistical methods for the analysis of spatial and spatial-temporal data for the relationship between urbanization and dengue. In this study, we analyzed data from Kaohsiung, a densely populated city in southern Taiwan, and found a positive correlation between environmental risk factors associated with urbanization (ditches positive for mosquito larvae and closely packed streets termed "dengue lanes") and clustering effects in dengue cases. The statistical analysis also revealed that the occurrence of positive ditches was significantly associated with that of dengue lanes in the study area. The relationship between climate variables and positive ditches was also analyzed in this paper, indicating a relationship between dengue and both rainfall and temperature, with temperature having a greater effect. Overall, this work is immediately relevant and applicable for policymakers in government, who will need to reduce these favorable habitats for vector-born disease spreaders and implement regulations for new urban constructions to thus reduce dengue spread in future outbreaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper redefines the connotation of China's human development in the context of the new development concept and high-quality development, and constructs the China Human Development Index (CHDI) indicator system accordingly. Then, based on the inequality adjustment model and DFA model, the human development level of each region in China from 1990 to 2018 is measured, and the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of China's CHDI and the current situation of regional imbalance are analyzed accordingly. Finally, LMDI decomposition technique and spatial econometric model were used to study the influencing factors of China's human development index. The results show that: (1) The weights of the CHDI sub-index estimated by the DFA model have good stability, and it is a relatively good objective weighting method. (2) Compared with the HDI, the CHDI in this paper can better reflect the level of human development in China. (3) China's human development has made great achievements and has basically achieved the leap from the low human development level group to the high human development level group. However, there are still significant gaps between regions. (4) From the results of LMDI decomposition, the livelihood index is the most important driving index of CHDI growth in each region. From the results of spatial econometric regressions, there is a strong spatial autocorrelation of China's CHDI among the 31 provinces. GDP per capita, financial education expenditure per capita, urbanization rate, and financial health expenditure per capita are the main influencing factors of CHDI. Based on the above research findings, this paper proposes a scientific and effective macroeconomic policy with important reference value for promoting the high-quality development of China's economy and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the notion that mobility plays a critical role in everyday urban life in Africa as elsewhere, this editorial provides an introduction to the special collection 'The Past in Present African Urban Mobility Systems'. As we introduce the papers in this collection, we argue for an understanding of contemporary urban mobility systems that account for their historical roots. While historians of African transport have provided insights into the origins of mobility systems on the continent, we wish to animate the contemporary experience of those systems, advocating for a mobilities longue durée. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the relationship between urban agglomeration and income inequality. The World Bank and the United Nations place Sub-Saharan Africa among the leading urbanizing regions with sizable urban agglomeration inequality challenges. Therefore, the main research question of this study was whether there is a significant relationship between urban agglomeration and income inequality. This study also aimed to determine whether the relationship is nonlinear, estimated using a dynamic panel model, an inverted U-shaped Kuznets hypothesis, and balanced panel data from 2000 to 2020 for 22 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The findings revealed a nonlinear relationship between urban agglomeration and income inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa. The findings showed that income inequality increases with urban agglomeration in the first stage and decreases in the later stages of urbanization. Based on the findings, our recommendations are to enhance governance capacity in providing urban infrastructural investment, improve industrialization capacity, and open up the peri-urban connecting rural regions through public–private development partnerships to shorten the urbanization-driven income inequality inverted U-shaped Kuznets' turning point in Sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban mobility contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions and comes with negative social impacts for various groups, such as limited accessibility to opportunity or basic services. Transitions towards sustainable and people-centred urban mobility systems are paramount. Yet, this is accompanied by various challenges. Complex urban systems are accompanied by high uncertainties (e.g., technological progress, demographics, climate change) which are currently not well integrated. Possible solutions originate from design, policymaking, and innovation, with a widespread disconnection due to non-compatible methods. This paper presents a method to improve the ability to design future urban mobility systems by integrating different approaches for modelling what the future could be and who could be the users. The research question is how diverse future user needs can be integrated in design processes for urban mobility systems. The proposed scenario-based design and personas allows to create data-driven proto-personas—a set of archetypical users with assigned characteristics and behaviours—test their validity, derive distributions across geographical areas, and transform them for different 2030 scenarios. This serves as input to create full personas and synthetic populations as intermediary design objects for the collaboration of designers and simulation experts. The methodology is exemplarily applied in the context of Paris. It contributes to urban mobility solution design that is more aware of future uncertainty and diverse needs of users, therefore, better capable to respond to today's challenges. The approach is replicable with open data and accessible source code: https://github.com/TjarkGall/proto-persona-clustering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pedestrian-oriented urban strategies such as the Paris 15-minute City are needed to respond to the global boiling. Quantitative evaluation of pedestrian-oriented urban objectives is important for various cities, and in this paper, a walkability evaluation system for the advanced model is developed considering the characteristics of a large city. The system calculates the walkability of Seoul. The evaluation system uses the Betweenness index as a weight in the urban network analysis. Considering stations with a high betweenness in urban traffic is essential for evaluating a pedestrian-oriented metropolis. Our findings in this study are that the UNA index in WES is critical for transit-oriented, walkable cities. The large city needs to find the location for mobility hubs or stations to observe the last mile. Installing a mobility hub or station at a high-value location in the city center is functionally important. In a pedestrian-oriented city, citizens can walk and bike the last mile in a busy city center. Walkable cities can encourage active transport and ultimately create more sustainable and environmentally friendly transportation systems. This study offers valuable insights into pedestrian infrastructure, urban systems, and policies that promote green transportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power-law city-size distributions are a statistical regularity researched in many countries and urban systems. In this history of science treatise we reconsider Felix Auerbach's paper published in 1913. We reviewed his analysis and found (i) that a constant absolute concentration, as introduced by him, is equivalent to a power-law distribution with exponent ≈ 1 , (ii) that Auerbach describes this equivalence, and (iii) that Auerbach also pioneered the empirical analysis of city-size distributions across countries, regions, and time periods. We further investigate his legacy as reflected in citations and find that important follow-up work, e.g. by Lotka (Elements of physical biology. Williams & Wilkins Company, Baltimore, 1925) and Zipf (Human behavior and the principle of least effort: an introduction to human ecology, Martino Publishing, Manfield Centre, CT (2012), 1949), does give proper reference to his discovery—but others do not. For example, only approximately 20% of city-related works citing Zipf (1949) also cite Auerbach (Petermanns Geogr Mitteilungen 59(74):74–76, 1913). To our best knowledge, Lotka (1925) was the first to describe the power-law rank-size rule as it is analyzed today. Saibante (Metron Rivista Internazionale di Statistica 7(2):53–99, 1928), building on Auerbach and Lotka, investigated the power-law rank-size rule across countries, regions, and time periods. Zipf's achievement was to embed these findings in his monumental 1949 book. We suggest that the use of "Auerbach–Lotka–Zipf law" (or "ALZ-law") is more appropriate than "Zipf's law for cities", which also avoids confusion with Zipf's law for word frequency. We end the treatise with biographical notes on Auerbach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, urbanization has resulted in the establishment of peculiar, often extremely dense urban populations in some wild bird and mammal species. However, until the beginning of the 20th century, the number of such species remained small, only some full synanthropes and a few partial synanthropes reached an impressive abundance in cities. However, from the second third of the 20th century, urban populations began to appear in a steadily increasing number of species that previously either did not show a tendency to synanthropy at all, or inhabited the rural landscape. The importance of species interactions in this process later called synurbization are still rather poorly studied. There is the opinion that for birds one of the leading initial factors of ecological release in urban landscapes is the decreased predation pressure. However, this point of view is not shared by all experts. The purpose of this series of papers is to analyze ideas about the role of predators in the colonization of the urban environment by birds. This paper is devoted to a brief review of the categories and composition of urban species, the criteria for synurbization, and the proposed ecological mechanisms for the development of extremely high local densities of breeding birds in cities. Success in colonization of urban landscapes has been achieved by representatives of many orders and families, morphological types and ecological groups occupying different positions in food chains, species with different levels of plasticity of behavior, sociality, etc. There are many predators among synurbic species of the last 4–5 decades. Some of them, primarily bird-eating species, achieve not only high population density in cities, but also high rates of breeding success. High local population densities in synurbic species, in contrast to those in full synanthropes, can hardly be interpreted as a consequence of reduced species richness and filling of the "ecological vacuum" by individual urban species. For the most part, synurbic species are numerous not in continuous built-up areas, but in natural and green urban areas, which are characterized by an impressive range of species, so there is no reason to talk about competitive release. The hypothesis of an increase in density "on credit" also seems plausible mainly in relation to full synanthropes, however, not all of them. It remains unclear why the emergence and long-term (co)existence of highly dense local populations of synurbic species during the breeding season, including those of potential competitors, are not limited by those biotic factors that keep the population density of these species at lower levels in natural landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid urbanization of cities in the Global South, and indeed Ghanaian cities has left many Municipalities grappling with a widening gap in infrastructure need. This is largely due to limited financial resources to expand infrastructure to keep pace with urban expansion. In this context, land-based financing has become topical among city managers in generating resources to provide the much-needed urban infrastructure. The paper examines how non-state actors such as parastatal land operators collaborate with state actors—local authorities to provide urban infrastructure using land-based financing mechanisms. The case study approach was used to study two parastatal land development companies—Tema Development Company and Ghana Airport Company. The paper finds that leasehold premium and infrastructure levy are instruments used for providing urban infrastructure. It further finds that the application of these instruments requires the management of complex factors and stakeholders; proper understanding of land market conditions; comprehensive property-monitoring systems; effective communication among fiscal and planning entities; and political resolve to realize the full potential of land-based financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pedestrian-oriented urban strategies such as the Paris 15-minute City are needed to respond to the global boiling. Quantitative evaluation of pedestrian-oriented urban objectives is important for various cities, and in this paper, a walkability evaluation system for the advanced model is developed considering the characteristics of a large city. The system calculates the walkability of Seoul. The evaluation system uses the Betweenness index as a weight in the urban network analysis. Considering stations with a high betweenness in urban traffic is essential for evaluating a pedestrian-oriented metropolis. Our findings in this study are that the UNA index in WES is critical for transit-oriented, walkable cities. The large city needs to find the location for mobility hubs or stations to observe the last mile. Installing a mobility hub or station at a high-value location in the city center is functionally important. In a pedestrian-oriented city, citizens can walk and bike the last mile in a busy city center. Walkable cities can encourage active transport and ultimately create more sustainable and environmentally friendly transportation systems. This study offers valuable insights into pedestrian infrastructure, urban systems, and policies that promote green transportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assessed the expansion of land use and land cover that occurred in Oyo State, Southwestern Nigeria, over a period of thirty-year. This was to assess urban expansion, landuse dynamics and their effects on land surface temperature in the area. The study used four multi-date imageries of the area. Landsat 7 ETM + , 1990, 2000, 2012, and Landsat 8 OLI/TIR, 2021 were collected from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) website were used. The ArcGIS 10.1 environment was utilised to clip the area of interest, and ERDAS Imagine remote sensing software was employed to efficiently improve and categorise the images. The images were then divided into five major: cultivation, built-up area, vegetation, water body, and bare soil using a maximum likelihood supervised classification algorithm. These categories were then utilised to conduct time series analysis or change detection analysis. Results of this study revealed that the built-up area has changed over the preceding three decades because of urban expansion. The built-up area increased from 19.83 km2 to 35.67 km2 in 2012 and 44.84 km2 in 2021, indicating increases of 14.93% to 79.87% and 25.71%, respectively, whereas the vegetative land cover decreased from -0.11% to -3.01 48% and 12.75% during the study period. Findings revealed that anthropogenic factors including urbanisation and agricultural expansion, have significantly altered the surface and atmospheric characteristics of the study area, causing a variety of heat patterns within the area. The built-up area had average temperatures between 35.05 °C and 36.16 °C between 1990 and 2021, which indicated a higher temperature with evidence of an urban heat island. This study concludes that the city's land surface temperature is rising and that the expanding built-up area's density and a corresponding decline in vegetation over time significantly impact it. Therefore, the study suggests cultivating and maintaining trees, promoting green environment,, public awareness, campaigns and education on actions that aggravate high temperatures are also required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of China's land border cultural heritage, aiming to offer guidance for its protection and development. The study compiled a comprehensive database of heritage sites and analyzed their mathematical characteristics based on quantity, type, and quality. The spatial pattern of the cultural heritage was described using kernel density analysis, spatial variability, and spatial correlation, while the driving mechanism was measured based on Geo-Detector model. The findings revealed that the land border areas of China have a total of 1227 cultural heritage, comprising two main types and 18 subtypes. National cultural heritage accounted for 22.74%, with ancient city ruins being the largest type of cultural heritage. The Southwest and Northeast regions of China exhibited high-high clusters and low-low clusters, respectively. Moreover, the study identified history of administrative succession, evolution of historical and cultural, altitude, distance from the city, population density, minority population ratio, urbanization process, and per capita GDP as significant factors impacting the spatial pattern of land border cultural heritage in China. Based on these findings, the study suggests that the government should invest more in border cultural heritage, improve transportation infrastructure in border areas, ensure dynamic inheritance and protection of cultural heritage, and promote the joint development of different types of cultural heritage. The research results will provide data support and decision-making reference for the sustainable development of cultural heritage in land border areas, and can provide a new perspective for the management of cultural heritage in similar areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural populations are particularly exposed to increasing weather variability, notably through agriculture. In this paper, we exploit longitudinal data for Turkish provinces from 2008 to 2018 together with precipitation records over more than 30 years to quantify how variability in a standardized precipitation index (SPI) affects out-migration as an adaptation mechanism. Doing so, we document the role of three potential causal channels: per capita income, agricultural output, and local conflicts. Our results show that negative SPI shocks (droughts) are associated with higher out-migration in rural provinces. A mediated-moderator approach further suggests that changes in per capita income account for more than one quarter of the direct effect of droughts on out-migration, whereas agricultural output is only relevant for provinces in the upper quartile of crop production. Finally, we find evidence that local conflict fatalities increase with drought and trigger out-migration, although this channel is distinct from the direct effect of SPI shocks on out-migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present century faces developmental fallout as vulnerability and risk mount on the global systems due to climate change, urbanisation, and population ageing. Moreover, population ageing is gaining a stronger hold in urban areas, and so are climate change and related shocks and stresses. Consequently, repercussions for the weakest sections of society – including the elderly – remain under academic consideration. In this context, the paper aims to understand the perilous predicament of older people due to the occurrence and interaction between climate change, urbanisation, and population ageing. This review investigates the underpinnings of the nature of the interaction among the three phenomena; and discerns how as a result of the interaction, various climate change related shocks and stresses affect older people in urban settings. It emerges that these three phenomena exhibit: concurrence; a positive trend of growth; and a cyclic pattern of interaction with four linkages, implying (i) rapid urbanisation is fuelling climate change, (ii) climate change is impacting urban areas, (iii) older people are increasing in urban areas, and (iv) urbanisation provides opportunities and barriers for older people. This interplay further discloses that older people stand vulnerable and at heightened risk from climate change related stressors in urban areas. These understandings highlight the need to ensure that urban environments remain age-friendly even in the face of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to reveal the relationship between new urbanization and carbon emission to provide reference opinions for the construction of low-carbon urbanization, an evaluation system between new urbanization and carbon emission was constructed. Then their matching degree relationship was analyzed by coupling coordination degree model based on the data from 2012 to 2021 in Anhui Province, and their development trend from 2023 to 2032 was predicted by gray prediction model. The results show that: (1) New urbanization and carbon emission have the co-trend effect, and the consistency of core impact factors is relatively significant. Among them, the level of new urbanization increases from 0.058 in 2012 to 0.699 in 2021 and carbon emission development increases from 0.023 in 2012 to 0.165 in 2021, which both showing an upward trend. Meanwhile, social urbanization and population carbon emission are the core influencing factors. (2) The coupling coordination degree between new urbanization and carbon emission is low, but the synergy trend is optimistic and there is a large room for improvement. Among them, the coupling coordination coefficient of the coupling system rises from 0.136 in 2012 to 1.412 in 2021 (antagonistic phase), and then reaches 0.820 by 2032 (highly coordinated phase) by forecast. It shows that their current development is unbalanced, but the development trend is good, and there is a chance for improvement. This paper deepens the understanding of the logical correlation between new urbanization and carbon emission, and the following views are formed: (1) Low-carbon development is still the mainstream of new urbanization; (2) The coordination development of new urbanization and carbon emission reduction should be strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this systematic literature review is to contribute to the knowledge about barriers to change in urban freight systems and to support managed changes toward more sustainable urban freight systems. Method: This paper is based on a systematic review covering 93 peer-reviewed journal articles. The study was designed to advance earlier research in this area by providing a system perspective on barriers to development in urban freight systems. The theoretical knowledge about these barriers was analyzed and synthesized, the relationships between barriers explored, and the insights developed into a model of understanding of managed change processes in urban freight systems. Findings: From a system perspective 11 categories of barriers to change in urban freight systems were identified and characterized. The barriers are, in different ways, related both to each other and to a managed change process for sustainable development of urban freight systems. A model for understanding categories of barriers and their connection to managed change processes in urban freight systems is proposed in this paper. The model consists of three groups of barriers within the process, and two groups in the system context, which should be addressed with different priorities in a managed change process. The study identifies several future research options. Future research could support the development of sustainable urban freight systems by providing insights into change process governance, potentially by combining theory from areas like organization, systems, and networks with the system perspective on urban freight systems. Research on non-European urban freight systems could increase the scholarly insights about contextual impact on barriers and change processes. Future studies could also explore methods to mitigate identified barriers, especially in the areas of cooperation, organization, politics, knowledge, and the first mover disadvantage. Finally, future research should continue to develop the model of the managed change process for urban freight systems and its use in supporting sustainable development of these systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high pace of urbanization in Manipur being confined to the valley regions has attracted much attention to researchers to explore the intra-state dynamics of urban inequality in the state. This study examines the role of spatial factors in determining consumption inequality in the state, especially in urban areas considering the unit-level National Sample Survey data from different rounds. Also, the Regression-Based Inequality Decomposition is estimated to understand the role played by relevant household characteristics in explaining the inequality patterns in urban Manipur. The study observes an increasing trend of Gini coefficient for the overall state despite its slow per-capita growth. While Gini measures of consumption have an overall increasing trend in the economy between 1993 and 2011, and inequality level in rural areas is greater than in urban areas in 2011–2012. This is in contrast to the overall Indian phenomenon. Also, the state per capita income is 43% lower than the all-India average in 2019–2020 at 2011–2012 prices. Within-component (both within-district and within-sector) is the major contributor to overall consumption inequality. The decomposition-based regression analysis shows that most of the estimated regression coefficients are statistically significant. Factors like age, possession of land, and regular salary earner in a household contribute to enhancing the level of total inequality of the average MPCE. This paper suggests that in order to avoid the negative consequences of rising consumption inequality in Manipur, a justiciable land redistribution policy, improving the level of education, and creating employment opportunities are necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gulangyu Island is a special case of social development and changes since modern China. In the past, Chinese and foreign people lived together and Chinese and Western cultures coexisted, resulting in an international community with outstanding cultural diversity and modern quality of life. As a functional carrier, space is of great reference significance to the research on the spatial evolution path of the Gulangyu international community with the accelerating globalization and rapid expansion of urbanization. Based on the interpretation of historical maps and the integration of historical geographic information, this paper explores the evolution path of Gulangyu community space in modern times from the perspective of actor-network theory. It is found that: (1) The change of key actors promotes the spatial evolution of the Gulangyu international community. (2) In the stage of foreign culture dissemination (1840–1902), foreign nationals, as key actors, promoted the formation and development of actor-networks through administrative recruitment and other means, and promoted Gulangyu Island to change from a traditional Minnan community to a modern community form, with the embryonic form of an international community beginning to emerge. (3) In the stage of multicultural integration (1903–1940), overseas Chinese returning home became key actors. The concept of a combination of Western cultures was not only embodied in community management but also acted on space practice to promote the multicultural integration of the Gulangyu international community. This paper summarizes the effects of various factors on the evolution of community space, to provide a reference for other coastal cities to rationally develop islands and promote the multicultural integration of local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization brings benefits and burdens to both humans and nature. Cities are key systems for integrated social-ecological research and the interdisciplinary journal of Ambio has published ground-breaking contributions in this field. This reflection piece identifies and discusses integration of the human and natural spheres in urban social-ecological research using the following foundational papers as important milestones: Folke et al. (1997), Ernstson et al. (2010) and Andersson et al. (2014). These papers each take unique approaches that aim to uncover core properties—processes, structures, and actors—of urban systems and set them into mutual relationship. This piece will end with a forward-looking vision for the coming 50 years of urban sustainability and resilience study in Ambio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food access, stability and utilisation are key dimensions of food security at an urban scale. When the majority resided in rural areas, and lived predominantly agrarian lifestyles, it made sense for the state to govern food security through national agricultural ministries, focusing predominantly on the availability dimension of food security. With the transition to a majority urban world, coupled with the food security challenges currently experienced in urban areas, specifically in Africa, these historical policy and governance structures are increasingly inadequate in responding to essential food and nutrition needs. Problematically, urban areas, and specifically urban managers, cite unfunded mandates, and absent authority, as the reasons for not engaging food and nutrition governance responses. This paper argues that this is a false position. Drawing on recent data from household food security and poverty surveys, the paper calls for new and expanded planning and design approaches at the urban scale. The paper argues that spatial planning and urban design principles and actions provide an immediate and effective means through which to engage urban food system questions. Importantly these actions are essential to the transition from the current piecemeal project responses to urban food system inadequacies. Food sensitive planning and urban design is offered as a specific approach that could assist in programming food system–related challenges at the urban scale, responding to conceptual, analytical, organisational and design related dimensions of planning, and in so doing offering a longer term, systematic response to urban food insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent excavations and theoretical advances have revealed evidence of an early and perhaps independent nucleation and centralization process in the region south of the Alps, a phenomenon that has been undervalued in previous studies. In this paper I present a broad overview and attempt to reassess the role of the Cisalpine regions as crossroads of trade and cultural transfer between the Mediterranean and central Europe through a critical evaluation of key archaeological evidence. I adopt alternative and up-to-date perspectives on the urbanization phenomenon, disentangling commonsensical and text-driven definitions of urbanism and social formation, while challenging the outdated "check-list" approach. This theoretical framework should promote a paradigm shift that leads to a substantial backdating and broadening of the appearance of complex site agglomerations in northern Italy, avoiding unidirectional development patterns and instead looking at possible cases of instability, ephemerality, and seasonality. The adoption of a comparative perspective triggers a timely disentanglement of the simplistic equation between urbanism and social hierarchy. Beyond a narrow and selective emphasis on elites, this paper considers alternative social entities and actions, including commoners, subaltern groups, and cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As concluded in the previous paper, the order of synurbization of predators (Corvus cornix first of all) and prey species, as well as relatively low or moderate proportions of predated nests in some avian prey species in selected Russian cities, are consistent with the so-called urban predation paradox. The paradox observed for terrestrial vertebrates (mostly birds and mammals) in a number of North American and Western European cities, refers to the predation relaxation of prey species in spite of a simultaneous predator proliferation in urban environments. The most plausible explanation of the paradox is based on the suggestion that the abundance of food for predators is often higher in urban landscapes than in more natural ones. As a result, despite the high densities and considerable species richness of predators, especially generalist mesopredators, the per capita predation pressure (per active nest or individual prey) is hypothesized to be lower in cities than in nonurbanized areas. The food subsidies to predators in urban landscapes are provided (1) in the form of anthropogenic food that can be consumed by predators (especially by generalist predators like corvids, gulls, some carnivores) and/or by their prey species and (2) through those resources and human activities (e.g., application of organic fertilizers) that increase habitat (primary) productivity in urban green spaces. Initially, dense urban populations of fully synanthropic species such as Columba livia f. domestica, Passer domesticus, and Rattus norvegicus that highly dependent on anthropogenic food resources, and also of some partially synanthropic species, e.g., Apus apus and Passer montanus, could have been of prime importance as prey for specialist predators like some birds of prey and owls colonizing cities. By significantly part taking the predation pressure by specialist predators, such prey species might have facilitated the urbanization process for some other prey species. The proportions of some synurbic prey species in the diets of urban predators tend to increase with time as the densities of the former increase. In urban habitats, some predators can also expand the range of the species they prey upon or switch to different prey directly or indirectly due to altered abiotic conditions, such as increased temperatures in winter and early spring (enabling an earlier start of breeding in prey and predatory species), artificial light at night (enabling twilight and nocturnal foraging by diurnal birds of prey), and some structural features of buildings (enabling unusual hunting techniques). There are also reasons to suggest that the synurbization of some avian prey species in some cities could have initially been facilitated by nesting in association with aggressive species, e.g., in urban colonies of Turdus pilaris, thus providing protection against predators. However, in general, the importance of such associations for the establishment and growth of avian prey population, especially in urban environments, is poorly studied. They are estimates of synergistic effects of predation and other interspecific interactions, especially parasitism, on the success of synurbization that deserve the utmost attention in the coming future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since over a decade of conflicts in the Lake Chad Basin region, different measures have been adopted to regulate the mobility of displaced persons in border cities. Mubi—like other transit sites—is both a place of care and control, of incentivization and eviction and of inclusion and exclusion. To nuance these contradictions, I argue that we might have to pay attention to arrival practices in transit sites, particularly the encounter with infrastructures, which are intertwined and profoundly co-constitutive of the displaced persons' realities. In transit sites, arrival is practised and lived temporally and relationally among the displaced persons, despite the conditions of exile and immobility. Urban infrastructures (such as marketplaces, transit camps and living rooms) transform and enact the strategy adopted by the displaced persons to navigate daily life and to 'move on' from conditions of exile and confinement. Moving on, in this sense, is a strategy to overcome the disruption of the temporality of arrival practices from the Nigerian state regulation of mobility through incentivization and encampment policies. I demonstrate that both incentivization and encampment aim towards a common goal, which is to render displaced persons invisible in urban centres while becoming a raw material for capital production. The regulation enables a new form of unplanned spaces to emerge that are hyper-visible and super-precarious at the urban margins. This paper calls for a critical perspective on humanitarian urbanism in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Etruscans, who dominated central Italy for much of the first half of the first millennium BC, are ripe for new analysis: the quantity of data for their culture is now substantial, wide ranging, and qualifies for large-scale comparison. In this paper, we survey how research in the last decade has affected our understanding of settlements, of changing models of the transfer of ideas, and of Etruscan religious behavior, among other topics. We place them into complex spatial, architectural, and economic narratives to show that the interplay between microhistorical case studies and macrohistorical trends has now achieved what ought to be a paradigmatic status. Despite the continuous flow of specialist publications and an industry of exhibitions, however, the Etruscans have not broken through into mainstream archaeological awareness. We argue that this could be achieved if future research becomes more thematic and agenda driven and embraces comparative study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synchronization between humans is often observed in our daily lives, for example in breathing, in hand clapping in crowds, and in walking. It has been reported that pedestrian gait synchronization maximizes walking flow efficiency. As increasingly more mobile robots are being developed for practical use, it is important to consider how robots may impact pedestrian flows. While there is research on synchronization phenomena between humans and robots, gait synchronization between humans and robots has yet to be studied, particularly synchronization occurring with wheeled humanoid robots while moving. In this paper, we investigated the gait phase synchronization between humans and a wheeled mobile humanoid robot, which moved its upper body in three distinct types of motion patterns: (1) no-motion, (2) arm-swinging (as is common for typical mobile humanoids), and (3) arms-swinging in addition to periodic vertical-oscillation similar to the human upper body movement while walking. Rayleigh test was performed on the distribution of the obtained gait phase differences under each condition and a significant distributional bias was confirmed when participants were walking with the robot that performed both arm-swinging and vertical-oscillation of the upper body. These results suggest that humans can spontaneously synchronize their gaits with wheeled robots that utilize upper body oscillating. These findings can be important for the design of robot-integrated urban transportation systems, such as train stations and airports, where both humans and robots are mobile and a highly efficient flow is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a heterogeneous spatial-temporal similarity search framework is proposed, in which the datasets come from multiple different asynchronous data sources. Due to measuring error, data loss, and other factors, the similarity search based on single points along a trajectory usually cannot fulfill the accuracy requirements in our heterogeneous case. To address this issue, we introduce a concept of the spatial-temporal cluster of points, instead of single points, which can be identified for each target query. By following this concept, we further design a spectral clustering algorithm to construct the clusters in the pre-processing phase effectively. And the query processing is improved for the accuracy of the search by unifying multiple search metrics. To validate our idea, we also prototype a clustered online spatial-temporal similarity search system, "Osprey", to calculate in parallel the similarity of spatial-temporal sequences in the heterogeneous search on a distributed database. Our empirical study is conducted based on an open dataset, called "T-Drive", and a billion-scale dataset consisting of WiFi positioning records gathered from the urban metro system in Shenzhen, China. The experimental results show that the latency of our proposed system is less than 4s in most cases, and the accuracy is more than 70% when the similarity exceeds 0.5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper raises a fundamental question about Sub-Saharan Africa: has urbanization there been accompanied by improvements in personal wellbeing? It then proceeds to open an investigation focused on child health—in the form of child growth failure, including (i) stunting; (ii) wasting; and (iii) underweight—that addresses the question. The main contribution of the work is to reconcile an array of data, collected across different spatial scales and over different timeframes, in a manner that enables some preliminary insight into the relationships explored. Evidence derived from the analysis suggests that the wave of urbanization breaking across Sub-Saharan Africa is associated with improvements in wellbeing, a finding that is qualified by need for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of urbanisation in the capital cities of Zimbabwe and Zambia with specific reference to their inherited spatial planning systems. Many cities around the world are faced with urbanisation challenges, owing largely to population growth caused rural-urban migration. Most of this urbanisation occurs as people search for favourable economic opportunities and a better life. The paper analyses the colonial spatial planning legacy of the two countries, highlighting how inherited spatial planning practices in Zimbabwe and Zambia has continued to influence urban development in the rapidly urbanising cities of Harare and Lusaka. Data was obtained from document reviews and the analysis of secondary data. Some data was acquired through interviews from expert planners and observations. The results revealed that urbanisation is an enduring phenomenon in these capital cities, and the growth of slums and informal settlements is very pronounced there. Although efforts have been made to address challenges associated with urbanisation, these have not been sufficient. Moreover, although Harare and Lusaka are experiencing rapid urbanisation, minimal priority is given to deliberately reviewing their spatial planning systems and addressing their urbanisation challenges. Noteworthy attempts have been made to control urbanisation in Harare and Lusaka, but these have largely been inadequate due to the lack of will to review the adopted colonial spatial planning frameworks in Zimbabwe and Zambia. There is need, therefore, for strong spatial planning institutions and sustainable statutory frameworks that address contemporary urbanisation problems in these Third World cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nature-based solutions (NBS) were introduced as integrated, multifunctional and multi-beneficial solutions to a wide array of socio-ecological challenges. Although principles for a common understanding and implementation of NBS were already developed on a landscape scale, specific principles are needed with regard to an application in urban areas. Urban areas come with particular challenges including (i) spatial conflicts with urban system nestedness, (ii) specific urban biodiversity, fragmentation and altered environments, (iii) value plurality, multi-actor interdependencies and environmental injustices, (iv) path-dependencies with cultural and planning legacies and (v) a potential misconception of cities as being artificial landscapes disconnected from nature. Given these challenges, in this perspective paper, we build upon and integrate knowledge from the most recent academic work on NBS in urban areas and introduce five distinct, integrated principles for urban NBS design, planning and implementation. Our five principles should help to transcend governance gaps and advance the scientific discourse of urban NBS towards a more effective and sustainable urban development. To contribute to resilient urban futures, the design, planning, policy and governance of NBS should (1) consider the need for a systemic understanding, (2) contribute to benefiting people and biodiversity, (3) contribute to inclusive solutions for the long-term, (4) consider context conditions and (5) foster communication and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid new-style urbanization process in China has had a significant impact on the inheritance and protection of local culture. This paper quantitatively analyzes the spatiotemporal difference regarding the coupling coordination between the inheritance of local culture and the new-style urbanization process in China. It is found that during the period between 1991 and 2017, the coexistence of inheritance of local culture and new-style urbanization in China has successively undergone three stages, and at present, the coupling coordination between these two processes is still at a relatively low level, featuring significant differences across various regions and a progressive decrease in the degree of coupling coordination from east to west in China. However, the economically underdeveloped regions, especially ethnic minority regions, are under far greater pressure in terms of coordinated coexistence of both the inheritance of local culture and new-style urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scale is the range or measurement unit of the characteristics of natural or human ontology in the temporal or spatial dimension and is widely used in daily life and the study of various disciplines. Scale effect pertains to certain laws and characteristics that can only be reflected on a specific scale, so choosing the appropriate scale remains the basic premise of scientific research. The concept of the urban spatial system is complex and has the characteristics of scale dependence, and the selection of an appropriate spatial scale is important for the accurate estimation and description of urban issues. In this paper, we discuss spatial scale in urban research using cases that primarily come from the Chinese experience, provide some examples that demonstrate the importance of appropriate scale in urban research, including urban shrinkage, and highlight problems in spatial research. Ultimately, we suggest that scale consciousness should be the basic consciousness required in empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With global climate change and the rapid urbanization, urban flood and drought disasters are frequent and urban water supply systems are facing a sea of serious challenges. It is crucial to assess the resilience of urban water supply systems and develop corresponding disaster mitigation and improvement strategies. Urban water supply systems include many subsystems, but existing researches generally focus on a single subsystem. Therefore, this paper proposes a correlation analysis method and a factor analysis method for the resilience evaluation index system of urban water supply systems by combining each subsystem and applying grey system theory. The method can reflect the four dimensions of the water supply process (water source, water plant, supply and distribution network and users) and the five dimensions of the urban management system (society, natural environment, economy, physics and organization). Taking Qingdao as an example, a multi-level integrated evaluation model based on a cloud model is applied to simulate and analyze the resilience of Qingdao's water supply system. As a result, decision support is provided for planning and building resilience systems for urban water systems in the short and long term, based on four main factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]