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Streets, vital for vehicular and pedestrian traffic, are increasingly repurposed to enhance urban vibrancy beyond transport needs. This paper explores intentional and spontaneous street experiments, drawing on Henri Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis. Streets are seen as hosts to intersecting rhythms shaped by daily routines and mobility, with users as performers in rhythmic interactions. While initially disruptive, these experiments strive to integrate innovative elements for cohesive urban compositions. Through a musical metaphor, the paper promotes a holistic approach to identifying rhythms influenced and introduced by street experiments. It examines how these rhythms interact, presenting as synchronised dynamics, disruptive discordance, or coexistence in dissonant compositions. Combining rhythmanalysis with spatial discourse analysis, the study 'reads' and 'listens' to temporary spaces through historical records (N = 55) of seven street experiments in Hong Kong from 2016 to 2020. Findings uncover the overly abstract agendas of these experiments — exemplified through narratives involving chairs, railings, and traffic signals — often oversimplify and exclude possibilities. The paper calls for open dialogue to capture power dynamics in street infrastructure and embodied lived experiences during the transition from vehicle-centred to people-oriented streets. It suggests rhythmanalysis as an initial tool for urban planners to envision streetscapes as symphonies, fostering sensitivity to time-space dynamics. [Display omitted] • Explore street spatial-temporal dynamics through Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis. • Conceptualise experiments, though disruptive, for innovative synchronicity. • Establish musical metaphors for open-ended rhythmanalysis. • Identify street rhythms and examine their interactions pre/post-experiment. • Encourage open dialogue over abstract, selective and exclusive agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban morphology and spatial forms shape a city's character and user behavior, often embracing a particular type of people and unwelcoming other kinds of gender. City design policies and legislation have favored men since its beginning, affecting overall urban planning and design. While the world is delving into new techniques and methods to empower women, constraints in public space activities remain prevalent. This paper explores the scope of urban design strategies to catalyze women's social and physical inclusion in these spaces. It presents a systematic approach to identifying women's social roles during the use of public spaces and introduces the 'GenUrban: Shaping Cities for All Genders' framework to guide researchers and designers alike promote inclusive urban design and planning. The investigation, in the central area of Hong Kong, focuses on the cultural landscape created by the women-centric 'Foreign Domestic Helpers' community. A desktop literature review, direct observation of public spaces, and in-depth interviews with a focus group of women in the city's heart established and mapped the marginalized users' collective viewpoint and their appropriation of space. The framework can be used by professionals to transform urban spaces through a gender lens to improve the overall quality of public spaces and make them more inclusive and accessible. The paper generates gender-sensitive urban design principles that can be translated for planners to use for various user groups and contexts. When women become key drivers in activating public space, they are given back their right to the city. • Women's traveling patterns are frequent due to their caregiving responsibilities. • The unique cultural landscape of a city creates gender-centered activities. • Integrating gender-specific features ensures urban spaces cater to women's needs. • Reliable public transport is vital for women's mobility and engagement in city life. • A city catering to women tends to accommodate those they care for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Equity and inclusion continue to pose significant challenges for many cities. Disparities in access to resources and facilities among the residents of these areas are often influenced by factors such as geographical location and income level, among others. Therefore, creating a quantitative basis to detect spatial and socio-economic inequities in residents' access to vital infrastructures is crucial for advancing smart cities. This paper introduces a novel measure of Spatial Inequity that is based on 1) computing building-level scores for each building in terms of access to facilities, and 2) comparing the distribution of the scores of these facilities using the Gini coefficient. The proposed building-level scores will enable the identification of GIS hotspots at a high resolution. Then, the Gini-based measure will facilitate a comparison of the distribution of the scores, and determine if they are evenly distributed and equitably accessible. The Gini coefficient was highest (0.89) for waste management and elderly care, and lowest (0.56) for hospitals, reflecting varying levels of inequality. This study applies this Spatial Ineqity methodological framework to Hong Kong, a representative of Highly Dense Cities. The framework benchmarks urban infrastructure, identifies hotspots, and selects interventions for equitable urban development. • Novel approach identifies spatial inequities via building-level scores & Gini coefficient. • Precise hotspot identification enhances targeted interventions in dense urban areas. • Applied methodology in Hong Kong offers insights into urban development complexities. • Gini coefficient unveils varying degrees of inequality across essential services. • Geospatial analysis & quantitative measures support equitable urban resource allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Covid-19 has wreaked havoc worldwide. To mitigate the spread of the virus, societies around the world implemented various social control measures and restrictions on mobility. Traditional work practices were upended, leading to a widespread adoption of telecommuting in many cities, effectively turning urban spaces into expansive work-from-home laboratories. The exchange of digitized documents, virtual conversations, and online transactions replaced physical movements and face-to-face communication, allowing for the continuation of productive activities. This shift to telecommuting raises important questions about the impact on traditional business practices and power dynamics in the workplace. It also prompts us to examine how new communication and surveillance tools facilitate collaboration and enhance worker productivity. Furthermore, it is essential to understand how employees navigate and adapt to the opportunities and limitations presented in a teleworking environment. To gain insights into these issues, this paper focuses on the experiences of work-from-home employees in the community of Tin Shui Wai in Hong Kong, using the concept of governmobility as an analytical framework. The findings reveal that telecommuting is enabled by innovative social interaction mechanisms, changes in power dynamics, and the implementation of new discourse and surveillance methods, all of which are contingent on specific work and life conditions. The various experiences of telecommuting, such as working in a home office, in virtual workspaces, and using on-body devices, demonstrate adaptable responses to the emerging opportunities and constraints of telecommuting. These experiences illuminate the intricate ways in which work and life intertwine in both physical and temporal dimensions. • Exploring the mechanisms of governmobility in telecommuting during the Covid-19 pandemic. • Theorizing diverse telecommuting practices and experiences. • Discussing the prospects of telecommuting in the post-Covid world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the time-varying and land use-induced spillover effects of urban redevelopment, providing a lens through which to understand the welfare implications of both the temporal dynamics and the land use changes that occur through urban transformation. By analysing redevelopment project and housing transaction data from Hong Kong between 2005 and 2020, we find significant, positive spillover effects of urban redevelopment on local housing prices following the redevelopment announcement, with diminishing magnitudes as the redevelopment project proceeds. We also find heterogeneous spillover effects associated with different functional land use changes in redevelopment projects. The direction and extent of these externalities depend on the trade-off between the changes in local amenities and the changes in the level of competitiveness in the local housing market. • Redevelopment has time-varying and land use-induced spillover effects. • In general, spillover effects show a diminishing magnitude as the project proceeds. • The time-varying spillover patterns depend on the specific changes in land uses. • Redevelopments pose negative spillovers through the competitiveness channel. • Redevelopments pose positive spillovers through the amenity channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]