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"Disrupting D.C.: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City" by Katie J. Wells, Kafui Attoh, and Declan Cullen explores the rise of Uber and its impact on labor and municipal governance. The authors argue that Uber has been able to operate according to its own rules by positioning itself as a technological solution to urban problems such as public transit, racial injustice, poverty, and economic development. They contend that Uber's solutions are surface-level fixes that do not address deeper structural issues. The book also examines how Uber mobilized customers and used issues of race and data to shape public discourse and prevent regulation. The authors emphasize the ideological and political nature of Uber's labor strategy and its impact on municipal regulatory authority. [Extracted from the article]

"Supertall: How the world’s tallest buildings are reshaping our cities and our lives" by Stefan Al is a book that explores the impact of supertall skyscrapers on architectural, cultural, and financial aspects of cities. The author, an architecture scholar with firsthand experience in skyscraper projects, provides a comprehensive overview of the technological and societal dimensions of skyscrapers. The book discusses the inner workings of skyscrapers, including building materials, engineering, and environmental considerations. It also delves into the social dynamics of skyscrapers, such as regulatory frameworks and their effects on public space and urban inequality. The author concludes by advocating for a new paradigm that prioritizes sustainability in skyscraper design and regulation. Overall, "Supertall" offers a balanced and critical examination of skyscrapers as significant elements of contemporary urban landscapes. [Extracted from the article]

Romit Chowdhury's book, "City of Men: Masculinities and Everyday Morality on Public Transport," provides ethnographic insight into the lives of working-class men in Kolkata who work as transport workers. The book explores the gendered subjectivities that exist in commuting spaces and how they are shaped by private morality. Chowdhury uses the concept of homosocial trust to understand how men navigate the challenges of their work and the city. The book also examines themes of urban affect, freedom, and respect, and highlights the constraints and stereotypes faced by working-class transport workers. Overall, the book offers valuable contributions to the study of transport, mobility, and gender in India. [Extracted from the article]

Electric Micromobility (EM) and the use of dockless shared electric scooters (DSES) has rapidly grown in many cities worldwide. They are promoted as an accessible, low-emissions, versatile, and low-effort alternative. This article conducts a systematic review of DSES, considering their evolution, operation, regulations, user profile, environmental impact, safety, and pricing. The review shows age, income, and gender gaps among their users as most of them are young, male, high-income adults. DSES adopters come mainly from public transport, walking, and cycling. Their environmentally friendly label needs to be analyzed according to the city's context; their distribution and collection logistics impacts, and the vehicle's service life. The review shows significant differences in the way cities have regulated the service. One of the most significant potential contributions from DSES to urban mobility is the possibility to be integrated with public transport, implementing the Mobility-as-a-Service concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Urban environments are important determinants of human health. The term walkability summarizes features of the urban built environment that promote walking and other types of physical activity. While the beneficial effects of active and public transport have been well established, the health impact of other features of walkability are less well documented. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of health impact assessments (HIAs) of walkability. Studies were identified through PUBMED and Science Direct, from two German websites related to urban health and reference tracking. Finally, 40 studies were included in the present review. We applied qualitative thematic analysis to summarize the major results from these studies. Results: Most of the HIAs (n = 31) reported the improvement of health or health behaviour resulting from an investigated project or policy. However, three HIAs reported a lack of improvement or even a decrease of health status. In parallel, 13 HIAs reported a gain in economic value, whereas one reported a lack or loss of economic effects. Moreover, three HIAs reported on social effects and six HIAs gave additional recommendations for policies or the implementation of projects or HIAs. Conclusions: Most HIAs investigate the impact of increasing active or public transport. Other features of walkability are less well studied. With few exceptions, HIAs document beneficial impacts of improving walkability on a variety of health outcomes, including reductions of mortality and non-communicable diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the rapid growth in the use of smartphones, the digital traces (e.g., mobile phone data, call detail records) left by the use of these devices have been widely employed to assess and predict human communication behaviors and mobility patterns in various disciplines and domains, such as urban sensing, epidemiology, public transportation, data protection, and criminology. These digital traces provide significant spatiotemporal (geospatial and time-related) data, revealing people's mobility patterns as well as communication (incoming and outgoing calls) data, revealing people's social networks and interactions. Thus, service providers collect smartphone data by recording the details of every user activity or interaction (e.g., making a phone call, sending a text message, or accessing the internet) done using a smartphone and storing these details on their databases. This paper surveys different methods and approaches for assessing and predicting human communication behaviors and mobility patterns from mobile phone data and differentiates them in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. It also gives information about spatial, temporal, and call characteristics that have been extracted from mobile phone data and used to model how people communicate and move. We survey mobile phone data research published between 2013 and 2021 from eight main databases, namely, the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, MDPI, SAGE, Science Direct, Scopus, SpringerLink, and Web of Science. Based on our inclusion and exclusion criteria, 148 studies were selected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Shifting Gears: Toward a New Way of Thinking About Transportation" by Susan Handy is a book that critically examines the ideas that have shaped the transportation system in the United States. The author explores nine interlocking concepts, including freedom, speed, mobility, vehicles, capacity, hierarchy, separation, control, and technology, to explain how the current transportation system came to be. Handy shares personal stories throughout the book and draws from various disciplines such as psychology, engineering, and urban planning. She also introduces new ideas that challenge traditional approaches and advocates for a paradigm shift in the transportation field, emphasizing mobility justice and the integration of different modes of transportation. The book encourages readers to think about the future of transportation and the need for new options and approaches. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the role of gender in urban transportation systems, specifically focusing on the experiences of transport workers in Kolkata. The author argues that masculine moral logics shape the operation of these systems and contribute to the construction of the city as a male social space. Through a comparison of different sectors within the transport industry, the author demonstrates how gendered norms influence drivers' understanding of their work and their obligations to their families. The article also highlights the role of class in these dynamics and suggests that the surface ethnography method used in the study may present a somewhat narrow perspective on drivers' experiences. [Extracted from the article]

Romit Chowdhury's book, "The City of Men," provides an ethnographic exploration of Kolkata, India, through the perspective of its transport workers. The book examines how the labor of driving people around the city shapes ideologies of masculinity and morality. It highlights the interlocking relationship between masculinity and urbanity and delves into the processes that reproduce patriarchal power in urban India. The book also explores themes of male homosociality, infrastructural support among transport workers, and the impact of age and caste on masculine identities. Overall, "The City of Men" offers a vivid portrayal of the lives of transport workers and their role in keeping cities moving. [Extracted from the article]

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The increasing traffic congestion and pollution in cities is seriously threatening the livability and development of urban areas. As a result, the growing importance of transit accessibility is attracting considerable attention among researchers in transport planning, urban geography and sustainable development. To help solve these increasingly serious issues, public transport studies related to transit network design, transit system evaluation, land use, and transport planning in cities require accurate transit accessibility measurements. The past three decades have seen a burgeoning body of research on transit accessibility, and numerous models have been developed to measure transit accessibility for different purposes. This comprehensive review explores the existing transit accessibility models and highlights their practical advantages and drawbacks from different perspectives to help researchers and transport planners employ the most suitable models to counter mounting traffic threats. Accordingly, this review seeks to answer the following questions. What are the major challenges in developing transit accessibility models? What are the potential research directions to address these challenges? Why have different researchers developed different models for measuring transit accessibility in cities? How important is it to estimate travel impedance or attractiveness of opportunities accurately? Finally, what are the important criteria for developing future transit accessibility models? To deliver its outcomes and answer these questions, this paper reviews transit accessibility models under three main categories: system accessibility, system-facilitated accessibility and access to destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moving the Masses: Bus-Rapid Transit (BRT) Policies in Low Income Asian Cities. Through the example of the BRT proposals, the book makes clear that transport policy in Indonesia fails to adopt a multipronged, integrated approach. For each, sections are devoted to transport challenges and opportunities, transport decision-making, a review of local transport policy and policy tensions. [Extracted from the article]

In this introduction, I set out some of the key themes and approaches David Bissell takes to I Transit Life i , before making way for reflective contributions and provocations from Clare Holdsworth, Hayden Lorimer, Peter Merriman, Elaine Stratford and Tim Schwanen, and a response by David. I Transit Life i can be read as an empirical book as it is based on Bissell's own detailed research into the drudgery, intricacies, challenges, despair, humour, resistance and occasional joy of Sydney commuters. 16 See, for instance, D.Bissell, "Animating Suspension: Waiting for Mobilities", I Mobilities i , 2(2), 2007, pp. 277-98; Bissell, 'Passenger Mobilities, pp. 270-89; D.Bissell, "Vibrating Materialities: Mobility-Body-Technology Relations", I Area i , 42(4), 2010, pp. 479-86. 24 Bissell "Encountering Stressed Bodies", pp. 191-201; Bissell "Transforming Commuting Mobilities", pp. 1946-65; Bissell "Micropolitics of Mobility", pp. 394-403; D.Bissell, 'How Environments Speak: Everyday Mobilities, Impersonal Speech and the Geographies of Commentary', I Social & Cultural Geography i , 16(2), 2015, pp. 146-64. [Extracted from the article]

Although new technology can be politically appealing for transit agencies, the ridership and equity impacts of improving bus service offers are more meaningful to transit riders. Better Buses, Better Cities: How to Plan, Run, and Win the Fight for Effective Transit: Steven Higashide (2019). According to the text, transportation network companies, automated vehicles, and micro-transit cannot solve mobility and access problems that mass transit addresses. [Extracted from the article]

A review of the book "The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight," by Nicholas Dagen Bloom, is presented.

Henry Eoghan O'Brien: An Engineer of Nobility: By Gerald M. Beesley. In 1901, O'Brien had become a member of a small group tasked by Aspinall with looking into all aspects of the possible electrification of the L&YR route from Liverpool northwards along the Lancashire coast to Southport. Between 1903 and 1925, one of the most important engineers working on the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) was an Irishman by the name of Henry Eoghan O'Brien. [Extracted from the article]

It was a pleasure to sit down and read this new offering addressing public transportation. Indeed, the book is very customer centric in its focus and approaches public transportation from the perspective of understanding the markets first then addressing how services and transit technologies can be applied. The book is not a traditional academic textbook on public transportation as it is not as comprehensive and rigorous or sufficiently well documented to be a standalone text for public transportation. [Extracted from the article]