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Copyright of Artl@s Bulletin is the property of Purdue University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The pursuit of happiness as an issue in planning for towns in trans-Appalachian America was a prime requisite. It is the intent of this paper to illustrate that, while many of the towns were paper towns that were never actualised, they acted as a catalyst for immigrants seeking to escape the oppression of Europe. Visualised as a new Eden, and promising land ownership with liberty, they were an opiate so strong that even with numerous instances of fraud and deceit the settlers came. Their belief that they had indeed arrived at Eden was so strong that it transcended any and all difficulties. This belief has influenced the planning and development of towns in America up to and including modern times. As long as people believe that their living situation is what is meant for them, their pursuit of happiness is satisfied. They have found their Eden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incunabula are printed materials created in Europe from the time of Johann Gutenberg's invention until 1500. Incunabula originate from the Latin language (lat. Incunabulum) and mean cradle or the beginning of something. In this paper, the representation of individual states and cities in the creation of incunabula is investigated and presented. The persons responsible for such development are also listed. Special attention is given to the presentation of Croatian incunabula. The mentioned works describe the characteristic features. Incunabula testify to a high level of culture, standards, and technological development of a particular area. The studied works reveal and confirm, as confirmed in this paper, the attitude of society towards literacy, education, and the national culture of each nation. This paper aims to comprehensively present the importance of incunabula for the development of European and Croatian culture, technological and comprehensive progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an increasing level of recognition of the interaction between cultural mega-events and built heritage in recent years. While research has broadly identified the need to align strategies and visions, as well as involve heritage actors and local communities, there has not been a systematic investigation of the position of industrial heritage within this tableau. This paper examines in depth the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) programme, as it is one of the longest standing Capital of Culture programmes in the world and has a significant record of investment and urban transformation. In this paper, we survey and categorise the inclusion of industrial heritage within the ECoC programme in 36 host cities and regions spread across Europe. This research provides the most comprehensive understanding to date of the specific forms of interaction between industrial heritage and ECoCs to better understand the kinds of relationships that have taken place. We then explore in detail the projects and decisions made in the cases of the 2023 Elefsina, 2017 Pafos and 2008 Liverpool ECoCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban lab is an experimental governance approach for the co-creation of innovative solutions to urban challenges, such as climate change. However, urban lab scholarship has overlooked lab formation as a distinct process and is almost exclusively based on European cases. Therefore, little is known about the role of context conditions for lab formation in general and beyond Europe in particular. To address these gaps, this paper inductively analyses urban lab formation in five cities in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, develops a framework for the comparative analysis of lab formation challenges, and asks: What do the challenges encountered and the solutions developed during lab formation in these cities tell us about the context dependence of the urban lab approach and what are the implications for its potential beyond Europe? Comparing insights from Europe to the findings from Latin America, the paper answers these questions and identifies future research questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this paper is to present an innovative approach to addressing the challenges of smart mobility exploiting digital twins within the METACITIES initiative. We have worked on this issue due to the increasing complexity of urban transportation systems, coupled with the urgent need to improve efficiency, safety, and sustainability in cities. The work presented in this paper is part of the project METACITIES, an Excellence Hub that spans a large geographical area, that of Southeastern Europe. The approach of the Greek innovation ecosystem of METACITIES involves leveraging digital twin technology to create intelligent replicas of urban mobility environments, enabling real-time monitoring, analysis, and decision making. Through use cases such as "Smart Parking", "Environmental Behavior Analysis on Traffic Incidents", and "Emergency Management", we demonstrate how digital twins can optimize traffic flow, mitigate environmental impact, and enhance emergency response; these use cases will be tested on a small scale, before deciding on implementation at a larger and more expensive scale. The final outcome is the METACITIES Architecture for smart mobility, which will be part of an Open Digital Twin Framework capable of evolving a smart city into a metacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the Positive Energy District Database (PED DB), a pivotal web tool developed collaboratively by the COST Action 'PED-EU-NET', in alignment with international initiatives such as JPI Urban Europe and IEA EBC Annex 83. The PED DB represents a crucial step towards sharing knowledge, promoting collaboration, reinforcing decision-making, and advancing the understanding of Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) in the pursuit of sustainable urban environments. The PED DB aims to comprehensively map and disseminate information on PEDs across Europe, serving as a dynamic resource for sustainable urban development according to the objective of making the EU climate-neutral by 2050. Indeed, PEDs imply an integrated approach for designing urban areas—the districts—where a cluster of interconnected buildings and energy communities produce net zero greenhouse gas emissions, managing an annual local/regional overflow production of renewable energy. The paper describes the collaborative step-by-step process leading to the PED DB implementation, the current results and potentials of the online platform, and introduces its future developments towards a more user-friendly and stakeholders-tailored tool. The interactive web map offers a customizable visualizations and filters on multiple information related to PED case studies, PED-relevant cases, and PED Labs. Users can access detailed information through a table view, facilitating comparisons across different PED projects and their implementation phase. The paper offers insights and detailed analysis from the initial dataset that includes 23 PED cases and 7 PED-related projects from 13 European countries, highlighting the key characteristics of surveyed PEDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the removal of various monuments commemorating colonial figures, this paper introduces the Empty Plinth as epitomizing postcolonial Europe's identity crisis. As Europe negotiates new discursive foundations for an increasingly multicultural society, this paper argues for a re-membering of Europe through a materialization of Black narratives in the European memoryscape for their potential to: 1) tackle white ignorance and exclusionary nativism by uncovering Europe's contingency upon other(ed) geographies, 2) contribute to creating/fostering a Black sense of place in European cities, and 3) addressing Europe's identity crisis and lay new conceptual foundations for a hybrid and inclusive "Europe." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the contribution of built cultural heritage to the quality of life in peripheralised small and medium-sized towns (SMTs). While the scientific discourse on peripheralised towns and regions is largely focused on development threats and challenges, this paper highlights heritage as an endogenous resource with the potential to promote a high quality of life in peripheralised towns. A case study covering ten historic towns at the German–Polish border constitutes the basis of the research presented in this paper. Qualitative focus group workshops have been conducted in each town to get detailed insights into the heritage-related quality of life. It appears that under specific conditions, heritage contributes to the quality of life in peripheralised SMTs. This contribution is more pronounced on emotional terms, i.e. regarding meaningful constitutions of place and social cohesion. Practical domains of quality of life related to urban functions or the economy benefit less from the towns' heritage. It follows that the heritage ressources themselves are no warranty for an enhancement of the quality of life in peripheralised SMTs. Exploiting their potential remains context dependent, and peripheralised SMTs are faced with particular socio-spatial challenges in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the relationship between urban planning and mobility management, TeMA has gradually expanded the view of the covered topics, always remaining in the groove of rigorous scientific in-depth analysis. This section of the Journal, Review Notes, is the expression of continuously updating emerging topics concerning relationships between urban planning, mobility and environment, through a collection of short scientific papers written by young researchers. The Review Notes are made of four parts. Each section examines a specific aspect of the broader information storage within the main interests of TeMA Journal. In particular, the Urban Practices section aims at presenting recent advancements on relevant topics that underline the challenges that the cities have to face. This note provides an overview of the challenges that global warming poses and the risks in terms of climate change that it generates for territories and cities. The challenges that adaptation to climate change commonly faces are outlined, and a brief review of European case studies is carried out. Finally, the results of the review are discussed highlighting some key threads of climate adaptation practices and three significant examples of climate change adaptation in urban areas are reported, within a perspective of integration and sharing of know-how on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The premise of our research paper is that large (by the size of the population) municipalities are more complex to govern and manage, and this, in turn, calls for a more professional and apolitical local government. Using data from the largest European survey of mayors, we analyzed the influence of mayors and chief administrative officers in Europe and checked for correlations with the size of the local government. We present empirical evidence to support that the perceived influence of mayors varies with the size of the municipality regardless of the institutional configuration of power relationships. We found that very large municipalities (80,000 or more inhabitants) had weaker mayors. The presumption that a larger, more complex local (urban) environment calls for more professional leadership has been addressed in numerous publications; however, the answer was usually beyond the reach of the empirical tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an overview of the modelling of particle number concentrations (PNC's) in five major European cities, namely Helsinki, Oslo, London, Rotterdam and Athens, in 2008. Novel emission inventories of particle numbers have been compiled both on urban and European scales. We use atmospheric dispersion modelling for PNC's in the five target cities and on a European scale, and evaluate the predicted results against available measured concentrations. The concentrations of PN in the selected cities were mostly influenced by the emissions originated from local vehicular traffic; however, in some of the cities, also harbour and airport activities were significant. The highest values of the predicted PNC's were higher in the megacities, London and Athens, and also in Rotterdam, whereas these were lower in Helsinki and Oslo. It was numerically evaluated that the influence of coagulation and dry deposition on the predicted PNC's was substantial for urban background in Oslo. The predicted and measured annual average PNC's in four cities agreed within approximately ⩽36% (measured as fractional biases), except for one traffic station in London. The indexes of agreement (IA) for the comparisons of hourly measured and predicted time-series in Oslo and Helsinki ranged from 0.75 to 0.79. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nature-Based Solutions concepts and practices are being used worldwide as part of attempts to address societal challenges but have also been criticised for not dealing with deeper transformations needed to face urgent issues including biodiversity loss, climate change and inclusion. In this paper, we explore how an inclusive, integrated and long-sighted approach, emphasising a more radical integration of nature within cities, might support the transformations needed to endure major contemporary challenges. Addressing important emerging critiques of Nature-Based Solutions, we consider the potential of a more incisive form of Nature-Based Thinking (NBT) in cities, based on more holistic perspectives. The paper draws on a reflective and iterative research process that engaged both the research and practice communities through a symposium and a series of futures workshops that together explored the potential of NBT to develop future nature-cities relations in Europe and Latin America. The results of the reflective process suggest that notions of nature with people—not for people— new organisational structures, and the intention and capacity to apply long-term perspectives, are needed when planning for NBS interventions aimed at sustainable urban development. This includes developing a cultural-structural change based on new and inclusive understandings of human–nature relations, and novel governance paradigms that allow cross-sectoral coordination and engagement of local stakeholders beyond formal organisational structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) is on the political agenda as one of the main objectives in order to respond to the increasing degradation processes affecting soils and territories. Nevertheless, proper implementation of environmental policies is very difficult due to a lack of the operational, reliable and easily usable tools necessary to support political decisions when identifying problems, defining the causes of degradation and helping to find possible solutions. It is within this framework that this paper attempts to demonstrate a new valuable web-based operational LDN tool as a component of an already running Spatial Decision Support System (S-DSS) developed on a Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure (GCI). The tool could be offered to EU administrative units (e.g., municipalities) so that they may better evaluate the state and the impact of land degradation in their territories. The S-DSS supports the acquisition, management and processing of both static and dynamic data, together with data visualization and on-the-fly computing, in order to perform modelling, all of which is potentially accessible via the Web. The land degradation data utilized to develop the LDN tool refer to the SDG 15.3.1 indicator and were obtained from a platform named Trends.Earth, designed to monitor land change by using earth observations, and post-processed to correct some of the major artefacts relating to urban areas. The tool is designed to support land planning and management by producing data, statistics, reports and maps for any EU area of interest. The tool will be demonstrated through a short selection of practical case studies, where data, tables and stats are provided to challenge land degradation at different spatial extents. Currently, there are WEBGIS systems to visualize land degradation maps but—to our knowledge—this is the first S-DSS tool enabling customized LDN reporting at any NUTS (nomenclature of territorial units for statistics) level for the entire EU territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the recent era of smart city ecosystems and the Internet of Things (IoT), innovative, intelligent parking systems must make cities more sustainable. Every year, the increasing number of city vehicles requires more time to search for parking slots. In large cities, 10% of the traffic congestion occurs because of cruising; drivers spend almost 20 minutes searching for free space to park their vehicles. The passing time of waiting for parking in the traffic leads the issues such as energy, pollution, and stress. There needs to be more than the developed solutions. Therefore, the necessary to create a parking slot availability detection system that informs the drivers in advance about the free parking slot based on location. This paper introduces an enhanced ensemble Deep Learning (DL) model designed to forecast parking slot availability through the integration of IoT, cloud technology, and sensor networks. The devised model, known as Ensemble CNN-Boosted Graph LSTM (ECNN-BGLSTM), is optimized using a Genetic Algorithm (GA) framework. The model's performance is rigorously evaluated using a dataset from Europe, and various metrics, including Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Square Error (MSE), and Mean Absolute Error (MAE), are employed for assessment. The experimental findings demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed model compared to existing state-of-the-art approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the emerging topics of the international debate for safe mobility in urban areas with an innovative interpretation. This is the bibliometric mapping of the most recurrent concepts (keywords) of almost 80 scientific publications. The paper framework moves from the issue of the sustainability of cities and through a mobility lens. In Europe by 2030 cities have to become climateneutral and some main urban strategy to achieve this result is focused on transport and mobility sectors. The interpretation of the bibliometric mapping results leads to highlighting the shortcomings of some topics within the scientific debate. The Qualiquantitaive Data Analysis was applied to set the interdependency among research fields and better understand the interrelation among the different topics. The key concepts of don't emerge clearly as an object of research and they will be included in future reflections about the transformative capacity of the city through sustainability and in the development of city strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The explosion of youth revolts in the long 1970s, including the emergence of environmental activism in western Europe, coincided with the democratization of printing technologies, and led to radical transformation in the production and distribution of knowledge. Publishing became cheap and easy due to the appearance of portable versions of formerly costly and heavy printing machinery and a myriad of self-published zines with an environmentalist tone flourished, disseminating a firm rejection to the post-war consensus of consumerism and growth, denouncing the overarching planning organizations, policies, and strategies. Besides criticism, they also present ways of thinking, living, cooperating, and building that follow different rules and values than consumer capitalism. This contribution identifies a gap in European planning history related to the agency of 1970s' environmental activism and explores the potential of environmentalist zines as sources to sustain historical inquiry and help to fill that gap. It proposes conceptualizing zines as 'minor' sources, arguing that the Deleuzian-Guattarian category is a useful concept for reframing previously marginalized voices in planning history. Through the analysis of seven transnationally published zines, the paper demonstrates their validity as sources that document contributions of voices that have been neglected so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring ground deformation at national and regional level with millimetre-scale precision, nowadays, is possible by using Advanced Differential Interferometric SAR (A-DInSAR) techniques. This study concerns the results of the European Ground Motion Service (EGMS), part of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service, which detects and measures land displacement at European scale. This Service provides reliable and consistent information regarding natural ground motion phenomena such as landslides and subsidence. The ground motion is derived from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) time-series analysis of Sentinel-1A/B data. These data, which provide full coverage of Europe from two different observation geometries (ascending and descending) every six days, are processed at full resolution. The paper is focused on the exploitation of the basic product of EGMS for both regional and local purposes. Analysing the slope and aspect of the deformation field is the novelty of this investigation. In particular, the focus is put on the generation of wide-area differential deformation maps. Such maps indicate the gradient of the deformation field. The obtained information is not only beneficial for monitoring anthropogenic phenomena but also vital for urban management and planning. Most of the significant damages to manmade structures and infrastructures are associated with high deformation gradient values. Thus, monitoring the temporal and spatial variations of deformation gradient is essential for dynamic analysis, early-warning, and risk assessment in urban areas. Although EGMS productions are prepared for monitoring at regional level, their resolutions are high enough to investigate at local level. Therefore, this paper considers the local deformations that affect single structures or infrastructures. Local differences in such deformation can indicate damages in the corresponding structures and infrastructures. We illustrate these types of analysis to generate differential deformation maps using datasets available at CTTC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporary uses are claimed to be new solutions for urban challenges, especially in a scenario characterized by scarce public-private resources. However, the role of temporariness in urban development is still ambiguous. The paper discusses the concept of temporary urbanism in the light of urban regeneration, other problematic concepts. The paper addresses current urban phenomena proposing a taxonomy of temporary uses to help clarify these ambiguities, highlighting differences and similarities among various European cases. Notably, the contribution aims to discuss whether temporary urbanism can be considered as a new method of urban regeneration or as a tool to perpetrate neoliberal policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim/purpose - The main purpose of the paper is the identification of opportunities and threats for city logistics development from a local authority perspective. Design/methodology/approach - The paper presents the original results of surveys conducted among city logistics experts from all over the world and among representa- tives of twelve EU capital cities. Findings - According to the study the most important opportunities for cities are stakeholders' willingness for cooperation, as well as a good and long cooperation with them. It shows that a local authority cannot introduce any solutions in the field of city logistics without cooperating with other stakeholders. Therefore, the lack of cooperation can be a threat. The other threat highlighted by the majority of studied cities is the lack of standards on data collections. Without information in real time on problems and activities undertaken by various stakeholders in the field of city logistics it is very difficult for strategic and tactical decisions to be made by a local authority. Research implications/limitations - The most significant limitation of the research was the sample of respondents. Despite the fact that the questionnaire was sent to 28 EU capital cites only 12 out of them have completed and returned the questionnaire. A further problem arises from the lack of standards on collecting information on city logistics by cities. As a result of it many European cities do not collect this information or do it in a fragmentary way. Originality/value/contribution - The research results introduced in the paper make a contribution to the theoretical and practical knowledge on city logistics development. It fills the gap related to the external factors affecting the development of city logistics. The author's concept of the framework for city logistics development with the inclusion of threats and opportunities and the set of questions can be a useful tool for local authorities as well as enriching the theoretical background for city logistics strategic planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper brings into the spotlight the concept of smart city, emerging from major economic, social and environmental considerations and developed to provide new possibilities for the inhabitants, but also to limit the impact of human activities on the environment. Thus, the authors initiate a presentation of attempts to define the smart city, highlighting the six dimensions on its development in a sustainable context. Moreover, as one of the greatest challenges of mankind today is to ensure the increasing demand for energy by maintaining the balance with the environment, the paper highlights aspects regarding the use of a form of renewable energy, known as bioenergy. This is one of the key factors for ensuring the sustainable development of smart cities and beyond. Taking into account that smart cities have a smart energy approach, in the last part of the paper the authors present ways to integrate bioenergy into the functioning of such urban areas in Europe and build a map of smart European cities which make use of bioenergy in the benefit of population's consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: Drones can be a very useful tool to help mosquito control tasks in areas where these insects are an important vector of disease transmission. Storing sterile mosquitoes in drones and releasing them in targeted areas where previous suppression of wild populations has been performed can be a major advance in this methodology. This is part of the sterile insect techniques (SIT) which have been demonstrated to be an environmentally friendly solution for the control of insect pests. However, the use of drones in the areas where these operations are foreseen is limited by the fact that we have a regulation that advances at a slower pace than technology. Of particular interest is the case of the suppression of mosquito populations in urban areas below the transmission threshold, where drones and their operating conditions must meet demanding safety requirements. This article presents the current regulatory situation in Europe that affects drone operations and its applicability to the case of the release of sterile mosquitoes to control the population of these insects in two different scenarios: urban and rural areas. In recent years, several countries have developed the use of sterile insect techniques (SIT) to fight against mosquitoes that transmit diseases. From a technical and economic point of view, the use of drones in the aerial release of sterile mosquitoes leads to important improvements in aerial coverage and savings in operational costs due to the requirement of fewer release sites and field staff. However, these operations are under the European drone regulation, one of the most advanced in the world. The main contribution and novelty of this paper with respect to previous work is the analysis of the SIT application with drones under the European risk-based regulation in two scenarios: urban and rural areas. The specific operations risk assessment (SORA) methodology has been applied to assess the risk of drone operations in these scenarios. The paper presents the operational requirements for aerial release of mosquitoes with drones along with the regulatory considerations that must be applied. Finally, an overview of the conditions in operation that could relax risks and mitigation measures is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many European cities, railway stations have become urban hubs in which a variety of functions and uses are focused. These include retail, cafés, offices and housing. They are often also complemented by adjacent amenity open space, in both hard and soft landscaping, alongside a broader provision for other modes, such as public transport, walking and cycling. In this sense, large-scale transport hubs resemble small-scale city centres and, like other urban centres, the public space in stations should meet the needs of a wide range of users. The design and management of railway stations is highly complex and the risk of such nodes failing as quality public spaces is significant. In addition, railway stations play a pivotal role in encouraging public transport use and they have the potential to contribute to a modal shift from more polluting transport modes. We argue that the design and management of such spaces is a key variable in the modal choices many travellers make. Based on empirical research across Europe, this paper presents a set of indicators for assessing the quality of railway stations and their adjacent areas and summarizes our research findings to increase the attractiveness of rail journeys through enhanced public spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessments of the bike-sharing industry traditionally focus on its effects on other markets, municipalities, or general well-being. This paper deviates from this on how the market is organised. Using information on the aggregate number of firms in cities and greater cities across Europe, we found non-proportional changes in market size with respect to changes in market structure. This is crucial information inferring changes in profits, costs, or degree of product differentiation. To distinguish between these three sources, we utilised additional firm-level data on capacity and type of service provided. Our results suggest that the non-proportional increase in market size after an entry is most likely associated with increased intensity of competition and new forms of offered services, i.e. product differentiation. We did not find evidence that newcomers have been entering with substantially larger capacities per capita compared to incumbents. From a policy perspective, entry into the bike-sharing industry has benefited consumers through market expansion and caused a potential decrease in profits. • A non-proportional market size increase after the entry of the second and third firms. • No association for entry barriers; no entries with larger capacity. • Increases likely associated with differentiation: entrants likely dockless or e-bikes. • Entry and competition benefited consumers through market expansion and may decrease profits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Makeshift camps have increasingly become a permanent presence along border areas and in cities around Europe and elsewhere, constituting a 'hidden geography' that is crucial to overland mobilities of thousands of migrants each year and essential to understanding contemporary informal migration. While there is rich and burgeoning scholarship on makeshift camps, substantial gaps remain in the understanding of these informal geographies which have not yet been conceptualized in terms of the key roles they play in the production of informal migration corridors nor the unique forms of daily life en route that they support, as this paper intends to do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a strong degree of interest over the last 30 years towards immigrant segregation in Europe. This paper aims to contribute towards the existing body of research by extending the multi-scalar analysis of patterns of immigrant residential segregation into a coherent international comparative study of cities of different sizes. We investigate the patterns of immigrant-native segregation at different geographical scales, along with their correlates, in more than a hundred cities in 2011 across Germany, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Our findings suggest that cities in the UK are the most highly segregated in Europe. The positions of the other countries in the 'European segregation ranking' depend upon the considered immigrant group and spatial scale. The national context is consistently the most important factor in understanding segregation at multiple spatial scales. However, even while taking into account the national contexts, the structural-ecological factors remain important predictors of segregation patterns in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European cities are currently facing one of the main evolutions of the last fifty years. 'Cities for the citizens' is the new leitmotiv of modern societies, and citizens are demanding, among others, a greener environment including non-polluted air. Improved sensors and improved communication systems open the door to the design of new systems based on citizen science to better monitor the air quality. In this paper, we present a system that relies on the already available Copernicus Environment Service, on Air Quality Monitoring reference stations and on a cluster of new low-cost, low-energy sensor nodes that will improve the resolution of air quality maps. The data collected by this system will be stored in a time series database, and it will be available both to city council managers for decision making and to citizens for informative purposes. In this paper, we present the main challenges imposed by Air Quality Monitoring systems, our proposal to overcome those challenges, and the results of our preliminary tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The positive energy district (PED) is a rather recent concept that aims to contribute to the main objectives of the Energy Union strategy. It is based on an integrated multi-sectoral approach in response to Europe's most complex challenges. But to what extent have its development and implementation been supported by research and innovation programs? And what is the state of the art of its implementation and effective penetration into the current energy systems of European cities, according to the evidence provided by the scientific literature? This study aims to investigate these issues, providing a critical overview of the PED situation by means of a systematic literature review based on the use of open-access bibliometric software supplemented with content analysis. The results show that less than half of the documents analyzed refer to actual case studies, 80% of which were funded as part of research projects. This seems to lead to the conclusion that although PEDs have been strongly encouraged by the scientific community and policy initiatives at the European level, their implementation in cities is still limited. Moreover, an uneven distribution among countries can be observed. To overcome the existing barriers to PED diffusion and implementation, it would be useful to provide more ad hoc funding and, above all, facilitate its accessibility also by municipalities not yet well integrated into European projects, initiatives, and networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in urban residential density represent an important issue in terms of land consumption, the conservation of ecosystems, air quality and related human health problems, as well as the consequential challenges for urban and regional planning. It is the decline of residential densities, in particular, that has often been used as the very definition of sprawl, describing a phenomenon that has been extensively studied in the United States and in Western Europe. Whilst these studies provide valuable insights into urbanization processes, only a handful of them have reflected the uneven dynamics of simultaneous urban growth and shrinkage, using residential density changes as a key indicator to uncover the underlying dynamics. This paper introduces a contrasting analysis of recent developments in both de- and re-concentration, defined as decreasing or increasing residential densities, respectively. Using a large sample of European cities, it detects differences in density changes between successional population growth/decline. The paper shows that dedensification, found in some large cities globally, is not a universal phenomenon in growing urban areas; neither the increasing disproportion between a declining demand for and an increasing supply of residential areas nor actual concentration processes in cities were found. Thus, the paper provides a new, very detailed perspective on (de)densification in both shrinking and growing cities and how they specifically contribute to current land take in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 20th century, urban centers in New Jersey, especially locations such as Newark, Hoboken, and Camden, were home to many immigrants from Europe. Hoboken stands out amongst these as it was the major port of embarkation for American troops en route to the World War I. The city saw American immigrants supporting the war effort in varying ways. Irish immigrants, for example, may well have looked at American support for Great Britain in a different light than native-born American citizens. Similarly, German-Americans, especially between 1914 and 1917, were ambivalent as American "neutrality" towards Germany shifted towards outright hostility. What can local newspapers, some of which catered to ethnic interests, tell us about the tensions between ethnic loyalties and the call for patriotic support for the Allies as the United States went to war? This paper focuses in part on editorial comments on the need for "loyalty," and/or "patriotism" once war was declared in April, 1917. It was originally presented as a paper at the NJ Historical Commission's 2017 conference, "New Jersey and The Great War," held November 3-4, 2017 at Rowan College at Burlington County and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper contributes to the understanding of socio-spatial trends and urban systems in Europe, with a specific focus on smaller settlements. First, a morphological delimitation of urban settlements as geographical base is used to identify the different settlement structures that characterise regions across Europe. Secondly, an analysis of population and GDP performances of NUTS 3 regions for the 29 countries of the European space (growth rates in 2001-2011) provides evidence of the variety of territorial phenomena that characterise smaller-settlement regions across Europe. Finally, the paper highlights the diversity and complexity of urbanisation structures in Europe and how general trends observed at larger scale are articulated locally according to prevailing structures of urbanisation. It shows the character of 'embeddedness' of smaller settlements within urban systems and territorial structures and how the socio-economic performances of smaller-settlement regions are defined by a combination of macro trends, national contextualisation, local dynamics and regional path dependency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unique contribution of this paper is to empirically compare and contrast demographic change in settlements with a population between 5,000 and under 50,000 (defined as towns) across different national urban systems in Europe with common definitions for the first time. The analysis uses a new data set based on harmonised small area data and harmonised morphological definitions of what a town is. The paper hypothesises first that a general model of demographic growth can be applied across national urban systems and secondly that regional demographic change is a significant predictor of demographic change in towns nested within those regions within this generalised model. A fixed effect multi-level regression analysis tests the importance of town-level and regional factors among towns from five national systems but also within two individual national urban systems. The findings suggest that national context still matters and within some national systems, regional context also strongly predicts demographic change in towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role played by the position of European regions in research networks on their rate of innovation and economic growth. The analysis is based on a panel of EU-28 NUTS2 regions participating in EU Framework Programmes observed over the 2004–2014 period. We find that regions that are more central in the network (higher strength centrality) and those that are surrounded by highly inter-connected regions (higher clustering index) show higher rates of innovation and higher economic growth. We also find heterogeneous effects of centrality and clustering for peripheral and central regions. We conclude that a more interconnected network (an increase in centrality for peripheral regions and of clustering for urban areas) would create benefits both at the periphery and at the core of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do you design a sustainable urban area from scratch? A growing number of urban development projects, marketing themselves as sustainable or 'eco' cities, claim to have the answer. This paper focuses on the companies who create the masterplans that guide the development of such sustainable urban projects. While these projects are appearing in a diverse array of locations around the world, they are largely conceived and designed by a small, elite group of international architecture, engineering and planning firms based in North America and Europe sometimes referred to as the global intelligence corps (GIC). Drawing on research into these firms, the paper examines the contemporary drivers of internationalisation in sustainable urban planning and design. These include enhanced professional reputations and satisfaction for designers and branding benefits for clients with a desire to be seen as modern and 'global'. The paper then considers the role of international masterplanners in the global dissemination of ideas in this area, concluding that the GIC and the plans they develop are playing a significant role in the development of an international model of sustainable urbanism. However, the way in which this model is actually expressed in material form is strongly influenced by the demands and priorities of the GIC's international clients. The paper concludes by reflecting on what this research demonstrates about what it means for a planning model to be both relational and territorial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large amount of policy support is spent to foster the development of rural areas in Europe. However, empirical evidence on the well-being differential between rural and urban areas in Europe is scant and incomplete. The present study develops a systematic literature review on this topic, bridging a gap in research as a systematic analysis on the subject has not been developed as far as we know. It uses the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method. The review focuses on definitions of rural-urban most used in the literature, main dimensions of well-being that are analyzed, nature of the data and, finally, evidence that emerged regarding the differences in the various dimensions of well-being between rural and urban populations. The analysis confirms that available evidence is controversial and provides advice on how to develop new and better empirical analyses on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first analysis of scientific strength by output (papers in the Science Citation Index 1994-96) produced by authors from the 'greater' urban regions of Europe. Top lists of European centres are indicated. Four agglomerations constitute the European super-league of science: London, Paris, Moscow and the Dutch urban agglomeration of Amsterdam, the Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht. The next layer could be named the primary league and comprises 19 large research centres. A third group of 16 cities forms a secondary league of 16 smaller research centres. These upper-level research strongholds are categorised in the paper where patterns of specialisations by absolute and relative distribution of research disciplines for each city are identified and families of cities by research pattern are analysed and compared within the perspective of urban economic growth and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current debates in urban development display a rising awareness that several cities in Europe and the US must deal with challenges of long-term urban shrinkage. However, on an international scale it is still not clear if and how planning paradigms, planning systems, planning strategies and planning cultures are changing when shrinkage and decline are taking place. This paper investigates how planning is transformed in view of shrinking cities. For this purpose, the paper introduces four cities’ storylines framed by shrinkage. Particular focus lies on the question if and how dealing with decline and shrinkage led to changes in urban planning and brought about different planning styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Waste is a resource. Generating energy from waste instead of sending it to landfill avoids methane gas which equals 25 times CO2 in mass. In combination with the energy efficiency thresholds set in Waste Framework Directive, this could prevent up to a further 45 million tons of CO2 eq. per year. The purpose of this paper is to present the waste-to-energy (WTE) plants installed in ten European cities which have been selected among the most sustainable cities or among the best cities to live in. Design/methodology/approach – The work is based on literature review and a combination of several statistical data and reports that include the required data. Findings – The European Directives, along with the general thinking that wastes are resources and the effort to reduce the environmental impact in urban environment from waste management, were the driving forces. The most sustainable cities in EU considered that their sustainability is based also in energy recovery from wastes. All of them are using WTE facilities to treat a significant part of their waste in order to produce energy in the form of heat and electricity. And they do it in a very successful and environmental friendly way, as they mainly utilize the waste fractions that cannot be recycled or reused, and they do not landfill these resources. This approach is proving that the sustainable waste management cannot be achieved without WTE facilities, since a fraction of wastes consists of non-recyclable and non-reusable materials, which present significant heating value that cannot be neglected as an energy source. Originality/value – This paper presents the WTE plants installed in ten European cities which have been selected among the most sustainable cities or among the best cities to live in. This work aims to present the strong and successful relation between WTE and sustainability in the modern complex urban environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces the names of the winners including Maribel Casas-Cortes, Sebastian Cobarrubias and John Pickle, for the journal's first Jim Lewis Prize as of July 2014. It mentions that the Prize marks contributions of the former Editor Jim Lewis and highlights the most innovative paper published previously in the journal. The recipients are awarded for their paper "Re-bordering the neighbourhood: Europe's emerging geographies of non-accession integration."

Environmental noise has become one of the principal health risks for urban dwellers and road traffic noise (RTN) is considered to be the main source of these adverse effects. To address this problem, strategic noise maps and corresponding action plans have been developed throughout Europe in recent years in response to the European Noise Directive 2002/49/EC (END), especially in populated cities. Recently, wireless acoustic sensor networks (WASNs) have started to serve as an alternative to static noise maps to monitor urban areas by gathering environmental noise data in real time. Several studies have analysed and categorized the different acoustic environments described in the END (e.g., traffic, industrial, leisure, etc.). However, most of them have only considered the dynamic evolution of the A-weighted equivalent noise levels L A e q over different periods of time. In order to focus on the analysis of RTN solely, this paper introduces a clustering methodology to analyse and group spectro-temporal profiles of RTN collected simultaneously across an area of interest. The experiments were conducted on two acoustic databases collected during a weekday and a weekend day through WASNs deployed in the pilot areas of the LIFE+ DYNAMAP project. The results obtained show that the clustering of RTN, based on its spectro-temporal patterns, yields different solutions on weekdays and at weekends in both environments, being larger than those found in the suburban environment and lower than the number of clusters in the urban scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Introduction paper, I will describe the motivation behind this special issue on the role of rural-urban relationships in preserving the rural landscape in Europe. Based on the RURBAN project 'Building new relationships in rural areas under urban pressure', the special issue aims to identify the impact of urban pressure on rural landscapes and to explore the contribution of 'rural goods and services' (RGS) to them. This paper will start with an overview of the concepts of rural-urban relationships and RGS, both from a rural perspective and from the perception of different actors, followed by a conceptual model of demand and supply of RGS. To be able to identify differences and similarities across Europe, rural case study regions near a metropolitan area and a tourist area in Finland, France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Spain will be presented. The Introduction paper closes out with a brief overview of the papers in this issue and the themes explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of cities around the world have taken advantage of their green image of the purpose of place branding. In the research literature, it is suggested that these practices are motivated by place-based competition over financial and social capital, combined with more holistic motives of sustainable urban development. However, although an increasing number of green cities are engaged in place branding, few studies have researched the impact of place branding on environmental policy-making in a city, building up to the question: how is local environmental policy-making affected by green place branding? Addressing this issue, this paper critically investigates how the continuity of local environmental policy-making is affected by place-branding practices. To tackle this task, the paper firstly develops an analytical framework aiming to understand how green cities emerge and become famous based on their policy-making. Secondly, using that framework, this paper present an in-depth case study of a city branding itself as the 'Greenest City in Europe'. Drawing on the growing body of work on green cities, this paper investigates the 'understudied' practice of using policy for the purpose of place branding as well as the impact of place branding 'on the environment'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socio-spatial segregation has been increasing in European cities as a result of major longterm structural processes such as a rolling back of state interventions, changing social housing policies and failures in urban planning regulations. This has been aggravated by the 2008-2009 global financial crisis (GFC) and ensuing austerity measures. This paper frames EU urban policies in relation to socio-spatial segregation and seeks to shed light on the limits and advantages of past EU urban policy with a view toward contributing to the current debate about the new instruments proposed in the Cohesion Policy 2014-2020, Community Led Local Development (CLLD) and Integrated Territorial Investments (ITI) in particular. Findings point to a number of underlying tensions that the new instruments need to address to be successful, namely, political tensions between agendas of actors at different administrative levels, semantic ambiguities in the use of key terms, and an under-developed evidence base to support policy. The article concludes by proposing a set of directions for further research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper emerges from an ethnography of the economic and cultural life of Rye Lane, an intensely multi-ethnic street in Peckham, South London. The effects of accelerated migration into London are explored through the reshaping and diversification of its interior, street and city spaces. A ‘trans-ethnography’ is pursued across the compendium of micro-, meso- and macro-urban spaces, without reifying one above the other. The ethnographic stretch across intimate, collective and symbolic city spaces serves to connect how the restrictions and circuits of urban migration have different impacts and expressions in these distinctive but interrelated urban localities. The paper argues for a trans-ethnography that engages within and across a compendium of urban localities, to understand how accelerated migration and urban ‘super-diversity’ transform the contemporary global city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]