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Paper umbrellas are one of the crafts included in the intangible cultural heritage of Malang, East Java. Currently, it is known that there is only one group of craftsmen who still produce this paper umbrella craft. Although not many of them, this paper umbrella craft still exists among people who like traditional handicrafts. This is evident from how often paper umbrella crafts appear at craft exhibitions in cities in Indonesia. Consequently, there is a pressing need for in-depth research on paper umbrella craftsmanship in Malang City. A valuable avenue for exploration is the examination of non-verbal communication aspects inherent in paper umbrella craftsmanship. This study aimed to determine the non-verbal communication aspects contained in paper umbrella crafts. The research employs a descriptive qualitative approach, focusing on analyzing non-verbal communication aspects. Data was collected using unstructured interview methods, documentation, and field surveys. The collected data was reduced for analysis using nonverbal communication theory. The study findings are presented descriptively, detailing the observed non-verbal communication aspects. The findings reveal three distinct categories of non-verbal communication aspects in paper umbrella craftsmanship: fixed features, semi-fixed features, and non-fixed features. Fixed features include shapes depicted on the umbrella. Semi fixed feature is a choice of material used to make paper umbrellas, colors, and motifs. The materials used are bamboo and paper. The colors of the umbrellas are red and green. The motif drawn on the umbrella is a floral motif. Flowers are present because they are the favorite shapes of the craftsmen who make umbrellas. Non-fixed features encompass the entire process of crafting paper umbrellas, from material preparation to final finishing touches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of digital economy development on carbon emissions, which is a hot topic in the field of environmental economics. This topic is within the scope of the Frontiers in Environmental Science and is particularly in line with the theme of Environmental Economics and Management section in the journal. Firstly, this paper constructs the Digital Economy Development Index and its variable indicators to measure the development of the digital economy. Secondly, this paper uses urban panel data to reveal the impact of digital economy development on carbon emissions, and further adopts IV method to deal with endogeneity issues. Thirdly, this paper performs the heterogeneity analyses depending on the characteristics of the city. The results can provide a basis for formulating differentiated policies. Fourthly, this paper further explores the mechanism by which the digital economy affects carbon peaking. The results show that the digital economy may influence carbon peaking through upgrading of the industrial structure, technical innovation, and energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon emission issues are becoming increasingly severe, and the carbon emissions in shrinking cities, primarily characterized by population loss, are often overlooked and insufficiently studied. This paper focuses on the carbon emissions from county-level administrative units in China's three northeastern provinces from 2001 to 2017. The study scientifically identified shrinking cities and measured the differences in carbon emission characteristics between growing and shrinking cities using the Theil index. Ultimately, the paper constructs a panel spatial econometric model to analyze the factors influencing them and explore their spatial effects. (1) The total carbon emissions in the Three Northeastern Provinces exhibited an inverted U-shaped trend, increasing from 734.21 million tons in 2001 to 1731.73 million tons in 2017, with the Mann–Kendall trend test showing a significant increase; spatially, this manifests as a significant positive spatial autocorrelation. (2) The region has 138 shrinking cities, accounting for over 50%; regarding carbon emission characteristics, the Theil index has consistently remained above 0.18, indicating significant differences between the carbon emissions of growing and shrinking cities. (3) The panel spatial econometric model results show that the influencing factors of carbon emissions in shrinking cities have unique directions, intensities, and spatial effects. In shrinking cities, aside from localized GDP effects and per-capita GDP acting as a suppressant, the population size has a pronounced inhibitory effect on local and surrounding carbon emissions. The analysis reveals significant differences in the carbon emission patterns and mechanisms between growing and shrinking cities; based on these results, the paper proposes differentiated carbon control strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart governance as a new stage in the development of public sector management brings many challenges to the cities of the 21st century. It opens new possibilities for how to maximize the socio-economic and ecological performance of cities and cope with negative externalities. But to achieve these benefits, it is necessary to create conditions for smart governance implementation. The paper aims to define the principles and prerequisites of smart governance development in cities theoretically and verify them in the real conditions of cities. Based on the theoretical review on smart governance paper identifies principles and prerequisites of smart governance development in cities. They are verified by research results of two sub-researches - one among the experts from academia and practices and one among the representatives of the cities in the Slovak Republic. The paper identifies also the challenges in the implementation of smart governance and the potential future research in the international context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's scenario of India most of the youth is preparing for some competitive exam. If we think behind 15–20 years the number of candidates appearing for competitive exams were in thousands but as the population is increasing exponentially in India day by day the number of candidates is increasing in lacks. We can observe by daily newspapers that most of the competitive exams are facing paper leak problems. Although online examination systems are more effective and secure as compared to offline examination systems because it's not easy to open the question paper before the time starts. On the other hand there are also various consequences where the examination process can be hacked online. But the main issue with online examination process is to lack of resources to conduct parallel examination of millions of candidates, lack of techno enabled exam centers in small cities etc. Our focus is to propose a system in which offline examination can be conducted at most of the govt. and private centers in metro cities as well as small techno backward cities with reduced possibility to leak the paper before commencement of examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of the study of the morphological composition of municipal solid waste (MSW) from the landfill of Atyrau city, and the waste's energy characteristics and presence of microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi and viruses. This study was carried out under a government order to determine the feasibility of recycling accumulated and incoming waste into electricity and its hazard to the environment and the workers involved in handling it. At the moment, there is no MSW recycling in Kazakhstan, which has led to the accumulation of more than 125 million tons of waste with an annual increase of 5 million tons. The research included four major cities (Almaty, Shymkent, Atyrau and Astana), which were selected not only on the basis of population, but also because the cities were located in different climatic zones. Samples were collected at the city landfills: 10 samples with an average distance of 100 m from each other were collected to provide a maximum coverage of both recently received waste and long-time stored waste. The research showed that neither climatic conditions nor the population size had a significant impact on MSW density, the values of which ranged from 120.1 kg/m3 to 145.4 kg/m3, as this indicator directly depends on the quality of life. The mass of the combustible fraction ranged from 39.41% to 54.62% and was mainly represented by plastic, textile and paper waste. The average value for the four cities was 50.30%. The higher calorific value fell in the range of 24.22–30.49 MJ/kg, with an average value of 26.71 MJ/kg. Microbiological studies showed little difference in average composition regardless of climatic conditions. Thus, no sharp differences in MSW composition, its energy characteristics and microbiological composition were found. The results of this study may be useful for optimising MSW recycling and disposal processes, as well as for developing measures to reduce their negative impact on the environment and human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In insects, different pigments, such as melanins and pterins, are involved in thermoregulation. The degree of melanisation often varies along geographical gradients, according to the so-called thermal melanism hypothesis, i.e. darker forms are found in colder places because they can warm up more quickly. Similarly, pterins work as heat sinks and thus are expected to be more abundant in colder sites. Cities, which are warmer than surrounding areas (Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect), might also be expected to influence pigmentation, although studies are lacking. Here, we sampled workers of the social paper wasp Polistes dominula (Christ, 1791) (Vespidae) across an urbanisation gradient in an Italian metropolis and used iNaturalist pictures of this species across Italy to study pigmentation patterns at both urban and larger geographical scales. We found a lower yellow intensity of abdominal spots at warmer locations. Scanning Electron Microscopy strongly suggested that yellow colouration is due xanthopterin, known to be the heat sink molecule in other social vespids. Thus, wasps from warmer (i.e., urban) environments are likely to have fewer xanthopterin granules, in line with the lack of need for heat storage due to the local thermal gradient (UHI effect). At the country level, we found that wasps at higher latitudes had smaller yellow spots on the thorax and only two spots instead of four at higher altitudes, in full accordance with the thermal melanism hypothesis. In conclusion, climatic conditions seem to affect insect colour patterns both along urban and wider geographical gradients, although colour changes may affect different body parts and pigments likely according to different needs. • In urban hotter sites, workers show lower intensity of yellow pigmentation (xanthopterin). • Along an urbanisation gradient, there was weak consistence with the thermal melanism hypothesis. • Along the same gradient, there was a likely lack of need for heat storage due to the urban heat island effect. • At country level, latitudinal variations in yellow spots were in accordance with the thermal melanism hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China plans to arrive at its peak in the emissions of carbon dioxide and reach carbon neutrality by 2030 and 2060, respectively. What role does internet technology, as a key twenty-first-century technology, play in China's achievement of its two carbon goals? Based on datasets about Chinese prefecture-level cities collected mainly from statistical reports released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC), China City Statistical Yearbook, and China Energy Statistical Yearbook in 2006–2019, this paper empirically examines how the development of the internet influencing energy efficiency. This paper uses the policy of "network power nation" strategy and "internet plus" (NPNIP) as a policy impact to construct a continuous difference-in-difference (DID) model for an empirical investigation, and use a mediating effect analysis to test the transmission mechanism involved in industrial structure upgrading, technological innovation, and economic agglomeration. Empirical findings show that energy efficiency is improved by the development of internet. But this result has significant regional heterogeneity. Internet development can significantly reduce energy intensity in the eastern region and mature resource-based cities, but not the central and western regions and other resource-based cities. The mediating effect results show that the internet improves energy efficiency in three ways: upgrading industrial structure, stimulating technological innovation, and economic agglomeration. The empirical findings in this paper lead to many policy recommendation, including strengthening the formation of new infrastructure, deepening the organic integration of the internet across industries, and exploring the legal regulations on internet technology in specific application areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of ongoing global urbanization, the disparity in urban development, marked by the dual phenomena of urban sprawl and urban shrinkage at the regional level, has become increasingly evident. In this vein, two land-related governance strategies—smart growth (SG) and smart shrinkage (SS)—emerge as potential remedies to these challenges, targeting urban expansion and shrinkage, respectively. This study bridges the gap in the fragmented discourse surrounding SG and SS by conducting a comprehensive comparative review on the respective literatures. Utilizing the Scopus database, our research employs trend analysis, text and topic mining, time node analysis, and regional analysis, augmented by qualitative reviews of seminal papers. The findings reveal a notable shift in research focus, with interest in SS surging around 2010 (the number of SS-related papers published after 2010 accounts for 92.3% of the total number of the entire study period) as attention to SG waned, suggesting an impending paradigm shift in urban sustainability. The analysis indicates that SS research lacks the disciplinary diversity, thematic breadth, and empirical depth of SG studies, underscoring a need for a more robust theoretical foundation to support urban sustainability. Furthermore, while both SG and SS derive from environmental science foundations, SG predominantly addresses the physical and landscape attributes of urban areas, whereas SS focuses more on socio-economic dimensions. Our findings point to an intrinsic link between SG and SS, which could lay the groundwork for their integration into a unified theoretical framework to better advance urban sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to define activities performed by car (vehicle) drivers while waiting at traffic lights in city areas and how frequent they are. Some of these activities could be a factor leading to possible traffic accident. The research is based on the sample of 17,088 surveyed vehicles. Data were collected on 67 streets in 5 cities in the Czech Republic (Praha, Brno, Pardubice, Olomouc, Frýdek-Místek) from IV/2022 to VI/2023. The way of survey is manual data collection. There are defined and assessed 7 groups of activities - following traffic situation; cellular phone; (vehicle) control elements; talking to other people in a vehicle; paper documents; drinking+eating+smoking; and dressing-up. The modified SWOT analysis is applied in process of definition of these groups of activities. All these activity groups and their impacts on vehicle driving are discussed in the paper. The data collected are assessed in transport technology as well as statistics points of view. Means of descriptive statistics and χ² Goodness-of-Fit test are applied. Data are compared by city as well as by direction of drive (towards/outwards or around the city centre). The relation to the distance from the city centre is assessed in the case of Prague. Differences by drivers leaving residential areas and shopping centres are discussed, as well as the impact of tram transport. The main result is that ca. 65% of drivers still follow traffic while waiting at traffic lights. Talking to others in vehicle is recorded by 14% of drivers. Vehicle control elements are manipulated by 4%. The remaining 17% of drivers perform other (and may be riskier) activities - cellular phone 8%; drinking+eating+smoking 6%; dressing-up 2%; and paper documents 1%. From a transport technology point of view, this structure should be considered as representative. Relationships to some of the facts mentioned were recorded, but they are seen to be not so significant. The increased frequency of 'drinking+eating+smoking' and 'dressing-up' activities by leaving shopping centres can be pointed out as an example. The paper is extended by comparison between stated (in on-line survey) and revealed (on-site) preferences, with the result that people are open to allow also activities which can be problem in the point of safety (e.g. cellular phone). The paper is concluded with suggestions. First is statement, that the ergonomics of vehicles that reduce the demands on attention by performing such activities is helpful. The second suggestion is to mark specific parking places for short stops in city areas. Both suggestions are based on the fact, that ca. 21% of drivers perform activities reducing attention, and it is illusory that these activities should be totally replaced by their prohibition. It is necessary to give them the opportunity to manage these activities more safely than by waiting at traffic lights. The paper presents results of activities of students at internships between the Palacký University Olomouc and the University of Pardubice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the relationship between the Air Quality Index (AQI), COVID-19 incidence rates, and population density within Malaysia's ten most populous cities from January 2018 to December 2021. Data were sourced from the Department of Statistics Malaysia, the World Air Quality Index Project, and Our World in Statistics. The methodology integrated population-based city classification and AQI assessment, cluster analysis through SPSS, and Generalized Additive Mixed Model (GAMM) analysis using R Studio despite encountering a data gap in AQI for five months in 2019. Cities were organized into three clusters based on their AQI: Cluster One included Ipoh, Penang, Kuala Lumpur, and Melaka, Cluster Two comprised Kuantan, Seremban, Johor Bahru, and Kota Bharu, Cluster Three featured Kota Kinabalu and Kuching. GAMM analysis revealed prediction accuracies for AQI variations of 58%, 60%, and 41% for the respective clusters, indicating a notable impact of population density on air quality. AQI variations remained unaffected by COVID-19, with a forecasted improvement in air quality across all clusters. The paper presents novel insights into the negligible impact of COVID-19 on AQI variations and underscores the predictive power of population dynamics on urban air quality, offering valuable perspectives for environmental and urban planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explore whether and how urban road transport (URT) development affects haze pollution. One of the innovations of this paper is that URT development is measured by road accessibility with novel digital elevation model datasets, which have been used by few scholars. The endogenous problem caused by revere causality issue in the relationship between URT development and haze pollution is also considered. Based on the panel data of prefecture-level cities of Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region in China from 2011 to 2018, this paper uses long-lagged values of URT development as the instrumental variable, employing the two-stage least squares (2SLS) method. The study shows that URT development leads to an increase of haze pollution. Moreover, mechanism tests based on moderating and mediating models support the finding that decreasing haze pollution resulted from better connection effects, while rising agglomeration effects tend to bring about increasing haze pollution, and the latter effect is larger in magnitude than the former. Current URT development may have long-term negative consequences for livability of YRD cities, and urban decision makers should reconsider the effectiveness of the current road transport investment and construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of transportation infrastructure upgrading, this paper discussed the motivation behind industrial firms' pollution transfer to provincial borders. Using a panel data set of 41 cities in China's Yangtze River Delta from 2005 to 2020, this paper empirically tested the impact of intracity and intercity transportation infrastructure upgrading on pollution transfer through a two-way fixed-effects model. The results revealed the following: First, intracity transportation infrastructure upgrading forces local industrial firms to transfer pollution outward. Second, intercity transportation infrastructure upgrading accelerates pollution transfer to provincial borders. Third, in the central region, intracity transportation infrastructure upgrading does not significantly impact local pollution transfer. Intercity transportation infrastructure upgrading can aggravate border pollution, whether in the eastern or central regions. Furthermore, border pollution is more serious in the central region. The results have important practical significance for improving China's regional development planning and environmental governance system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Municipalities employ pilot projects, tests, living labs and similar initiatives to explore novel sustainable solutions for urban development. Nevertheless, civil servants often encounter challenges when attempting to scale up tested solutions, both within their own city and to other cities. To address this and increase knowledge on how theory can be utilised by practitioners, this research project has created a supportive tool aimed at facilitating the upscaling process. The development took place in co-creation with civil servants from the three largest cities in Sweden. The paper confirms earlier research on the need of institutional capacity as well as appropriate navigation between institutional logics as pre-requisites for upscaling. More specifically, institutional capacity plays a vital role for securing sufficient resources and mandates for upscaling, extending beyond mere dissemination of results. The supportive tool aims at enhancing this institutional capacity and translating between institutional logics. In addition, the paper contributes to the scientific debate on civil servants' understanding of different forms of upscaling and, consequently, the need to articulate these differences when facilitating upscaling. The paper emphasizes that upscaling should be conceptualised not as a discrete event but rather an ongoing process starting already when planning a pilot project. Science highlights: • It is pertinent for civil servants to elucidate institutional capacity as basis for upscaling • Civil servants working with upscaling, work in the tension between institutional logic. • Civil servants should employ a nuanced vocabulary, defining upscaling in each contex. • Upscaling is not a discrete event but rather an ongoing proces Policy and practice recommendation: • Defining upscaling for each sustainable solution is a central part of an upscaling process • Municipalities have to secure resources and mandate in order to make dedicated upscaling efforts • Possible future upscaling should be considered already when planning a pilot project [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times, elevated urban linkages (EULs) have emerged as crucial components of urban development, cutting through the cities' urban fabric to accommodate the rapid expansion of urban cores and to facilitate traffic flow. However, these massive infrastructures have inadvertently given rise to urban lost spaces—vacant, inefficient areas within the urban fabric. Recognizing these lost spaces as untapped public assets, the paper explores sustainable development strategies to reclaim them into the urban fabric, transforming them into vibrant, multi-functional public spaces. The paper aims to achieve a set of urban design guidelines for rehabilitation design interventions which will be deduced into a comprehensive framework. This framework encompasses criteria for selecting appropriate approaches and types of rehabilitation design interventions, as well as design principles ensuring the desirability of the reclaimed space. The paper applies this framework to assess the El Sawy Cultural Wheel in Egypt, revealing it as a successful example of a reclaimed space. While positive aspects of rehabilitation design interventions are evident in terms of the approach and type of intervention in this case study, there are identified areas with shortcomings in fully implementing the design principles, if enhanced, could elevate the overall quality of the reclaimed space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses the articles in the issue on topics including urban regeneration, covering multifunctional city centers, Dutch new town maturation, land use intensity in Egypt, and core city revitalization.

The development of smart cities has led to transforming modern city operations by applying emerging technologies from the fourth industrial revolution such as the Internet of Things, BIM and machine learning. To prepare for the future development of cities, it is necessary to investigate the current status of city development, research topics and the direction toward future cities. In this study, a systematic literature review was conducted following the combination of literature review guides by Kitchenham and the PRISMA statement. The review identified 141 peer-reviewed academic papers from web-based archives, such as Web of Science and SCOPUS, that were categorized into five topics related to smart cities and urban areas. The technologies applied in the research were analyzed to determine the direction future cities should take based on current smart cities and emerging technologies that will shape individuals' daily lives. However, it was discovered that research papers on critical areas, such as mobility and management, were lacking compared to those on building design and urban planning. This paper concludes with an example of a future urban area that has been transformed due to adoption of future mobility technology to address the shortcomings of the reviewed literature on building and urban environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of energy price fluctuation on the macro economy is a hot issue that is continuously concerned by the academic community, but few literature have paid attention to the impact of energy price fluctuation on housing price and the financial risks that may arise. Based on the data of cities at and above the prefecture level in China, this paper empirically examines the impact of energy price fluctuation on the price fluctuation of the domestic real estate, and analyzes its influencing mechanism and transmission pathways. The results show that changes of energy price will significantly affect the fluctuation of domestic real estate price, and it is more obvious in large cities and megacities. Energy price affect the demand for housing through changes of interest rate levels on the one hand, and the supply of the real estate market through the cost of housing construction on the other hand, which leads to housing price fluctuation. After a series of robustness tests, the results are still valid. At the same time, the effect is asymmetric, that is, higher energy price increases the fluctuation of house price, but the impact of falling energy price is not significant. Therefore, when preventing real estate market risks, energy price should be considered as a forward-looking indicator to focus on, and the regulation and control policies of the real estate market should be scientifically formulated. This paper not only provides a new perspective on the mechanism of housing price formation, but also enriches the research on the interconnection between energy and financial markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of urbanization has brought new challenges to the ecological environment, and the promotion of green technology innovation and development is widely recognized as an essential method to achieve cities' economic benefits and environmental protection. This paper examines whether the new urbanization pilot policies (NUP) increase green technology innovation (GTI) from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. This paper examines the impact of new urbanization on GTI by analyzing data from 285 cities in China between 2010 and 2021, using the multi-period DID model with the implementation of NUP as an exogenous policy shock. The study results indicate that NUP significantly affects GTI, and the conclusion still holds after the parallel trend test, placebo test, and other robustness tests. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the NUP significantly enhances GTI in low environmental pollution, non-resource-based, Medium-sized, and Central Region cities. The test of moderating effect shows that NUP has a "linkage effect" with the government's environmental attention, financial investment in innovation, and regional talent pooling. The findings of this paper provide empirical evidence and decision-making reference for promoting NUP and sustainable development of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of society, the number of female-headed households is on the rise. Based on the data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) in 2019, this paper establishes a Tobit model to study the influence of female-headed households on household debt risk. Results indicate that female-headed households can substantially reduce household debt risk, and this conclusion still holds after overcoming endogeneity issues. Further tests on the mediating effect reveal that risk aversion and housing property holding have partial mediating effects and masking effects, respectively, in the path of female-headed households affecting household debt risk. In addition, the heterogeneity analysis indicates that the influence of female-headed households on household debt risk is more significant in third-tier cities, as well as in families without children, families without elderly members, and families with more than two elderly members. The conclusions of this paper provide a reference for the relevant policy measures to reduce household debt risk and promote gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of paper is to indicate the potential of using blockchain technology in smart cities. The author analyzes the state of development of blockchain-based solutions and relates it to areas of the functioning of cities. The aim is also to indicate blockchain applications importance in the context of city residents quality of life and the functioning of various industries operating within them. Design/methodology/approach: The objectives of the paper were achieved by analyzing literature, industry reports as well as selected blockchain projects’ websites. The theoretical scope of the article is the description of blockchain technology application areas within the modern cities, their main characteristics and the potential for its usage. Findings: The author indicated 6 areas of blockchain application, and then indicated a number of functioning solutions based on blockchain referring to them, and also indicated the potential of the impact of the described solutions on the development of the city. In the summary, areas for further research were indicated, referring to slightly differently perceived aspects of the city's development and improving the lives of its inhabitants. Practical implications: The successful implementation of blockchain solutions depends on a large amount of conceptual and technological work in organizations. The article suggests areas of blockchain use in the city and indicates examples of already implemented solutions that can constitute a reference point and inspiration for new solutions. Social implications: The blockchain technology shows the potential to improve the quality of life of city residents in the context of building solutions that eliminate the need for trust in service providers, weakened by frequently observed unethical behavior and negligence in the security and transparency of information flow. The widespread use of blockchain in the city is therefore undoubtedly in the interest of societies. Originality/value: The paper’s originality is expressed in a comprehensive look at the issue of using blockchain in the functioning of modern cities, together with an indication of both the potential of their implementation and already existing solutions in the subject area. Moreover, the author points out social benefits in the form of increased trust and an increase in the city residents quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparing with cities, rural communities especially those declining rural communities have become vulnerable to natural disasters owing to their backward socioeconomic conditions. Taking Xun County of China's Henan Province as the study area, the paper aims to evaluate rural community resilience to flood by unveiling the connection between individuals' cognition, follow-up actions and the community resilience. Research results show that: (1) The logic chain exists as individual's cognition to disaster leads to their constructive actions to cope with disaster, which contribute to community resilience. (2) At the cognition dimension, individual's knowledge reserve of disaster prevention and their recognition to local authority are playing an important role in their decision making and follow-up behaviors when disaster occurs. (3) At the action dimension, individual's familiarity with the disaster preparedness, efficient information transmission when disaster occurs and villagers' following order and their unity of action all contribute to community resilience to disaster. The paper proposes ways to improve rural community resilience to disasters based on the research findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Logistics resilience is a significant representation of sustainable development ability and a necessary support for high-quality economic development. In order to explore the influencing factors and realization mechanism of the improvement of logistics resilience of the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the high-quality and sustainable development of the economy, this paper comprehensively considers factors of the supply and demand relationship of the logistics market, industrial structure and ecological environment, and evaluates the urban logistics resilience of the Yangtze River Economic Belt by using POI data and statistical data. Combined with the spatial Durbin model, the influencing factors and spatial spillover effects of inter-city logistics resilience were revealed. This study found that the urban logistics resilience in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River has been high. Except Chongqing and Shanghai, the COVID-19 epidemic happened in 2020 led to a significant decrease in logistics resilience. In the meanwhile, every 1% increase in the logistics resilience of the city will promote the logistics resilience of the adjacent cities by 0.145%. Economic condition and urban development potential have positive effects on logistics resilience of the city and its adjacent cities. The economic condition has a direct effect coefficient of 0.166 and an indirect effect coefficient of 0.181, The direct and indirect effects of urban development potential are significantly positive, and the coefficients are 0.001 and 0.006, respectively. The level of information, government support and ability of technological innovation are helpful for the improvement of urban logistics resilience while hindering the enhancement of logistics resilience in adjacent cities. The research area can be extended in the future and more influencing factors can be considered in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studied the feasibility of a sliding base isolation layer to be used in rubble stone masonry buildings in rural areas in the Himalayan Mountain range to provide robust protection to important building like schools against strong earthquakes. In this paper, we carried out on-site investigations, quasi-static tests, and shaking table tests focusing on constructability as well as isolation performance. From the results of the feasibility study, the combination of styrofoam, concrete slab, and grease was found to be the most feasible to be used as the upper element, the lower element, and the lubricant, respectively, in the sliding isolation layer. The key features of the present sliding base isolation layer are: 1) the use of the materials that exist in rural mountain areas or those that can be easily transported from the neighboring towns and cities and 2) ease of construction and minimal change from the current construction practice. From the shaking table tests, we identified the conditions, e.g., grease amount, grease type, normal stress at the interface, and roughness of concrete slab surface, to achieve dynamic friction coefficients ranging from 0.08 to 0.16, suitable for sliding base isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Urban Living Lab (ULL) is both a methodology and a place where different actors of a territory can collaborate with the aim of urban transformation and sustainable development. This paper briefly introduces a methodological framework, that combines stakeholder engagement and co-design process on Circular Economy (CE) ideas and projects. The structure of the methodological framework foresees four main phases: scouting and analysis of the territorial context, listening and exploration, participation and execution. The main objective of this paper focuses on the application and experimentation of the same ULL methodology framework in four different Italian urban territories (Anguillara Sabazia in the metropolitan area of Rome, Bologna, Taranto and Venosa, a small town in southern Italy), to highlight how the ULL is an effective approach for stakeholder engagement and co-design processes aiming to the transition toward CE. The discussion section of the four ULL cases highlights the main results of the co-design process: the ideation of project proposals of CE activities suitable for implementation in the reference urban territories. The four ULL cases have shown how the same methodological steps can be applied in urban areas with different geographical, territorial and socio-economic characteristics, with comparable results in terms of activating processes of engagement and co-design within the communities living there. In conclusion, experimenting the proposed methodological framework in each of the four urban areas, despite their differing characteristics, it has stimulated the growth of cultural capital and community ties. This was achieved through the exchange of different skills and the collaborative contributions of multidisciplinary teams, resulting in increased collective awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the operation of the first route in Xi'an City, the matching relationship between the metro networks and the urban population is a root factor affecting the utilization of rail transit facilities. The mismatch between the metro networks and the urban population has led to an imbalance between the supply and demand for rail transport, resulting in wasted urban infrastructure. Based on this issue, the research objective is to focus on the spatiotemporal variations of the matching relationship. Firstly, the topological network model abstractly extracted metro spatial distribution features, and the spatial autocorrelation model was adopted to identify the evolution characteristics of the metro networks and urban population. Secondly, this paper adopted a time-lagged regression model to demonstrate the action relationship from 2011 to 2021. Then, the compositive coordination index was utilized to assess the variation of the global matching relationship. Finally, the paper explored spatial heterogeneity through the coupling coherence degree attached to grid cells. The research results indicate that the Moran's I value of metro elements decreased from 0.782 to 0.510 with the further complexity of topological networks, while the population was consistently high in spatial dependence with a Moran's I value of around 0.75 during the decade. Based on the regression coefficients and significance, this paper verified the hypothesis that the metro networks and urban population had a positive time-lagged feedback effect in urban development. From 2011 to 2021, the compositive coordination index symbolizing the global matching relationship increased from 0.29 to 0.90, but the coupling coherence degree shows significant spatial heterogeneity in different grid units. Differentiated spatial planning strategies were proposed for varied areas to efficiently utilize rail transit, which may provide a reference for other cities with the same reality problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring human perception of environmental safety and quantifying the street view elements that affect human perception of environmental safety are of great significance for improving the urban environment and residents' safety perception. However, domestic large-scale quantitative research on the safety perception of Chinese local cities needs to be deepened. Therefore, this paper chooses Chaoyang District in Beijing as the research area. Firstly, the network safety perception distribution of Chaoyang District is calculated and presented through the CNN model trained based on the perception dataset constructed by Chinese local cities. Then, the street view elements are extracted from the street view images using image semantic segmentation and target detection technology. Finally, the street view elements that affect the road safety perception are identified and analyzed based on LightGBM and SHAP interpretation framework. The results show the following: (1) the overall safety perception level of Chaoyang District in Beijing is high; (2) the number of motor vehicles and the proportion of the area of roads, skies, and sidewalks are the four factors that have the greatest impact on environmental safety perception; (3) there is an interaction between different street view elements on safety perception, and the proportion and number of street view elements have interaction on safety perception; (4) in the sections with the lowest, moderate, and highest levels of safety perception, the influence of street view elements on safety perception is inconsistent. Finally, this paper summarizes the results and points out the shortcomings of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are the core carriers and key positions to achieve the dual carbon goals. It is of great significance to explore whether promoting urbanization can improve carbon emission performance, which is of great significance to comprehensively promote the goal of carbon neutrality. Based on the panel data from 2006 to 2021, this paper analyzes the spatial autocorrelation of carbon emission performance per unit space and the impact mechanism of urbanization process on it. The fixed-effect model was further used to identify the influencing factors of spatial carbon emission performance. The results show that: 1) China's carbon emission performance per unit space is declining year by year. 2) There is a strong positive spatial correlation and stable path dependence on the performance of carbon emissions per unit space in each region. 3) To a certain extent, increasing the level of urbanization will reduce the carbon emission performance per unit space. 4) The urbanization process has a spatial spillover effect on the carbon emission performance per unit space of surrounding provinces, and the spatial spillover effect of industrial structure and energy consumption structure is more obvious than that of economic level, population density and urbanization rate. Based on the conclusions, this paper puts forward specific policy suggestions to reduce the carbon emission performance per unit space to help the low-carbon development of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past 40 years of reform and opening-up, the implementation of an unbalanced enhancement strategy has led to severe resource misallocation, making the mitigation and rectification of this misallocation an urgent issue. This paper utilizes urban data from China between 2006 and 2020 to examine the impact of two-way foreign direct investment (FDI) on resource misallocation, as well as the pathways through which coordinated advancement of two-way FDI affects resource misallocation. After undergoing a series of robustness and endogeneity tests, the conclusion remains stable. Mechanism testing reveals that coordinated advancement of two-way FDI improves capital resource misallocation by enhancing the enhancement level of the financial industry, while exacerbating labor misallocation by increasing labor costs. This paper integrates the coordinated advancement of two-way FDI and resource misallocation into the same analytical framework, proposing policy recommendations to alleviate China's resource misallocation issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital economy is gradually emerging as a new driving force and engine for high-quality economic development. In the context of reaching carbon peak and carbon neutrality, can the digital economy empower the development of urban green technology innovation? Based on the panel data of 274 cities in China from 2011 to 2019, this paper measures the development level of digital economy at the city level and employs the two-way fixed effect model to empirically analyze the impact of digital economy on urban green technology innovation. The results indicate that: (1) Digital economy development exert a significant positive impact on urban green technology innovation. This conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests. (2) Digital economy enhances urban green technology innovation by optimizing human capital structure, enhancing the level of financial and credit investment, and strengthening public environmental concern. (3) Heterogeneity analyses show that the digital economy has a greater positive effect on green technology innovation in the eastern region and non-resource cities. The higher the level of intellectual property protection and the better the development of the factor market, and the lower the intensity of environmental regulation, the greater the positive effect of the digital economy on urban green technology innovation. These findings are not only of great practical significance for accelerating the development of green technology innovation in China, but also serve as a reference for other developing countries to utilize the digital economy to empower the development of green technology innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is a comprehensive assessment of the waste management system in Besisahar municipality. Information and some data have been collected from the municipality of Besisahar, followed by interviews with municipal officials responsible for waste management, stakeholders, waste workers, and residents. A total of 230 households, 20 schools, 10 government and private offices, 10 financial institutions, 60 commercial hotels, restaurants, and shops, and 20 medical shops and healthcare institutions, were selected in this study by random sampling. An extensive field study was conducted within all municipal wards and at dump sites. The results indicated that 42.14% of solid waste was collected through door-to-door collection services, 5.87% was mismanaged in open public places, 11.21% was used as compost manure, and the rest was discarded on riverbanks, dug up, and burned. A large component of the characterization of household waste consisted of organic waste (68.03%), followed by paper/paper products (8.13%), agricultural waste (5.5%), plastic (5.21%), construction (3.81%), textile (2.72%), metals (0.54%), glass (1.01%), rubber (0.10%), electronic (0.05%), pharmaceutical (0.1%) and others (4.78%) in the Besishahar municipality. Solid waste generation was found to be at 197.604 g/capita/day, as revealed by cluster sampling in 230 households. Around 4.285 tons-solid waste/day were generated in urban areas, while 16.13 tons-solid waste/day was estimated for the whole municipality. An important correlation between the parameters of solid waste was found by statistical analysis. Currently, solid waste is dumped on riverbanks, open fields, and springs, creating environmental and health hazards. The findings of this study will be useful to Besisahar municipality and its stakeholders in forming policies that facilitate waste management practices in this region and promote sustainable waste management systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regional networking strategy is widely implemented in China as a normative policy aimed at fostering cohesion and enhancing competitiveness. However, the empirical basis for this strategy remains relatively weak due to limitations in measurement methods and data availability. This paper establishes the urban networks by the enterprise investment data, and then accurately measures the network's external effects of each city by the method of MGWR model. The results show that: (1) Regional networking plays a significant role in urban development, although it is not the dominant factor. (2) The benefits of network connections may vary depending on the location and level of cities. (3) The major cities assume a pivotal role in the urban network. Based upon the aforementioned research conclusions, this paper presents strategic measures to enhance the network's external impacts, aiming to offer insights for other regions in formulating regional development strategies and establishing regional urban networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa's population is expected to triple by 2050, owing to rapid urbanisation and overall demographic trends. The combined pressures of urbanisation and climate change impact the ecosystem and the services it provides. As a result, additional dangers such as increased flooding, and environmental disruption have risen. Therefore, devising adaptive solutions to mitigate flood risk impacts while also building community resilience is needed. Evidence suggests that Nature‐based Solutions (NbS) can potentially alleviate floods and mitigate climate change impacts while also delivering other societal benefits. Despite rising NbS popularity following its recognition in the last decade, studies on its recognition in Africa remain limited. For this reason, this paper reviewed NbS studies conducted in East Africa (EA) to evaluate opportunities and barriers surrounding NbS adoption in EA. Academic literature published from January 2012 to May 2022 was reviewed using a comprehensive search of the SCOPUS database. Results show 14 papers have been published during the period, with the majority being post‐2020. In addition, the majority of the articles focused on cities and peri‐urban settlements, while public awareness, clear guidelines on performance monitoring, stakeholder inclusion, and diverse demonstration projects were highlighted as potential success factors for the adoption of NbS in EA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing uncertainty of urban security, urban resilience construction with risk awareness and bottom-line thinking has become essential for promoting sustainable urban development. This paper measures China's urban resilience development index (CRDI) based on 284 cities in China (except Tibet) using the entropy method from four dimensions: economic, social, environmental, and infrastructure, and analyzes it by combining coupling coordination degree and barrier factor analysis. We find that: (1) At the national level, CRDI and its sub-dimensions show an increasing trend in time, a decreasing spatial layout from coastal to inland, and a "high-high-low-low" clustering feature in space. (2) At the regional level, the CRDI is from high to low in the east, middle, and west order. The sub-dimensions are from high to low in the order of east, middle, and west for economic, social, and infrastructure resilience and from high to low in the order of east, west, and middle for environmental resilience. (3) To coupling coordination degree, the CRDI index coupling coordination is increasing in time trend but is still on the verge of dissonance. (4) Social resilience is the main obstacle factor. In the indicator layer, human resources, innovation, education, security, living, and environmental protection are the areas where CRDI coordinated development is the key to improvement. Based on the above empirical evidence, this paper proposes countermeasures to optimize urban resilience construction from four perspectives: economic, social, environmental, and infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying influential spreaders in complex networks is a crucial issue that can help control the propagation process in complex networks. An aviation network is a typical complex network, and accurately identifying the key city nodes in the aviation network can help us better prevent network attacks and control the spread of diseases. In this paper, a method for identifying key nodes in undirected weighted networks, called weighted Laplacian energy centrality, was proposed and applied to an aviation network constructed from real flight data. Based on the analysis of the topological structure of the network, the paper recognized critical cities in this network, then simulation experiments were conducted on key city nodes from the perspectives of network dynamics and robustness. The results indicated that, compared with other methods, weighted Laplacian energy centrality can identify the city nodes with the most spreading influence in the network. From the perspective of network robustness, the identified key nodes also have the characteristics of accurately and quickly destroying network robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The next Point-of-Interest (POI) recommendation, in recent years, has attracted an extensive amount of attention from the academic community. RNN-based methods cannot establish effective long-term dependencies among the input sequences when capturing the user's motion patterns, resulting in inadequate exploitation of user preferences. Besides, the majority of prior studies often neglect high-order neighborhood information in users' check-in trajectory and their social relationships, yielding suboptimal recommendation efficacy. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel Double-Layer Attention Network model, named DLAN. Firstly, DLAN incorporates a multi-head attention module that can combine first-order and high-order neighborhood information in user check-in trajectories, thereby effectively and parallelly capturing both long- and short-term preferences of users and overcoming the problem that RNN-based methods cannot establish long-term dependencies between sequences. Secondly, this paper designs a user similarity weighting layer to measure the influence of other users on the target users leverage the social relationships among them. Finally, comprehensive experiments are conducted on user check-in data from two cities, New York (NYC) and Tokyo (TKY), and the results demonstrate that DLAN achieves a performance in Accuracy and Mean Reverse Rank enhancement by 8.07% -36.67% compared to the state-of-the-art method. Moreover, to investigate the effect of dimensionality and the number of heads of the multi-head attention mechanism on the performance of the DLAN model, we have done sufficient sensitivity experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades, many scholars have studied competition between cities and entrepreneurial urban policies. Coming from the evolving field of competition research, we are interested in how competition between cities is constructed and, for this purpose, examine the competition imaginary of Vienna, a city known less for its entrepreneurial policies than for its social welfare policies. The paper employs critical discourse analysis of Viennese policy papers from 1985–2015, a period particularly shaped by the process of competitization. The analysis shows that Vienna's social and welfare policies are also decisive for the city's positioning in city competition and rankings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deployment of intelligent transportation is still in its early stages and there are many challenges that need to be addressed before it can be widely adopted. Autonomous vehicles are a class of intelligent transportation that is rapidly developing, and they are being deployed in selected cities. A combination of advanced sensors, machine learning algorithms, and artificial intelligence are being used in these vehicles to perceive their environment, navigate, and make the right decisions. These vehicles leverage extensive data sourced from various sensors and computers integrated into the vehicle. Hence, massive computational power is required to process the information from various built-in sensors in milliseconds to make the right decision. The power required by the sensors and the use of additional computational power increases the energy consumption, and, hence, could reduce the range of the autonomous electric vehicle relative to a standard electric car and lead to additional emissions. A number of review papers have highlighted the environmental benefits of autonomous vehicles, focusing on aspects like optimized driving, improved route selection, fewer stops, and platooning. However, these reviews often overlook the significant energy demands of the hardware systems—such as sensors, computers, and cameras—necessary for full autonomy, which can decrease the driving range of electric autonomous vehicles. Additionally, previous studies have not thoroughly examined the data processing requirements in these vehicles. This paper provides a more detailed review of the volume of data and energy usage by various sensors and computers integral to autonomous features in electric vehicles. It also discusses the effects of these factors on vehicle range and emissions. Furthermore, the paper explores advanced technologies currently being developed by various industries to enhance processing speeds and reduce energy consumption in autonomous vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many companies prefer to use third party logistics firms to deliver their goods and as such planning the return of the vehicles to the depot is not required. This is called open vehicle routing problem (OVRP). In literature, the OVRP is handled with minimum distance as objective function like vehicle routing problem. But in the real world, the objective function achieves minimum many costs like standard routing cost, stopping by cost and the deviation cost. The standard routes are previously defined under free market conditions by third party logistic firms. The deviation from the standard route is required to arrive cities which are not on the standard route. The stop by cost occurs on the delivery points. In this paper mentioned three costs are considered in the objective function while many papers consider only distance related costs in the literature. This paper proposes a new mathematical model for the OVRP. In the constraints, the last points of the routes are researched in detail. The standard route costs are determined by considering the last point of the route. Because of the NP-hard structure of the OVRP, the proposed mathematical model is solved with a hybrid metaheuristic called Civilized Genetic Algorithm (CGA). CGA is developed by hybridizing a modified genetic algorithm and a local search algorithm. The application of this study is implemented for the delivery routing of a combi boiler producer in Turkey. The third party logistic firms may use this proposed model and the solution approach for the real life applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering China's 'isolated' digital ecosystem, this paper examines China's 'check-in' activities to understand how the wanghong economy is driving China's new rounds of urban development, with the purpose of supplementing existing research on digital economies from the Chinese context. Focusing on a representative case study area called Dongshankou in Guangzhou, which is regarded as one of the most popular wanghong places and an emerging commercial centre, I sought to enrich existing studies about digital economies and extend scholarship on platform urbanism from the cultural economy perspective. First, I argue that Chinese consumers' check-in activities function as the data accumulation process, structuring Dongshankou's digital capital through the assemblage of online posts and geotags. Therefore, Dongshankou's urban development challenges the conventional view of creativity as the key factor in the cultural economy for urban development, given that digital capital is now the key driver for urban development in the digital age. Second, the growth of wanghong stores in Dongshankou reveals how the wanghong economy is materialised into urban cultural objects. Emotional value – a crucial selling point that these wanghong stores aim to provide to facilitate consumers' check-in activities – illustrates how China's highly participatory digital ecosystem extracts users' emotions and bodily experiences into the process of capital accumulation, which structures the 'platform urbanism' through our daily lives. This paper broadens the horizon for an alternative theoretical agenda in platform urbanism: beyond focusing solely on platform algorithms, how digital platforms and emotions become inextricably linked in economic production should be further explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Buildings are significant components of digital cities, and their precise extraction is essential for the three-dimensional modeling of cities. However, it is difficult to accurately extract building features effectively in complex scenes, especially where trees and buildings are tightly adhered. This paper proposes a highly accurate building point cloud extraction method based solely on the geometric information of points in two stages. The coarsely extracted building point cloud in the first stage is iteratively refined with the help of mask polygons and the region growing algorithm in the second stage. To enhance accuracy, this paper combines the Alpha Shape algorithm with the neighborhood expansion method to generate mask polygons, which help fill in missing boundary points caused by the region growing algorithm. In addition, this paper performs mask extraction on the original points rather than non-ground points to solve the problem of incorrect identification of facade points near the ground using the cloth simulation filtering algorithm. The proposed method has shown excellent extraction accuracy on the Urban-LiDAR and Vaihingen datasets. Specifically, the proposed method outperforms the PointNet network by 20.73% in precision for roof extraction of the Vaihingen dataset and achieves comparable performance with the state-of-the-art HDL-JME-GGO network. Additionally, the proposed method demonstrated high accuracy in extracting building points, even in scenes where buildings were closely adjacent to trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing population and rapid urbanization are significant challenges for Indian cities. Pune City generates nearly 2,258 tonnes of waste per day. Pune's informal waste sector has demonstrated remarkable efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and self-sustainability. Moreover, it contributes to favorable economic and social outcomes for the city. With the support of the self-help group SWaCH Seva Sahakari Sanstha Maryadit, Pune, the municipal solid waste management model has successfully achieved a remarkable 95 percent segregation rate. Implementing the Pune municipal solid waste management model showcases the active and efficient engagement of informal waste workers in the collection and resource utilization process. This underscores the possibility of favorable economic, social, and environmental results stemming from collaborations between municipalities and waste pickers. This paper looks at the role of SWaCH in line with Pune Municipal Corporation towards the present waste management system. Primarily reliant on labor, this model accomplishes recycling tasks at a notably lower cost compared to conventional mechanized and centralized waste management approaches. It can also accomplish high recycling levels and relatively considerable plastic waste segregation. Promoting the retrieval of valuable materials, especially plastics, for local and global recycling enterprises actively contributes to the advancement of a circular urban waste management approach. The objective of this research is to explore and provide a realistic understanding of Pune's current status of waste generation, collection, transportation, and disposal. Apart from the SwaCH-PMC model, the paper also focuses on plastic waste recycling, the Red Dot Campaign towards sanitary waste, and household e-waste management in Pune. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the critical period of strengthening the construction of ecological civilization, the construction of forest cities has become an important measure to promote urban ecosystem restoration and achieve sustainable development. Based on the mechanism of forest city promoting green development, the construction of a national forest city is regarded as a "quasi-natural experiment". Using China's urban panel data from 2005 to 2019, the impact of national forest city construction on urban green total factor productivity was evaluated using Multistage asymptotic double difference. The results show that National Forest Cities with environmental regulation can significantly promote regional green total factor productivity, which is still valid after a series of Robustness tests. Mechanism analysis shows that forest city construction not only affects territorial spatial planning but also forms a linkage with green technology innovation, mutual promotion and mutual promotion to jointly promote the sustainable development goals. This paper argues that building a national forest city is an important measure to achieve China's sustainable development goals in the new era, but in the process of policy implementation, it is necessary to implement the national forest city selection system according to local conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]