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Interactions between humans and nature are understood to be beneficial for human well-being. In cities, urban green spaces are believed to provide many benefits to urban populations in terms of mental and emotional well-being. Through a case study of 60 urban green spaces in Birmingham, United Kingdom, this article investigates the spatial and temporal variation of the emotions experienced by individuals whilst using urban green spaces. Using a dataset obtained from Twitter as the basis for emotional explorations, sentiment analysis was performed on over 10,000 tweets to ascertain the positivity/negativity of individuals. Positive responses were more common than negative responses across all seasons, with happiness and appreciation of beauty being the common positive emotions identified. For the negative responses, fear and anger were present in similar amounts, with fewer tweets indicating sadness and disgust. Our findings show that Twitter data is a viable source of information to researchers investigating human interaction and emotional response to space in cities. Such information has implications for urban planners and park managers, enabling the creation of evidence-based spaces which enhance positive outdoor experience. Limitations in using Twitter data are discussed and these should be considered in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban parks and public transport are indispensable elements of a compact megacity for their environmental and social values. However, few measures of urban park accessibility have considered the public transport travel mode. Based on the framework of geographic information systems (GIS) network analysis, this study proposes an innovative method to incorporate public transport travel mode into urban park accessibility evaluations. Taking Shanghai, China, as the study area, we measured home to park and park from home travel times on multi-modal transport networks, calculated the accessibilities by multiple equations, and compared accessibilities for different districts. These methods extend current accessibility measures by calculating accessibility at a realistic level, and provide a measure of public transport service for urban parks. The results for Shanghai show that approximately 99.95% of home to park routes might include public transport. The distribution of home to park public transport accessibility of the city was uneven. The patches with best accessibility tend to be distributed in the built-up area in the city centre. Public transport access to urban parks is inhomogeneous for different districts, because of urban park locations, road network characteristics, and uneven public transport supply. The distribution of park from home public transport accessibility has no significant correlation with district development stage. Public transport service in Shanghai takes no account of the factors of park star rating or size. Positive actions are required to improve the equity of public transport access to the important public health resources of urban parks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controlled environments create specialist forms of microclimatic enclosure that are explicitly designed to transcend the emerging limitations and increasing turbulence in existing modes of urban climatic conditions. Across different urban contexts, anthropogenic change is creating urban conditions that are too hot, cold, humid, wet, windy, etc. to support the continued and reliable environments that are suitable for the reproduction of food, ecologies and human life. In response, there are emerging forms of experimentation with new logics of microclimatic governance that seek to enclose environments within membranes and develop artificially created internal ecologies that are precisely customised to meet the needs of the plant, animal or human occupants of these new forms of enclosure. While recognising that enclosure has a long history in urbanism, design and architecture, we ask if a new logic of microclimatic governance is emerging in specific response to the ecological changes of the Anthropocene. The paper sets out a research agenda to investigate whether the ability of cities, states and corporates to design and construct internalised environments is now a strategic capacity that is critical to developing the knowledge, practices and technologies to reconfigure new forms of urban climatic governance that address the problems of climate change and ensure urban reproduction under conditions of turbulence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are often touted as climate change leaders in the USA and all cities across the country are affected by climate change, but little is known about climate action in politically conservative cities. Using document analysis and interviews, an in-depth case study of two cities in the conservative Dallas-Fort Worth region of Texas examines how public participation and cultural framing contribute to sustainability and climate change planning. One city successfully adopted sustainability plans, while the other city was unable to do so. Comparison of the two cases reveals that carefully designed public participation processes and locally relevant cultural frames can help cities educate residents, build support and expand discussion of sustainability. However, economic development, competition and political controversy prevent cities from addressing climate change explicitly or in meaningful ways, raising concerns about the capacity of cities to act as climate change leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the catalogue of environment-related publications in Urban Studies, this paper identifies and reviews 12 thought-provoking articles that have addressed the issue of climate changes and cities from complementary perspectives. It argues that to advance a holistic understanding of urban environmental issues it is necessary to embrace a broad multi-disciplinary approach, particularly as moving towards low carbon urban living will require integrated social, political and technical adaptation processes. Ultimately, the paper advances a forward-looking research agenda that extends beyond consideration of how to improve urban environmental performance to include evaluation of how urban consumers, firms and local government endeavour to achieve sustainable urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are increasingly seeking to learn from experiences elsewhere when planning programmes of sustainable transition management, and the contingencies of policy-learning arrangements in this field are beginning to receive greater attention. This paper applies insights from the field of policy mobilities to the burgeoning field of transition management to critically explore a proposed ‘learning relationship’ between Berlin (Germany) and Manchester (UK) around cycling policy. Drawing on qualitative data, the paper casts doubt over the existing consensus attributing recent growth in bicycle use in Berlin to concerted governmental interventions. A multi-actor analysis suggests that contextual factors caused the growth in cycling and that policy has been largely reactive. The emergence and circulation of the Berlin cycling renaissance as a policy model is then traced through policy documents and interviews with actors in Manchester, UK, to understand why and how it has become a model for action elsewhere. It is concluded that Berlin’s cycling renaissance has been simplified and mobilised to demonstrate the requisite ambition and proficiency to secure competitive funds for sustainable urban transport. The paper develops an original study of the role policy knowledge and learning play in sustainable urban transition management, and argues that attending to the dynamics of policy learning can enhance our understanding of its successes and failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New York City (NYC) is threatened by 21st-century relative sea-level (RSL) rise because it will experience a trend that exceeds the global mean and has high concentrations of low-lying infrastructure and socioeconomic activity. To provide a long-term context for anticipated trends, we reconstructed RSL change during the past 1500 years using a core of salt-marsh sediment from Pelham Bay in The Bronx. Foraminifera and bulk-sediment δ13C values were used as sea-level indicators. The history of sediment accumulation was established by radiocarbon dating and recognition of pollution and land-use trends of known age in down-core elemental, isotopic, and pollen profiles. The reconstruction was generated within a Bayesian hierarchical model to accommodate multiple proxies and to provide a unified statistical framework for quantifying uncertainty. We show that RSL in NYC rose by ~1.70 m since ~575 CE (including ~0.38 m since 1850 CE). The rate of RSL rise increased markedly at 1812-1913 CE from ~1.0 to ~2.5 mm/yr, which coincides with other reconstructions along the US Atlantic coast. We investigated the possible influence of tidal-range change in Long Island Sound on our reconstruction using a regional tidal model, and we demonstrate that this effect was likely small. However, future tidal-range change could exacerbate the impacts of RSL rise in communities bordering Long Island Sound. The current rate of RSL rise is the fastest that NYC has experienced for >1500 years, and its ongoing acceleration suggests that projections of 21st-century local RSL rise will be realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban sustainability approaches focusing on a wide range of topics such as infrastructure and mobility, green construction and neighbourhood planning, or urban nature and green amenities have attracted scholarly interest for over three decades. Recent debates on the role of cities in climate change mitigation have triggered new attempts to conceptually and methodologically grasp the cross-sectorial and cross-level interplay of enrolled actors. Within these debates, urban and economic geographers have increasingly adopted co-evolutionary approaches such as the social studies of technology (SST or ‘transition studies’). Their plea for more spatial sensitivity of the transition approach has led to promising proposals to adapt geographic perspectives to case studies on urban sustainability. This paper advocates engagement with recent work in urban studies, specifically policy mobility, to explore conceptual and methodological synergies. It emphasises four strengths of an integrated approach: (1) a broadened understanding of innovations that emphasises not only processes of knowledge generation but also of knowledge transfer through (2) processes of learning, adaptation and mutation, (3) a relational understanding of the origin and dissemination of innovations focused on the complex nature of cities and (4) the importance of individual actors as agents of change and analytical scale that highlights social processes of innovation. The notion of urban assemblages further allows the operationalisation of both the relational embeddedness of local policies as well as their cross-sectoral actor constellations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The replacement of freeways with urban greenways is a major urban physical renovation that makes cities greener and more liveable. This study examines the effects of the urban greenway in Seoul on the choice of office locations and on the variation in employment density. Our multilevel models confirm that Seoul’s urban greenway tends to attract and retain firms in office sectors within a kilometre, while the freeway provides a favourable infrastructure for the geography of service industries. In addition, employment density increased within a 1.2km zone surrounding the urban greenway, in contrast to the freeway, which only had a similar effect within a 600m zone. These key findings suggest that amenity-oriented public investment is a highly effective strategy to render urban settings appealing to office sectors and to improve employment density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal marine Holocene deposits of the Apulia region, considered as indicators of palaeoclimatic conditions, were studied. Our data show that (1) up to c. 5500 cal. yr BP, a phase of accumulation of flint pebbles from the Gargano headland occurred at the Riviera sud di Manfredonia (Adriatic coast); their transport from the Gargano headland (north of the study site) is incompatible with the current northward littoral drift and is best explained by a prevalence and dominance of NE and E winds and (2) after c. 4500 cal. yr BP, there was a rapid accumulation of sediments at the Marina di Ugento (Ionian coast), which is best explained by a prevalence and dominance of S, SW and SE winds. The two different wind regimes identified can be explained by a change in the mean pressure configuration in the central Mediterranean. The first phase (until c. 5500 cal. yr BP) consisted of more frequent cyclogenesis to the east-southeast of the Italian Peninsula, followed by a second phase (from c. 4500 cal. yr BP) of more frequent cyclogenesis to the west-northwest. The period between 5500 and 4500 cal. yr BP represents a transitional phase between the two different regimes. In other words, there was a ‘retreat’ of the central Mediterranean cyclogenesis towards the west-northwest. This pattern is contemporaneous with the termination of the African Humid period. We interpret both the ‘retreat’ of the Mediterranean cyclogenesis and the termination of the African Humid period as the expression of an expansion of the tropical dry Saharan belt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for an increased emphasis on the institutions of risk governance and management in understanding urban resilience. This moves analysis of vulnerability away from a focus on individuals to also consider risk management regimes as co-productive of vulnerability and resilience in the City. This is illustrated through the application of an Adaptive Capacity Index to unpack the role played by formal governance institutions in mediating resilience to extreme heat events in the empirical case of London. Analysis shows that the configuration of risk at the institutional level directs heat wave risk management through the health services, and operationalises it during the emergency phase of hazard onset. This misses an important opportunity for integrating individual and regime level risk management initiatives, which we proposed can be worked out through greater collaboration with social services and interaction with those caring for the vulnerable, has yet to be fully integrated into planning and practice in London and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Resilience is an increasingly important urban policy discourse that has been taken up at a rapid pace. Yet there is an apparent gap between the advocacy of social-ecological resilience in scientific literature and its take-up in policy discourse on the one hand, and the demonstrated capacity to govern for resilience in practice on the other. This paper explores this gap by developing a performative account of how social-ecological resilience is dealt with in practice through case study analysis of how protection of biodiversity was negotiated in response to Melbourne’s recent metropolitan planning initiative. It is suggested that a performative account expands the possible opportunities for governing for social-ecological resilience beyond the concept’s use as a metaphor, measurement, cognitive frame or programmatic statement of adaptive management/co-management and has the potential to emerge through what has been called the everyday ‘mangle of practice’ in response to social-ecological feedback inherent to policy processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The struggles to define and implement an inclusive non-racial urbanism in South Africa after democratisation in 1994 occurred during the heyday of world-wide diffusion of unevenly developed neoliberalisation processes. This case study of the complexities of transforming Cape Town’s energy sector analyses the consequences of these contradictory trajectories by tracking the dynamics of four urbanism typologies: inclusive, splintered, green and slum urbanism. It is argued that, while the imperatives of deracialisation reinforced inclusive trends, neoliberalisation processes reinforced splintered urbanism and its consequences, namely slum urbanism. These dynamics were then overdetermined by environmental changes that have introduced green urbanism as a new arena of contestation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past decade, a growing body of research has examined the role of cities in addressing climate change and the institutional and political challenges which they encounter. For the most part, in these accounts, the infrastructure networks, their material fabric, everyday practices and political economies, have remained unexamined. In this paper, it is argued that this is a critical omission and an approach is developed for understanding how urban responses to climate change both configure and are configured by infrastructure networks. Central to any such analysis is the conception of how and why (urban) infrastructure networks undergo change. Focusing on urban energy networks and on the case of London, the paper argues for an analysis of the ‘urban infrastructure regimes’ and ‘experiments’ through which climate change is governed. It is found that climate change experiments serve as a means through which dominant actors articulate and test new ‘low-carbon’ logics for urban infrastructure development. It is argued that experiments work by establishing new circuits, configuring actors in new sets of relations and through these means realising the potential for addressing climate change in the city. At the same time, experiments become sites of conflict, a means through which new forms of urban circulation can be confined and marginalised, leaving dominant energy regimes (relatively) intact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims to contribute to existing literature on the effects of the built environment on bicycle commuting, examining the case of Beijing. A group of city-wide random samples is analysed. The analysis shows that bicycle commuting is significantly associated with some features of the built environment when many demographic and socioeconomic factors are taken into account. Higher destination accessibility, a higher number of exclusive bicycle lanes, a mixed environment and greater connectivity between local streets tend to increase the use of the bicycle. These effects differ across gender, age and income groups. However, residential density has no significant effects on the use of a bicycle for commuting, while higher levels of public transit services tends to decrease rather than increase bicycle commuting. The results imply that the drastic changes in the built environment are a major reason for the demise of ‘the kingdom of bicycles’ in China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reviews the long tradition of city-scale climatological and meteorological applications prior to the emergence in the 1990s of early work on the urban/global climate change interface. It shows how ‘valuing and seeing the urban’ came to be achieved within modern scientific meteorology and how in a limited but significant set of cases that science has contributed to urban practice. The paper traces the evolution of urban climatology since 1950 as a distinct research field within physical geography and meteorology, and its transition from observational monographs to process modelling; reviews the precedents, successful or otherwise, of knowledge transfer from science into public action through climatically aware regulation or design of urban environment; and notes the neglect of these precedents in contemporary climate change discourse—a serious omission. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As in other countries, public authorities in the US have initiated an array of experiments collectively designed to mitigate the threat posed by global warming. This paper considers the implementation of global climate protection in the Seattle metropolitan region of Washington State. Specifically, the discussion focuses on regulatory, institutional and investment changes within the handful of municipalities formally pledged to address carbon goals as articulated by their statutory participation in the US Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement. While enrollment in such networked spaces has created crucial momentum for practical policy action, the hardest work is just starting: namely, transforming the physical, institutional, economic and cultural constitution of actually existing political communities. Interrogating new data gleaned from recent research on local ‘cool city’ developments, the discussion assesses overall progress within the context of broader debates in the extant literature on local planning and policy for global climate action. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the potential contribution of critical urban theory to the intellectual and political debates surrounding climate change. While it is possible to identify an emerging strand of critical enquiry concerning the role of cities in facilitating climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, this paper argues that the full implications of critical urban theory to climate change studies have yet to be realised. In this paper, critical urban theory is understood as an approach (or set of approaches) to the city that recognises the contingent form of urban politics and policy, while asserting that, far from being an inevitable and politically neutral process, urbanisation is an expression of intersecting regimes of social power. This paper utilises critical urban theory as a basis for analysing emerging urban climate adaptation strategies. The analysis presented here asserts that contemporary adaptation policies are being framed by neoliberal practices of market-oriented governance, enhanced privatisation and urban environmental entrepreneurialism. This paper exposes some of the key contradictions that are inherent within neoliberalised urban climate change adaptation strategies and suggests how it might be possible to develop more progressive adaptation regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the pressure placed by cities on their environment with respect to urban air pollution. The analysis employs a spatially explicit global dataset of emissions to estimate urban emissions of four pollutants from a sample of 8038 cities world-wide in 2005. A cross-sectional regression analysis is then conducted to examine the association of urban air pollution with socioeconomic and geographical factors. The results confirm that urban pollution is associated primarily, but not exclusively, with demographics. The results suggest that urban pollution is likely to increase with population growth and that economic modernisation is unlikely to provide much relief from the pressures placed by coming population growth. The findings suggest that policy-makers must focus on reducing the emissions intensity of production activities within cities, especially from the energy sector, if they are to avoid rapid growth in urban air pollution in coming decades. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It will be argued in this paper that the problematic of social cohesion is also one of socio-ecological cohesion whereby the urbanisation of nature and its socio-environmentally enabling and disabling conditions are key processes. By viewing the contradictions of the urbanisation process as intrinsically socio-ecological ones, the terrain of social cohesion is shifted both epistemologically and politically. The paper critically examines three contemporary schools of thought that consider in different ways the relationship between cities, social cohesion and the environment. It begins with a critical examination of the notion of urban sustainability. The paper will then move on to consider two approaches that emphasise issues of (in)equality and (in)justice in the urban environment, those of environmental justice and urban political ecology. The final part of the paper pinpoints four areas of research that urban researchers must examine if we are to understand more fully—and act more politically on—the nexus between cities, social cohesion and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘Urban sustainability’ currently receives widespread and generally enthusiastic endorsement, yet concerns are emerging that recent expressions of the concept may actually be working against the city and its residents. Based on research in Christchurch, New Zealand (one of the most urbanised countries in the world), it is argued that the assimilation of social, economic and bio-physical environmental elements that gave the idea much of its original legitimacy has been reduced to a minimalist set of material and discursive ‘eco-friendly’ denominators. As a result, only occasional glimpses of the city and its human inhabitants are caught in attempts to operationalise sustainability in urban areas. The effect is that cities, in New Zealand at least, are less liveable and less likeable than they should be. It is suggested that there is a real need to re-urbanise and rehumanise the urban sustainability agenda as a means of realising its integrative and transformative potential. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Economic transition has posed a serious challenge to environmental protection efforts in China. This study explores the environmental effects of the triple transition process of marketisation, globalisation and decentralisation using data on industrial SO2 and soot emissions at the prefecture-city level. Panel data regression results find that marketisation and decentralisation have been harmful to the urban environment while economic globalisation has been beneficial to urban air quality. As is to be expected, state-owned enterprises have contributed to China’s environmental degradation. However, the environmental impacts of the triple processes of economic transition only occur in the coastal and central cities. The results imply that the institutional perspective provides an important angle to understand the issue of environmental deterioration in China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Scholars and policy-makers have increasingly sought to understand the relationship between poverty and place in the inner city. This paper examines the spatiality of an anti-poverty strategy called ‘gentrification with justice’ and implemented by an urban ministry collective in three neighbourhoods in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. This place-based approach centres on the movement of middle-class ‘strategic neighbours’ into impoverished neighbourhoods as a way to transform the local socio-spatial dialectic of poverty. The urban ministry collective draws upon notions of diverse community, social justice, the ‘where’ of faithful practice and a faith-governed market in seeking to redevelop neighbourhoods. Based on archival analysis and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with leaders and members of the urban ministry collective, this paper provides a deeper understanding of the place-making role that faith-motivated actors play in local contexts of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Urban sprawl is one of the major issues regarding sustainable urban development. In response to concerns about sprawl, compact development strategies have been proposed to promote sustainable development. However, a compact development approach needs to pay attention to the crucial question of commercial profitability. The aim of this article is to inquire into the commercial profitability of compact development strategies by developing different scenarios and to put forward ways to control urban sprawl through certain spatial strategies in the Istanbul case. The results indicate that the current planning approach is not effective in reducing sprawl without setting certain spatial strategies by which development activity is restricted, or imposing additional requirements for new development in certain areas. It is found that urban sprawl can be reduced by up to 62 per cent through setting certain spatial strategies and that uncontrolled urban sprawl might feasibly be shifted from peripheral to central areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines three controversies that revolve around the Hong Kong government's efforts to privatise components of its property assets in the years following the Asian financial crisis in 1997. While the rolling back of welfare and privatisation of public goods are typical features of the 'neo-liberal turn', the consequences of and responses to these processes are highly contingent upon specific historical experience and social practices. By examining the narratives of different actors over the course of these controversies, this paper aims to elucidate the contradictions and mutual entanglements between the ideology of neo-liberalism and everyday discourse and how the contestation in each of the three cases worked to reshape and ultimately to preserve the existing regime of legitimation. It also illustrates how the long-running 'laissez-faire' principles of Hong Kong's colonial period have contributed to the ongoing absorption of political critique, thus exposing the limits of 'people power'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A poorly designed urban solid waste collection system has an enormous impact on labour, operational and transport costs, and on society in general due to road contamination and negative effects on public health and the environment. This study proposes a methodology for designing an urban solid waste collection system. This methodology uses combinatorial optimisation and integer programing, and GIS tools to minimise collection time, and operational and transport costs while enhancing the current solid waste collection system. This methodology establishes feasible collection routes, determines an adequate vehicle fleet size and presents a comparative cost and sensitivity analysis of the results. The implementation of this methodology in a study case of a zone in Santiago yields significant cost savings in the total collection system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solid waste management (SWM) is becoming a major issue in most cities where the provision of such public service had hitherto been the sole responsibility of central government. However, the costs involved and the rate of waste generation have virtually forced city authorities to seek new arrangements with the private sector. This paper reviews public-private partnership (PPP) in SWM in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) and reveals that the policy worked well until one of the stakeholders failed to deliver. It maintains that harnessing the social support, acceptability and participation is key to sustainable PPP. The paper calls for institutional and private sector collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the book "The Climate of London," by T. J. Chandler which is said to be the first textbook on climatology. It examines the book's overall structure including the physical and cultural setting, the synoptic weather setting and nine weather elements. It mentions that the book is an exposition of the general and urban climatology of the city of London.

In recognition of the growing concern about the likely detrimental environmental impacts of hotel activities, an increasing number of tourism research publications highlight the importance of achieving sustainable tourism and accommodation. However, there is still a scarcity of numerical data which reflect the severity of the negative impacts on the environment created by the operations of hotel owners. This study compiles a database for hotels to design and construct an appropriate environmental impact index for Hong Kong as a first significant step towards creating a 'green' tourism satellite account for the city. It is estimated that the total environmental cost of the local hotel sector has increased by 400% in 16 years to HK$265 million in 2005. Computable or measurable environmental costs were used to establish a composite environmental index and it was discovered that it reached a peak in 2005. In the final analysis, the growth rate of the composite environmental index is compared with that of the value-added index of the local hotel industry and it is found that they generally have the same trend over the study period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]