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The implementation of fare-free public transport (FFPT) in Tallinn (Estonia) in 2013 sparked international media, policy, and academic interest in best practices, funding structures, and ridership. Initial studies showed marginal effects on modal shift, but increased travel by low-income households, and by younger and older passengers. Yet, the assumed social impact of FFPT has since been under-researched. Based on qualitative research with 22 transport-dependent users, including two semi-structured interviews and a seven-day travel diary, this study examines the daily experiences, mobility constraints, and travel practices of care mobilities, i.e., journeys made to care for others or a household. Findings indicate that the absence of fares, although a relative variable in modal choice, allows carers expanded activity spaces, independence from car ownership, and easier coordination of care tasks. I propose to frame accessibility as a relational process emerging from passengers' encounters and the practices adopted to navigate shared spaces. With this, I argue that understanding public transport use and experiences at a micro-level offers an intersectional and justice lens to commuter-oriented transport and neoliberal urban planning policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of self-organization initiatives within conflicting urban planning processes. It draws on the debate developed around the use of the concepts of 'trading zone' and 'boundary object' in planning studies and focuses on a single case study: the regeneration of the Rossani barracks in Bari, Southern Italy. This long process is paradigmatic of current urban regeneration processes in relation to the plurality of actors involved and the projects developed. It allows for a general reflection on the implementation of solutions belonging to different strategic viewpoints, enabling impasses to be overcome even when actors remain in conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adapting urban spaces to the impacts of climate change is one of today's key challenges, especially when it comes to avoiding the associated social trade-offs which are often overlooked in planning and policy regulation. Based on a review of existing policy and legal documents from Vienna, we analyse how mitigation of green gentrification is already included in Viennese urban planning and policy, and how the administration tries to manage it strategically. Results show that while risks are generally limited, current policy and planning strategies show no awareness of the emerging risks of green gentrification as unintended consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban co-production, through which citizens contribute with the public institutions to the planning or governance of the city, is a growing practice throughout Europe. However, apart from the more widespread and spontaneous 'co-city' model, only a few countries have adopted state policies of urban co-production. A comparative inquiry of the European spatial governance and planning systems (SGPSs) highlights at least three possible types of correlation between systems and urban co-production. Urban co-production as a state policy appears to take shape only in countries with SGPSs characterized by a greater capacity for public control over spatial development. Moreover, only SGPSs that allocate land rights on a case-by-case basis seem able to ensure that co-production operates within (and not outside) the system itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Application of the ecosystem services (ES) concept in urban planning has potential for improving environmental and human health outcomes in cities. We aimed to narrow an identified ES implementation gap by identifying the criteria for the practical fit of the ES concept in urban planning. We found that local relevance and adaptability within current planning approaches were core criteria for practical fit. If not met immediately, these criteria may be met over time through policy entrepreneurship. Further research in different locations and planning systems would increase understanding of the enabling factors for applying ES in urban planning. [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]

In an era of austerity, co-production involving local government and community groups has taken on much greater significance worldwide, including in Japanese local government. However, the nature of local co-production differs widely across Japan, ranging from bona fide cooperation between municipalities and voluntary groups to de facto outsourcing of local government functions in pursuit of cost savings. This paper seeks to add to the scholarly literature on community co-production by examining two case studies in Yokohama City. In particular, we seek to show how "path-dependency" and local social capital play a significant role in the success of co-production in local government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 5 decades of the Urban Affairs Association, more than 4 decades of the Journal of Urban Affairs (JUA), and with the departure of an editorial team, this seems an opportune moment to assess the contribution made by the journal to the field of urban affairs. This paper takes both an historical and analytical approach to this evaluation, detailing the institutional challenges associated with the journal's production, coupled with identification of key themes in its catalog of papers. The historical exploration of defining articles and notable authors provides a retrospective of the key urban issues that have defined the JUA over the last 4 decades. We also undertake a content analysis of the JUA, utilizing Web of Science data, which dates back to 1993. This bibliometric analysis sheds further light on influential JUA authors, articles and topics, as well as key conceptual, intellectual, and social patterns and trends in the journal over the last four decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban regeneration programs involve a series of intricate activities that utilize human, material, and financial resources, executed at varying times and in diverse manners. Within this complex scenario, a major challenge lies in effectively managing concurrent developments across multiple buildings and infrastructure projects, while also harmonizing the interests of all parties engaged in urban regeneration initiatives. This paper introduces a multi-step strategy designed to enhance and streamline urban management amid the multifaceted decision-making processes characteristic of urban regeneration efforts. Specifically, the multi-criteria decision-making model ELECTRE TRI-B is employed to sort the array of basic tasks within a complex transformation endeavor into priority groups based on various evaluative criteria. To ascertain the significance of these criteria and rank each task according to the interests of the stakeholders likely to be impacted, a panel of specialists, including construction experts, economists, and environmental assessors, is convened. Following this, project actions are organized in a Gantt chart reflecting the construction priority determined by the evaluation model. This approach facilitated the temporal organization of master plan activities, incorporating insights from a broad spectrum of experts including municipal technical staff, professionals, and the community at large. The findings indicate that this comprehensive and interactive approach to performance measurement enabled the handling of extensive datasets and the refinement of financial, economic, environmental, and social resources, all while adhering to logical constraints and urban policy demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting on my involvement in planning education at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) University since the early 1980s and with Urban Policy and Research, 1982–2003, there was a degree of optimism about what urban planning, through education and publication, might achieve, given the relatively favourable political and institutional circumstances of the time. The normalisation of neoliberal thinking across Australia by 2000, however, stymied such hopes. Looking back, I consider how I, as a teacher and a researcher, and UPR now a commercial journal, adapted to these challenging times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Placemaking is a concept used in urban planning to shape public spaces. It is a complex and evolving concept that involves various actors with different goals, including grassroots community members, artists, developers, and governments. Placemaking has the potential to address urban crises and improve urban life, but it is distinct from mainstream planning and can take the form of informal interventions led by activists. It has been influenced by various discourses, including post-capitalism and post-liberalism, and it is important to consider how it can benefit marginalized groups and contribute to meeting place-based goals of access and inclusion. Placemaking has gained renewed attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are challenges to maintaining its integrity, such as the rush to implement initiatives without proper community engagement. Despite these challenges, placemaking holds potential for progress in addressing social vulnerabilities and building bridges across communities. [Extracted from the article]

This work is based on the analysis and the assessment of morphological and syntactic characteristics of the street network of a mid-sized city: Potenza (County Seat of Basilicata region – Italy). Based on the identification of sustainable mobility options related to the selected case study, the research identifies an active mobility infrastructure framework to improve sustainable mobility policies as a component of urban planning. This research presents the methodology used for creating a 'morpho-syntactic' scenario for the case study town. Traditional techniques for morphological analysis (including terrain and street slope) have been integrated by mathematical graph theory-based spatial configuration measurements using the Space Syntax Analysis and Place Syntax Analysis as an extended framework oriented to assess 'urban places'. The results obtained by this approach are useful for planning a more sustainable urban mobility scenario based on the pedestrian route network for Potenza town and represent a transferable analytical framework for similar cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irrigated urban agriculture using various water sources has been consistently present throughout Maputo's history. Grounded in Infulene Valley, we delve into how urban planning has evolved since 1960 and trace the implications of these policies on urban farming and the livelihoods dependent on it. Documenting the imaginaries of the city over four eras of Maputo's development, we find that agriculture occupied a prominent place in the post-colonial city, and continues to be significant, despite its vague recognition within urban planning, after the shift to neoliberalism. We advocate for acknowledging urban irrigated agriculture as an intrinsic feature of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities all over the world are rethinking their mobility policies in light of environmental and quality of life objectives. As space is one of cities' scarcest resources, mobility's spatial footprint is increasingly scrutinized as externality to mitigate. Similar to passenger transport, goods transport is envisioned to shift towards efficient and zero emission mobilities. To achieve an urban logistics system that eliminates inefficiencies and fossil fuels, the logistics sector requires space to unload, cross-dock, consolidate and stock goods closer to their destinations. Such a 'proximity logistics' is however at odds with 'logistics sprawl', the historic outward migration pattern of logistics facilities. With policies and planning, cities can support the (re)integration of logistics facilities in urban areas to facilitate and enable the shift to an efficient urban logistics system. Logistics still being a largely neglected policy subject in many cities, knowledge on how to approach this (re)integration is hardly available. Therefore, we compare two pioneering cities: Rotterdam and Paris. Both cities have an established track record in advancing urban logistics policies and are spearheading the practice of planning for logistics. Based on interviews and policy analyses, we develop best practices on how to address the integration of urban logistics facilities for cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The City Statute is a legal framework that provides Brazilian urban policy with another dynamic. It guides urban policies across the national territory, and hasgained international prominence at a moment when Latin American countries became policy exporters. This paper takes the City Statute to discuss multilevel urban policy mobilities between international and subnational levels, analyzing how its guidelines and contents spread across Brazilian and Latin American territories. The findings suggest that the City Statute has been simultaneously disseminated and questioned at different levels. It is a significant case study for understanding multilevel and South-South policy mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limited research examines the relationship between land-use zoning and industrial activity over time, with little known beyond standard narratives of industrial suburbanisation. We combine records of zoning controls and firm location to examine their associations in Melbourne, Australia between 1954 and 1974 following the introduction of comprehensive zoning. Results show increasing concentrations of industrial firms in industrial zones and confirm significant suburbanisation of industry. However, counter to dominant narratives, results reveal increasing firm numbers in inner industrial zones. These shifts play out over several decades, illustrating the longer time horizons needed to understand relationships between zoning and urban restructuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity boosts innovation and creativity in urban contexts, but it can also undermine civicness by negatively impacting individuals' trust of other citizens, also hampering economic and institutional performance. By employing a spatial analysis approach using geocoded data from 5776 residents in three major urban Italian areas, we explore whether sharing geographical space in a context of socio-economic difference (in terms of income and education) affects individuals' choices to be civically engaged. The evidence reveals that the geographical proximity of an individual to others with different socio-economic characteristics decreases their civic engagement. A key challenge when designing urban policies is to reconcile the positive effects of diversity as it influences different economic–societal aspects, with the associated social tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New York is America's quintessential arrival city. The city's defining institutions; its economy; its skyscrapers, parks and infrastructure; its schools, hospitals and social services and its cultural ecosystem have all been produced through the city's reception of the millions that have arrived at its shores. Nevertheless, New York's urban policy has consistently defined immigrants as blight. Urban planning policies, especially those that address the build environment, have, throughout the city's history, targeted immigrant communities, and have sought to contain and exclude immigrant populations. The tension between the city's reliance on immigration for its vitality and its urban policies of immigrant exclusion has shaped the city's development and defined its modern form. This commentary addresses this tension and shows that for an arrival city like New York urban policy and immigration policy are one in the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes research asking what is required to overcome entrenched obstacles to accessibility and inclusivity in an Australia regional city, in particular for those living with disability. A transdisciplinary, systems thinking approach allowed a range of stakeholders, including many with lived experiences of disability, to create a collective plan of action. This plan included interdependent interventions, independent and ahead of national governance, connecting urban planning policy to education, public transport, housing provision, co-design of public buildings, community infrastructure and inclusive employment practices. Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity within regional planning research was seen as impacting the process and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acceleration of urbanization leads to a geographical extension of cities, longer distances and travel times, increased motorization, and a constantly growing population. Faced with this situation, new urban policies are attempting to control the interaction between urban planning and urban mobility and to redefine a new dimension of proximity, which reduces excessive use of energy-consuming and polluting modes of travel, namely vehicles. This orientation is embodied in the 15-minute city model, which focuses on pedestrian accessibility from one's home to nearby services and urban spaces. From this perspective, the paper proposes a GIS-based model to evaluate pedestrian accessibility to mosques. Using the open-source software QGIS, a total number of 30 mosques in the Agdal district in the city of Fez in Morocco were studied to investigate their pedestrian accessibility, by examining their spatial distribution and also their capacity to accommodate the worshippers of their catchment areas. Considering the land use and the population density of each mosque's catchment area, the results showed that even if a mosque can be spatially accessible by walking, it may not be able to comfortably satisfy the potential worshippers in its area of influence. Many people are then forced to travel long distances, sometimes by vehicles, to reach other mosques that can eventually accommodate them. The proposed method helps city planners better understand the urban configuration in terms of spatial and functional pedestrian accessibility, for more inclusive and equitable cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South Australian Government is creating plans, policies, and strategies (PPS) that are preferencing infill development. While there are benefits to infill development, if scientific evidence is not adequately incorporated into these PPS, they can elevate urban temperatures. This study investigated Blakes Crossing, an infill development of Blakeview (South Australia) to identify the extent to which scientific evidence has informed the PPS that guided its urban fabric and their impact on Blakeview's urban temperature. This was achieved by comparatively analysing the temporal PPS that guided Blakes Crossing's urban fabric, with primary remote sensing data (using Landsat 8 imagery) that identified and compared Blakes Crossing's land cover composition and surface temperature against four neighbouring areas. This study found that all tiers of government have applied a reductionist approach when applying science to form their PPS. This has resulted in inadequate cooling policies and principles being incorporated into Blakes Crossing's urban design, thereby, elevating its surface temperature by as much as 2.67°C when compared to this study's other analysed areas and consequently, elevating Blakeview's surface temperature. To ameliorate the disconnect between science and planning, scientific tools such as remote sensing should help guide future PPS to effectively reduce urban temperatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mid-2010s, China initiated a quality-oriented urbanization model aimed at overcoming the urban crises resulting from the past quantity-oriented urbanization. The Xiong'an New Area (XNA), China's latest national-level new area, has been planned such that it serves as a showcase of the quality-oriented urbanization model. Based on a review of the official urban planning documents, this paper examines the characteristics of the XNA's urban planning and finds that the urban planning has integrated environmental friendliness, social inclusion, innovation-driven economy, cultural inheritance, and smart urban governance to facilitate the XNA's pursuit of quality-oriented urbanization. Besides analyzing its improvement over the previous urban planning, this paper also examines the XNA's challenges in its urban planning implementation. Although the XNA is subject to circumstances that make it unique, its urban planning can serve as a point of reference for attempts to urbanize among the world's other cities. This paper contributes to a more thorough understanding of the role of urban planning in promoting the transformation from quantity-oriented to quality-oriented urbanization models in the Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study sheds light on the state of knowledge on shrinking cities over the past four decades by identifying major thematic clusters, conceptual evolutions, and key players. The bibliometric analysis tools of VOSviewer and SciMAT were used to analyze 562 documents indexed in the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases. The publication trend was divided into three subperiods: the genesis period (1978–2004), the growth period (2004–2015), and the rapid growth period (2015–2021). The most significant conceptual evolution in the field occurred between 2004 and 2015. Three thematic clusters were identified: (1) urban policy and planning, (2) physical and ecological planning, and (3) demographic and regional development. This review highlights that issues related to governance and regional, physical, and ecological planning have attracted more attention. Moving beyond past research, we provide four promising areas for further research in shrinking city studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature reviews can play a pivotal role in designing urban policies. Here we introduce two tools used by public health specialists to assess the quality of studies and quantify the evidence derived from them: the Risk of Bias Assessment (RoB) and Evaluation of Certainty of Evidence (ECE). The RoB scores articles on several domains (e.g., selection bias, study design, etc.) to provide an appraisal of how rigorous the study is, whereas the ECE tool provides a framework to clearly state how much certainty there is in the outcomes under study. Both tools can be used to enhance literature review articles in urban planning to better inform practitioners on how to best develop policies using a rigorous approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many countries, national urban policies have been afforded a very prominent role in addressing the challenges of urbanisation in a sustainable, resilient and equitable manner (Kundu et al. [2]; UN-Habitat [5]). By the same token, international urban agendas such as the United Nations I New Urban Agenda i and the I 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development i have been supporting the development of national-level urban policies, whilst recognising them as one of its key elements (OECD/UN-Habitat/UNOPS [4]). Identifying models of National Urban Agendas. a view to the global transition: edited by Francesca Gelli and Matteo Basso, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, 398 pp., € 96,29 (eBook), ISBN: 978-3-031-08388-4. [Extracted from the article]

This paper examines the role of violence in Turkey's state-coordinated pursuit of rapid urban transformation. We argue that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) implemented an urban development regime that relied on structural violence to control and distribute urban rent, housing and land. Despite framing this mode of urban transformation as a way to include marginalised urban populations in economy and society, it ultimately proved to be politically and economically unsustainable. In response to resistance, the AKP shifted its strategy to one of coercion in order to maintain control of the pace and scope of urbanisation. We present original research from Ankara and show how this strategic shift unfolded through an analysis of urban policy and planning practice. By highlighting the negotiated nature of Turkey's urban transformation and the limits of structural violence, this paper offers insights into the complexities of contemporary urban politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social sustainability has increasingly become a goal for urban policy and planning, and for local and regional developmental strategies. Neighbourhoods are a common spatial scale for studying social sustainability and there is a growing focus on social sustainability in urban neighbourhoods for both researchers and policymakers. This paper is based on a qualitative case study of a neighbourhood defined by the municipality as at-risk of negative social development in a municipality in northern Sweden. The aim is to describe the perceived threats and promoters for social sustainable development in a neighbourhood defined as at-risk, and to analyse these in relation to a perspective of spatial scale. The study is based on data from interviews with municipal representatives, local professionals and residents, representing different experiences and perspectives in the neighbourhood. Four themes illustrating threats to socially sustainable development were identified: crime, unrest and unsafety; segregation and social exclusion; reputation and stigmatisation; and low involvement in municipal processes. The promoters for socially sustainable development identified in the respondents' stories reflect four themes: strong community spirit; safety and low criminality; lively civic society and well-functioning public services. Our results show that neighbourhood social sustainability cannot be studied or acted upon without being put in a context of spatial scale and an understanding that processes occurring at a particular scale only can be adequately understood when considered in relation to other scales, i.e. the development in the neighbourhood can only be understood in relation to the development in the city and at national level. There is also a need for an awareness of how different aspects of socially sustainable development relate to each other, by strengthening or counteracting each other. Key policy highlights There are no "magic bullet solutions" to ensure social sustainable development at the local level. Rather, actions and interventions must embrace complexity. The risk for counteracting processes must be acknowledged in any actions to promote social sustainability. Social sustainability processes occurring at a particular scale can only be adequately understood and addressed when considered in relation to other scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to shed light on the contribution of the Cohesion Policy to the urban dimension of Portuguese cities. This research is based on a case study of Porto. The results show that their contribution was positive, especially concerning the extensive rehabilitation of problematic urban areas, the reinforcement of local administrative entities' strategic planning and the development of citizen participation mechanisms, accountability and public‒private partnerships. However, the research also identified that the government structure is too centralised and excessive local funding competition made the process more complex, with concepts being applied more to the discourse than practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that while some of them can be seen as mobile policies in the McCann/Ward and Peck/Theodore sense, most have been developed in situ with only diffuse connections to policies elsewhere or via innovatively combining selected aspects of several extant policies from elsewhere. By contrast, while the mobile policy literature acknowledges that "teritorialisation" and transformation of policies can occur, this is subordinate to the uprooting, mobilization and circulation of policies across space (Ward & McCann, [19], p. 170). Conclusion: Rebalancing Mobile Urban Policies Discourse This paper has set out to open up debate around mobile urban policy discourse by addressing pertinent questions about the ways in which innovative new urban policies are generated. Recent scholarship on how cities come to adopt new policies has focused on the notion of mobile policy. [Extracted from the article]

The article explores the impact of Israeli policies and practices on Palestinian urban nodes in occupied East Jerusalem focusing on Kubsa junction. It argues that the Segregation Wall has created spaces where Palestinian life is expendable and where the practice of eliminating the Arab Palestinian character of the city has transformed a once vibrant Palestinian urban node into a dead end. Kubsa Junction illustrates settler-colonial military spatial policies and urban planning to control the urban space of Kubsa Junction which have created a 'frame' to segregate and control the colonized Palestinians. Such policies, the article argues, are better interpreted by settler-colonial state strategies than racialized global capitalism. Yet, while different layers of daily lives and memory of the colonized on both sides of the Segregation Wall have been harmed, the spiritual and collective memory layers maintain meaning and purpose to the colonized's steadfastness or Sumoud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radon gas from the ground is the main source of indoor concentrations in buildings, regardless of construction characteristics. According to Council Directive 2013/59/EURATOM, EU Member States must establish national reference levels for indoor radon concentrations in workplaces and draw up a National Radon Plan. In Calabria (Southern Italy), maps of indoor measurements at regional scale are not available. A set of 1434 average annual measurements, taken between 2010 and 2021, has been analysed. For a limited sector, a geostatistical approach allowed to map the expected concentrations at ground floor, the spatial uncertainty of estimates, and the probability of exceedance of the 300 Bq m−3 Italian threshold for workplaces. Highest values characterize the eastern border of the Sila massif. Obtained maps might be used to optimize locations of additional dosimeters, based on geological constraints. Such studies may support urban planning policies and provide recommendations on building techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization is a growing challenge for city planners and policymakers who are continuously focusing on computer-based statistical models, and machine learning for a sustainable and livable city. The main objectives of this article were to develop a robust artificial intelligence-based hybrid geo-simulation model to support multi-scenario urban growth modeling for urban policy improvement. In this study, earth observation datasets, Artificial Neural Network-Multilayer Perceptron coupled with Markov Chain (MLP-Markov) and Cellular Automata and Markov Chain (CAMarkov) were applied and the best performance was measured for urban growth modeling. The result shows that the urban land use was 25.79, 31.40, 45.19, 89.22 and 147.96 square km in 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011 which has been predicted for 2021, 2031, 2041 and 2051 based on the planned and unplanned development scenarios. The predicted urban land use of the planned development scenario is 242.10, 312.69, 363.80 and 400.72 square km while 242.91, 314.31, 366.23 and 403.98 square km of the unplanned development scenario during 2021, 2031, 2041 and 2051. The uncertainty result shows that overall agreement (84.99%) and other indices are higher, and disagreement is lower (15.01%) for MLP-Markov than the CA-Markov for the urban land use prediction. The hybrid geo-simulation models were tested over multiple urban planning indicators to understand urban growth patterns and related scenarios. The result shows that the geo-simulation model is extremely sensitive to the complex pattern of urban growth and disperse indicators over space and time. This study provides a promising guideline for urban planners and conservation scientists to implement a robust artificial intelligence-based hybrid geo-simulation model for compact, organized, and integrated land use-transportation development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African urban areas and cities are primarily seen as vulnerable to climate change. Apparent attempts to get required policies have led to the widespread proliferation of overlapping and duplications of policies. Using a policy coherence framework, this study aims to synthesise the coherency of climate adaptation and urban policies in Ghana. The study used content analysis of existing policy documents to understand if specific variables are explicit, implicit or not mentioned in four urban and climate change policies in Ghana. It was found that there is a minimal degree of coherence only in the adaptation measures, but there is a general lack of coherence in the motivation and implementation. This can be attributed to radically different current institutional arrangements for urban planning and climate change, inconsistent use of data and terminologies, and lack of embracement of innovations in urban planning in African cities. The findings suggest that attention must be given to integrated collaborative adaptation planning to address these impediments in urban planning context of African cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to fill a gap in critical smart city scholarship regarding the Central Eastern European (CEE) context. To this end, smart city understandings and practices in Hungary's five (non-capital) major cities are examined through a discourse-analytical focus on relevant municipal planning documents, existing interventions and key actors' interpretations. The paper concludes that although smart city building in Hungary in many ways aligns with trends in the Global North and South, there are also notable differences that need to be contextualized in the country's historically shaped trajectory of urban (policy) development, especially its post-socialist institutional path-dependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article retraces the impact of evolving hegemonic rapid transit planning and design strategies on pedestrian integration between stations and neighbourhoods, using Hong Kong as a longitudinal case. Mixed-methods research, triangulating documentary analysis, spatial analysis, and in-depth interviews, identified six typologies across three historical phases. The findings demonstrate that pedestrian access to transit is spatially heterogeneous, shaping the evolution of the station area from a connecting structure into an interconnecting infrastructure. Unfolding the historical interplay of hegemonic forces in the production of pedestrian spaces, this study innovatively bridges the research gap between planning policies and fine-grained urban design features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategies applied by urban policy makers in order to achieve sustainable city development may be in conflict with each other because it crosses many disciplines and policy areas. This research focusses on the dilemma between compact city and urban greenspace policies and their influence on actual land-use change in Amsterdam and Brussels. These cases are selected because of their similar urban growth yet diverse policy and governance contexts. We contend that comparing how urban policies try to address this dilemma can provide a deeper understanding of how policy strategies affect land-use change. The results show that densification indeed decreases the quantity (Amsterdam: −4.7% Brussels: −11.9%), average size (A: −3.1% B: −25.6%) and connectivity of urban greenspaces. Observed land-use changes seem disconnected from purported urban greenspace policies, whereas urban development plans seem to dominate changes in greenspace quantity and form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile phone data can provide insightful location-based information on the interactions between individuals and the urban environment, e.g. urban land-use types. Using mobile phone data, this study aims to recognize citywide land use classes in a highly accurate and timely manner, because land use classes are important for urban planning and urban management. How to extract key and discriminative features from mobile-phone-call time series is an essential problem for urban land-use classification. Considering the high dimensional characteristic of mobile-phone-call time series data, an improved land-use classification framework with deep convolutional autoencoder (DCAE) is proposed to automatically recognize land-use types in urban areas, which are geographical regions clustered based on the similarity of features in waveform and magnitude of mobile-phone-call time series. The method is validated using mobile phone data collected in Wuhan city, China. The experimental result shows that the key and discriminative features in waveform and magnitude can be extracted without human prior knowledge and these features extracted by DCAE can improve the performance to distinguish functionally similar land-use types, such as business and industrial/commercial types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, hypermarkets represent most of the Finnish retail property stock leading to the dwindling of small mainstream retail. Accordingly, many retail premises have been left vacant at the old shopping centres in suburbia. Ethnic retailing has remarkably impacted the urban landscape of the city of Helsinki and spontaneously converted such abundant premises into livable agglomerations, which has contributed to placemaking. The aim of this paper is to study ethnic retailing through two case studies in Helsinki, with an explicit focus on its role in placemaking and the response of urban planning to the phenomenon. The case studies do not report success in planning for diversity. On the contrary, urban renewal policy threatens the existence of two successful agglomerations. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it demonstrates that ethnic retailing has a structured capacity to deal with market impacts, and the clustering of intercultural entrepreneurship supports its success. Second, the empirical work showed that factors related to space and its usage are already discussed in the theoretical work on placemaking. Third, it argues that the rigid boundaries of planning have prevented the city from perceiving the potential of ethnic retailing and placemaking remains in a blind spot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agendas are struggling to challenge conventional planning paradigms, to improve environmental, economic, and social conditions in cities and meet sustainability goals. Such problems call for a critique of existing planning structures, which determine how planners and urban designers work, and thus condition cities themselves. While it is widely acknowledged that descriptive or paradigmatic urban concepts have multiplied in recent years and play a part in shaping development strategies, it is unclear that they reach the desired outcomes. This paper addresses this gap in the case of Portugal, seeking to compare two specific periods of Portuguese planning history: the 1960s and nowadays. For different reasons, both moments urged urban planners and designers to seek urban change. We retrieve key concepts and definitions to call for an observation of how planning at each of those time-periods approached social, political, environmental, and economic challenges. By observing such paradigmatic changes, we aim to identify their advantages and limitations for current urban policies, while gathering eventual lessons for spatial planning to handling the need for a sustainable transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like in other cities in the global South, rapid urbanization in Malawi continues to pose challenges for local authorities as manifested in un-ending struggles and contestation for urban space such as squatting and invasions of urban space. The research asks the question: how do the evolving and changing conceptions and perceptions of urban space shape or are shaped by planning and its associated spatial practices and representations of space? Specifically, the article addresses this question in two ways: first, by examining the evolving conceptions and perceptions of space in Malawi; second, by analysing the link between the changing conceptions and perceptions with urban planning and its associated representations and spatial practices. Using archival and secondary data, the article documents the underexplored history of urban planning policy in Malawi in three historical moments namely: the pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial eras; before delving into the shifting conceptions of planning from the colonial to post-colonial Malawi using Lilongwe city as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative research on welfare and planning has traditionally been based on broadly defined typologies of national welfare state and planning systems, thereby neglecting the role of local "cultures" that help sustain and redevelop underlying institutions and practices. Drawing on a European-wide survey of city mayors, we explore how well the established typologies are reproduced in local welfare and planning cultures, as reflected in mayoral attitudes, and whether there are systematic variations of welfare and planning cultures even within the same country. The findings suggest that nationally based categories of welfare regimes and planning systems do not necessarily correspond with mayors' preferences for "urban intervention" in service delivery, housing provision, or planning. Local specificities, including permeability to the influence of European institutions and policies, may in fact have a significant impact on mayors' attitudes in these fields, possibly creating new local understandings as well as pressures for reforming national welfare and planning systems. These conclusions strengthen the argument that "local cultures" are presenting a challenge to national typologies of planning and welfare, and are important elements to take into account when exploring the evolution of urban policies at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dismantling of equity oriented urban policies has led to a call for a 'just city' agenda where policies are directed towards equity, diversity and democracy rather than growth and cultural protectionism. This paper presents a first assessment of political support for the 'just city' and investigates its conditioning factors, building on a European survey of city mayors. We find a strong association with leftist ideology, but also enabling conditions for the support of conservative mayors. The positive predisposition of leftist mayors, however, wains with increasing dependence on EU funding. The exploratory study thus opens new avenues for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider current conversations within feminist urban scholarship and across academic publishing more broadly, about patterns of bias in authorship and citation practices. Things are changing in the field of urban research, whereas once there were few established female voices (see, for instance, Sandercock [19], Harman [5], Fincher [3], Sandercock and Forsyth [20], Jacobs [7]), there are now many. From the sciences to the humanities, there is increasing recognition that academic publishing and citation practices have reflected and also reinforced systemic patterns of bias and exclusion within the academy. [Extracted from the article]

This paper focuses on the intersection between degrowth and urban planning and contributes to a deeper understanding and a sharper concretisation of how a strong sustainability concept such as degrowth can be taken into planning practice. Taking the Swedish municipality of Södertälje as a case, this paper uses empirical material from interviews with municipal urban planners and urban planning policy. The findings put current planning in relation to degrowth ideas, gather insights about the possible role of planning actors in a degrowth transition, and includes proposals for how planning practice can facilitate a degrowth future. This study finds that integrating a degrowth approach in planning practice means that urban planning needs to be subordinated to overarching social and environmental goals. Producing urban planning that is measured and conditioned by overarching goals would most likely imply completely different ways of planning, and goal-oriented backcasting scenarios are suggested as a tool to overcome this challenge. This paper also gathers strategies, like Södertälje's Cultivation Strategy, that can facilitate a degrowth transition within current planning practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex institutional, economic, and societal trends that have characterized the post-socialist transition in Central and Eastern European countries have drastically reshaped urban development. The case of Budapest shows that three decades of nearly exclusive market-driven urban policies have resulted in a variety of social, spatial and environmental deficiencies. This paper presents the paradigm of creativity-driven urban regeneration and proposes an approach to implement this paradigm, with a key role for urban design interventions, to successfully address these challenges, specifically, the regeneration of industrial brownfields, in an integrated manner and to create more inclusive, just, and sustainable cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The articles in this special issue, then, demonstrate that games and play provide more than simply a theoretical lens for examining the phenomenology of place in smart cities. Others are nascent or continually being reinvented, such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR). Further still, the focus of this special issue is on games and play - from locative gaming apps to participatory urban planning games - that both fulfil the smart city's imperative to be participatory I and i respond to the need to become more equitable. [Extracted from the article]

As the electronic process of land management is accelerating, the research on the construction of land use planning system tends to be intensified. This paper combines the concept of traditional farming culture to construct a rural land planning system, and proposes a stacked combination collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm to process traditional farming cultural data and promote the integration of traditional farming cultural data and rural land planning data. Moreover, starting from the existing problems in urban land planning at this stage, this paper proposes the rationality and importance of the land use planning system, and at the same time guarantees that it can be used in a standardised and scientific way. In addition, after explaining the construction purpose of the land use planning system, this paper also explains the tasks, design and corresponding steps to be completed to construct the system. Finally, this paper verifies the performance of this system through experimental research. Through the experimental results, we can see that the method proposed in this paper has a certain effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Management of flood risk remains a major problem in many urban environments. To generate the data needed for estimation of the flood risk, catchment models have been used with the reliability of the predicted catchment response for design flood estimation dependent upon the model calibration. However, the level of calibration required to achieve reliable design flood estimation remains unspecified. The purpose of this paper is to assess the event modelling accuracy needed if data from the calibrated model are to be used for continuous simulation of data for flood frequency analysis. For this purpose, a SWMM-based catchment model was investigated using 25 monitored events, while the assessment of the calibration was based on a normalised peak flow error. Alternative sets of parameter values were used to obtain estimates of the peak flow for each of the selected events. The best performing sets of these sets of parameter values were used with SWMM in a continuous simulation mode to predict flow sequences for extraction of Annual Maxima Series for an At-Site Flood Frequency Analysis. From the analysis of these At-Site Flood Frequency Analyses, it was concluded that the normalised peak flow error needed to be less than 10% if reliable design flood quantile estimates were to be obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]