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This paper analyzes and discusses the potential and limits of using Facebook data to analyse spatial-temporal urban rhythms and city centrality through the availability of services and retail. During September 2020, we harvested Facebook Places data using Graph API for our pilot area consisting in the city of Brno. Specifically, we focused on the spatial distribution of 'Food & Beverage', 'Shopping & Retail' and 'Medical & Health' categories, and their associated opening hours. The paper provides a detailed description of data collection and post-processing among possible analysis methods and visualizations presented in the context of our case study. The study focuses on inter-urban structures and urban rhythms through the analysis of opening hours of retail and services. We also discuss the benefits and potential problems associated with the use of these data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Alcohol policies that protect public health do not necessarily harm bars. • 'Sweetspot' policies are those which can improve public health without affecting hospitality businesses. • There is good evidence that increasing the price of shop-bought alcohol is a sweetspot policy. • Restricting remote/online alcohol sales is also a likely sweetspot policy. • Measures to shape or manage the night-time economy are less well supported by evidence. During COVID-19, hospitality businesses (e.g. bars, restaurants) were closed/restricted whilst off-sales of alcohol increased, with health consequences. Post-covid, governments face lobbying to support such businesses, but many health services remain under pressure. We appraised 'sweetspot' policy options: those with potential to benefit public services and health, whilst avoiding or minimising negative impact on the hospitality sector. We conducted rapid non-systematic evidence reviews using index papers, citation searches and team knowledge to summarise the literature relating to four possible 'sweetspot' policy areas: pricing interventions (9 systematic reviews (SR); 14 papers/reports); regulation of online sales (1 SR; 1 paper); place-shaping (2 SRs; 18 papers/reports); and violence reduction initiatives (9 SRs; 24 papers/reports); and led two expert workshops (n = 11). Interventions that raise the price of cheaper shop-bought alcohol appear promising as 'sweetspot' policies; any impact on hospitality is likely small and potentially positive. Restrictions on online sales such as speed or timing of delivery may reduce harm and diversion of consumption from on-trade to home settings. Place-shaping is not well-supported by evidence and experts were sceptical. Reduced late-night trading hours likely reduce violence; evidence of impact on hospitality is scant. Other violence reduction initiatives may modestly reduce harms whilst supporting hospitality, but require resources to deliver multiple measures simultaneously in partnership. Available evidence and expert views point to regulation of pricing and online sales as having greatest potential as 'sweetspot' alcohol policies, reducing alcohol harm whilst minimising negative impact on hospitality businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies competition in prices and opening hours in a model with free entry. It is shown that under free competition market failures arise: Entry is excessive and opening hours are under-provided. The larger the demand elasticity, the larger market failures are going to be. Restrictions on opening hours aggravate this failure. We analyze the impact of a liberalization of opening hours. The model predicts that prices will remain constant in the short run but increase in the long run. Concentration in the retail sector will rise. Additionally, employment in the retail sector increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daily rhythmical patterns in the city are investigated in depth in this paper. The city is conceptualised here as a cyclical process and described by a sequence of relatively stable spatial-temporal stages. The concept of a chronotope is incorporated in the analysis of retail opening hours in the middle-sized city of Brno (Czech Republic), in order to identify distinct fusions of specific times and specific retail places and to examine their position within the daily rhythms of the city. There are distinct time-space retail configurations (chronotopes), which play crucial roles in the social negotiation and imagination of basic temporal categories, such as early morning, late morning, lunchtime, afternoon, evening, as being taken-for-granted in the urban context. More generally, the paper offers an example of the ways in which the specific daily rhythms of the city are produced and structured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many metropolitan conceptualizations apply 'territorial grammar' when articulating the region. This paper approaches the metropolitan region as an entity whose extent and internal structure are negotiated in both space and time. We argue that the 'planning imagination', which is predominantly spatial in nature, must be temporalized by considering 'temporal grammar'. The main objective of this study is to explore how a temporal dimension can be integrated more effectively into how the metropolitan region is imagined and conceptualized. Therefore, we employ the dialogical concept of heteroglossia to present the metropolitan region as a continuous dialogue between municipalities of different power, as an open, ongoing and negotiated spatiotemporal unit. Our secondary aim is to employ this conceptualization in an empirical description of the spatiotemporal arrangement of a particular region (Brno, Czech Republic, summer 2015). For this purpose, we use data related to the opening hours of shops selling fast-moving consumer goods. Analysis revealed four specific voices present in the complex heteroglossia of the region: the voice of the core, the city of Brno; the voice of secondary urban centres; the voice of municipalities located in the hinterlands of secondary urban centres; and the voice of traditional agricultural municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Aims: The study's aim is to identify and classify the most important alcohol control policies in the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and Poland between 2000 and 2020. Methods: Policy analysis of Baltic countries and Poland, predicting potential policy impact on alcohol consumption, all‐cause mortality and alcohol‐attributable hospitalizations was discussed. Results: All Baltic countries implemented stringent availability restrictions on off‐premises trading hours and different degrees of taxation increases to reduce the affordability of alcoholic beverages, as well as various degrees of bans on alcohol marketing. In contrast, Poland implemented few excise taxation increases or availability restrictions and, in fact, reduced stipulations on prior marketing bans. Conclusions: This classification of alcohol control policies in the Baltic countries and Poland provides a basis for future modeling of the impact of implementing effective alcohol control policies (Baltic countries), as well as the effects of loosening such policies (Poland). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A majority of literature about food deserts is focused on geographic access to food retailers by a buffered distance differentiating high and low access. An overlooked facet in this representation is that food acquisition is not only geographically dictated, but it is also temporally constrained. Food retailers invariably have limited opening hours that create a temporal restriction for shoppers. In this paper, a three-dimensional (3D) construct was proposed to delineate the limited food access to a retailer location across space and over its time of operation. Food retailer data in Columbus, OH, USA were collected for examining the variation of food access on both spatial and temporal scales. This study also employed the technique of interactive 3D modeling in a geographic information system (GIS) to visualize the food environment to delimit where and when food is accessible on a daily basis. The interactive 3D geovisualization (visualization of geographic information) of space–time access contributed to improving the representation of food environment and exploring the inequity of food access across space and over time. The development of this geovisualization context for food science studies could assist public health professionals and government stakeholders in understanding the effect of temporal access and improving food access for regions with limited operation hours in policy formulation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper we analyze the opening hours of 50 randomly selected university libraries (UL) in Austria, Germany, Canada and the USA. The aim of this analysis is to identify possible influences on the extent of the opening hours. Potential influencing factors that we consider are library size and country (state) or linguistic area in which a library is located. The results of the analysis show that larger UL and UL that are located in the United States tend to be opened longer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In the past two decades urban time policies have been proposed and implemented in many European cities as a complement to traditional spatial planning methods. Such policies seek to provide an answer to the growing number of people facing time problems as a result of an erosion of collective time rhythms and a desynchronisation of different time structures of urban life. Particular emphasis is being placed on the reconciliation of opening hours of public service facilities with the travel and activity patterns of citizens in order to increase individual accessibility to urban services. In spite of the increasing relevance of time policies, only limited quantitative research has been conducted about the relationships between opening hours and accessibility. This paper seeks to extend this line of inquiry by exploring if and to what extent the accessibility of public facilities can be ameliorated by redesigning the timetables of service delivery. A method is proposed to optimise the temporal regime of public service delivery in terms of accessibility. The method is illustrated in a case study of accessibility of government offices within the city of Ghent (Belgium). Our findings suggest that by rescheduling the opening hours of public service facilities individual accessibility to service delivery can be improved significantly. Our study may support urban service deliverers, policymakers and urban planners in assessing timetables for a better ’accessible’ service provision. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: While many studies have concentrated on the effects of the spatial distribution of services on individual accessibility, only little is known about the ways in which equity of individual accessibility is affected by the temporal organisation of service delivery. This paper seeks to deepen our understanding about the relationship between accessibility, equity and the opening hours of public service facilities on the basis of space–time accessibility measures. Three approaches based on different equity principles are presented to schedule the opening hours of public service facilities: a utilitarian, an egalitarian and a distributive approach. A case study of public libraries in Ghent (Belgium) demonstrates the relevance of these approaches for amending the opening hours of public services to control the equity of accessibility levels across individuals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In March 2008 the New South Wales judiciary restricted pub closing times to 3 a.m., and later 3.30 a.m., in the central business district (CBD) of Newcastle, Australia. We sought to determine whether the restriction reduced the incidence of assault. Non-equivalent control group design with before and after observations. Newcastle, a city of 530 000 people. People apprehended for assault in the CBD and nearby Hamilton, an area with a similar night-time economy but where no restriction was imposed. Police-recorded assaults in the CBD before and after the restriction were compared with those in Hamilton. Cases were assaults occurring from 10 p.m.-6 a.m. from January 2001-March 2008, with April 2008-September 2009 as the post-restriction period. We also examined changes in assault incidence by time of night. Negative binomial regression with time, area, time × area interaction terms and terms for secular trend and seasonal effects was used to analyse the data. Autocorrelation was examined using generalized estimating equations. In the CBD, recorded assaults fell from 99.0 per quarter before the restriction to 67.7 per quarter afterward [incidence rate ratio (IRR): 0.66, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.55-0.80]. In the same periods in Hamilton, assault rates were 23.4 and 25.5 per quarter, respectively (IRR: 1.02, 95% CI: 0.79-1.31). The relative reduction attributable to the intervention was 37% (IRR = 0.63, 95% CI: 0.47-0.81) and approximately 33 assault incidents were prevented per quarter. This study indicates that a restriction in pub closing times to 3/3.30 a.m. in Newcastle, NSW, produced a large relative reduction in assault incidence of 37% in comparison to a control locality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]