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The aim of this study was to develop a scale to measure students' STEM continuing motivation (CM). In accordance with the conceptualisation of CM by Maehr (1976. Continuing motivation: An analysis of a seldom considered educational outcome. "Review of Educational Research," 46(3), 443-462. doi:10.3102/00346543046003443), we define STEM CM as students' tendencies to actively engage in STEM-related activities. The STEM Continuing Motivation Scale was developed from a literature review and student cognitive interviews, and was validated on a sample of 465 Chinese 7th and 8th graders. The results demonstrated that the developed scale had high reliability (Cronbach's a = 0.91) and good validity. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that boys had significantly higher STEM CM than girls and there were significant differences in engineering CM among students from different schools. The implications of the findings of this study are also discussed.

China is generally considered a safe place: among the safest for foreigners to visit. For local (long-term) residents and for Chinese criminology scholars, China as a country and its individual cities might be safer compared to many of their foreign peers; however, they might not be as safe as some travel agents claim. To show why this is the case, we crawled and geovisualized the 2015–2016 crime records (n = 24,803) available to the public online. The geovisualization shows that the seven crimes (n = 12,516) that were most likely to be influenced by space in Beijing were aggravated assault, blackmail, cheating and bluffing, dangerous driving, picking quarrels and provoking trouble, robbery and theft. It also shows a Beijing that many might not have known before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on China’s latest national railway network planning proposal, the connectivity and accessibility indices of China’s high-speed railway network (CHSRN) in different time periods are computed to evaluate the implications of high-speed rail (HSR) for Chinese cities. An overall index for measuring the connectivity-accessibility of cities on the HSR network is proposed based on three indicators: (a) the Beta index, to reflect the connectivity of the HSR, (b) the number of reachable counties by HSR within the 500-km domain of a city, to reflect the location-based accessibility of the HSR, and (c) the population of the reachable places by HSR within the 500-km domain of a city, to reflect the potential-based accessibility of the HSR. Finally, the differences in the normalized connectivity-accessibility levels of different categories of cities are qualified to measure the impact of China’s future national HSR network on the potential development of cities. It is found that “Mid-to-Long-Term Railway Network Plan (Revised in 2016)”, if fully realized, would profoundly change the HSR connectivity/accessibility of different cities. Most notably, cities in the Yangtze River Delta would suffer the most whereas cities of the central and western regions would gain the most. This could potentially contribute to, or bring about new changes in, the socioeconomic landscapes in China. The methodological contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, an overall index to evaluate the comprehensive connectivity and accessibility levels of the HSR network is designed. Secondly, this paper investigates how to qualify the impact of the future HSR network on different tiers of cities in different time periods according to the change of the overall connectivity/accessibility index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the co-presence which is a concept and a phenomenon of lasting interest among sociologists that has two dimensions such as co-presence as mode of being with others and co-presence as sense of being with others. It states that smartcard swipe data were used to quantify and visualise physical co-presences of metro riders along certain routes of the local metro system in Beijing, China.

Based on the construction scale of China's high-speed rail network (CHSRN) between 2007–2017, this paper presents the evolution process and network characteristics over this period. Additionally, according to China's latest national railway planning proposal - “The Mid- and Long-term Railway Network Plan” issued in 2016, the development prospects and impacting factors of future CHSRN from 2018 to 2030 are analyzed. The evolutionary process and regularity of CHSRN development is evaluated with various complex network measures. It is found that the degree and eccentricity of each Tier 1 city increase over time, but the pagerank of almost all Tier 1 cities decreases from 2007–2017 to 2018–2030, and that the contribution of the Tier 1 cities to the network connections decreases from 2007 to 2030. The Chinese government would be adopting an egalitarian model to construct the CHSRN in the long-term. Moreover, during the second period, the CHSRN would form increasingly more connections between more populated Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. From 2018–2030 the clustering coefficients of some Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities would be greater than those of Tier 1 cities. The HSR planners of China may have expected a larger share of passenger flows from the Tier 1 cities to Tiers 2 and 3 cities in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing jobs-housing balance studies have relied heavily if not solely on small data. Via a case study of Shanghai, this study shows how cellular network data can be processed to derive useful information, job and housing locations of commuters in particular, for those studies. Based on cellular network data, this article quantifies and visualizes Shanghai's jobs-housing balance with a much larger sample (n = 6.3 million), finer spatial resolution and greater geographic coverage than ever before. It identifies and geocodes the local commuters by Base Transceiver Station (BTS), which has on average a service area of 0.16 km 2 . After detecting jobs and housing by BTS, it aggregates them by subareas of particular interest (e.g., traffic analysis zones, inner city, suburbs and exurbs) to local planners and decision-makers. It also visualizes the traffic flows associated with the actual (T act ), theoretical minimum (T min ) and maximum (T max ) commutes. It shows that Shanghai's commuting pattern is far from the extremes (indicated by T max and T min traffic flows) and Shanghai's relative balance of jobs with respect to housing is decent (3.2 km) despite its huge population (24 million) and land area sizes (6800 km 2 ). The cumulative distribution of the T act and T min flows vary more significantly when the commuting distance is less than 6 km. In theory, there is high concentration of both jobs and housing within a 6-kilometer radius across different locales of the city. This potentially allows over 95% of all the local workers to find a job within 6 km of his/her residence or vice versa. In reality, a much lower percentage (71%) of workers can enjoy such a benefit. This can imply that there is qualitative mismatch between jobs and housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities are where innovations, face-to-face interactions and social capital are commonplace. Nevertheless, often regarded as ‘the ivory tower’, universities cannot be separated from the social and economic transformations outside of them. Traffic, information and financial flows between universities and other locations can be used to reveal connections between the ivory tower and other locales. Therefore, this paper uses the weekday public transit smartcard records from 6 to 9 April 2010 (158,262 transit trips in total, including bus-only, bus plus subway and subway-only trips) to identify and profile the most popular destinations of student riders from the ‘985 universities’ (a short list of top universities designated by the Chinese Central Government in 1999) and associated transit trip flows in Beijing. It identifies destination hotspots for the 985 universities’ students in Beijing, allocates traffic volume to major roads and delineates the transit trips of students from each campus. The results indicate that there exist only weak ties and little movement between the top universities and the most disadvantaged areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2011, the Ministry of Transport (MoT) of China announced to competitively select and fund at least 30 cities in their respective efforts of building a transit metropolis. Incentivized by MoT, many Chinese cities have started planning for a transit metropolis and even implementing related measures. This signifies some larger-than-ever government-led efforts towards the transit metropolis that we have heard of. Why did China/MoT initiate the transit metropolis program? Is the transit metropolis idea of MoT similar to what Robert Cervero defines in his book, which introduces the concept of transit metropolis and illustrates it using 12 exemplars? If not, why? Have Chinese cities followed the same principles or taken comparable measures proposed or identified by Cervero? Or, have they produced brand new principles or measures? If so, what is the implication? This article answers the above questions through literature review, interviews, surveys and case studies. It shows that MoT's idea of the transit metropolis differs notably from that of Cervero. Even though MoT proposes more universal and quantitative performance measures for a transit metropolis than Cervero, its perspectives and policies are still parochial. Local governments, nevertheless, have comparable principles or measures like Cervero. But compared to a transit metropolis exemplar such as Curitiba, they overlook issues such as the match between regional commuter sheds and the services/administrative boundaries of local transit-related entities, coordinated, regionalized transit services and fares, pedestrian-friendly streets and parking pricing strategies. The above indicate that more work is needed to better define, plan and implement a transit metropolis in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When optimising the overall commuting pattern for a city or a region, there are often winners and losers among commuters at the subdivision level. Losers are those who are burdened with longer commutes than before the optimisation. Knowing who or where losers are is of interest to both researchers and policy-makers. The information would help them efficiently locate losers and compensate them. Few, however, pay attention to such losers. By revisiting ‘excess commuting’ in the economic framework, we show that optimising the commuting pattern is comparable to restoring Pareto optimality in commuting. Using Beijing as a case study, we identify and geo-visualise the losers when the city’s bus commuting pattern is optimised. We examine the severity of the loss among the losers, the spatial pattern of the losers and their influencing factors. We find that most losers are located around the epicenter. The severity of the loss is independent of jobs/housing ratio but is associated with the commute distance before the optimisation. Workers whose commute distance is less than the global average are more likely to become losers. Places where losers reside have significantly lower employment density in a few industries than where non-losers reside. A low jobs/housing ratio in individual subareas does not necessarily increase the average trip length of commuters therein. A low jobs/housing ratio of one or several subareas, however, could influence the average trip length of all the commuters in the area. Locating diverse jobs and housing opportunities around or along transit corridors could compensate the losers and reduce the overall commuting cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study aimed at mapping the commuting with cellular network data for solving problem of traffic jam in Shanghai, China. It mentions need for quantifying and visualizing the location of commuters where they reside and work. It states various solutions for dealing with traffic jam such as increasing the carrying capacity of the transportation system, reducing number of commuting trips and distributing commuting trips across modes of travel, space and time.

Walking is an imperative travel mode, especially for short trips. Walking accessibility, which is defined as the ease of reaching essential destinations in the walk-in catchment area, may affect property prices because residents are more likely to be willing to pay for this attribute. In addition, different categories of public services may have varied influencing directions and magnitude. These two hypotheses are tested in this study. Taking Xiamen, China as a case study, we estimate the cumulative opportunities of public services on foot and develop a set of hedonic pricing models (more specifically, two pre-specified ordinary least squares models, four Box-Cox transformed models, and two spatial econometric models) to estimate, whether and to what extent, walking accessibility contributes to price premiums (or discounts). Using a database of 22,586 second-hand residential properties in 358 multi- or high-storey residential complexes, we find that (1) walking accessibility to public services contributes to the variations in housing prices and plays a role in determining housing prices; (2) different categories of services have vastly divergent, even opposite, influencing impacts; and (3) walking accessibility to primary schools, commercial centers, and sports and cultural centers have positive effects on house prices whereas walking accessibility to comprehensive hospitals adversely affects housing prices. Methodologically, we confirm that spatial econometric methods improve estimation accuracy and have more explanatory power relative to the standard non-spatial models. Robustness check analysis further guarantees the plausibility of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of COVID-19 and subsequent pandemic containment measures have significantly affected our daily life, which has been extensively examined in the existing scholarship. However, the existing scholarship has done little on the jobs/housing relationship impacts of COVID-19. We attempted to fill this gap by using an excess-commuting approach. The approach allows us to analyse a series of jobs-housing matrices based on the location-based service big data of around fifty million individuals in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), China before and amid COVID-19. In the PRD, a zero-COVID policy was implemented, which presents a distinct and interesting context for our study. We found that after the COVID-19 outbreak: (1) residences and employment became more centrally located in downtowns, which is opposite to the suburbanization trend elsewhere; (2) in the whole PRD, the minimum and maximum commutes became smaller while the actual commute became larger, indicating the simultaneous presences of some paradoxical phenomena: a better spatial juxtaposition of jobs and housing, more compressed distribution of jobs and housing, and longer average actual commutes; (3) inter-city commutes between large cities were significantly refrained and decreased, while new inter-city commuters between smaller cities emerged; (4) it was more likely for the less-educated and female workers to see smaller minimum commutes amid COVID-19. This paper illustrates the potential of big data in the longitudinal study on jobs-housing relationships and excess commuting. It also produces new insights into such relationships in a unique context where stringent anti-COVID-19 policies have been continuously in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] This paper estimates CO2 emissions from China’s urban passenger transportation. [•] A “bottom-up” methodology is developed based upon passenger travel behaviors. [•] Traffic optimization can reduce 21% of the transportation energy in 2030. [•] Traffic plus urban optimization will reduce 43% of the transportation energy in 2030. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Reveals the rationale for R+P programs in Mainland China. • The obstacles for private sector participation thereof. • The balance between profit and social obligations in R+P programs. • Local business environment has discouraged private sector participation. Populous Chinese cities have invested heavily in metro systems and planned proactively for transit-oriented development. Rail plus property (R+P) programs, where metro corporations engage in, and even orchestrate real estate development in or around rail station areas, have been recurrently reported among these cities. However, careful assessment of these programs is still rare in the existing literature. Built upon multiple R+P programs led by Shenzhen Metro Cooperation and/or Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway Cooperation, this article fathoms the rationale for R+P programs in Mainland China, the obstacles for oversea private investors' participation and the balance between profit making and social goods supply. It finds that R+P programs serve as alternative funding sources for expensive metro projects. It decreases municipal governments' cash flow contribution to those projects, which is mandated by the central government. In addition, local business environment for R+P projects has disadvantaged private sector participation, especially those private investors from overseas. Furthermore, public subsidy to local metro corporations is likely to persist as R+P programs have not been designed for economic value maximization; rather, they are in place because (1) they reduce the cash flow burden of the municipal government; (2) they are tasked by the municipal government to produce a considerable number of affordable public housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]