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Most semi-enclosed seas have experienced severe eutrophication owing to high nutrient loading from rivers during rapid population growth periods. In Japan, the coastal areas of some megacities (e.g. Tokyo and Osaka) experienced considerable economic growth during the 1960s–1970s. Therefore, determining the amount of nutrient loading during this period is essential to undertake measures for the conservation of coastal environments. However, determining the nutrient loading that occurred several decades ago is generally difficult owing to lacking water quality records. In this study, the nitrogen loading in the Yamato River catchment, an urbanized coastal catchment in Asia, for 80 years from the 1940s to the 2010s is reconstructed using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool. We considered factors such as population growth, wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) construction, and changes in land and fertilizer usage in different urbanization stages. Results show that the total nitrogen loading in the catchment peaked in the 1970s at 6616 tons yr ^−1 owing to untreated wastewater discharge and rapid increase in population growth. By reducing 57% of the nitrogen loading in the 2010s from the catchment, WWTPs have been instrumental in improving the water environment. The decrease in and integration of agricultural land has reduced nitrogen loading attributed to nonpoint sources; however, this reduction was not obvious because of the high fertilizer usage before the 2000s. Overall, the findings of this study provide a comprehensive understanding of the impact of rapid urbanization in an Asian coastal catchment on nitrogen loading during the high economic growth period in the past. This study will be useful for the long-term assessment of nutrient loading in other.

Global large-scale urbanization has a deep impact on climate change and has brought great challenges to sustainable development, especially in urban agglomerations. At present, there is still a lack of research on the quantitative assessment of the relationship between urban scale and urban expansion and the degree of the urban heat island (UHI) effect, as well as a discussion on mitigation and adaptation of the UHI effect from the perspective of planning. This paper analyzes the regional urbanization process, average surface temperature variation characteristics, surface urban heat island (SUHI), which reflects the intensity of UHI, and the relationship between urban expansion, urban scale, and the UHI in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration using multi-source analysis of data from 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015. The results show that the UHI effect in the study area was significant. The average surface temperature of central areas was the highest, and decreased from central areas to suburbs in the order of central areas > expanding areas > rural residential areas. From the perspective of spatial distribution, in Beijing, the southern part of the study area, the junction of Tianjin, Langfang, and Cangzhou are areas with intense SUHI. The scale and pace of expansion of urban land in Beijing were more than in other cities, the influencing range of SUHI in Beijing increased obviously, and the SUHI of central areas was most intense. The results indicate that due to the larger urban scale of the BTH urban agglomeration, it will face a greater UHI effect. The UHI effect was also more significant in areas of dense distribution in cities within the urban agglomeration. Based on results and existing research, planning suggestions are proposed for central areas with regard to expanding urban areas and suburbs to alleviate the urban heat island effect and improve the resilience of cities to climate change.

Owing to the crucial environmental and hydrological functions of river systems and intensive human disturbance, further investigations of their change patterns and flood control functions are urgently needed. The Rapidly Urbanized Taihu Basin (RUTB) was selected as the study region to investigate changes in the river networks, the relationship between changes in river systems and urbanization, and the changes in the static drainage storage capacity (SC) and regulation capacity (RC) from the 1980s to the 2010s. The results indicated that the total drainage density in RUTB decreased by 10.17%. For the first‐, second‐, and third‐order rivers, the changes are +7.61%, −14.35%, and −17.84%, respectively. Spatially, the change pattern of the third‐order river drainage density displayed significant spatial clustering. The ratio of main to tributary river length (Rmt) was increased from 0.31 in the 1980s to 0.39 in the 2010s. Spatially, the drastic increases were found in the south‐east of Wu–Cheng–Xi–Yu, the east of Yang–Cheng–Dian–Mao, and the central southern part of Hang–Jia–Hu. Results moreover show that urbanization has the greatest influence on the third‐order drainage density, especially around the secondary and rapidly developing cities. The demand for flood control has led to a slight increase in the density of main rivers. The values of SC and RC decreased by 0.69% and 40.61% in RUTB, respectively. These changes were mainly concentrated around the major cities and urban corridors. The decrease in SC was caused by the decay of the river system, and the reduction in RC was caused by a combination of river system degradation and increase in ordinary water levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few years, rapid urbanization has stressed an urgent need for the development of comprehensive and efficient contingency plans in urban spaces. Amongst other actions to take, evacuation plans are important solutions to protect people from unforeseen effects of disasters. In this paper, we develop an optimal method to design appropriate evacuation plans. Its objectives include minimizing total clearance time and travel time of each evacuee, avoiding traffic congestions, and balancing traffic loads among different exits. A series of algorithms are developed to determine the departure time, the destination, and the route of each evacuation group. A time-extended network model is presented to support these algorithms. A real-world case is employed to examine the performance of the proposed model. The performance and applicability of the proposed approach when targeting different scales and granularities of evacuation are discussed and analyzed in detail. Results demonstrate that the above four objectives can be closely satisfied, and the approach performs better for evacuations with a large scale and a small granularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research underlines the need to improve water management policies for areas linked to confined karstic aquifers subjected to intensive exploitation, and to develop additional efforts towards monitoring their subsidence evolution. We analyze subsidence related to intensive use of groundwater in a confined karstic aquifer, through the use of the InSAR technique, by the southern coast of Spain (Costa del Sol). Carbonates are overlain by an unconfined detritic aquifer with interlayered high transmissivity rocks, in connection with the Mediterranean Sea, where the water level is rather stable. Despite this, an accumulated deformation in the line-of-sight (LOS) direction greater than −100 mm was observed by means of the ERS-1/2 (1992–2000) and Envisat (2003–2009) satellite SAR sensors. During this period, the Costa del Sol experienced a major population increase due to the expansion of the tourism industry, with the consequent increase in groundwater exploitation. The maximum LOS displacement rates recorded during both time spans are respectively −6 mm/yr and −11 mm/yr, respectively. During the entire period, there was an accumulated descent of the confined water level of 140 m, and several fluctuations of more than 80 m correlating with the subsidence trend observed for the whole area. Main sedimentary depocenters (up to 800 m), revealed by gravity prospecting, partly coincide with areas of subsidence maxima; yet ground deformation is also influenced by other factors, the main ones being the fine-grained facies distribution and rapid urbanization due to high touristic pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to the dramatic pace and scale of its transformation, Nigeria is considered Africa’s next urban giant. Between 1960 and 2010, Nigeria added approximately 62.5 million inhabitants to its urban population, with forecasts to 2050 projecting an additional 226 million. As Nigeria forges ahead into the next chapter of its urban transition, there is an unmet need to take stock of past experiences, identify trends, and speculate on future growth trajectories. Taking advantage of recently available datasets from the United Nations and the Africapolis Project, this paper launches an inquiry into the nature and causes of Nigeria’s rapid urban transition between 1960 and 2010. It disaggregates urbanization into its individual components of urban growth and calculates their contributions to the overall urban increment. Several notable findings are highlighted. Nigeria, which is considered a late urbanizer, is currently in the accelerated stage of its urban transition and is projected to enter the terminal stage by 2030. Urban natural population increase has been the dominant component of urban growth in the post-colonial period and will likely continue to be so in the immediate future. Despite this, policies aimed at stemming rural to urban migration appear to have been the preferred mechanism for lessening the pressures posed by the contemporary urban transition, suggesting a potential policy mismatch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tong’an Bay (TAB) is a semienclosed embayment in the north of Xiamen Island. The sea area of TAB was mainly used for aquaculture in enclosed areas before 2003. Since 2003, the districts surrounding TAB have been undergoing a rapid urbanization process, and the scale of land used for urban construction in these districts has been continuously increasing. Under the backdrop of rapid urbanization, the coastline of TAB has largely been transformed into an artificial coastline. Due to the large scale of land reclamation and, dredging activities and the opening of the Gaoqi-Jimei (GJ) Seawall, there have been relatively significant changes in the coastal and submarine geomorphology in central northern, western, and southern TAB and Wuyuan Bay as well as a significant increase in the area where artificial submarine geomorphologies are distributed; the number of surface sediment types in the TAB has increased, and sediments in the sea area surrounding engineering projects have been coarsening; the sediment transport pattern has not significantly changed at the mouth of TAB and in central northern TAB, but the suspended sediment transport direction near the GJ Seawall has changed to a certain extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global warming and rapid urbanization has significantly resulted in exacerbation of the urban heat island (UHI). However, most of the previous studies neglected the impact of terrain background on the UHI effect. Lanzhou city, the second largest city of Northwest China, is chosen as the case study, the typical valley terrain, fast urbanization and serious atmospheric pollution have caused unique urban climate characteristics. Based on the observational experiments between urban and rural areas, the meteorological data of four weather stations in past 60 years, economic and social development statistical data, trends of the regional temperature and UHI characteristics in different time-scales are analyzed. Then, the contribution of the urbanization effect on the urban air temperature alteration is evaluated, and finally a potential relation between the urbanization and the UHI are examined. Results show that the temperature of Lanzhou demonstrates a rising trend in the wave curve during the past 60 years. Based on Mann-Kendall analysis, an unusual change in the annual temperature is found in 1993. There are quasi-periodic variations on the time scales of seven years in the annual mean and maximum temperature series. Furthermore, it is found that the UHI effect of Lanzhou increases year by year, especially after 1980s. The UHI intensity shows a large seasonal dependence, being strongest in winter (0.43 °C/10a), and weakest in spring (0.17 °C/10a). And, daily UHI intensity analyses also present the characteristics to be strong during a night and weak during a day; the difference between the maximum and minimum UHI is biggest in summers. In general, the contribution rate of the UHI effect to regional temperature is 57.3%. Eventually, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method is used to extract the first principal component of nine urbanization indices, and construct a comprehensive urbanization index. The cubic fit regression model between the UHI and comprehensive urbanization index is established, which verifies Kuznets phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statement of the problem: Cities inherently encounter complex, interrelated, and widespread challenges that can only be solved through a systematic approach. In other words, the accumulation of a huge mass of people has led to chaos, and created the conditions that not only led to the collapse of the balance of the cities but also achievement of stability is impossible with the current methods of administration and urban development. As a result, urban planners around the world are trying to provide models with an integrative perspective to all aspects of urbanization development in the 21st century in order to meet new demands and expectations of today. One of the new concepts that deals with the current challenges in the field of urban planning is development of a smart city that has attracted much attention in recent years. Smart City has been raised as a pivotal factor of the Millennium Development that can open new concepts in urban planning and combine capabilities of real and virtual world to solve urban problems. Research goal: The aim of this study is to provide a foundation for researches in smart cities. In fact, it aims to explain the concept, meanings, dimensions, attributes, indexes, conventional beliefs, challenges and risks facing the smart city theoretically through profound analysis of relevant literature in this field and discussing the concept. Research Methodology: The research method is descriptive-analytical. Results: The results show that despite extensive literature on the concept of smart cities, a clear understanding and consensus on this issue does not exist and various academic researchers have suggested various contents. So that some smart technologies are considered as the only or least important component of the smart city, others have suggested a definition that goes beyond technology and believe that technology adoption is not the end. Technologies can be used in cities to empower citizens by adapting these technologies to their needs rather than adapting their lives to the requirements of technology. In addition, the meaning of a smart city is multifaceted. The key point is that cities must respond to changes in the context in which they operate. Moreover, what should be considered as intelligent depends on a variety of underlying conditions such as the political system, geography and dissemination of technology. In fact, smart solutions simply cannot be copied; therefore, the value for each field should be evaluated differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How human activities impact on coastal ecosystem during rapid urbanization is one of the hot spots in the coastal management study. In this paper, we comparatively evaluate changes in the positive and the negative ecological elements of Shenzhen's coastal zone in the rapid urbanization process to understand impacts of human activities. The positive and the negative ecological elements divided by built of classification based on extracted land uses from multi-source remote sensing images and land-use degree index. Then landscape indexes such as AWMSI, ED, PSSD, PSCOV at the class level and CONNECT, SHEI at both class level and landscape level were used to reveal spatial and temporal differentiation of impacts of human activities on ecological elements. Results revealed that impacts of human activities on coastal ecosystem were stronger in west coast than that in east coast, and environmental protection awareness of government began to enhance from 2000, whereas the ecosystem health didn't become better. Future urbanization plans about coastal zones need to consider the ecological benefit of the landscape pattern from both a local and global point of view. This method can contribute to the sustainable management of other coastal zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UN Habitat estimates that more than fifty percent of global population is now urbanized. Carbon emission, urbanization and climate change are intricately linked with each other. To sustain growing household energy demand in Pakistan, carbon emission has substantially increased, which is reflected by country's rank among climate vulnerable nations. Unsustainable use of energy is a major contributor of urban carbon footprint. Study of household carbon footprint is thus felt imperative to identify key factors of carbon footprint increase. This study aims to compare the carbon footprint of urban slum (Kachi Abadi, Khayaban-e-Sirsyed) and non-slum areas (Bahria Town, Gulraiz Colony) of Rawalpindi city to assess the environmental burden in the form of CO 2 emissions generated at the household consumption practices. Results clearly indicate that the household carbon footprint of non-slum areas is higher than urban slum areas. Carbon footprint of non-slum areas shows highly significant increment along with the increasing monthly income of their inhabitants ( r  = 0.49 p  = .02; r  = 0.79 p  < .01). Regression analysis revealed significant impact of individual use of personal vehicles on increasing carbon footprint in non-slum areas (R 2  = 0.61; p  < .01). Findings presented here substantially contribute in highlighting key household parameters that actually depicts consumption patterns linked with carbon emission. We conclude that the escalating household consumption by attaining luxurious life style leads to increase in carbon footprint significantly at domestic level, which could be reduced by using less carbon intensive products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities undergoing rapid urbanization are characterized by quick successions of spatiotemporal patterns, meaning that traditional methods cannot adequately assess carbon emissions from urban residential areas, which prevents the study of spatial mismatch. Therefore, this study utilizes night-time lights to construct a spatial emissions model that enables the analysis of the evolution of emissions patterns in China. The results indicate that, compared to the traditional method, the spatial modeling based on night-time lights reflects the spatial emissions trajectories in a more timely and accurate manner in rapidly urbanizing cities. Additionally, we found a relatively low degree of spatial match between emissions and economic activities, with the former, which are greatly affected by urbanization, having a larger dynamism and instability than the latter. Such spatial mismatch effect illustrates that policy makers should focus on factors beyond economics in order to reduce residential carbon emissions during China's rapid urbanization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lanzhou New District is the first and largest national-level new district in the Loess Plateau region of China. Large-scale land creation and rapid utilization of the land surface for construction has induced various magnitudes of land subsidence in the region, which is posing an increasing threat to the built environment and quality of life. In this study, the spatial and temporal evolution of surface subsidence in Lanzhou New District was assessed using Persistent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture radar (PSInSAR) to process the ENVISAT SAR images from 2003-2010, and the Small Baseline Subset (SBAS) InSAR to process the Sentinel-1A images from 2015-2016. We found that the land subsidence exhibits distinct spatiotemporal patterns in the study region. The spatial pattern of land subsidence has evidently extended from the major urban zone to the land creation region. Significant subsidence of 0-55 mm/year was detected between 2015 and 2016 in the land creation and urbanization area where either zero or minor subsidence of 0-17.2 mm/year was recorded between 2003 and 2010. The change in the spatiotemporal pattern appears to be dominated mainly by the spatial heterogeneity of land creation and urban expansion. The spatial associations of subsidence suggest a clear geological control, in terms of the presence of compressible sedimentary deposits; however, subsidence and groundwater fluctuations are weakly correlated. We infer that the processes of land creation and rapid urban construction are responsible for determining subsidence over the region, and the local geological conditions, including lithology and the thickness of the compressible layer, control the magnitude of the subsidence process. However, anthropogenic activities, especially related to land creation, have more significant impacts on the detected subsidence than other factors. In addition, the higher collapsibility and compressibility of the loess deposits in the land creation region may be the underlying mechanism of macro-subsidence in Lanzhou New District. Our results provide a useful reference for land creation, urban planning and subsidence mitigation in the Loess Plateau region, where the large-scale process of bulldozing mountains and valley infilling to create level areas for city construction is either underway or forthcoming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's rapid urbanization is characterized by large-scale construction activities which require enormous amounts of construction materials and induce a series of resource and environmental problems. However, few studies have paid serious attention to construction material metabolism within urban ecosystems in the Chinese urbanization hotspot. This study focuses on changes in cement metabolism in Xiamen from 2002 to 2012 and aims to elucidate its metabolic characteristics and mechanisms. The results show that, (1) residential buildings account for 1/3 of total cement use, with more and more accumulating as unused stock; (2) decoration is the second largest cement consumer after building and should be paid more attention in metabolism analyses; (3) road transport infrastructure is expected to maintain its growing potential for cement use; (4) increasing amounts of construction and demolition waste are hardly reused or recycled. To mitigate ecological pressures resulting from urban cement metabolism and foster sustainable construction, a multidimensional policy portfolio is proposed including development of improved real estate policies, optimization of urban spatial patterns, popularization of decoration-binding residential buildings and premixed mortar usage, establishment of a waste recycling system, industrialization of the construction industry and the promotion of sustainable consumption. This empirical research provides a reference template for future sustainable construction material management studies in rapidly urbanizing areas elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shenzhen is one of the world's cities with the fastest urbanization and the most astonishing changes, and it is also a typical benchmark of Chinese rapid urbanization miracle. Under the tide of neoliberalism and globalization, the central government gave Shenzhen the priority of reform and experimentation first, then it has been rapidly pushed to the front stage as a test field for China's reform and opening up. Shenzhen has become the world's first-tier city in a short time with its location advantage and high-quality talent attraction, as well as active private economy and scientific and technological innovation. Through the multi-dimensional data analysis of the great changes during Shenzhen's urbanization, and a summary of the advantages of the Shenzhen model, this paper systematically answers the question that why Shenzhen can achieve urbanization so quickly. Furthermore, it concludes challenges of Shenzhen's future development and discusses the inspirations of the Shenzhen model for other cities. Based on the above analysis, this paper constructs an organic framework comprehensively covering achievements, characteristics, challenges, and inspirations of Shenzhen's rapid urbanization model. In the future, Shenzhen needs to transform from "Shenzhen Speed" to "Shenzhen Quality" to realize sustainable high-quality urbanization. • The drastic changes of Shenzhen's urbanization in the past 40 years from three dimensions of population, economy and land. • Five prominent characteristics of Shenzhen's urbanization development model. • Summary of three challenges of Shenzhen's future sustainable development. • Some inspirations from Shenzhen model for other cities, especially global southern cities, to learn and replicate. • A comprehensive framework covering achievements, model, challenges, and inspirations of Shenzhen's urbanization development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The ERP has caused significant changes in the landscape pattern. • The impact of landscape patterns on WESs in different periods was assessed from a geospatial perspective. • Landscape composition has a greater impact on WESs than configuration. • PD and CONTAG are the main factors affecting WESs. Understanding the changes and drivers of water ecosystem services (WESs) can provide guidance for the management of ecological restoration programs (ERPs). This study analyzed the changes in WESs (water yield and water purification) and landscape patterns in the Jianghuai Ecological Economic Zone (JHEEZ) from 2000 to 2020 and revealed the effect of landscape patterns on WESs in different periods (development priority and ecological priority) through a geographic detector (GD) and geographic weighted regression (GWR). During the development priority period, there was an increase in landscape diversity and aggregation, as well as a decrease in landscape fragmentation and complexity. Additionally, the area of water bodies landscape decreased while the aggregation of cropland and built-up land increased. In contrast, during the ecological priority period, landscape diversity, fragmentation, and complexity increased, while landscape aggregation decreased. The water body area also increased, and cropland fragmentation increased. Water yield experienced an initial decrease and subsequent increase, while water purification continued to improve. Patch density and the contagion index are the main factors affecting WESs, and the improvement of water connectivity and the reduction of fragmented Landscape are of great significance to WESs. This study analyzed the impact of landscape pattern changes on WESs from a geospatial perspective and provided a reference for the sustainable development of ERPs in the JHEEZ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Rapid urbanization has altered many ecosystems, causing a decline in many ecosystem services, generating serious ecological crisis. To cope with these challenges, we presented a comprehensive framework comprising five core steps for identifying and managing hotspots of critical ecosystem services in a rapid urbanizing region. This framework was applied in the case study of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) Region. The study showed that there was large spatial heterogeneity in the hotspots of ecosystem services in the region, hotspots of supporting services and regulating services aggregately distributing in the southwest mountainous areas while hotspots of provisioning services mainly in the northeast plain, and hotspots of cultural services widespread in the waterbodies and southwest mountainous areas. The regionalization of the critical ecosystem services was made through the hotspot analysis. This study provided valuable information for environmental planning and management in a rapid urbanizing region and helped improve China's ecological redlines policy at regional scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limited success in 3R (reduce, reuse, recycle) implementation and conflicts in waste treatment plant construction call for active and sustained public participation in Chinese waste management. It is especially important to identify factors which affect citizen participation in waste reduction and recycling where waste policies are poorly implemented. In this paper we report the results of a research-constructed survey conducted in Xiamen, one of eight cities in China which have been operating waste source separation pilot programs since 2000. The results showed that while more than half of respondents were satisfied with local waste management, waste recycling was still inefficient and largely carried out by the informal sector. Satisfaction rates and basic residential house prices were positively correlated, and the satisfaction rate was higher in newly urbanizing areas than in old downtown and urban village areas. A structural equation model was used to identify key factors influencing citizen environmental willingness to participate in waste management, and this indicated that the most important influencing factor was citizen knowledge, followed by social motivation, while institutional factors had the smallest positive effect. Citizens who were better informed and lived in a community/family with more environmentally friendly behaviors have a greater propensity to participate in sustainable waste management. The model is useful for identifying causal relationships and ranking influencing factors in terms of their importance. The results indicate a waste policy hierarchy in Chinese cities, and future waste management should change from the current legislative-centered strategy. The results can be used to inform decision makers find locally effective strategies to improve public participation in waste management in accordance with socioeconomic and cultural conditions in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With cities sprawling and populations booming in developing regions, ensuring social sustainability in urban areas has become more urgent. This study investigates the challenges of implementing social sustainability initiatives for cities in developing countries, focusing on Dhaka as a representative city. A mixed-method approach involving structured questionnaire surveys and key informant interviews was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The study identified eighteen challenges to implementing social sustainability initiatives in Dhaka city, including a lack of poor urban governance, an inefficient city management system, a lack of political stability, a long delay in the planning approval process, etc. Additionally, experts identified additional challenges that require attention. The study offers empirical evidence to assist government officials, policymakers, and urban planners overcome these challenges and implement social sustainability effectively. To address the identified challenges, the study recommends revisiting the Structure Plan, Urban Area Plan, Detailed Area Plan, and Urban Sector Policy-2011. It highlights the crucial role of community social workers in mitigating specific issues in socially sustainable urban development. Eventually, the study will contribute to the implementation of SDG-11 in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by bridging the gap between urbanization and socially sustainable cities., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Şehirler enerji konusunda oburdur; aydınlatma, ısınma, serinleme ve ulaşım için sürekli daha fazla enerji ister. Diğer taraftan şehirler, daha yeşil bir yaşamın umut kaynağıdır; insan faaliyetlerini bir yerde yoğunlaştırmalarısayesinde, geriye kalan alanlar üzerindeki etkiyi hafiflettikleri gibi, yeniliklere uygun bir ortam sunar. Bu bağlamda şehirlerin, dünyamızın büyüme sancılarına en iyi çözüm olacağıöngörülmektedir. Daha fazla şehirleşme bir çözüm olabilir. Bununla birlikte, hızlı şehirleşme süreci, yerele, geleneksele ve doğal dokuya saygılısakin şehirlerin cazibesini her geçen gün daha da artırmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, doğa dostu şehirlerin dünyadaki ve Türkiye’deki örneklerini oluşturan sakin şehirlerde sürdürülen permakültürel yaşam tarzıdeğerlendirilerek bu şehirlerdeki koruma, planlama, yönetim ve eğitim pratikleri gözden geçirilmektedir.

Lanzhou New District is the first and largest national-level new district in the Loess Plateau region of China. Large-scale land creation and rapid utilization of the land surface for construction has induced various magnitudes of land subsidence in the region, which is posing an increasing threat to the built environment and quality of life. In this study, the spatial and temporal evolution of surface subsidence in Lanzhou New District was assessed using Persistent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture radar (PSInSAR) to process the ENVISAT SAR images from 2003–2010, and the Small Baseline Subset (SBAS) InSAR to process the Sentinel-1A images from 2015–2016. We found that the land subsidence exhibits distinct spatiotemporal patterns in the study region. The spatial pattern of land subsidence has evidently extended from the major urban zone to the land creation region. Significant subsidence of 0–55 mm/year was detected between 2015 and 2016 in the land creation and urbanization area where either zero or minor subsidence of 0–17.2 mm/year was recorded between 2003 and 2010. The change in the spatiotemporal pattern appears to be dominated mainly by the spatial heterogeneity of land creation and urban expansion. The spatial associations of subsidence suggest a clear geological control, in terms of the presence of compressible sedimentary deposits; however, subsidence and groundwater fluctuations are weakly correlated. We infer that the processes of land creation and rapid urban construction are responsible for determining subsidence over the region, and the local geological conditions, including lithology and the thickness of the compressible layer, control the magnitude of the subsidence process. However, anthropogenic activities, especially related to land creation, have more significant impacts on the detected subsidence than other factors. In addition, the higher collapsibility and compressibility of the loess deposits in the land creation region may be the underlying mechanism of macro-subsidence in Lanzhou New District. Our results provide a useful reference for land creation, urban planning and subsidence mitigation in the Loess Plateau region, where the large-scale process of bulldozing mountains and valley infilling to create level areas for city construction is either underway or forthcoming.

This article examines the evolution of planning education in China in response to rapid social and economic changes, the growth of planning schools and students, and curriculum design development in various planning schools. It argues that the legacy of the planned economy still influences planning education, which means top–down, elite-driven, and blueprint-style planning that lacks a wide social foundation. With the advent of rapid urbanization and explosive economic growth, further changes to planning education in terms of values, approaches, and targets will be needed in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantifying the landscape pattern change can effectively demonstrate the ecological progresses and the consequences of urbanization. Based on remotely sensed land cover data in 1994, 2000, 2006 and a gradient analysis with landscape metrics at landscape- and class- level, we attempted to characterize the individual and entire landscape patterns of Shanghai metropolitan during the rapid urbanization. We highlighted that a roadscape transect approach that combined the buffer zone method and the transect-based approach was introduced to describe the urban-rural patterns of agricultural, residential, green, industrial, and public facilities land along the railway route. Our results of landscape metrics showed significant spatiotemporal patterns and gradient variations along the transect. The urban growth pattern in two time spans conform to the hypothesis for diffusion–coalescence processes, implying that the railway is adaptive as a gradient element to analyze the landscape patterns with urbanization. As the natural landscape was replaced by urban landscape gradually, the desakota region expanded its extent widely. Suburb areas witnessed the continual transformation from the predominantly rural landscape to peri-urban landscape. Furthermore, the gap between urban and rural areas remained large especially in public service. More reasonable urban plans and land use policies should push to make more efforts to coordinate urban-rural development. This study is a meaningful trial in demonstrating a new form of urban–rural transects to study the landscape change of large cities. By combining gradient analysis with landscape metrics, we addressed the process of urbanization both spatially and temporally, and provided a more quantitative approach to urban studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In past decades, China has experienced rapid urbanization, which has brought about environmental changes. The assessment of regional environmental risk (RER) is a complex study for evaluating risk associated with risk sources, risk receptors, and risk retardation under uncertainty. This study aims to evaluate the RER through the holistic macro-assessment, and to ascertain management guide for rapid urbanization to diminish the RER. The results of our case study in the Su-Xi-Chang city cluster, which is a metropolitan area that largely contributed to the economic growth of Jiangsu Province, showed that the RER scores constantly increased from 0.506 to 0.817 during the period from 2001 to 2011. Coupled with the current tendency, in addition, scenario predictions revealed that rapid expansion of urban land would cause a multiple increase in RER. However, RER would begin to decline if the rate of urban population growth (UPG) stabilizes at 1.7%. Moreover, when the urban population ratio increases to 78% along the previous trend, a higher UPG corresponds to a lower declining rate of RER. Otherwise, a lower UPG corresponds to an earlier decline of RER. Finally, implementing city cluster plans was discussed to provide a scientific basis for guiding risk management and sustainable development of urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of thresholds shows important implications for environmental and resource management. Here we derived potential landscape thresholds which indicated abrupt changes in water quality or the dividing points between exceeding and failing to meet national surface water quality standards for a rapidly urbanizing city on the Eastern Coast in China. The analysis of landscape thresholds was based on regression models linking each of the seven water quality variables to each of the six landscape metrics for this coupled land-water system. We found substantial and accelerating urban sprawl at the suburban areas between 2000 and 2008, and detected significant nonlinear relations between water quality and landscape pattern. This research demonstrated that a simple modeling technique could provide insights on environmental thresholds to support more-informed decision making in land use, water environmental and resilience management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization modifies the landscape with green and blue spaces (GBS), which further leads to a functional change along an urban-rural gradient. Emotional improvement is a critical service of GBS, which may be perceived and exposed through facial expressions by visitors. How people react, however, may vary at different locations of a city at varied phases of urbanization. In this study, happy and sad emotions were rated as scores from 7965 Sina-Weibo users who visited 77 GBS across 49 cities of East China in 2020. GBS were located in different regions of a city, either near downtown or in more rural-like regions. Compared to cities near the Hu Huanyong line, those along the eastern coast were built with parks that had smaller green spaces at lower elevations in locations near downtown. They also had larger blue spaces in parks at suburban areas of the same cities. People expressed more happiness in GBS in regions closer to remote rural regions, or in cities further from the eastern coast. Larger green spaces were associated with by the presentation more smiles in parks near downtown, while experiences in large blue spaces evoked positive emotions at suburban areas. Overall, GBS in population-dense regions of more developed cities can be perceived as an activation of exposing higher depression by visitors. More smiles can be exposed in GBS with a large green space near downtown, or with a large blue space at suburban regions of a city in East China. • A total of 7965 facial expressions were rated for visitors in 77 urban forest parks across 49 cities in East China. • Green space area, park area, and elevation of parks around downtowns were negatively correlated with longitude. • Blue space areas of parks at suburban regions were positively related with both longitude and latitude. • People in parks around downtown perceived more sadness and less happiness compared to those in countryside. • Large blue space at lowland accounted for the presentation of positive emotions of people visiting suburban parks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ongoing, rapid urbanization accompanied by habitat fragmentation and loss poses great threats to biodiversity and the ecosystem. Maintaining ecological networks (ENs) connectivity provides a powerful landscape strategy to confront these ecological consequences. However, for rapid urbanization contexts, the connectivity of ENs cannot be well maintained by the current protection system under the impacts of continuous land expansion. Although the stepping-stones protection offers feasible connectivity-based schemes, the degree of their availability in dynamic land expansion scenarios is unclear. In this study, we developed a static and dynamic coupling approach that emphasized a comprehensive ENs protection system should be incorporated into future land expansion scenarios. The system included landscape defects identification which can be built as stepping-stones outside the traditional ENs establishment framework for ENs connectivity restoration. Taking Southern Jiangsu as the application case, our results showed that there were 127 existing landscape defects covering a total area of 285.00 km2, in the fragmented regional ENs, constituting the group of stepping-stones that can efficiently improve the ENs connectivity. Meanwhile, we confirmed that these stepping-stones were vulnerable although they were included in the protection system, with 70% of the total would be degraded and 13% lost due to the encroachments caused by future land expansion. Therefore, we proposed an alternative scenario that designated stepping-stones as restricted land expansion areas integrated into the comprehensive ENs protection system to maintain their persistent roles in connectivity. This study highlighted the weakness of traditional ENs establishment for rapid urbanization contexts and provided practical contributions to improving the effect of regional ecological protection and restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]