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Based on the theme of sexual predation and violence, Samidha Gunjal's short story Someday, anthologised in Drawing the Line (2015), is a visual narration of a well-dressed woman walking through an urban landscape. During her journey, she is subjected to sexual harassment as she gets catcalled and whistled at by the men around her. Eventually, she arrives at a place depicted as an all-male terrain that transforms into a realm of predators as the men metamorphosize into rapacious beings with egregious physiognomy. Overwhelmed by these men who grow into enormous predators, the woman shrinks into nothingness and is eventually rendered invisible. At this juncture, when her sexual harassment escalates, the woman, too, undergoes a transmutation and emerges as goddess Kali to overthrow her abusers. While deploying the theories propounded by stalwarts including Foucault, Goffman, McCloud, and Chute, this paper attempts to decode Gunjal's visual narrative to understand its radical feminist stance. It undertakes a critical exposition of the representation of violent (vagina dentata) and non-violent (naked protest) modes of resistance and how the iconography of goddess Kali embedded in its visuals challenges despotic patriarchal constructions that render women powerless. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the katabasis mytheme in Margaret Drabble's The Seven Sisters (2002), laying special emphasis on her contemporary revisionist reimagining of the Aeneid. A dialogue with Virgil's male-centred epic poem becomes both a starting point and a destination when death is just around the corner, intimated and sublimated as it is by London, a city that correlates to the Virgilian Underworld as a dark, damp topos, plagued by grotesque lost souls wandering about its liminal spaces. This close reading of the trope will not only provide a critical insight into Drabble's subversive reworking of Aeneas's descent to the Underworld from a female-centred perspective, but will also explore how the mythical resignification of the London urban landscape mediates an ongoing redefinition of women's old age and its tense power relations with the past, the present and the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical image comparison is a widespread art‐historical practice. This essay explores why a Brabantine artist encouraged viewers to exercise it in the late fifteenth century. At the time, northern European artists tested out how images could be means of transcending the visible world while simultaneously showcasing their very constructedness. The self‐reflexivity that characterises such images has engendered a particularly rich field of art‐historical studies. This essay focuses on a little‐known image which was designed to combine two visual concepts devised more than three centuries apart – a twelfth‐century map of Jerusalem, and a cityscape popularised in the fifteenth century – and required viewers to realise this combination in their minds, using external images recollected before their internal eyes. In its complex conception, the image becomes a unique contributor to the vibrant debate about the right use of images in late medieval devotion, and to the long history of image comparisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the transnational cityscapes of Paris and Beijing in the Sino-French urban-set film Love and Bruises directed by Lou Ye, one of the so-called Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers. Drawing on the method of textual analysis and Deleuzian theories of affect, it explores how these two global cities are depicted as dystopian and illusive utopian places respectively, how the cityscapes are connoted, and how they are charged with affects. The author argues that Lou's imaginaries of transnational cityscapes insinuate individuals' bruises of displacement and dislocation in an era of active integration into globalisation. Moreover, cityscapes are presented phenomenologically and affectively in the film by screening the protagonists' act of viewing and the camera's lingering on the urban spaces. Finally, the cityscapes of Paris transmit a sense of estrangement or alienation, while Beijing's counterparts provoke postmodern bewilderment and anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban art has been and continues to be a transforming component within urban renewal processes, reinforcing memory, recovering the sense of place, and reducing stigmatization. This article delves into the role of urban art within the (physical-spatial) requalification and (symbolic) resignification processes in Urban Working-Class Settlements, analyzing how these processes are related to strengthening place attachment, sense of belonging, sense of security, and community organization, and trying to reflect on how they can affect deeper lying issues such as social and environmental risk. The methodology used is participatory action research, which was developed with the Santa Lucía Community in the Historic Center of San Salvador. Although the limitations of urban art are clear in the face of complex problems such as urban violence and environmental risk, the case of Santa Lucía reflects the potential of these interventions when they emerge as a collective and consensual expression, becoming an instrument of citizen vindication, strengthening community ties and organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ports and their oceanic hinterlands are distinctively malleable, permeable places. They are defined by morphologies that articulate shifting perspectives on the meanings of coastal settlements and their relationship to the term landscape. This essay introduces the co-editors' perspectives on port cities and the sea as distinctive modes of landscape, situating them, and the essays within the special issue, within a broader field of landscape studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a qualitative account of Vietnamese language maintenance in Manchester. Through ethnographic observations of distinctly Vietnamese locations, Vietnamese language practices are shown to create spaces in which Vietnamese is the dominant language, and in which Vietnamese norms and expectations, or scales, are able to influence and contest other behavioural norms. These scales are viewed as social practices, and they are derived from interviews with Vietnamese speakers and observations of Vietnamese spaces, and special focus is given to the linguistic resources used to conduct them. The analysis reveals ideas of language competence and politeness which compete and interact with norms from outside the spaces, and non-linguistic behavioural norms which contribute to language maintenance. Vietnamese is shown to be maintained through micro-interactions which make the heritage language the norm, and business and religious practices are found to promote heritage language use by requiring heritage language practices to participate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is intended to open a debate on two different issues: the landscape of Puerto de Menesteo in the time of Strabo and the possibility of the winery of Puerto de Menesteo in the current Sierra de San Cristóbal being walled. In the first case, the interpretation of Strabo’s text made by Pepa Castillo and Pilar Iguácel on the situation of the island cited in the passage which mentions the communication between Puerto de Menesteo and Asta is questioned. The second theme focuses on the design of the complex excavated in the Sierra de San Cristóbal as a wine production unit (winery), its parallelism with the Alt de Benimaquía (Denia, Alicante), and the possibility that it is walled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on narratives embedded in urban landscapes and focuses on analyzing legal conflicts revolving around expressive visual elements of urban public spaces. It mentions cityscapes are created by a limited social group that predominantly consists of property owners, city planners, politicians, and commercial enterprises. It also mentions legal system assigns and regulates rights to design cityscapes.

This paper reflects on urban cultural development in a post-Soviet context. Most literature on arts and the city focuses either on Western cities, often recovering from post-industrial decline, or emerging global cities. However, post-socialist cities have remained under-investigated. The paper argues that the existing accounts of urban cultural development often underestimate the impact of national policy frameworks and historical trajectories. In post-Soviet countries, these national dynamics—often responding to broader diplomatic and cultural shifts—need to be considered. The paper uses the case study of Kazakhstan and its two major cities Almaty and Astana (recently renamed Nur-Sultan) to explore the role of path dependence and national policy in urban cultural development. It concludes by arguing for integrating a complexity perspective into the study of arts and the city, looking at macro policy and infrastructural changes, meso local urban responses, and micro dynamics of collaboration and work amongst creative and cultural practitioners in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Airbnb is commonly seen as emblematic of the disruptive forces of peer-to-peer platforms, and often attracts attention due to its relationship to existing socio-institutional frameworks. This article investigates how existing societal structures are navigated, remade or challenged through Airbnb hosting. In taking a performative approach to the economic forms found in collaborative economies, this article introduces a novel way of thinking about such changes. In examining performances of Airbnb hosts performances this article endeavours to move beyond distinctions of commercial, cultural and private, but rather perceives such categories as performatively constructed through ongoing framings. Through 33 qualitative interviews with hosts in Copenhagen, Denmark and Philadelphia, United States, this article explores how hosting becomes entangled with social and institutional frameworks through host performances. First, the article explores host strategies for navigating and making sense of local legislation. Second, the article moves to the theme of taxation and discusses how hosts balance public obligations with personal profit. Finally, the article addresses how hosting is negotiated in relation to neighbour relations and implications for local communities. The article contributes with insights into how Airbnb hosting is transforming urban landscapes, as well as discussions on the heterogeneity of economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uncovers the local state's complex intersections with the market and its multifaceted relations with the public through an in-depth qualitative case study of municipal housing privatization and urban renewal in one of the heartlands of the Swedish welfare state project, Rosengård in Malmö, Sweden. Drawing on the political-economic literature, I argue that housing privatization is entangled with complex interrelations among the (municipal) local state, the market, and the public and that an exploration of these relations reveals contemporary features of the local state. Hence, this investigation highlights the local state's motivation for privatization, the remaking of a market in a place where the market is believed to have failed, and the powers the local state retains. Additionally, the paper elucidates how the function of public assets changes due to privatization and considers tenants' and residents' worries, criticism, and concerns about municipal interventions. Subsequently, by grounding these findings in the historical function of municipalities in Sweden, the study contributes new knowledge on the local state in a deepened neoliberalized and financialized urban landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intervening in the revitalization and development of art villages is one of the ways to build regional brands in rural areas, fit in with contemporary aesthetics, and meet the needs of modern people for diversified life. At the same time, it is not limited by artistry itself, but a comprehensive artistic activity with modernity, industrial linkage, and sustainability. This paper uses the HPR (Hestenes–Powell–Rockafellar) multiplier method to solve and establishes a SSFCM-HPR (semisupervised fuzzy C-means clustering based on HPR) algorithm. The experimental results on datasets show that FCM-UserCF (fuzzy C-means-user collaborative filtering) algorithm effectively solves the problem of data sparsity and improves the accuracy of recommendation. Rural planning and design under the intervention of art is a kind of respect for local memory, an inheritance of folk crafts, a reshaping of history and culture, and an identification with the countryside itself. It also puts forward new development ideas and guiding methods for the sustainable development of rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the application and implications of magnetic prospection within two complex early mediaeval sites of the 5th–10th centuries BCE in northern Spain, at Aistra and Peña Amaya in the Upper Ebro Valley. In this period most sites displaying domestic and other forms of occupation present multifaceted and challenging problems due to the poor preservation of stratigraphic relationships in rural contexts and rarity and poor visibility of early mediaeval horizons in multi‐period urban sites. It is now widely acknowledged that extensive magnetic prospection, both in rural areas and in abandoned townscapes, can on a variety of sites facilitate the identification of domestic settlements, productive areas and monumental structures as well as the patterns of former roads, trackways and field boundaries. The two sites described here were selected to test this approach in the particular environment of the Ebro Valley and to draw any resulting conclusions about early mediaeval settlement in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Pampulha Modern Ensemble is an urban complex located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, whose metropolitan context is highly problematic due to the pressures of urban dynamics, impacts from urban development and the need to manage changes and preserve architectural and landscape attributes that have led to its recognition as World Heritage. This article is part of a larger study that investigates the community's recognition of the values conferred by experts on that complex's cultural landscape as a world heritage site. Due to the restrictive conditions imposed by the COVID 19 pandemic, an online questionnaire with open access to the general public was used as an instrument for the field research to collect primary data from the community. The analysis of the answers obtained from the questionnaire pre-test, object of this article, demonstrates the recognition of landscape elements and of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble that contribute to its enjoyment and that characterize it as a differentiated landscape in the context of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Pampulha Modern Ensemble is an urban complex located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, whose metropolitan context is highly problematic due to the pressures of urban dynamics, impacts from urban development and the need to manage changes and preserve architectural and landscape attributes that have led to its recognition as World Heritage. This article is part of a larger study that investigates the community's recognition of the values conferred by experts on that complex's cultural landscape as a world heritage site. Due to the restrictive conditions imposed by the COVID 19 pandemic, an online questionnaire with open access to the general public was used as an instrument for the field research to collect primary data from the community. The analysis of the answers obtained from the questionnaire pre-test, object of this article, demonstrates the recognition of landscape elements and of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble that contribute to its enjoyment and that characterize it as a differentiated landscape in the context of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The physical form of cities is exposed to conflicting forces of change and conservation. In the conservation field, despite the advances achieved over the last decades changing the paradigm from historical monuments to urban landscapes, the focus tends to be on the building fabric and the main three-dimensional characteristics of buildings. This paper proposes a complementary emphasis for conservation--the town-plan, meaning the different patterns of combination of streets, plots, and block-plans of buildings (building footprints). Preserving the town-plan of urban areas built in the past, means bringing to the present significant parts of urban history, assuring diversity (a key characteristic for sustainable, resilient, and safe cities), and providing a basis for the design of new areas more accessible, dense, and continuous. This argument is illustrated in the Chelsea district in New York at two different scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Located at one of Iran's busiest intersections, the Vali Asr billboard has been a key venue for projecting and promoting the regime messaging of the Islamic Republic since 2015. With its unique ability to frequently change its images, unlike the more traditional painted murals populating Iran's urban landscape, the Vali Asr billboard has the capacity to convey a wide-range of regime messages tailor-made for a variety of domestic and international events, whether foreseen or unforeseen, from national holidays to the outbreak of Covid-19. This article assesses how the Vali Asr billboard's unique features and design style allow it to present a mix of 'hard' and 'soft' propaganda and succeed in attracting public engagement with its images. Through a close analysis of the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Qassem Suleimani (d. 2020), a series of murals unveiled during the holy month of Muharram in 2020, and a controversy around the 2018 World Cup, the article argues that the Vali Asr billboard is a unique communicative medium and potent tool for regime cultural producers in Iran's twenty-first century media landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores drawing as an ethico-political practice. Taking London as an example, I speculate about a critical and creative, radical and imaginative engagement with speculative urbanization processes at a time when the extreme right is on the rise and the populist far right has become increasingly mainstream. Reflecting on a nonrepresentational drawing approach that responds to distantiated expert eyes by breaking free from their knowledge and pre-defined moral standards of the capitalist city, I explore different lines: lines that commodify the cityscape; lines that cross commodifying categories; lines that creatively produce alternatives; and lines of violent creativity. In so doing, I scrutinize conservative links between a visuality of capital accumulation and fascist urban aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the 1929 tourism poster competition in which the architect Joaquín Vaquero Palacios participated alongside some 50 other illustrators, painters, and advertisers. The competition was a unique event, without precedents in the field of illustration in Spain, and represents an ideal opportunity of compare how different artists of the time approached the depiction of architecture, cities, and landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we analyze the particular view of the urban landscape proposed by Ingres in his drawing L'Escalier de Santa Maria in Aracoeli, comparing it with the one that results from accepting as a predetermined point of view the one that Michelangelo proposes in its symmetrical composition for the Piazza del Campidoglio. The different ways in which the Campidoglio complex has been graphically represented, both in reference books on urban morphology and in old engravings, are examined and through frame and perspective we trace the background of the alternative look by Ingres. Finally, the analysis of the drawing of the stairway of Santa Maria in Aracoeli is integrated in an interpretation of the urban landscapes drawn by Ingres during his stay in Rome, identifying the distinctively modern features that we can find in his representation of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contextualises Xing Danwen's role in creating the posed photography of Ma Liuming from 1993 to 1995, the canon of East Village performance art in China, and how this experience prompted her to reflect on gender issues in later works. I compare similar shots of performance work by Rong Rong and Xing Danwen and discuss the role of a gendered power structure in the making of a performance art canon. These images have been received as documentations, yet it was through dialogue with the camera and two genders that Ma and Xing developed their unique paths to performance art and conceptual photography in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Succeeding waves of mobilisation for the separate state of Gorkhaland has left an indelible imprint on the cultural, political and urban landscape of the Darjeeling Hills. Based on empirical research, this paper tries to explore the intricate relationship between ethnicity, place and politics of belonging in the Himalayan town of Kalimpong. It specifically tries to locate the interface between political events and the transformation of the urban landscape by taking into consideration the growth of roadside settlements. While noting the specific contours of these settlements, their culture and their liminal condition, the paper tries to address the issues pertaining to place-making and identity formation in the Himalayan region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable, democratic, resilient, inclusive urban regeneration means working with inhabitants when cities are transformed, giving them the opportunity to collaborate in the city's creation. This research studies the relationship between graphic creativity and citizen participation for architectural and university applications in urban processes to build the city, and in the strategies and means to operate it. In schools, this relationship reveals glimpses of new ways of alternative learning. As a research method, we analyze examples that have influenced various graphic disciplines and technological implementations, and urban art practices that have emerged from citizen struggles. The results illustrate that the urban project can be taught by incorporating collaborative design, with strategies such as street art, collective maps or tactical urbanism, and urban sketching and virtual reality, taken together as means of enriching the creative, artistic and educational processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, murals have become a common phenomenon in urban landscapes. They are markers of identity and can provide benefits to individuals, communities, and cities. Some murals are created sporadically, while others are carefully promoted by the establishment. Given the adoption (or co-optation) of murals as an acceptable, and even desired, municipal tool, local governments around the world have established their own mural policies. While many scholars accept murals as an important element in urban environments, the literature has somewhat neglected the policies and practices that administer them. This paper aims to fill this gap by facilitating a better understanding of mural policies and enabling future evaluations. To do so, we introduce a conceptual framework that assists in identifying, characterizing and evaluating mural policies. We then demonstrate the applicability of the conceptual framework through a case-example of Portland, Oregon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1949, a lumber executive and city alderman in Charleston, South Carolina, named Alfred O. Halsey produced a visually unique map of the Charleston peninsula. The map highlights the fluctuations and changes of the urban landscape through time and traces the contours of historic events in the city. Although his depiction is compelling, tapping into a dialectical understanding of the city landscape, there are distinct cultural forgettings and silences in the map particularly in terms of the city's long historical trajectory of racial inequality and systemic violence. The following discussion both unpacks Halsey's dialectical vision of the peninsula, and indicate a space where archaeology can intervene in the gaps and silences in an act of memory-work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The migration patterns of middle-class families in urban landscapes has been a point of discussion in studies of gentrification since the 1980s; however, most studies focus on the movements of families with young children. In contrast, this paper examines the place that children continue to have in gentrifying neighborhoods, specifically as they engage in their own residential search process as adults. Identifying residents who were raised in two gentrifying areas, this paper outlines how second-generation residents move away from and back to their childhood homes and neighborhoods. Posing a challenge to models of gentrification that emphasize in-and out-migration, I find that a sub-set of second-generation residents use parental homeownership as a mechanism to come back to now further gentrified neighborhoods. I introduce the concept of "second gentrifier" to describe how such second-generation residents benefit from their parents' participation in early gentrification, thus highlighting new mechanisms of cultural reproduction and social distinction. Ethnographic and interview data from two Boston neighborhoods is used to describe and analyze the practices and motivations of second-generation and second-gentrifier residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian flying fox Pteropus giganteus (Brünnich, 1782) is one of the largest fruit bats (Pteropodidae) in the world. However, studies on seasonal variations and influence of weather parameters on diurnal roosting of this species in urban areas are almost non-existent. We carried out this study in a major urban landscape of India to determine which weather parameters influence diurnal roosting behaviours of Indian flying fox. Behavioural data was assessed through scan sampling method. Sleeping, thermoregulatory, locomotion and communicative behaviour, all of which varied significantly, showing highest incidences of sleeping followed by thermoregulatory, locomotion and communicative behaviours. Sleeping was negatively related with thermoregulatory, locomotion and communicative behaviours; thermoregulatory behaviour was positively related with locomotion and locomotion with communicative behaviour. Except sleeping, all other behaviours were positively related to temperature and were higher in summer than winter. Cloud cover negatively influenced sleeping and positively influenced thermoregulatory and locomotion behaviour; humidity negatively influenced thermoregulatory behaviour and rainfall negatively influenced locomotion behaviour of Indian flying foxes. Our findings might be useful for conservation of diurnal roosting sites of fruit bats in many urban landscapes in the recent scenario of changing climate and rapid urbanization throughout the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protection and development of historical and cultural ancient town have always been the hot topic. With the continuous deepening of the study of ancient town and the rise of the landscape design subject, systematic, professional information and drawings about the landscape of ancient town are relatively scarce. To make up for the blank, Pingle Ancient Town in Chengdu was taken as the research object, and systemic research on the spatial pattern of urban landscape was conducted. In this paper, landscape features were studied in the scale of the space enclosed by urban boundaries. According to the spatial structure, the landscape features were divided into fi ve aspects: boundary, axis, skeleton, group domain and base, and detailed study was conducted in the changes of time axis. The preliminary research methods were mainly literature and site survey and mapping, and the history, environment and style of Pingle Ancient Town were discussed by referring to historical classics, journal papers and books. In the middle stage, surveying and mapping improvement work was carried out. In the later stage, papers were analyzed and written. The results of this paper included detailed mapping atlas, analysis atlas and text summary on spatial pattern of urban landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irrigation in arid urban landscapes can use significant amounts of water. Water conservation must be based on plant species and the ability to meet plant water requirements while minimizing overirrigation. However, actual evapotranspiration (ET) estimates for landscape trees and turfgrass in arid environments are poorly documented, especially direct comparisons to assess potential trade-offs. We conducted research to quantify ET of 10 common landscape tree species grown in southern Nevada and compared these values with the ET of both a warm season and cool season turfgrass species. The trees were grown in a plot with a high-density planting (256 trees/ha). A complete morphological assessment was made on each tree, and monitoring of plant water status was conducted monthly. ET was quantified with a hydrologic balance approach, irrigating based on the previous week's ET to eliminate a drainage component. Transpiration was estimated with sap-flow sensors, and evaporation was estimated by difference. Although ET in liters revealed no statistical difference based on species, there were many significant differences in tree morphological parameters (P < 0.05), such as found with basal canopy area. When ET was converted to centimeters based on standardizing the ET on a basal canopy area basis, statistically higher ET values (P < 0.05) were generated for three of the trees (Lagerstroemia indica, Gleditsia tricanthos, and Fraxinus velutina 'Modesto'). A clear separation of all tree ET values (lower ET) with turfgrass ET occurred (P < 0.001), with the exception of L. indica. Backward regression analysis revealed that all morphological and physiological parameters were eliminated with the exception of percent cover in predicting ET (cm, R2 = 0.88, P < 0.001). In addition, a highly curvilinear relationship existed between decreasing percent tree cover and ET on a basal canopy area basis (R² = 0.96, P < 0.001), revealing that smaller trees located within the plot had significantly higher ET (centimeters). Tree-to-grass water use ratios demonstrated that all species except L. indica had ratios significantly below 1.0, indicating that on the basis of this study, landscapes dominated by mature trees irrigated at ET would have lower water use rates than similar areas planted to turfgrass, with the exception of the smaller L. indica. The results suggest that the smaller trees within the higher planting density plot were partially released from a negative feedback on transpiration that occurred in the larger trees based on reduced canopy atmospheric coupling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban expansion poses a major threat to wildlife populations. Biodiversity‐friendly urban landscapes could deliver benefits for both wildlife and people, by incorporating conservation and ecosystem services objectives. Well‐designed urban developments could also soften the ecological impacts of urbanization. However, delivering urban landscapes that integrate biodiversity requirements effectively remains challenging.Ecological models, designed to predict wildlife population responses to alternative urban designs, could prove effective in supporting the creation of biodiversity‐friendly urban landscapes. Here, we combine national‐scale bird abundance data with high resolution, spatially explicit habitat data to characterize relationships between bird densities and urban landscape form in Britain. From these analyses and cross validation, we evaluate the potential for well‐parameterized, species‐specific models to be used to predict bird densities in novel or modified urban areas.Our analyses indicate that responses of bird abundance to urban habitat are species‐specific and complex, with few variables consistently affecting a large proportion of species. However, contiguous areas of greenspace within urban sites are preferential for accommodating breeding birds, compared to a more fragmented arrangement of multiple, small greenspace patches. In combination, the bird‐habitat relationships identified could successfully predict observed variation in abundance for most bird species considered.Further evaluation of habitat descriptor variables, spatial scales of species' habitat use and analytical modelling approaches may be needed to improve the predictive ability of bird‐habitat models for certain species, particularly waterbirds and those observed less frequently in urban areas.Synthesis and applications. We modelled breeding bird abundance in built‐up areas with respect to the characteristics and contexts of urban environments. While most variables were important for multiple species, responses overall were species‐specific, so simple assemblage metrics, like diversity, will not describe the variation in bird communities well. However, the results illustrate the potential of an evidence‐based, spatially explicit evaluation of urban development impacts on biodiversity, by predicting the consequences for bird numbers. Subject to verification of predictive ability, practitioners can apply the models to compare, for example, land‐sparing and sharing within developments, or to quantify the biodiversity requirements for effective offsetting. This would be facilitated by incorporation into an online tool allowing user‐determined input scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of mosquito-transmitted viruses poses a global threat to human health. Combining mechanistic epidemiological models based on temperature-trait relationships with climatological data is a powerful technique for environmental risk assessment. However, a limitation of this approach is that the local microclimates experienced by mosquitoes can differ substantially from macroclimate measurements, particularly in heterogeneous urban environments. To address this scaling mismatch, we modeled spatial variation in microclimate temperatures and the thermal potential for dengue transmission by Aedes albopictus across an urban-to-rural gradient in Athens-Clarke County GA. Microclimate data were collected across gradients of tree cover and impervious surface cover. We developed statistical models to predict daily minimum and maximum microclimate temperatures using coarse-resolution gridded macroclimate data (4000 m) and high-resolution land cover data (30 m). The resulting high-resolution microclimate maps were integrated with temperature-dependent mosquito abundance and vectorial capacity models to generate monthly predictions for the summer and early fall of 2018. The highest vectorial capacities were predicted for patches of trees in urban areas with high cover of impervious surfaces. Vectorial capacity was most sensitive to tree cover during the summer and became more sensitive to impervious surfaces in the early fall. Predictions from the same models using temperature data from a local meteorological station consistently over-predicted vectorial capacity compared to the microclimate-based estimates. This work demonstrates that it is feasible to model variation in mosquito microenvironments across an urban-to-rural gradient using satellite Earth observations. Epidemiological models applied to the microclimate maps revealed localized patterns of temperature suitability for disease transmission that would not be detectable using macroclimate data. Incorporating microclimate data into disease transmission models has the potential to yield more spatially precise and ecologically interpretable metrics of mosquito-borne disease transmission risk in urban landscapes. Author summary: Predicting the effects of temperature on mosquito abundance and arbovirus transmission cycles is essential for mapping hot spots of disease risk and projecting responses to climate change. In urban landscapes, the built environment and natural features create distinctive environments. Buildings and roads generate warmer conditions through the urban heat island effect, while vegetation can have a cooling effect because of shading and evaporative heat loss. We used land cover data to map microclimate temperature in Athens-Clarke County, GA and applied a temperature-dependent vectorial capacity model to predict the effects of microclimate on dengue transmission by Aedes albopictus. The highest vectorial capacity was predicted in patches of trees located in the urbanized portion of the study area. These locations had relatively warm nighttime and cool daytime temperature, which kept temperatures close to the optimum for disease transmission. This work demonstrates the feasibility of predicting variation in mosquito microenvironments in urban landscapes using satellite Earth observations. Incorporating microclimate data into disease transmission models has the potential to yield more spatially precise and ecologically interpretable metrics of mosquito-borne disease transmission risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first part of this two-part essay discusses the important roles crocodiles and sharks played in Preclassic (and later) political geography and myths of cosmogenesis in Mesoamerica. They are associated with sacrifices resulting in creation of the world and births of some major gods. Crocodiles are also associated with fertility, rebirth, and renewal of seasonal and temporal/calendrical cycles. Recent investigations at Nixtun-Ch'ich' show that its gridded urban landscape, established in the Middle Preclassic period (ca. 800–400 b.c.), was likely modeled on a crocodile's back. The second part of the essay presents some speculations on the early role of this site and crocodiles in central Peten. At Tikal, archaeology and retrospective texts indicate that crocodiles appeared in early versions of the site's emblem glyph and in the name of an early ruler. Nixtun-Ch'ich' might be the legendary chi place, important in the dynastic foundations of several lowland Maya centers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fukushima Daiichi power plant accident led to large‐scale and long‐term evacuation zones in which usual land‐use activities such as farming have been stopped. In particular, the loss of irrigated rice paddies is hypothesized to have seriously impacted freshwater biodiversity. In 2014, we started acoustic monitoring of frogs by using digital voice recorders in and around the evacuation zone. For the monitoring project, 52 and 57 monitoring sites were located within schoolyards (including those that had been converted into community centers) to examine the frog assemblages in the urban and rural landscapes of the region in 2014 and 2015, respectively. At each site, a digital voice recorder was installed during the period from May to July, and we recorded 10 min a day at night using a timed‐recording mode. We divided the audio data into 20‐s segments and identified species recorded in segments sampled from late May to late June (partly in early July). We identified eight frog species from 1,962 audio segments in total (correspond to 4 days per year in principal). For each species, intensity of calling at four levels was also recorded as an index of abundance. We are continuing to monitor and intend to update the dataset with new observations hereafter. Our dataset will support scientists and experts in recognizing the status and dynamics of anuran assemblages in and around the evacuation zone and will contribute to the promotion of open science. The complete data set for this abstract published in the Data Paper section of the journal is available in electronic format in MetaCat in JaLTER at http://db.cger.nies.go.jp/JaLTER/metacat/metacat/ERDP-2020-12.1/jalter-en. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study concerns the struggle for Philadelphia's LOVE Park, which involved the general public and its functionaries on one side and skateboarders on the other. This paper argues LOVE Park was one place composed of two distinct spaces: the public space the public engendered and the common space the skateboarders produced. This case demonstrates that public and common space must be understood as distinct, for they entail different understandings of publicly accessible space. Additionally, public and common spaces often exist simultaneously as "public‐common spaces," which emphasizes how they reciprocally shape one another. This sheds light on the emergence of "anti‐common public space," which is evident in LOVE Park's 2016 redesign. This concept considers how common spaces are increasingly negated in public spaces. The introduction of common space to the study of public spaces is significant as it allows for more nuanced understandings of transformations in the urban landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the densest cities in the world, Manila suffers from constant population overflow. Hardly any spot in the urban landscape is unpopulated. Successive governments argue that the population overflow has crippled or arrested the potential of Metro Manila. In response, governments have resorted to resettlement, displacing urban poor populations and emplacing them often in far-flung and desolate sites. While the justifications for resettlement projects have gradually changed in the past half-century, we argue that its practice constitutes certain continuities—the conscious and constant attempt to establish and maintain urban divides around binary notions of order/disorder, purity/danger, and wealth/poverty. While resettlement projects often fail to produce the desired outcomes, they still have effects. In the paper, we hone in on different scales of effects, namely the transformation of progressive politics; reconfigured class relations in Manila as well as in the resettlement sites; and the transformation of spatial-temporal configurations and modes of belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban complex of Greater Angkor, the capital of the Khmer state from the 9th to the 14th–15th century CE, was a vast, convoluted settlement of rice fields, residential structures, shrines, roadways and water systems. Because the urban landscape was repeatedly remodeled on a massive scale the settlement plan is a complicated palimpsest of additions and remodeling that drastically altered earlier settlement configurations and water management features. Consequently, older settlements and structures in Greater Angkor are either buried or altered by later construction. The purpose of this paper is to offer an opinion about key issues which might be pursued or assessed concerning the development of water management in Angkor. The paper is about opinions because the physical evidence that is currently observable on and in the ground is partial, much is obscured and some is scarcely accessible. Further vigorous inquiry into water network of Greater Angkor is crucial for local cultural history and has serious, global implications for the vulnerability of very large, low‐density urban settlements which are confronted by extreme climate instability. This article is categorized under:Human Water > Water as Imagined and RepresentedHuman Water > Water Governance [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pacific Island communities are experiencing significant societal changes as a result of rural urban, inter‐island migration and migration to New Zealand. These relocations have significant implications for children's relationship to place. However, virtually nothing is known about children's sense of place in Samoa or places and activities that are important to them. This exploratory study worked with eight children aged 5–12 years growing up in an urban village in Samoa drawing on 'Talanoa' as research methodology and method by employing photo‐elicitation. The study provides a first snapshot of Samoan children's sense of place growing up in an urban village. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cities around the world, the removal of waste materials is a critical part of everyday life. Workers, both formal and informal, engage in intimate forms of labor that separate these materials from those who produce them. In Lahore, Pakistan, such waste intimacies are fraught by inequalities, which are discernible in affective, material, and spatial relations stretching across an uneven urban landscape. Waste work in urban Pakistan is a social relationship formed along the lines of caste, class, and religion; both municipal sanitation workers who are Christian and informal waste workers who are Muslim come from low‐ or noncaste backgrounds. Waste intimacies foreground those forms of work, relationships, and affects that, in distributing waste across individuals and social groups, reproduce a shared though unequal world. [waste, work, labor, intimacy, caste, Pakistan, South Asia] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a method for spatial downscaling of Landsat 8-derived LST maps from 100(30 m) resolution down to 2–4 m with the use of the Multiple Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) models coupled with very high resolution auxiliary data derived from hyperspectral aerial imagery and large-scale topographic maps. We applied the method to four Landsat 8 scenes, two collected in summer and two in winter, for three British towns collectively representing a variety of urban form. We used several spectral indices as well as fractional coverage of water and paved surfaces as LST predictors, and applied a novel method for the correction of temporal mismatch between spectral indices derived from aerial and satellite imagery captured at different dates, allowing for the application of the downscaling method for multiple dates without the need for repeating the aerial survey. Our results suggest that the method performed well for the summer dates, achieving RMSE of 1.40–1.83 K prior to and 0.76–1.21 K after correction for residuals. We conclude that the MARS models, by addressing the non-linear relationship of LST at coarse and fine spatial resolutions, can be successfully applied to produce high resolution LST maps suitable for studies of urban thermal environment at local scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city of Baghdad has recently witnessed an increase in urban land due to the recent economic growth, which negatively affected the environment of the study area through the retraction of the agricultural lands surrounding the city. Therefore, we studied the relationship between increasing urban expansion and changes in the local climate of Baghdad for the period from 2008 to 2018. The information derived from the satellites utilized in this search showed the changes in ground cover during the study period, while the evaporation rate data source from the European Center for Forecasting (ECMWF) confirmed the effects of urban expansion on evaporation rates. Increasing urbanization increased evaporation rates and decreased vegetation degradation (NDVI). Satellite data from Landsat )TM( and Landsat )OLI( for 2008, 2013, and 2018 were processed and analyzed using the ArcGIS program. The visuals were classified into urban land, sparse plant, dense plant, water, bare soil, and wet soil. The results of the classification showed that the percentage of urban land was 26.5%, 28.3%, and 30.9% for the years of 2008, 2013, and 2018, respectively. On the other hand, the MNDWI value for the studied years was 2.0%, 1.9% and 3.6%. The highest rate of urbanization was in 2018 which was accompanied by highest evaporation rates. The study proved that there was a significant correlation between increasing urbanization and evaporation rate in the study area. These results indicate that the poor planning of land use leads to negative effects on the local climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]