This article critically examines the transformations of retailwithin the context of planetary urbanization and contemporary capitalist restructuring. Drawing on the concept of retail-less cities, it argues that traditional retail has lost its structuring role in the city, displaced by new logistical logics. The paper identifies five key dimensions that explain this process: the logistics revolution, the rising cost of urban land, changes in consumption habits, increasing inequalities, and the fragmentation of urban planning. Through an urban political economy approach, it demonstrates how these dynamics generate uneven urban landscapes and erode the local commercial fabric. The article concludes by advocating for multiscalar urban planning, the recovery of retail as a form of social infrastructure, and the development of new analytical categories to better understand —and ultimately challenge— the exclusionary logics of the dominant commercial model.
Social media platforms provide a real-time lens into public sentiment during natural disasters; however, models built solely on textual data often reinforce urban-centric biases and overlook underrepresented communities. This paper introduces an adaptive cross-city learning framework that enhances disaster sentiment understanding by integrating mobility-informed behavioral signals and city similarity-based data augmentation. Focusing on the January 2025 Southern California wildfires, our model achieves state-of-the-art performance and reveals geographically diverse sentiment patterns, particularly in areas experiencing overlapping fire exposure or delayed emergency responses. We further identify positive correlations between emotional expressions and real-world mobility shifts, underscoring the value of combining behavioral and textual features. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that multimodal fusion and city-aware training significantly improve both accuracy and fairness. Collectively, these findings highlight the importance of context-sensitive sentiment modeling and provide actionable insights toward developing more inclusive and equitable disaster response systems.
(1) Background: Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing the fastest urbanization worldwide. People in rural areas still have a traditional and rural lifestyle, whereas the Westernization of diet and lifestyle is already evident in urban areas. This study describes dietary habits of families in Burkina Faso living at different levels of urbanization. (2) Methods: Data on lifestyle, socio-economic conditions, health status and anthropometry were collected from 30 families living in rural villages, a small town and the capital city. A food frequency questionnaire and a 24 h recall diary were used to estimate dietary habits and macronutrients intake. (3) Results: The urban cohort showed a more diversified diet, with a higher intake of animal protein and, especially in children, a higher consumption of simple sugars. Fiber intake was significantly higher in the rural and semi-urbanized cohorts. As expected, overweight and obesity gradually increased with the level of urbanization. In semi-urbanized and urban families, we observed coexistence of under- and over-nutrition, whereas in rural families, a portion of children were wasted and stunted, and adults were underweight. (4) Conclusions: These three cohorts represent a model of the effect on diet of rural-to-urban migration. Rural diet and traditional habits are replaced by a Western-oriented diet when families move to urbanized areas. This dietary transition and increased socio-economic status in newly developing urban areas have a major impact on disease epidemiology, resembling the past evolution in Western countries.
Starting from the relationship between urban planning and mobility management, TeMA has gradually expanded the view of the covered topics, always remaining in the groove of rigorous scientific in-depth analysis. This section of the Journal, Review Notes, is the expression of continuously updating emerging topics concerning relationships between urban planning, mobility and environment, through a collection of short scientific papers written by young researchers. The Review Notes are made of five parts. Each section examines a specific aspect of the broader information storage within the main interests of TeMA Journal. In particular, the Urban Practices section aims at presenting recent advancements on relevant topics that underline the challenges that the cities have to face. This note concludes a three-part series exploring the potential driving role of climate tech startups in supporting urban planning processes for effective climate change adaptation in cities. It first provides an overview of urban planning tools that enable cities to integrate innovation ecosystems into goal-oriented urban transformation processes. These tools highlight the strong interconnection between advancing climate change adaptation and enhancing urban competitiveness. Subsequently, a set of representative case studies of climate startups that have successfully scaled up and are driving tangible adaptive transformations in urban contexts is examined. The note then outlines practical recommendations and future research directions. Overall, the case studies demonstrate that climate startups are not only highly promising allies for urban adaptation, but are already shaping the pathways toward climate-resilient cities. Innovation ecosystems emerge as crucial actors in scaling up global efforts for urban resilience and competitiveness.
Transportation engineering, Urbanization. City and country
Abstract Cities worldwide increasingly adopt social resilience strategies, yet their implementation often obscures real drivers of urban renovation with ambiguous indicators. This study examines Rotterdam’s 'balanced neighbourhoods' policy, based on property values, and its claimed contribution to urban social resilience. Using empirical data and structural equation modelling, we investigate how housing value mix affects social cohesion and informal support in 'balanced neighbourhood' configurations. Only 2.1% of possible configurations fit Rotterdam’s urban policy claims, and even those yield counterproductive associations. We argue that the ambiguous definition of 'balanced neighbourhoods' obscures policy goals, allowing areas in Rotterdam North to meet 'balance' criteria without reflecting the municipality’s long-term composition targets, while the South—dominated by social housing—faces demolition. Our study highlights the need for more nuanced measures of resilience and calls for shifting from interventions that alter the physical composition of neighbourhoods to enhancing social cohesion as a key factor promoting resilient actions.
Abstract Current global socioecological crises are rooted in an anthropocentric worldview that sees humans as separate from and superior to the rest of nature. Urban sustainability planning is also anthropocentric in that it often regards non-human species as mere service providers. While anthropocentric approaches to planning are called into question, there is currently a lack of methods for incorporating more-than-human voices into planning. This paper presents multispecies role-playing games as a method of engaging with urban planning from a more-than-human perspective. First, we show how to design multispecies role-playing games based on human-nature partnership ethics. Second, we present how a multispecies justice lens can help to improve the design and application of such games in urban sustainability planning. Our findings suggest that multispecies role-playing games are a valuable method for applying ideas of multispecies justice in urban planning education, practice and research.
Neeraj Pandey, Abhineet Agarwal, Raju Roychowdhury
et al.
Analysis of the urban population fraction data for sixteen populous countries over the last fifty years reveals a universal increase in urbanization, exhibiting four qualitatively distinct temporal patterns: (i) continuously accelerating growth, (ii) continuously decelerating growth, (iii) two-phase growth transitioning from acceleration to deceleration, and (iv) two-phase growth transitioning from deceleration to acceleration. To understand the origin of these diverse urbanization trajectories, we develop a simple coarse-grained model in which a country is segregated into two regions, a rural and an urban region. Population in each region evolves due to natural (sexual) growth and migration from rural to urban areas, with the migration rate governed by economic inequality, quantified through the difference in GDP per capita between the two regions. The GDP per capita of both regions is assumed to grow exponentially with distinct rates. We demonstrate that this minimal model, involving four dynamical variables and a small number of demographic and economic parameters, is capable of reproducing all four empirically observed urbanization patterns. Assuming demographic and economic parameters remain approximately constant over a 50-year timescale, we estimate coarse-grained parameters for the United States using empirical data and obtain optimized values that accurately reproduce its observed urbanization trajectory. Our results highlight how simple demographic-economic interactions can generate rich and diverse urbanization dynamics.
Simon Puttock, Umberto Barros, Diego Pinheiro
et al.
Cities attract a daily influx of non-resident commuters, reflecting their roles within wider urban networks -- not as isolated places. However, it remains unclear how this interconnectivity shapes the way crime scales with population, given that larger cities tend to receive more commuters and experience more crime. In this work, we investigate how inter-city commuting relates to the population-crime relationship. We find that larger cities receive proportionately more commuters, which in turn is associated with higher levels of burglary, drug possession, robbery, shoplifting, and theft. For example, each 1% increase in inbound commuters corresponds to a 0.32% rise in theft and 0.20% rise in burglary, holding population size constant. We demonstrate that models incorporating both population size and commuter inflows explain variation in these offenses better than population-only models. Our findings underscore the importance of considering how cities are connected -- not just their population size -- in disentangling the population-crime relationship.
Unequal outcomes resulting from urbanization can pose a significant challenge to sustainable development. Vehicles are an important urbanization dimension as a critical component of urban infrastructure by providing mobility and accessibility to social services. China’s vehicle ownership ( referred to as in-use vehicle stocks ) has been growing quickly since 2000, but its per capita stocks are still much lower than that in developed economies. This raises the question of whether and when China’s vehicle stocks will reach a peak level close to that in the developed countries. By analyzing vehicle stocks in 283 Chinese cities during 2001–2018, we have the following findings: (1) vehicle stocks are predominantly distributed in northern and eastern coastal cities and provincial capital cities; (2) inequality in vehicle ownership rates between cities shows a declining trend at both national and region scales; (3) the growth of vehicle ownership rates follows an S-shape curve and most cities are still at the early stage of motorization; (4) China is likely to have a lower saturation level of vehicle ownership rate. These results could help to accurately forecast future vehicle demand in China, estimate the resulting environmental impacts, and explore strategies to achieve carbon neutrality in transportation.
BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESIS The burden of schizophrenia is increasing. Assessing the global distribution of schizophrenia and understanding the association between urbanization factors and schizophrenia are crucial. STUDY DESIGN We conducted a two-stage analysis utilizing public data from GBD (global burden of disease) 2019 and the World Bank. First, the distribution of schizophrenia burden at the global, regional, and national levels as well as temporal trends was analyzed. Then, four composite indicators of urbanization (including demographic, spatial, economic, and eco-environment urbanization) were constructed from ten basic indicators. Panel data models were used to explore the relationship between urbanization indicators and the burden of schizophrenia. RESULTS In 2019, there were 23.6 million people with schizophrenia, an increase of 65.85% from 1990, and the country with the largest ASDR (age-standardized disability adjusted life years rate) was the United States of America, followed by Australia, and New Zealand. Globally, the ASDR of schizophrenia rose with the sociodemographic index (SDI). In addition, six basic urbanization indicators including urban population proportion, employment in industry/services proportion, urban population density, the population proportion in the largest city, GDP, and PM2.5 concentration were positively associated with ASDR of schizophrenia, with the largest coefficients being urban population density. Overall, demographic, spatial, economic, and eco-environment urbanization all had positive effects on schizophrenia, and the estimated coefficients indicated that demographic urbanization was the most significant influence. CONCLUSIONS This study provided a comprehensive description of the global burden of schizophrenia and explored urbanization as a factor contributing to the variation in the burden of schizophrenia, and highlighted policy priorities for schizophrenia prevention in the context of urbanization.
Energy conservation and emission reduction policies restrict the economic and social development of all countries in the world, and the impact on China, which has low urbanization, is more serious. In the process of promoting urbanization, the pressure of carbon emission reduction in the construction industry has increased, and the high emissions of the construction industry have made the low-carbon development of cities face severe challenges. China is at a critical stage of urbanization development, and there is become a general consensus on how to improve the carbon emission efficiency of the construction industry. The interaction between urbanization and the carbon emission efficiency of the construction industry is a long-term and complex process. As one of the industries contributing to China’s urbanization process and carbon emissions, it is of great practical significance to explore the coordination relationship between urbanization and the carbon emission efficiency of the construction industry (CEECI) to realize the goal of “double carbon”, promoting urbanization construction and solving the problem of “green development”. Taking 30 provinces in China as the research target area, the double weighted summation method and the undesirable output superefficiency window-EBM-DEA model are used to measure the provincial urbanization level and CEECI, respectively. Then, the coupling coordination degree model of the relative development index is introduced, and the spatial autocorrelation model and the spatial and temporal differentiation characteristics of the coordination level of urbanization and the CEECI are analysed. From 2010 to 2021, China’s urbanization level increased steadily, but the growth rate gradually decreased. There were significant differences in urbanization levels among provinces. The eastern provinces have a higher level of urbanization but lack an impetus in the later period, while the western provinces have a lower level of urbanization but a faster growth rate. The low-carbon development trend of China’s construction industry is good, and the overall development of the CEECI shows an “N” type, and the inflection points appear in 2013 and 2018. The interprovincial urbanization level is significantly different from that of the CEECI, and the development form of the central and western provinces is better than that of the eastern provinces. The coordination level of urbanization and the CEECI in China is transitioning from the running-in stage to the coordination stage, and the coupling coordination degree between systems is on the rise, while the relative development degree is on the decline. The spatial distribution pattern is in a dynamic state of change, and the overall distribution pattern is “high in the east and low in the central and western regions”. The differences among provinces were significantly decreased, with 63.33% of provinces at the high running-in level. The provinces that entered the coordination stage were mainly located in the eastern region, and only Beijing was in the coordination stage by the end of the study. In addition, 90% of the provinces exhibited lagging efficiency, and only Jiangxi, Guangxi and Chongqing, which had low coordination levels maintained synchronous development of the two systems. The coordination level between provincial urbanization and the CEECI showed a positive spatial distribution, the global Moran index showed a “V” shape trend, and the spatial dependence of the coordination level between the two systems gradually weakened. In the local spatial distribution, there are two types of convergence: high and low. The coordination degree of urbanization and the CEECI analysed in this study is an extension of the research on the relationship between the two. By integrating the two into a unified framework, the method of combining quantitative and qualitative analysis is used to further explore the coordination relationship between the two, which not only enhances the scientificity and accuracy of the research but also extends the breadth and depth of relevant theoretical research. At the same time, according to the coordination type between urbanization and the CEECI, China should propose corresponding targeted coordination and optimization paths from the perspective of urbanization and low-carbon development of the construction industry to achieve high-quality development of China’s economy and society.
India urbanization is closely linked to modernization, industrialization, and the sociological process of rationalization. Urbanization is not merely a modern phenomenon, but a rapid and historic transformation of human social roots on a global scale, whereby predominantly rural culture is being rapidly replaced by predominantly urban culture. Urbanization occurs as individual, commercial, and governmental efforts reduce time and expense in commuting and improve opportunities for jobs, education, housing, and transportation. Many rural inhabitants come to the city for reasons of seeking fortunes and social mobility. But the picture of urbanization is not so much glorious as it apparently seems. Modern cities have grown in a haphazard and unplanned manner due to fast industrialization. Cities in developing countries become over-populated and over-crowded partly as a result of the increase in population over the decades and partly as a result of migration. Methodology: This study is descriptive research. The data is gathered through secondary sources like Government Records, books, articles, web-based journals. The Records of Urban Population as sourced from Census Reports have been tabulated for description of its trend. This paper seeks to review the effects of fast growing urbanization in Indian society through analysis of its multi-dimensional impact.
Green-space-triggered gentrification, wherein original residents are displaced by wealthier individuals owing to the creation of new green spaces, has been criticized for exacerbating environmental injustice. While previous studies have explored green-space-triggered gentrification in individual cities, few have examined heterogeneities across multiple cities, especially in developing countries where cities are at different stages of expansion. The roles of green space in different stages of urbanization can produce varying outcomes of gentrification. This study investigated the relationship between green space and gentrification in Chinese cities from 2012 to 2020. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), distance to adjacent parks, and area of adjacent parks were used as indicators of green space, while nighttime lights and residential land prices were used as proxies for gentrification. Nationwide analyses indicated that both increasing NDVI and building new parks nearby could lead to gentrification, but the park area had a marginal effect. Stratified analyses further showed that the effect of green space on gentrification was related to the different roles of green space associated with the stage of urbanization. Cities with higher urbanization rates were more affected by NDVI but less affected by park distance. Our findings provide insights for urban planners and decision-makers on developing localized strategies that mitigate the varying outcomes of gentrification at different stages of urban development.
ABSTRACT Urbanization is key to the development of a city. It is part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Developing countries are called upon to modernize and build urban infrastructure. There are several problems in developing countries: undirected and uncontrolled urbanization. This has several consequences, including the proliferation of slums, uncontrolled construction, erosion, flooding, and an increase in the crime rate. It is possible to combat these consequences and mitigate their effects by implementing solid urban planning that takes into account subdivision plans, the reinforcement of embankments, the expansion of the urban area, the construction of infrastructure, and their diversification.
En la Sudamérica fluvial, las tierras bajas son escenario de superposición de procesos naturales y procesos urbanos; la falta de proyecto que integre tierra y agua y oriente transformaciones sustentables en el territorio, aumenta vulnerabilidades y desigualdades, alejando oportunidades, especialmente en las áreas marginales. A pesar de los numerosos aspectos críticos, estas periferias suelen presentar importantes recursos patrimoniales, naturales y culturales de capacidad representativa. El turismo cultural, y especialmente patrimonial, puede desempeñar un papel notable, al renovar estos valores y transformarlos en oportunidades de desarrollo sustentable desde abajo. Se propone una reflexión proyectual del tipo investigación-servicio que postula lo insular como clave de lectura e interpretación cultural territorial. El paisaje cultural de islas, interpretado a escala sudamericana, regional y local, sirve para caracterizar los espacios del turismo comunitario en territorios fluviales. La investigación identifica una posible proyectualidad insular que el proyecto de turismo patrimonial puede promover de manera comunitaria. Se discute el rol activista del proyecto y el valor de lo colectivo en la organización de islas posibles, propicias para el turismo y la vida cotidiana en tiempos de cambio climático.
Aref Ayati, Mohammad Mahdi Hashemi, Mohsen Saffar
et al.
Regarding the concepts of urban management, digital transformation, and smart cities, various issues are presented. Currently, we like to attend to location allocation problems that can be a new part of digital transformation in urban management (such as locating and placing facilities, locating and arranging centers such as aid and rescue centers, or even postal hubs, telecommunications, electronic equipment, and data centers, and routing in transportation optimization). These issues, which are seemingly simple but in practice complex, are important in urban environments, and the issue of accurate location allocation based on existing criteria directly impacts cost management, profit, efficiency, and citizen satisfaction. In recent years, researchers have used or presented various models and methods for location allocation problems, some of which will be mentioned in this article. Given the nature of these problems, which are optimization problems, this article will also examine existing research from an optimization perspective in summary. Finally, a brief conclusion will be made of the existing methods and their weaknesses, and suggestions will be made for continuing the path and improving scientific and practical research in this field.