Hasil untuk "Urbanization. City and country"

Y. Shan, D. Guan, K. Hubacek et al.

Technological advancement in industrializing cities is critical for reducing CO2 emissions while maintaining economic growth. As national efforts to reduce CO2 emissions intensify, policy-makers need increasingly specific, subnational information about the sources of CO2 and the potential reductions and economic implications of different possible policies. This is particularly true in China, a large and economically diverse country that has rapidly industrialized and urbanized and that has pledged under the Paris Agreement that its emissions will peak by 2030. We present new, city-level estimates of CO2 emissions for 182 Chinese cities, decomposed into 17 different fossil fuels, 46 socioeconomic sectors, and 7 industrial processes. We find that more affluent cities have systematically lower emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP), supported by imports from less affluent, industrial cities located nearby. In turn, clusters of industrial cities are supported by nearby centers of coal or oil extraction. Whereas policies directly targeting manufacturing and electric power infrastructure would drastically undermine the GDP of industrial cities, consumption-based policies might allow emission reductions to be subsidized by those with greater ability to pay. In particular, sector-based analysis of each city suggests that technological improvements could be a practical and effective means of reducing emissions while maintaining growth and the current economic structure and energy system. We explore city-level emission reductions under three scenarios of technological progress to show that substantial reductions (up to 31%) are possible by updating a disproportionately small fraction of existing infrastructure.

Xinyu Li

The renewal of Wuhan's Lihuangpi Road neighborhood represents an integrated approach to historic preservation, low-carbon development, and community engagement. This study investigates the renewal strategies and their implications for sustainable urban development through a combination of policy analysis, field observations, semi-structured interviews, and inductive content analysis. Findings show that a “gradual renewal” model was adopted, emphasizing facade restoration of historic buildings, pedestrian-friendly environments, and improvements to public spaces and residents' quality of life. Low-carbon measures included the expansion of green infrastructure, enhanced waste classification, and traffic control, while building-level energy retrofitting remained limited. Commercial revitalization contributed to local economic vitality, supported in part by tourism development, though concerns over cultural commodification emerged. Community participation played a significant role in environmental governance, particularly in waste management practices; however, long-term engagement mechanisms remain underdeveloped. The renewal process was largely government-led, yet the integration of more flexible policies and market incentives warrants further exploration. Rather than advancing new theoretical frameworks, this study provides empirical insights into the practice of low-carbon urban renewal in historic districts. It offers practical references for policymakers and urban practitioners seeking to balance heritage conservation with environmental and social sustainability.

Xiaohan Xu, Wei Ma, Zhiheng Shi et al.

With the global energy transition and the rapid penetration of electric vehicles (EVs), the widening travel cost gap between EVs and gasoline vehicles (GVs) increasingly affects commuters' route choices and may reshape urban congestion patterns. Existing research remains in its preliminary exploratory phase. On the one hand, multi-class models do not account for fixed user class scenarios, which may not align with actual commuters; on the other hand, there is a lack of systematic quantitative analysis based on real-world complex road networks across multiple cities. As a result, the congestion effects induced by heterogeneous GV-EV cost structures may be mischaracterized or substantially underestimated. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a multi-user equilibrium (MUE) assignment model for mixed GV-EV traffic, constructs a dual algorithm with convergence guarantees, and designs multi-dimensional evaluation metrics for congestion patterns. Using 10 representative U.S. cities as a case study, this research explores the evolution trends of traffic congestion under different EV penetration scenarios based on real city-level road networks and block-level commuter origin-destination (OD) demand. The results show that full EV penetration reduces average system travel time by 2.27%--10.78% across the 10 cities, with New Orleans achieving the largest reduction (10.78%) and San Francisco the smallest (2.27%), but the effectiveness of alleviating congestion exhibits urban heterogeneity. Moreover, for cities with sufficient network redundancy, benefits are primarily concentrated during the low to medium EV penetration stage (0-0.5), though cities with topological constraints (e.g., San Francisco) show more limited improvements throughout all penetration levels. This paper can provide a foundation for formulating differentiated urban planning and congestion management policies.

Lucía Alvaredo

The construction of the water supply infrastructure in the locality of Barreiro (Setúbal) illustrates diverse aspects of the public water management model undertaken in continental Portugal from the second third of the 20th century. Sources consulted encompass local, state, and international institutional documents as well as private papers, ranging from annual reports to specialist studies, among others. The positive outcomes in terms of better public health conditions and the growth of industry were obscured by the appearance of new taxes and unequal access to water. This inequality was caused by the availability of larger volumes of water, thanks to the combined stimulus -and commercialisation- of private water prospection initiatives and the location of most of the country's industry in a relatively small area. On the one hand, a scenario arose of new economic dependence due to the compulsory payment of services by part of the population, on the other, ecosystemic factors intervened; at the dawn of the 1990s, Barreiro was among the areas of the country with greatest problems of overexploitation and contamination of water resources.

Kangning Huang, Mingzhen Lu

A longstanding puzzle in urban science is whether there's an intrinsic match between human populations and the mass of their built environments. Previous findings have revealed various urban properties scaling nonlinearly with population, yet existing models of city built mass are still dominated by per-capita linear thinking. Our analysis of >3,000 cities globally reveals universal sublinear scaling of city mass with population at both the city (\{beta}=0.90) and neighborhood levels (δ=0.75). This means that larger cities and denser neighborhoods achieve economies of scale with less per-capita built mass. Our theoretical framework further shows that city-level scaling emerges naturally from within-city disparities. This multi-scale understanding redefines "over-built" and "under-built" conditions as deviations from expected scaling patterns, implying either excessive environmental impacts or inadequate living standards. Effective urban policy thus requires moving beyond simple per-capita assumptions, adopting scale-adjusted metrics and managing cities as nested, complex systems.

Gustavo H. Santos, Myriam Delgado, Thiago H. Silva

Location-Based Social Networks (LBSNs) provide a rich foundation for modeling urban behavior through iNETs (Interest Networks), which capture how user interests are distributed throughout urban spaces. This study compares iNETs across platforms (Google Places and Foursquare) and spatial granularities, showing that coarser levels reveal more consistent cross-platform patterns, while finer granularities expose subtle, platform-specific behaviors. Our analysis finds that, in general, user interest is primarily shaped by geographic proximity and venue similarity, while socioeconomic and political contexts play a lesser role. Building on these insights, we develop a multi-level, explainable recommendation system that predicts high-interest urban regions for different user types. The model adapts to behavior profiles -- such as explorers, who are driven by proximity, and returners, who prefer familiar venues -- and provides natural-language explanations using explainable AI (XAI) techniques. To support our approach, we introduce h3-cities, a tool for multi-scale spatial analysis, and release a public demo for interactively exploring personalized urban recommendations. Our findings contribute to urban mobility research by providing scalable, context-aware, and interpretable recommendation systems.

T. Kobashi, R. C. Mouli, J. Liu et al.

Urban decarbonization is central to meeting global climate goals, yet progress toward integrated low-carbon energy systems remains slow. The SolarEV City Concept, linking rooftop photovoltaics with electric vehicles as mobile storage offers a technically robust pathway for deep CO2 reduction, potentially meeting 60-95 percent of municipal electricity demand when deployed synergistically. Despite rapid global growth of PVs and EVs, integration through bidirectional Vehicle-to-Home and Vehicle-to-Grid systems has lagged, revealing a persistent SolarEV paradox. This review examines that paradox through a socio-technical framework across four dimensions, technology, economics, policy, and society. Cross-national comparison shows that while technical feasibility is well established, large-scale implementation is limited by fragmented charging-protocol standards, immature and often non-profitable V2G business models, regulatory misalignments between energy and transport sectors, and social-equity barriers that restrict participation mainly to high-income homeowners. Emerging national archetypes from Japans resilience-driven model to Europes regulation-first trajectory highlight strong path dependence in current integration strategies. The analysis concludes that advancing SolarEV Cities requires a shift from parallel PV-EV promotion toward coordinated policy frameworks, interoperable digital infrastructure, and inclusive market designs that distribute economic and resilience benefits more equitably. Achieving this integrated energy transition will require strategic collaboration among researchers, governments, industries, and communities to build adaptive, resilient, and socially just urban energy systems.

Bin Sun, Yonglong Lu, Yifu Yang et al.

Although cities are human-dominated systems, they provide habitat for many other species. Because of the lack of long-term observation data, it is challenging to assess the impacts of rapid urbanization on biodiversity in Global South countries. Using multisource data, we provided the first analysis of the impacts of urbanization on bird distribution at the continental scale and found that the distributional hot spots of threatened birds overlapped greatly with urbanized areas, with only 3.90% of the threatened birds’ preferred land cover type in urban built-up areas. Bird ranges are being reshaped differently because of their different adaptations to urbanization. While green infrastructure can improve local bird diversity, the homogeneous urban environment also leads to species compositions being more similar across regions. More attention should be paid to narrow-range species for the formulation of biodiversity conservation strategies, and conservation actions should be further coordinated among cities from a global perspective.

S. Chen, I. Kimirei, Cheng Yu et al.

Anthropogenic pollution plays an important part in deteriorating the water quality of rivers all over the world, especially in urban areas of Africa where water quality monitoring is still seriously constrained by the limited test facility and capability. In this study, for evaluating the impact of urbanization on the river water quality, we investigated four typical urban rivers of Tanzania through the upper-urban-down gradient assessment approach and analyzed by water quality index (WQI) and statistical methods. The physicochemical indices monitored in these rivers revealed that the contents of those indicators of TN, TP, PO43−, NH4+, CODMn, and NO3− were accumulated significantly in the lower reaches of the cities, which indicated the life-type pollution characteristics in such urban rivers of Africa. The following main conclusions are achieved from this study. The water quality of 30% of the investigated river sections is in the medium to good status based on the subjective WQI with sensory factors included. Moreover, the sections with obvious water quality decline are mainly limited to the river segments within the urban central area, and severe pollution of water bodies is closely related to large cities, indicating an increasing pollution tendency with the quickly growing population. Therefore, to help formulate water pollution control policies in response to the rapid urban expansion in African countries, it is necessary to adopt an economical and feasible method to carry out early monitoring of surface water quality timely.

Hua Zhang, Mingxing Chen, C. Liang

This paper uses the fifth and sixth census data and 2018 demographic statistics to analyze the spatiotemporal evolution of the urbanization of county in China and the factors that influence the evolution. The paper reveals that the urbanization level of counties is a weak area in China’s overall urbanization. During the period from 2000 to 2010, the spatial patterns of the urbanization level of counties remained stable. Counties with high-level urbanization were concentrated in the coastal areas of the eastern region, while counties that experienced rapid urbanization were mainly located in the central and western regions. Regression analyses indicate that harsh natural endowments that constrain economic development are the most important factors that hinder the urbanization of county; these factors include marginalized locations far away from center cities, high altitudes, and a population with a low education level. This paper also compares two theoretical modes of new-type urbanization, nearby urbanization and remote urbanization, and argues that the new-type urbanization of county is the main form of nearby urbanization and provides an example of urbanization for developing countries worldwide.

Thomas Collins, Diogo Pacheco, Riccardo Di Clemente et al.

Urban vibrancy is an important measure of the energetic nature of a city that is related to why and how people use urban spaces, and it is inherently connected with our social behaviour. Increasingly, people use a wide range of mobile phone apps in their daily lives to connect socially, search for information, make decisions, and arrange travel, amongst many other reasons. However, the relationship between online app usage and urban vibrancy remains unclear, particularly regarding how sociospatial behaviours interact with urban features. Here, we use app-usage data as a digital signature to investigate this question. To do this, we use a high-resolution data source of mobile service-level traffic volumes across eighteen cities in France. We investigate the social component of cities using socially relevant urban features constructed from OpenStreetMap 'Points of Interest'. We developed a methodology for identifying and classifying multidimensional app usage time series based on similarity. We used these in predictive models to interpret the results for each city and across France. Across cities, there were spatial behavioural archetypes, characterised by multidimensional properties. We found patterns between the week and the weekend, and across cities, and the country. These archetypes correspond to changes in socially relevant urban features that impact urban vibrancy. Our results add further evidence for the importance of using computational approaches to understand urban environments, the use of sociological concepts in computational science, and urban vibrancy in cities.

Marian Necula, Tudorel Andrei, Bogdan Oancea et al.

The modernization of offi cial statistics involves the use of new data sources, such as data collected through remote sensing. The document contains a description of how an urban green index, derived from the SDG 11.7 objective, was obtained for Romania's 41 county seat cities based on free data sets collected by remote sensing from the European and North American space agencies. The main result is represented by an estimate of the areas of surfaces covered with vegetation for the 40 county seat towns and the municipality of Bucharest, relative to the total surface. To estimate the area covered with vegetation, we used two data sets obtained by remote sensing, namely data provided by the MODIS mission, the TERRA satellite, and data provided by the Sentinel 2 mission from the Copernicus space program. Based on the results obtained, namely the surface area covered with vegetation, estimated in square kilometers, and the percentage of the total surface area or urban green index, we have created a national top of the county seat cities

Viktor Bezborodov, Tyll Krueger, Cornelia Pokalyuk et al.

This study examines the effectiveness of regional lockdown strategies in mitigating pathogen spread across regional units, termed cities hereinafter. We develop simplified models to analyze infection spread across cities within a country during an epidemic wave. Isolation of a city is initiated when infection numbers within the city surpass defined thresholds. We compare two strategies: strategy (P) consists in prescribing thresholds proportionally to city sizes, while the same threshold is used for all cities under strategy (U). Given the heavy-tailed distribution of city sizes, strategy (P) may result in more secondary infections from larger cities than strategy (U). Random graph models are constructed to represent infection spread as a percolation process. In particular, we consider a model in which mobility between cities only depends on city sizes. We assess the relative efficiency of the two strategies by comparing the ratios of the number of individuals under isolation to the total number of infections by the end of the epidemic wave under strategy (P) and (U). Additionally, we derive analytical formulas for disease prevalence and basic reproduction numbers. Our models are calibrated using mobility data from France, Poland and Japan, validated through simulation. The findings indicate that mobility between cities in France and Poland is mainly determined by city sizes. However, a poor fit was observed with Japanese data, highlighting the importance to include other factors like e.g. geography for some countries in modeling. Our analysis suggest similar effectiveness for both strategies in France and Japan, while strategy (U) demonstrates distinct merits in Poland.

Tim Menzner, Jochen L. Leidner, Florian Mittag

In this demonstration, we present Country Guesser, a live system that guesses the country that a photo is taken in. In particular, given a Google Street View image, our federated ranking model uses a combination of computer vision, machine learning and text retrieval methods to compute a ranking of likely countries of the location shown in a given image from Street View. Interestingly, using text-based features to probe large pre-trained language models can assist to provide cross-modal supervision. We are not aware of previous country guessing systems informed by visual and textual features.

Phisit Pornpongtechavanich, Therdpong Daengsi

The advancement of 5G technology has transformed various aspects of life, including tourism, by enabling people worldwide to communicate and travel with ease. Traveling to different places and countries is now seamless, removing language barriers and facilitating easy access to information on culture, accommodation, and tourist attractions. Additionally, access to applications that facilitate quicker language translation further enhances the travel experience. Phetchaburi Province holds significant importance as a global tourist destination. UNESCO has recognized Phetchaburi as a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN), comprising one of 49 cities worldwide acknowledged for their creative city initiatives. Phetchaburi Province stands as the 5th city in Thailand to receive this designation. This research investigated 5G performance in Phetchaburi Province, both the inner and outer city, focusing on download and upload speeds. The results indicate that there is widespread 5G coverage throughout Phetchaburi Province, including urban and rural areas, especially for the 5G network with a good performance provided by one of the mobile network operators. In addition, the statistical analysis reveals differences in 5G performances between the inner city and the outer city of Phetchaburi Province, particularly for download speeds (p-value < 0.001).

S. Bose, A. Mazumdar, S. Basu

Advancement in technology has made a new sphere of geospatial exploration. Application of geoinformatics in Landuse and Landcover study has made quantitative analysis most clear. Urbanization process is an inevitable factor in developing countries like India. Last 30 years eastern India has also been changed itself in terms of urban development. Kolkata and Bhubaneswar are two most important cities in eastern India where urban growth has taken place rapidly. Landuse and landcover pattern has also changed here with time. Urbanization process of both cities has been identified using satellite images taken from USGS. Applying satellite images, this paper has investigated about the urban green spaces that has been changed with time also depth of urbanization has been studied to find out an overall ecological balance in these cities. Different LULC classes has been chosen to define the ecology. Details about landscape matrices has been applied which are necessary to get the result. Urban Index (UI), Urban expansion index (UX) and Urban green index (UGI) has been used to calculate and compare results with both the cities. Geospatial analysis has been processed maintain time interval of 15 years to better understand the change that affected on land with time. Kolkata is one of the most urbanized cities as it has large history of urbanization whereas Bhubaneswar is also has developed with time, it has been selected as smart city for maintaining a holistic growth approach. Quantitative analysis and application of LecoS made the results more specific and appropriate to understand the actual relationship between growth of cities and greenspace towards sustainability.

Peter Newman

Covid is fading into history in our cities around the world, but its implications are still worth reflecting upon. This special collection called “Covid, Cities and Sustainability” in npj Urban Sustainability has been a pleasure to encourage and edit for the reflections it has provided.

Wolf Reuter

Planning in pluralistic societies implies to propose measurements in situations of dissent and unsolved conflicts. Insofar it is congruent with the domain of politics, inclusive the involvement in the network of effects on existing or awakened, mostly divergent interests. In the resulting case of conflict, their respective representatives try to influence the plan – by their arguments in a rational discourse and by means of power. However, argumentation itself turns out to be a mean of power: As their agents try to push through themselves against resistance, they definitively enter the mechanisms of power acting. Following these considerations, a power model of planning is developed, with its logical structure, its calculi, means and instruments, as it is embedded in its societal conditions, with its ethical positions and including trials to hinder its misuse by procedures.

Atchareeya Saisin, Siriporn Somboonboorana, Rajen Singh Laishram et al.

The border of Moreh town is a major security concern for the Manipur State of India due to its location whereby it shares the border with neighboring Myanmar and the diverse population characteristics. Furthermore, the conflict in Myanmar following a military coup in 2021 heightened regional tensions. It impacted people in the nation and neighboring countries as a result of mass migration fleeing political and economic difficulties. The objective of this article is to examine the security policy-making process and its components in Moreh town, as well as the impact of Myanmar's political crisis on human security, using Securitization Theory as a framework. This study employs qualitative research methodology, primarily relying on secondary documents. According to the findings of this study, the government, both federal and state, is the primary securitizing actor in Moreh town, with other non-actors in dual process of securitization, prioritizing illegal migration as a case study. While insurgencies and other cross-border crimes are also important security issues in the area. As a result of border restrictions and limitations, these issues could have an impact on both national and human security.

Ayşe Nur Aytemiz

Representing the starting point of the modernization efforts of the Ottoman Empire, the Tanzimat Edict of the 18th century decreed that a reform modeled on Europe would become an official state policy, thus initiating a period that reshaped the structure and social fabric of the Empire. The Tanzimat Edict transformed the institutional structure in terms of legal practices, introducing a land order, city administration and construction practice in the cities and the architecture. In the Tanzimat Period, Ankara was one of the main cities where the changes in the administration of the Empire were reflected. In this context, the aim of this study is as follows: to analyze the urban fabric of Ankara related to the process that started with the Tanzimat Edict, in line with the modernization of the Ottoman Empire. This period saw transformation in many areas within spatial structures, as well as in the central administration at the upper level (political, social and economic). Changes at the local context can be seen from the maps of 1839 and 1924. These identify the processes that have instigated these changes and improvements and reveal the relationship of these processes with the Tanzimat reforms. The research concludes that the Tanzimat era practices carried out in Ankara, unlike the structural changes experienced in Istanbul and port cities, did not create major transformations, but actually created only gradual changes in the city. However, it is observed that these modernization initiatives in Ankara brought about, especially in bureaucratic and administrative organizations, social, political and cultural changes, and that these changes paved the way for the Republican Period. There is therefore no doubt that the Tanzimat era is an important time period in the story of changes in the urban fabric of the city.