Hasil untuk "Urbanization. City and country"

Carl-Johan Neiderud

The world is becoming more urban every day, and the process has been ongoing since the industrial revolution in the 18th century. The United Nations now estimates that 3.9 billion people live in urban centres. The rapid influx of residents is however not universal and the developed countries are already urban, but the big rise in urban population in the next 30 years is expected to be in Asia and Africa. Urbanization leads to many challenges for global health and the epidemiology of infectious diseases. New megacities can be incubators for new epidemics, and zoonotic diseases can spread in a more rapid manner and become worldwide threats. Adequate city planning and surveillance can be powerful tools to improve the global health and decrease the burden of communicable diseases.

Juan Pablo Chauvin, E. Glaeser, Yueran Ma et al.

Jianli Xiao, Zhicheng Bai

Abstract This study critically examines how digital technologies contribute to the sustainable conservation and revitalisation of urban–rural heritage in China, focusing on their empowering effects and inherent challenges. Through a qualitative multiple case analysis of 30 representative Chinese projects, it assesses technological applications in digital recording, information management, and public dissemination. The findings indicate a paradigm shift from static preservability to dynamic sustainability, driven by technologies such as high-precision scanning and Digital Twin, which enhance documentation accuracy and enable preventive conservation. Nevertheless, significant challenges remain, including gaps in technical standardisation, inherent governance paradoxes, algorithmic bias, data silos, and constrained community agency. These issues stem from a governance model that frequently prioritises technical rationality over humanistic values, such as cultural accuracy and narrative sovereignty. In conclusion, the study proposes an integrated rebalancing framework advocating for context-sensitive technical adaptation, a collaborative governance logic model for digital heritage, and the adoption of an ethics-aligned benchmarking matrix aligned with international charters. This approach aims to steer digital heritage practice towards more inclusive and sustainable outcomes.

Thiago N. Gardin, Weeberb J. Requia

Abstract Most studies investigating the relationship between green exposure and academic performance have been conducted in high-income countries, leaving a significant knowledge gap regarding this association in low- and middle-income settings. Given the distinct urban landscapes, educational systems, and social contexts in these regions, it remains unclear whether previous findings can be generalized. This study addresses this gap by examining the association of urban greenery with academic performance in Brazil. We analyzed a large-scale dataset with individual-level academic performance data from about 3 million Brazilian students, incorporating two greenness metrics—normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and tree cover—across three buffer sizes (300 m, 500 m, and 1000 m). We estimated associations using primary and sensitivity analyses while distinguishing between essay and general subject scores. Our findings indicate that tree cover is more consistently associated with better academic performance than NDVI, suggesting that structural attributes of greenery, such as shade and biodiversity, may play a crucial role in learning environments. The effects were stronger for essay scores compared to general subjects. Furthermore, smaller buffer sizes (300 m) showed more robust associations, emphasizing the importance of immediate green exposure near schools. This study provides compelling evidence that urban greenery, particularly tree cover, supports academic success among Brazilian students. These findings have significant implications for policymakers and urban planners, reinforcing the need to integrate green spaces into school environments to promote equitable access to nature and optimize educational outcomes.

Tomoya Mori, Daisuke Murakami

This study develops a statistical model that integrates economic agglomeration theory and power-law distributions of city sizes to project future population distribution on 1-km grid cells. We focus on Japan -- a country at the forefront of rapid population decline. Drawing on official population projections and empirical patterns from past urban evolution in response to the development of high-speed rail and highway networks, we examine how ongoing demographic contraction and expected reductions in distance frictions may reshape urban geography. Our analysis suggests that urban economies will consolidate around fewer and larger cities, each of which will experience a flattening of population density as the decentralization of urban populations accelerates, while rural areas are expected to experience further depopulation as a result of these spatial and economic shifts. By identifying sustainable urban cores capable of anchoring regional economies, our model provides a framework for policymakers to manage population decline while maintaining resilience through optimized infrastructure and resource allocation focused on these key urban centers.

Geoffrey Deperle, Philippe Jacquet

This paper focuses on the challenge of interactively modeling street networks. In this work, we extend the simple fractal model, which is particularly useful for describing small cities or individual districts, by constructing random cities based on a tiling structure over which hyperfractals are distributed. This approach enables the connection of multiple hyperfractal districts, providing a more comprehensive urban representation. Furthermore, we demonstrate how this decomposition can be used to segment a city into distinct districts through fractal analysis. Finally, we present tools for the numerical generation of random cities following this model.

Rashid Mushkani

This position paper argues that embedding the legal "reasonable person" standard in municipal AI systems is essential for democratic and sustainable urban governance. As cities increasingly deploy artificial intelligence (AI) systems, concerns around equity, accountability, and normative legitimacy are growing. This paper introduces the Urban Reasonableness Layer (URL), a conceptual framework that adapts the legal "reasonable person" standard for supervisory oversight in municipal AI systems, including potential future implementations of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Drawing on historical analogies, scenario mapping, and participatory norm-setting, we explore how legal and community-derived standards can inform AI decision-making in urban contexts. Rather than prescribing a fixed solution, the URL is proposed as an exploratory architecture for negotiating contested values, aligning automation with democratic processes, and interrogating the limits of technical alignment. Our key contributions include: (1) articulating the conceptual and operational architecture of the URL; (2) specifying participatory mechanisms for dynamic normative threshold-setting; (3) presenting a comparative scenario analysis of governance trajectories; and (4) outlining evaluation metrics and limitations. This work contributes to ongoing debates on urban AI governance by foregrounding pluralism, contestability, and the inherently political nature of socio-technical systems.

Chaolin Gu

Asadullah Hanif, Tamanna Barak, Najibullah Loodin et al.

Abstract The increase in urban population growth has contributed to the expansion of unplanned settlements, especially in developing countries. Triggered by the lack of government oversight, the expansion of these settlements is characterized by unique economic, social, physical, and functional attributes. This study aims at exploring the physical features of unplanned settlements in District 4th of Herat city, western Afghanistan. Employing a mixed-research method, we integrated spatial analysis using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) into detailed field observations to get a better understanding of the characteristics of the formation of these informal settlements. Our findings shed light on a number of key physical features including irregular street layouts, inadequate drainage systems, and substandard construction materials, irregular buildings in term of layout, number of floors, and building density. The features of unplanned urban morphology contribute to socio-economic loss and environmental degradation due to the absence of critical infrastructures including water infrastructures and the presence of unplanned streets in under-resourced unplanned settlements. In fact, the absence of government’s efforts in monitoring the development of unplanned settlements hinders the provision of essential services and infrastructures in the informal settlement communities. Our assertion is that the findings of this research will help policy makers in Afghanistan to reconsider their policies and decisions on urban development and growth, particularly in the poorer and under-served unplanned settlements in major cities in Afghanistan.

Mauricio Ávila Juárez

Tras la derrota peruana en la Guerra del Pacífico, son diversos los discursos intelectuales que muestran una urgencia general por la ausencia de cuerpos viriles para el Perú, y esto motivó una serie de reformas sociales durante el proceso de Reconstrucción Nacional. Este artículo ilustra el proyecto social de la hacienda Chiclín, ubicado en el norte peruano (La Libertad), y dirigido por Rafael Larco Herrera y orientado a este objetivo de “reformar” y civilizar la raza peruana. Motivado por las ideas del darwinismo social, Larco encaminó su hacienda para ser una “hoja en blanco” para refundar una sociedad utópica, y utilizó los deportes como herramienta para forjar un “nuevo peruano”. A través del análisis de los discursos, obras y proyectos de Larco Herrera en Chiclín, y el impacto de la Guerra del Pacífico en su juventud, podemos evidenciar el enfoque eugenésico y paternalista en su labor social. Larco buscó promover la salud física y moral de los trabajadores, fomentando la cultura física y el deporte como medios de disciplina, civilización y progreso para el Perú.

A. Gravagnuolo, M. Angrisano, M. Bosone et al.

Adaptive reuse of cultural heritage can be a valid strategy to recover heritage buildings in a state of abandonment or underuse, as well as to implement the circular economy model in cities and regions, contributing to the achievement of climate objectives, to social cohesion, wellbeing and quality of life, making cities more attractive, safe, sustainable and resilient. The aim of this paper is to develop and test an ex-ante evaluation methodology to support participatory decision-making processes for the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage according to the circular economy perspective. A multidimensional and multicriteria evaluation framework was experimented in the city of Salerno, Italy, to assess alternative solutions for the adaptive reuse of four large historic buildings in abandonment, and identify a satisfying solution based on interactions with local stakeholders. The TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) multi-criteria evaluation method was used to compare adaptive reuse project alternatives including stakeholder objectives and preferences. Starting from 14 adaptive reuse proposals, the participative evaluation methodology supported stakeholders in the identification of 4 preferable solutions further developed and co-designed, as well as in the search of a final satisfying solution engaging diverse stakeholders groups. Moreover, operational circularity criteria for the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage were identified. The results of the study show the potential of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) mixed with participative methods for co-design and co-evaluation to support inclusive decision-making processes for circular adaptive reuse of cultural heritage.

Jie Deng, Wenhao Chai, Junsheng Huang et al.

City scene generation has gained significant attention in autonomous driving, smart city development, and traffic simulation. It helps enhance infrastructure planning and monitoring solutions. Existing methods have employed a two-stage process involving city layout generation, typically using Variational Autoencoders (VAEs), Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), or Transformers, followed by neural rendering. These techniques often exhibit limited diversity and noticeable artifacts in the rendered city scenes. The rendered scenes lack variety, resembling the training images, resulting in monotonous styles. Additionally, these methods lack planning capabilities, leading to less realistic generated scenes. In this paper, we introduce CityCraft, an innovative framework designed to enhance both the diversity and quality of urban scene generation. Our approach integrates three key stages: initially, a diffusion transformer (DiT) model is deployed to generate diverse and controllable 2D city layouts. Subsequently, a Large Language Model(LLM) is utilized to strategically make land-use plans within these layouts based on user prompts and language guidelines. Based on the generated layout and city plan, we utilize the asset retrieval module and Blender for precise asset placement and scene construction. Furthermore, we contribute two new datasets to the field: 1)CityCraft-OSM dataset including 2D semantic layouts of urban areas, corresponding satellite images, and detailed annotations. 2) CityCraft-Buildings dataset, featuring thousands of diverse, high-quality 3D building assets. CityCraft achieves state-of-the-art performance in generating realistic 3D cities.

Vini Netto, Caio Cacholas, Dries Daems et al.

Cities emerged independently across different world regions and historical periods, raising fundamental questions: How did the first urban settlements develop? What social and spatial conditions enabled their emergence? Are these processes universal or context-dependent? Moreover, what distinguishes cities from other human settlements? This paper investigates the drivers behind the creation of cities through a hybrid approach that integrates urban theory, the biological concept of morphospace (the space of all possible configurations), and archaeological evidence. It explores the transition from sedentary hunter-gatherer communities to urban societies, highlighting fundamental forces converging to produce increasingly complex divisions of labour as a central driver of urbanization. Morphogenesis is conceptualized as a trajectory through morphospace, governed by structure-seeking selection processes that balance density, permeability, and information as critical dimensions. The study highlights the non-ergodic nature of urban morphogenesis, where configurations are progressively selected based on their fitness to support the diversifying interactions between mutually dependent agents. The morphospace framework effectively distinguishes between theoretical spatial configurations, non-urban and proto-urban settlements, and contemporary cities. This analysis supports the proposition that cities emerge and evolve as solutions balancing density, permeability, and informational organization, enabling them to support increasingly complex societal functions.

Weifeng Li, Xia Hai, Lijian Han et al.

Abstract Water scarcity as a serious global issue has been challenging the human beings. Despite broad research on water scarcity from global to local scale, there is lack of comprehensive understanding of water scarcity in urban areas, particular in the megaregion which is a cluster of a number of cities with dense human activities and close interactions between each other cities. In this study, we took one important megaregions of China, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) megaregion, as a case study to analyze the spatial-temporal trajectories of water scarcity and the driving forces. First, we developed a new water scarcity index system that could separately assess the spatial variation of physically- and human-induced water scarcity. Second, we explored the relations between water scarcity and the multi-manifestation of urbanization in terms of demographic, social, landscape, and economic aspects. The results showed: 1) the overall water scarcity varied spatially and temporally across different cities in the BTH megaregion; the physically- and human-induced water scarcity was not spatially coincident; most the variation in water scarcity was due to human-induced water scarcity; 2) urbanization primarily affected the human-induced water scarcity; the economic urbanization had the strongest negative impacts, whereas the landscape urbanization had positive effects; non-urban water utilization, such as agricultural water use, strongly competed for water use with regional urbanization. Overall, the results highlight the importance of optimizing economic development mode and controlling agriculture water use to alleviate the water scarcity of megaregion. The general framework used in this study can be applied to other megaregions in China and to some other developing countries that have similar water scarcity problems.

Uche Abamba Osakede, Victor Olufemi Aramide, Aderonke Esther Adesipo et al.

Gender inequality is high in Africa compared to other regions of the world. This disparity jeopardises the efforts targeted at improving human development and economic growth in the continent. This study provides empirical evidence on the drivers of human development in Africa across gender and country income groups, covering 54 countries over the period 1990 to 2019. It employed the Mean Group estimator for analysis to accommodate slope heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. The paper used Human Development Index (HDI) to proxy human development, while HDI across gender was employed to capture gender differences in human development. Country income grouping followed the World Bank country classification into low, lower-middle and upper-middle-income economies. The findings showed more determinants of HDI when disaggregated across gender than otherwise. The drivers of HDI are similar across gender for each country income group, with infrastructure, particularly ICT shown to have a positive effect in the long run for all country groups. For lower-middle and upper-middle income countries, fertility rate induced a significant negative effect on HDI and gender human development but only in the long run. However, the effect was insignificant for male and female HDI in low-income countries. Moreover, an increase in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) promotes human development regardless of a country's income classification. A larger positive effect of GDP was observed on the HDI for low-income countries. Therefore, in the bid to improve human development in Africa, efforts should continually be intensified towards promoting GDP growth regardless of the level of growth in macroeconomic income. Policies targeted at reducing fertility rates and increasing ICT are also encouraged as these will improve HDI and close the gap in HDI across gender.

Hauke Sandhaus, Wendy Ju, Qian Yang

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) can potentially improve urban living by reducing accidents, increasing transportation accessibility and equity, and decreasing emissions. Realizing these promises requires the innovations of AV driving behaviors, city plans and infrastructure, and traffic and transportation policies to join forces. However, the complex interdependencies among AV, city, and policy design issues can hinder their innovation. We argue the path towards better AV cities is not a process of matching city designs and policies with AVs' technological innovations, but a process of iterative prototyping of all three simultaneously: Innovations can happen step-wise as the knot of AV, city, and policy design loosens and tightens, unwinds and reties. In this paper, we ask: How can innovators innovate AVs, city environments, and policies simultaneously and productively toward better AV cities? The paper has two parts. First, we map out the interconnections among the many AV, city, and policy design decisions, based on a literature review spanning HCI/HRI, transportation science, urban studies, law and policy, operations research, economy, and philosophy. This map can help innovators identify design constraints and opportunities across the traditional AV/city/policy design disciplinary bounds. Second, we review the respective methods for AV, city, and policy design, and identify key barriers in combining them: (1) Organizational barriers to AV-city-policy design collaboration, (2) computational barriers to multi-granularity AV-city-policy simulation, and (3) different assumptions and goals in joint AV-city-policy optimization. We discuss two broad approaches that can potentially address these challenges, namely, "low-fidelity integrative City-AV-Policy Simulation (iCAPS)" and "participatory design optimization".

A. Beshir, Jaemin Song

Zhaoyang Cai, Weiming Li, Shixiong Cao

F. H. Mardiansjah, P. Rahayu, Deden Rukmana

Indonesia is home to more than 260 million people and is one of the world’s most rapidly urbanizing countries. Between 1980 and 2010, Indonesia’s urban population grew about fourfold, from 32.8 to 118.3 million. Using data from National Census publications, this article examines the urbanization patterns and trends in urban growth in Indonesia from 1980 to 2010. The urbanization process has increased the number of cities in Indonesia from 50 to 94 and expanded large urban regions. Most of these expanded urban regions are located on the island of Java, including the metropolitan areas of Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Semarang, Malang, Surakarta and Yogyakarta. The article also identifies the emergence of non-statutory towns and new extended urban regions outside the jurisdictions of urban municipalities. The policy implications of the emergence of such urban areas are additionally discussed.

Zhenghui Li, Fanqi Zou, Yong Tan et al.

Most countries have experienced land urbanization, which is indispensable for financial support, especially for their financing function achievement through land appreciation and other channels in the urbanization process. By using 34 provincial capital (sub-provinces) cities in China as the sample, this paper studies the impact of finance on land urbanization construction based on the panel data from 2003 to 2018 under a differential GMM method; besides, the causes of excessive financial support and results generated on different regions are reported. Moreover, a moderate range of financial support for land urbanization is found under the influence of land finance. We obtain the following results: first, there is excessive financial support for land urbanization with regional differences exhibited; for instance, the eastern and central regions have an excessive financial support but the western region does not. Second, land urbanization with an excessive financial support correlates with financial efficiency, while the relatively large financial efficiency leads to the waste of a large number of financial resources. Third, financial support has a single and significant threshold effect on land urbanization construction, and finance has a promoting effect when land finance is less than the threshold value; otherwise, it has an inhibiting effect.