Deploying spatio-temporal forecasting models across many cities is difficult: traffic networks differ in size and topology, data availability can vary by orders of magnitude, and new cities may provide only a short history of logs. Existing deep traffic models are typically trained per city and backbone, creating high maintenance cost and poor transfer to data-scarce cities. We ask whether a single, backbone-agnostic layer can condition on "which city this sequence comes from", improve accuracy in full- and low-data regimes, and support better cross-city adaptation with minimal code changes. We propose CityCond, a light-weight city-conditioned memory layer that augments existing spatio-temporal backbones. CityCond combines a city-ID encoder with an optional shared memory bank (CityMem). Given a city index and backbone hidden states, it produces city-conditioned features fused through gated residual connections. We attach CityCond to five representative backbones (GRU, TCN, Transformer, GNN, STGCN) and evaluate three regimes: full-data, low-data, and cross-city few-shot transfer on METR-LA and PEMS-BAY. We also run auxiliary experiments on SIND, a drone-based multi-agent trajectory dataset from a signalized intersection in Tianjin (we focus on pedestrian tracks). Across more than fourteen model variants and three random seeds, CityCond yields consistent improvements, with the largest gains for high-capacity backbones such as Transformers and STGCNs. CityMem reduces Transformer error by roughly one third in full-data settings and brings substantial gains in low-data and cross-city transfer. On SIND, simple city-ID conditioning modestly improves low-data LSTM performance. CityCond can therefore serve as a reusable design pattern for scalable, multi-city forecasting under realistic data constraints.
Juan Palma-Borda, Eduardo Guzmán, María-Victoria Belmonte
Crime is one of the greatest threats to urban security. Around 80 percent of the world's population lives in countries with high levels of criminality. Most of the crimes committed in the cities take place in their urban environments. This paper presents the development and validation of a digital shadow platform for modeling and simulating urban crime. This digital shadow has been constructed using data-driven agent-based modeling and simulation techniques, which are suitable for capturing dynamic interactions among individuals and with their environment. Our approach transforms and integrates well-known criminological theories and the expert knowledge of law enforcement agencies (LEA), policy makers, and other stakeholders under a theoretical model, which is in turn combined with real crime, spatial (cartographic) and socio-economic data into an urban model characterizing the daily behavior of citizens. The digital shadow has also been instantiated for the city of Malaga, for which we had over 300,000 complaints available. This instance has been calibrated with those complaints and other geographic and socio-economic information of the city. To the best of our knowledge, our digital shadow is the first for large urban areas that has been calibrated with a large dataset of real crime reports and with an accurate representation of the urban environment. The performance indicators of the model after being calibrated, in terms of the metrics widely used in predictive policing, suggest that our simulated crime generation matches the general pattern of crime in the city according to historical data. Our digital shadow platform could be an interesting tool for modeling and predicting criminal behavior in an urban environment on a daily basis and, thus, a useful tool for policy makers, criminologists, sociologists, LEAs, etc. to study and prevent urban crime.
Commuting Origin-Destination (OD) flows capture movements of people from residences to workplaces, representing the predominant form of intra-city mobility and serving as a critical reference for understanding urban dynamics and supporting sustainable policies. However, acquiring such data requires costly, time-consuming censuses. In this study, we introduce a commuting OD flow dataset for cities around the world, spanning 6 continents, 179 countries, and 1,625 cities, providing unprecedented coverage of dynamics under diverse urban environments. Specifically, we collected fine-grained demographic data, satellite imagery, and points of interest~(POIs) for each city as foundational inputs to characterize the functional roles of urban regions. Leveraging these, a deep generative model is employed to capture the complex relationships between urban geospatial features and human mobility, enabling the generation of commuting OD flows between urban regions. Comprehensively, validation shows that the spatial distributions of the generated flows closely align with real-world observations. We believe this dataset offers a valuable resource for advancing sustainable urban development research in urban science, data science, transportation engineering, and related fields.
Slums are a structural feature of urbanization, and shifting urbanization trends underline their significance for the cities of tomorrow. Despite their importance, data and knowledge on slums are very limited. In consideration of the current data landscape, it is not possible to answer one of the most essential questions: Where are slums located? The goal of this study is to provide a more nuanced understanding of the geography of slums and their growth trajectories. The methods rely on the combination of different datasets (city-level slum maps, world cities, global human settlements layer, Atlas of Informality). Slum data from city-level maps form the backbone of this research and are made compatible by differentiating between the municipal area, the urbanized area, and the area beyond. This study quantifies the location of slums in 30 cities, and our findings show that only half of all slums are located within the administrative borders of cities. Spatial growth has also shifted outwards. However, this phenomenon is very different in different regions of the world; the municipality captures less than half of all slums in Africa and the Middle East but almost two-thirds of all slums in cities of South Asia. These insights are used to estimate land requirements within the Sustainable Development Goals time frame. In 2015, almost one billion slum residents occupied a land area as large as twice the size of the country of Portugal. The estimated 380 million residents to be added up to 2030 will need land equivalent to the size of the country of Egypt. This land will be added to cities mainly outside their administrative borders. Insights are provided on how this land demand differs within cities and between world regions. Such novel insights are highly relevant to the policy actions needed to achieve Target 11.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (“by 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services, and upgrade slums”) as interventions targeted at slums or informal settlements are strongly linked to political and administrative boundaries. More research is needed to draw attention to the urban expansion of cities and the role of slums and informal settlements.
DThis paper presents an additive index on climate policy engagement at the municipal level, based on the three dimensions awareness, conception and implementation of climate change mitigation and adaptation. The distortion of the index is based on the self-perception and personal assessment of municipal decision-makers, which were collected and evaluated as part of a primary survey (postal survey). The index shows how strongly a municipality is committed to climate policy. Thus, it represents an extension of previous indices that either only consider climate mitigation or adaptation or are only based exclusively on secondary statistics. The second part of the paper describes the application of the index in three counties or 51 municipalities in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The interpretation takes place in the context of structural characteristics of the municipalities concerned (number of inhabitants, share of votes of different parties, geographical location). The distribution of the index values shows a similar awareness in climate protection and climate change adaptation, but an increasing discrepancy in the implementation of adaptation-specific measures.
Cities. Urban geography, Urbanization. City and country
Before the COVID-19 crisis, Thailand’s tourism industry, which is critical to the economy, relied on global tourists. The Thai government initiated a policy reform to stimulate domestic focus on the agricultural sector as the key occupation for income distribution, which involved changing tourist behavior from urban to local tourism. This study integrates quantitative and qualitative multiphase approaches to obtain reliable research results from six regions of Thailand. The travel behaviors of Thai tourists engaged in agritourism did not show a statistically significant difference. The paradigm was intercorrelated with variables of the entry mode, comprising internal and external factors that influence the decision to enter the agritourism business. An agritourism entrepreneur must perceive risks and benefits, and adjust and return to the homecoming of offspring. Thailand’s agritourism can contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), resulting in economic growth based on sustainable domestic dependency.
Cities. Urban geography, Urbanization. City and country
João da Cunha Borges, Rui del Pino Fernandes, Sara Silva Lopes
et al.
This paper focuses on challenge, quite typical of developing or industrializing regions, of converting a former rural settlement into a town. We analyse the urban process of Pirescoxe, a former hamlet in the riverside of Loures (Lisbon Metropolitan Region), observing the key episodes of historical formation of its current built structure, but highlighting a particularity, which was the recent conversion of elements of rural memory, built and unbuilt, into elements of cohesivity in an otherwise discrete suburban space. This analysis discloses aspects of the process of transformation of Pirescoxe over time, through its regional context, and accounting for the evolution of its typical building forms. It stems from observation of photographic and cartographic elements, historical and contemporary, as well as of the urbanization plans that transformed this space. The conclusion notes how the most decisive intervention in Pirescoxe was the one that more strongly emphasized the ruins of the rural past as elements of memory and identity.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology
The idea of smart cities (SCs) has gained substantial attention in recent years. The SC paradigm aims to improve citizens' quality of life and protect the city's environment. As we enter the age of next-generation SCs, it is important to explore all relevant aspects of the SC paradigm. In recent years, the advancement of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has produced a trend of supporting daily objects with smartness, targeting to make human life easier and more comfortable. The paradigm of SCs appears as a response to the purpose of building the city of the future with advanced features. SCs still face many challenges in their implementation, but increasingly more studies regarding SCs are implemented. Nowadays, different cities are employing SC features to enhance services or the residents quality of life. This work provides readers with useful and important information about Amman Smart City.
Super-resolution techniques are crucial in improving image granularity, particularly in complex urban scenes, where preserving geometric structures is vital for data-informed cultural heritage applications. In this paper, we propose a city scene super-resolution method via geometric error minimization. The geometric-consistent mechanism leverages the Hough Transform to extract regular geometric features in city scenes, enabling the computation of geometric errors between low-resolution and high-resolution images. By minimizing mixed mean square error and geometric align error during the super-resolution process, the proposed method efficiently restores details and geometric regularities. Extensive validations on the SET14, BSD300, Cityscapes and GSV-Cities datasets demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods, especially in urban scenes.
Truong Thanh Hung Nguyen, Phuc Truong Loc Nguyen, Monica Wachowicz
et al.
This paper presents a Multimodal Ambient Context-enriched Intelligence Platform (MACeIP) for Smart Cities, a comprehensive system designed to enhance urban management and citizen engagement. Our platform integrates advanced technologies, including Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, edge and cloud computing, and Multimodal AI, to create a responsive and intelligent urban ecosystem. Key components include Interactive Hubs for citizen interaction, an extensive IoT sensor network, intelligent public asset management, a pedestrian monitoring system, a City Planning Portal, and a Cloud Computing System. We demonstrate the prototype of MACeIP in several cities, focusing on Fredericton, New Brunswick. This work contributes to innovative city development by offering a scalable, efficient, and user-centric approach to urban intelligence and management.
Laboni Paul, Rahul Deb Mohalder, Kazi Masudul Alam
The population of the urban areas is increasing daily, and this migration is causing serious environmental pollution. A larger population is creating pressure on the municipality's waste management and the city corporations of developing countries such as Bangladesh, further threatening human health. New generation technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT)-based waste management systems, can help improve this serious issue. IoT-enabled smart dustbins and mobile applications-based interactive management can effectively solve this problem. In this article, we combine these two technologies to offer an acceptable solution to this problem. The proposed waste management model enables smart dustbins to communicate with waste collectors or waste control centers whenever it is necessary. Additionally, city dwellers can use mobile applications to report their observations in their neighborhoods. As a result, both sensors and humans are involved directly in the development loop. We have conducted a detailed survey to study the acceptance of such a system in the community and received some encouraging results.
Mustapha Immurana, Abdul-Aziz Iddrisu, Ayisha Mohammed
et al.
Although a lot of studies exist on the drivers of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows, very little attention has been paid to the effect of population health, to the extent that, some countries may be willing to compromise their health and safety standards in order to attract FDI inflows. In this study, we provide empirical evidence of the effect of population health on net FDI inflows in Africa. The study employs data from 1997 to 2017 on a sample of 35 African countries. Life expectancy and death rate are used to proxy population health whiles the Instrumental Variable Fixed Effects (IVFE) and the system Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) regressions are used as the baseline and robustness empirical estimation techniques, respectively. The study finds life expectancy and death rate to have positive and negative significant effects on net FDI inflows respectively, irrespective of the estimation technique used. Our findings imply that, instead of lowering health and safety standards, enhancing population health (via for instance, improving access to quality healthcare, improved water and sanitation as well as vaccination against diseases among others) should rather be used as a strategy towards attaining higher net FDI inflows, especially into Africa.
Cities. Urban geography, Urbanization. City and country
George M. Nassef, Kariman Ahmed Shawky, Aladin Yassin
أصبحت كثير من مراكز المدن التاريخية المصرية تعاني من خطر التدهور والزوال بعد أن كانت مراكز ذات شهرة اقتصادية وتجارية وثقافية في الماضي، حيث تنهار البيئة التراثية من مباني تاريخية وفراغات عمرانية وتنهار معها الانشطة الاقتصادية، حيث إندثار الحرف التراثية وتدهور الخدمات وضياع الهوية التاريخية. ومن ثم تناولت كثير من الأبحاث ضرورة التدخل لإنقاذ تلك المراكز التاريخية والتي تمثل الهوية التاريخية.
ويهدف البحث إلى التوصل لأهم الحلول الفاعلة لتطوير مراكز المدن التراثية ذات الأنشطة الحرفية. لذا يتناول البحث من خلال المنهج النظري والتحليلي دراسة البعد الاقتصادي من خلال دراسة بعض المشكلات التي تم التوصل اليها بناء علي الأبحاث والدراسات السابقة. ويتم مناقشة الحلول الخاصة بتلك المشكلات، وبعد ذلك يتم قياس المشكلات والحلول في عدة تجارب عالمية للتأكد منها من خلال المنهج المقارن، ثم تطبيق تلك المشكلات والحلول علي مراكز مدن تاريخية مصرية كحالات دراسية. بالإضافة إلى إجراء إستبيان للخبراء لتدقيق اولويات المشكلات والحلول الاقتصادية لمراكز المدن التراثية. ويخلص البحث إلي التوصل لأهم المشكلات والحلول الاقتصادية وتطويرها كمدخل لإحياء مراكز المدن التاريخية ذات الأنشطة الحرفية التراثية. وتتلخص أهم المشكلات في تدهور الأنشطة الحرفية التراثية، ويلي ذلك نقص التمويل المناسب لإحياء تلك المراكز التاريخية. كما يأتي في مقدمة الحلول الاقتصادية تطوير الأعمال الانتاجية الحرفية، وأيضا تحويل المنطقة إلي مركز للنشاط الاقتصادي، حيث تسهم هذه الحلول في حل أكثر من مشكلة اقتصادية.
Many Egyptian historical city centers are currently facing the risk of deterioration and disappearance after being renowned for their economic, commercial, and cultural activities in the past. The heritage environment, including historical buildings and urban spaces, collapses along with economic activities, the disappearance of heritage crafts, the deterioration of services, and the loss of historical identity. Therefore, many studies have highlighted the necessity of intervening to save these historical centers, which represent historical identity.
This research aims to identify effective solutions for developing heritage city centers with craft activities. Through a theoretical and analytical methodology, the research examines the economic aspect by studying some of the problems that have been identified based on previous research and studies. Solutions to these problems are discussed, and then the problems and solutions are measured in multiple international experiments through a comparative methodology. Finally, the research applies these problems and solutions to Egyptian historical city centers as case studies, in addition to conducting a survey of experts to confirm the priorities of economic problems and solutions for heritage city centers. The research concludes by identifying the most important economic problems and solutions and developing them as an approach to revitalizing heritage city centers with craft activities. The main problems identified include the deterioration of heritage crafts activities, followed by a lack of appropriate funding to revitalize these historical centers. The proposed economic solutions include developing craft production activities and transforming the area into a center for economic activity, which can solve multiple economic problems.
Cities. Urban geography, Urbanization. City and country
According to agonistic democracy theory, conflict is key for the functioning of plural democracies. In particular in ‘fractured’ societies, deliberative spaces in which adversary positions can be recognized and negotiated, serve as important arenas where antagonisms can be transformed into agonisms. Professionals dealing with conflicts between different interest groups – for instance in the field of spatial planning – are therefore challenged to identify appropriate ‘spaces’ for debate. Against this background, this paper discusses the extent to which localist discourses and practices can facilitate such spaces. For this purpose, we introduce a scheme for classifying different manifestations of New Localism. This scheme is unpacked and discussed by means of two contrasting case studies that reconstruct notions of New Localism based on a migration-related conflict in a rural area and on a conflict about traffic calming in an urban neighbourhood. Thereby we show how localist discourses and practices can contribute to establishing common symbolic spaces and temporary conflictual consensus, but also to concealing and normalizing exclusionary positions in small-scale conflicts.
Cities. Urban geography, Urbanization. City and country
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of pro poor interventions with a special focus on wealth accumulation and diversity in income generating programs. The study used a Recursive Bivariate Probit model. The study used secondary data gathered by the Local Development Fund (LDF) in 2020 which drew a sample of 1396 households (868 beneficiaries, 528 non-beneficiaries). The study finds that participation in Livelihoods and Skills Development (LSD) programs significantly improved household asset accumulation by 14.8% and petty trading by 31.8%. Participation in Public Works Program (PWP) significantly improved asset accumulation by 17.7%. The study therefore concludes that the LSD program is more effective in helping households accumulate assets and engage in trade activities that result in improvement of income. Since the study demonstrates that the LSD program is more successful in assisting households to accumulate assets and participate in trade activities, the government should consider implementing a graduation model that extends the LSD's financial trainings to PWP and Social Cash Transfer (SCT) groups.
Cities. Urban geography, Urbanization. City and country
Self-citations are a key topic in evaluative bibliometrics because they can artificially inflate citation-related performance indicators. Recently, self-citations defined at the largest scale, i.e., country self-citations, have started to attract the attention of researchers and policymakers. According to a recent research, in fact, the anomalous trends in the country self-citation rates of some countries, such as Italy, have been induced by the distorting effect of citation metrics-centered science policies. In the present study, we investigate the trends of country self-citations in 50 countries over the world in the period 1996-2019 using Scopus data. Results show that for most countries country self-citations have decreased over time. 12 countries (Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Malaysia, Pakistan, Romania, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Ukraine), however, exhibit different behavior, with anomalous trends of self-citations. We argue that these anomalies should be attributed to the aggressive science policies adopted by these countries in recent years, which are all characterized by direct or indirect incentives for citations. Our analysis confirms that when bibliometric indicators are integrated into systems of incentives, they are capable of affecting rapidly and visibly the citation behavior of entire countries.