Objective: Smart Cities Mission launched by Government of India in 2015 aims to promote sustainable and inclusive cities that provide core infrastructure and facilitates decent quality of life for the citizens. Emphasis is laid on good governance, especially e-Governance and citizen participation.The paper examines the challenges in people’s participation and identifies the factors that facilitate people’s involvement in enhancing smart governance. Prior Work: Underlining the importance of people in city development, a study was conducted when Jawahar Lal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission was launched in 2005. The research was further extended when the Smart Cities Mission emphasized on the significance of citizens’ engagement. The present paper is continuum of these researches. Approach: This paper focuses on citizens’ engagement process applied under Smart Cities Mission, and attempts to investigate whether citizens’ point of views are directly or indirectly reflected in the Mission implementation. The paper is premised on literature review supported by a few field level surveys, consultations and analyses. Results: Smart Cities Mission emphasizes on public participation; and recommends Information Communication Technologies and e-governance as tools to facilitate and enhance citizen engagement. However, digital divide and digital illiteracy are serious challenges. Besides, bureaucratic control, political intervention, and top-down approach characterize Indian city governments. This leads to more of ceremonial public participation. But, there are instances of visionary and dynamic city governments that encouraged constructive and effective citizen participation. Implications:The paper would serve for further intensive studies to: a. identify effective ways for people’s participation in a system dominated by powerful vested interest groups averse to change, and ; b. provide policy-makers thoughts for effecting meaningful public involvement. Value: The paper findings are, by and large, common for developing countries. The paper indicates the mode for citizen engagement to enable smart governance of cities.
Social sciences (General), Cities. Urban geography
The twenty-first century is witnessing continuous developments and diverse challenges that cannot be understood from a disciplinary perspective alone. This prompted academia to pay attention to the interdisciplinary approach as an entry to acquire the skills needed to face these challenges by creating solutions exceeding the scope of one discipline. Accordingly, and in the context of keenness to apply this approach to the local architectural academia, the study aims to provide a proposed vision for integrating the interdisciplinary approach into architectural design (AD) education through the creation of the Interdisciplinary Architectural Design Studio (IADS), to be included in undergraduate curricula. Therefore, the study first relied on the inductive approach to analyzing the latest literature that recorded experiences about this topic, and examples from the current situation have operationalized this approach in the international and local architectural academia to understand various aspects related to this integration. Secondly, the deductive analytical approach, by surveying to investigate the relevance and effectiveness of applying this approach in AD teaching and mechanisms on which the proposed studio should be based. The study concluded by transforming lessons learned into a proposed framework that can be applied and tested, and that aims to link artistic, scientific, theoretical, and practical aspects and provide a learning environment that encourages building the century competencies.
Cities. Urban geography, Urbanization. City and country
Abstract This paper reviews a large number of scholarly articles in the housing field spanning the last thirty years, from 1993 to 2022 by implementing bibliometric analysis method. We examine scientific outputs, identify influential articles, journals, international collaboration and evolution of research trends. Keywords such as “Housing price,” “Housing policy,” “Affordable housing,” “Homeownership,” “Housing market,” “Urban planning,” and “Neighborhood” have been identified as the most prevalently cited terms during this period. Furthermore, the prominence of terms such as “China,” “Gentrification,” “Public housing,” “Social housing,” “Homelessness,” “Migration,” “Urbanization,” “Energy,” “Inequality,” “Land use,” “Gender,” and “Foreclosure” have grown in importance, pointing to future research trends. The analysis also reveals that articles pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic predominantly address the comprehensive effects of the virus on aspects of mental and physical health, consumer behavior, and economic and societal challenges.
Abstract This study aims to develop a Local Climate Zone (LCZ) classification map and establish the associated urban morphology database as a cross-discipline information platform for climate research and planning decision making in Hong Kong. Geographic information system (GIS) was applied to synergize various kinds of planning data, and classify land surface properties following the LCZ framework. Sensitivity tests were performed to identify the appropriate raster resolution and geolocation for LCZ classification. Next, a set of urban morphology analysis maps were developed. Based on the spatial information supported by the urban morphology analysis maps, land surface properties were classified according to the LCZ classification criteria, and an LCZ classification map was formulated. Finally, spatial distribution pattern of LCZ classes was analyzed, and LCZ datasets were established following the standardized procedure suggested by the LCZ framework. The LCZ classification system not only provides site metadata for UHI observation in Hong Kong, but also expands the global LCZ database under the high-density urban scenario. This study proposes an integrative GIS-based method to process various kinds of planning data for urban morphology analysis and LCZ-based land surface classification, which is also applicable to other cities with a comprehensive set of planning information.
Arab oil exporting countries have been advised by the IMF to diversify their economies away from oil and that the way to do that is to adopt the ten principles of the Washington Consensus, which call for liberalization, deregulation and privatization. It is not clear how measures like these are conducive to economic diversification, but the message is obvious—that diversification cannot be done without giving the private sector the driving seat and without the participation of multinationals through foreign direct investment. This paper presents a critical evaluation of the advice given by the IMF to Arab oil exporting countries and conveys a simple message to policy-makers in those countries: that they should handle with care the advice received from the IMF.
Cities. Urban geography, Urbanization. City and country
Gopinath Nandini, V. Vinoj, Soumya Satyakanta Sethi
et al.
Abstract Climate change and sustainability are among the most widely used terms among policymakers and the scientific community in recent times. However, climate action or steps to sustainable growth in cities in the global south are mostly borrowed from general studies at a few large urban agglomerations in the developed world. There are very few modeling studies over south Asia to understand and quantify the impact of climate change and urbanization on even the most primary meteorological variable, such as temperature. Such quantifications are difficult to estimate due to the non-availability of relevant long-term observational datasets. In this modeling study, an attempt is made to understand the urban heat island (UHI), its transition, and the segregation of regional climate change effects and urbanization over the rapidly growing tier 2 tropical smart city Bhubaneswar in India. The model is able to simulate the UHI for both land surface temperature, called the SUHI, and 2-m air temperature, called UHI, reasonably well. Their magnitudes were ~ 5 and 2.5°C, respectively. It is estimated that nearly 60–70% of the overall air and 70–80% of the land surface temperature increase during nighttime over the city between the period 2004 and 2015 is due to urbanization, with the remaining due to the regional/non-local effects.
The transformation processes in Central and Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria, are subject of many investigations in the last two decades. Up to now there is no geographical survey on the territorial differences and their course in Bulgaria. The aim of this investigation is to study these differences in the transformation process in Bulgaria by 28 administrative districts (NUTS3). On the basis of analyses and comparisons of GDP per capita in different units (an indicator, accepted by specialists as the most common parameter) and the calculated values of integral indicator (reflecting the influence of 15 interlocked factors), the existing significant differences in the achieved level of transformation in the country are shown. At this stage there is no sufficient research to determine the threshold value of the integral indicator and to say with certainty that the territorial units, having values above it, are winners from the transformation process, and those with values below it, are losers.
Cities. Urban geography, Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology
The concept of a smart city according to several studies is very feasible to be adopted and developed as a solution to urban problems so far. Six smart city concepts can be adopted by adjusting the conditions of each city. The six concepts are a smart economy, smart mobility, smart environment, smart government, smart living, and smart infrastructure. After all, the most important element of a city area is the citizens of the city itself. The concept of a smart city was born to answer the problems faced by citizens. The concept of a smart city can be realized if coupled with efforts to make smart city residents (Smart Citizen). Intelligence is not just talking about improving the level of academic education, but increasing awareness and awareness of citizens to be directly involved in the process of formulating government policies and programs in their cities. Through the use of current information technology advances, it is very possible to do and be initiated by the government. Therefore, this paper will analyze the participation of the community in Sleman Regency to achieve the smart peoples. The method used in this study is qualitative and quantitative in which qualitative in-depth interviews are conducted with various sources, namely the government and the community and quantitative is done by distributing 100 questionnaires. The results of this study indicate that people are happy with the government's efforts to realize the concept of smart cities and districts. Besides, although the government has made various kinds of complaints channels to be closer to the community, several factors influence the community to use these channels, such as because of education, and inclusion. In the other hand, another factor that the most influence the use of public complaints is the response from the government.
Social sciences (General), Cities. Urban geography