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.
The aim of the paper is to deal with the question of the form of Catholic places of worship in the current secularization process phase, and with special reference to the Italian case and once assumed a sociological perspective. First of all, the relevance of the artifacts for the sociological understanding of secularization will be highlighted. The next step will be dedicated to the reciprocal and very important relationships between the form of the place of worship and the type of social order. These relationships will be illustrated by focusing on the relationship between the religious dimension of Catholicism and some different variants of secularization. Having elaborated on this basis a typology of forms of the religious dimension of Catholicism, it will show and discuss how the solution of some architectural questions can influence the success or the demise of one or an other among different forms that the religious dimension of Catholicism can assume copying with the secularization process current phase.
Architectural drawing and design, Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying
Deva Menéndez García, Daniel Carmona Cardona , Isabella Tobón Franco
Este trabajo analiza el impacto del neoliberalismo en el diseño urbano y la sostenibilidad de Medellín, centrándose en la transformación de la ciudad bajo políticas neoliberales desde la década de 1980. A partir de la revisión de los principales instrumentos de planeación del Área Metropolitana de Medellín —como la Ordenanza Departamental n.º 34 de 1980, el Plan Integral de Desarrollo Metropolitano (PIDM) 2008-2020 y el Acuerdo Metropolitano 40 de 2007—, se evalúa la planeación del Valle de Aburrá como centro conurbado y la efectividad de sus políticas públicas ambientales. Asimismo, se examina la interacción entre los sectores público y privado en proyectos urbanos estratégicos, como Metroplús y el Parque Arví. Los hallazgos evidencian una fragmentación social, territorial y ambiental, así como una estética urbana orientada al turismo ecológico, cuyos efectos en la sostenibilidad y la equidad social resultan cuestionables. Se concluye que estos elementos han sido instrumentalizados como herramientas de neoliberalización urbana, lo que pone en entredicho su verdadera contribución a la justicia ambiental y social.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology
Generating realistic 3D cities is fundamental to world models, virtual reality, and game development, where an ideal urban scene must satisfy both stylistic diversity, fine-grained, and controllability. However, existing methods struggle to balance the creative flexibility offered by text-based generation with the object-level editability enabled by explicit structural representations. We introduce MajutsuCity, a natural language-driven and aesthetically adaptive framework for synthesizing structurally consistent and stylistically diverse 3D urban scenes. MajutsuCity represents a city as a composition of controllable layouts, assets, and materials, and operates through a four-stage pipeline. To extend controllability beyond initial generation, we further integrate MajutsuAgent, an interactive language-grounded editing agent} that supports five object-level operations. To support photorealistic and customizable scene synthesis, we also construct MajutsuDataset, a high-quality multimodal dataset} containing 2D semantic layouts and height maps, diverse 3D building assets, and curated PBR materials and skyboxes, each accompanied by detailed annotations. Meanwhile, we develop a practical set of evaluation metrics, covering key dimensions such as structural consistency, scene complexity, material fidelity, and lighting atmosphere. Extensive experiments demonstrate MajutsuCity reduces layout FID by 83.7% compared with CityDreamer and by 20.1% over CityCraft. Our method ranks first across all AQS and RDR scores, outperforming existing methods by a clear margin. These results confirm MajutsuCity as a new state-of-the-art in geometric fidelity, stylistic adaptability, and semantic controllability for 3D city generation. We expect our framework can inspire new avenues of research in 3D city generation. Our project page: https://longhz140516.github.io/MajutsuCity/.
We propose a method to procedurally generate a familiar yet complex human artifact: the city. We are not trying to reproduce existing cities, but to generate artificial cities that are convincing and plausible by capturing developmental behavior. In addition, our results are meant to build upon themselves, such that they ought to look compelling at any point along the transition from village to metropolis. Our approach largely focuses upon land usage and building distribution for creating realistic city environments, whereas previous attempts at city modeling have mainly focused on populating road networks. Finally, we want our model to be self automated to the point that the only necessary input is a terrain description, but other high-level and low-level parameters can be specified to support artistic contributions. With the aid of agent based simulation we are generating a system of agents and behaviors that interact with one another through their effects upon a simulated environment. Our philosophy is that as each agent follows a simple behavioral rule set, a more complex behavior will tend to emerge out of the interactions between the agents and their differing rule sets. By confining our model to a set of simple rules for each class of agents, we hope to make our model extendible not only in regard to the types of structures that are produced, but also in describing the social and cultural influences prevalent in all cities
The ninth AI City Challenge continues to advance real-world applications of computer vision and AI in transportation, industrial automation, and public safety. The 2025 edition featured four tracks and saw a 17% increase in participation, with 245 teams from 15 countries registered on the evaluation server. Public release of challenge datasets led to over 30,000 downloads to date. Track 1 focused on multi-class 3D multi-camera tracking, involving people, humanoids, autonomous mobile robots, and forklifts, using detailed calibration and 3D bounding box annotations. Track 2 tackled video question answering in traffic safety, with multi-camera incident understanding enriched by 3D gaze labels. Track 3 addressed fine-grained spatial reasoning in dynamic warehouse environments, requiring AI systems to interpret RGB-D inputs and answer spatial questions that combine perception, geometry, and language. Both Track 1 and Track 3 datasets were generated in NVIDIA Omniverse. Track 4 emphasized efficient road object detection from fisheye cameras, supporting lightweight, real-time deployment on edge devices. The evaluation framework enforced submission limits and used a partially held-out test set to ensure fair benchmarking. Final rankings were revealed after the competition concluded, fostering reproducibility and mitigating overfitting. Several teams achieved top-tier results, setting new benchmarks in multiple tasks.
Buildings are primary components of cities, often featuring repeated elements such as windows and doors. Traditional 3D building asset creation is labor-intensive and requires specialized skills to develop design rules. Recent generative models for building creation often overlook these patterns, leading to low visual fidelity and limited scalability. Drawing inspiration from procedural modeling techniques used in the gaming and visual effects industry, our method, Proc-GS, integrates procedural code into the 3D Gaussian Splatting (3D-GS) framework, leveraging their advantages in high-fidelity rendering and efficient asset management from both worlds. By manipulating procedural code, we can streamline this process and generate an infinite variety of buildings. This integration significantly reduces model size by utilizing shared foundational assets, enabling scalable generation with precise control over building assembly. We showcase the potential for expansive cityscape generation while maintaining high rendering fidelity and precise control on both real and synthetic cases.
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.
This study investigates city dynamics employing a nonextensive diffusion equation suited for addressing diffusion within a fractal medium, where the nonadditive parameter, $q$, plays a relevant role. The findings demonstrate the efficacy of this approach in determining the relation between the fractal dimension of the city, the allometric exponent and $q$, and elucidating the stationary phase of urban evolution. The dynamic methodology facilitates the correlation of the fractal dimension with both the entropic index and the urban scaling exponent identified in data analyses. The results reveal that the scaling behaviour observed in cities aligns with the fractal dimension measured through independent methods. Moreover, the interpretation of these findings underscores the intimate connection between the fractal dimension and social interactions within the urban context. This research contributes to a deeper comprehension of the intricate interplay between human behaviour, urban dynamics, and the underlying fractal nature of cities.
Enhanced efforts in the transportation sector should be implemented to mitigate the adverse effects of CO2 emissions resulting from zoning-based planning paradigms. The innovative concept of the 15-minute city, with a focus on proximity-based planning, holds promise in minimizing unnecessary travel and advancing the progress toward achieving carbon neutrality. However, an important research question that remains insufficiently explored is: to what extent is a 15-minute city concept within reach for US cities? This paper establishes a comprehensive framework to evaluate the 15-minute city concept using SafeGraph Point of Interest (POI) check-in data in the 12 most populous US cities. The results reveal that residents are more likely to rely on cars due to the fact that most of their essential activities are located beyond convenient walking, cycling, and public transit distances. However, there is significant potential for the implementation of the 15-minute city concept, as most residents' current activities can be accommodated within a 15-minute radius by the aforementioned low-emission modes of transportation. Our findings can offer policymakers insight into how far US cities are away from the 15-minute city and the potential CO2 emission reduction they can expect if the concept is successfully implemented.
In the face of the Covid-19 crisis, the city model of the new Leipzig Charter of the EU was re-evaluated. The existing urban development model of a mixed and compact city is to be mainly maintained because the urban density or building typology does not influence the spread of Covid-19. But the pandemic has made it clear how important green space and recreation areas are for inner city residential areas. This green space also becomes more important regarding climate adaptation measures to provide cooler air and ventilation. In the framework of the Leipzig Charter of the EU, the German ministry for building adopted the memorandum on Urban Resilience in May 2021. Resilience in this context means that we should not only repair the damage of disasters but also adapt to future crises and make our cities more resilient and sustainable. For this, we need to strengthen preventive strategies in urban development planning connected with urban renewal approaches and ask for extended city models. Planning shapes the future, including counteracting undesirable scenarios with preventive planning. In this sense, future planning and disaster control have common objectives—they take an interdisciplinary approach to prepare for future change, they want to anticipate and prevent danger, protect and expand the infrastructure, and serve the common good. In this article, I will point out how integrated urban development concepts should be extended with aspects of urban resilience, and which city models are important for the future.
The percentage of urban areas dedicated to streets and public spaces is a crucial feature of the spatial planning of cities. By 2050 urban mobility will be one of the biggest confronts for global cities. This study has been carried out to assess the ratio of public space allocated to the streets in some cities of Bangladesh. The length, width, area, and number of street crossings have been counted for the city core and its suburban area as an indicator of the form and pattern of the street layout. This exercise does not consider the rest of the public spaces, like gardens and general public spaces for amenities, including sports. The methodology of data collection has been through Google Earth and GIS software. For precise results, other more sophisticated software is essential. Nevertheless, even at these levels of precision, very interesting city patterns emerge. The findings of this study show that Bogra, Rangpur, and Dinajpur are better cities having higher land allocation rates for streets, including sufficient crossings. Nilphamari and Thakurgaon have lower land areas for roads; tend to have lower connectivity and productivity. The rest of the cities have an average land area for roads and an average number of street crossings.
A lack of financial access, which is often an issue in many central-city U.S. neighborhoods, can be linked to higher interest rates as well as negative health and psychological outcomes. A number of analyses of "banking deserts" have also found these areas to be poorer and less White than other parts of the city. While previous research has examined specific cities, or has classified areas by population densities, no study to date has examined a large set of individual cities. This study looks at 319 U.S. cities with populations greater than 100,000 and isolates areas with fewer than 0.318 banks per square mile based on distances from block-group centroids. The relative shares of these "deserts" appears to be independent of city population across the sample, and there is little relationship between these shares and socioeconomic variables such as the poverty rate or the percentage of Black residents. One plausible explanation is that only a subset of many cities' poorest, least White block groups can be classified as banking deserts; nearby block groups with similar socioeconomic characteristics are therefore non-deserts. Outside of the Northeast, non-desert areas tend to be poorer than deserts, suggesting that income- and bank-poor neighborhoods might not be as prevalent as is commonly assumed.
Following part 1 of Port City Cultures, Values, and Maritime Mindsets, this issue explores how cultures of port city territories are put into words, visualized, and can even be shaped. Continuing the argument that port city territories merit particular attention due to their location at the border of sea and land and the presence of global and local interests and stakeholders of differing sizes, this issue emphasizes once more the role that culture, values, and mindsets can play in understanding the historical relations and socio-spatial features of port cities, their socio-cultural construction, and their future design. The issue emphasizes the value of considering ways of perceiving, defining, and classifying port cities in relation to social context and powerful processes of meaning-making in academia and in the wider society.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying
In recent years, cities and districts, such as Songdo City in South Korea, King Abdullah Economic City in Saudi Arabia, or Singapore, have been planned, built and rebuilt in adherence to the guiding principle of a “Smart City”. Some science fiction scenarios are in parts reminiscent of control systems already implemented in these places. Science fiction therefore offers approaches to urban development policy, for example to visualise the possible effects of uncontrolled technologization of the living environment. But is such a use of science fiction even possible? After all, one of the most essential distinctions in literary and media studies is the differentiation between factual and fictional discourse. For most scholars, the decisive distinguishing feature is on the level of form. Using set theory, I intend to differentiate between them on the level of content. This makes it possible to show the hybrid status of science fiction between fictionality and factuality. It is precisely this seemingly contradictory in-between that makes this genre so attractive and highlights its potential for reality. For example, for urban planning.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying
Francesca Camerin, Francesco Incelli, Massimo Rossetti
The paper presents the results of a research funded by the Veneto Region concerning the study of innovative temporary wooden housing units for the hospitalisation and accommodation of elderly people in the case of functional requalification of buildings used as care homes. The project originates from the observation that existing buildings used as care homes may often need to be redeveloped. In this scenario, a temporary housing unit with advanced comfort and energy saving features may, therefore, constitute an optimal solution for the protection of elderly people and, at the same time, to experiment with new models of living, besides possibly adapting them for permanent accommodation.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Architectural drawing and design