ObjectiveCollaboratively promoting carbon reduction, pollution reduction, green expansion, and growth, while maintaining national ecological security, has become a key focus area in national strategic planning in recent years. However, rapid urbanization has compressed carbon sink spaces such as forest land and grassland, leading to a significant decline in environmental quality and soil carbon sink capacity. Currently, existing research on carbon sink spaces is limited, and it is mostly concentrated on regional scales with superior ecological environments and rich vegetation cover. Research on rapidly urbanizing areas with poor carbon sink backgrounds is relatively scarce. Therefore, analyzing the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of carbon sinks in highly urbanized areas with weak carbon sink backgrounds and conducting multi scenario simulation analysis. To provide a basis for optimizing the spatial layout of the country and formulating differentiated carbon sink enhancement strategies, thus contributing to maintaining regional ecological security and achieving high-quality development.MethodsThis study focuses on southern Jiangsu region, where urbanization is predominant and carbon sink spaces face intense competition with construction spaces. At the township scale, the carbon sink space is analyzed and classified using specific criteria. The PLUS (patch-generating land use simulation) model is used to analyze the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of carbon sink space from 2000 to 2020, and proposes differentiated strategies based on simulation results of various future development scenarios.ResultsThis study focuses on the town carbon sink space in rapidly urbanizing areas, revealing that the evolution of carbon sink space in rapidly urbanizing areas is the result of the combined effects of natural factors, policy interventions, and town development stages. It has important theoretical and practical value for optimizing the national spatial pattern and achieving carbon neutrality goals, providing scientific support for the green transformation of new urbanization in developed areas. The research indicates four results. 1) From 2000 to 2020, the loss of carbon sink spaces in southern Jiangsu region was not uniform but highly concentrated in high-value carbon sink areas. 2) The structure of carbon sink spaces in southern Jiangsu region at the town scale did not completely disintegrate due to urbanization; instead, it demonstrated remarkable stability. 3) Simulation results show that different intensities of carbon sink protection measures can promote the expansion of high-quality carbon sink spaces. However, a "carbon sink enhancement scenario" is not necessarily optimal. The pursuit of a "high carbon sink coefficient" alone should be avoided, and the risk of ecological function simplification needs to be guarded against. 4) Towns in southern Jiangsu region can be categorized into three types: those with high carbon sink capacity, high carbon sink potential, and high construction intensity. Most towns have maintained their original carbon sink spatial structure characteristics under three simulated scenarios, and in the future, they can focus on exploring the potential of existing space to protect and optimize carbon sink space. For sensitive town types—those with easily fluctuating carbon sink quality, those prone to carbon sink function degradation, and those with clearly degraded carbon sink functions—more targeted strategies should be implemented based on the specific risk types.ConclusionThrough multi scenario simulation, the evolution patterns of future urban carbon sink spaces can be analyzed and predicted, offering references for the protection and optimization of urban carbon sink spaces in rapidly urbanizing areas. This study can scientifically analyze the dynamic evolution laws of regional carbon sink space, explore the optimization path and has significant theoretical and practical value for optimizing territorial spatial patterns and achieving carbon neutrality goals, thus providing scientific support for the green transformation of new urbanization. This method can be widely applied to similar studies on town ecological space planning related to carbon sink enhancement, and helps other cities, especially those with rapid urbanization, to achieve coordinated and sustainable development of ecological environment and economy.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Architectural drawing and design
This essay has its origin in issues related to the alleged failure in 2018 of the Royal Incorporated of Architects in Scotland (RIAS), a chapter of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), to comply with the requirements of its Royal Charter. This engendered a wider inquiry into the operations and legislation affecting architecture, enacted by and on the RIBA since its founding in 1834, in the promulgation and regulation of the interrelated processes of architectural education, registration and practice in the United Kingdom (UK). Pivotal moments in the late nineteenth-century debate on the "professional or artist-architect", the enactment of the Registration Acts of the 1930s, the 1958 Oxford Conference on Architectural Education, the Monopolies legislation of the 1970s, the 1997 Registration Act, and the 2003 European Union Directive amended in 2015 are all put to the test by the contemporaneous structures and procedures of the office and the architects work. Texts on and by architects relating to education, registration and practice, as well as the various reports made by the RIBA, the UK Architects Registration Council (ARCUK) and subsequently the Architects Registration Board (ARB), are referenced and their impact on the architectural profession is assessed. The essay will seek to demonstrate that decisions made and directions chosen at those pivotal points and the lack of understanding of the links between them have left endemic structural flaws in education, registration and practice in the UK unresolved.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Anthropology
Filippo Marchesani, Francesca Masciarelli, Andrea Bikfalvi
The rise of smart cities represents a significant trend in urban development. However, only in recent years has attention shifted toward the international promotion of these cities. Despite ongoing academic discussions on the impact of smart city development on urban environments, the global recognition of smart cities remains uncertain due to their multidisciplinary nature. To address this, we conducted a systematic literature review of articles published in top-tier peer-reviewed journals from 2008 to December 2021, offering a comprehensive analysis of the existing literature.
Maria Teresa Rossi, Martina De Sanctis, Ludovico Iovino
et al.
The Smart City concept was introduced to define an idealized city characterized by automation and connection. It then evolved rapidly by including further aspects, such as economy, environment. Since then, many publications have explored various aspects of Smart Cities across different application domains and research communities, acknowledging the interdisciplinary nature of this subject. In particular, our interest focuses on how smart cities are designed and modeled, as a whole or as regards with their subsystems, when dealing with the accomplishment of the research goals in this complex and heterogeneous domain. To this aim, we performed a systematic mapping study on smart cities modeling approaches identifying the relevant contributions (i) to get an overview of existing research approaches, (ii) to identify whether there are any publication trends, and (iii) to identify possible future research directions. We followed the guidelines for conducting systematic mapping studies by Petersen et al. to analyze smart cities modeling publications. Our analysis revealed the following main findings: (i) smart governance is the most investigated and modeled smart city dimension; (ii) the most used modeling approaches are business, architectural, and ontological modeling approaches, spanning multiple application fields; (iii) the great majority of existing technologies for modeling smart cities are not yet proven in operational environments; (iv) diverse research communities publish their results in a multitude of different venues which further motivates the presented literature study. Researchers can use our results for better understanding the state-of-the-art in modeling smart cities, and as a foundation for further analysis of specific approaches about smart cities modeling. Lastly, we also discuss the impact of our analysis for the Model-Driven Engineering community.
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.
Raditya Hari Murti, Hendra Adi Wijaya, Indira Laksmi Widuri
et al.
Based on data from the Semarang City Fire Department in 2013-2016, 1028 fire incidents took place in Semarang City. This incidence reached its highest in 2015 with 399 cases of fire which caused material losses of up to IDR 398.3 billion. Based on these figures, Semarang City possesses the highest incidence rate of fire cases in Central Java Province. However, studies on the risk and mitigation of fire hazard disasters in Semarang City still need to be carried out. This study aims to identify fire risks, to mitigate the disaster’s hazards in Semarang City, and to provide recommendations for arranging relevant buildings and the environment. The method used in this study is a qualitative descriptive method, in which interviews are conducted with key persons, with the utilization of GIS analysis to assess the risk of fire. The results of this study exhibit that in Semarang City, 14 villages have a high level of fire hazard risk, one of which is Rejosari Village which has the highest level of fire risk. This occurred mainly because historically, there have been many fire incidents in this area and even claiming several lives. The density of buildings and the difficulty of access further increase vulnerability in the case of fire. Nevertheless, the inhabitants still lack an understanding of this hazard. Accordingly, the fundamental mitigation to be carried out in Rejosari Village is to increase community comprehension and to consider the addition of fire protection and safety facilities, including hydrants, in densely populated buildings and areas, in order to reduce the risk of fire hazards.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Building construction
This essay proposes a reading of the Anthropocene from the reconstruction of the energy imaginaries at the beginning of industrial civilisation. The transformations that took place in the energy matrix of productive processes, with the new social and geographical organisation of work derived from the use of fossil fuels, had their correlate in the appearance of a series of discourses and images with a strong ideological component. The emergence of thermodynamic science, based on the observation of the processes of energy transformation, was underpinned by narratives oriented to boost the denigration of subjects who resisted integration into the productive devices of the industrial world. These imaginaries contributed to naturalise a certain worldview, where the universe was assimilated to an immense repository of energy at the service of the West civilisational project, where the development of industry should guarantee the production of exponential wealth. In this context, the imaginaries of energy contributed to constituting a new socio-environmental relationship that, for the last two centuries, has conditioned the cultural development of fossil modernity, while generating eco-systemic effects that are at the origin of the climate crisis.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying
Procedurally generating cities in Minecraft provides players more diverse scenarios and could help understand and improve the design of cities in other digital worlds and the real world. This paper presents a city generator that was submitted as an entry to the 2023 Edition of Minecraft Settlement Generation Competition for Minecraft. The generation procedure is composed of six main steps, namely vegetation clearing, terrain reshaping, building layout generation, route planning, streetlight placement, and wall construction. Three algorithms, including a heuristic-based algorithm, an evolving layout algorithm, and a random one are applied to generate the building layout, thus determining where to place different redstone style buildings, and tested by generating cities on random maps in limited time. Experimental results show that the heuristic-based algorithm is capable of finding an acceptable building layout faster for flat maps, while the evolving layout algorithm performs better in evolving layout for rugged maps. A user study is conducted to compare our generator with outstanding entries of the competition's 2022 edition using the competition's evaluation criteria and shows that our generator performs well in the adaptation and functionality criteria
The gravity model of human mobility has successfully described the deterrence of travels with distance in urban mobility patterns. While a broad spectrum of deterrence was found across different cities, yet it is not empirically clear if movement patterns in a single city could also have a spectrum of distance exponents denoting a varying deterrence depending on the origin and destination regions in the city. By analyzing the travel data in the twelve most populated cities of the United States of America, we empirically find that the distance exponent governing the deterrence of travels significantly varies within a city depending on the traffic volumes of the origin and destination regions. Despite the diverse traffic landscape of the cities analyzed, a common pattern is observed for the distance exponents; the exponent value tends to be higher between regions with larger traffic volumes, while it tends to be lower between regions with smaller traffic volumes. This indicates that our method indeed reveals the hidden diversity of gravity laws that would be overlooked otherwise.
Public open spaces are fundamentally important for the health and well-being of citizens in densely populated cities. If not carefully planned, high-density urban development can overshadow adjacent open spaces, resulting in poor quality, dark and oppressive winter conditions. Current planning control approaches for protecting light amenity in cities are often limited to simple overshadowing impact diagrams (e.g. shadows cast on the equinox at 9 a.m., 12 p.m. and 3 p.m.). In cities transitioning from low to higher density, comprising more complex urban forms and more extreme seasonal light amenity dynamics, these static approaches are insufficient. This paper outlines the development of a spatio-temporal design decision support system for analysing and protecting the light amenity of public open spaces, applied to a capital city in Australia. The system described has two parts: Firstly, to assess the overshadowing of existing public open spaces and identify those in need of protection (Part A), and secondly to generate planning restrictions to protect designated open spaces from future deprivation of light (Part B). For Part A, we use a graphics processing unit accelerated aggregate-shadow (15 minute increments) calculation applied to a detailed city-wide 3D model generated from billions of points of aerial survey (LiDAR) data. For Part B, we use a reversed solar ray casting approach we call the ‘Subtracto-Sun’ which allows a user to specify a time range (e.g. 9 a.m.–4 p.m.) for multiple days of the year and subsequent generation of 3D maximum building height development envelopes. The output of this system was used by the local government to inform a proposed planning policy amendment for the City of Melbourne. The findings illustrate the potential for urban professionals to use the system to rapidly assess shadow impacts for existing and proposed, contextually accurate, large, complex urban environments with high levels of geometric and temporal details. The presented results are significant in that we develop and apply our spatio-temporal decision-support approach to a local government area, successfully informing planning height restriction decisions to protect daylight amenity of public open spaces in need of protection. Our method for setting development height restrictions allows for higher density to be achieved, while not increasing the overshadowing of critical open space infrastructure during designated times.
Paolo Belardi, Massimiliano Marianelli, Giovanna Ramaccini
et al.
The concept of the sacred can be perhaps broadened by comparing it with its opposite, revealing new meanings. If the term profane etymologically refers to the need to “stand outside the temple” (from the Latin pro-fanus, literally “in front of the temple”) then, on the contrary, the concept of sacred refers to the need to stay within a confined space identified precisely in the “enclosure” (the root of the Latin templum is associated with the Greek term τέμενος, meaning “sacred enclosure”). This interpretation highlights an aspect of sacredness that implicitly recalls elements of architectural composition, such as limitation, form and material, variously declined according to the specific context. That said, can contemporary didactic experience measure itself against the ability to give an aesthetic-compositional response to man’s innate need to relate to the absolute? This is the meaning of “Polvese Chapels” initiative (inspired by the exhibition Vatican Chapels presented at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice), conceived with the aim of investigating a compositional-design theme, that of the sacred chapel, in relation to a specific naturalistic-environmental context, that of Polvese Island (now a major tourist destination) imagining its transformation into a place for introspective and silent meditation.
Architectural drawing and design, Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying
Resumen
Esta investigación parte de la voluntad de detectar y caracterizar los lugares del conflicto urbano que han protagonizado las tres últimas décadas de desarrollo de la ciudad de Tarragona. Para ello, este ensayo parte de la observación sistematizada y crítica del relato mediático de la prensa escrita para identificar, acotar y examinar aquellos ámbitos geográficos donde colidan, con mayor o menor virulencia, las carencias, nostalgia, resistencia al cambio y expectativas de transformación. Son los lugares donde compiten múltiples intereses, a menudo contradictorios, por orientar el devenir urbano, espacios donde toman cuerpo los designios abstractos del mercado inmobiliario y las contestaciones, resistencias y fricciones derivadas. Son también los escenarios del error, el exceso, el infortunio o la obsolescencia y abandono. En todos ellos, el conflicto urbano puede actuar como motor del cambio y principio catalizador de transformación o, por el contrario, como condena a la parálisis eterna. El análisis sistemático de la hemeroteca local y la ponderación de variables como el momento, el grado de impacto, el sentimiento asociado a cada noticia o los ámbitos referentes emerge, pues, como estrategia innovadora para estructurar un hilo argumental de la biografía, geometría y geografía de los principales hechos urbanos de cualquier realidad metropolitana contemporánea.
Abstract
This research is based on the desire to detect and characterize the places of urban conflict that have played the leading roles of the last three decades of development in the city Tarragona. To do so, this essay starts from the systematized and critical observation of the media narrative of the written press to identify, delimit and examine those geographical areas where, with greater or lesser virulence, deficiencies, nostalgia, resistance to change and expectations of transformation collide. They are the places where multiple interests, often contradictory, compete to guide the urban future, spaces where the abstract designs of the real estate market and the resulting disputes, resistances and frictions take shape. They are also scenarios of error, excess, misfortune or obsolescence and abandonment. In all of them, the urban conflict can act as a motor and a catalyst for change or, on the contrary, as a sentence to eternal paralysis. Thus, the systematic analysis of the local newspaper archive and the weighting of variables such as the moment, the impact degree, the sentiment associated with each piece of news or the relevant areas emerges as an innovative strategy to structure a plot line of biography, geometry and geography of the main urban facts of any contemporary metropolitan reality.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying
During a recent weekend stay in a coastal town in East Anglia, I visited the austere Holy Trinity church
in the small settlement of Blythburgh, the site of an extraordinary supernatural incident. In the 16th
century, this venerable ecclesiastical building was terrorised by Black Shuck, a fiendish dog who oc-
casionally ravaged the surrounding villages. One afternoon, as the townsfolk shivered in the church,
sheltering from a ferocious storm that raged outside, a deafening clap of thunder was the signal for
the gigantic hellhound to burst through the church doors and hasten down the aisle. Terrorising the
congregation, he leapt upon a man and a boy bent in prayer, wringing their necks before bounding
away. The deep, dark scratches on the door, it is said, are lasting traces of this macabre episode: scorch
marks he made upon his exit from the church.
Architecture, Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying
The problem of air pollution threatens public health. Air quality forecasting can provide the air quality index hours or even days later, which can help the public to prevent air pollution in advance. Previous works focus on citywide air quality forecasting and cannot solve nationwide city forecasting problem, whose difficulties lie in capturing the latent dependencies between geographically distant but highly correlated cities. In this paper, we propose the group-aware graph neural network (GAGNN), a hierarchical model for nationwide city air quality forecasting. The model constructs a city graph and a city group graph to model the spatial and latent dependencies between cities, respectively. GAGNN introduces differentiable grouping network to discover the latent dependencies among cities and generate city groups. Based on the generated city groups, a group correlation encoding module is introduced to learn the correlations between them, which can effectively capture the dependencies between city groups. After the graph construction, GAGNN implements message passing mechanism to model the dependencies between cities and city groups. The evaluation experiments on Chinese city air quality dataset indicate that our GAGNN outperforms existing forecasting models.
We investigated the role of universities in the prosperity of cities and regions. Performance characteristics of universities are derived from the Leiden Ranking 2020. The socioeconomic strength of a city is determined with the urban scaling methodology. Our study shows a significant relation between the presence of a university in a city and its socioeconomic indicators, particularly for larger cities, and that this is especially the case for universities with higher values of their output, impact and collaboration indicators.
Smart cities are urban areas with sensor networks that collect data used towards efficient management. As a source of ubiquitous data, smart city initiatives present opportunities to enhance inhabitants' urban awareness. However, making sense of smart city data is challenging and there is a gap between available data and end-user applications. Sonification emerges as a promising method for the interpretation of smart city data and the production of novel musical experiences. In this paper, we first present the smart city paradigm. We then cover the topics of ubiquitous and mobile music, followed by an overview of sonification research. Finally, we propose an approach entitled ubiquitous sonification and present the initial design of a speculative use case for musical smart city systems, leveraging user and urban data to inform behaviour.
The outbreak of the novel Corona Virus in 2019, named COVID-19, causes the ongoing global pandemic. This pandemic has a devastating socio-economic impact across the globe. On the other hand, due to the pre-pandemic aggressive urbanization with the steep population growth, modern cities also facing substantial challenges. Hence, usage of technology is anticipated to be the precondition for adaptive, resilient, and sustainable development, where, a smart city is defined as the accumulated advanced ideas of information and technology aiming to ensure a decent quality of life for the inhabitants. Considering the current growth rate of 1.9 percent, the projected population of Bangladesh will exceed 180 million in 2026. It is also speculated that Dhaka being the capital will be populated with 14 million inhabitants. Moreover, Dhaka has already been labeled as the most densely populated city in the world. Thus, concerned authorities are facing enormous challenges to provide and ensure fundamental services to the in-habitants. Therefore, this has become the need of the hour to conceptualize an information and communication technology-driven smart city for Bangladesh. A smart city may contain numerous components; however, the proposed framework identifies seven components and services for smart cities in Bangladesh. These are healthcare, education, transportation, public safety, real estate, utilities, and city administration. Discussions on these components are carried out in this paper.