Emergence of Wetland Neighbourhoods in Port Harcourt and the Challenge to the Urban Planner

Informal settlements are home to the most socially and economically vulnerable people on the planet. In order to deliver effective economic and social aid, non-government organizations (NGOs), such as the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), require detailed maps of the locations of informal settlements. However, data regarding informal and formal settlements is primarily unavailable and if available is often incomplete. This is due, in part, to the cost and complexity of gathering data on a large scale. To address these challenges, we, in this work, provide three contributions. 1) A brand new machine learning data-set, purposely developed for informal settlement detection. 2) We show that it is possible to detect informal settlements using freely available low-resolution (LR) data, in contrast to previous studies that use very-high resolution (VHR) satellite and aerial imagery, something that is cost-prohibitive for NGOs. 3) We demonstrate two effective classification schemes on our curated data set, one that is cost-efficient for NGOs and another that is cost-prohibitive for NGOs, but has additional utility. We integrate these schemes into a semi-automated pipeline that converts either a LR or VHR satellite image into a binary map that encodes the locations of informal settlements.

Presently, informal settlements exist as part of the urban fabric and a major constituent of the residential geographies of most Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa. The growth of informal settlements in cities of the global south has been widely discussed in existing literature as a critical concern. Urban development literature in Zambia in particular has focused on the rapid urbanization and poverty growth, but barely explains how this affects settlement sustainability. Studies have focused on measures put in place by government and supporting organisations to help find solutions to the problem. But this has been done without providing specifics as relates to interventions for settlement sustainability and user perceptions of their living environments. The article provides a conceptual analysis of the local dynamics influencing informal settlement development and sustainability. The historical perspective and modern day realities of informal urban settlement settings in Lusaka in Zambia are also reviewed. The case study findings indicate a need to refocus development interventions in informal settlements by considering informal dwellers concerns and requirements when formulating settlements development strategies. The article offers an insight into sustainability challenges that the settlement population faces despite a variety of development interventions by the State and private agencies. The article shows the potential success and sustainability of interventions when informal settlement residents are empowered and take responsibility of their own development agenda. The paper points out the need for collaborative approach to informal settlement improvement where all stakeholders including the local residents, participate in all stages of settlement development.

Can economic growth and urban greenness achieve positive synergies during rapid urbanization in China?

This study examines urban internal displacement in Colombia and analyses the humanitarian response to the needs of internally displaced people (IDPs) and their host communities in informal settlements. Research was undertaken in Altos de la Florida, an informal settlement in Soacha on the outskirts of Bogotá, between 2016 and 2019. Colombia has the second-highest number of internally displaced people in the world, with 5.6 million. Nearly 90 per cent of the country’s IDPs have been displaced from rural to urban areas by conflict and violence, and informal urban settlements have become a refuge of last resort for many. Internal displacement has played a significant role in the country’s rapid urbanisation. Around a quarter of the built areas of Colombian cities are informal settlements, as such urban areas have been at the forefront of the response to internal displacement.

Community spaces in informal settlements endure and evolve despite the absence of institutional support, sustained by social networks, economic exchanges, and cultural traditions. This contrasts with formal urban public spaces, which depend on municipal financing and structured planning to remain relevant. Yet how community spaces in informal settlements function, adapt, and sustain over time remains underexplored. Understanding these dynamics offers critical insights for rethinking urban sustainability beyond formal governance structures. This study examines ecuavoley courts in Quito as socially produced spaces where sport intersects with informal economies, political negotiations, and community self-organisation. Using a qualitative case study with ethnographic methods, including participant observation, interviews, and focus groups in three informal neighbourhoods, the research draws on fieldwork conducted across three periods between 2016 and 2023 to explore the mechanisms that sustain these courts, the challenges they face, and their implications for urban planning. Findings reveal that ecuavoley courts are more than recreational facilities. They function as vital infrastructures of everyday life, yet remain vulnerable to removal or repurposing under urban development policies that overlook their social and cultural significance. The study shows that the endurance of these spaces depends on embedded practices of collective organisation, informal economies, and cultural meaning. Recognising these dynamics matters for urban strategies, as it points to the risks of displacing locally sustained infrastructures and the value of supporting adaptive practices that communities already use to keep them functional. These insights can inform urban strategies that seek to build inclusive, resilient cities in line with SDG 11.

Urban forest (UF) basal area is an important parameter of UF structures, which can influence the functions of the UF ecosystem. However, the spatio-temporal pattern of the basal area in a given UF in regions under rapid urbanization and greening is still not well documented. Our study explores the potential of estimating spatio-temporal UF basal area by using Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery. In our study, the predicting model was established to produce spatiotemporal maps of the urban forest basal area index in Changchun, China for the years 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2014. Our results showed that urban forests became more and more fragmented due to rapid urbanization from 1984 to 1995. Along with rapid urban greening after 1995, urban forest patches became larger and larger, creating a more homogeneous landscape. Urban forest and its basal area in the whole study area increased gradually from 1984 to 2014, especially in the outer belts of the city with urban sprawl. UF basal area was 27.3 × 103 m2, 41.3 × 103 m2, 45.8 × 103 m2, and 65.1 × 103 m2 of the entire study area for the year 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2014, respectively. The class distribution of the UF basal area index was skewed toward low values across all four years. In contrast, the frequency of a higher UF basal area index increased gradually from 1984 to 2014. Besides, the UF basal area index showed a decreasing trend along the gradient from suburban areas to urban center areas. Our results demonstrate the capability of TM remote sensing for understanding spatio-temporal changing patterns of UF basal area under China’s rapid urban expansion and greening.

ABSTRACTMany barriers exist to K–12 classroom teachers’ adoption and implementation of geospatial technologies with their students. To address this circumstance, we have developed and implemented a geospatial curriculum approach to promote teachers’ professional growth with curriculum-linked professional development (PD) to support the adoption of socio-environmental science investigations (SESI) in an urban school environment that includes reluctant learners. SESI focus on social issues related to environmental science. The pedagogy is inquiry-driven, with students engaged in map-based mobile data collection and subsequent analysis with Web-based dynamic mapping software to answer open-ended questions. Working with four science and social studies teachers, we designed and implemented a sequence of three locally oriented, geospatial inquiry projects that were implemented with 140 9th grade students. We investigated how the geospatial curriculum approach impacted the teachers’ geospatial pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), their cartographic practices, and promoted geospatial thinking and analysis skills with their students. Findings revealed strong growth in teachers’ geospatial PCK, increased map use by teachers, use of maps as media for inquiry and not didactic instruction, and modeling to guide students’ geospatial analysis using GIS. Implications for PD to promote teachers’ geospatial PCK and in-class cartographic practices are discussed.

Effects of land use transitions due to rapid urbanization on ecosystem services: Implications for urban planning in the new developing area of China

Rapid urbanization drives land cover change, affecting urban ecosystems and inducing serious environmental issues. The study region of Changchun, China was divided into three urbanization categories according to different urbanization levels and the characteristics of urban sprawl and changes and relationships between typical ecosystem services (ESs) under rapid urbanization were analysed. The results showed that Changchun has undergone considerable urban expansion since 2000, which has significantly impacted all ESs in terms of spatial and temporal heterogeneity. Habitat suitability and crop yield have relatively stronger service capacity in the study area. Since the expansion of large-scale infrastructures, the mean ES values of developed urban areas are the lowest among the three zones, except for water retention and sandstorm prevention in 2015, when the balance between all services decreased. Over the past 16 years, habitat suitability in developing urban areas has decreased to a large extent due to urban sprawl. Because of the improvement in agricultural science and technology, crop yield in three regions increased, while the area of cropland reduced from 1720 km2 to 1560 km2 (9.3%). Synergies between habitat suitability and carbon storage and habitat suitability and soil retention were detected in three areas. A trade-off between habitat suitability and water retention was detected in three areas. The interactions between crop yield and carbon storage, habitat suitability, and soil retention were more complex in this study region. In addition to water retention, urbanization index has a negative correlation with ESs. According to the results, some suggestions to alleviate ES loss during the process of rapid urbanization were proposed, which may guide scientific urban planning for sustainable urban development.

The Philippines is argued as the only Southeast Asian country where informal settlers’ communities have been self-organized and produced discernible impacts on the country’s urban policies. As one of the high risk countries, fifty percent of the country’s informal settlements are located in danger and disaster-prone areas. However, informal settlement upgrading has not reached its significance in disaster mitigation and community resilience building. At the national level, on-site upgrading is not established in disaster risk management or climate change adaptation strategies, which explains the lack of strategic approaches for local implementation. Metro Manila serves as a suitable backdrop in this sense to study informal settlement upgrading under the condition of high risk and rapid urbanization with a high civil society engagement. This study investigates the underlined reasons why upgrading strategically falls short in addressing disaster mitigation and community resilience building. Theoretically, it questions what on-site upgrading is about. Empirically, two hazard-prone informal settlement communities within Metro Manila are examined with their different risk profiles, community development needs and resilience priorities. The core issues of upgrading are, therefore, differentiated at the settlement level with communities’ innate socio-economic and eco-spatial features over time. Meanwhile, the paper heightens the necessity of tackling on-site upgrading at the settlement level and articulating settlements’ spatial correlations with the city development, so as to sustain upgrading outcomes. In addition, this study attempts at setting up a range of scenarios conditioned with COVID pandemic fallout. It endeavors to provide another facet of how to deal with adaptation and resilience. This includes the urgent strategy shift in the housing sector and its financial sustainability, innovative mechanisms to manage uncertainty and risks, lessons for post-COVID planning, etc.

A new style of urbanization in China: Transformation of urban rural communities

ContextCities are still expanding in many parts of the world in the 21st century, especially in developing regions, where socioeconomic transition has triggered urbanization. The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, characterized by its high elevation, developing economy, and fragile environment, has undergone rapid urbanization in the past twenty years, potentially heightening the region’s risk of geological and hydrometeorological disasters.ObjectivesThis article examines the process of urbanization on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in order to better understand the relationship between urban expansion and population change and to explore whether geological and hydrometeorological disasters threaten urban expansion.MethodsWe created a high-resolution urban built-up boundary dataset from 2000 to 2020 based on remote sensing and GIS. By examining the spatio-temporal pattern of urban expansion and its population dynamics from 2000 to 2020 in 15 cities across the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, we quantified the urban expansion characteristics and explored the rising geological and hydrometeorological disaster risks urban areas face.ResultsThe Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau has experienced rapid and uneven urbanization in the past 20 years. The total expansion rate was over 252% – 1.48 and 2.81 times higher than that of China and the world, respectively. Urban expansion exceeded population growth in most cities throughout the whole period. The urban built-up areas and population of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau tended to concentrate in the Yellow River-Huangshui River Valley of Qinghai Province and the Yarlung Zangbo River and its two tributaries of Tibet. High-density urban built-up areas and population distribution were exposed to geological and hydrometeorological disasters. The urban boundary dataset produced in this study has better accuracy than the other five existing datasets, for the given area and time range.ConclusionsThis study will not only provide a scientific reference for urban development research and future urban planning on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau at the regional scale, but will also contribute to research on the urbanization process of the plateau and mountainous regions on a global scale, raising awareness of geological and hydrometeorological disaster risk prevention in these areas worldwide

Obesity is a chronic, relapsing disease with multiple comorbidities affecting over two billion people globally. Beyond individual causes, the built environment may influence diet, sedentary behaviour, physical activity, and transport choices, making it a key target for population-level prevention of obesity. Objective measures of obesogenic built environments are essential, but studies often rely on single-exposure models that fail to capture complex interactions. This thesis explores methods for developing composite indicators to characterise obesogenic built environments and examines their associations with health behaviours and obesity-related outcomes. Chapter 2 presents an umbrella review of 32 systematic reviews on built environment factors and their links to obesity in adults. Findings suggest that urbanisation is associated with lower weight in high-income countries but higher weight in low-income countries. Socioeconomic status plays a role as both a determinant and confounder. Some evidence links fast food availability, urban sprawl, and reduced land use mix to higher weight in high-income settings, but overall, food environment associations were less consistent than those of the physical activity environment. To characterise the physical activity environment, we developed two spatial indices: walkability and drivability These indices measure land use compactness (population density, land use mix), walking infrastructure (intersections, sidewalks), driving infrastructure (highways, parking supply), public transport, daily destinations (shopping, jobs), and green space. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 used the 2017 Dutch National Travel Survey to validate and improve these indices. In Chapter 3, a 10% increase in residential walkability was associated with 8.5 additional minutes of daily walking (n=16,055). Chapter 4 found that a 10% increase in workplace walkability increased the odds of commuting on foot by 32% (n=6,769), with stronger effects when residential and workplace walkability were combined. Chapter 5 refined the drivability index by incorporating urbanisation as an interaction term. The final index predicted driving more accurately in urban (AUC=0.64) than in rural areas (AUC=0.54). A 10% increase in residential drivability was associated with a 31% higher likelihood of driving. Both indices have implications for urban planning and public health policies. In Chapter 6, we combined 12 physical activity environment components (walkability, drivability, sports facilities, and bike path density) with five food environment components (density of fast food outlets, supermarkets, restaurants, takeaways, and local food stores) to create a theory-based obesogenic environment index for the Netherlands. The index showed regional differences but no clear socioeconomic gradient in obesogenicity. Chapter 7 linked the index to residential addresses in the 2016 Dutch Public Health Monitor (n=255,187). Surprisingly, the index was inversely associated with BMI, largely driven by the food environment component. In Chapter 8, we adapted the Dutch obesogenic environment model to Singapore. From 11 spatial measures, four key variables (subway access, park density, residential density, and general food access) were identified as significant predictors of overweight risk in a multiethnic adult cohort (n=18,919). Combined together, this data-driven index was more strongly associated with obesity-related outcomes (e.g., waist-to-hip ratio, cholesterol levels) than a theory-based version. Overall, this thesis confirms that the physical activity environment is more consistently linked to obesity-related outcomes than the food environment. Associations between indices and health outcomes were influenced by urbanisation and socioeconomic context. Methodologically, this research presents different approaches for constructing composite indicators, each with trade-offs. While no single method is universally optimal, choices should align with research goals, user needs, and data availability. The developed walkability, drivability, and obesogenic environment indices highlight neighborhood disparities in environmental characteristics relevant to urban and health planning and could be aggregated for regional assessments. Future research should further integrate composite indicators, geospatial analysis, and epidemiological methods to refine these measures and advance the field

Accurate and reliable informal settlement maps are fundamental decision-making tools for planning, and for expediting informed management of cities. However, extraction of spatial information for informal settlements has remained a mammoth task due to the spatial heterogeneity of urban landscape components, requiring complex analytical processes. To date, the use of Google Earth Engine platform (GEE), with cloud computing prowess, provides unique opportunities to map informal settlements with precision and enhanced accuracy. This paper leverages cloud-based computing techniques within GEE to integrate spectral and textural features for accurate extraction of the location and spatial extent of informal settlements in Durban, South Africa. The paper aims to investigate the potential and advantages of GEE’s innovative image processing techniques to precisely depict morphologically varied informal settlements. Seven data input models derived from Sentinel 2A bands, band-derived texture metrics, and spectral indices were investigated through a random forest supervised protocol. The main objective was to explore the value of different data input combinations in accurately mapping informal settlements. The results revealed that the classification based on spectral bands + textural information yielded the highest informal settlement identification accuracy (94% F-score). The addition of spectral indices decreased mapping accuracy. Our results confirm that the highest spatial accuracy is achieved with the ‘textural features’ model, which yielded the lowest root-mean-square log error (0.51) and mean absolute percent error (0.36). Our approach highlights the capability of GEE’s complex integrative data processing capabilities in extracting morphological variations of informal settlements in rugged and heterogeneous urban landscapes, with reliable accuracy.

Objective: Socioeconomic status (SES) disparity is one of the primary factors for cancer disease. The majority of research on cancer disease and SES has been conducted for African American and white populations. This study explores the relationship between SES and cancer prevalence (Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer) in Alabama's Black Belt for major ethnic groups. Historically, Alabama's Black Belt counties are embedded with SES disparities, health care inequality, politics, race, ethnicity, oppression, and most importantly, lack of awareness of the cancer epidemic. Methods: Geospatial technology (GIS) has been employed to analyze the last two decades SES and cancer statistics from the U.S. Census, Alabama Department of Health (ADH), American Cancer Society (ACS), Center for Disease Control (CDC), and National Cancer Institute (NCI). The GIS analysis indicates an apparent SES disparity between the Black Belt (BB) and Non-BB (NBB) counties of Alabama and especially among African American population. Results: The geospatial analysis indicates SES is positively associated with cancer prevalence. Research also shows that African American cancer prevalence rates are higher than whites due to poor social and health equity, including access to health care, green food, transportation, and education. Conclusions: Alabama is one of the top states concerning the cancer epidemic. The research employed SES and cancer prevalence using geospatial technology. Data shows a close relation between SES and cancer prevalence in the African American population in the Black Belt of Alabama. The research strongly recommends the state adopt cancer awareness programs and social and health equity policy planning. Citation Format: Ram Alagan, Seela Aladuwaka, Upender Manne, Rajesh Singh, Manoj K Mishra. Cancer awareness and prevalence in the Black Belt of Alabama: A geospatial analysis [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 15th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2022 Sep 16-19; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2022;31(1 Suppl):Abstract nr B094.