Seoul street-view database for urban environment research

Urban parks provide multiple benefits to human well-being and human health. Big data provide new and powerful ways to study visitors’ feelings, activities in urban parks, and the effect they themselves have on urban parks. However, the term “big data” has been defined variably, and its applications on urban parks have so far been sporadic in research. Therefore, a comprehensive review of big data-based urban park research is much needed. The review aimed to summarize the big data-based urban park research in visitor dimension by a systematic review approach in combination with bibliometric and thematic analyses. The results showed that the number of publications of related articles has been increasing exponentially in recent years. Users’ days data is used most frequently in the big data-based urban park research, and the major analytical methods are of four types: sentiment analysis, statistical analysis, and spatial analysis. The major research topics of big data-based urban park research in visitor dimension include visitors’ behavior, visitors’ perception and visitors’ effect. Big data benefits urban park research by providing low-cost, timely information, a people-oriented perspective, and fine-grained site information. However, its accuracy is insufficient because of coordinate, keyword classification and different kinds of users. To move forward, future research should integrate multiple big data sources, expand the application, such as public health and human–nature interactions, and pay more attention to the big data use for overcoming pandemic. This review can help to understand the current situation of big data-based urban park research, and provide a reference for the studies of this topic in the future.

Albedo is one of the key parameters in the surface energy balance and it has been altered due to urban expansion, which has significant impacts on local and regional climate. Many previous studies have demonstrated that changes in the urban surface albedo are strongly related to the city’s heterogeneity and have significant spatial-temporal characteristics but fail to address the albedo of the urban surface as a unique variable in urban thermal environment research. This study selects Beijing as the experimental area for exploring the spatial-temporal characteristics of the urban surface albedo and the albedo’s uniqueness in environmental research on urban spaces. Our results show that the urban surface albedo at high spatial resolution can better represent the urban spatial heterogeneity, seasonal variation, building canyon, and pixel adjacency effects. Urban surface albedo is associated with building density and height, land surface temperature (LST), and fractional vegetation cover (FVC). Furthermore, albedo can reflect livability and environmental rating due to the variances of building materials and architectural formats in the urban development. Hence, we argue that the albedo of the urban surface can be considered as a unique variable for improving the acknowledgment of the urban environment and human livability with wider application in urban environmental research.

The expansion, densification and proliferation of urban areas around the world is currently occurring at a rate that is unprecedented in human history. It is predicted that global urban land cover will triple between 2000 and 2030, with some regions (including biodiversity hotspots) experiencing a ninefold increase in urban land cover over the same time period (Seto, G€ uneralp & Hutyra 2012). Accompanying the expansion of urban landscapes, it is anticipated that the human population living in cities and towns globally will increase from 3 5 to 5 billion people within the next 20 years (Fragkias et al. 2013). Thus, the demands of an expanding and urbanizing human population are one of the pressing ecological problems our world is facing (Sanderson et al. 2002), alongside, and in combination with, global climate change and changes to biodiversity at local and global scales (Pimm et al. 2014). Yet, urban environments also present a unique opportunity to expand our fundamental knowledge related to ecology and evolution due to the presence of intense and often novel selection pressures. In the inaugural issue of this journal, Calow (1987) defined functional ecology as the sum of three interactive processes: (i) those occurring between organisms and their environment, (ii) biotic interactions between organisms and (iii) adaptive processes driven by natural selection. The same three processes were highlighted 1 year earlier by Jared Diamond in Nature, when he called for biologists to pay more attention to the potential of using the unprecedented environmental conditions that exist within towns and cities to develop and test evolutionary and ecological theory (Diamond 1986). There is thus a natural synergy between functional ecology and urban ecology, as exemplified by some of the classic papers that have appeared in this journal, such as Rydell (1992) who demonstrated that the form of echolocation system determined the impact of light pollution on bat foraging behaviour. The potential of combining functional ecological research with urban ecology is, however, a long way from being fully realized. This is in part explained by the youth of urban ecology as a discipline. Scientific enquiry into the ecological consequences of urban environments has been underway for over half a century, although most of the momentum emerged after the mid 1990s (McDonnell 2011; Wu 2014). Thus, the focus of much urban research to date has involved describing patterns along environmental gradients (Gagn e 2013; McDonnell & Hahs 2013) rather than investigating the mechanistic processes that lie at the heart of functional ecology. To be effective in addressing the global challenges of urbanization, a much better understanding of how the urban environment affects the ecology and evolution of organisms needs to be developed (Grimm et al. 2008; Marzluff 2012; Gil & Brumm 2014; McDonnell & Hahs 2015). The purpose of this special feature is to draw attention to the plethora of opportunities that await researchers investigating the ecology and evolution of organisms in urban environments. The combination of environmental stressors and conditions within urban areas provides a novel opportunity to test and expand our theories related to ecology and evolution of organisms, and some intriguing insights are already beginning to emerge. For example, the detailed understanding of the molecular, genetic and developmental mechanisms of beak evolution that has arisen from studying Galapagos finches has been significantly advanced by studying beak evolution in the house finch Carpodacus mexicanus in response to novel urban food sources and its consequences for acoustic communication (Badyaev 2010, 2014). Thus, urban ecology has the potential to extend our understanding of extremely well-studied ecological and evolutionary problems.

A systematic review of big data-based urban sustainability research: State-of-the-science and future directions

In 2015, one hundred years passed since Robert Park penned his seminal article “The City: Suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the city environment” in the American Journal of Sociology. It provided an agenda for the Chicago school of urban sociology, which came to shape urban research for decades to come. Since 1915 much has changed, both in the urban world itself and in the urban research that reflects on those transformations. In today’s world of global cities, cities around the world have undergone dramatic development, and nowhere as dramatic as in China. In the world of urban research, Park’s human ecology approach has lost the appeal that it once had. Against this background, in this book specialists on urban China reflect on the relevance of Park’s article on “The City” – for cities in China, for urban research, and for questions about studying the social life of the city. The aim of the book is to take Park’s article as a point of departure for critical reflection on both the research on urban China and on the issues that Chinese cities face. The book offers readers a timely respite from the eruption of urban China research, to reflect on what the city in China contributes to urban studies more generally. Despite the shared starting point, the contributors represent a range of perspectives that would disrupt any notion of monolithic “Chinese school” while also pointing the way towards recurrent challenges, topics and approaches relevant for a contemporary urbanism.

In 2015, one hundred years passed since Robert Park penned his seminal article “The City: Suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the city environment” in the American Journal of Sociology. It provided an agenda for the Chicago school of urban sociology, which came to shape urban research for decades to come. Since 1915 much has changed, both in the urban world itself and in the urban research that reflects on those transformations. In today’s world of global cities, cities around the world have undergone dramatic development, and nowhere as dramatic as in China. In the world of urban research, Park’s human ecology approach has lost the appeal that it once had. Against this background, in this book specialists on urban China reflect on the relevance of Park’s article on “The City” – for cities in China, for urban research, and for questions about studying the social life of the city. The aim of the book is to take Park’s article as a point of departure for critical reflection on both the research on urban China and on the issues that Chinese cities face. The book offers readers a timely respite from the eruption of urban China research, to reflect on what the city in China contributes to urban studies more generally. Despite the shared starting point, the contributors represent a range of perspectives that would disrupt any notion of monolithic “Chinese school” while also pointing the way towards recurrent challenges, topics and approaches relevant for a contemporary urbanism.

Every city was constructed on a region with special geomorphology. The construction and development of the city was based on it. The relationship between urban geographical environment and urban planning was intimate. This paper gave a brief introduction of the history and development of the urban geological research, urban geographical research, urban geomorphic disasters research and urban geographical environmental quality comprehensive assessment research based on the condition of urban planning and land-use. At last, the problem and the trend of urban geographical environment research were discussed.

Urban physical environments are the physical settings and built environments in neighbourhoods and cities which provide places for human activities. Evidence suggests that there are substantial associations between urban physical environments and various health outcomes, e.g. people’s physical activities might be influenced by surrounding physical environments, thereby affecting their health behaviours; more exposure to urban physical environments may benefit human mental health. Street view imagery enables us to capture the landscape at eye-level, making it a promising data source for observing and analysing the realistic dynamics of urban physical environments. Compared with traditional in-person assessments and field observations, street view imagery-based data collection is relatively time-effective and cost-effective. Researchers from epidemiology, psychology, and geography have used street view imagery to quantify the built environment and understand its impacts on public health. To summarize current research trends, this paper systematically reviews the use of street view images for sensing urban environments in public health studies. Specifically, we describe the characteristics of street view imagery and review the methodology for image processing and semantic understanding. We then summarize the challenges that remain for quantifying urban environments in terms of data and methodology. Several future research directions that would benefit public health research and practices are recommended in urban environment research.

Every city was constructed on a region with special geomorphology. The construction and development of the city was based on it. The relationship between urban geographical environment and urban planning was intimate. This paper gave a brief introduction of the history and development of the urban geological research, urban geographical research, urban geomorphic disasters research and urban geographical environmental quality comprehensive assessment research based on the condition of urban planning and land-use. At last, the problem and the trend of urban geographical environment research were discussed.

Australian urban and built environment research covers a multitude of research disciplines investigating social, economic and physical phenomena at a multitude of spatial and temporal scales and across diverse aggregation levels, from individual-level through to cohorts and populations, and across a range of scenarios, e.g. public health, voting patterns. The development of a common software platform (e-Infrastructure) to meet the needs of such research communities involves tackling many challenges associated with data intensive areas of research. This includes dealing with data sets from a multitude of federal, state, municipal, academic and private institutions, which hold vast arrays of heterogeneous data. For many researchers these data sets are difficult to discover, access, interrogate and use more generally. It is also unrealistic to expect researchers to always have the technical capability and capacity to handle such large amounts of data, or to develop data processing tools making use of such data sets, or be able to run computationally intensive simulations and models based on these data sets. Islands of expertise and islands (silos) of data currently exist that have fragmented urban research and thwarted a holistic approach to the study of the Australian urban and built environment system. The Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN - www.aurin.org.au) is a $20m SuperScience initiative established across Australia that seeks to address this directly by creating an e-Infrastructure aiming at bridging these gaps, by allowing researchers to conduct collaborative research in a security-enabled, browser-based environment providing seamless and transparent access to the distributed data and computational resources across Australia. These include metadata services, federated datasets, data integration and interrogation services, together with advanced visualization, collaboration and data storage capabilities. The goal is to provide access to rich datasets, state-of-the-art data processing tools, as well as a knowledge base where good research practices can be followed and used to assist researchers when navigating through vast data holdings to couple appropriate data and analytical tools for a range of urban research endeavors. In this paper, we address the fundamental question behind the establishment of this infrastructure, i.e. how to design a versatile and flexible software platform (e-Infrastructure) for urban research? The approach described is centered on establishment of a range of demonstrator projects addressing specific urban and built environment themes and the challenges they give rise to through a common e-Infrastructure. We believe that such an approach will allow delivery of early functionality in supporting a range of urban research scenarios, and at the same time support novel links between tools traditionally not applied beyond individual research fields. Through a common (core) e-Infrastructure, we expect to develop urban research capability that will offer a step change in how urban research is currently conducted, to support multi- and inter-disciplinary research scenarios whilst preserving full functionality in individual urban research strands. We describe the initial design stages of the AURIN e-Infrastructure from a technical perspective. The approach chosen is based on past experiences from a variety of eResearch initiatives, such as the UK e-Science National e-Infrastructure for Social Simulation (NeISS - www.neiss.org.au) project (Birkin et al., 2010); the Data Management through e-Social Science (DAMES - www.dames.org.au) project (McCafferty et al., 2009); the Spatial Information Software Stack (SISS) eResearch Facility (Liao et al., 2009), and the workflow-based image annotation using geographic information retrieval of TRIPOD (Purves et al., 2010). We illustrate the utility of the approach taken based on an initial set of demonstration projects exploring demographic and economic investigations of the Australian urban system.

The thermal environment problem is one of the main focuses of current urban environment research. At present, there are various methods used in urban space thermal environment (USTE) research. As a simulation method to quantify the USTE, the urban weather generator (UWG) has undergone great development and achieved many progressive results. It is necessary to establish and review its current research status by synthesizing UWG multi-scale applications. This review adopts a literature review approach, leveraging the Web of Science Core Collection to obtain previous relevant publications from 2010 to 2025 using “urban weather generator” and “thermal environment” as keywords. The literature is categorized by research themes, including model development, parameter optimization, and application cases. Through innovative analyses of spatio-temporal-scale classification, parameter optimization, the integration of anthropogenic heat emissions, and the multi-domain simulation potential of the UWG, this review synthesizes the application outcomes of the UWG model in multi-scale research, addressing gaps in current urban climate studies. The paper aims to elaborate and analyze the model’s current research status considering the following six aspects. First, the basic parameters in UWG simulation are introduced, including the data and parameter determination settings used in such simulations. Secondly, we introduce the simulation model and its basic principles, the simulation process, and the main steps of this process. Third, we classify and define UWG simulations of spatial thermal environments at different time scales and spatial scales. Fourth, regarding how to improve the accuracy of the UWG model, the deterministic parameters and uncertainty parameters settings are analyzed, respectively. Then, the impacts of anthropogenic heat during the simulation process are also discussed. Fifth, the applications of the UWG model in some major fields and its possible future development directions are addressed. Finally, the existing problems are summarized, the future development trends are prospected, and research on possible expected mitigation measures for the USTE is described.

Urban research influences urban policy, practice and public opinion. When it is effectively communicated, urban research energises, excites and opens new ways of looking at the urban environment to solve its many complex challenges. Good communication of urban research adds to the body of academic knowledge and it creates change in our cities, environments and communities. Whether you are an academic researcher, a consultant, a student or an advocate or activist, your research can influence policy, practice and opinion, but it must be effectively communicated to do so. This chapter sets out a ‘how to’ guide for the effective communication of urban research. This is practical advice for urban researchers and students to build their academic and professional profiles and contribute to urban knowledge and practice. The guidance in this chapter is based on the author’s collective experience as influential urban researchers and urban strategists in both public (Government and University) and private (consulting) sectors. The chapter overviews the context for urban research and then follows a basic sequence of why, when and how to communicate urban research. In the latter part of the chapter, we offer eight communication tips and practice notes to maximise the impact of your research.

Cities from space: potential applications of remote sensing in urban environmental research and policy

An attempt is made to summarize key results from a recently concluded project examining continuity and change in one particular dimension of family life in one particular city in the mid-1990s, along with selected comparisons with the same aspect of family life in urban Taiwan. The similarities and differences in urban family patterns in the 1990s are analysed in two ethnically Chinese societies that originally followed quite different development paths, the closed-door revolutionary socialism of the PRC and the market capitalism of Taiwan.

Planning for active mobility satisfies many fundamental tenets of good urban design and planning. However, planning for active mobility is a complex endeavour due to numerous local, place-based factors that influence active mobility decisions. Recent advancements in urban data research have demonstrated the effectiveness of deep learning methods in evaluating active mobility potential for urban environments. At present, the incorporation of semantic information from deep learning models and street view imagery into spatio-temporal contexts remains a challenge. In particular, knowledge extraction from deep learning models remains an open question for urban planning and decision-making. Towards this issue, we propose a functional deep learning and network science workflow that employs open data from OpenStreetMap and Mapillary to assess factors affecting active mobility decisions and route planning. We demonstrate the generalisability of our analytical workflow through two case studies focusing on urban greenery in Nerima city (Japan) and urban visual complexity in Pasir Ris town (Singapore). Our results reveal clear patterns of heterogeneity in urban streetscapes and identify unevenness in street infrastructure provision based on destination types. Using this information, we propose specific areas for design intervention to improve active mobility planning. Our workflow is applicable for a diverse range of use cases making it relevant to a wide range of stakeholders, not limited to, urban researchers, policy makers and urban planners.