City Hall Research Articles

The Epistemology of Groups

<i>The Epistemology of Groups</i>

“Greasy Thumb”—The Man Who Made the Chicago Mob

“Greasy Thumb”—The Man Who Made the Chicago Mob

The Importance of Soil on Human Taphonomy and Management of Portuguese Public Cemeteries

Cemeteries from the European Romantic period (18th–19th centuries) are often compared to small cities that hold memories, art, and history. Portuguese public cemeteries were first established in 1835 and became an interesting combination of fauna, flora, and monumental sculptures to mourn the dead at a location outside the limits of the city. Over the past 187 years, laws have been created and amended taking into consideration the needs of the population and the scientific knowledge available at each time point in history. Nevertheless, cemeteries have long been struggling with the lack of burial space which has been emphasised during the two years of the COVID pandemic. This work aims to review the development of Portuguese public cemeteries since their establishment, highlighting the imposed measures for the inhumation and exhumation of the deceased. It will also discuss the importance of soil as an abiotic agent, focusing on eight specific soil properties and their significance on the characterisation of graves. It is expected that a better understanding of the impact of soil on human taphonomy supports the role of city halls in managing public cemeteries, particularly the lack of burial space.

Effects of intergenerational contact on social capital in community-dwelling adults aged 25–84 years: a non-randomized community-based intervention

BackgroundAccumulating social capital in urban areas is essential to improve community health. Previous studies suggested that intergenerational contact may be effective for enhancing social capital. However, no study has examined the effect of intergenerational contact on social capital through a population-based evaluation. This study aimed to investigate the effects of a community-based intervention to increase the frequency of intergenerational contact on social capital among adults aged 25–84 years.MethodsThis study used a non-randomized controlled trial design to conduct a community-based intervention (from March 2016 to March 2019). The study area was Tama ward, Kawasaki city, Kanagawa, Japan. The area comprises five districts; one district was assigned as the intervention group and the other four districts as the control group. We provided the intervention to residents in the intervention group. The intervention comprised three phases: Phase 1 was the preparation term (organizing the project committee); Phase 2 was the implementation term (trained volunteer staff members, conducted the intergenerational greeting campaign, and held intergenerational contact events); and Phase 3 was the transition term (surrendering the lead role of the project to the city hall field workers). In the control group, field workers provided public health services as usual. We conducted mail surveys in September 2016 and November 2018 to assess the effects of the intervention on social capital during Phase 2. Eligible participants were randomly selected from community-dwelling adults aged 25–84 years according to age (10,620 control group individuals and 4479 intervention group individuals). We evaluated social trust, norm of reciprocity, and social support as outcome variables.ResultsIn total, 2518 participants completed both surveys and were analyzed (control group: 1727; intervention group: 791). We found that social trust (coefficient = 0.065; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.006, 0.125) and norm of reciprocity (coefficient = 0.084; 95% CI: 0.020, 0.149) positively changed in the intervention group compared with the control group.ConclusionsThis community-based intervention may contribute to sustaining and improving social capital among community-dwelling adults.Trial registration: UMIN000046769 (UMIN-CTR); first registered on January 28, 2022 (retrospectively registered).

Energy Conservation for Indoor Attractions Based on NRBO-LightGBM

In the context of COVID-19, energy conservation is becoming increasingly crucial to the overwhelmed tourism industry, and the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system (HVAC) is the most energy-consuming factor in the indoor area of scenic spots. As tourist flows are not constant, the intelligent control of an HVAC system is the key to tourist satisfaction and energy consumption management. This paper proposes a noise-reduced and Bayesian-optimized (NRBO) light-gradient-boosting machine (LightGBM) to predict the probability of tourists entering the next scenic spot, hence adopting the feedforward dynamic adaptive adjustment of the ventilation and air conditioning system. The customized model is more robust and effective, and the experimental results in Luoyang City Hall indicate that the proposed system outperforms the baseline LightGBM model and a random-search based method concerning prediction loss by 5.39% and 4.42%, respectively, and saves energy by 23.51%. The study illustrates a promising step in the advancement of tourism energy consumption management and sustainable tourism in the experimental area by improving tourist experiences and conserving energy efficiently, and the software-based system can also be smoothly applied to other indoor scenic spots.

The Role of Organizational Communication in Improving the Performance of the State Civil Apparatus (ASN) in the Makassar City Governance Section

The objectives of this study are to identify what organizational communication efforts are being done to improve the performance of ASN in the Makassar City Governance section, and to find out how the role of organizational communication in improving ASN performance in the Makassar City Governance section is. The method used in this research is qualitative method. The type of research used is the field type (Field Research). This research lasted for one month and was located at the Makassar City Hall office with 4 informants. Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that the efforts on the part of Governance in improving the performance of the State Civil Apparatus are by giving rewards and punishments, if the employee's performance is good, they will be rewarded, and if the employee's performance is not good, they will be punished. The role of communication carried out by the Makassar city government is vertical and horizontal communication, where superiors provide motivation to subordinates, and subordinates provide input or solutions to superiors and fellow employees in the governance section

City-Level E-Bike Sharing System Impact on Final Energy Consumption and GHG Emissions

Bike-sharing systems implemented in cities with good bike lane networks could potentiate a modal shift from short car trips, boosting sustainable mobility. Both passenger and last-mile goods transportation can benefit from such systems and, in fact, bike sharing (dockless or with docking stations) is increasing worldwide, especially in Europe. This research focused on a European city, Lisbon, and the e-bike sharing system GIRA, in its early deployment, in 2018, where it had about 409 bikes of which 30% were non-electric conventional bikes and 70% were e-bikes. The research aims at answering the main research questions: (1) What is the number of trips per day and travel time in conventional bikes and e-bikes?; (2) Do the daily usage peaks follow the trends of other modes of transport in terms of rush hours?; (3) Are there seasonality patterns in its use (weekdays and weekends, workdays and holiday periods)?; (4) How do climate conditions affect its use?; and finally, (5) What would be the impact on final energy consumption and GHG emissions? The dataset for 2018 regarding GIRA trips (distance, time, conventional or e-bike, docking station origin and destination) and weather (temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, precipitation) was available from Lisbon City Hall by means of the program “Lisboa aberta”. Data regarding the profile of the users (which trips GIRA replaces?) and data regarding electricity consumption were not available. The latter was estimated by means of literature e-bike data and electric motor specifications combined with powertrain efficiency. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were estimated by using the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) CO2 equivalents and a spreadsheet simulator for the Portuguese electricity GHG intensity, which was adaptable to other countries/locations. In a private car fleet dominated by fossil fuels and internal combustion engines, the e-bike sharing system is potentially avoiding 36 Ton GHG/year and reducing the energy consumption by 451 GJ/year. If the modal shift occurs from walking or urban bus to an e-bike sharing system, the impact will be detrimental for the environment.

Sustainable living neighbourhoods: Measuring public space quality and walking environment in Lisbon

Obesity and global warming are two major challenges that affect communities’ health and quality of life. Providing good walking environments, with appropriate pedestrian infrastructure, green areas and access to commercial retail and transport hubs favour liveable, healthy, and sustainable cities. The Lisbon City Hall has implemented an intervention program in the public space as a strategy to improve environmental quality and mitigate the effects of climate change. The program “A square in each neighbourhood” intends not only to reinforce the economic base of Lisbon, namely tourism, restaurants, commerce, and creative activities but also to promote physical activity and improve the quality of living of all citizens. For studying the impact of the public space quality on the walking environment, Campolide, a typical Lisbon neighbourhood, Portugal, which includes one of the requalified squares, was selected. A two-step methodology based on spatial modelling is proposed. In the first step, the public space quality was evaluated based on a set of 13 urban quality attributes. Attributes, intended for the street level, were collected from open data platforms and complemented with a field survey. Then, through spatial analysis, these attributes were used to build the Pedestrian Environment Quality Indicator and the Priority Intervention Indicator. Using these indicators, walking-friendly streets were mapped and the most critical sites that require priority intervention were identified to prepare for the requalification planning process. The street with the highest quality in the study area according to the dimensions evaluated - connectivity, convenience, comfort, cleanliness, and conviviality - has a great offer of trees, bus stops, commercial establishments, commercial diversity, crossings, paper bins/eco points and esplanades. On the opposite side of the rank, the street with the lowest quality has no trees or green areas, transport stops, benches and tables, or commercial activity. The urban quality indicators constitute a helpful tool for city planners and policymakers when planning sustainable living neighbourhoods.

Automatic verification of urban index compliance: A case study for Brazilian buildings

Urban planning has become an essential tool for regulating the cities’ growth, maintaining the local urban identity and providing a good quality of life for its inhabitants. In Brazil, the master plan is the primary policy instrument for urban development and expansion. It defines the common requirements that designers must follow when preparing building projects. Up to date, such projects are verified in project latter stages and eventually approved by the city halls, with a manual calculation and assessment process. This procedure creates both the need to assess project compliance earlier to avoid rework and changes, as well as to automate project verification compliance, to reduce human errors. With the emergence of new technologies and computational systems, such as Building Information Modelling (BIM), creates the opportunity for process automation, by providing the required data to support decision making, as well as to automate the calculation process both for designers and municipalities. Thus, this research aims to develop an assessment procedure which automates the compliance assessment of a set of urban requirements from Vila Velha, Brazil. A BIM model was developed in Autodesk Revit to prove the procedure functionality and Dynamo was used to automate data collection and the calculation of three different indexes from Vila Velha’s building code. By providing a fast and reliable analysis, the research framework provides designers with a real-time decision support tool, which indicates building compliance in the project’s early stages. It also provides municipalities with a calculation tool, which can be used to assess the compliance of submitted BIM models, sparing time and avoiding assessment errors. Overall, the procedure has the potential to support building project design, increase process efficiency and accelerate the verification of mandatory requirements. It also offers the possibility for replication by adapting the routine to the mandatory requirements of each location.

An Ethnographic Account on Transparency and Participation in Civil-Public Cooperation: Enablers and Constraints in Iaşi, the First Romanian City Admitted to Open Government Partnership - Local Program

The purpose of this research is to pioneer ethnographic research on enablers and constraints in transparency and participation building at the local level. The case study is focused on Iași’s experience as the first Romanian city admitted to Open Government Partnership - Local Program and highlights how the relative trust of local authorities in civil actors translated into maximal inclusion and freedom for drafting the city action plan on transparency and open governance. However, trust was also fueled by local authorities’ disengagement with OGP mechanisms, which translated into watercolor local democracy. Particular emphasis is placed on the dynamics of friendliness as a soft pressure mechanism securing collaboration between civil actors and public servants, to counterbalance the lack of political will in designing participatory structures. The authors come to the conclusion that toe-holds bridging civil society pioneers and friendly technical staff of the City Hall have cornerstone value for enabling democracy innovation at the local level when political will is weak. However, it is not enough to ensure continuity and there is a need for both civil society capacity building and political reframing to build sustainable transparency that converts into genuine public participation.

Sprouts for Life: Eco-Feminism and Performance

Sprouts for Life: Eco-Feminism and Performance

At the sources of Ukrainian Juvenile Justice: Valery Levitsky and Yuriy Novitsky – founders of the Kiev court for minors

The idea of the birth of courts for children originated in Australia, but it was widely known in 1899 in the United States. The main idea was to replace the reprisals for the birth of children, as if they had committed a malice, a wrongful-vichalic beginning. To have good indications that the idea was transferred in 1904 to Western Europe – back to England, then to Germany, France and in 1910, as an experiment, this was implemented in Russia in the city of St. Petersburg. For the results of the activity of a special court for juveniles in St. Petersburg, it was ruled out that people would come to the court to order such a court in Kiev. The process of organizing the court dragged on for a long time. Until the fi rst September of 1913, the project of splitting and making submissions to the Kiev Star of the World Judges. After that, with insignifi cant changes in the vins of fi lings to the 1st Department of the Ministry of Justice. In early 1913, the Ministry of Justice praised the project, and on September 7, 1914, the Kyiv City Court of the World Courts praised the courts of minors accused and minor victims in an open court. All right, they were seen and entrusted to the additonal justice of the peace. On September 7, 1914, the Kiev City Hall of the World Judgment made a decision to appoint a young, talented, accomplished justice of the peace, Valeriy Mikhailovich Levitsky, to the tenure. The article deals with the life and creative path of outstanding but little – known lawyers, active members of the Society of Kiev patronage, founders of the Kiev court for minors-Valery Mikhailovich Levitsky and Yuri Petrovich Novitsky. A general overview of their offi cial careers, their role and place in the formation of the Ukrainian juvenile justice system is presented. Their steady energy in achieving their goals and amazing hard work are shown. Key words: Society Kiev patronage, Kiev court for minors, additional Justice of the peace, justice of the peace, minors.

Yevhen Terletsky – Ukrainian Lawyer and Revolutionary in the time mirror

The idea of the birth of courts for children originated in Australia, but it was widely known in 1899 in the United States. The main idea was to replace the reprisals for the birth of children, as if they had committed a malice, a wrongful-vichalic beginning. To have good indications that the idea was transferred in 1904 to Western Europe – back to England, then to Germany, France and in 1910, as an experiment, this was implemented in Russia in the city of St. Petersburg. For the results of the activity of a special court for juveniles in St. Petersburg, it was ruled out that people would come to the court to order such a court in Kiev. The process of organizing the court dragged on for a long time. Until the fi rst September of 1913, the project of splitting and making submissions to the Kiev Star of the World Judges. After that, with insignifi cant changes in the vins of fi lings to the 1st Department of the Ministry of Justice. In early 1913, the Ministry of Justice praised the project, and on September 7, 1914, the Kyiv City Court of the World Courts praised the courts of minors accused and minor victims in an open court. All right, they were seen and entrusted to the additonal justice of the peace. On September 7, 1914, the Kiev City Hall of the World Judgment made a decision to appoint a young, talented, accomplished justice of the peace, Valeriy Mikhailovich Levitsky, to the tenure. The article deals with the life and creative path of outstanding but little – known lawyers, active members of the Society of Kiev patronage, founders of the Kiev court for minors-Valery Mikhailovich Levitsky and Yuri Petrovich Novitsky. A general overview of their offi cial careers, their role and place in the formation of the Ukrainian juvenile justice system is presented. Their steady energy in achieving their goals and amazing hard work are shown. Key words: Society Kiev patronage, Kiev court for minors, additional Justice of the peace, justice of the peace, minors.

포스코건설 강남 구룡마을 개발사례- 도시개발사업 속 갈등과 마찰을 중심으로

This study was conducted to analyze the situation in which POSCO E&amp;C failed the development project through various conflict situations while promoting the ‘Gang-nam Guryong Village’ urban development project to consider various factors and learn background knowledge related to the development project. POSCO E&amp;C tried to develop Guryong Village, also known as “Potential Site of Gang-nam”, but it has difficulty in the progress of the project due to conflicts between residents and landlords, Gang-nam office and Seoul City Hall over the development method. In this situation, I would like to discuss what method would POSCO E&amp;C to minimize the loss from the project and could have been considered. The purpose of this study is to consider basic questions such as “how to receive funds for the project?” and “how to proceed the project” and to understand background knowledge related to urban development projects such as “Finance through debt financing” and “Project financing (PF)”.

Human resource management and operational efficiency of city hall personnel in northeastern region of Thailand during pandemic crisis

This research aimed to 1) study human resource management and operational efficiency during the pandemic crisis 2) compare operational efficiency according to demographical factors, and 3) study the relationship between human resource management and operational efficiency of city hall personnel. The sample group was city hall 256 employees in northeastern region of Thailand. Research instrument was questionnaire, statistics used for analysis were descriptive statistics and inferential statistics using independent-samples t-test, One-Way Anova and multiple regression with statistics SPSS application. Research showed personnel variables had the highest level in human resource management with mean score at 4.44. On recruitment, hiring selection process compensation and benefit, operational evaluation, and training and development had mean score at 4.48, 4.46, 4.45, 4.42, and 4.38 respectively. Personnel variables had the highest level in operational efficiency with mean score at 4.43. Volume of work, expense, quality of work, and operational time had mean score at 4.48, 4.42, 4.41, and 4.41 respectively. Personnel with different gender and monthly income had different perspective on operational efficiency with statistically significance 0.05. Human resource management had influence on operational efficiency could predict operational efficiency at 64.2 percent with constant value of predication equation at 0.805 with statistically significance 0.05.

Experience of local self-governments in providing medical services to the population in developing and developed countries

Background: The aim of the study was to investigate the role of local government and self-government and their role in health care of population. The study was conducted in a pandemic and was conducted through a Google form. The study also asked whether the population applied to the city hall and the government for funding, what kind of assistance it needed and whether its problem was solved. We conducted a large-scale study in Georgia to assess the role of local self-government and governance, the role of local governance and self-government in the health care scheme of the population.Methods: We conducted a survey of 1,010 people across Georgia. There were both open and closed questions, with a minimum of 2 questions per question; an environmental survey was also conducted among the population. What did they want the funding to increase, what kind of service did they get and would they not improve anything?Results: These issues became more apparent when we conducted a survey of 1,010 people across Georgia, the purpose of the survey was to assess the population’s opinion, their attitude towards funding, as well as their opinion on the role of local government and self-government.Conclusions: Among the respondents, many residents received proper and full assistance completely, some at least partially, but no one was left unattended. Those of the respondents who needed help and did not apply for help from the city hall and the board, wondered what was the reason why they refrained.

Convolutional Neural Network-Based Rapid Post-Earthquake Structural Damage Detection: Case Study.

It is necessary to detect the structural damage condition of essential buildings immediately after an earthquake to identify safe structures, evacuate, or resume crucial activities. For this reason, a CNN methodology proposed to detect the structural damage condition of a building is here improved and validated for two currently instrumented essential buildings (Tahara City Hall and Toyohashi Fire Station). Three-dimensional frames instead of lumped mass models are used for the buildings. Besides this, a methodology to select records is introduced to reduce the variability of the structural responses. The maximum inter-storey drift and absolute acceleration of each storey are used as damage indicators. The accuracy is evaluated by the usability of the building, total damage condition, storey damage condition, and total comparison of the damage indicators. Finally, the maximum accuracy and R2 of the responses are obtained as follows: for the Tahara City Hall building, 90.0% and 0.825, respectively; for the Toyohashi Fire Station building, 100% and 0.909, respectively.

Sankara Is Not Dead, dir. Lucie Viver

<i>Sankara Is Not Dead,</i> dir. Lucie Viver

Mining-Dependence &amp; Triple Helix in Brazil: Analysis of the Entrepreneurial University

Extractivism is one of the main economic sources in the country. However, this activity produces socio-environmental liabilities in the host territories, making well-being and work alternatives unfeasible. As a way of circumventing the impacts, intersectoral partnerships are formed to overcome “Mining-Dependency”. To better understand this phenomenon, a single case study was carried out in order to understand the territorial development projects between university, city hall and mineral extractive industry, located in Itabira - MG. The city of Itabira is the birthplace of a large mining company and records a deadline for the depletion of its mineral reserves for the year 2028. Through documentary research and semi-structured interviews, it was possible to recognize the alignment of the population's reality with the development project. Preliminary results indicate that the project of economic dynamization led by the university is erratic, still benefiting the local economy in a superficial way and not integrated with the desires of the local community. Projects aimed at fostering entrepreneurship and innovation have not shown preeminence. In this way, new research may arise when rethinking the role of the Triple Helix in territories impacted by extractivism, including civil society as an actor of the Fourth Helix.

IMPACT OF PLASMA HDL CHOLESTEROL LEVELS, MEASURED ONE YEAR BEFORE ACUTE MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION, ON MORTALITY AFTER THE ACUTE EVENT

Introduction: Although epidemiological studies demonstrated that HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) levels are associated with higher cardiovascular risk, pharmacological interventions for elevated HDL-C levels have failed to show a risk reduction. Objective: To evaluate patients admitted for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) to determine whether HDL-C levels measured up to 1 year before the event have an impact on post-event mortality. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted using data from the database of the Curitiba (Brazil) city hall. This study included 1,363 patients hospitalized from 2008 to 2015, with a diagnosis of infarction and available HDL-C values measured up to 1 year before the coronary event. The mean HDL-C levels obtained in this period and at 6 and 12 months after discharge were correlated with hospital mortality. Results: HDL-C levels of ≤35 mg/dL resulted in lower mortality than values of ≥50 mg/dL. This indicates that the mortality risk of patients with HDL-C levels of ≥50 mg/dL was 30% higher than ≤35 mg/dL, regardless the age and the total follow up. The survival rate at 6 and 12 months of follow-up for patients with HDL-C levels of ≥50 mg/dL was reduced in relation to other quartiles, with higher evidence of mortality at 12 months. Conclusions: The patients with higher HDL-C levels in the year preceding an AMI presented worse prognosis than those with lower HDL-C levels after the acute event. This reinforces the paradoxical effect of HDL-C on cardiovascular risk and the results of recent intervention studies.