City Perspective Research Articles

A.I.’s vısıon of future cıtıes

Not only has artificial intelligence become ingrained in our everyday lives, but it has also been put to beneficial use in a wide variety of scholarly fields. Over the course of the past few decades, artificial intelligence has developed into an essential component of the optimization strategies utilized in the urban planning and design field. With the diversification and development of algorithms, although artificial intelligence has not yet begun to visually shape our cities, it has begun to be utilized as a design and planning derivative from urban design to planning scale, particularly in the context of smart cities. On the other hand, thanks to advancements in areas of machine learning, neural networks, deep learning, natural language processing, and computer vision, artificial intelligence can now generate authentic images based on texts that are provided. In this study, the perspectives of future cities obtained by text-to-image generation algorithms are analyzed. The visuals obtained with the open-source Stable Diffusion artificial intelligence's predictions about the future are presented in conjunction with numerous AI related contemporary design terms; smart city, sustainability, eco-design, biomimicry, and topology optimization. At each stage of history, the image of the cities of the future first appeared in literature and art before becoming a reality. Synthesizing contemporary works of art and literature in the millions of images that make up artificial intelligence's libraries today can inspire designers to construct our future.

A.I.’s vısıon of future cıtıes

Not only has artificial intelligence become ingrained in our everyday lives, but it has also been put to beneficial use in a wide variety of scholarly fields. Over the course of the past few decades, artificial intelligence has developed into an essential component of the optimization strategies utilized in the urban planning and design field. With the diversification and development of algorithms, although artificial intelligence has not yet begun to visually shape our cities, it has begun to be utilized as a design and planning derivative from urban design to planning scale, particularly in the context of smart cities. On the other hand, thanks to advancements in areas of machine learning, neural networks, deep learning, natural language processing, and computer vision, artificial intelligence can now generate authentic images based on texts that are provided. In this study, the perspectives of future cities obtained by text-to-image generation algorithms are analyzed. The visuals obtained with the open-source Stable Diffusion artificial intelligence's predictions about the future are presented in conjunction with numerous AI related contemporary design terms; smart city, sustainability, eco-design, biomimicry, and topology optimization. At each stage of history, the image of the cities of the future first appeared in literature and art before becoming a reality. Synthesizing contemporary works of art and literature in the millions of images that make up artificial intelligence's libraries today can inspire designers to construct our future.

Analyzing the Changes of Industrial Network from Smart City Perspectives

Analyzing the Changes of Industrial Network from Smart City Perspectives

Optimalisasi Program Tanggap Stunting dengan Pangan Aman dan Sehat di Kota Bandung dalam Perspektif Smart City

In order to improve public services, the City of Bandung as one of the cities in Indonesia that has implemented a smart city is increasingly trying to optimize its services, including health services, one of which is in dealing with the problem of stunting. Where in 2020, the stunting rate in the city of Bandung increased to 8.86%. To that end, the Bandung City government created the Bandung Tanginas program (Tanggap Stunting Dengan Pangan Aman Dan Sehat) which is a program aimed at enabling the City of Bandung to become a City with Zero News Stunting. Therefore, the goal to be achieved in this research is to find out how to optimize the Tanginas Program in Bandung City from a Smart city Perspective. This research is descriptive with a qualitative approach. The results of this study indicate that the optimization of the Tanginas program in the city of Bandung seen from the smart city perspective is still not optimal. This is based on the limited amount of healthy food intake, population density, lack of green open space and the lack of use of information technology.

Preservice Training Strategies and Guarantee Mechanisms for Primary and Secondary School Teachers in the Development of Smart Cities by the Internet of Things

It aims to perfect the preservice training system and improve the teaching quality of primary schools. The research methods are questionnaire survey and interview, and 154 teachers from 16 primary schools under the background of smart city development are used as the research objects. Questionnaires are distributed to them, and the Internet of Things (IoT) technology is used to analyze the adaptation law of primary school teachers’ preservice training and to conduct in-depth research on teacher education and training strategies according to the relevant curriculum system. The results manifest that the IoT technology can effectively process the questionnaire data. From the perspective of the smart city, more than 70% of art teachers and physical education (PE) teachers know nothing about their professional level, and nearly 40% of music teachers know little about their professional level of teachers. In addition, more than 50% of the teachers surveyed do not have a clear understanding of their own professional standards, teacher training standards, primary school training strategies, and guarantee mechanisms of the teaching effect. It means that teachers in the progress of smart cities should strengthen the training of professional level and education policy during preservice training. After the evaluation and training system is established according to the ratio of “25.4% of primary school students’ growth knowledge +42.7% of professional knowledge +31.9% of teacher education curriculum knowledge”, students’ learning enthusiasm increased by 23%, and their academic performance increased by 15%. This indicates that the training system can ensure the good learning effect of students. Therefore, the research on preservice training strategies and guarantee mechanisms for primary and secondary school teachers in smart cities by the IoT provides a certain direction for subsequent teacher training.

The Civil City Framework for the Implementation of Nature-Based Smart Innovations: Right to a Healthy City Perspective

This paper aims to expand the current debate concerning the implementation of health-related innovations by employing the rights-based approach. Specifically, we address the challenges related to the implementation of technological and Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) from the right to the city perspective. As a result, we present a comprehensive Civil City Framework that involves the synergic use of ICT tools and participation models to mobilize grassroots potential for building healthier cities, while ensuring equity and respect for diverse needs. We explain the participatory and technological aspects of implementing and monitoring innovative NBS, involving data gathering through environmental sensors, personal wristbands, and smartphone apps. Finally, we highlight opportunities and challenges stemming from the use of health- and environment-monitoring technologies. To build such a vision one needs to reconceive the city as commons, enabling collective action of city residents and cooperation between different local stakeholders. This can be achieved by embedding a pentahelix approach of multi-governance in urban planning, based on a close interaction between five key stakeholders, including public authorities, industry and business sector, academia, civil society organizations, and individual citizens.

Paisagens de Macau (sécs. XVIII-XIX). “Vue de Macao en Chine” versus” On the Green”

O Museu do Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau (CCCM) conserva no seu acervo uma gravura e um desenho com vistas da cidade de Macau, dos finais do séc. XVIII e da primeira metade do séc. XIX. A primeira, “Vue de Macao en Chine”, data de 1787 e é da autoria de Gaspard Duché de Vancy e o segundo, “On the Green”, um pouco mais tardio, é do ano de 1838 e foi desenhado por Warner Varnham.
 Estes dois exemplares oferecem-nos perspectivas complementares e extremamente interessantes da cidade de Macau. Nos mesmos é possível reconhecer paisagens físicas e humanas e reconstituir ambientes.
 Estas imagens serão analisadas em paralelo, nas suas semelhanças e diferenças e, no âmbito deste estudo, serão cruzadas com memórias escritas coevas, de forma a atingir-se outros níveis de compreensão e de leitura da realidade da época, para além da dimensão estritamente visual que as mesmas encerram.

VRP in urban areas to optimize costs while mitigating environmental impact

Nowadays, the need to think about sustainable mobility, both goods and people, is widely recognized. For this reason, many recent papers have moved in this direction. In this context, particular attention is now devoted to urban mobility, mainly from a smart city perspective. The present work focuses on sustainable urban freight distribution and proposes a variant of the VRP, which presents some innovative aspects. The goal is to minimize the routes’ cost components, including traveling and external costs due to environmental issues, depending on the chosen vehicles and the different urban streets to cross. In addition, restrictions on the maximum duration of each route to ensure frequent sanitation of vehicles used for deliveries, as required from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, are imposed. The distribution network is modeled by a weighted digraph for which some properties are proved. To face the problem, we present a mixed-integer linear programming model, a math-heuristic associated with it, and a memetic algorithm approach. The results of the reported computational experimentation with random instances specifically tailored for the problem show the efficiency of the proposed methods. Further, test cases based on data of the distribution network of two B2C companies operating in the city of Genoa, Italy, proved the effective application of the proposed methods in the direction of sustainable urban distribution plans.

Post-Pandemic Urbanism from the Perspective of Healthy Cities: Evaluation of Urban Green Space Sufficiency in Denizli

The COVID-19 pandemic has re-bought forward the importance of urban open spaces. The scarcities of public spaces and open green spaces have been effective in keeping the city dwellers in their homes due to the need for isolation during the pandemic era. Despite this, cities with sufficient open green spaces have increased the mobility of city dwellers since people interact less with each other. In the process of re-planning urban areas, developing an integrated approach with green infrastructure strategies in parallel with designing resilient cities has the potential to create healthier cities. In this context, the PP-GS (Post-Pandemic Green Spaces) model of the study reveals the minimum amount of green spaces required per capita in the cities, based on the social distance and healthy living principles that emerged during the pandemic. The study examines the required amount of green space in the Denizli urban center based on the PP-GS model from the perspective of healthy cities and proposes spatial suggestions for post-pandemic urban green space planning.

전원도시 이론에 기반한 지속가능한 도시재개발사업 구조에 관한 연구

Sustainability is an important topic from the perspective of cities as a common international task related to the survival of humanity. Especially, this topic is critical from an urban redevelopment perspective. The garden city model, suggest by Howard, provides the theoretical foundation needed for sustainable city construction. This paper proposes a sustainable urban redevelopment structure to analyzing the garden city model and cases evaluated as successful redevelopment projects: Battery Park City and Hudson Yards. Our proposal is as follows: First, urban redevelopment projects should adopt the land or superficies lease method. This method creates a positive feedback system that converts profits from the land into public resources and reinvests them to the city. Second, a public corporation should establish for each urban project. This corporation manages urban development projects as well as maintains the city after the project is complete. This method can alleviate the inefficiency and agency problems from a bloated organization that has excessive authority. Third, the government should reflect the above proposal to smart city construction, a new urban paradigm. The usability of the garden city model proves through the United States case. Therefore, adopt our proposal can strengthen city construction competitiveness.

Optimal Residence: Does Air Quality Affect Settlement Decisions of Urban Floating Migrants?

There is a strong association between urban prosperity and human resources. Rapid urbanization and industrialization have caused severe air pollution to the urban cities over the past decades, and permanently moving to locations with clean air has been considered to be one of the most effective strategies to avoid air pollution. However, whether this is in fact still unclear. In order to fill the research gaps, this study combines individual-level data derived from a national survey and city-level data obtained from various sources to empirically exam the effect that air quality has on settlement decisions of urban floating migrants in China. We focus on the target floating migrants who have urban hukou in the origin city and housing in the destination city, and investigate the relationship between air quality and settlement decisions from the move-in and move-out city perspective. In addition, we exam not only the willingness of urban floating migrants to settling in the move-in city, but also their actual migration decision in the reality. The bivariate probit analysis and panel data regression are applied. Results show that poor air quality in the move-out cities has a significant positive impact on urban floating migrants’ willingness to settling in the move-in cities, while bad air quality in the move-in cities has a significant negative impact, indicating that poor air quality does act as a push force to drive floating migrants away but good air quality can be a pulling force for floating migrants to settling down. In addition, the robust tests show good agreement with the main regression results, with almost all relationships reported having the same direction as those indicated by the regression analysis. Our findings can help policy makers and urban planners assess and design interventions to improve the urban air quality aimed at attracting talent, with broader implications for urban sustainable development.

Smaller is smarter: A case for small to medium-sized smart cities

Smart Cities have been around as a concept for quite some time. However, most examples of Smart Cities (SCs) originate from megacities (MCs), despite the fact that most people live in Small and Medium-sized Cities (SMCs). This paper addresses the contextual setting for smart cities from the perspective of such small and medium-sized cities. It starts with an overview of the current trends in the research and development of SCs, highlighting the current bias and the challenges it brings. We follow with a few concrete examples of projects which introduced some form of “smartness” in the small and medium cities context, explaining what influence said context had and what specific effects did it lead to. Building on those experiences, we summarise the current understanding of Smart Cities, with a focus on its multi-faceted (e.g., smart economy, smart people, smart governance, smart mobility, smart environment and smart living) nature; we describe mainstream publications and highlight the bias towards large and very large cities (sometimes even subconscious); give examples of (often implicit) assumptions deriving from this bias; finally, we define the need of contextualising SCs also for small and medium-sized cities. The aim of this paper is to establish and strengthen the discourse on the need for SMCs perspective in Smart Cities literature. We hope to provide an initial formulation of the problem, mainly focusing on the unique needs and the specific requirements. We expect that the three example cases describing the effects of applying new solutions and studying SC on small and medium-sized cities, together with the lessons learnt from these experiences, will encourage more research to consider SMCs perspective. To this end, the current paper aims to justify the need for this under-studied perspective, as well as to propose interesting challenges faced by SMCs that can serve as initial directions of such research.

The 15-Minute City—The Geographical Proximity of Services in Krakow

The discussion about 15-minute cities (also referred to as cities of short distances) has gained considerable momentum in the last decade. Thanks to the optimal spatial layout of these urban areas, their residents can meet most or all of their day-to-day needs within a short walk or a bicycle ride from their place of residence. This is especially important in the context of problems currently faced by most large agglomerations worldwide, the negative externalities caused by predominantly motorised transport and inappropriate spatial planning policies that entail substantial environmental and technical infrastructure outlays. The concept of spatial proximity to services played a key role in the empirical part of the present study, where Krakow’s layout was analysed in detail from the perspective of a 15-minute city. Krakow is a resident-friendly, inclusive city created primarily with local communities in mind. However, certain design flaws in terms of spatial proximity to services prompted us to reconsider how its specific spatial components operate. To achieve the study’s goal—a comprehensive assessment of Krakow as a 15-minute city—we proposed several solutions that can be made universally adaptable for other urban areas striving to meet the short distance criteria.

Making Cities Smarter-Optimization Problems for the IoT Enabled Smart City Development: A Mapping of Applications, Objectives, Constraints.

One of the prime aims of smart cities has been to optimally manage the available resources and systems that are used in the city. With an increase in urban population that is set to grow even faster in the future, smart city development has been the main goal for governments worldwide. In this regard, while the useage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques covering the areas of Machine and Deep Learning have garnered much attention for Smart Cities, less attention has focused towards the use of combinatorial optimization schemes. To help with this, the current review presents a coverage of optimization methods and applications from a smart city perspective enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT). A mapping is provided for the most encountered applications of computational optimization within IoT smart cities for five popular optimization methods, ant colony optimization, genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization, artificial bee colony optimization and differential evolution. For each application identified, the algorithms used, objectives considered, the nature of the formulation and constraints taken in to account have been specified and discussed. Lastly, the data setup used by each covered work is also mentioned and directions for future work have been identified. This review will help researchers by providing them a consolidated starting point for research in the domain of smart city application optimization.

Research on the Design Strategy of Pocket Park from the Perspective of Healthy City

Pocket parks are small in size and flexible in function. In the process of urbanization development in China, the number 
 of pocket parks has gradually increased, but from the current point o f view, there are many problems in the construction of pocket 
 parks in China . This study conducts a detailed investigation on the plants, sports facilities and roads of the pocket park by adopting 
 the method of on-site investigation of the pocket park. It was found that pocket parks currently have problems such as functional 
 limitations and insufficient ecological design. Therefore, a strategy is proposed to refine the infrastructure of pocket parks and 
 enhance the interactivity of the landscape, so as to promote the high-quality development of pocket parks.

Applications of Big Data Analytics in Traffic Management in Intelligent Transportation Systems

Big Data technology is emerging as a mass technology that can be applied to many industries in life. Decisions in a wide range of fields may benefit greatly from the information provided by Big Data and Analytics research. One of the areas that have benefited the most from this technology is transportation, which is known as an important field in the development of each nation and possesses a huge treasure of data that traditional technologies cannot handle. Indeed, many countries have applied Big Data-based intelligent transportation systems because it is a traffic system that interacts with vehicles and people on the road, thereby reducing traffic congestion and traffic accidents year by year in many countries. The article presents the applications of Big Data technology in smart traffic systems, thereby providing the perspective of a smart city with a smart traffic system as a critical factor. This paper's analysis indicated that smart cities could be born and further developed through the linkage of Big Data technology and smart traffic systems with smart traffic systems as the core. In addition, the results also showed that the obstacle that needs to be studied at this time is the policy and legal framework for Big Data technology. Therefore, a system managed by the state or shared between the state and the private sector should be studied in the future, aiming to harmonize interests and develop the system extensively.

The impact of population factors and low-carbon innovation on carbon dioxide emissions: a Chinese city perspective.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reduction has become an important concern worldwide. During the past century, human activities have been a significant cause of the increase in the level of greenhouse gases. Past research mainly focuses on evaluating the nexus between unidimensional population factors and CO2 emissions, while few prior studies in a developing country have reported the impact of multidimensional demographic factors on CO2 emissions. As an initial attempt, this study investigates the short- and long-run associations between population factors, low-carbon innovation, and carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) for a panel consisting of 285 cities by employing the pooled mean group (PMG) estimator under the framework of the panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. Our main findings are as follows: (1) Population size and population density could increase CO2 emissions, while population quality and low-carbon innovation were essential factors that alleviate carbon emission pressure in the long run. (2) Economic development, foreign direct investment, and industrial development were found to be factors causing the increase in carbon emissions. (3) The split-sample analysis demonstrated that the improvement of population quality still has a positive and significant long-run effect on environmental quality. Simultaneously, low-carbon innovation could realize the enormous dividends of carbon emission reduction in the long run, especially in existing relatively larger CO2 emission areas. Finally, the paper presents important policy implications.

Evaluation of ecological security and ecological maintenance based on pressure-state-response (PSR) model, case study: Fuzhou city, China

Since the modern industrial revolution, the speed of urbanization has accelerated, resulting in a series of ecological environment problems. Fujian province will begin to implement the policy of strengthening the provincial capital in October 2021. Therefore, it is crucial to analyze the ecological maintenance status of Fuzhou and provide a relevant reference for Fuzhou to be built into a national central city. This article takes Fuzhou city as the research area, collects land use data in 2000, 2010, and 2020 from Globeland30, combines remote sensing image data, statistical yearbook data, and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data, and based on Pressure-State-Responses (PSR) model. A total of 15 indicators were selected to construct the ecological security evaluation system of Fuzhou in 2000, 2010, and 2020, and the weight of each indicator was determined by analytic hierarchy process. Spatial autocorrelation was used to analyze the correlation degree of the land use ecological security index in Fuzhou. The concept of ecological maintenance was introduced to analyze the status of ecological maintenance in Fuzhou during the third period. Finally, the diagnostic model of obstacle factors was used to determine the main obstacle factors affecting ecological security in Fuzhou. The results showed that from 2000 to 2020, the area of cultivated land, grassland and bare land decreased year by year, and transferred 320.63 km2, 25.34 km2 and 9.85 km2 to the artificial surface respectively. The high-value ecological security indexes in 2000, 2010 and 2020 were 27.54%, 28.67% and 30.93% respectively. Therefore, the overall level of ecological security in Fuzhou has improved, but there is a large gap in local ecological security. The area with moderate ecological maintenance degree accounted for 60.15%. From the perspective of the whole city, the very poor ecological maintenance degree mainly concentrated in the downtown area and Pingtan Island, while the very good ecological maintenance degree accounted for very little, mainly distributed in the northwest of Fuzhou. The ecological security index showed the characteristics of high and low-value agglomeration, and the distribution of four clusters in three periods was similar. The main obstacle factors of ecological security in three periods are highway density, population density, surface temperature, intensity of human interference, landscape diversity, GDP per capita, and regional development degree. The ecological security evaluation and ecological maintenance of Fuzhou city is beneficial to provide an efficient decision support tool for the ecological environment protection of Fuzhou City.

Exploring the Resilience Park Index from the Perspective of Flood and Wind Disasters

At present, various climate disasters, global warming and other problems feed off of one another. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons, flooding, and drought as well as human-made disasters such as petrochemical plant safety accidents and steam explosion accidents pose a threat to and affect the development of cities. Therefore, scholars, scientists, and urban planners must study and discuss disasters, so as to work toward important concepts such as resilient cities, resilient landscapes, and disaster prevention parks. This study discusses the resilience park from the perspective of the resilient city. Since the harm caused by natural disasters to parks is mainly due to flooding and high winds, this study focuses on the prevention and control of flood and wind damage. This study is an attempt to explore the indicators of resilience of parks in the context of flood and wind damage, calculate the indicator weight of resilience parks, and establish an indicator evaluation system for resilience parks. The research methods of this study are the Fuzzy Delphi method and the network analysis program method. The results show that the indicators of a resilience park under flood disaster are different types of soil drainage capacity grade (0.199), the lawn to permeable ratio (0.248), the permeable pavement grade (0.125), and the degradation basin grade (0.177). The indicators of a resilience park under high winds are the wind resistance grade of tree species (0.064), the multilayer planting configuration grade (0.053), the tree height and wind resistance grade (0.066), and the bearing capacity grade of trunk and root system (0.067). The weight of each index is calculated. Finally, the park toughness index evaluation system is established. Through this study, we hope to put forward reconstruction suggestions for different parks and provide the evaluation criteria of park toughness so as to improve the disaster resistance of parks.

From global city makers to global city-shapers: Migration industries in the global city networks

Recently, increasing migrant-led diversity of urban spaces can be expected to be especially observed in global cities, where global flows of capital, goods and people are concentrated. Although this connection between the global phenomenon of transnational migration and the local socio-spatial impacts on the cities appears evident, empirical research on the ‘relationship of migrants and cities’ remains underexplored. Discussions on global city makers have focused primarily on global economic actors, and have paid little attention to actors involved in shaping these global cities locally. This paper sheds new light on the role of migration industries in shaping global cities on the local level, being based empirically on qualitative interviews with transnational migrants and service providers in Tokyo. It discusses how the novel constellation of service firms for the transnational migration from above and below, that is, corporate migration industry in contrast to the conventional migration industry of labour migration, not only contributes to the global flow of transnational migrations into specific cities, but also draws them into specific socio-spatial patterns within the local urban space. By bringing these different types of migration industries conceptually together, it illustrates how socio-spatial diversification processes within global cities are embedded in the global economy (global city makers) but also locally directed by intermediary actors of migration industries (global city shapers). Embedding migration industries into the global cities perspective, it bridges the gap on urban transformation from the global to the local.