City Users Research Articles

Critical Challenges of Street Users in Inner Cities

Critical Challenges of Street Users in Inner Cities

People-centred design methods in a local decision-making process: masterplan for Lisbon's multimodal mobility hubs

Lisbon's City Council and EMEL (the city's mobility and parking management company) have been working on a concept for Mobility Hubs in Lisbon through a comprehensive participatory process that brings together a broad spectrum of stakeholders. We have adopted a design thinking approach rooted in a thorough user research process aiming at better understanding unmet needs, preferences, and expectations of city users, whilst co-creating alternative value propositions for future mobility hubs. Stakeholder outreach has been pivotal to ensuring active participation of all communities: passengers, former passengers, transport operators, local and regional administration bodies, civil society, among others have been voicing their views and concerns to help transform five bus terminals of Lisbon into inviting places of connectivity. Our goal is to better inform future investment choices.

Moving past the sound-noise dichotomy: How professionals of the built environment approach the sonic dimension

Debates on the sounds of cities have focused on the often-used dichotomy of noise versus sound; yet for the decades of debate, few examples of policy, procedures, or case studies have made motions in acknowledging the diverse roles that sound plays in shaping our experience and understanding of the city: orienting us, creating memories, fostering healthy restoration, etc. To better understand the challenges that professionals of the built environment face in their everyday practice, we interview 22 professionals across six countries to understand how they interact with sound. Building on a substantial corpus of transcriptions using an multi-layered coding process, three approaches of how sound is considered and prioritized in practice emerged: policy, public health, and city user experience. These three approaches are operationalized according to the key concepts, decision criteria, and evaluation methods that frame what motivates each professional to consider sound in the context of individual projects. Finally, these considerations were heavily influenced by contextual factors including individual, locational, and organizational. Classifying the ways in which professionals consider sound in practice into these three approaches may serve as a better starting point for future communication and collaborations between research and practice. Further, it may better accommodate the inclusion of other types of artists and experts into the conversation on urban sound. • Professionals of the built environment (PBEs) face challenges in integrating sound in everyday projects. • Sound is considered using three approaches: policy, public health, and city user experience. • Each approach is context-dependent (individual, location, organization) and can rely on human- or object-centered evaluation • The identified approaches could guide future communication and collaboration between sound experts and urban professionals

URBAN TOURISM STUDIES: A TRANSVERSAL RESEARCH AGENDA

The debate on tourism in cities, both academically and in practice, has for a long time taken place in relative isolation from urban studies. Tourism is mostly addressed as an external agent and economic force which puts pressure on cities rather than as an interdependent part of city systems. The recent debate on city touristification and excessive dependence on the visitor economy, as well as the associated processes of exclusion, and displacement of local city users, serves to highlight how tourism is an integral part of urban developments. A wider urban perspective is needed to understand the processes underlying the tourism phenomena and more interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives are required to analyse the urban (tourism) phenomenon. The current paper seeks to contribute to such a perspective through a discussion of the literature on urban and tourism studies, and related fields such as gentrification, mobilities and critical placemaking. Based on this, initial ideas are provided regarding a more integral perspective to tourism and urban development and the ways in which such a perspective can further the discussion on how to deal with urban tourism in an increasingly complex world.

Sustainable Non-Cooperative User Detection Techniques in 5G Communications for Smart City Users

The 4G network is not sufficient for achieving the high data requirements of smart city users. The 5G network intends to meet these requirements and overcome other application issues, such as fast data transmission, video buffering, and coverage issues, providing excellent mobile data services to smart city users. To allocate a channel or spectrum to a smart city user for error-free transmission with low latency, the accurate information of the spectrum should be detected. In this study, we determined the range of non-cooperative detection techniques, such as matched filter detection with inverse covariance approach (MFDI), cyclostationary feature detection with inverse covariance approach (CFDI), and hybrid filter detection with inverse covariance approach (HFDI); based on the results of these methods, we provided highly accurate spectrum information for smart city users, enabling sustainable development. To evaluate the performance of the proposed detection techniques, the following parameters are used: probability of detection (PD), probability of false alarms (Pfa), probability of miss detection (Pmd), sensing time, and throughput. The simulation results revealed that the HFDI detection method provided sustainable results at low signal-to-noise ratio ranges and improved channel detection and throughput of approximately 17% and 10%, respectively.

Online Car Parking Booking System

The proposed project is a smart parking booking system that provides city user an easy way of reserving a parking space online using web portal. It overcomes the problem of finding a parking space in universities/institute areas that unnecessary consumes time. Hence, this project offers a web application-based reservation system where user can view various parking spaces and select nearby or specific area of their choice to view whether space is available or not. If the booking space is available, then user can book it for specific time slot. The booked space will be marked and will not be available for anyone else for the specified time. This system provides an additional feature of cancelling the bookings. User can cancel their reserved space anytime. User can also view previous parking booking details using the web portal. We are also creating a feature for user to check the cng pumps available. Key Words: Smart parking, Smart city, pollution free, IOT, Child Safety, GPS, GSM, Smart Band, Location.

Dynamic Traveling Route Planning Method for Intelligent Transportation Using Incremental Learning-Based Hybrid Deep Learning Prediction Model with Fine-Tuning

Abstract Predicting the most favorable traveling routes for Vehicles plays an influential role in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Shortest Traveling Routes with high congestion grievously affect the driving comfort level of VANET users in populated cities. As a result, increase in journey time and traveling cost. Predicting the most favorable traveling routes with less congestion is imperative to minimize the driving inconveniences. A major downside of existing traveling route prediction models is to continuously learn the real-time road congestion data with static benchmarking datasets. However, learning the new information with already learned data is a cumbersome task. The main idea of this paper is to utilize incremental learning on the Hybrid Learning-based traffic Congestion and Timing Prediction (HL-CTP) to select realistic, congestion-free, and shortest traveling routes for the vehicles. The proposed HL-CTP model is decomposed into three steps: dataset construction, incremental and hybrid prediction model, and route selection. Firstly, the HL-CTP constructs a novel Traffic and Timing Dataset (TTD) using historical traffic congestion information. The incremental learning method updates the novel real-time data continuously with the TDD during prediction to optimize the performance efficiency of the hybrid prediction model closer to real-time. Secondly, the hybrid prediction model with various deep learning models performs better by taking the route prediction decision based on the best sub-predictor results. Finally, the HL-CTP selects the most favorable vehicle routes selected using traffic congestion, timing, and uncertain environmental information and enhances the comfort level of VANET users. In the simulation, the proposed HL-CTP demonstrates superior performance in terms of Mean Square Error (MSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE).

Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 12 in Cities: Best Practices

Although urban areas do not occupy much of the Earth’s surface, their inhabitants account for more than half of the global population. Moreover, cities consume most of the world’s energy while emitting the bulk of carbon compounds. For that reason, metropolises should seek to implement the concept of sustainable development, as is practically embodied in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although SDG 11, addresses cities directly, all the others contain an “urban” aspect, too. One of the SDGs which is rising in importance due to the global problem of over-consumption and, consequently, over-production of waste is SDG 12 concerning responsible production and consumption. The purpose of this article is to present the actions that cities can take to achieve SDG 12. The study is based on a critical analysis of the literature on the subject, as well as on web research and case studies. Attainment of SDG 12 requires the pursuit of the concept of a circular economy (CE), namely, one where the value of products, materials and resources is maintained in the economy for as long as possible, and the generation of waste is minimised. The review of best practices from Polish and other cities, demonstrates their efforts to work towards a CE through diverse and comprehensive initiatives, beyond their tasks and competencies. Moreover, metropolises encourage their stakeholders: (i) entrepreneurs, to join them in following the CE path by creating conditions that are conducive to implementing responsible production; and (ii) residents and city users, by promoting sustainable consumption.

Optimization of Control Strategy for Orderly Charging of Electric Vehicles in Mountainous Cities

In light of the increasing number of electric vehicles (EV), disorderly charging in mountainous cities has implications for the stability and efficient utilization of the power grid. It is a roadblock to lowering carbon emissions. EV aggregators are a bridge between EV users and the grid, a platform to achieve energy and information interoperability, and a study of the orderly charging of EVs to reach carbon emission targets. As for the objective function, the EV aggregator considers the probability of EV charging access in mountainous cities, the SOC expectation of EV users, the transformer capacity constraint, the charging start time, and other constraints to maximize revenue. Considering the access probability of charging for users in mountainous cities, the optimized Lagrange relaxation method is used to solve the objective function. The disorderly charging, centralized optimized charging, and decentralized optimized charging modes are investigated using simulation calculations. Their load profiles, economic benefits, and computational efficiency are compared in three ways. Decentralized optimal charging using the Lagrange relaxation method is shown to be 50% more effective and to converge 279% faster than centralized optimal charging.

Everyone Inside. Transformation of an Inaccessible Heterotopy. The Case of Buoncammino's Prison.

The specific architectural typology of the prison, congenitally inaccessible to the urban morphological and cultural context in which it sets, as heterotopia carries in itself physical and cognitive barriers. The day after their abandonment, as happened for the former prison of Buoncammino in Cagliari, it's interesting to understand what new relationships should be put in place to make it accessible to all of the city users, in both material and immaterial terms.

Kentsel Mekân Kalitesinin Antalya Cumhuriyet Meydanı Kapsamında Değerlendirilmesi

Urban spaces have an important place in terms of gathering of citizens and communication of city users with each other. The quality of these spaces is determined by the different aesthetic and functional ideas in their designs and affects the lives of the citizens. Much studies has been done on the quality of urban spaces until today. In the studies the parameters have been established for determining the spatial quality. In this study, the quality parameters studies made by Project for Public Space, Jack L. Nasar, Jan Gehl and Sherwin Greene were evaluated and it was aimed to evaluate Antalya Cumhuriyet Square in terms of spatial quality. In the study, firstly, literature review was made based on the concepts of space, urban space, square, quality and space quality, and after the researches, on-site observation and analysis method was used. It was concluded that the city square contains the determined parameters, but it is not used intensively except for certain times. As an urban space, proposals were made to take into account the conditions and opportunities of the day in the formation of spatial qualities of squares and to enrich these spaces in a functional and formal sense with public art products.

MMLOS-based study of central streets: re-planning Beyhaq St., Sabzevar, Iran

Planners have been seeking new urban solutions to increase the presence of citizens once again without any constraints to ensure a safe urban space and provide equal opportunities for using transportation modes. Multi-modal level of service, used as a tool for analyzing complete streets, facilitates the creation of a fair and equal environment for all users and the enhancements of public safety and security against road accidents. The main purpose of this study is to resolve the problems of urban space allocation of central streets to all users in cities of middle-income countries that lie in historical context. The analysis is based on the multi-modal level of service indicators and is influenced by efficient plans and global policy strengths. In this regard, identifying the characteristics affecting the road network system in the high-income country plans is inspiring for this research. In this paper by probing the case study and identifying the most important criteria affecting the comfort of street users, the proposed planning framework is presented in two stages: strategies and alternatives. The alternatives are presented at 3 levels based on the type of intervention, which is weighted by the AHP method. Then, the best and most practical alternative is selected based on the local criteria fitting the conditions of Sabzevar city with the TOPSIS technique. The results indicate that historical contexts, especially in the core of the cities, require conservative approaches; so, as much as possible, without physical destruction, the existing spaces need to distribute among all urban users in the most optimal way for ease of movement. Therefore, in Beyhaq Street, as a historical street in the center of Sabzevar city, by inspiring the methods of global traffic planning, a contextual format of devising has been presented to improve traffic problems.

The 15-minute city concept and new working spaces: a planning perspective from Oslo and Lisbon

ABSTRACT In the last few years, chrono-urbanism has welcomed a novel perspective, namely, that of the 15-minute city concept, which has recently emerged in the present planning debate. During the current pandemic, this has coincided with a drive to highlight the importance of merging more activities in the neighbourhood to improve urban vitality and reduce daily commuting. In addition, increasing digitalization and knowledge-intensive activities have transformed the nature of work itself, thus affecting the choice of the workplace with new working spaces (NWS) emerging for collaborative and flexible work environments. Therefore, within this context, this study discusses recent chrono-urbanism approaches applied to urban planning and the role of NWS. The phenomenon is empirically examined in Oslo and Lisbon through a qualitative analysis of planning documents and a spatial analysis. The results show that most NWS are fairly accessible by public transport to users in both cities; although the NWS neighbourhoods in Lisbon have a greater diversity of functions compared to Oslo. However, in both cities, the distribution of NWS is non-uniform. This may limit residents’ choice to live and work (outside home) in the same neighbourhood. The study contributes to the current planning debate on new urban models for sustainable neighbourhoods.

The end of participatory destination governance as we thought to know it

In response to rising anti-tourism movements, the role of residents in destination governance has experienced a revival in tourism research. Participatory destination governance approaches have been advocated as problem-solvers for increasing conflicts, yet their implementation is still lacking. Besides a considerable amount of positivist research drafting the best participatory governance model, the socially constructed perspective of those who are supposed to participate has been widely neglected until now. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to reveal residents’ views on participating in tourism activities and destination governance processes. In pursuit of this, a mixed qualitative research method of focus groups and photo elicitation has been deployed in Copenhagen and Munich in 2020 following a social constructionist epistemology. The findings confirm that residents are not willing to participate in destination governance per se due to a lack of time, access, awareness, prioritization, knowledge, qualification, and opportunities. At the same time, residents were interested in a socio-cultural exchange with like-minded tourists and are generally proud to share their city. Ultimately, the perspectives of residents on tourism should be considered for the implementation of an inclusive urban destination governance. Via psychological, political, and social empowerment, destination governance should foster residents’ (1) motivation to connect with other city users (including tourists); (2) opportunity to influence local tourism development if they are affected by it; and (3) ability to benefit from local tourism (at least indirectly). Ultimately, by understanding how and to what extent residents’ are actually willing to participate in tourism and its governance enables tourism professionals to proactively realize a more resilient destination development while mitigating potential social conflicts caused by the renaissance of (over)tourism.

Strategy for sustainable urban revitalization in a heritage tourist city with a Sub-humid Temperate climate

The environmental quality of urban public and tourist spaces affect the development of the activities of the large number of users in heritage cities, where the concept of sustainability continues to be one of the main interests for researchers around the world. Nowadays, numerous indices have been developed to determine the liveability of urban spaces; however, there are localities that, due to their topographical characteristics, tourist and social activities require methods to generate revitalisation strategies according to their characteristics. In this study, an exploratory longitudinal method was used in a central street of a world heritage city with a temperate sub-humid climate as a case study, with the objective of favouring, by passive means, thermal habitability conditions in a heritage urban space focused on promoting pedestrian mobility. As a result, an urban revitalisation strategy for the benefit of society and tourists in heritage cities was obtained to strengthen sustainable urban mobility strategies.

Securing Smart City Services in Cyber-Physical Systems Using the Computation Annealed Selection Process

Cyber-physical systems in a smart city environment offer secure computations in addition to robust resources and secure information exchanges. From the security aspect, the selection of legitimate computing resources is considered the most trustworthy measure for preserving user and data privacy. However, the outlier information results in false computations and time-consuming privacy measures for smart city users. This article introduces the Computation Annealed Selection Process (CASP) for combating outlier information in cyber-physical system networks. This process is assimilated with different infrastructure units in the smart city in an adaptable fashion. The adaptive measure administers information and user privacy through mutual time-key-based authentication. Information privacy is endured until the smart city provider provides a valid service interval. W2The service interval is evaluated for its consistency in maintaining the privacy and is validated using decision-tree learning. The decision tree performs interval classification and key assignment recommendations. Based on the decisions, the privacy is either prolonged or withdrawn for the information exchanged between the users and service providers. This process is repeated until the end of the service interval, identifying the outlier information in legitimate intervals. The proposed process improves detection, legitimacy rate, interval time, and interval rate by 7.57%, 10.4%, 13.15%, and 7.59%, respectively.

Future City, Digital Twinning and the Urban Realm: A Systematic Literature Review

Digitalisation and the future city paradigm are becoming a trend in recent research and practices. Literature discusses digitalisation and its applications as the main gear in the transformation to the ideal future city vision. Yet, the concept of digitalisation is articulated in many interpretations and presented in different applications in the built environment. One emerging application is digital twinning. Literature envisions the potential of digital twinning applications in the urban realm and discusses the cognitive city model and its implications on the future of our cities, its urban realm and the built environment in general. With the evolving themes on the ideal future city model, this systematic review tackles the following questions: what are the key motives and drivers of the future city paradigm; what is a city digital twin; and what are their expected applications. Additionally, how literature envisions the definition of the city users and their experience in the urban realm of the city of the future. This review article explores related literature on the themes of future city model, digital urban realm, digital twinning and city users. The main findings are: identifying key gears of the future city model in literature, exploring city digital twin conceptualization and applications and discussing concepts on the definition of city user and user experience in the city of the future.

‘Greening’ the Cities

We are facing an urgent global environmental crisis that requires a reframing of traditional professional and conceptual boundaries within the urban environment. Complex and multidisciplinary issues need complex and multidisciplinary solutions, which result from the collaboration of many different disciplines concerned with the urban environment. A more integrated ecological perspective that recognizes the complexity of urban environments and resituates our ‘artificial’ or human-made world within its natural ecosystem can facilitate this shift towards greater knowledge exchange. C40 Cities case studies provide a framework within which to understand the disciplines and scales encompassed by ecological solutions, while projects at MIT Senseable City Lab and CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati highlight how data is used as a tool in driving ecological solutions. The artificial world of sensors, data and networks creates a bridge between the ‘artificial’ and ‘natural’ elements of our urban environments, allowing us to fully understand the present condition, connect city users and decision makers, and better integrate ecological solutions into the built environment.

The Dominant Effect of Electronic Service Quality Attributes on Affective, Conative, and Action Electronic Customer Loyalty on Shopee E-Commerce Users in East Java

The high value of e-commerce business transactions which reached more than forty four billion US Dollars caused e-commerce companies to compete fiercely. Shopee is an example of a company that has successfully taken advantage of e-commerce business opportunities in Indonesia. Shopee as e-commerce with the most visitors currently has to face competition in its business scope. One way to face competition is to pay attention to the quality of its services (e-servqual). The purpose of this study is to analyze the indicators that have the most influence on the electronic service quality variable in maintaining affective, conative, and action e-customer loyalty on e-commerce users . Shopee in East Java by making modeling using Structural Equation Modeling . The sampling technique was carried out by purposive sampling, which was selected by Shopee users in various cities in East Java. The number of samples that are taken as much as 393 respondents. The attributes of the quality of electronic services in this study include efficiency, fulfillment, privacy, responsiveness, compensation and contact. From the results of the research, it is found that the indicators that give the greatest contribution to the diversity of the quality of electronic services are privacy , responsiveness , and contact . In addition, the relationship between e-servqual variables with affective, conative, and action customer loyalty , among others: e-servqual has a significant direct relationship and has a positive effect on affective E-loyalty, e-servqual has a significant direct and indirect relationship and has a positive effect on conative e-loyalty, e-servqual has a significant direct and indirect relationship and has a positive effect on action e-loyalty, affective e-loyalty has a significant direct and positive effect on conative e-loyalty, and affective e-loyalty has a significant direct relationship and has a positive effect on action e-loyalty.

Factors and Strategies for Environmental Justice in Organized Urban Green Space Development

Increased demand for land for economic and residential purposes has engendered tensions among different land users in Indian cities. Consequently, the development and management of environmentally just and organized green spaces involve major challenges. In this article, using the context of three Indian cities (Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, and Kolkata), the factors that contribute to environmentally unjust development and management of organized green spaces were examined and various strategies that would lead to environmental justice were evaluated. A survey research method was used to collect data, followed by factor analysis and ordinal regression modelling. Findings suggest that factors under five principal components contributed to environmental injustice, including: community features and infrastructure related to organized green space; the economics of development and management of organized green space; linking green space to environment and health; spatial development, land use, and accessibility; and land availability and governance of the supply of green space. Strategies such as community-led, green space development and management; fair and equitable distribution of green spaces; improvement of accessibility; connecting green spaces to benefits of health; and mandatory linkage of built infrastructure with the provision of green spaces would ensure environmental justice.