Vision Of City Research Articles

Technological advancements and the vision of a meta smart twin city

Recent digital advancements have led the construction industry to reassess its core principles. Critical issues such as construction site impacts, aesthetics, methodologies, and sustainability are under rigorous scrutiny. The challenges hindering the digital transformation of construction remain unclear. Addressing the technical questions of when, where, why, and how the industry is evolving is crucial, especially as digital operations become more prevalent compared to traditional methods.The “digital twin” concept has emerged as a key approach in shaping the industry's future. Integrating Building Information Modelling (BIM) with the Internet of Things (IoT) has enhanced project engagement, though challenges persist. Traditionally, a digital twin represents the construction process and its interactions. But it misses the transactional and experiential aspects that integrate users into the process. Technologies like blockchain and the metaverse, combined with the digital twin, offer insights into the future of construction projects. Municipalities that adopt digital twins and metaverse representations of their commercial activities throughout construction phases are likely to set future standards for societal specifications.As some specifications such as architectural designs should be grounded in the diverse aspirations and experiences sought by citizens. This paper aims to explore the ways digital twins, smart urban environments, blockchain technology, and other reality capture datasets contribute to the vision of digital and physical construction domains. It examines the interaction and convergence of new spatial constructs, highlight the critical role of data acquisition technologies, and present a comprehensive framework for user experience and the future of Meta Smart Twin Cities.

The Transition toward Smart and Sustainable Cities

Increasing population followed by uncontrolled city expansion neglected many essential criteria, resulting in management challenges, social service inequities, and worsened environmental conditions. However, this development is always ongoing and overshadows daily life. City administrators desire to implement smart cities to address a wide variety of prevalent issues in metropolitan areas. This study aims to take steps toward creating a smart city. Citizens' understanding and support for a project in a city are crucial to its success. The focus of this research is to examine citizens' awareness of smart cities and their importance in helping city managers, urban planners, and architects in improved planning to realize the vision of a smart city. This article comprehensively explains the smart city by compiling and evaluating relevant facts. Also, numerous smart cities throughout the world have been researched and compared to gain insight. Furthermore, being the most important part of a smart city, the level of public knowledge about "smart cities" in Iran through a survey distribution has been analyzed. This study has the potential to create new insight into city development. The findings offer novel perspectives that can be applied to the design and planning of intelligent cities.

Transition Approaches towards Positive Energy Districts: A Systematic Review

The positive energy district (PED) concept is attracting growing research interest; however, the need for practical approaches to facilitate their implementation remains crucial. This study, framed in the COST Action ‘Positive Energy Districts European Network’, offers a comprehensive review of the roadmaps, pathways, and guidelines—namely ‘PED-Transition Approaches’—currently available to support the implementation of district-scale innovative models, thereby advancing energy transitions and enhancing livability at the city level. The review involved a systematic search and web scraping of documents, including scientific and grey literature, as well as EU-funded projects’ reports. The studies were identified according to multiple filters and eligibility criteria, then categorised in a structured repository using a multidimensional matrix, and finally examined following three-levels of detail (i.e., bibliometric study) overview and in-depth analysis. The findings reflect the main characteristics, gaps, and challenges in PED implementation by underlying the growing need for effective step-by-step, user-centric, and context-based transition approaches. In conclusion, the research, building on an extensive literature of multiple inspirational methodologies and their associated use cases, is a strong basis to develop sequential pathways to facilitate PED implementation among key stakeholders in a short–medium-term perspective towards a climate-neutral city vision.

Agricultural City – its Formal Shape in the Light of Historic Theoretical Designs and Emerging Technologies

The progressive degradation of environment and urban sprawl inspired the search for alternative ways of urban development. In this context, the concept of a “regenerative city” has gained significant traction in the field. It encompasses a variety of principles and strategies to ensure that cities can function sustainably and do not just consume resources but also actively regenerate them. In this context, the role of urban farming is particularly relevant. Urban farming, as a multifunctional tool, can contribute to food security, ecological sustainability, community resilience, and social cohesion. By integrating nature into the very fabric of urban design and ensuring that cities can sustainably support their inhabitants, we move closer to a vision of cities that are not just places of residence but thriving ecosystems in their own right. To achieve this goal we need not invent urban theories de novo. Throughout the decades, researchers have proposed cities encompassing agrarian land. The present study aims to present three lesser-known theories of W. Czerny, L. Zimowski and O. Hansen on the backdrop of theories by i.e. L. Migge, F.L. Wright, particularly focusing on the role of agriculture within city framework and their implications for the built structure of cities in the future.

The 15-minute city dilemma? Balancing local accessibility and gentrification in Gothenburg, Sweden

This article explores the relationships between gentrification and the realization of the 15-minute city vision in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden. Using unique Swedish registry micro-data, we track changes in local accessibility to urban social functions from 2011 to 2017 in neighborhoods experiencing different gentrification processes. Findings reveal a positive association between gentrification and improved local accessibility in low-income neighborhoods experiencing classic gentrification. The findings emphasize the need to balance socio-spatial polarization and 15-minute city planning, particularly in neighborhoods undergoing classic gentrification. Future studies should delve in more detail into potential displacement effects when gentrification and 15-minute city goals intersect.

A perspective on smart universities as being downsized smart cities: a technological view of internet of thing and big data

The integration of internet of things (IoT) and big data technologies is transforming the overall perspective of managing various sectors of modern life; with higher educational sectors being no exception of this transformation. This paper explores the idea of a “smart university” as an extension of the overarching “smart city” framework, emphasizing the blending of IoT and big data technologies within higher education institutions. The study investigates the incorporation of IoT technologies throughout university campuses, including intelligent classrooms, smart infrastructure, and device networking. Moreover, the paper delves into the substantial role played by big data analytics in processing and extracting meaningful insights from extensive data generated by IoT devices in a Smart University. The use of predictive analytics, machine learning algorithms, and data-driven decision-making contributes to personalized learning experiences, adaptive campus management, and proactive maintenance of university facilities. Furthermore, this paper not only emphasizes the potential benefits of deploying IoT and big data in a university setting but also addresses challenges related to security, privacy, and ethical considerations. By embracing a comprehensive approach to technology integration, universities can leverage the capabilities of IoT and big data to establish intelligent, interconnected, and flexible educational environments that align with the broader vision of a smart city.

Does a compact city really reduce consumption-based carbon emissions? The case of South Korea

Evidence to prove that compact cities, the core of smart growth strategies, are the vision for carbon-neutral cities has been insufficiently explored because analyses have not distinguished between production- and consumption-based carbon emissions. Empirically analyzing the relationship with compact cities by estimating the final demand and investigating carbon emissions generated from the consumption of goods is essential. This study estimated consumption-based carbon emissions in South Korea using nighttime satellite imagery. Subsequently, using spatial analysis, K-means clustering analysis, and a regression model, we comprehensively confirmed whether a compact city to reduce consumption-based carbon emissions should be pursued. The results showed that (1) based on the clustering analysis, consumption-based carbon emissions were the lowest in clusters with the most desirable development form from a compact city perspective; and (2) the OLS regression analysis showed that the higher the complex land use (diversity), population density (density), congestion frequency intensity (transit access), green area ratio (environment), and agricultural area ratio (environment), the lower the consumption-based carbon emissions. However, the results confirmed that the greater the Vehicle Kilometers Traveled (street accessibility) and the poorer the accessibility of high-speed rail, the higher the consumption-based carbon emissions. Therefore, we recommend pursuing a compact city to reduce consumption-based carbon emissions.

Smart City Planning To Create Good And Clean Government In Ternate City

Abstract: In the journey towards a Smart City, efforts to make it a bridge that connects people's expectations of appropriate, effective, and efficient government services by utilizing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is of the essence. The Smart Governance concept is the main key, where the Ternate City Government as executor of government duties is expected to be able to provide quality services following Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and the principles of law, humanity, justice, democracy, participation, transparency, accountability, and commitment to the welfare of its citizens. To realize the Smart City vision in Ternate, there needs to be a mutual understanding regarding the true Smart City paradigm. "In addition to supporting regulations, good cooperation between various parties who are committed to implementing Smart City as a form of public service to the community is very important.Keywords: Smart City, Planning, Government

Three-Dimensional Vehicle Detection and Pose Estimation in Monocular Images for Smart Infrastructures

Over the last decades, the idea of smart cities has evolved from a visionary concept of the future into a concrete reality. However, the vision of smart cities has not been fully realized within our society, partly due to the challenges encountered in contemporary data collection systems. Despite these obstacles, advancements in deep learning and computer vision have propelled the development of highly accurate detection algorithms capable of obtaining 3D data from image sources. Nevertheless, this approach has predominantly centered on data extraction from a vehicle’s perspective, bypassing the advantages of using infrastructure-mounted cameras for performing 3D pose estimation of vehicles in urban environments. This paper focuses on leveraging 3D pose estimation from this alternative perspective, benefiting from the enhanced field of view that infrastructure-based cameras provide, avoiding occlusions, and obtaining more information from the objects’ sizes, leading to better results and more accurate predictions compared to models trained on a vehicle’s viewpoint. Therefore, this research proposes a new path for exploration, supporting the integration of monocular infrastructure-based data collection systems into smart city development.

Stakeholders’ Participation in the Creative Economic Development of Cirebon City

This study aims to examine the participation level of stakeholders, identify the dominant stakeholders, and investigate the factors inhibiting stakeholders’ participation in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of creative economic development in Cirebon City. “Creative City” is politically and legally stipulated as the city vision in the regional mid-term development plan 2018-2023 of Cirebon City. As the creative economy is centered around the production, exchanges, and consumption of goods and services from human creativity, Cirebon City is, therefore, a significant case study to investigate how the local government implements participatory processes in developing a creative city.Using qualitative methods, data were collected through a semi-guided interview of 190 respondents from five stakeholders: academics, businesses, communities, government institutions, and media organizations. It was followed by a focus group discussion of 12 key respondents selected purposively from the five stakeholders. With primary and secondary data sources, qualitative data was analyzed through the process of data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification.This study concluded that stakeholders' participation in all stages of creative economic development in Cirebon was still minimal. The businesses in culinary subsectors as the most dominant stakeholders in the participation processes. The lack of socialization from the municipal government and the limited collaboration amongst the stakeholders were identified as the inhibiting factors of inclusive participation in creative city development. The government needs to accelerate creative economic development through multisectoral policies, including improvement of business knowledge and skills of the local business actors, goods and services’ quality upgrading and assurance, certification and legal assistance, as well as promotion and market expansion

Digitalization of Tourism and the Role of Generation Z in Parepare City (An Analysis from the Perspective of New Media Cultural Participation Theory)

The Parepare City Government's policy of positioning the city as an industry without smokestacks, as outlined in the city's vision 2018-2023, the development of the tourism sector as highly urgent. Alongside digital media determinism, there is opportunity to develop a smart city that implements a series of tourism developments through digitalization to increase tourist visits, with a tourism digitalization program through the contributions of Generation Z. Based on research findings, Parepare City Government has encouraged policies for the involvement of Generation Z through various policies, such as programs and budgets to encourage the involvement and competence of Parepare's Generation Z residents. They has a significant contribution to tourism development through the use of information and communication technology, including citizen journalism, social media platforms, and cultural events that converge with digital information, as part of the globalization of Parepare's tourism information based on new media. This aligns with theory proposed by Henry Jenkins that the presence of new media will encourage audiences to collectively take roles, including Generation Z. Hence, Generation Z contributes to the activities on social media platforms for disseminating tourism information about Parepare City. The digital space participation of Parepare's Generation Z acts both as followers and prosumers.

Predictive evaluation of city sustainability based on benchmarking method - A case study of 34 cities in northeastern China

Sustainability is a recurring theme in city development, aiming to foster an environmentally friendly, livable, and prosperous future. Sustainable development, as a long-term vision for cities, requires an interdisciplinary method and a systems-orientated perspective on evaluating and solving city problems. The multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method is highly applicable given the excellent multidimensional analytical and model building capabilities. As a widely used decision-making tool, the classical paradigm of MCDM is to make summary measurements of the system based on historical data to facilitate the best conclusions. Nevertheless, from the perspective of long-term sustainability evaluation, the currently available MCDM models are gradually failing to meet the predicting needs highlighted by policy makers in urban planning. Therefore, this paper proposes an innovative predictive evaluation method of city sustainability by integrating benchmarking and stochastic simulation under the framework of MCDM, which enables cities to develop visionary scenarios to accelerate the achievement of sustainability goals. This method was used to predict the future sustainability of 34 cities in northeastern China, which is a good demonstration of its utility and validity in sustainable cities and related fields.

How accessible are cities for visually impaired pedestrians? A case of Greater London

Urban planning and design aim to encourage active mobility by promoting various models that assess a city’s transportability and accessibility. In practice, these models are not attuned to a huge part of the population that have mobility impairments, therefore they uphold a flawed city design and prevent these populations from being an equal part of the inclusive city vision. We suggest an approach to develop new visually impaired mobility accessibility indices of urban space using open-source geospatial data and showcase them across different wards and boroughs in Greater London. Results show the various urban accessibility levels for visually impaired pedestrians, pointing to existing problems this community faces when navigating the city, such as challenging street network connectivity and dangerous walking areas. These indices can be used for more inclusive city planning and design, enhancing urban mobility and walkability equality, and improving this community’s quality of life.

Urban growth and liberal fixation on the land in a sustainable city context in greater Lomé (Togo)

Over the last two decades, greater Lomé has experienced a spatial evolution marked by a disproportionate fixation of Lomé residents on the ground. This liberal occupation of urban land undermines the development of the capital and delays the vision of a sustainable city initiated by the public authorities following the Habitat III conference of the United Nations in Quito in 2017. The objective of this article is to show how largely uncontrolled spatial dynamics delay the sustainable development of greater Lomé. To achieve this, this research used quantitative and qualitative approaches based respectively on questionnaire administration and individual interview techniques. In total, 232 landowners and resource persons were interviewed. Field investigations have shown that liberal fixation on land has led to the occupation of unapproved areas and the privatization of administrative reserves. This creates urban instability marked by conflicts between public authorities and populations. This situation, very detrimental to the sustainable city, demonstrates weakened urban governance.

Addressing Data Challenges to Drive the Transformation of Smart Cities

Cities serve as vital hubs of economic activity and knowledge generation and dissemination. As such, cities bear a significant responsibility to uphold environmental protection measures while promoting the welfare and living comfort of their residents. There are diverse views on the development of smart cities, from integrating Information and Communication Technologies into urban environments for better operational decisions to supporting sustainability, wealth, and comfort of people. However, for all these cases, data is the key ingredient and enabler for the vision and realization of smart cities. This article explores the challenges associated with smart city data. We start with gaining an understanding of the concept of a smart city, how to measure that the city is a smart one, and what architectures and platforms exist to develop one. Afterwards, we research the challenges associated with the data of the cities, including availability, heterogeneity, management, analysis, privacy, and security. Finally, we discuss ethical issues. This article aims to serve as a “one-stop shop” covering data-related issues of smart cities with references for diving deeper into particular topics of interest.

Is a 15-Minute City Within Reach? Measuring Multimodal Accessibility and Carbon Footprint in 12 Major American Cities

Enhanced efforts in the transportation sector should be implemented to mitigate the adverse effects of CO2 emissions resulting from zoning-based planning paradigms. The concept of a 15-minute city, emphasizing proximity-based planning, holds promise in reducing unnecessary travel and progressing towards carbon neutrality. However, a critical research question remains inadequately explored: to what extent is the 15-minute city concept feasible for American cities? This paper presents a comprehensive framework to evaluate the 15-minute city concept using SafeGraph Point of Interest (POI) check-in data across 12 major American cities. Our findings suggest a prevailing reliance on cars among residents due to the spatial distribution of essential activities beyond convenient walking, cycling, and public transit distances. Nevertheless, there exists significant promise for realizing the 15-minute city vision, given that most residents' daily activities can be accommodated within a 15-minute radius by low-emission modes transportation modes. When comparing cities, it appears that achieving a 15-minute walking city is more feasible for metropolises like New York City, San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago, while proving to be challenging for cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix. In examing inter-group comparisons, neighborhoods with higher proportion of White residents and higher median incomes tend to have more accessible POIs, with a substantial percentage of activities concentrated within a 15-minute radius. This demographic also shows a greater propensity to fulfill daily activities through walking, cycling, or public transit trips within a 15-minute travel time, thus presenting a greater potential in CO2 reduction compared to African Americans. This study can offer policymakers insight into how far American cities are away from the 15-minute city concept. It also highlights the potential CO2 emissions reductions that could be achieved through successful implementation.

Gauging Public Acceptance of Conditionally Automated Vehicles in the United States

Public acceptance of conditionally automated vehicles is a crucial step in the realization of smart cities. Prior research in Europe has shown that the factors of hedonic motivation, social influence, and performance expectancy, in decreasing order of importance, influence acceptance. Moreover, a generally positive acceptance of the technology was reported. However, there is a lack of information regarding the public acceptance of conditionally automated vehicles in the United States. In this study, we carried out a web-based experiment where participants were provided information regarding the technology and then completed a questionnaire on their perceptions. The collected data was analyzed using PLS-SEM to examine the factors that may lead to public acceptance of the technology in the United States. Our findings showed that social influence, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, hedonic motivation, and facilitating conditions determine conditionally automated vehicle acceptance. Additionally, certain factors were found to influence the perception of how useful the technology is, the effort required to use it, and the facilitating conditions for its use. By integrating the insights gained from this study, stakeholders can better facilitate the adoption of autonomous vehicle technology, contributing to safer, more efficient, and user-friendly transportation systems in the future that help realize the vision of the smart city.

Analysis of the external attraction of Shanghai urban functions based on the travel characteristics

The external attraction of urban functions refers to the ability of specific urban functional areas to attract foreign populations, which can reflect the importance of urban functions in the regional or even global scope. Existing research tends to discuss urban attraction at the macro level, which is insufficient for understanding the importance of internal city functions. Analyzing the attraction of urban functions from the perspective of travel characteristics can reveal the distribution and preferences of the foreign population, which can help the rational planning of urban functions. In this study, we combine Points of interest (POI) and signaling data to identify Shanghai’s urban functional areas and the external population's distribution patterns. The attraction index is calculated based on cross-city geographic flow to evaluate the external attraction of Shanghai's functions from real fine-level human activities. The results show that both Shanghai’s urban functional area and external population distribution present a “ring-radial” distribution with the city center as the core, high in the Central Business District (CBD), and gradually decreasing outward. The overall external attraction also presents a gradual decrease from the center outward with a similar “ring-radial” distribution. At the same time, the regional subcenter of Shanghai also excels in external attraction. Universities, well-known business districts, industrial districts, and famous tourist spots become the dominant functions with high external attraction. Above all, the economic factor is the most important driver for migration. Our research provides valuable insights into Shanghai’s global city vision and lays a scientific foundation for long-term future urban development and planning.

HumanLight: Incentivizing ridesharing via human-centric deep reinforcement learning in traffic signal control

Single occupancy vehicles are the most attractive transportation alternative for many commuters, leading to increased traffic congestion and air pollution. Advancements in information technologies create opportunities for smart solutions that incentivize ridesharing and mode shift to higher occupancy vehicles (HOVs) to achieve the car lighter vision of cities. In this study, we present HumanLight, a novel decentralized adaptive traffic signal control algorithm designed to optimize people throughput at intersections. Our proposed controller is founded on reinforcement learning with the reward function embedding the transportation-inspired concept of pressure at the person-level. By rewarding HOV commuters with travel time savings for their efforts to merge into a single ride, HumanLight achieves equitable allocation of green times. Apart from adopting FRAP, a state-of-the-art (SOTA) base model, HumanLight introduces the concept of active vehicles, loosely defined as vehicles in proximity to the intersection within the action interval window. The proposed algorithm showcases significant headroom and scalability in different network configurations considering multimodal vehicle splits at various scenarios of HOV adoption. Improvements in person delays and queues range from 15% to over 55% compared to vehicle-level SOTA controllers. We quantify the impact of incorporating active vehicles in the formulation of our RL model for different network structures. HumanLight also enables regulation of the aggressiveness of the HOV prioritization. The impact of parameter setting on the generated phase profile is investigated as a key component of acyclic signal controllers affecting pedestrian waiting times. HumanLight’s scalable, decentralized design can reshape the resolution of traffic management to be more human-centric and empower policies that incentivize ridesharing and public transit systems.

Policies and legislation enabling sustainable technologies in the public transport infrastructure in NEOM

AbstractIn the context of rapidly urbanizing cities, integrating sustainable technologies into public transportation systems is important. This study examines the policies and legislative frameworks of NEOM and articulates their impact on the adoption and expansion of sustainable technologies within the public transport domain. The objective is to determine whether these regulatory mechanisms facilitate or impede NEOM's sustainability ambitions. The main finding is that NEOM's current legislative and policy framework presents notable challenges. The commitment to advancing sustainable technologies is clear, tension exists between the rigidity of traditional legislative approaches and the rapidly evolving nature of technological innovation. Our analysis suggests NEOM has considerable potential to reform its policies and measures. Recalibration would ensure compatibility with sustainable practices and drive the city's vision for a sustainable and technologically advanced public transportation system. The study recommendations highlight the need for flexible, innovation‐centric legal frameworks. A more adaptable legislative approach could inform NEOM to leverage sustainable technologies more effectively, ensuring an environmentally responsible public transportation system that serves its expanding user community. Furthermore, this research offers broader implications for other emerging smart cities, underscoring the essential relationship between policy, technology, and sustainability in shaping future‐ready urban transport systems.