Contemporary Urban Research Articles

Insights from Smart City Initiatives for Urban Sustainability and Contemporary Urbanism

Urbanization growth poses various challenges, such as congestion, pollution, and resource consumption, prompting city planners and governments to adopt smart systems to manage these issues more efficiently. Despite widespread adoption, there is no consensus on the defining attributes of smart cities, particularly regarding their role in urban sustainability and contemporary urbanism. This paper provides a literature review to understand the implications of smart city initiatives for sustainable urban planning, focusing on practices in Singapore, Helsinki, Barcelona, and Medellin. Based on 71 publications surveyed from Scopus and Web of Science, this paper evaluates smart, sustainable initiatives undertaken in these four cities across six smart domains: mobility, governance, environment, people, living, and economy. This review shows that most studies focus on Barcelona and Singapore, particularly in the domains of smart environment and governance. Despite differing urban contexts, the notion of “smart” is closely tied to using information and communication technologies to drive urban operations. This analysis identifies a lack of assessment studies on the benefits of smart cities in terms of urban sustainability and a lack of holistic approaches to address the complex challenges cities face in achieving sustainable development.

The Superego of the City: Integrating Psychoanalytic Theory with Sustainable Urbanization in the Age of Industry 4.0

This article introduces the concept of the "superego of the city" by drawing on Freudian psychoanalytic theory to explore the ethical and moral dimensions of contemporary urbanization. As cities undergo rapid transformation driven by metropolization, digitalization, and environmental challenges, traditional urban analysis frameworks have become increasingly inadequate. The "superego of the city" provides a theoretical framework for understanding how urban spaces preserve cultural identity, foster social cohesion, and promote environmental sustainability amid these ongoing changes. By applying this concept to smart city initiatives—specifically in the realm of healthcare waste management—this study demonstrates how the integration of Circular Economy (CE) principles with Industry 4.0 technologies can align technological advancements with the ethical imperatives embodied in the city's collective consciousness.

Contesting the Anticipated Infrastructural City: A Grounded Analysis of Silk Road Urbanization in the Multipurpose Port Terminal in Chancay, Peru

A new private port and logistics complex is under construction in the city of Chancay, located north of Lima, Peru, as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) promising to change life in the city while expanding a Sino-centric globalized economy and Peru’s reach within it. Through a series of interviews conducted between 2020 and 2022 and document analysis, we seek to offer a grounded theorization of how the BRI, as an exemplar of infrastructure-led urbanization, interweaves with broader sociospatial and socionatural transformations, affecting the present and future of the places where it materializes. By using the concept of the infrastructural city we show how the combination of port and logistics infrastructures with spatial interventions in periurban space is guiding contemporary urbanization, resulting in the formation of a new, amorphous city that has as its defining characteristic the domination of infrastructure over urban life, eradicating prior functions and marginalizing local grievances to facilitate the creation of a privatized enclave for international trade. Our analysis provides insights into the intricate and multifaceted geographies of emerging Chinese-sponsored infrastructural strategies, the hopes and struggles that contextually shape them, and the potentially distinctive and contested urban features of the anticipated infrastructural cities yet to come.

Contemporary Urban Challenges for The Preservation of Values Associated with Settlements in Andalusian Mountainous Areas: The Case of Castaño Del Robledo in the Sierra De Huelva, Spain

The landscapes linked to settlements such as Castaño del Robledo are one of the main elements of heritage interest in the complex and diverse Sierra de Huelva, a border territory between Spain and Portugal in the northwest of Andalusia. They reflect the physical and functional integration between the houses and the environment, where roads, historical infrastructure networks, walls and small buildings are intertwined with the cultivation areas, the embodiment of a very elaborate peasant culture. The aim of this work is to advance in the ways of approaching the knowledge of the singular values and fragility of these landscapes, with the main contribution of integrating a transversal view in their urban-heritage reading. The study starts with a first phase of analysis and diagnosis of the physical environmental support, the territory and the landscapes, and a second phase of evaluation to identify the challenges they currently face.

How Socio-Economic and Cultural Factors Shape Privacy in Ibadan's Public Housing Estates

This study investigates the socio-economic and cultural characteristics of residents in selected public housing estates in Ibadan, focusing on the privacy regulatory mechanisms they adopt. By employing a mixed-methods approach, the research involved administering questionnaires to 565 household heads and conducting in-depth interviews with eight key informants from neighbourhood associations. The findings indicate a significant majority (92.00%) of respondents have adopted privacy regulating mechanisms, with personal space and territorial behaviour being the most common. ANOVA results reveal a significant relationship between these mechanisms and the residents' socio-economic and cultural characteristics. Qualitative insights from key informants' interviews provided a nuanced understanding of residents' privacy needs, highlighting emotional and behavioural cues, as well as verbal and non-verbal data. The study concludes that privacy regulation in public housing varies across different estates and is influenced by nine socio-economic and cultural factors, offering guidance for sustainable housing design that considers contemporary urbanization's socio-economic impacts. These findings can inform architects and policymakers in creating housing designs that respect privacy and enhance the quality of life for residents.

Mapping sense of place as a measurable urban identity: Using street view images and machine learning to identify building façade materials

Sense of place, as an intangible perception, is widely recognized as an urban identity and of great value in both cross-cultural studies and contemporary urbanism. Building façade material can effectively capture sense of place due to its combination of physical and social attributes. Nevertheless, there are no widely implementable and high-resolution approaches to identify façade materials on a large scale. As a response, this study proposes a method using street view images (SVIs) and a set of deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to identify building façade materials. Specifically, a large cross-cultural training set was built to promote generalizability. Buildings within SVIs were divided into high-resolution rectangular images and classified using a well-trained Residual Network-50 (ResNet-50) model. Sense of place and its spatial patterns were then depicted by measuring façade material and analytical indicators including diversity and continuity. Eight cities worldwide with distinctive urban identities were examined. The findings revealed that compared to Asian cities, New York City, Chicago, and London are similar, while Paris and Tokyo are more distinctive. While challenges persist in comprehensively measuring the sense of place, the analysis of façade materials offers an insightful indicator that can assist in enhancing urban identity for contemporary urbanism. This study not only promotes the fine development of urban science through the empowerment of intelligent algorithms but also introduces a new perspective on exploring unmeasurable qualities based on the objective physical environment.

Un’urbanistica relazionale

The failure of contemporary Urbanism to cope with Climate Collapse has to do with its own approach to reality, which moves between imagination and the materialisation of human landscapes. As an answer to this weakness, two major Urbanism trends are, on the one hand, the exasperation of a hyper-technological and geo-engineering attitude and, on the other, the reframing of the nature and city relation. A paradigm shift that confronts climate emergency on a both planetary and territorial level. The traces of nature-city paradigm shift are at least three, recounted in the essay through some cases and research: the end of production and the emergence of a pluriversal “industrial nature”; the ecological turn and the urgency of “greening” strategies for cities; the failure of the traditional idea of “nature” and the need to reformulate the territorial project. What emerges is the possibility of a Relational Urbanism, in which the focus is mainly on the ways in which human and non-human actors interact, and not only on the ancestral debate on human rights and social control. Far from being a green utopia, the relational dimension of the project imposes itself as a collective intellectual risk and a necessary ethical commitment.

The Application of Art Therapy Methods in Alleviating Negative Emotions Among Contemporary Urban Youth

The Application of Art Therapy Methods in Alleviating Negative Emotions Among Contemporary Urban Youth

History and the present time, material and spiritual, modern and postmodern: socio-philosophical analysis of contemporary urbanism by the Kazan example

History and the present time, material and spiritual, modern and postmodern: socio-philosophical analysis of contemporary urbanism by the Kazan example

INNOVATIVE URBAN DEVELOPMENT: THE CONCEPT OF "SMART CITY" AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION IN THE U.S.

Along with the rapid development of information and communication technologies in the 21st century, implementation of innovative urban development practices and approaches has become a pivotal trend and direction of contemporary urbanization process. Smart cities are considered to be the main practical outcomes of innovative urban development. Meanwhile, the concepts of "smart city" and sustainability are mutually connected and determined: thus, the concept of "smart sustainable city" has emerged to characterize the use of smart and innovative urban technologies for achieving long-term and balanced urban development in socio-economic, institutional, cultural, and environmental aspects. Innovative urban development gets a particular significance for the U.S., taking into account the great share of country's urban population (above 80%), distribution of large and densely-settled urbanized areas across the country, as well as the uniqueness of the factor of urbanization in American lifestyle, economy, and social relations. The theoretical section of this paper is devoted to the study of aforementioned theoretical ideas and peculiarities of innovative urban development smart sustainable cities. It is followed by a practical section, where relevant cases of 5 American smart cities (New York City, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin and Chicago) were studied, compared and summarized.

Study on the spatial relationship between road network and the diversity of urban public facilities: the case of the central area of Changsha City

In the context of contemporary urbanization, the significance of diversifying urban public facilities has attracted significant attention. This study examines the relationship between road network and the diversity of urban public facilities in Changsha City. These factors are measured through the Shannon-Weiner Index and Space Syntax method. To provide greater specificity, the study employs Random Forest and Geographically Weighted Regression models to analyze the relationship between road networks and the diversity of urban public facilities. The results identify a nonlinear relationship between these variables. In addition, high accessibility exhibits a stronger association with diversity than accessibility alone, and this correlation is reflected in varying degrees of inconsistency across different study areas. Finally, the cartographic depiction of diversity clusters is overlaid on the road network, demonstrating a significant relationship between the configuration of the road network and diversity patterns. In conclusion, this research emphasizes the robust correlation between the roadway network and the diversity of urban public facilities. It prompts local governments to focus beyond mere equality, with a greater commitment to enhancing the quality of life for residents through diversity.

Comparative Assessment of Asartepe/Konya Hellenistic Period Settlement and Contemporary Urban Fabric

The village of Yeniceköy (Amblada), located in the Seydişehir/Konya provience, has a history dating back approximatelyten tousand years. It is estimated that the nearby city of Ververit has a history older than Çatalhöyük. The remains ofthe city wall, found to the east of Asartepe, are from the Hellenistic Period and indicate the presence of a large templein that era. Additionally, the wide plain to the west of Asartepe, referred to as the marketplace by the villagers, isbelieved to have been the city's agora during the Hellenistic period. Interaction between the ancient settlement andthe current one is observed, with many building materials from the ancient period being used in current buildings.Many of these materials contain decorative elements and embellishments from the Hellenistic period. Historicalresearch has been conducted on this region, which holds significant cultural depth, comparing the settlement fromancient times to the present day. Evaluations have been made considering the relationship between a Hellenisticperiod city and a modern city, with a focus on urban conservation.

Integration of RS and GIS in assessing flood risk: A Case Study on Istanbul - Esenyurt

Floods, exacerbated by escalating urbanization, pose significant threats to life and property globally. Over the past decade, the Esenyurt district in Istanbul has witnessed a series of floods, highlighting existing flood risks. Rapid population growth in this area and dense urbanization caused by intensive construction increase flood risks. Given these factors, the study focuses on examining the historical impact of urbanization on flood risks, considering spatial and temporal changes. Landsat-8 satellite data, specifically examining NDVI, NDBI, and BU, was employed to detect building imprints and reveal their historical backgrounds for temporal risk calculations. The analysis showed a sudden increase in urbanization rates in 2016, 2017, and 2021. In the flood risk calculations, 2014 data for a return period of 100 years were used and flood inundation depth, economic damages, affected population and depth-damage function were taken into consideration. The results indicate that from 2014 to 2022, increasing urbanization led to a 32.9% increase in the population affected by floods, a 22.3% rise in potential economic damage, and a 13.6% increase in total flood risk. The relationship between flood risks, contemporary urbanization, and its economic dimensions has been evaluated to reduce risks and achieve sustainable cities.

Housing Policy, Urbanization, and the Production of Homelessness in Greenland

Visible homelessness is on the rise in Nuuk, Greenland. Since the early 2000s, the number of people staying at the municipal shelter, accessing support programs, and registering as homeless in the community has, by a qualitative estimate grown. Attention has also been given to the growing number of Greenlanders living homeless in Danish cities. However, the literature on Greenlandic homelessness remains sparse, and very little literature conceptualizes homelessness in Greenland within its specific geographical, cultural, or social context. To better understand the emergence of visible homelessness, this article explores the social dimensions of homelessness and asks how homelessness can be understood within the dynamics of urbanization in Greenland. Drawing on four years of participant observation in Nuuk with homelessness outreach organizations, and 20 in-depth interviews with both service providers and men and women experiencing homelessness, and four lived experience focus groups, we find that the emergence of homelessness in Greenland is part and parcel of a trajectory of welfare colonialism, resettlement, and contemporary urbanization. We highlight four specific policy issues: 1) an existing housing stock in Nuuk inappropriate for diverse needs; 2) urbanization in the absence of a national housing or homelessness strategy; 3) a lack of integrated supports and reliance on the non-profit sector; 4) and an increasingly punitive approach to managing the limited housing supply. Stepping back, we argue that the emergence of visible northern homelessness is an important lens through which to understand the dynamics of northern urbanization, social marginalization and exclusion, and the continuation of colonial relations in the era of self-governance.

The Absurdity of the Ordinary: The Fragile Affinity Between Imagination and Materiality in the Finnish Urban Periphery

This anthropological study focuses on spatially ordered dimensions of sociocultural life in Kontula, a suburban housing estate located at the urban margins of Helsinki, Finland. With a notorious reputation since its construction in the 1960s, it has come to represent the numerous ills of contemporary urbanity, from poverty and substance abuse to failed immigration policies. Its urban transformation is explored as the entanglement of imagination and materiality, a make-believe space that privileges neither the social constructionist nor the purely materialist perspective. I study the everyday life of its inhabitants as recurring and routinized episodes, occasionally interrupted by events that disturb its embodied flow and force inhabitants to reflect upon their spatially situated practices. I argue that the everyday encounters in rapidly transforming Kontula are simultaneously experienced as absurd and ordinary, and constitute the ordering principles of its affective geography.

Environmental Change in Coastal Region of West Bengal: A District Level Study

The 21st century experiences a rapid pace of urbanization in the world and especially in the developing countries like- India. More than half of the world's population lives in cities and towns that symbolize the unprecedented growth of urbanization. This very urbanization is coupled with social, economic, spatial and environmental impacts and challenges. Though higher rate of urbanization seems to be positive sign for economic development and overall prosperity of the regions. Contemporary urbanization in developing regions means inadequate basic infrastructural amenities, substandard housing, overcrowding, depletion of green spaces, inadequate transport facilities, and non-compliance with building bye-laws and planning regulations. This leads to multiple and serious environmental problems in the form of pollution, deforestation, wet land destruction, erosion and flooding, urban sprawl, slums and squatter settlements, and aesthetic degradation which all have adverse impacts on human's well-being. Similar kinds of impacts are visible not only in the interior parts of the country but also in the coastal zones where urban places are facing multiple challenges and ecological crisis as well. The present study focuses on the development and environment in the coastal region (including districts East Medinipur and South 24-Parganas) of West Bengal, a state with 31.87 percent level of urbanization as per Census of India 2011. Since this study is in preliminary phase, there has been made an attempt to provide an overview on the quality of life and environmental conditions in the coastal region. Present study is based on secondary source of data and information, and tries to address the following objectives: a) to examine the urbanization- environment relationships and its consequences in the coastal areas, and b) to identify and explore the emerging issue areas and concerns in the coastal region of the state.

Contemporary Urban Agriculture in European and Chinese Regions: A Social-Cultural Perspective

With its early start in urbanization, Europe has accumulated a wealth of practical experience in urban agriculture (UA), exploring various development models. This paper compares and analyzes the characteristic patterns of UA in Europe and China through theoretical research, academic frontier exploration, and case analysis. In order to investigate and analyze theoretical developments and the current state of academic frontiers in a systematic, accessible, and comprehensive approach, the methodology of bibliometric analysis has been utilized. A bibliometric method is applied to analyze relevant data from the Web of Science (WoS) core collection database and 2230 CNKI publications. The case study section conducts separate field research on nine representative European practices of urban food gardening and urban farming. Additionally, the study scrutinizes UA research development and its implementation in Hangzhou, China. Based on the findings of this study, the authors recommend that European approaches to the development of UA in China’s future UA practice be taken into account, in particular their methods and strategies for realizing social and cultural benefits. It is imperative to integrate UA projects into urban green space system planning and to rationalize their construction types. Simultaneously, Chinese scholars are encouraged to explore the socio-cultural functions of UA, with a particular focus on urban agricultural heritage conservation.

فاس ومكناس: الأهمية التاريخية والازدهار الاجتماعي الاقتصادي في الديناميات الحضرية

This study examines the historical significance and urban development of Fez and Meknes, two cities with roots tracing back to the Idrisi dynasty and the reign of Moulay Ismail of Morocco. Historically, both cities have experienced significant economic, scientific, and cultural prosperity, which is still evident through their notable urban landmarks. This historical background has been instrumental in shaping the demographic and economic dynamics of Fez and Meknes, enabling them to exert influence beyond their boundaries into the surrounding southern and southeastern regions. The findings indicate that this expansion has resulted in urban growth that exceeds traditional city limits, leading to the development of neighboring communes. As a result, urban planners and developers are increasingly focusing on these suburban areas, recognizing their potential for accommodating new projects due to the availability of extensive land and space. This research highlights the interplay between historical context and contemporary urbanization in shaping the future of these cities.

The Role of Data Fusion in Contemporary Urban Image Design and Communication in the Context of Big Data

Abstract The urbanization process is accelerating, the competition between cities is getting more and more intense, and the problem of urban image management is getting more and more attention from urban image researchers and city managers. Taking Nanchang City as the case study, this paper selects the city government, economy, tourism, and people image, as well as three data platforms: the official website, news positioning, and tourists’ diary, and crawls the comments of the four types of city image elements on the platforms, and carries out the data fusion and pre-processing to get the comment dataset. Subsequently, the TF-IDF algorithm is used to extract high-frequency words from the city image, and it is combined with the SnowNLP model and LDA theme analysis model to analyze and supplement the overall image of Nanchang City. Finally, after studying the mechanism of city image under data (media) fusion, the communication effect of Nanchang’s image is explored in terms of communication heat, recognition, and participation. Government image and tourism image aspects of the words appear most often, and the highest and lowest percentage of positive emotions are the city’s economic image and government image, respectively, which should integrate the existing resources, improve the level of service, and further create the city’s characteristics, to expand the city’s visibility and communication effect.

URBANO CONTEMPORÂNEO E ESTRUTURA CENTRO-PERIFERIA

The contemporary urban phenomenon has challenged studies that seek to establish generalizations about spatial structuring, leading to continual questioning of center-periphery models. The proliferation of shopping malls towards the "peripheries" represents an important indicator capable of promoting this debate. Thus, the article analyzes the spatial structuring logic of Brazil's shopping center sector, particularly its expansion into the Brazilian Amazon. To that end, it raises two questions: Is the Brazilian center-periphery model still able to explain shopping centers' spatia distribution, considering the regions and hierarchy of the cities in which they are located? Based on the hierarchy and intra-urban space of its cities, how does this spatial distribution take place in the Brazilian Amazon? The sector's data is mapped based on information from the Brazilian Association of Malls and the Regic/IBGE/2018 study. On the intra-urban scale, it establishes three locational types (central, pulverized, fragmented) based on the uses within a 1 km radius of the malls. The study concludes that the center-periphery model has not lost its explanatory validity. However, it must be improved to capture the complexity of contemporary spatial structuring, dialoguing on multiple scales, and different socio-spatial formations. Keywords: Contemporary Urban, Center, Periphery, Shopping Mall, Brazilian Amazon.