Country Urban Population Research Articles

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.

How do industrialization and agricultural land use affect urban population in Turkey? Policy implications in the context of SDGs

Urban population growth in Turkey has been increasing rapidly since the middle of the 20th century. The escalating population, particularly in urban regions, has emerged as a critical challenge in achieving sustainable urban management. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2, 9, and 11 present various avenues for governments to adress this predicament. This study employs the framework of multiple stream model, offering a valuable lens through which policies can identify opportune moments for policy implementation. The study examines the impact of industrialization and agricultural land use on the country's urban population while identifying potential opportunities for enhancing sustainable urban management in alignment with the SDGs. Subsequently, it critically examines the asymmetrical effects of these two significant factors on the urban population, formulating policy recommendations based on the empirical findings. The study concludes by stressing the significance of prioritizing sustainable, long-term agricultural and industrialization policies outlined in national policy documents rather than relying on short-term and temporary solutions.

Urban Resiliency towards Climate Change

India will experience massive urbanization in the coming decades, with the country's urban population expected to double by 2050. Climate change is a major threat to urban systems all over the world. Its consequences are expected to worsen over the next few decades. The consequences of climate changes are more in urban areas than rural due to rapid urbanization, health issue, decreasing water level and industrialization etc. Climate change consequences such as increased rainfall intensity, storm surges, temperature fluctuation and flooding are expected to have a global impact on urban health, sustainability, coastal areas, urban infrastructure, migrants, ecosystems and urban water use. On the other hand, humanity able to take collective action to mitigate the severity of these impacts. Mitigation and adaptation strategies, such as climate resilient agriculture, rooftop farming, extreme weather mitigation, resilient water use and so on, will almost certainly be required to deal with these effects. It is encouraging to note that urban planning has the potential to play a key role in developing and implementing adaptive responses in urban systems. The benefit of urban planning is sustainable and required some urban planning regimes around the world which include, plan-making, stakeholder engagement, development management and design standards to make a better and greener urban ecosystem.

Chief Minister’s Jan Awas Yojna-2015 – An Emerging Prospect Of Affordable Housing In Rajasthan

After independence, the country's urban population has exploded. The migration of people from rural and semi-urban areas to urban areas is a common occurrence. They face a significant shelter challenge in urban areas, which is out of reach due to scarce resources, expensive property, construction materials, and labour, as well as a general lack of infrastructure in urban areas. As a result, policymakers must take a constructive position in encouraging the development of EWS and LIG housing stock in urban areas. According to TG-12 reports, the poorer parts of India accounted for 96 percent of the housing shortage.3 As a result policy proposals were needed to close the gap between urban housing demand and supply. The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna-2015 (Urban) and the Chief Minister's Jan Awas Yojna-2015 (Rajasthan) will serve as a watershed moment in this regard. Central and state governments strategically manage the cost of affordable housing units for the EWS and LIG segments by subsidizing affordable houses and extending various incentives, exemptions, rebates, relaxations, interest subsidy, and facilities to various stakeholders with the aim of maximising the use of valuable urban lands to provide EWS and LIG houses at affordable rates to targeted groups. This research paper aims to evaluate the integration of both schemes in order to meet affordable housing goals in the state of Rajasthan, as well as summarise the perspectives of various stakeholders on both schemes.

Air quality management in Chile: Effectiveness of PM2.5 regulations

In Chile, at least 60% of the country's urban population live in cities at which ambient PM2.5 exceeds the annual ambient air quality standard (AAQS) of 20 μg/m3. We assess the effectiveness of ambient PM2.5 regulations in Chile by estimating meteorologically adjusted trends in ambient PM2.5. This analysis includes 9 geographical regions, 33 monitoring sites in 23 cities, comprising 61% of Chile's urban population. We find a significant downward trend in ambient PM2.5 in most cities that have an Air Quality Management Plan (AQMP, PDA in Spanish); these include the case of Santiago and southern cities at which ambient PM2.5 is dominated by residential wood burning (RWB). However, in cities without AQMP our results are mixed: in some cities there is no significant trend at all and in others there is a downward, significant trend, ascribed to nationwide regulations upon mobile sources. Overall, we estimate a significant downward trend in ambient PM2.5 for 56% of Chile's urban population. Hence, ongoing regulations have been efficient in reducing ambient PM2.5. The significant downward trends are higher in magnitude (up to 4.4 μg/m3 per year) for smaller, more polluted cities than for cleaner or larger urban zones (down to 0.3 μg/m3 per year).

E-commerce use in urbanising China: the role of normative social influence

ABSTRACTIn the past 30 years, China has undergone unprecedented urbanisation: the country's urban population surpassed that of rural areas for the first time in 2011. Despite its soaring popularity, the urban–rural divide in e-commerce use has been persistent and striking. How to promote e-commerce use among the new urbanites to ensure its sustainable development and reduce the digital divide in China's rapid urbanisation context? Drawing on the diffusion of innovations theory and the Theory of Planned Behaviour, using data from a survey of a representative sample of China's urban population (N = 1288), this study investigates the various effects of normative social influence on online shopping application and intention among urban residents, rural-to-urban migrants, and in-situ urbanised rural residents. Normative social influence is found to be significantly associated with actual online shopping application, particularly among in-situ urbanised rural residents. The research suggests that the new urbanities in China can benefit from e-commerce use if strategies focusing on expanding and strengthening normative social influence are promoted. Policies that intend to address the urban–rural digital divide in information and communication technology adoption should also consider approaching the issue by utilising the normative social influence.

Socio-economic Impact on Schooling of Urban Slum Children: AStudy of Rayer Bazaar Slum in Dhaka City

The number of slum has been increasing gradually in the urban areas of Bangladesh since its independence. Bangladesh has the highest number of slum dwellers – 60% of the urban population – in the South Asian region. Very recent study shows that slum dwellers constitute 6.33% of the country's urban population. Slum dwellers are probably under-served by both government and non-government organisations (NGOs), whose focus has traditionally been on rural development. Slum dwellers are to struggle every moment to survive with their families. This paper mainly concentrates on slum children. This paper seeks to understand the socio-economic impact on schooling of urban slum children. Education and income of the parents of the slum children are the main determinants of their schooling. There is a relationship between education and awareness, income and ability of sending the children to school. The illiterate people are not conscious about schooling of their children, but the literate are conscious though many of them are not able to send their children to school. Cost of schooling determines whether the slum children will go to private school, NGO-driven school or government primary school (GPS). GPS and NGO-driven school require little expenses, whereas private school requires more expenses but the education quality is better in private school. This study shows that awareness of the parents about schooling of their children increases with the increase of education level. The number of dropout and non-school going children is higher where the income level of the parents is low, and this number gradually decreases with the increase of earnings. However, there is a hope for the better education of urban slum children. The government has different plans for providing quality education to the children. More pro-poor policies can be undertaken for addressing the core problems of urban slum dwellers.

Efficiency in Brazil's water and sanitation sector and its relationship with regional provision, property and the independence of operators

The purpose of this paper is to assess the comparative efficiency of Brazil's water and sanitation sector. We run a Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) model for a panel of 127 providers covering more than 70 percent of the country's urban population in the period 2003–2010. We use a database built on the National System of Sanitation Statistics (SNIS). The model is fitting and shows a modest efficiency average. The study has policy implications in the discussion of state-level run v. municipal-level run, government-owned v. private-provision, and corporatized providers v. dependent ones. The optimal industrial organization of the sector is discussed from the efficiency perspective. We find that regional and micro-regional firms' have lower costs than municipal providers. Administrative independence seems not relevant when explaining the cost structure, but ownership is. The joint provision of water and sanitation results in higher fixed costs compared to water-only operators. We find that there are not regional differences in cost structures. However, there are slight variations in the efficiency levels and in their dispersion in each region. Finally, inefficiency decreased at a rate of 4.9 percent per year during the time frame under study.

CHINA'S URBANISATION UNDER COMMUNIST RULE, 1949–1982

China has had a long and varied urban history dating back more than 2000 years. Throughout the imperial period (221 BC‐1911 AD), the Chinese dynasties established administrative centres throughout their empire and domestic trade flourished, especially in China's major river basins. As a result, cities of different sizes were exceptionally evenly distributed across the country and most of its citizens were influenced by some kind of urban centre. In fact, even before the mid‐nineteenth century, China had the largest number of city dwellers in the world. But China's bureaucratically‐controlled and evenly‐distributed urban configuration began to change after Britain's conquest of China in the Opium War of 1842 (Whyte and Parish, 1984). Once China's treaty ports like Shanghai, Nanking, Tientsin, and Wuhan were opened to foreign trade by the British, they started to grow disproportionately as thousands of people migrated to these cities, concentrating the country's urban population in the central and coastal areas. Soon, problems like unemployment, crime, prostitution, and drug addiction reached epidemic proportions in China's rapidly expanding cities. Consequently, when the Communists took control of China's government in 1949, they were determined to decentralise the country's urban population, to restrict urban growth, and to purge big cities of the social pathologies which had plagued them since initial contact with the West one hundred years earlier. It is, therefore, interesting to analyse each of the three major periods of China's urbanisation under Communist rule up to 1982, the year of the most recent national population census — that is, 1949 to 1960, 1961 to 1976, and 1977 to 1982 — and to discuss the most salient demographic developments during each of these periods.

The Present and Future of Large Cities

The problems associated with large cities in the USSR are growing increasingly urgent due to the increase in their number and in the size of their populations. To date, the country has reached quite a high level of urbanization. During the years of Soviet power, 1,266 cities have been created, and the share of urban dwellers in the nation's total population has risen from 18% in 1917 to 65% in 1984. Furthermore, megalopolises [krupneishie goroda] and large cities are growing at a more rapid rate. On January 1, 1985, there were 51 cities with a population in excess of half a million persons; 22 of them had a population over a million. More than one-fourth of the nation's urban population lives in megalopolises (cities with a population over 500,000 persons). Cities with a population under 100,000 persons are the only group of urban settlements whose absolute population is more or less stable, but their share in the country's urban population is declining.