Experience Of City Research Articles

The Mental Health and Well-Being of Master’s and Doctoral Psychology Students at an Urban Canadian University

Aim/Purpose: Although the high rates of stress and psychological distress in graduate students has been well-documented, Canadian samples are underrepresented in the extant literature. The present study explores prevalence rates of burnout and psychological distress in a sample of psychology master’s and doctoral students at a university in a large urban Canadian city, as well as factors relating to their well-being, social support and stress. Background: There are economic and productivity setbacks stemming from high stress and mental health challenges. Burnout and psychological distress of graduate students are associated with hindered academic progress, mental and physical health challenges, and reduced productivity. Further, emotionally exhausted doctoral students are at heightened risk for non-completion of their degrees. Methodology: Sixty-two psychology graduate students completed an online survey that assessed burnout, psychological distress (anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms), perceived social support, collegiate sense of community, financial strain, and rank-ordered nine domains of graduate school stressors. Contribution: The present paper contributes to the body of knowledge that graduate students residing in an urban Canadian city experience high rates of burnout and psychological distress. High levels of social support outside the academe were not protective factors in mitigating burnout. Findings: Participants reported high levels of perceived social support and sense of community. However, over half (60%) of respondents met criteria for burnout, and one in three students met criteria for problematic levels of stress, anxiety, and/or depression. In a rank ordering question, “thesis, dissertation or other research”, “classwork” and “finances” ranked in the top three most stressful aspects of graduate school for respondents. Recommendations for Practitioners: Graduate students experience unique stressors related to their mental health and well-being that differ from undergraduate students and young working professionals. Mental health practitioners may be better equipped to support graduate students with knowledge of these specific factors impacting mental health and well-being. Recommendation for Researchers: Based on these findings, four areas of recommendations for psychology graduate institutions and training programs are discussed. These recommendations highlight the need for change across systemic levels and call for integrative efforts to improve wellbeing for psychology graduate students. Impact on Society: Enhancement of doctoral student well-being could contribute to long-term benefits in academia and in higher education. Future Research: The study took place before the emergence of COVID-19, which has undoubtably impacted graduate students globally. Research on student experiences during this unprecedented time is needed, as are additional supports (e.g., virtual programming to reduce social isolation; contingency plans for data collection).

Interests-Based Local Experience Tourism: A New Tourism Product Design in China

Travel pattern is changing to seek authenticity, and the emerging of sharing economy provides a significant opportunity for meeting the demand for an authentic tourism experience. Therefore a dire to new tourism product development has increasingly become more pressing. To develop a new authentic tourism product, this study aims to explore the significant characteristics of authentic travel activities to meet the demand of tourists. The qualitative method was employed to interview 30 interviewees from China to investigate what perceive authentic tourism activities do they think, based on their memorable, authentic travel and ideal travel. The result showed the product should be an integration of authenticity, local community and sharing economy. This study is useful for the DMO to how to create city experiences that benefit both residents and visitors.

Ser y estar en lo urbano. Un acercamiento espacio-temporal al tatuaje

El siguiente artículo propone una mirada espacio-temporal del tatuaje que permite reconocer en él una forma de urbanidad: hábitos cotidianos, formas de pensar e interactuar. La propuesta consiste en comprender esta urbanidad en espacios cambiantes y globalizados por medio del tatuaje y su carácter móvil, entendiendo que el tatuaje es un vínculo para ser y estar en el espacio urbano. Con base en una metodología etnográfica-artística, que enfatiza en las interacciones, tránsitos y contextos de los sujetos, proponemos tres temporalidades del tatuaje: el rito (el momento del tatuaje y su significación), el ritmo (la cotidianidad del cuerpo tatuado) y el ciclo de la vida (el tiempo largo de la permanencia de la tinta en la piel). A su vez, exploramos las espacialidades del cuerpo tatuado y su tránsito en la ciudad. Producto de este análisis concluimos que revelar la movilidad de los cuerpos y sus marcas, posibilita ampliar la mirada de lo urbano hacia una diversidad de percepciones de los entornos, e integrar lo somático y corpóreo a la experiencia social de la ciudad.

ADVERTISING IN THE MODERN URBAN SPACE: A SOCIO-PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS

The article presents a socio-philosophical analysis of the functioning of advertising in the urban socio-cultural space in the following aspects: socio-cultural: advertising as an agent of influence on the spiritual culture of the individual and society, as a spatial dominant of modern urban architectural environment; anthropological: advertising as a tool for experiencing the city; social: advertising as an agent of the formation of consumer attitudes of city residents and a tool of communication, especially in terms of the establishment of «tablet consciousness». It is revealed how the visualization of advertising images, the saturation of the urban information space with audio messages of advertising content form the culture of the individual primarily due to the repetitive nature of their translation. Amplification information flows, increasing the share of advertising messages, the actual totalization of advertising in the urban socio-cultural space encourage the use of various control and restrictive means to prevent the dominance of advertising in it. The opposite reaction is to the «invasion» through different cultural strata, in particular through street art.A special way of human existence is the formation of identity (urban, rural) through his experience of local connection with the settlement where he lives or lived, and thus the expression of feelings of belonging to the responsibility for the common destiny. Appeal to the markers of the uniqueness of the city, the creation of stereotypical images, the use of official symbols, logos, attributes, legendary images in advertising affect the emotional component of the formation of urban identity. The city's experience through advertising is, first, through social advertising, which proclaims the meanings and values of both national and local identities, ie the values of «local patriotism» and which proclaims the meanings and values of coexistence (solidarity, subsidiarity, ecological and public security and etc.), and secondly, commercial, which uses as a tool the humanitarian, social, communal and economic problems of the city.

Formation of City Brand in the Implementation of the Concept of Integrated Development

Modern realities and requirements for sustainable development of territories need ensuring diversity and a certain identification of each city. The relevance of this process is enhanced in terms of implementing the concept of integrated urban development, so the purpose of the article is defined as a spare impact on the formation of the personal brand of the city in the process of successful implementation of integrated development planning. The development and implementation of the concept of integrated development in the cities of Ukraine significantly contributes to the formation of city branding, puts the task of developing and implementing the city brand in the foreground, and provides an opportunity to borrow successful branding experience of European cities. The result of such work is the formulation of a common vision of what the city wants to be, what and how it should achieve, the definition of strategic, operational goals and objectives, among which you can clearly trace the main directions of the city's branding. The foundations of the city's branding are laid in the most important areas of its development, as well as in the visions of the city, which create an opportunity to develop and apply your own brand.

Undefined lands: A review of their role as an underexplored resource of landscape

Landscape areas have spatial discontinuities, such as vacant land and leftover spaces. Undefined lands present a compelling area for landscape research, aesthetical experience, and development of cities which discuss irregular and unexpected aspects in landscape settings. Having lacked a formal definition of undefined land, this study aims at proposing keywords of undefined lands, a comprehensive review of knowledge, and definition. In order to promote new aspects of such spaces in the future research, the study conducts a systematic analysis of 65 peer-reviewed papers for their temporal trends, locations, methods, key authors, and commonly studied aspects. Results show the production of vacancy and the temporary use of undefined lands as an opportunity, and a flexible method of regeneration. An increase in publications over the past 30 years demonstrates that leftover space is an evolving subject. Although socio-ecological aspects are the most effective, serious gaps are mentioned in the literature considering aesthetical and ecological qualities in leftover spaces formed by visual, sensorial (hearing, touch, smell, taste), and cognitive perception. These gaps in the literature suggest that it is important to understand the potential effects of repurposing citizen's ideas about interventions in which to use leftover spaces. Having identified the knowledge gaps, undefined lands are suggested as a significant sub-discipline in landscape research.

Undefined lands: A review of their role as an underexplored resource of landscape

Landscape areas have spatial discontinuities, such as vacant land and leftover spaces. Undefined lands present a compelling area for landscape research, aesthetical experience, and development of cities which discuss irregular and unexpected aspects in landscape settings. Having lacked a formal definition of undefined land, this study aims at proposing keywords of undefined lands, a comprehensive review of knowledge, and definition. In order to promote new aspects of such spaces in the future research, the study conducts a systematic analysis of 65 peer-reviewed papers for their temporal trends, locations, methods, key authors, and commonly studied aspects. Results show the production of vacancy and the temporary use of undefined lands as an opportunity, and a flexible method of regeneration. An increase in publications over the past 30 years demonstrates that leftover space is an evolving subject. Although socio-ecological aspects are the most effective, serious gaps are mentioned in the literature considering aesthetical and ecological qualities in leftover spaces formed by visual, sensorial (hearing, touch, smell, taste), and cognitive perception. These gaps in the literature suggest that it is important to understand the potential effects of repurposing citizen's ideas about interventions in which to use leftover spaces. Having identified the knowledge gaps, undefined lands are suggested as a significant sub-discipline in landscape research.

УПРАВЛІННЯ ПРОЦЕСАМИ СТВОРЕННЯ ПУБЛІЧНИХ ПРОСТОРІВ: ДОСЯГНЕННЯ СТАЛОГО МІСЬКОГО РОЗВИТКУ ШЛЯХОМ ПОДОЛАННЯ СОЦІАЛЬНОГО ВИКЛЮЧЕННЯ

The purpose of the article is to systematize the experience of European cities in creating public spaces capable of overcoming social exclusion and ensuring sustainable urban development. The scientific novelty is to substantiate the conceptual approach to the management of the process of creating public spaces in cities in the context of achieving sustainable urban development by overcoming social exclusion. The results of the research show that the creation of public spaces requires attention to the factors influencing the possibilities of overcoming social exclusion (economic, social, institutional). The analysis of the experience of five European cities (Varna, Bulgaria; Viterbo, Italy; Getxo, Spain; Copenhagen, Denmark; Malmo, Sweden) allowed highlighting the features and current trends in the creation of public space in cities. The main provisions of the approach to the management of public spaces in cities by identifying and systematizing: 1) the functions of public spaces: communication, recreational, political, territorial identification, integrating and aesthetic; 2) features of public spaces: openness and accessibility (convenience and ability to use the space for all regardless of age, race, health, affluence, etc.), safety and comfort (physical and psychological comfort, a sense of security in a comfortable and attractive space to use), interaction (the ability to establish contacts and cooperation in heterogeneous groups of users of the space); 3) forms (transformation of existing built-up areas, development of new territories) and tools (organizational and managerial, technical and technological, financial and economic) for creating public spaces. As a result, the study provided an opportunity to develop a mechanism for creating public spaces in the city. Successful implementation of the experience of European cities in Ukraine requires studying the needs of residents and guests of the city, researching existing analogues, identifying the potential of the city to create a public space of a certain type, taking into account risks, understanding the purpose of public space and determining the reasonable cost of projects.

Alone Together

In this article, based on my ethnographic experience of Ho Chi Minh City’s lockdown, I argue that COVID-19 acted as an accelerator of intimacies, allowing people to negotiate alternative forms of sociality both within and outside the domestic space. On the one hand, by confining people at home it brought to light social and housing inequalities in urban Vietnam. On the other, it forced people to find imaginative ways to cope with social-distancing protocols. Since mobility during lockdown was limited, the normatively private space of the house became an incubator for social life, affording people – even those outside the circle of close friends and relatives – the opportunity to be alone together, sharing their temporary stuckness to challenge normative patterns of intimacy and sexuality.

Clinical Outcomes of 2019 COVID-19 Positive Patients Who Underwent Surgery: A New York City Experience

BackgroundThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic has led to a halt in elective surgeries throughout the United States and many other countries throughout the world. Early reports suggest that COVID-19 patients undergoing surgery have an increased risk of requiring intensive care unit (ICU) admission and overall mortality. Materials and methodsA retrospective review was performed of all COVID-19, positive with polymerase chain reaction confirmation, patients who had surgery between February 17, 2020 and April 26, 2020 at a major New York City hospital. Clinical characteristics and outcomes including ICU admission, ventilator requirement, and mortality were analyzed. ResultsThirty-nine COVID-19 surgical patients were identified. Mean age was 53.9 y, and there were more men than women in the cohort (56.4% versus 43.6%). Twenty-two patients (56.4%) had a confirmed positive COVID-19 test preoperatively, and the remainder tested positive after their procedure. The majority (59%) of patients had an American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) class of 3 or higher. Postoperatively, 7 patients (17.9%) required ICU level care with a mean length of stay of 7.7 d. There were 4 deaths (10.3%) in this patient population, all of which occurred in patients who were ASA class 3 or 4. ConclusionsThis study represents the largest study to date, that objectively analyzes the outcomes of COVID-19 positive patients who underwent surgery. Overall, ICU admission rates and mortality are similar to reported rates in the literature for nonsurgical COVID-19 patients. Notably, in COVID-19 patients with ASA 1 or 2, there was a 0% mortality rate in the postoperative period.

Challenges to Comparative Oral Histories of Cinema Audiences

This article reflects on the challenges of comparative oral history analysis by taking the BA/Leverhulme-funded project Mapping European Cinema: a comparative project on cinema-going experiences in the 1950s (2016-2017) as a case study. The aim of MEC was to test new methodologies in order to explore and compare programming patterns and cinema-going experiences in European cities that were similar in terms of population and film exhibition structure but substantially different in terms of film culture. MEC focused on three case studies: Bari (Italy), Leicester (United Kingdom) and Ghent (Belgium). This article uses three video interviews to reflect on the theoretical framework around comparative analysis and to discuss issues of cultural specificity. Attempts at substantial comparative analysis have proved to be a challenging task because of the difficulty of analysing different film cultures cross-nationally, the complexity of standardising data, and the lack of analytical frames that could be used to explain patterns and differences revealed during the analysis. Building on the work of cultural historians studying the reciprocal traffic of culture across borders, the article adopts a theoretical framework that addresses the complexity of working with memory across national borders and linguistic barriers and emphasizes contextualization as a defining component in cross-national comparative studies. The article argues that the national specific knowledge of individual researchers enabled the authors not to overlook local perspectives while at the same time generalising across the three national cultural contexts, identifying new perspectives, and finding a common ground that could be commensurable to ensure a systematic comparative process.

Intensive Care Unit Capacity, Cancellation of Elective Surgery, and the US Pandemic Response.

Intensive Care Unit Capacity, Cancellation of Elective Surgery, and the US Pandemic Response.

A Tale of Three Cities: The Rise of Dubai, Singapore, and Miami Compared

The literature on “global cities”, following a publication by Saskia Sassen of a book under the same title, has focused on those prime centers of the capitalist economy that concentrate on command-and-control functions in finance and trade worldwide. New York, London, Tokyo, and sometimes, Frankfurt and Paris are commonly cited as such centers. In recent years, however, another set of mercantile and financial centers have arisen. They reproduce, on a regional basis, the features and functions of the prime global cities. Dubai, Miami, and Singapore have emerged during the first quarter of the XXI century as such new regional centers. This paper explores the history of the three; the mechanisms that guided their ascent to their present position; and the pitfalls—political and ecological—that may compromise their present success. The rise of these new global cities from a position of insignificance is primarily a political story, but the stages that the story followed and the key participants in it are quite different. A systematic comparison of the three cities offer a number of lessons for urban scholarship and development policies. Such lessons are supplemented by the experiences of other cities that attempted to achieve or sustain a similar global status but failed, for various reasons, to do so. Such experiences are also discussed in the conclusion.

Urban Pulse - Gendered urban toponyms in the global South: a time for de-colonization?

ABSTRACT This short commentary scrutinizes the contemporary toponymic phenomenon of gendered street naming in the global South with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa’s cities. It reveals the problematic prevalence of masculine street names in comparison to feminine names in the region’s urban spatialities and provides a comparative glimpse into similar realities in the global North. The paper offers explanations for this phenomenon as a consequence of the (post-)colonial experiences of many Southern cities and reports on the socio-political implications of this problem. Our recommendation on a toponymic de-colonization in terms of gender is part of a broader aspiration for more just and inclusionary urban management policies, better accommodated to the challenging realities of urban life in Southern cities.

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children related to COVID-19: A New York City experience.

In December 2019, the 2019, a novel coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus‐2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) first emerged in Wuhan, China. This has now spread worldwide and was declared a pandemic by March 2020. Initially, the pediatric population was described as a low risk for severe COVID‐19. However, reports have emerged recently of cases of COVID‐19 in children with a systemic inflammatory disease, with features that overlap with Kawasaki disease (KD). We describe the first 15 cases with the multi‐systeminflammatory syndrome in children (MIS‐C), temporally related to COVID‐19, who presented for care to a tertiary pediatric referral center in New York City. We discuss the disproportionate burden of disease among Hispanic/Latino and Black/African American ancestry, the distinct cytokine signature across the disease spectrum (IL‐1/IL‐6), and the potential role and pathogenesis of SARS‐CoV‐2 in this new clinical entity.

Mapping spatiotemporal variability of the urban heat island across an urban gradient in Worcester, Massachusetts using in-situ Thermochrons and Landsat-8 Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) data

ABSTRACT Landsat-8 derived Land Surface Temperature (LST) is used to measure Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) patterns and intensity in Worcester, MA, USA. Additionally, near-surface air temperature variability is measured using in-situ sensors to further contextualize the urban-to-rural land-cover driven thermal patterns in the study area. Despite the widespread applicability of thermal data, many SUHI studies do not compare LST with in-situ information. Comparisons between satellite-based and in-situ measurements of land surface temperature (LST) are important for establishing confidence in the utility of remotely sensed information to monitor and help improve the lived experience in cities. The objective of this study is to determine the capability of Landsat-8 Thermal Infrared Scanner (TIRS) to measure fine-scale temperature variation in a moderately sized urban area with a mixture of land-cover types. Ground-Level Temperature (GLT) was measured at 13 sites using iButton® Thermochron® temperature sensors from 13 June 2013 to 28 October 2014. Landsat-derived LST was compared to in-situ GLT using 30 Landsat-8 TIRS images for the commensurate time period. Sites with 1) eastern solar exposure; 2) low tree canopy coverage; and 3) proximity to impervious surfaces have higher annual temperature and greater offset from Landsat-derived LST. Sites with more than 47% tree canopy coverage have a more consistent LST and GLT relationship, (e.g. MAE < 3.74°C), show lower annual variability (e.g. r2 > 0.85), and also experienced low LST variability over the time series (e.g. coefficient of variation 0.007). Results indicate that site characteristics and land-cover type affect the offset between in-situ air temperature measurements and satellite-derived LST.

Analysis on the Influence of Urban Sculpture Development and the Application of 3D Modeling Technology in Sculpture Education

In recent years, with the rapid development of higher education in sculpture in China, more and more colleges and universities offer sculpture-related majors. However, judging from the current process of urban construction in China, the sculpture specialty offered by existing colleges and universities still cannot meet the needs of urban development, and the quality of sculpture education needs to be improved to used the 3D modeling technology. Sculpture education should train comprehensive talents of urban sculpture design, establish effective education mechanism and coordinate development. At the same time, in order to ensure the sustainable and healthy development of urban sculpture art, it is necessary to learn from the advanced experience of similar cities at home and abroad, base on the economic foundation and cultural environment of the city, and promote the development of domestic urban sculpture art from two aspects of institutional environment construction and practical operation[1].

War-talk: an urban youth language of siege in Nairobi

ABSTRACT In this article, I detail how youth in poor urban settlements in Nairobi use a vernacular that I term war-talk. This is a speech, anchored in the Swahili derived urban slang language Sheng, which includes words that reference combat situations. If Sheng, as has been argued, is a generational articulation of unequal spatialized relations in Nairobi, war-talk further indexes the siege that those who live within the margins of the city experience every day, and that appears to be worsening. In addition, I put forward that war-talk is shaped by specific situated identities taken up in the East of Nairobi, subjectivities that chronicle what are seen as ongoing violations of the poor, particularly by the police. At the same time, while it bears witness to “war,” war-talk does not position its speakers solely as victims, and is performed as a language that offers deft situated escapes that portend vernacular and material agency for those who continue to be its progenitors in the margins of this city.

Disruption and Design: Crowdmapping Young Women’s Experience in Cities

The history of women’s exclusion and invisibility in cities is well charted, yet young women’s experience of sexual harassment and assault has been difficult to quantify. This article discusses the Free to Be project initiated by Plan International in 2018. In partnership with Monash University’s XYX Lab and CrowdSpot, the crowdmapping web app enabled young women in Delhi, Kampala, Lima, Madrid, and Sydney to identify and share their experiences of public spaces. It is believed to be the most ambitious global crowdsourced data collection project on street harassment ever undertaken. By using coding and visual data techniques, the data demonstrated the scale of the problem and the urgent need for city-level decision makers, as well as other members of society, to take action. This article outlines the findings from Free to Be, and explores the ways data and activism led by girls and young women are a powerful method for creating change.

Original

Kohima located in the Eastern Himalaya of Northeast India experience numerous landslides and soil creeps annually. Landslides, the resultant of various interactions i.e., geological, geomorphologic, meteorological factors etc., caused immense loss economically and environmentally. Kohima city experiences the torrential amount of rainfall which further aggravate landslide hazard. This paper implores the use of high-resolution satellite data for deciphering landslide vulnerability mapping through remote sensing and GIS technique. Factors such as land use and land cover, lithology, lineament, drainage, road, aspect and slope were used as thematic input layers for landslide vulnerability mapping. The bivariate statistical method particularly Information Value method was used to extract the information from the landslide and the various controlling factors to generate the landslide vulnerability map. Validation of the landslide vulnerability mapping using classification and R-index methods along with ground observation were used to create the final vulnerability map.