Intermediate Cities Research Articles

Editorial: Desarrollo urbano y energía en el contexto de ciudades intermedias sostenibles

Sustainability-oriented urbanism proposes strategies to address environmental, social, and economic challenges in intermediate cities. Within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this issue of CienciAmérica highlights the importance of sustainability in cities. The energy transition of cities is necessary and represents an opportunity to promote sustainable investments, in line with SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy) and SDG 13 (climate action). Similarly, sustainable urban planning, in line with SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities), promotes the circular economy through proper waste management, thereby reducing environmental impacts and promoting economic sectors and job creation. On the other hand, education for a culture of sustainability, in line with SDG 4 (Quality Education), is essential to create a society that is aware and proactive in protecting the environment. This volume also includes sustainable technology, innovation and economic competitiveness, key aspects in the implementation of SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure). Finally, this edition calls on governments, businesses, organizations and citizens to work together to build a sustainable future, where sustainability and the economy are intrinsically linked to ensure the sustainable functioning of cities.

An urban rivers renaissance? Stream restoration and green–blue infrastructure in Latin America – Insights from urban planning in Colombia

AbstractWhile urban river restoration has become mainstream in the Global North, it remains scarce in Latin America, where most literature focuses on water quality, stream habitats, and watershed assessment, but planning and implementation lag behind. Colombia is undergoing a paradigm shift after pioneering the integration of green and blue infrastructure (GBI) into urban planning in the early 2000s (namely Estructura Ecológica Principal). A surge in river renaturalization initiatives is underway, with large and intermediate cities planning and executing projects. We systematically assessed the integration of rivers and GBI into local policies (Planes de Ordenamiento Territorial) and found widespread and strong recognition of streams, wetlands, and ecosystem services in urban planning, higher than previously reported. Most cities emphasize river multifunctionality, ecological connectivity, public space, and recreation, as well as disaster risk reduction, advancing toward sustainable urban water and drainage systems. However, significant gaps persist regarding climate change resilience, participation, and social justice. In a region marked by high inequality, pre-existing spatial exclusion could be amplified by urban renewal, greening, and tourism due to unfair resettlement conditions and gentrification. Such trade-offs can undermine the ecological and social benefits of restoration. We highlight the crucial role of civil society and grassroots activism in protecting and defending urban commons and conclude by recommending a critical examination of GBI and river restoration efforts in Latin America. Colombia’s case can serve as both a reference and a cautionary tale for other cities in the region to achieve outcomes that promote equity and justice amid pressing social and environmental challenges.

Education for peace in a peace-friendly context: testing a virtual learning tool to improve teachers’ competencies for conflict transformation in Colombia

ABSTRACT Colombian society has been exposed to decades of sociopolitical violence with apparent effects on its social infrastructure that may inadvertently lead to more structural, cultural, and interpersonal forms of violence. Peacebuilding efforts are required, and education for peace plays a key role. This requires building conflict sensitivity within the school system and improving teachers’ competence-based knowledge in several domains. To achieve this aim, we developed and tested the ‘Eco-GesTE Virtual Learning Environment.’ Nine teachers (male and female) from a public school in Ibagué (an intermediate city in Colombia) completed 10 Interactive Virtual Learning Scenarios (IVLS) to improve emotional, social reasoning, integrative, and conflict transformation competencies over three months. They completed two conflict management style measures, before and after the intervention, besides a qualitative survey after the intervention. Non-parametric, paired samples Wilcoxon tests suggest marginally significant individual changes whereby teachers reported using fewer conflict-avoidant styles after completing the intervention. Qualitatively, participants also reported learning emotion regulation and listening skills, as well as feeling better equipped to handle situations with domain congruency. They also reported using more perspective-taking during conflicts. Findings suggest potential for competence-based knowledge online interventions to strengthen conflict transformation competencies among teachers and contribute to violence-free educational environments.

Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Land Use and Community Perception in Peri-Urban Environments: The Case of the Intermediate City in Indonesia

Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Land Use and Community Perception in Peri-Urban Environments: The Case of the Intermediate City in Indonesia

Railway and Centrality in Intermediate Cities of Northeastern Brazil: The Structuring and the Formation of the City Center in Caruaru-PE

Railway and Centrality in Intermediate Cities of Northeastern Brazil: The Structuring and the Formation of the City Center in Caruaru-PE

Factors that influence choice of residence by urban informal settlement dwellers in an intermediate city: A case study of Enugu, Nigeria

<p>The consequences of urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa are poverty, insecurity, and the growth of informal settlements. These settlements are characterized by overcrowding, tenure insecurity, a lack of basic services and amenities, and many other deprivations. The current study looks at the social and environmental problems faced by residents and the factors responsible for their choice to reside in an informal settlement in Enugu using the survey research method. Primary and secondary data were utilized in the study. Whereas the former source includes a structured questionnaire and observations, the latter source comprises relevant literature. A total of 111 questionnaires were distributed to household heads in five selected informal settlements in Enugu. The data set was collated and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Principal component analysis was used to classify and determine the factors influencing the choice to reside in an informal settlement. The study revealed that six factors influence the choice of residence in informal settlements: government/political influence, social integration/services, housing/employment, infrastructure accessibility, livelihood costs and security/economy. The factors accounted for 72.11 percent of the factors influencing the choice to reside in an informal settlement. The major social challenges faced by residents are gambling, drug abuse, and overcrowding. The study recommends that low-cost housing that is affordable should be provided for the low-income group that characterizes informal settlements in Enugu metropolis.</p>

Participación y redes sociales: el uso de Facebook en tiempos de Covid-19 en una ciudad intermedia

The objective of the paper is to know the predominant modes and uses of the social network Facebook by socio-political organizations in intermediate cities, such as Río Cuarto, Argentina. Specifically, it seeks to show how the social organizations La Marcha de la Gorra and La Huella use, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the social network Facebook to make their actions visible in the local public sphere and promote scenarios participatory. Appealing to the specialized literature on social networks and based on a methodological convergence between digital ethnography and discourse analysis, the study investigates the Facebook pages belonging to each of the social organizations to reveal the topics considered important to publish, the social, political and institutional actors involved, the discursive strategies considered at the time of creating the content, and the participation of Internet users in the messages received. The results of the study show uneven use of the social network Facebook by the organizations La Huella and La Marcha de la Gorra during the Covid-19 pandemic. With a varied participation of Internet users before the messages received and with a marked difference in the discursive formulation.

Preface

Abstract 3rd. Congress in Sustainability, Energy and City CSECity’23 The 3rd. Congress in Sustainability, Energy and City (CSECity’23) was held at Universidad Tecnológica Indoamérica, in Ambato – Ecuador during 20-21 November 2023. This event adopted a hybrid format, combining in-person and virtual participation. The decision for a hybrid setup was driven by our commitment to inclusivity and environmental sustainability, reducing the overall carbon footprint associated with travel. CSECity’23 will bring together experts in sustainability, urbanism, energy, and industry. This multidisciplinary group of researchers will allow the transfer of knowledge between academic institutions, raise research, and analyze how intermediate cities and industries are likely to change and adapt in the coming months and years in a sustainable way. Presenting high-quality, peer-reviewed papers, the book discusses the following topics: • Information Technologies • Software Systems, Architectures, Applications and Tools • Sustainable, Energy and City CSECity’23 received 28 submissions written in English by 89 authors coming from 4 different countries. All these papers were peer-reviewed by the CSECity’23 Program Committee consisting of 80 high-quality researchers. To assure a high-quality and thoughtful review process, we assigned each paper at least two reviewers. Based on peer reviews, 11 full papers were accepted, resulting in a 39.28% acceptance rate, which was within our goal. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the invited speakers for their inspirational talks, to the authors for submitting their work to this conference, and the reviewers for sharing their experience during the selection process. November 2023. Manuel Ayala-Chauvin Fátima Avilés-Castillo Miguel Botto-Tobar List of ORGANIZATION is available in this pdf.

Transport accessibility changes in metropolitan regions: high-speed rail connection frequency estimation

This article focuses on a very narrowly specific segment of this issue, considering the impacts of HSR in the long term, not as transport arteries connecting the most important metropolitan areas but, on the contrary, as an internal factor of development within a metropolitan region. The paper aims to transfer the present operational European HSR commuting connection frequency experience to a generally applicable frequency estimation formula. Through a quantitative approach, the research analyses the total sample of 1,446 train connections from 10 European metropolitan regions. It answers the secondary research question of what the range of accessibility change between the metropolitan core and the intermediate city is after introducing HSR connection inside metropolitan regions in the time of 1 hour of journey. The estimation model formula calculates the optimal number of HSR connections between the metropolitan core and intermediate city in the HSR developing countries. It is derived and verified from the analysed dataset values. The potential operational change scenarios are presented and described based on the example of 34 metropolitan city pairs.

La configuración de las ciudades emergentes: Una revisión a la sintaxis espacial

This review focuses on the phenomenon of spatial syntax from the perspective of urban performance, through its theoretical evolution applied in the scenario of intermediate cities, allowing to understand the role of accessibility and the urban built environment, for the improvement in the provision of services from the instruments of planning and management of the territory. In the development of this research, various data sources such as Scopus, Scielo, Research Gate and Google Scholar were used, structuring the theoretical basis with various articles from journals indexed in Atlas.ti that, under the inductive method, allowed the triangulation and identification of co-occurrences in the different cases. The review concludes that, the analysis of spatial syntax and its components, define how performance is important for the diagnosis of urban sectors, since, it provides information for decision making from public action such as accessibility and angular choice, which constitute urban integration.

URBAN UPGRADE IN BISKRA’S SHANTYTOWNS SAMPLE: THE NEIGHBORHOODS OF SIDI GHAZEL AND SIDI ROUAG (ALGERIA)

The shantytowns or slum area started to appear in the urban fabric within town zones in Algeria during the colonial period. This situation endured after the independence, in particular during the seventies of the last century. The reasons : a population growth and an increasing urbanization in big and intermediate cities, in addition to the industrial establishment resulting from the development choices. This latter wasn’t supported by balanced development. The impact was obvious on the urban development of the Algerian cities. Hence, the slum areas increased outside the town urban perimeter, where the public lands and the lands inconvenient for urbanization such as river shores, old quarries and hills. The citizen, in cause of that, stood in a permanent conflict with the relevant authorities, in particular municipalities, to settle the situation or to remove definitively the house. Hence, this situation leads to a degradation in the urban fabric and planning of numerous cities. The Governorate of Biskra was also affected by this phenomenon starting from the 1970s. It results, among other reasons, from its elevation to the status of Governorate in 1974 following the second administrative structuring in Algeria after the independence.

Worldwide delineation of multi-tier city–regions

Urban centers are pivotal in shaping societies, yet a systematic global analysis of how countries are organized around multiple urban centers is lacking. We enhance understanding by delineating city–regions worldwide, classifying over 30,000 urban centers into four tiers—town, small, intermediate and large city—based on population size and mapping their catchment areas based on travel time, differentiating between primary and secondary city–regions. Here we identify 1,403 primary city–regions employing a 3 h travel time cutoff and increasing to 4,210 with a 1 h cutoff, which is more indicative of commuting times. Our findings reveal substantial interconnectedness among urban centers and with their surrounding areas, with 3.2 billion people having physical access to multiple tiers within an hour and 4.7 billion within 3 h. Notably, among people living in or closest to towns or small cities, twice as many have easier access to intermediate than to large cities, underscoring intermediate cities’ crucial role in connecting surrounding populations. This systematic identification of city–regions globally uncovers diverse organizational patterns across urban tiers, influenced by geography, level of development and infrastructure, offering a valuable spatial dataset for regional planning, economic development and resource management.

Empowering intermediate cities: cost-effective heritage preservation through satellite remote sensing and deep learning

ABSTRACT In the capitalist rush to attract more visitors, cities are committing significant resources to heritage conservation, driven by the substantial economic benefits generated by the tourism industry. However, less famous or less well-resourced cities, often with smaller populations, also known as intermediary cities, find it difficult to allocate funds to protect their most significant heritage sites. In this conservation context, intermediary cities, often on the periphery or ‘at the margins’, can fill the gaps and needs of urbanism through a better strategic understanding of the challenges of global touristification, thus this research provides urban planning tools for local governments with limited resources to preserve their architectural heritage through remote sensing, for its advantages in terms of lower economic cost, as a valuable monitoring tool to effectively identify high-vulnerability sites that require priority attention in the conservation of architectural heritage. In other words, it allows for a reduction in the territory of those areas located ‘at the margins’ in terms of urban planning and management, by approaching the territorial, urban, architectural and tourism problems from a transdisciplinary perspective in the preservation of the architectural heritage. This study explores the application of optical (Sentinel-2) using neural networks for classifying the land cover and radar (Sentinel-1 and PAZ) satellite images to obtain the ground motion as a geotechnical risk study, together with geospatial data, for the monitoring of architectural heritage in intermediate cities. Focusing on the districts of Bragança and Guarda in Portugal, the approach allows the direct identification of vulnerable architectural heritage, identifying 9 highly-vulnerable areas using PAZ data and 7 areas using Sentinel-1 data. Furthermore, this work provides an understanding of the potential and limitations of these technologies in heritage preservation because compares the processing results of freely accessible medium-resolution Sentinel-1 radar imagery with the high-resolution radar images from the innovative PAZ satellite.

Accesibilidad geográfica al primer nivel de atención de las personas mayores en una ciudad intermedia deArgentina

El trabajo busca evaluar la accesibilidad geográfica a los médicos de cabecera por parte de las personas mayores en la Argentina afiliados alInstituto Nacional de ServiciosSociales para Jubilados y Pensionados(INSSJyP) en una ciudad intermedia de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (Bahía Blanca). Se calcularon medidas de accesibilidad geográfica entre afiliados y médicos, y, áreas de cobertura. Losafiliados se encuentran, en promedio, a 1000 metros del médico de cabecera más cercano y se evidencian áreas en las cuales los afiliados quedan muy alejados de la oferta. Asimismo, la distancia promedio al médico más próximo es mayor para los afiliados que viven en radios censales de menor nivel socioeconómico.

Producing peripheries: morphology and habitability in the conurbations of Cuenca, Ecuador

The expansion of Latin American intermediate cities has left irregular and discontinuous occupation patterns in their peripheral territories. In appearance, the configurations of the urban edges do not have relevant differences. In fact, each morphological structure is heterogeneous and has its own behaviors, different occupation motivations, and diverse resulting consolidated models. In Cuenca, Ecuador, these diffuse zones between the urban and rural limits are marked by segregation dynamics and dependence on the consolidated center and have the lowest quality-of-life indexes in the city. In this context, the objective of the research was to find a possible relationship between the types of peripheral morphologies and the levels of urban habitability of four city urban centers, using a quantitative methodological design with a two-stage correlational scope. Initially, urban morphologies were classified, and the habitability levels were rated separately, applying independent instruments. Then, the results were cross-checked to describe possible links between variables. The findings highlight significant disparities in habitability between conurbations and define an apparent direct correlation between the two dimensions of analysis.

Fragmented or disintegrated city? Urban models applied to intermediate Mexican cities from the perspective of geodemography

Urban models are fundamental in the theoretical and empirical discussions about cities. However, the Latin American city models proposed by German geographers have not been questioned much despite their use, and there are few studies outside the large metropolitan areas. Therefore, this article, using geodemography, seeks to identify whether there is a residential structure pattern in the intermediate cities of Mexico's National Urban System. This methodological proposal looks to use new spatial analysis tools focused on lifestyles and the study of one of the great layers that urban models have: their residential structure. The results show that, firstly, using the models and their temporalities as a kaleidoscope, it is possible to identify the multiple patterns of cities and not just a single model. Secondly, a new disintegrated pattern appears where the classical models of the Chicago School are unrecognizable, and the fragmented city is left disintegrated.

Idea of “intermediate city” in light of the concept of social transaction

El artículo aborda el concepto de transacción social a la luz de la idea de “ciudad intermedia”, según el planteamiento del sociólogo belga Jean Remy. Considera el papel de intermediación que desempeñan las ciudades de tamaño mediano en áreas urbanizadas o en proceso de urbanización, dependiendo de sus respectivos contextos nacionales o regionales, particularmente en Brasil. Desde una perspectiva interpretativa, el estatus de “ciudad intermedia” está asociado al concepto de transacción social y, así, puede revelar los vínculos sociales entre los habitantes de la ciudad que interactúan en el espacio urbano. Este trabajo postula que el concepto de Remy contribuye en gran medida a la comprensión de situaciones concretas en los intersticios de las ciudades, siendo las transacciones sociales mediadoras de acciones y relaciones simultáneas de proximidad y distancia, incluso en América Latina.

Tensions in Social Integration Based on Access to Health and Decent Work for the Migrant Population in Santiago de Cali

Cali, Colombia has been a destination for migrants from Venezuela, either to serve as a transit point or a settlement for those seeking better opportunities. This complex situation, within the context of an intermediate city located in the Global South, has led to unprecedented institutional challenges related to the assurance of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ESCR), and even more, requirements for social coexistence. This paper aims to elucidate tensions that have arisen in the social integration of the migrant population in Cali, Colombia, based on the analysis of their access to health and work rights. The primary reference for this exploration is drawn from oral accounts provided by Venezuelan migrant participants residing in the city.

Methodology for the comparative evaluation of vehicle technologies in intermediate cities considering electric vehicles

Climate change and emissions reduction are crucial global issues that require transformations in the energy and transportation sectors. This has increased Electric Vehicles (EVs) adoption in various countries, including emerging economies like Colombia. The government in Colombia has implemented incentives and regulations to promote sustainable mobility, increasing the number of EVs and hybrids. However, beyond governmental incentives, factors such as range, availability of charging stations, and acquisition costs impact EV adoption. Therefore, vehicle owners must evaluate total ownership costs over time and technical aspects to understand EVs financial and performance advantages. In this context, a methodology is proposed to facilitate decision-making by comparing technical, economic, and environmental aspects of vehicle technologies in a specific urban transportation context. A case study for individual public transportation in Pasto, an intermediate city in Colombia (Pasto), is presented, which can be extrapolated to other cities with similar characteristics. This methodology supports governmental efforts for transport decarbonization and aims to inform cab owners about the economic benefits of new technological adoptions. The case study constructs a spatial model for individual public transportation simulated in SUMO (Simulation of Urban Mobility). By evaluating technical, economic, and environmental aspects with a realistic approach based on simulation results that considered traffic conditions and network operational parameters, helpful benchmarking is obtained to promote EVs among owners of public vehicles in the city and concludes that EV adoption for individual public transportation in Pasto is notably advantageous from a financial perspective.

Heritage-led regeneration in Chinese intermediary cities: understanding incremental changes under a ‘business as usual’ urban governance regime

This study examines Longchang, an intermediary city in China, to discern differences in its heritage-led regeneration compared to major Chinese cities. Despite the recent incremental shifts in China’s urban governance regime, which is characterised by ‘selective learning’ and ‘trial and error’ approaches, cities like Longchang, constrained by scant socio-institutional resources, perpetuate pro-growth tendencies in their regeneration. While progress has been made towards more sustainable outcomes, the persistent disregard for local communities is still ‘business as usual’ in current practice. This phenomenon jeopardises the urban transformation process, amplifying heritage commodification and adversely impacting the intangible and living heritage.