Intra-urban Level Research Articles

Do local characteristics act in a similar way for the first two waves of COVID-19? Analysis at intraurban level in Barcelona.

BackgroundThis paper concerns the spatial determinants of the first two waves of COVID-19 at the neighbourhood level.MethodsUsing data for the first and second waves of COVID-19 at the neighbourhood level in Barcelona, we analyse whether local characteristics acted in the same way during the two waves and identify typologies of areas depending on such determinants. Univariate and bivariate local Moran’s I and count data models are used.ResultsSome structural effects at the neighbourhood level consistently either boost (e.g. population density) or reduce (e.g. income) COVID-19 cases. Other effects differ between the two waves (i.e. age composition, schools and transport infrastructures).ConclusionsSince certain characteristics influenced the virus diffusion in opposite ways between the two pandemic waves, territorial heterogeneity alone is insufficient to explain COVID-19 outbreaks—individual behaviour also needs to be factored in. Consequently, both econometric and spatial analysis techniques are recommended for tracking the spatiotemporal spread of this disease and for monitoring the effectiveness of policy measures across heterogeneous neighbourhoods.

VIDA: A Simulation Model of Domestic Violence in Times of Social Distancing

Violence against women occurs predominantly in the family and domestic context. The COVID-19 pandemic led Brazil to recommend and, at times, impose social distancing, with the partial closure of economic activities, schools, and restrictions on events and public services. Preliminary evidence shows that intense coexistence increases domestic violence, while social distancing measures may have prevented access to public services and networks, information, and help. We propose an agent-based model (ABM), called VIDA, to illustrate and examine multi-causal factors that influence events that generate violence. A central part of the model is the multi-causal stress indicator, created as a probability trigger of domestic violence occurring within the family environment. Two experimental design tests were performed: (a) absence or presence of the deterrence system of domestic violence against women and (b) measures to increase social distancing. VIDA presents comparative results for metropolitan regions and neighbourhoods considered in the experiments. Results suggest that social distancing measures, particularly those encouraging staying at home, may have increased domestic violence against women by about 10%. VIDA suggests further that more populated areas have comparatively fewer cases per hundred thousand women than less populous capitals or rural areas of urban concentrations. This paper contributes to the literature by formalising, to the best of our knowledge, the first model of domestic violence through agent-based modelling, using empirical detailed socioeconomic, demographic, educational, gender, and race data at the intraurban level (census sectors).

A zone of exception? Interrogating the hybrid housing regime and nested enclaves in China-Singapore Suzhou-Industrial-Park

Focusing on the highly ‘successful’ China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP), this study taps into a less explored topic of housing development in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) through the conceptual lenses of housing regime and enclave urbanism. Drawing on empirical evidence garnered from interviews, survey, observation, and secondary sources, this study transcends methodological nationalism and cityism to present a situated and close-up examination of housing regime at the intra-urban level. It also enriches the concept of enclave urbanism by delving into the nested enclave structure in SIP. A hybrid housing regime featuring a (neo)liberal logic in the disguise of the semi-social democratic regime for landless farmers and a productivist regime for the variegated workforce is identified. Two key players – the local state and transnational corporations, via formal and informal institutions, gave rise to a nested enclave structure. Instead of ‘a zone of exception’, SIP epitomises the ubiquitous neoliberalisation and aggravated precarity endured by low-skilled migrants, and foregrounds housing stratification and segregation within SEZs.

The Ripple Effect and Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Intra-Urban Housing Prices at the Submarket Level in Shanghai, China

The ripple effect of housing price movements between cities has been extensively investigated, but there are relatively few studies on this topic within a metropolitan context, especially at the submarket level. This paper describes the use of ripple effect theory to examine the diffusion process and convergence of intra-urban housing prices at the submarket level in Shanghai, an emerging global city in China. The analysis is based on directed acyclic graphs, local indicators of spatial association time-paths, and a recently developed convergence test. The empirical results of grouping analysis identify 25 submarkets in Shanghai, and the diffusion of housing prices between these submarkets is found to be caused by both geographical and economic proximities. There is also a complex recursive process of price spillovers from high- to low-priced submarkets, and vice versa, which contributes to the spiraling local housing prices. Housing prices diverge across all submarkets, and the whole market can be divided into three convergence clubs. Finally, these convergence clubs have a circular structure with a degree of continuity. This study broadens our knowledge of the price interrelationship among housing submarkets at the intra-urban level. These findings have profound implications for urban planners, policy makers, and local residents.

Detecting Intra-Urban Housing Market Spillover through a Spatial Markov Chain Model

This study analyzed the spillovers among intra-urban housing submarkets in Beijing, China. Intra-urban spillover imposes a methodological challenge for housing studies from the spatial and temporal perspectives. Unlike the inter-urban spillover, the range of every submarket is not naturally defined; therefore, it is impossible to evaluate the intra-urban spillover by standard time-series models. Instead, we formulated the spillover effect as a Markov chain procedure. The constrained clustering technique was applied to identify the submarkets as the hidden states of Markov chain and estimate the transition matrix. Using a day-by-day transaction dataset of second-hand apartments in Beijing during 2011–2017, we detected 16 submarkets/regions and the spillover effect among these regions. The highest transition probability appeared in the overlapped region of urban core and Tongzhou district. This observation reflects the impact of urban planning proposal initiated since early 2012. In addition to the policy consequences, we analyzed a variety of spillover “types” through regression analysis. The latter showed that the “ripple” form of spillover is not dominant at the intra-urban level. Other types, such as the spillover due to the existence of price depressed regions, play major roles. This observation reveals the complexity of intra-urban spillover dynamics and its distinct driving-force compared to the inter-urban spillover.

Spatial inequality of housing value changes since the financial crisis

The financial crisis has dramatically reshaped the map of inequality; in particular, wealth has been redistributed because of fluctuations in the prices of equities and housing. However, since the explanation of this issue has by default been seen as economists' responsibility, the spatial dimension of the financial crisis still remains unexplored, especially at the intra-urban level. This study examines the local geographies of the housing value bust (2008–2012) and boom (2012–2016) since the financial crisis, with an explicit emphasis on their impacts on urban inequality in Salt Lake County, Utah. We find that housing value changes differ across space and appear strongly associated with the spatial distribution of neighborhood conditions and urban amenities. Additional regressions confirm that a city's housing market volatility is amplified by uneven distribution of physical and service amenities and residential segregation. Moreover, the significance level of local attributes changes over the bust-boom cycle of the housing market. The comparison between bust and boom models suggests that the value of houses enjoying shade from trees and proximity to jobs, places of worship, and good public schools are more resilient, experiencing less value drop in an economic bust, but also less increase in a boom. Other amenities such as public transport, hospitals, parks, and restaurants could be interpreted as types of discretionary consumption, which positively contribute to housing value volatility. Neighborhood conditions, especially white-Hispanic segregation, significantly contribute to housing value fluctuation. Hispanic communities in Salt Lake County tend to experience more loss of property value in a bust and gain more in a boom. Thus, our study suggests that a more balanced urban distribution of employment, races, and amenities would significantly enhance local economic stability by smoothing fluctuations of business cycles at the local level.

Migration, Religion, and Residential Segregation at the Urban Level: The Case of Muslim Migrants in Rome and Milan

This article investigates residential segregation at the intraurban level of migrants in two Italian cities, Rome and Milan, considering religion as a point of reference in light of its pivotal role in terms of identity references for many migrants. The article focuses in particular on Muslim migrants—due to both the magnitude of their presence and complex issues related to their settlement in Italian cities. The analysis shows a low level of intraurban residential segregation of Muslim migrants in both cities, with some relevant differences related to national subgroups (e.g., a higher concentration for people coming from Bangladesh and Pakistan), so that religion seems not yet to be a main driver of residential choice for Muslim migrants. In light of both the low level of segregation of Muslim migrants and some features of Italian urban policies on migration and religion, we argue that residential concentration can currently play a beneficial role in terms of the insertion of migrants in Italian cities and fulfillment of some of their needs (e.g., availability of minority places of worship).

Mixed monetary and non-monetary valuation of attractive urban green space: A case study using Amsterdam house prices

This paper offers new insight into the monetary value of green space at the intra-urban level. To this end, an established monetary valuation method, hedonic price analysis, is integrated with a relatively novel non-monetary valuation method. In specific, online value mapping-based survey data (N = 723) are used to inform hedonic models of the preferences that potential home buyers may have for nearby attractive green spaces. The estimation uses data on 35,298 home transactions in the Amsterdam agglomeration's urban core. Homes nearby attractive green space are found to sell at a price premium, which decays with distance and becomes negligible after one kilometer. The estimated price-effect varies from 7.1%–9.3% for houses within 0.25 km from the nearest attractive green space to 1.7%–2.3% for houses located at 0.75–1.0 km away, depending on the scale at which omitted spatial variables are controlled for. Adding to the discussion of spatial controls in this type of analysis, the controls are evaluated at multiple scales and a metric that simplifies the interpretation of the scale of spatial controls – the mean equalized diameter – is introduced. This study's findings may inform policymakers who seek to maximize the well-being of urban citizens through public investments in attractive amenities.

Urban Shrinkage and Sustainability: Assessing the Nexus between Population Density, Urban Structures and Urban Sustainability

Urban shrinkage has become a common pathway (not only) in post-socialist cities, which represents new challenges for traditionally growth-oriented spatial planning. Though in the post-socialist area, the situation is even worse due to prevailing weak planning culture and resulting uncoordinated development. The case of the city of Ostrava illustrates how the problem of (in)efficient infrastructure operation, and maintenance, in already fragmented urban structure is exacerbated by the growing size of urban area (through low-intensity land-use) in combination with declining size of population (due to high rate of outmigration). Shrinkage, however, is, on the intra-urban level, spatially differentiated. Population, paradoxically, most intensively declines in the least financially demanding land-uses and grows in the most expensive land-uses for public administration. As population and urban structure development prove to have strong inertia, this land-use development constitutes a great challenge for a city’s future sustainability. The main objective of the paper is to explore the nexus between change in population density patterns in relation to urban shrinkage, and sustainability of public finance.

Urban amenity, human capital and employment distribution in Shanghai

Human capital theory argues that by attracting skilled workers urban amenities are increasingly important to the location decisions of firms and to employment agglomeration. However, this hypothesis has been questioned with respect to the direction of causality at the interurban level, the existence of endogeneity, and confusion between revealed and actual preferences of consumers. In this research, to contribute the existing debate over the relationship between amenities and jobs, we develop a new measurement of private service amenities based on the comments about facilities from Dianping.com, and further relate it to labor markets in Shanghai at the intra-urban level. We find that human capital theory and the distribution of amenities can partially explain the employment agglomeration in Shanghai, and their applicability is also influenced by types of amenities and sectors. Private service amenities, such as entertainment, shopping, for-profit healthcare facilities, and restaurants, are largely associated with the employment agglomeration of producer services at the subdistrict-level, which supports human capital theory, while the agglomeration of manufacturing employment is more likely associated with the development of public facilities such as transportation systems. Our study provides an innovative way to examine urban theories in the context of the social data revolution. It also suggests that the Chinese government has to encourage the decentralization of service amenities to overcome the increasing centrality of producer services and the accelerating marginality of manufacturing employment.

Analyzing the private rental housing market in Shanghai with open data

The failure of public housing policies and skyrocketing housing prices have made the private rental sector an increasingly important part of the housing system in Chinese metropolises. However, due to the lack of data, the private rental housing market remains poorly understood. By integrating open data, this paper comprehensively examines the spatial patterns and determinants of residential rents in Shanghai at the intra-urban level. We find that high rents are concentrated heavily in the inner-city area, which not only forces low-income families to live in the suburbs, where rents are still relatively affordable, but also makes housing costs a heavy burden to non-native young professionals. The results of spatial regressions suggest that the rental housing market in Shanghai is shaped by regional level factors such as job opportunities, salary levels, and the size of the “floating” population, and neighborhood level indicators like public transport facilities and service amenities. Such factors are differentiated across space. In the areas with better infrastructure, the roles of high salaries and attractive amenities are highly significant. In suburban districts, the presence of a larger “floating” population, better access to metro stations, sharing bikes, bus stops, and shopping facilities tend to raise rents. These patterns indicate that the geographical inequality of infrastructures, spatially imbalanced job accessibility, and institutions that make housing unaffordable have reinforced the rental and commuting burdens on economically disadvantaged groups, which also undermines their social mobility. Thus, our study suggests that the Chinese government should devote more effort to decentralize high-paying jobs, improve employment accessibility in urban peripheries and villages, as well as reform public housing policies and provide more public housing to make rental housing more affordable.

Improving Urban Population Distribution Models with Very-High Resolution Satellite Information

Built-up layers derived from medium resolution (MR) satellite information have proven their contribution to dasymetric mapping, but suffer from important limitations when working at the intra-urban level, mainly due to their difficulty in capturing the whole range of variation in terms of built-up densities. In this regard, very-high resolution (VHR) remote sensing is known for its ability to better capture small variations in built-up densities and to derive detailed urban land use, which plead in favor of its use when mapping urban populations. In this paper, we compare the added value of various combinations of VHR data sets, compared to a MR one. A top-down dasymetric mapping strategy is applied to reallocate population counts from administrative units into a regular 100 × 100 m grid, according to different weighting layers. These weighting layers are created from MR and/or VHR input data, using simple built-up proportion or reallocation “weights”, obtained from a set of multiple ancillary data used to train a Random Forest regression model. The results reveal that (1) a built-up mask derived from VHR can improve the accuracy of the reallocation by roughly 13%, compared to MR; (2) using VHR land-use information alone results in lower accuracy than using a MR built-up mask; and (3) there is a clear complementarity between VHR land cover and land use.

Contextual factors and prejudice at the beginning of the migrant influx: The Moroccan case in Seville, Spain

AbstractStudies addressing contextual factors associated with anti‐immigrant prejudice have focused on out‐group size and rapid demographic changes in receiving locations. However, the territorial concentration and distribution of ethnic minorities at a local and intraurban level has received little attention. We analyse the relationship between emerging territorial concentration points—alongside other contextual variables—by Moroccans and receiving society's growing prejudice towards them in a city experiencing the start of a migrant influx. We combine survey and census data from five Seville districts (southern Spain). Our results show how rapid changes in the general population's ethnic composition, coupled with Moroccan and economic migrants' territorial concentration, correlate strongly with negative attitudes towards Moroccans at this early stage. However, a weaker relationship between the immigrant percentage and degree of prejudice by the receiving group is observed. We also discuss guidelines for ensuring good, local diversity management to prevent socioterritorial fragmentation in multicultural cities.

Multiple intra-urban land use simulations and driving factors analysis: a case study in Huicheng, China

Simulations of intra-urban land use changes have gradually attracted more attention as these approaches are extremely helpful in regard to decision making and policy formulation. While prior studies mostly focused on methods of developing intra-urban level simulations, very little research has been conducted explain the factors driving intra-urban land use change. Urban planners are highly concerned with how inner-city structures are formed and how they function. Here, to simulate multiple intra-urban land use changes and to identify the contribution of different driving factors, we developed a random forests (RF) algorithm-based cellular automata (CA) simulation model. In this study, the model applied diverse categories of spatial variables, including traffic location factors, environmental factors, public services, and population density, as the driving factors to enhance our understanding of the dynamics of internal urban land use. The CA model was tested using data from the Huicheng district of Huizhou city in the Guangdong province of China. The Model was validated using actual historical land use data from 2000 to 2010. By applying the validated model, multiple intra-urban land use maps were simulated for 2015. Simultaneously, spatial variable importance measures (VIMs) were calculated by using the out-of-bag (OOB) error estimation approach of the RF algorithm. Based on the calculation results, we assessed and analysed the significance of each intra-urban land use driver for this region. This study provides urban planners and relevant scholars with detailed and targeted information that can aid in the formulation of specific planning strategies for different intra-urban land uses and support the future evolution of this area.

Spatial analysis of urban digital divide in Kigali, Rwanda

Access to Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) and its potentials for cities are often uneven across geographies and demographics, a condition that has been referred to as the digital divide. Given the invisibility of digital access, certain geo-demographic groups could face the risk of digital exclusion. However, where not aspatial, most studies explore the digital divide at macro-spatial levels (national and regional levels), which makes them less relevant for knowledge generation and policies at intra-urban scales, the actual hubs of innovations. This paper explores the state of ICT access in Kigali City, at an intra-urban level. It analyses official census data on ICT Access Indicators across dimensions and space, 35 administrative areas called sectors. The paper establishes the relative digital access performance of the sectors based on the measurement of their ICT Location Quotients. In Kigali City spatial distribution of ICT access is significantly clustered, with areas of concentration at the core and sparsity on the northeastern periphery of the city. This espouses spatiality–digitality relations. Using data reduction, we establish that existing urban inequality in infrastructure, urban agglomerative strength, planning status and household socio-economic status are replicated as correlates of the digital divide in Kigali City. We recommend that the baseline spatial–statistical analysis be applied for spatially-targeted ICT policy interventions and that the dimension of ICT be incorporated in policy making targeting urban inequality.

La medición multidimensional de la pobreza a nivel intraurbano en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua (2012)

El objetivo del artículo es realizar la medición multidimensional de la pobreza a nivel intraurbano en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua en el año 2012. La metodología que aplicó fue la misma que desarrolló Coneval en 2010 para su medición multidimensional de la pobreza a nivel nacional, estatal y municipal. Para poder aplicar la metodología de Coneval a nivel intraurbano se propuso como alternativa la construcción de las unidades de análisis territorial (UTA) mediante una técnica de análisis multivariado. Los resultados permiten identificar las UTA de la ciudad en donde la pobreza se padece con una mayor incidencia, intensidad y profundidad, lo cual es una poderosa herramienta para el diseño de políticas públicas focalizadas en el territorio. Las áreas de la ciudad que se localizan en el poniente y suroriente presentan los mayores rezagos sociales. Una de las principales limitaciones del estudio fue la imposibilidad financiera de ampliar el levantamiento de la encuesta con el objetivo de mejorar la calidad de la estimación.

Districts and networks in the digital generation music scene in Mexico City

ABSTRACTThe identification of aestheticized urban districts with music scenes is a simplification of economic and cultural processes that take place at the metropolitan region and not at the urban district scale. Creative urban districts are a component of larger systems that include diverse consumers from different social classes with diverse tastes, many of whom come from places that are not as glamorous or trendy as hip neighbourhoods. These other urban areas and the producers and consumers of cultural products in those areas tend to be forgotten or dismissed as unimportant. Exploring the spatial patterns of creative clusters at the intra-urban level is relevant for a better understanding of the role of central and peripheral districts in the functioning of these industries. Using social network analysis, this research spatializes Mexico City’s local digital generation music scene and reveals a metropolitan-wide network of venues and bands. Policy implications targeting the network of venues and bands are discussed.

Environmental Health Related Socio-Spatial Inequalities: Identifying "Hotspots" of Environmental Burdens and Social Vulnerability.

Differential exposure to multiple environmental burdens and benefits and their distribution across a population with varying vulnerability can contribute heavily to health inequalities. Particularly relevant are areas with high cumulative burdens and high social vulnerability termed as “hotspots”. This paper develops an index-based approach to assess these multiple burdens and benefits in combination with vulnerability factors at detailed intra-urban level. The method is applied to the city of Dortmund, Germany. Using non-spatial and spatial methods we assessed inequalities and identified “hotspot” areas in the city. We found modest inequalities burdening higher vulnerable groups in Dortmund (CI = −0.020 at p < 0.05). At the detailed intra-urban level, however, inequalities showed strong geographical patterns. Large numbers of “hotspots” exist in the northern part of the city compared to the southern part. A holistic assessment, particularly at a detailed local level, considering both environmental burdens and benefits and their distribution across the population with the different vulnerability, is essential to inform environmental justice debates and to mobilize local stakeholders. Locating “hotspot” areas at this detailed spatial level can serve as a basis to develop interventions that target vulnerable groups to ensure a health conducive equal environment.

Assessing the geoecological functions of the green infrastructure in cities of Canada

An assessment is made of the geoecological functions of the green infrastructure for the cities of Canada by using landscape-basin approach at three spatial levels: regional, intra-urban and local. The study revealed regional and functional differences in the green infrastructure of Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa, and determined the quantitative relationships between territories that have biospheric, recreational, foodproducing and environment-regulation functions. It is shown that the general urban (average according to the spatial scale) level develops many important attributes of configuration of the green infrastructure which come to be intimately linked to the history and modern tendencies of urban development. It is established that for the intra-urban level (Toronto), the large-area elements have the functions of a stabilization of the environment and sustainment of biodiversity, whereas area-limited fragments most often serve as recreational places of the public nearest access. We calculated the proportion of the urban area corresponding to different (according to the functions of runoff formation) types of catchment units; almost one-third of the area is represented by catchment units with no permanent streams or with a transformed drainage system. It is found that the highest percentage of forest land corresponds to the downstream portions of river basins and to areas along valleys, whereas these indicators are much lower in the upstream regions and near drainage divides. It is established that there is almost no correlation between the size of the runoff cell and its percentage of forest land and the degree of development.

Intra-urban patterns of creative industries in polycentric city

Abstract The principal objective of this paper is to evaluate the spatial patterns of creative industries in a micro-geographic perspective. As the creative industries represent a highly heterogeneous complex, only selected creative industries were studied (culture, marketing and advertising, printing, publishing, architecture). The polycentric industrial city of Ostrava was chosen as the surveyed area. Various spatial statistical methods (e.g. nearest neighbour analysis, kernel density estimation) were applied for the needs of assessment. The results show that spatial patterns of creative industries at intra-urban level do not vary significantly from their counterparts in Western Europe. Despite the fact that Ostrava is highly industrialized polycentric city with relatively weak position of the city centre, creative industries are highly concentrated into the historical city centre and the inner city.