Loss Of City Research Articles

Water scarcity in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia (SA) is one of the world's arid, most water-scarce nations without permanent water resources. The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive overview of Saudi Arabia's water resources availability and reliability in terms of water supply, demand, and the major challenges that water faces. Saudi has an annual water supply of roughly 89.5 m3 per person as consumption is rising in parallel with the country's rapid population growth and development. SA produces the most desalinated seawater in the world, accounting for 22% of worldwide consumption. Due to changes in agricultural demand, Saudi Arabia's overall water needs in 2020 were 15.98 BCM. Apart from agricultural use, the food industry utilizes up to 80% of freshwater supplies, with only around 20% of rain recharging the aquifer, meaning that the region will still be water-stressed by 2025. In addition to wastewater reuse, water expenses should be split between private investors and the government, and water losses in cities should be collected and recycled. Water development projects must also be safeguarded and have long-term viability for the community's future and well-being. Despite previous conservation efforts (public awareness campaigns, television and other public media messages, drip irrigation, and so on), more work is required, including improving water resource infrastructure, implementing environmental use of friendly technologies, and increasing economic feasibility, social acceptability, and management in light of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Rapid spatial growth of cities and its planning implications for developing countries: a case study of Abuja, Nigeria.

Accelerated spatial growth of urban areas is a key driver to land use/land cover change with its concomitant effect on environmental sustainability. The dearth of data on the rate of urban expansion, especially in many developing countries, including Nigeria has continued to hinder effective land use planning and sustainable development. The study aims to identify and analyze the settlement patterns and trends in urban growth at ten years intervals and their planning implications in Abuja, Nigeria. It relied on data generated via remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems to create the map and examine the land cover change in the study area. Classification of land cover using LANDSAT data and land cover transitions for 29 years (1990 to 2019) were mapped and the net land cover change was computed. The results showed the settlement pattern and an increase in the urban built-up area ranging from 1.8% in 1990 to 19.3% in 2019. The dispersion pattern revealed a large concentration of the built-up spaces to be in the eastern region and that the expansion continued from east to south and south-west. The bare land cover types were found to have increased while vegetation land cover decreased rapidly by 30.4% from 1990-2019. The study recommends the need for city planners to decentralize urban planning and development control with adequate provision of affordable urban facilities at the peripheries of cities in Nigeria. Furthermore, massive integration of green infrastructure in built-up areas is required to mitigate the effects of vegetation loss in cities.

Envisioning carbon-smart and just urban green infrastructure

To address the inter-connected climate and biodiversity crises, it is crucial to understand how multifunctional urban green infrastructure (UGI) is perceived to contribute to carbon neutrality, biodiversity, human well-being, and justice outcomes in cities. We explore how urban residents, including youth, associate carbon-related meanings with multifunctional UGI and how these meanings relate to co-benefits to biodiversity, well-being, and broader sustainability outcomes. Our findings are based on a survey distributed among urban residents of Helsinki, Finland (n = 487) and reveal how carbon-related meanings of UGI manifest at different levels of abstraction, agency, and scale, and incorporate community values and concerns attributed to the planning, features, functions, and transformational dimensions of UGI. Core carbon-related meanings of UGI emphasize either actions towards sustainability, carbon neutrality, biodiversity, or unfamiliarity towards such meanings. Perceived justice concerns and the socio-demographic contexts of the respondents covaried with carbon-related meanings associated with UGI. The results illustrate community perceptions of how it is not only possible, but rather expected, that multifunctional UGI is harnessed to tackle climate change, human well-being, and biodiversity loss in cities. Challenges for implementing the carbon-related benefits of UGI include navigating the different expectations placed on UGI and including residents with diverse socio-economic backgrounds during the process. Our findings contribute to a holistic understanding of how multifunctional UGI can help bridge policy agendas related to carbon neutrality, biodiversity protection, and human well-being that cities can implement when aiming for sustainable, just, and socially acceptable transitions towards a good Anthropocene.

Understanding patterns of internal migration during the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain.

Existing empirical work has analysed the impacts of COVID‐19 on mortality, fertility and international migration. Less is known about the ways in which the COVID‐19 pandemic has influenced the patterns of internal migration. Anecdotal reports of mass migration from large cities to less populated areas have emerged, but lack of data has prevented empirically assessing this hypothesis. Drawing on geographically granular administrative population register data, we aim to analyse the extent of change in the patterns of internal migration across the urban hierarchy in Spain during 2020. Our results show a decline of 2.5% in the number of internal migration moves, particularly during the early stages of the pandemic, returning to pre‐pandemic levels in late 2020. Results also reveal unusually large net migration losses in core cities and net migration gains in rural areas. Net migration losses in cities and gains in rural areas particularly accumulated following the elimination of the strict lockdown measures in June. Yet, these net losses and gains trended to pre‐pandemic levels in late 2020, and movements between cities, and between cities and suburbs, continued to dominate the internal migration system. Thus, while the COVID‐19 pandemic exerted notable changes in the geographic balance of internal migration flows, these changes appear to have been temporary and did not significantly alter the existing structures of the national migration system.

Regional tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic: Losses, missed opportunities and new developments for the tourism industry

As a result of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism, as one of the branches of many national economies, has suffered heavy losses both nationally and regionally. The pandemic as a global phenomenon is bound to change tourism, at least for some time to come. Therefore, questions arise about the nature of these changes and how deep they will be. The aim of the article is to show that for Podkarpackie Province in Poland, the COVID-19 pandemic, apart from the obvious negative consequences for the tourism industry, has also brought new development opportunities. The analyses presented here are based on a survey conducted among 948 adult respondents in 10 different locations within three districts between 15 and 30 August 2020. The analysis showed that during the pandemic, nature-related travel and active tourism, as well as trips aimed at health recovery were in high demand. Ensuring health and safety on holidays became a priority. Therefore, a concentration of tourism was observed in selected domestic destinations, usually in areas not associated with tourism (e.g. rural areas). In the future, this may create opportunities for a revival of local tourism. In contrast, the tourism industry suffered its greatest losses in cities; business and event tourism lost out, and there was a significant drop in revenue from both domestic and foreign tourists. These results indicate the negative effects of the pandemic, but also show new development opportunities. No one knows how long COVID-19 will continue, so the conclusions may be useful both for entrepreneurs preparing their tourist offers in the coming years, and institutions responsible for regional tourism policy.

Urbanisation drivers and underlying mechanisms of terrestrial insect diversity loss in cities

1. Urbanisation is one of the main land‐use changes behind global insect collapse. Despite that previous studies have described the negative effects of urbanisation on insect communities, so far there is no synthesis that considers multiple urban drivers, their combined effects, and the role of species traits altogether.2. Here we developed an integrative framework of the underlying mechanisms behind terrestrial insect species loss in cities by exploring five leading drivers: impervious surfaces, habitat fragmentation, urban heat island, pollution, and exotic plants. For each driver, we identified the main direct and indirect (mediated through species interactions or changes in resources) effects on insect populations and communities, emphasising the role of species traits as moderators of such effects.3. Body size, mobility, and oviposition/nesting requirements were the traits that frequently defined insect vulnerability to urban drivers. Urban heat island and pollution deserve further research from a community‐level approach. Direct effects of drivers dominated the literature, while most indirect paths were mediated by changes in resources rather than species interactions.4. In conclusion, our review showed the challenges of recognising particular effects and mechanisms for each urban driver and their combined effects. By doing so, we intended to encourage researchers to address some of the gaps we noticed in order to fully understand how urbanisation is affecting insect communities. Finally, we outlined the main recent urban planning strategies and future challenges in order to successfully conserve urban insect biodiversity.

A City With Vanishing Ambience: Virtual Architecture And Education To Help Repair Novokuznetsk’s Glory

Тhe article proposes an interdisciplinary approach to solving the problem of the prospects of individual cities of the Siberian region. On the basis of culturological material, with the involvement of research in the field of architecture, the author analyzes the reasons for the loss of the city of Novokuznetsk of its former representative appearance. Among the factors that contributed to the city's loss of the status of a convenient, comfortable place to live, along with the economic and environmental components, the city's atmosphere, created, among other things, by the architectural landscape, stands out. Despite the fact that urban architecture still has undoubted attractiveness against the background of nearby cities, and Novokuznetsk has, so to speak, its own “face”, nevertheless, some important “traces” in the cultural and historical heritage have been lost today. Thus, the article makes an excursion into the cultural and historical past of the southern capital of Kuzbass, which makes it possible to draw a conclusion about its worthy cultural potential, which can become the basis for the revival of its former glory and outline the prospects for further development. On the basis of research in the field of architecture and pedagogy, the possibility of in the architectural atmosphere of the lost monuments of architecture in order to develop the ambient environment of the city is substantiated and a comprehensive model of such restoration by means of modern technologies is proposed. The concept of virtual architecture proposed by the authors of the article is interesting from the point of view of its contribution not only to local history, but also as one of the attractive, relevant and understandable for modern youth ways of immersion in the history and modern life of their city, cultural and educational leisure. The study, in general, outlines the development of one of the most relevant today multidisciplinary scientific areas at the intersection of pedagogy, cultural studies and architecture, contributing to the solution of a number of both theoretical and applied problems.

A WebGIS-Based System for Urban Stormwater Risk Analysis Using a Cloud Matter-Element Model

The interaction of human activity, climate change, and urbanization gives rise to more frequent urban stormwater disasters, which causes great economic loss in cities. This article presents a prototype of an interactive WebGIS system for urban stormwater risk analysis. The system has a Browse/Server(B/S) structure and uses WebGIS techniques for prototype development. It is based on the theory of disaster system and Cloud matter-element model for risk assessment. The risk results are immediately generated and visualized interactively by rendering risk maps. Finally, two urban stormwater events in Nanjing in 2015 and 2016 were selected to verify the accuracy of the risk assessment. The results show that the intelligence system can effectively assess the risk level and identify the spatial-temporal distribution of urban stormwater risk in Nanjing, China.

Do Industrial Preservation Policies Protect and Promote Urban Industrial Activity?

Problem, research strategy, and findings: In recent years, several major cities have implemented industrial preservation policies to attract and retain industrial uses after facing acute pressures to rezone often centrally located industrial land to “higher and better” uses. Minimal research to date, however, has examined how effective industrial preservation policies have been at protecting and promoting urban industrial activity. In this study, we ask how New York City’s (NY) Industrial Business Zone (IBZ) program affected four measures of urban industrial activity—industrial business registrations, industrial employment, industrial building permits, and industrial land—in IBZs in New York City. We benchmark our results against a comparison group established using propensity score matching. We find that the IBZ program had a significant impact on retaining industrial land in IBZs but that it did not have a significant impact on promoting new industrial business registrations, employment, or building permits in IBZs.Takeaway for practice: Our research provides evidence of how various measures of urban industrial activity change following the designation of an industrial preservation policy. This research suggests that industrial preservation policies can be an effective tool to stem urban industrial land losses in cities facing land use conversion pressures, but that such policies need to create more robust linkages with economic development planning objectives. In the interest of continuing to protect middle-class industrial job opportunities in central cities, planners and practitioners should consider how to strengthen ties between physical land use planning and economic development planning.

Optimisation of heat loss in cities in different climatic zones in a Mediterranean climate

Optimisation of heat loss in cities in different climatic zones in a Mediterranean climate

Reviewing the past, present and potential lizard faunas of New Zealand cities

Cities and urban processes typically have a negative impact on biodiversity via land cover change, high rates of disturbance and high densities of pest species. Increasingly, however, people are being encouraged and empowered to reduce these impacts through urban restoration and backyard conservation initiatives. Internationally, lizards are a common feature of urban biodiversity, but in New Zealand where many species are threatened, little is known about populations of native skinks and geckos in cities. Yet cities may offer unique opportunities for lizard conservation compared with alternatively modified habitats. To explore the potential of cities for the conservation of lizards, we collated knowledge about the current lizard faunas of six New Zealand cities and developed a list of species that would likely have been present in the locations of these cities prior to human settlement. Comparing the two, we found that, although each of the cities has at least one currently urban-dwelling species, the diversity of lizards in all of the cities has declined dramatically since human colonisation. Patterns of species loss in cities reflect those observed across New Zealand more generally; that is, the loss of large-bodied skinks and geckos, probably resulting from predation by introduced mammalian predators, as well as the loss of regionally endemic species. The high diversity of species that are currently, or were historically, present in the locations of New Zealand cities means that urban restoration involving recovery or reintroduction of populations could have significant benefits for lizard conservation and advocacy.

Human health impact and economic effect for PM2.5 exposure in typical cities

Cities have been suffering from severe air pollution for decades due to intensive energy related production and consumption activities. Exposure to hazardous PM2.5 would not only trigger human health impact, but also result in an economic loss for both society and individual. In this study, the PM2.5-related health impact and corresponding economic loss are assessed in typical cities from north part of China. In these cities, huge amount of energy is consumed for space heating during the cold days, which has been proven to be the major contributor to PM2.5 emissions. Considering the remarkable difference of space heating utilization and average PM2.5 concentration, the study examines the health and welfare impact of PM2.5 exposure in both winter season and summer season from 2013 to 2016. Adjusted human capital method and the cost of illness are applied to assess the economic loss of premature death and medical expenses on PM2.5-related diseases, respectively. Welfare loss is proposed to quantify the financial damages caused by PM2.5 to the individual, which is calculated based on the proportion of health care expenses in disposable personal income. The results show that the number of cases for PM2.5-related mortality and morbidity during the winter season is about three times as much as that in summer season in 28 cities. If the annual average PM2.5 concentration has decreased from the current polluted condition to 35 μg/m3 (national health standard), about 16.46 billion Yuan, 0.54% of gross domestic product in 28 cities can be saved annually during the study period. The welfare loss in cities of provincial capital is obviously higher than other cities from the same province, which is associated with the higher consumption level and living quality of capital cities. Moreover, patients requiring hospital admission from rural household are more likely to be impoverished than that from urban household, which aggravates the economic burden of rural residents to recover from the suffer of PM2.5-related diseases. Estimation of the health impact and economic losses for the society and individual represent an integral part of a full analysis of the consequences of PM2.5 exposure to human beings, which can provide some insightful observations for policy makers to keep the social equality, welfare and environment conservation.

Idiosyncrasies in cities: evaluating patterns and drivers of ant biodiversity along urbanization gradients

Abstract Urbanization is expected to reduce biodiversity. However, an increasing number of studies report urban biodiversity comparable to that of surrounding nonurban areas, leaving open the question: what maintains biodiversity in cities? We characterized patterns of ant biodiversity across urbanization gradients of three major cities in the Midwestern United States and evaluated the support for two mechanisms underlying the maintenance of biodiversity in cities, specifically via introduced non-native species and differential phenology of communities along each urbanization gradient. We observed idiosyncrasies in ant species diversity such that each city displayed either increased, decreased or no change in biodiversity across the urbanization gradient. We found partial support (one of the three cities) for the hypothesis that non-native species can contribute positively to overall species diversity in cities, though even with introduced species removed from consideration, native ant biodiversity was maintained along the urbanization gradient. We found no support for systematic differential phenology across urbanization gradients, although species diversity did vary over time across all sites. Our results further challenge the assumption of biodiversity loss in cities, as two of our three cities exhibited maintained species diversity along the urbanization gradient. Most importantly, our study demonstrates that urban biodiversity can be maintained entirely by native communities.

Prevalence and compatibility of high risk factors of perinatal losses in the cities of Azerbaijan

Aim. To conduct a comparative assessment of the prevalence and compatibility of high risk factors of perinatal losses in various cities of Azerbaijan.Methods. The study was conducted by continuous coverage of all cases of completed pregnancies at gestational age after 12 full weeks. The women were divided into groups according to age, the counting number of pregnancy and childbirth, birth-spacing interval. Sample size was 6544 cases in the city Sumgait, 4930 in the city of Ganja, in the city of Shirvan 2066.Results.In the city of Sumgait, the proportion of childbirths before the age of 18 years was 0.3±0.07%. In Ganja, this figure was higher by more than 19 times (5.9±0.34%). In the provincial city of Shirvan, proportion of childbirths before the age of 18 years (13.0±0.74%) was higher by more than 43 times in comparison with Sumgait, and 2.2 times more than in Ganja. 5.0±0.27% of childbirths in Sumgait, 6.8±0.36% in Ganja and 7.7±0.59% in Shirvan were registered in women older than 34 years. The differences in indicators between Sumgait and Ganja, Sumgait and Shirvan are statistically significant (pConclusion. The compatibility and prevalence of the high risk factors of perinatal losses have regional characteristics that should be considered when planning preventive measures and monitoring.

Remembering Allan Sekula (1951–2013)

Having just recently returned from a rare visit to Los Angeles, and wondering about the city's loss of Michael Asher and Allan Sekula in the past year and a half, I was suddenly struck by the idea that these artists must have made gargantuan efforts in that environment on a daily—if not hourly—basis to sustain their conviction in the viability of their practices. After all, the near-total erasure of any remnant of conventional structures of subjectivity and the dissolution of even the last residual spatial forms of the public sphere could hardly reach a more decisive state.

Can urban consolidation limit local biodiversity erosion? Responses from carabid beetle and spider assemblages in Western France

During the last decades, urban consolidation has been developed to minimize spatial expansion of cities, yet very few studies investigated whether it would actually reduce some negative effects of urbanization on biodiversity. In this study, we compared the invertebrate assemblages associated with two distinct urban forms (compact vs. conventional), focusing on two arthropod taxa often used as bioindicators, and dominant in urban habitats: spiders and carabid beetles. The following parameters were estimated: assemblage composition, species richness, activity-density total, per species (excluding seldom-recorded species) and per size class. The field collection was performed in 2009 using pitfall traps randomly set in hedgerows within 6 sites (representing 251 traps). A total of 4,413 spiders belonging to 117 species and 2,077 adult carabid beetles belonging to 39 species were collected. We found few significant differences in carabid beetle and spider assemblages between the two urban forms. The species richness of both groups was independent from the neighborhood design. Only four species of carabid beetles and ten of spiders significantly reacted to the neighborhood design, and no difference was found among the two designs for all other species. Large carabid beetles were more abundant and small spiders less abundant in the new neighborhood design compared to the conventional one. For both carabid beetles and spiders, no difference in assemblage composition was found between neighborhood designs. We therefore conclude that urban consolidation, by permitting a higher human density with similar arthropod assemblages, could contribute to reduce biodiversity loss in cities.

A percepção da mudança: os registros na cidade de Goiás

Este artigo discute a relação existente entre acontecimento e indivíduo, na perspectiva de uma história das sensibilidades. Parte-se do pressuposto de que as expressões a respeito dos fatos ajudam a elucidá-los. O acontecimento eleito é a transferência da capital goiana, na década de 1930, avaliado a partir das manifestações dos moradores da antiga sede administrativa, registradas nos periódicos de circulação local. A mudança do centro de poder da Cidade de Goiás para Goiânia provoca reações aos destituídos dessa condição, que demonstram o ressentimento pela perda, mas também resignação e otimismo pela criação de alternativas ao desfecho consolidado. Diante de tais registros, verifica-se a forma urbana da Cidade de Goiás como elemento de confrontação às percepções expostas.

Crimes and Crime Dispersion in Urban Areas in Turkey

Crimes and Crime Dispersion in Urban Areas in Turkey Crime is a phenomenon that arises from the interaction between social, political, economic, physical, psychological circumstances and geographical factors. Since crime occurs in geographical locations, the relationship between crime and location is worth discussing characteristics of a location occur in differents ways. Not only natural geographical factors but also human geographical factors may lead to crime. In this study, the situation, distribution of crimes in the cities which are in the police service zone are dealt with. In addition to crime dispersion in the cities and crimes committed to people and property, crimes committed by month is also studied. In this context, it is seen that since city centres are composed of dense population and urban functions, they feed crime, social control weakens in those areas and they create opportunities for criminals. This causes weakness in society and social capital apart from economic losses in cities. The number of crime incidents, which was 229,513 in 1995, in Turkey, has risen to 785,510 in 2006 with a 3.4 fold increase. 41% of the crimes which were committed in the year of 2006 were against people, 59% were against property.

Encountering and Overcoming Small-City Problems

During the nineteenth century, Bremen enhanced its economic viability through a series of engineering feats, but struggled with the social problems brought on by urban growth. The most notable technical challenge was maintaining access to the North Sea and Atlantic via the silt-prone Weser River. Through the purchase of land for an outport (Bremerhaven) and a series of dredging operations headed by Ludwig Franzius, Bremen was able to preserve its position as a viable northern European port. But as the city's population grew, it proved less capable in dealing with the social and political challenges associated with urban growth. Its quasi-feudal political structure, which insulated elites from democratic pressures, made it difficult for the city to address housing and other social issues. Demands from the Social Democratic Party and other reformers ultimately undermined the city's elite and contributed to the city's loss of autonomy during the twentieth century.

Population shifts and local democratic representation in Eastern Germany

The shift to market forces in East Germany has fundamentally reconfigured its social and economic geography. In particular, spatial inequalities between localities and regions have re-emerged forcefully in response to new values, expectations and preferences. Increased mobility through private transport, changing job opportunities, educational choices and desire for new housing qualities have inter alia created new parameters for the population's lives. The responses i.a. in the form of migration have altered demographic structures and spatial patterns of the population considerably, often varying significantly over relatively short distances within and between regions. After initial population losses generally through outmigration from East to West Germany, population losses in cities occurred in favour of suburban areas, and rural depopulation in favour of the cities; creating a highly differentiated basis for future development through new urban-rural contrasts and differences between urban regions. This paper will outline some of these processes and demonstrate their effects on the already-considerable inequalities inherited from communism. Attention will also be given to the effects of changing population structures and patterns on local government and the future prospects for an indigenously supported, sustainable economic development for regions and the likely pathways of transformation and adjustment.