City Pairs Research Articles

Re-Examination of Quality of Life Indicators in US - Mexico Border Cities: a Critical Review

This paper explores quality of life (QoL) in the US–Mexico Border region by revisiting The Border Observatory Project (BOP). The BOP collected and analyzed survey-response data derived from four pairs of border sister cities (Mexicali, Baja and Calexico, California; San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora and San Luis/Somerton, Arizona; Juarez, Chihuahua and El Paso, Texas; Tijuana, Baja and San Diego, California) over time. This paper adds to the literature on QoL by identifying the social and QoL indicators particularly pertinent to U.S.–Mexico border cities and significant differences between cities. The BOP and recent literature on U.S.-Mexico border QoL and social indicators are described and leveraged to propose a border-rooted bi-national, multi-community, and multi-indicator social indicators framework for use in future QoL and social indicator studies regarding border cities. The commentary and proposed framework in this paper help inform future research, policy, and practice concerning residents and migrants found in border communities.

Pre-flight rerouting combining A∗ algorithm and AHP under severe weather

Delays due to bad weather have become common in recent years.When the delay occurs, in most cases, flights will choose ground-holding which results in the waste of airspace resources and reduces the operating efficiency of the entire air route network. In order to deepen the reform of the ATC operations, local rerouting strategy before flight is imperative. In this paper, based on the influence degree and scope of severe weather, historical meteorological data and flight plan data, the damage situation of the air route is comprehensively analyzed, and the segment that pilots need to avoid in route selection is defined. Taking the priority of different city pairs into consideration, the OD pair allocation order model based on AHP (analytic hierarchy process) was established. In addition, this paper establishes the evaluation index of navigation modification combined with the actual operation, and makes a comparative analysis with an example.

Directional dependence between major cities in China based on copula regression on air pollution measurements.

Air pollution is well-known as a major risk to public health, causing various diseases including pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases. As social concern increases, the amount of air pollution data is increasing rapidly. The purpose of this study is to statistically characterize dependence between major cities in China based on a measure of directional dependence estimated from PM2.5 measurements. As a measure of the directional dependence, we propose the so-called copula directional dependence (CDD) using beta regression models. An advantage of the CDD is that it does not rely on strict assumptions of specific probability distributions or linearity. We used hourly PM2.5 measurement data collected at four major cities in China: Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Shanghai, from 2013 to 2017. After accounting for autocorrelation in the PM2.5 time series via nonlinear autoregressive models, CDDs between the four cities were estimated to produce directed network structures of statistical dependence. In addition, a statistical method was proposed to test the directionality of dependence between each pair of cities. From the PM2.5 data, we could discover that Chengdu and Guangzhou are the most closely related cities and that the directionality between them has changed once during 2013 to 2017, which implies a major economic or environmental change in these Chinese regions.

Place niche and its regional variability: Measuring spatial context patterns for points of interest with representation learning

In the built environment, places such as retail outlets and public sites are embedded in the spatial context formed by neighboring places. We define the sets of these symbiotic places in the proximity of a focal place as the place's “place niche”, which conceptually represents the features of the local environment. While current literature has focused on pairwise spatial colocation patterns, we represent the niche as an integrated feature for each type of place, and quantify the niches' variation across cities. Here, with point of interest (POI) data as an approximation of places in cities, we propose representation learning models to explore place niche patterns. The models generate two main outputs: first, distributed representations for place niche by POI category (e.g. Restaurant, Museum, Park) in a latent vector space, where close vectors represent similar niches; and second, conditional probabilities of POI appearance of each place type in the proximity of a focal POI. With a case study using Yelp data in four U.S. cities, we reveal spatial context patterns and find that some POI categories have more unique surroundings than others. We also demonstrate that niche patterns are strong indicators of the function of POI categories in Phoenix and Las Vegas, but not in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Moreover, we find that niche patterns of more commercialized categories tend to have less regional variation than others, and the city-level niche-pattern changes for POI categories are generally similar only between certain city pairs. By exploring patterns for place niche, we not only produce geographical knowledge for business location choice and urban policymaking, but also demonstrate the potential and limitations of using spatial context patterns for GIScience tasks such as information retrieval and place recommendation.

Benchmarking the sustainability of urban energy, water and environment systems and envisioning a cross-sectoral scenario for the future

Urban areas provide strategic settings for attaining more sustainable urban systems. This paper provides fivefold contributions to the literature based on the Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems City Index. A comprehensive benchmarking of 120 cities is undertaken of which the first three cities are found to be Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Helsinki. Uncertainty and sensitivity analyses are conducted by comparing the original ranking with those based on Monte Carlo simulations and three aggregation schemes with and without the use of the geometric mean. The ranking of cities that take place in the 95% confidence interval and strong coefficients of correlation are found to suggest aspects of index robustness. As the third contribution, a scenario that represents the cross-sectoral strategy of utilizing residual energy in the urban vicinity from the industry, thermal power generation, wastewater, and urban biowaste is applied to 60 cities. The integration of data from the Pan-European Thermal Atlas provides additional practical value to local decision-makers who can assess possible improvements in city performance through such an approach. Fourth, 13 city pairs of 3 or more cities with the same above or below average performances across the dimensions of the index are identified as another means of supporting policy-learning opportunities. The fifth contribution synthesizes the original results of the research work to discuss the need for integrated urban transitions and proposes a vision for cities to envision the sustainable development of urban energy, water and environment systems. The research work provides analytical support to cities in a time when local actors are tasked with a mission that is nothing less than leading the transition to net-zero emissions by mid-century.

Institucionalidades do sistema de proteção social em linhas de frontera: experiência metodológica e resultados obtidos

Este texto apresenta o processo metodológico e os principais resultados de uma avaliação realizada para o Instituto Social do MERCOSUL (ISM) sobre os sistemas de proteção social em seis pares de cidades-gêmeas situadas nas fronteiras dos países do Mercado Comum do Sul (MERCOSUL). Com este intuito foram resgatadas informações sobre os dispositivos jurídicos e político-administrativos do MERCOSUL e Estados Parte, serviços, ações programáticas e demandas locais abrangendo os setores saúde, previdência social, educação e assistência social, cujos indicadores impactam negativamente as áreas de fronteiras internacionais do MERCOSUL. Em termos metodológicos utilizou-se a abordagem construída pela Comissão Econômica para América Latina e o Caribe para avaliar a institucionalidade das políticas sociais, a qual assinala quatro dimensões que concretiam o nível de cidadania em espaços regionais, nacionais e locais – a jurídico-normativa, organizacional, técnico-operativa e fiscal. Os resultados apontam em relação à dimensão jurídico-administrativa a lentidão na concretização das normativas e de acordos bilaterais entre os Estados Parte. Sobre a dimensão orgânico-ministerial destaca-se a forma distinta de organização pública nacional na proteção social nos países do bloco. Na dimensão substantiva as controvérsias em relação aos critérios de acesso de nacionais e não nacionais aos serviços no campo da saúde e proteção social foram frequentes, o que sinaliza para a divergência entre os gestores quanto ao grau de universalidade a ser obtido. Conclui-se que a abordagem metodológica utilizada favoreceu a construção do diagnóstico proposto favorecendo a elaboração de um plano de ação para superar os desafios identificados.

Economic Impact of the High-Speed Railway on Housing Prices in China

This study investigated whether and to what extent does the High-Speed Railway (HSR) affect city-level housing prices. With the data of HSR operation and housing prices from 285 cities from 2009 to 2017, the paper aimed to estimate the quantitative relationship between HSR and city-level housing prices and exploited city and regional dummy variables to assess the disparities between regions, followed by the economic effects between typical city pairs. Our findings were as follows: (1) The introduction of HSR leads to a 13.9% increase in city-level housing prices, and the figures for national central cities and regional central cities were 31.7% and 19.6%, respectively; (2) regional imbalance was mitigated with the development of the HSR, and some central cities in underdeveloped regions were stimulated with regard to housing price growth; (3) siphon effects and diffusion effects were observed in megacity–small city pairs, while synergistic effects often lay in megacity–megacity pairs, and such effects all tended to be more significant with increases in the number of HSR lines and a drop in the travel time.

The spatial distribution of US cities

In this paper, we consider the distribution of bilateral distances between all pairs of cities to estimate K-densities using the methodology by Duranton and Overman (2005), identifying different spatial patterns. By using data from different definitions of US cities in 2010 (places, urban areas, and core-based statistical areas), we analyse the spatial distribution of cities, finding significant patterns of dispersion depending on the city size and city definition. Our results lend support to a hierarchical system of US cities in which the central cities of each subsystem are far away from each other.

Effects of Descent Flight-Path Angle on Fuel Consumption of Commercial Aircraft

In this study, the effects of the flight-path angle (FPA) ranging between 1.0 and 4.5 deg during a continuous descent approach, on certain fuel-related parameters such as fuel flow, fuel burn per 1000 ft of altitude, and specific range, are investigated. The dataset, obtained from Turkish Airlines, includes 4384 eligible flight data records of narrow-bodied commercial aircraft performing 9351 domestic flights between 30 city pairs, across Turkey. The results indicate that the fuel flow is a strong linear function of FPA up to 2.5–3.0 deg for all of the aircraft types, whereas the effect diminishes above 3.0 deg. There is a monotonic decrease of the fuel burn per 1000 ft of altitude with an increase in the FPA, with the trend being stronger than that for fuel flow. Even though the fuel consumption of the descent flight significantly decreases with steeper FPAs, the effect of the FPA on the total fuel consumption of the flight seems not as straightforward as it does when considering only the descent phase. A case study based on this model indicates a U-shaped pattern for total fuel burn with an increase in the FPA, in which the highest fuel saving relative to 1.0 deg of the FPA is calculated to be 14.0% (191 kg) at 2.5 deg of the FPA.

Understanding real estate price dynamics: The case of housing prices in five major cities of China✰

The developing technology of wavelet analysis offers a valuable tool in mitigating many of the limitations of earlier studies of housing price dynamics. This paper applies wavelet analysis to five first-tier cities in China to study housing price changes over time, to decompose housing prices into their trend and cycle components, and to explore co-movement and lead-lag relationships among these cities. We find the average cycle for all five cities to be 3.25 years, which is much shorter than the housing cycles observed in the United States. When we examine the cyclical lead-lag relationships among these cities, we find that during the 2008–2011 period, Shenzhen led Beijing, which led Guangzhou, which led Shanghai, and finally Tianjin followed. However, during the 2011–2014 period, the lead-lag relationships changed to Tianjin leading Shenzhen, then Shanghai, then Beijing, and finally Guangzhou. Although we generally observe a strong co-movement among the city pairs, the co-movement between Tianjin and each of the remaining four cities is weak. The weaker correlation between Tianjin and other cities indicates that real estate investors in these other four cities can improve their risk-return performance by adding Tianjin properties to their portfolios.

Cashable Value: Social Capital and Practical Habits in the Analysis of Collaborative Cross-Border Economic Development

ABSTRACTToday’s climate of heightened border security has intensified a key challenge found on border regions: coordination across institutional regimes. For 30 years or more a popular concept for explaining groups’ abilities to handle such challenges has been social capital and its variants, such as collective efficacy. While in many respects useful, these concepts are hindered in their explanatory power due to the lack of precision in their definition and a misplaced analogy of group capacities to capital stocks. This paper therefore takes a dissenting view from the special issue’s premise that questions of cross-border collaboration are fully amenable to a social capital-based framework. Rather, it aims to contribute to the borderlands studies research community’s tools for moving beyond some widely-acknowledged limitations to social capital frameworks by introducing complementary concepts and methods that emerge from an historical ethnography of two US-Mexico border city pairs whose economic fortunes diverged after the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Although capital stocks cannot account for this divergence, local practices and habits of business and political elites’ policy implementation do, suggesting that researchers interested in these topics need to broaden their methods and concepts to help deal with the contradictory challenges of liberalized commerce and heightened security that today’s border regions face.

Managing Regional Impacts of Trade Liberalization: Informal Practices and Collaborative Economic Development on the U.S.–Mexico Border

How can local actors manage the regional-level impacts of trade liberalization? Most scholarship focuses on how given endowments, such as geographic location and existing industries, affect the local economic impacts of these contentious policies. This study considers local actors’ room for maneuver by focusing on a controlled case comparison of two city pairs along the Texas–Mexico border. These city pairs possessed very similar resource endowments and formal institutions prior to the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, but diverged dramatically afterward in their economic growth patterns. A detailed comparison of policy implementation reveals that distinct local informal institutions were a key source of their economic divergence. The identification of the role of these “repertoires” of unwritten local habits and practices underscores the potential impact of collaborative efforts on long-term economic outcomes while adding to our understanding of the basis on which such collaborations are built.

Novel Distance Estimation Methods Using “Stochastic Learning on the Line” Strategies

In this paper, we consider the problem of Distance Estimation (DE) when the inputs are the $x$ and $y$ coordinates (or equivalently, the latitudinal and longitudinal positions) of the points under consideration. The aim of the problem is to yield an accurate value for the real (road) distance between the points specified by the latter coordinates. 1 This problem has, typically, been tackled by utilizing parametric functions called the “Distance Estimation Functions” (DEFs). The parameters are learned from the training data (i.e., the true road distances) between a subset of the points under consideration. We propose to use Learning Automata (LA)-based strategies to solve the problem. In particular, we resort to the adaptive tertiary search (ATS) strategy, proposed by Oommen et al. , to affect the learning. By utilizing the information provided in the coordinates of the nodes and the true distances from this subset , we propose a scheme to estimate the inter-nodal distances. In this regard, we use the ATS strategy to calculate the best parameters for the DEF. Traditionally, the parameters of the DEF are determined by minimizing an appropriate “Goodness-of-Fit” (GoF) function. As opposed to this, the ATS uses the current estimate of the distances, the feedback from the Environment, and the set of known distances, to determine the unknown parameters of the DEF. While the goodness-of-fit functions can be used to show that the results are competitive, our research shows that they are rather not necessary to compute the parameters themselves. The results that we have obtained using artificial and real-life data sets demonstrate the power of the scheme, and also validate our hypothesis that we can completely move away from the GoF-based paradigm that has been used for four decades. Based on the latter results, the paper also suggests a completely novel method by which we can extend the traditionally-studied DE problem where the road distances were, typically, estimated using only the $x$ and $y$ coordinates (or equivalently, the latitudinal and longitudinal positions). In such a generalized model, we hypothesize that one can also provide to the system the additional $z$ coordinate, that represents the height or elevation of the subset of nodes and of the cities whose inter-city distance is to be estimated. The results for this generalized model are currently being compiled into a companion paper. 1 [1] This is a typical problem encountered in a Geographic Information System (GIS), or in a GPS. However, unlike the traditional systems where all the inter-city distances are assumed to be stored, in our setting, the distance between any pair of cities is assumed to be computed by merely having access to a small subset of known inter-city distances.

Direct to your destination: the size, scope and competitive status of express coach carriers in the United States

The advent of express coach bus lines offering guaranteed seating and emphasizing curbside pickup and drop-off is contributing to a revival in intercity bus travel in the United States. Relatively little is known, however, about the scale and geographic scope of these carriers or the competitive landscape in which they operate. To fill this void, this study evaluates the service networks operated by the two largest express coach operators in the country, BoltBus and Megabus, and evaluates a data set of 4775 fares sold on megabus.com. The results show that these carriers cumulatively serve 127 intercity segments and operate about 52.9 million bus miles per year. Together, these carriers have grown to about one third of the size of Amtrak, with Megabus and BoltBus providing 3.3 billion and .69 billion seat miles of service, respectively, compared to Amtrak’s 12.8 billion. With respect to the types of routes it serves and the competition it faces, Megabus has evolved into a carrier quite different than Boltbus; more than one third of Megabus’ bus miles are operated on segments without Amtrak service, while virtually all of BoltBus’ miles face this competition. The analysis of Megabus’ pricing shows that fares rise modestly within 2 weeks of departure, while the per-mile costs are much less ($.08/mile) for 300–399 mile trips than for those 50–99 miles ($.22/mile). Nevertheless, the dispersion of fares tends to fall as the departure date nears, regardless of distance. Together, these prominent bus lines serve 66 of the 100 most heavily traveled U.S. city pairs that have characteristics suitable for intercity bus service—which is more than Amtrak. With further growth on the horizon, planners, federal regulators, and researchers should collaborate on establishing reporting requirements for this expanding sector.

Geometrical distortions in geographical cognitive maps

A map sketching methodology was applied in three studies to assess geometrical distortions in large-scale cognitive geographical maps. In the first study, 198 participants sketched Italy's national and regional borders marking the 20 regional capital locations. Furthermore, in 40 city pairs, participants had to indicate which city was further north or further west. Results showed a remarkable rotation of Italy's longitudinal axis of 26.74° toward the vertical axis. Furthermore, Italy's latitude span was significantly underestimated while longitude span was largely overestimated, leading to a more compact shape. Italy's longitude-axis rotation led to misattributions in the evaluation of longitude and latitude differences between city pairs. In the second study 185 participants were requested to sketch Sardinia, an Italy's island facing the south part of the west coastline. Results showed that in the cognitive map the island was shifted significantly toward north, facing the central part of the west coastline. As occurred for the Italy's shape in the first experiment, the island was underestimated in height and overestimated in width, resulting in a more compact shape. In the third study, 212 participants sketched the border outlines of 10 European Union countries, Great Britain and Switzerland marking the position of the national capitals. The results showed a general distance underestimation of continental capitals and a distance overestimation for London and Dublin. The capitals tended to be aligned along the vertical and horizontal axis. Overall, the three studies showed remarkable effects of rotation, alignment, shape compactness, regression toward the mean in large-scale geographical cognitive maps.

A carbon footprint analysis of renewable energy technology adoption in the modal substitution of high-speed rail for short-haul air travel in Australia

ABSTRACTThis study presents a carbon footprint analysis of renewable energy technology adoption in the modal substitution of high-speed rail for short-haul air travel in Australia. The carbon footprint analysis of renewable energy technology adoption in such modal substitution establishes the efficacy of various renewable energy technologies in assisting CO2 emissions reduction on the Sydney–Melbourne city pair. Renewable energy technology efficacy, captured in the presented low-carbon pathways for high-speed transportation, provides an indication as to the CO2 emissions reduction potential of the technologies under consideration and their impact upon the environmental performance of the air and high-speed rail modes. These low-carbon pathways displayed a reduction in annual CO2 emissions throughout the longitudinal period ranging from moderate to significant. Furthermore, this study examines the cumulative effects of the considered renewable energy technologies upon the annual CO2 emissions production of the high-speed transportation system. A reduction of 56%–69% in annual life cycle CO2 emissions demonstrated the powerful mitigation potential of a combined air and high-speed rail transportation system in conjunction with renewable energy technologies adoption and a modal shift of 60%. Given this significant mitigation potential, the hybridization of the air and high-speed rail transportation systems with associated renewable energy technologies is considered. The effect of such hybridization would result in the formation of an integrated low-carbon, high-speed transportation system underpinned by the concept of “sustainable mobility” at the national level.

The Geographical Legacies of Mountains: Impacts on Cultural Difference Landscapes

Large-scale mountains that affect civilized linguistic exchanges over space offer potentially profound cultural difference landscape implications. This article uses China's national trunk mountain system as a natural experiment to explore the connection between spatial adjacency of mountains and cultural difference landscapes. Our spatial design documents that the presence of mountains widens the linguistic difference between two cities located on the opposite mountain sides, particularly when they are adjacent to administrative borders. The effect dwindles as spatial contiguity margins between city pairs increases. The results shed light on the importance of conceptualizing geographic contextual constraints to the configuration of cultural difference landscapes.

Segmentation of consumer markets in the US: What do intercity price differences tell us?

AbstractWe quantify the magnitude of market segmentation in US consumer market and explore the underlying factors behind this segmentation, using a quarterly panel of retail prices for 45 products in 48 US cities from 1985 to 2009. The extent of market segmentation is estimated using city‐pair price differences within the framework of both linear autoregressive (AR) and nonlinear threshold autoregressive (TAR) models. We find that the magnitude of market segmentation varies from one product to another, but even more across city pairs in each product. Contrary to a widespread perception, market segmentation within the US is not necessarily larger for non‐tradable services compared to tradable goods. We identify potential drivers of market segmentation by relating the cross‐city and cross‐product variations of market segmentation to location‐specific and product‐specific characteristics—distance, relative city sizes, differences in wage and rent, type of product and proximity to marketplace. Distance, which captures more than transport costs, turns out to be the most salient factor even after controlling for a range of other potential factors. The effect of distance, however, varies substantially across products, with perishable products and locally produced products showing larger distance effect on market segmentation. We find that the magnitude of market segmentation has been somewhat stable during the sample period, but intercity price differences have become more sensitive to distance over time in many products under study.

Measuring urban attitudes embedded in microblogging data: shrinking versus growing cities

This paper explores the use of powerful new software tools and social media data that can be used to study the attitudes of people in urban places. In particular, it uses propensity scoring to develop matched pairs of mid-sized US cities in the North East and Midwest, where the most significant difference between each pair is that of population decline. This resulted in a group of fifty declining cities matched with fifty growing or stable cities. Over 300,000 Twitter posts were collected over the course of two months, each analysed for either positive or negative sentiment. After running difference-of-means tests, we found that sentiment in the declining cities does not differ in a statistically significant manner from that in stable and growing cities. These findings suggest that real opportunities exist the better to understand urban attitudes through sentiment analysis of Twitter data.

Air transport and high speed train competition: A comparative analysis in selected routes

Along with the development of technology, high speed trains has become a serious threat to air transport. There are different discussions on these two transportation modes which may be expressed as substitutes for each other, especially in the medium and short distances as opponents of each other or as complementary transport modes. In this study, 8 city pairs will be examined and the number of passengers, the seat offered, the annual frequency and the occupancy rates will be examined on the basis of the years 2012-2015, both of which are indicated as the main starting-point of origin in which both high-speed trains and airline companies operate. In the analysis process, values related to before and after will be compared based on the entry of the high speed train in the mentioned city pairs. The results of the study show that the number of airline passengers continued to increase with the launch of the high-speed train, while there is a decrease or an increase at flight frequencies and occupancy rates on some city pairs.