Presence In Cities Research Articles

Climate change, conflict, and urban migration

The adverse effects of man-made climate change and protracted conflict intensify rural-to-urban migration in many developing countries. This article examines the impacts of climate and conflict migration on urban environments and on migrants themselves. To trace the distinctive pathways by which climate change and conflict drive migration as well as shared challenges for urban planning and services, we employ qualitative case studies of Jordan, Pakistan, and Honduras informed by interviews and secondary literature. These countries are chosen as they exemplify the compounding, cumulative impacts of climate change and conflict on urban expansion and the challenges in providing adequate public services in these contexts. Across all three cases, climate hazards threaten rural livelihoods and agricultural productivity, increasing rural to urban migration, while civil conflict and gang violence further induce urban migration, both internally and across borders. In Jordan, we assess the impacts of increasing water scarcity and conflict-driven refugee flows on infrastructure and public services. Pakistan’s experience highlights the impacts of rapid-onset natural disasters, severe water scarcity, and enduring refugee flows from Afghanistan on environmental quality and pollution within cities. In Honduras, we analyze how increasing droughts and hurricanes, combined with gang presence in cities, affect migrants in terms of increased violence and negative physical and mental health impacts. Together, these cases illuminate the need for context-specific proactive policy measures that address the independent and interrelated ways that climate change and conflict lead to migration and the subsequent profound impacts on urban development and human well-being.

Unveiling the urban colonization of the Asian water monitor (Varanus salvator) across its distribution range using citizen science.

This study aims to investigate the urban colonization of the Asian water monitor (Varanus salvator) across its entire range of distribution, addressing the paucity of research on this species in urban ecosystems. The research spans the geographic range of the Asian water monitor, focusing on urbanized areas where the species accumulates more observations (Bangkok, Colombo, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore). We conducted a systematic review to comprehensively assess the current knowledge of the species' presence in cities. Additionally, citizen science data from repositories like GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information facility ) were utilized to analyze the distribution patterns of V. salvator in urban environments. To elucidate urban distribution and correct collection biases, observations were weighted by sampling effort, using as a proxy all squamate occurrences available from 2010-2023, including V. salvator. Despite the widespread presence of the Asian water monitor in numerous cities within its distribution range, the available studies on the topic appear to be scarce. Existing research primarily consists of descriptive reports on diet and behavior. Our findings indicate that V. salvator predominantly colonizes green patches in urban areas, such as parks and small gardens. Larger cities exhibit higher records, potentially due to both permanent populations and increased citizen science reporting. The Asian water monitor, as the largest lizard with established populations in cities, remains scarcely studied on a broader scale. However, the urban design of each city seems relevant to understand the distribution patterns within each context. Our study highlights the need for further research to explore the ecological and human dimensions associated with the species' presence in urban environments.

The impact of urbanisation on chipmunks, arboreal and flying squirrels: a global systematic review

Abstract The current, rapid urbanisation process impacts global biodiversity and can be a driver for phenotypic changes in mammals that persist in cities. Animals display different response strategies in urban environments compared to natural areas, but patterns may differ among species. To better comprehend this process, we focused on a limited number of species that are present in many urban green spaces around the globe. The aim of this systematic review is to investigate which response strategies chipmunks, arboreal and flying squirrels use to cope with urban environments, exploring whether there are general response patterns, and to reveal potential adaptations to life in urban areas. We included studies that compared trait differences among conspecifics living in different areas along an urbanisation gradient (rural–urban) and studies comparing individuals or populations between urban areas with different environmental characteristics. The effects of urbanisation on chipmunks, arboreal and flying squirrels, at the individual and at the population levels, were identified in nine topics. Included articles explored at least one of these topics and their key findings were described. Effects of urbanisation are evident in all considered topics. However, we found contrasting patterns between species or even among individuals of the same species studied in different geographical areas. Overall, we reported two knowledge gaps: some phenotypic traits were considered in few studies, and many species, especially those living in the Global South, where urban growth rate is higher, have not been studied. This systematic review suggests that urbanisation can be an important driver for adaptation in small mammals, underlining the complexity and differentiation of response patterns. Since target species have important ecological and social roles, additional comparative studies, increasing our understanding of processes that determine their presence in cities, are essential for urban green planning which aims to conserve biodiversity.

Shaping the Inclusive City: Power Relations, Regulations, and the Role of Social Work

While being celebrated as the ideal of inclusiveness, cities also constitute the place of different types of discrimination, which some public policies intend to tackle. The “urban” has also been pointed out as the locus where vice and lust concentrate, leading public policies to develop regulations for public space aiming to maintain the social order of the city. This, in turn, contributes to the definition of the contours of urban moral economies, which are continuously shaped by processes of in/exclusion. Hence, crucial is the need to further explore how cities can be welcoming to their dwellers and newcomers, as well as the role public policies (have to) play in the vision of the future of an open and inclusive city. In so doing, social work is certainly called upon to play a major role based on its historical presence in cities and its know‐how in accompanying transitions. How does social work contribute to the definition of an inclusive city? By presenting new and original research that draws on various case studies as well as theoretical reflections across disciplines, this thematic issue aims to provide answers to this question to better understand the role of social work in the shaping of an open and inclusive city.

The digital peregrine: A technonatural history of a cosmopolitan raptor

AbstractHumans, non‐human animals, and technologies are increasingly entangled. Using the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) as an illustrative example, we propose ‘technonatural history’ as a theoretical and methodological approach for observing, describing, and examining the role technologies play in shaping human relations with other species. After nearing extinction in the 20th century, peregrines have become woven into the fabric of everyday urban life and are a frequently sighted urban raptor in the UK, nesting on high‐rise buildings and church spires since the late 1990s. Their unexpected presence in cities symbolises hope for multispecies conviviality amid the contemporary ecological crisis. As their populations resurged, crucially, webcam and livestreaming technologies developed rapidly. Peregrines were one of the first animals to be broadcast over the internet via ‘nestcams’, granting broad publics access to their intimate lives. We examine the related technological histories of livestreaming technologies and natural histories of peregrine falcons in the UK, tracing the emergence of ‘the digital peregrine’ and its manifold implications for more‐than‐human and digital geographies. To do so, we build on oral history interviews with people associated with digital peregrines throughout the UK: nestcam technicians, peregrine conservationists, professional ecologists, activists, and citizen scientists. While digitisation brings broad publics closer to these cosmopolitan raptors, they can only ever grasp at the wildness of peregrine falcons and their wider milieus as the digital peregrine is a distinct entity, encountered via its own set of affects and affordances. In the peregrine's case, digital technologies create unexpected and radical opportunities for urban conviviality, signalling the positive potentials technologies host for forging meaningful more‐than‐human connections.

Assessment of Environmental Noise in Cities: A Theoretical Approach

Environmental noise is a major problem with increasing presence in cities; its effects are not only assimilated into the environment, but also impact on human health. Noise sources are part of the city's daily life and it has not yet been given due attention, although prolonged exposure causes often irreversible physiological and psychosomatic damage.
 This paper presents a theoretical approach from several authors that expose the different tools that can be used the measurement and evaluation of environmental noise. These authors, to explain the causes and effect of environmental noise in cities consider various variables such as: sound pressure levels, weather conditions and urban structure.

Big cities with small green areas hold a lower species richness and proportion of migrant birds: A global analysis

Several studies around the world have shown that species richness and proportion of migrant species in bird communities increase toward the poles as a result of increased climatic seasonality and a considerable annual variation of resources. Since migrant species can use urban green areas (UGAs), they may be negatively affected by the loss of green areas and human disturbances. The aim of this study was to analyze the global pattern of migrant species richness and proportion in UGAs, considering the effects of both climatic seasonality and urbanization. Data of bird communities in UGAs were gathered through a search of scientific articles, book chapters, thesis works and unpublished data. Datasets that included a list of observed species, the numbers of parks surveyed and other methodological characteristics were considered for the analysis. Then, generalized linear models were used to relate total bird species richness and migratory species richness and proportion in each dataset to environmental and methodological variables that controlled for different sampling efforts among studies. A total of 37 cities from four continents were analyzed. Total bird species richness increased with the size of UGAs and in the Northern Hemisphere. As expected, species richness and proportion of migrants increased with increasing annual range of temperature and precipitation, and was higher in the Northern Hemisphere. Species richness and proportion of migrants decreased with increasing population size of cities but increased with size of UGAs surveyed. The results suggest that big cities have a negative impact on richness and proportion of migrant species. However, increasing the size and number of UGAs may benefit migrant species presence in cities.

Evaluation Methods for the Impacts of Shared Mobility: Classification and Critical Review

In recent years, shared mobility services have had a growing presence in cities all over the world. Developing methodologies to measure and evaluate the impacts of shared mobility has therefore become of critical importance for city authorities. This paper conducts a thorough review of the different types of methods that can be used for this evaluation and suggests a classification of them. The pros and cons of each method are also discussed. The added value of the paper is twofold; first, we provide a systematic recording of the state of the art and the state of the practice regarding the evaluation of the impacts of shared mobility, from the perspective of city authorities, reflecting on their role, needs, and expectations. Second, by identifying the existing gaps in the literature, we highlight the specific needs for research and practice in this field that can help society figure out the role of urban shared mobility.

Sacred Architecture and Public Space under the Conditions of a New Visibility of Religion

Embedded in the paradigm of the “New Visibility of Religion,” this article addresses the question of the significance of sacred buildings for public spaces. ‘Visibility’ is conceived as religion’s presence in cities through the medium of architecture. In maintaining sacred buildings in cities, religions expose themselves to the conditions of how cities work. They cannot avoid questions such as how to counteract the tendency of public space to erode. Following some preliminary remarks on the “New Visibility of Religion,” I examine selected sacred buildings in Vienna. Next, I focus on the motifs of the city, the “ark” as a model for sacred buildings and the aesthetic dimension of public space. Finally, I consider the contribution of sacred buildings to contemporary public spaces. What is at issue is not the subject that moves in public and visits sacred buildings with the aim of acquiring knowledge or with the urgency to act, but rather the subject that feels and experiences itself in its dealings with public space and sacred buildings. In this context, I refer to the experience of disinterested beauty (Kant), anachronism, multi-perspectivity (Klaus Heinrich), and openness (Hans-Dieter Bahr).

COVID-19 in East and Southern Africa: Rebuilding Differently and Better Must Start Now.

By June 2020, the cumulative cases and deaths related to COVID-19 in 16 East and Southern African (ESA) countries were still rising, with an average case fatality rate of 1.46%.[1] From its initial presence in cities and regional transport hubs, cases are spreading, including to rural areas, among health workers and as migrants cross borders to return home.[2].

The non-formal arts learning sector, youth provision, and paradox in the learning city

ABSTRACT The ‘learning city’ contains a range of non-formal learning economies. In recent years researchers have focused on, what has been termed, the non-formal arts learning sector, to document best practices, the emergence of new literacies and/or cultural practices, and to highlight interventions that support otherwise marginalised and underserved communities. Yet, for all of this attention, the non-formal learning sector has remained an opaque object, defined by hazy boundaries, diverse programme structures, and a presence in cities that is difficult to grasp. In this paper we develop an account of the non-formal arts learning sector for socially disadvantaged youth by treating it as a ‘socio-technical assemblage’ of the learning city. We draw on data from the Youthsites research project and examine the history, priorities, and tensions in the sector between 1995 and 2015, a period when the youth arts sector has become a significant feature of urban space. We trace the emergence of the sector in three global cities, analyse a series of paradoxes linked to income and property, the labelling of youth, and organisation aims, and show how these paradoxes shape the sector’s broader relationship with the state, labour and consumer markets, and related institutions that allocate support for young people.

Social-Aware Driver Assistance Systems for City Traffic in Shared Spaces

Shared spaces are gaining presence in cities, where a variety of players and mobility types (pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, and cars) move without specifically delimited areas. This makes the traffic they comprise challenging for automated systems. The information traditionally considered (e.g., streets, and obstacle positions and speeds) is not enough to build suitable models of the environment. The required explanatory and anticipation capabilities need additional information to improve them. Social aspects (e.g., goal of the displacement, companion, or available time) should be considered, as they have a strong influence on how people move and interact with the environment. This paper presents the Social-Aware Driver Assistance System (SADAS) approach to integrate this information into traffic systems. It relies on a domain-specific modelling language for social contexts and their changes. Specifications compliant with it describe social and system information, their links, and how to process them. Traffic social properties are the formalization within the language of relevant knowledge extracted from literature to interpret information. A multi-agent system architecture manages these specifications and additional processing resources. A SADAS can be connected to other parts of traffic systems by means of subscription-notification mechanisms. The case study to illustrate the approach applies social knowledge to predict people’s movements. It considers a distributed system for obstacle detection and tracking, and the intelligent management of traffic signals.

Notas sobre a presença dos gatos domésticos nas cidades médias

The expansion of urban areas is leading people to adopt cats as pets as they are better adapted to the modern lifestyle, require smaller spaces, and could stand alone for longer periods compared to other animals such as dogs. However, environmental groups are concerned about the increasing population of felines in urban areas, as they believe that cats threaten the lives of wild birds and small mammals that may be extinct. This research note presents the pros and cons of cats’ presence in cities as to how to handle them. Correct management of these animals is necessary since the greatest environmental risk related to their presence is their uncontrolled reproduction and consequent abandoning of undesirable pups by their tutors.

Mining large-scale human mobility data for long-term crime prediction

Traditional crime prediction models based on census data are limited, as they fail to capture the complexity and dynamics of human activity. With the rise of ubiquitous computing, there is the opportunity to improve such models with data that make for better proxies of human presence in cities. In this paper, we leverage large human mobility data to craft an extensive set of features for crime prediction, as informed by theories in criminology and urban studies. We employ averaging and boosting ensemble techniques from machine learning, to investigate their power in predicting yearly counts for different types of crimes occurring in New York City at census tract level. Our study shows that spatial and spatio-temporal features derived from Foursquare venues and checkins, subway rides, and taxi rides, improve the baseline models relying on census and POI data. The proposed models achieve absolute R^{2} metrics of up to 65% (on a geographical out-of-sample test set) and up to 89% (on a temporal out-of-sample test set). This proves that, next to the residential population of an area, the ambient population there is strongly predictive of the area’s crime levels. We deep-dive into the main crime categories, and find that the predictive gain of the human dynamics features varies across crime types: such features bring the biggest boost in case of grand larcenies, whereas assaults are already well predicted by the census features. Furthermore, we identify and discuss top predictive features for the main crime categories. These results offer valuable insights for those responsible for urban policy or law enforcement.

Large-scale commonness is the best predictor of bird species presence in European cities

Urban bird communities are homogenized across large spatial scales, suggesting that the urban environment acts as an environmental filter. We hypothesize that large scale commonness is a better predictor of urban affinity of birds than any particular species trait. We estimated the relative importance of taxonomy, reproductive, ecological and morphological traits, and commonness of individual bird species. We compiled data on i) breeding bird communities of 41 European cities from urban bird atlases, and ii) regional bird assemblages defined by nine grid cells of the Atlas of European Breeding Bird around each city, and quantified the urban affinity of each species by comparing its incidence in cities and in randomly drawn communities from respective regional assemblages. Conditional inference tree-based random forest analysis was utilized to assess the importance of individual predictors. A sign test was used to detect differences between congeneric pairs of species with contrasting affinity to cities. Birds associated with woody habitats and those having altricial chicks had higher affinity for cities. Of the other reproductive traits, only clutch size showed an association with urban affinity. Different bird orders differed significantly in their urban affinity, exemplifying the homogenizing effect of cities. However, by far the most important factor associated with bird tolerance to the urban environment was species commonness, indicating that either the traits associated with commonness, or population effects driven by commonness, are responsible for their presence in cities.

Trajectories of ethnic neighborhood change: Spatial patterns of increasing ethnic diversity

Western cities are increasingly ethnically diverse and in most cities the share of ethnic minorities is growing. Studies analyzing changing ethnic geographies often limit their analysis to changes in ethnic concentrations in neighborhoods between two points in time. Such a static approach limits our understanding of pathways of ethnic neighborhood change, and of the underlying factors contributing to change. This paper analyzes full trajectories of neighborhood change in the four largest cities in the Netherlands between 1999 and 2013. Our modelling strategy categorizes neighborhoods based on their unique growth trajectories of the ethnic population composition, providing a longitudinal view of ethnic segregation. Our results show that the ethnic composition in neighborhoods remains relatively stable over time. We find evidence for a slow trend towards deconcentration of ethnic minorities and increased (spatial) population mixing in most neighborhoods. We show how residential mobility decreases segregation, while natural population growth tends to reinforce segregation. While the ethnic minority presence in cities grows, there is a substantial share of neighborhoods which can be identified as white citadels; characterized by a stable large native population, with high incomes and high house values. These neighborhoods seem to be inaccessible to ethnic minorities, which illustrates the spatial manifestation of exclusionary elitism in increasingly ethnically diverse cities.

Local Communities and Home Rule: Extending the Alberta SuperNet to Unserved Areas

The Alberta SuperNet’s design strategy included fiber optic build-outs only to points of presence in cities, towns and villages. This strategy created a crucial role for local business and community involvement in providing high-speed internet service in rural areas. A paucity of private providers led individuals and communities to develop micro solutions to obtain broadband. Using the concept of home rule as a theoretical lens, this article chronicles and analyzes three approaches taken by individuals, communities, and businesses to illustrate the successes and weaknesses of both the local decisions and the Alberta government’s approaches.

L’Europe centrale existe-t-elle encore ? Perspectives pour une politique culturelle transnationale croate

Even after all of Europe will be supposedly integrated in the European Union, regions will not cease to exist. All kinds of diversities will be continuously legitimate, of course, to the extent they will contribute the European project to preserve, as well as to develop in the future to come. From that point of view, one has to bear in mind the South-East European paradox. Everything what makes Europe is here. This is the only part of Europe where Slavic peoples are on the Mediterranean. Only here the last migratory vawes of peoples from Asia have been integrated into European culture (Bulgarians, Hungarians). This is also the only part of Europe in which the Romanisation originating from the Late Antiquity has been preserved in areas where it lasted for a historically short period of time (Romania). Some of the oldest European ethnic communities are continuously settled down in South-East Europe (Greeks, Albanians), irrespectively of conflicting contemporary interpretations of their distinctive ancient histories. On the other side, this is probably the only European region which is marked much more by cultural discontinuities than by continuities, irrespectively to the fact that each modern nation in South-East Europe – including the Croatian one – projects itself, when it is about its historical memories, in millenial spans. Finally, this is the only part of Europe which all over its written history experienced the presence of „all“ major European powers, as well as the only one which knows today a long-lasting presence of all major European religious traditions (Western and Eastern Christianity, Islam), not to mention Jewish presence in cities like Thessaloniki, Dubrovnik, Sarajevo etc. Croatia, which is at a European crossroad, integrates all those major features.

Diasporic Indigeneity: Place and the Articulation of Ainu Identity in Tokyo, Japan

Representations of Indigenous people as rooted and sedentary reinforce ideas of their presence in cities as strange and out of place. This is problematic. In a world where an increasing number if not majority of Indigenous people live in urban or metropolitan areas, cities are now critical sites of Indigenous negotiation, appropriation, marginalization, and emplacement. This paper opens up the analysis of urban Indigenous life from the perspective of place and its role in the articulation of urban Indigenous identities. It takes as a case study the situation of indigenous Ainu in and around Tokyo. The interrogation of place highlights how Ainu are socially active in the city and critiques the regionalization of Ainu affairs to northern Japan.

Quantity Illusions and Paradoxes of Drug Interdiction: Federal Intervention into Vice Policy

The control of crime has been a predominantly local responsibility through the history of the Republic. Similarly, the regulation of morality generally has been viewed as a local responsibility, with each community enjoying the freedom to choose its own moral legislation. The last decade, however, has witnessed the rapid growth of a federal police effort aimed primarily at enforcing drug regulations. Drug enforcement has become a major federal responsibility, though drug policy is treated as the regulation of vice markets. This federal intervention is justified on the basis of paternalistic concerns about the effects of the behavior on both the user and society generally. For example, the federal drug enforcement effort currently involves expenditures of approximately $2 billion' and provides a significant presence in cities throughout the nation. Although state and local authorities continue to make a majority of the arrests for violation of drug laws,2 prisoners who were arrested by federal agencies account for a substantial minority of the total number of years spent in incarceration for drug violations.3 Moreover,