Shape Of Cities Research Articles

Effect of city shape on urban wind patterns and convective heat transfer in calm and stable background conditions

Extreme heatwaves and air pollution in urban areas often occur in calm and stable background conditions. In such situations, urban heat dome flows are induced by the urban heat island (UHI) effect, which has a strong influence on the urban thermal and wind environment. Cities have various shapes, but most studies of urban heat island circulation have focused on ideal circular shape and ignored the potential effects of shape. In this study, the effects of the various ideal urban shapes on the natural convective flow over urban areas (urban dome flow) are investigated experimentally. The urban dome flow over an equilateral polygonal city is characterised as convergent inflow along the interior angle bisector at the lower level, upward flow near the urban centre and divergent side outflow perpendicular to the side at the upper level. The characteristics of the urban dome flow over a rectangular urban area depend greatly upon the aspect ratio of the long side to the short side. As the aspect ratio increases, the divergent flows of the short sides disappear, and those of the two long sides dominate. Moreover, recirculation occurs between the divergent outflow perpendicular to the long edges and the convergent inflow near the short edges. Our results also show that the Nusselt (Nu) number (Eq. (1)), which quantifies the heat transfer efficiency, is significantly lower in a stable environment than in a neutral environment. A significant correlation between the shape and Nu was not found. It indicates that strong UHIs prefer stable background conditions.

Madrid’s great sonic transformation: sound, noise and the auditory commons of the city in the nineteenth century

ABSTRACTThis article addresses a key question attending historical sound studies: How do cities shape, intervene in and manage auditory cultures? Focussing in particular on nineteenth-century Madrid, the article seeks to make sense of some of the ways in which shifting imaginaries of the metropolis are also reflected in new imaginaries of the city as soundscape. How did shifting segmentational logics of the city and changes in the public imagination of cities as sites of both sociability and isolation impact on the sonic liveability of the city of Madrid? I approach the question of sonic experience by drawing on the work of Jean-François Augoyard and Henry Torgue (2006, Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds. Translated by Andra McCartney and David Paquette. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press) who, as members of the CRESSON research group based in Grenoble, have developed an impressive and subtle series of analytical tools for thinking about sounds in urban spaces. Another key concept that will prove useful in this article is one developed by Antonio Negri, namely, “the commons”.

Moyo wa Mtauni: Imagining the City in Malawian Popular Music

Cities in Africa and beyond have been sites of conflicting and contradictory associations in human cultures from their very beginning. Some regard the African city as a place of hope and fulfilment, freedom and opportunity, while others view it as an emblem of cultural decay and a nexus of corruption, perversion, greed, destruction and death. In this article we explore these ambivalent attitudes towards the city and urban life by focusing on Malawian popular music. We examine ways in which the city and what it stands for is depicted in the music. We also analyse attitudes and associations that converge on the city as a place and how such attitudes reflect the heterogeneity and complexity of individual and collective human experience and emotions contained by the city. We address questions such as: What images of the city and city life emerge in Malawian popular music? What do these images tell us about notions of community, inequality, and poverty in postcolonial Malawi? How do the economic, structural, or material settings of Malawian cities shape perceptions of the city? In addressing these and related questions, we use concepts drawn from cultural studies and urban studies.

Influence of urban land cover data uncertainties on the numerical simulations of urbanization effects in the 2013 high-temperature episode in Eastern China

Updating the urban land cover information has been proved a necessary method for the numerical studies of urban climate and urban atmospheric environment in China, a fast urbanizing country. However, there are uncertainties in the urban land use/cover (ULUC) information in different datasets due to the uncertainties in raw data sources and produce methods. In this study, the Weather Research and Forecasting model is used to simulate the summer climate over the Yangtze River Delta in July and August 2013, when a heatwave episode occurred. Five numerical experiments are designed; one is the baseline experiment (non-urban land cover (NOURB)) in which all urban land covers are removed, and different urban land use/cover (ULUC) experiments from four different global land cover datasets are used in other four experiments. The differences between the ULUC experiments and the NOURB experiment are used to observe the urbanization effects. The results show a remarkable urbanization effect in all the ULUC experiments, and the urbanization influences are most different over the union-urban area, which defined as the area marked as urban area by at least one land cover dataset, because the uncertainties in urban land cover information are greatest in this area. All the ULUC experiments show the regional influence of urbanization as well, which means urbanization effects are not limited in cities. The Climate Change Initiative (CCI) experiment using the European Space Agency CCI 2013 dataset showed the greatest urbanization influence and the highest effect index in all analyzed variables, because of the largest urban land cover area in the analysis domain. The urban land cover area in the Global Land Cover experiment is the smallest among the ULUC experiments, but it distributes in a more concentrated way than in other experiments; it indicates that both city size and city shape affect the regional influence.

Environmental Injustice and Religion: Outdoor Air Pollution Disparities in Metropolitan Salt Lake City, Utah

The distributive environmental justice literature has expanded beyond examining only race- and class-based injustices, but no studies have focused on religion’s influence on disparate environmental risks. We address that gap using data from the decennial U.S. Census, American Community Survey, and Environmental Protection Agency for 2010 census tracts to examine a proxy measure of Mormon prevalence, racial and ethnic composition, and socioeconomic status as predictors of seven indicators of outdoor air pollution in metropolitan Salt Lake City, Utah. Results from multivariate generalized estimating equation (GEE) analyses show that greater Mormon prevalence and white composition each independently predict lower levels of air pollution; moreover, Mormon prevalence and whiteness are the strongest predictors in the models. Results also demonstrate that greater proportions of Hispanic, black, and Pacific Islander residents predict higher levels of air pollution, suggesting that systemic white privilege oppresses those groups such that they experience air pollution disparities. Mormons are socially privileged in Salt Lake City, and findings indicate that their collective power serves to protect them from air pollution. Exploratory GEE interaction analyses reveal that disparities in exposure to particulate matter based on higher Hispanic composition are attenuated under conditions of high Mormon prevalence. Findings indicate that white privilege or racial oppression and Mormon privilege operate distinctively and, to a lesser degree, interactively as determinants of distributive environmental injustices in Salt Lake City. Although affiliation with a contextually dominant religion (Mormonism) among residents in Salt Lake City shapes neighborhood patterns of environmental inequality, future studies should examine the role of religion in both producing and ameliorating environmental injustice. Key Words: air pollution, environmental justice, race, ethnicity, religion.

ACOUSTIC PLANNING OF URBAN SPACE

Urban planning requires multiple instruments to organize a city. The growth process requires adapt to political, economic, technological changes, incorporating urban factors, architectural design concepts, and also acoustic, for public and private space more friendly with the environment. Noise as pollutant of public and private space, generated mainly by vehicular traffic, increases noise by the presence of buildings on both sides of streets, depending on its shape, materiality, height, and distance between facades. Direct sound when reflected in facades returns as a secondary source. These multiple reflections added to the direct sound, produce a "residual noise". Then time variable, when the passage of vehicles is continuous, an observer can define a linear source in constant generation. The persistence of the noise can reach 3 seconds. Original source, residual noise and the persistence of noise over time its the phenomenon called environmental noise, associated with the design and shape of cities.

In bodies and homes: Gendering citizenship in Southern African cities

How do the everyday contexts in which ordinary women struggle to access and maintain a place on the peripheries of the city shape experiences of citizenship? This paper explores this question in George, a periurban Lusaka neighbourhood in Zambia and through experiences of Zimbabwean migrant women’s negotiation of a place on the peri-urban edges of Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. In the logics of citizen-subjects, the experiences of these groups of women should be poles apart, the first with rights imbued in citizenship, the second migrants without. Here instead, we demonstrate the ways in which gendered political subjectivities embed in the hard, lived realities of home. In placing gender and everyday body politics at the forefront of our analysis, the paper makes visible the micro-realities of making home. We demonstrate that an assumed recursive relationship between citizenship and home, as a physical and social place in the city, is problematic. Building on debates on citizenship and its gendering in post-colonial African urban contexts, we demonstrate instead that citizenship and its gendered contestations and emergent forms in Southern African are crafted in quotidian activities in homes and everyday city contexts.

Collaborative governance towards cities sustainability transition

Abstract Cities and their constant growth have a crucial role in global sustainable development. The objective of this article is to present a conceptual framework of collaborative governance for the shaping of sustainable cities. The adoption of the multiple case study (5) method allowed understanding the reality of the cities of Copenhagen (Denmark), Amsterdam (Netherlands), London (England), Hamburg (Germany) and Barcelona (Spain). Sources of evidence were collected through in-depth interviews, documents, and observation, plus the data analysis was performed by using the NVivo software. For that, exploratory-descriptive research was conducted with the use of a qualitative research approach. The results exhibit strategies, benefits, risks, and limits inherent to collaborative governance systems in the cities and bring contributions to the development of the governance theory.

The Capital Social in the Development of Banda Aceh City, Indonesia

The growth and development of Banda Aceh city has its own characteristics. One of the characteristics is Masjid (mosque) which is spread all around the city. Masjid’s congregations are part of the city development’s agents. This research depicts the social capital of Banda Aceh’s people in the development of the city. The Qualitative method has been used in the research in order to gather information that is relevant to the research object. Generally, the research result depicts how the people in Banda Aceh city shape norms and networks which influence each other. Thus, people can trust each other for reliable city development’s ideas. The capital social formed has become one of a productive asset to encourage economic development and the society sustainability. Poverty eradication and other social developments can be effectively encouraged through communication among people in the congregations. One of very significant moves is to connect these congregations to the city leaders and stakeholders. Keywords: Masjid (mosque), capital social, society, development, Banda Aceh. DOI : 10.7176/RHSS/9-2-11

Limit condition for the intermunicipal emergency

The traditional urban planning issues, related to the design and city shape, today are faced with those derived from safety and risk. The Emergency Plan (EP) is the result of study about risk for each context, and it allows to identify potential emergency scenarios. The paper illustrates model of analysis of Intermunicipal Emergency Plan (I-EP) through Limit Condition for the Intermunicipal Emergency I-LCE), with the purpose of large-scale assessment and mitigation of the seismic risk. This is an approach that extends the methodological principles of Limit Condition for the Emergency (LCE) to the territory, we consider that the EP, in the same way as urban planning, is not a planning activity that can be concentrated only on urban area but must work on the system, especially for the effect control of natural phenomena such as seismic risk. This not only threatens a significant innovation for the LCE but also for its relationship whit the urban planning its design strategies aimed at reducing territorial fragilities. The proposed methodology is applied in the area of Sele, in the district of Salerno (Southern Italy), territory characterized by high levels of seismic and hydrogeological vulnerability. Through this case study we had the opportunity to discuss the potential of I-LCE and its additional recommended updates to increase its effectiveness and efficiency, in addition the necessary innovations of urban and territorial planning systems.

WARAK NGENDOG DALAM TRADISI DUGDERAN SEBAGAI REPRESENTASI IDENTITAS MUSLIM URBAN DI KOTA SEMARANG

This research aims to explore how Warak Ngendog in the Dugderan tradition represents the identity of urban Muslim communities in the city of Semarang. This research also aims to expose the strength of the city's Muslim culture that has been maintained to this day. This study uses an identity theory approach by Peter J. Burke and Homi K. Bhabha about Hybrid culture, and several other extraordinary theories as supporting theories. This research uses a qualitative descriptive approach with the support of substantive information from archives and interviews with related figures. The results of this study emphasize that the dynamics of the religiosity of urban Muslim communities in Semarang City shape urban Muslim identity. Acculturation of the traditional culture of Javanese, Arab, and Chinese Muslims symbolizes the new religious and cultural rites as an inseparable part of the urban Muslim identity of Semarang City because there are social interactions in their involvement in religious rituals, traditions and culture.

Building a Local Preservation Ethic in the Era of Urban Renewal: How Did Neighborhood Associations Shape Historic Preservation Practice in Lexington, Kentucky?

The federal urban renewal program had wide-ranging consequences for American cities of all sizes and locations. Among the most consequential was its catalyzing effect on the historic preservation movement nationwide. While preservation practice at the dawn of the urban renewal era emphasized historic monuments, by its end in the mid-1970s, preservationists were much more concerned with neighborhoods, districts, and larger swaths of urban fabric, thus, becoming relevant to all manner of future city shaping and revitalizing efforts. While this expansion took place nationwide, the paths taken by individual cities varied considerably. Because of its large number of historic downtown residential neighborhoods, and its long involvement with historic preservation, Lexington, Kentucky, provides an ideal case study to explore this transformation, highlighting the ways in which neighborhood associations and local preservation organizations collaborated to set the stage for widespread adoption of local historic districts in the 1970s.

The Trackless Tram: Is It the Transit and City Shaping Catalyst We Have Been Waiting for?

Recent innovations in transport technology are now providing mobility that is cheaper, autonomous, electric, and with improved ride quality. While much of the world’s attention has been on how this can be applied to cars, there have been rapid adoption of these and other technologies in High Speed Rail and Metro Rail systems that run between and across cities. This paper shows how such innovations have now been applied to create the next generation of urban transit system called a Trackless Tram. Trackless Trams are effectively the same as traditional light rail except they run on rubber tyres avoiding disruption from construction for Light Rail, but they retain the electric propulsion (with batteries) and have high ride quality due to rail-type bogies, stabilization technologies and precision tracking from the autonomous optical guidance systems—with infrastructure costs reduced to as low as one tenth of a Light Rail system. As with Light Rail, a Trackless Tram System provides a rapid transit option that can harness the fixed route assurance necessary to unlock new land value appreciation that can be leveraged to contribute to construction and running costs whilst creating urban regeneration. The paper considers the niche for Trackless Trams in cities along with its potential for city shaping through the creation of urban re-development along corridors. The paper suggests that the adoption of Trackless Tram Systems is likely to grow rapidly as a genuine alternative to car and bus systems, supplementing and extending the niche occupied by Light Rail Transit (LRT). This appears to be feasible in any medium-sized or larger city, especially in emerging and developing economies, and case studies are outlined for Perth and Thimpu to illustrate its potential.

Iconosphere of the contemporary city and its relations with urban planning in Poland after 1989

We have been observing dynamic metamorphosis of the world cities, including Polish ones, in qualitative and quantitative dimensions. Systemic transformation started in Poland after 1989, resigning of socialistic model of urban planning. Neoliberal economy and its paradigms, but also Polish access to EU structures and civil society creating had a significant impact on shape, functioning and skyline of Polish cities. Iconic buildings intensive development, accompanied by their surroundings improvement have been observed in Poland for several years. We witness shaping contemporary Polish cities iconosphere, what has an elementary impact on evolution and reconstitution of urban structures identity. The article purpose is to reflect on contemporary iconosphere of Polish cities (analyses and evaluation). The discussed problem refers to spatial policy implemented in Poland and related on an example of Culture-Congress Center Jordanki in Torun.

Function Follows Form

Ever since Victor Gruen opened Northland in a Detroit suburb, thousands of shopping centers and office parks have sprung up along city peripheries. While automobile travel is necessary for this transition from the monocentric to the polycentric city, car travel alone, so this paper argues, is not sufficient. Instead, the decentralization of shops and jobs (two important “urban functions”) hinges on the initial spatial distribution of the urban electorate, as embodied by the original city’s shape (“urban form”). The electorate is more likely to tilt in favor of decentralization the less skewed is original city shape. Hence “function follows form”. Given that “form follows function” eventually, too, cities either remain centralized and skewed in the long run, or shed all three: central jobs, central shops, and skew. We turn to a sample of U.S. metropolitan areas to illustrate these ideas.

Journey-to-Crime Distances of Residential Burglars in China Disentangled: Origin and Destination Effects

Research on journey-to-crime distance has revealed the importance of both the characteristics of the offender as well as those of target communities. However, the effect of the home community has so far been ignored. Besides, almost all journey-to-crime studies were done in Western societies, and little is known about how the distinct features of communities in major Chinese cities shape residential burglars’ travel patterns. To fill this gap, we apply a cross-classified multilevel regression model on data of 3763 burglary trips in ZG City, one of the bustling metropolises in China. This allows us to gain insight into how residential burglars’ journey-to-crime distances are shaped by their individual-level characteristics as well as those of their home and target communities. Results show that the characteristics of the home community have larger effects than those of target communities, while individual-level features are most influential. Older burglars travel over longer distances to commit their burglaries than the younger ones. Offenders who commit their burglaries in groups tend to travel further than solo offenders. Burglars who live in communities with a higher average rent, a denser road network and a higher percentage of local residents commit their burglaries at shorter distances. Communities with a denser road network attract burglars from a longer distance, whereas those with a higher percentage of local residents attract them from shorter by.

Little plant, big city: a test of adaptation to urban environments in common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia).

A full understanding of how cities shape adaptation requires characterizing genetically-based phenotypic and fitness differences between urban and rural populations under field conditions. We used a reciprocal transplant experiment with the native plant common ragweed, (Ambrosia artemisiifolia), and found that urban and rural populations have diverged in flowering time, a trait that strongly affects fitness. Although urban populations flowered earlier than rural populations, plants growing in urban field sites flowered later than plants in rural field sites. This counter-gradient variation is consistent adaptive divergence between urban and rural populations. Also consistent with local adaptation, both urban and rural genotypes experienced stronger net selection in the foreign than in the local habitat, but this pattern was not significant for male fitness. Despite the evidence for local adaptation, rural populations had higher lifetime fitness at all sites, suggesting that selection has been stronger or more uniform in rural than urban populations. We also found that inter-population differences in both flowering time and fitness tended to be greater among urban than rural populations, which is consistent with greater drift or spatial variation in selection within urban environments. In summary, our results are consistent with adaptive divergence of urban and rural populations, but also suggest there may be greater environmental heterogeneity in urban environments which also affects evolution in urban landscapes.

Cities, institutional entrepreneurship and the emergence of new environmental policies: The organizing of waste prevention in the City of Gothenburg, Sweden

Informed by institutional entrepreneurship theory and based on the case of waste prevention projects in the City of Göteborg, this paper examines the role of cities in shaping new environmental policies. Structured by the research question, ‘How do cities shape novel environmental policies and practices?’, the paper illustrates how cities become agents of environmental change and institutional entrepreneurship through mobilizing and recombining resources (i.e. human, financial, and spatial), rationales (by reframing symbols, challenging taboos, and transforming waste socio-materialities), and relations (via internal and external collaboration and by creating new institutional arrangements, roles, and expectations). Emerging environmental policies, such as waste prevention, represent the structuring of an incipient environmental policy field. This new generation of environmental policies expands the scope of the public sector (the so-called publicness), reshapes the public/private distinction, and challenges taboos such as the intrusion of publicness into privateness.

A City Shape Explanation of Why Donald Trump Won

The paper introduces urban centrists (who embrace carbon taxes) and urban decentrists (who reject them). Its theoretical analysis solves linear programs that help estimate (unobservable) centrists and decentrists. Its empirical analysis computes these estimates for U.S. metro areas and applies them to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This analysis suggests that Donald Trump's shift away from the traditional bipartisan consensus on global warming - wittingly or not - has gained him nearly 280,000 votes he else would not have enjoyed (in cities where decentrists were strong). U.S. city shapes have contributed to why Donald Trump won. If decentrists continue to gain in importance (not unlikely, given ongoing decentralization and suburbanization), we should expect the rift over global warming to play an even greater role in future elections.

Place and participation in local elections

How does place matter for participation in local politics and elections? To date, social scientists have largely ignored this question, in part because their focus has not been on local politics and elections. We think this is unfortunate given that 99% of all governments in the U.S. are local governments. Given stark differences in rates of turnout and office seeking across local and state/federal elections, we believe more attention to the way in which ‘sense of place’ affects residents' political behavior is warranted. In this study we look explicitly at how the geographic, functional, and socio-demographic features of cities shape turnout and contestation in local elections. Analyzing mayoral elections in two U.S. states, we find evidence not only that contextual factors are associated with both turnout and contestation, but place itself matters, independently of the features of its inhabitants, for the health of local democracy.