Single City Research Articles

Low Referral Rates for Genetic Assessment of Patients With Multiple Adenomas in United Kingdom Bowel Cancer Screening Programs

Approximately 1 in 20 cases of colorectal cancer are caused by monogenic syndromes. Published guidelines recommend that patients with 10 or more adenomas be referred for genetic testing, based on evidence that colorectal cancer risk is associated with adenoma multiplicity. The aim of this study was to determine adherence to guidelines on referral for genetic screening in patients with 10 or more adenomas. A cross-sectional study was performed of prospectively collected data from the UK Bowel Cancer Screening Programme between May 2007 and June 2018. Only histologically confirmed adenomas were included. Clinicopathological data were recorded from patient records, and referrals to clinical genetics services were ascertained. Data were obtained from 3 centers in London, United Kingdom. A total of 17,450 subjects underwent colonoscopy following an abnormal fecal occult blood test. We quantified patients with 10 or more adenomas and the proportion referred for genetic screening. The adenoma detection rate was 50.6% among 17,450 patients who underwent colonoscopy (8831 had 1 or more adenomas). Three hundred forty-seven patients (2.0%) had 10 or more adenomas. Patients with 10 or more adenomas were more likely to be male than those with fewer than 10 adenomas (76.9% vs 53.4%; p < 0.0001). A family history was collected in 37.8% of the multiple adenoma population. Of 347 patients with 10 or more adenomas, 28 (8.1%) were referred for genetic assessment. All 3 screening centers were in a single city. No genetic outcome data were available to permit analysis of actual rates of inherited cancer syndromes in this population. In this study, almost 1 in 50 patients had 10 or more adenomas. Despite guidelines advising genetic testing in this group, referral rates are low. A referral pathway and management strategies should be established to address this patient population. See Video Abstract at http://links.lww.com/DCR/B630. ANTECEDENTES:Aproximadamente uno de cada veinte casos de cáncer colorrectal son causados por síndromes monogénicos. Las pautas publicadas recomiendan que los pacientes con diez o más adenomas sean derivados para pruebas genéticas, basándose en la evidencia de que el riesgo de cáncer colorrectal está asociado con la multiplicidad de adenomas.OBJETIVO:El objetivo de este estudio fue determinar la adherencia a las guías de derivación para cribado genético en pacientes con diez o más adenomas.DISEÑO:Se realizó un estudio transversal de datos recolectados prospectivamente del Programa de Detección de Cáncer de Intestino del Reino Unido entre mayo de 2007 y junio de 2018. Solo se incluyeron los adenomas confirmados histológicamente. Los datos clínico-patológicos se registraron a partir de los registros de los pacientes y se determinaron las derivaciones a los servicios de genética clínica.AJUSTE ENTORNO CLINICO:Los datos se obtuvieron de tres centros en Londres, Reino Unido.PACIENTES:Un total de 17.450 17450 sujetos pacientes se sometieron a una colonoscopia después de una prueba de sangre oculta en heces anormal positiva.PRINCIPALES MEDIDAS DE RESULTADO VOLARACION:cuantificamos los pacientes con diez o más adenomas y la proporción remitida para cribado genético.RESULTADOS:La tasa de detección de adenomas fue del 50,6% entre 17.450 17450 pacientes que se sometieron a colonoscopia (8.831 8831 tenían uno o más adenomas). 347 pacientes (2,0%) tenían 10 o más adenomas. Los pacientes con 10 o más adenomas tenían más probabilidades de ser hombres que aquellos con menos de 10 adenomas (76,9% frente versus a 53,4%; p <0,0001). Se recogieron antecedentes familiares en el 37,8% de la población de adenomas múltiples. De 347 pacientes con 10 o más adenomas, 28 (8,1%) fueron remitidos para evaluación genética.LIMITACIONES:Los tres centros de detección se encontraban en una sola ciudad. No se disponía de datos de resultados genéticos que permitieran el análisis de las tasas reales de síndromes de cáncer hereditario en esta población.CONCLUSIONES:En este estudio, casi uno de cada cincuenta pacientes tenía diez o más adenomas. A pesar de las pautas que recomiendan las pruebas genéticas en este grupo, las tasas de derivación son bajas. Se debe establecer una vía de derivación y estrategias de manejo para abordar esta población de pacientes. Consulte Video Resumen en http://links.lww.com/DCR/B630.

Comprehensive Carrying Capacity of the Inland Node Cities Along the Belt and Road

Research interests in the node cities along the Belt and Road have been increasing since the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed in 2013. Most of the existing studies tend to analyze the Belt and Road Initiative qualitatively, either regard a single node city as the subject, or take one aspect of the node cities into consideration. However, we select 10 inland node cities as our study subjects and quantitatively evaluate them from 2009 to 2018, based on the definition of node cities, theory of comprehensive carrying capacity, and a set of evaluation methods. In our article, we first defined node cities and explained why the 10 inland node cities were chosen. And then we set up an evaluation index system with 5 subsystems, 25 indicators (10 unique indicators for the Belt and Road), which were estimated with the application of analytic hierarchy process method, principal component analysis method, improved entropy, and multiobjective linear weighting function method. We made some progress in the entropy method, which was not limited to calculate a single city's weight at a specific time, but 10 node cities with 10-year-time span. Finally, we analyzed the evaluation results and made some policy suggestions. Our quantitative and systematic studies can not only fill the previous global and local theoretical gaps to some degree, but also provide some valuable theories and measures for the government and practitioners in the country to solve the problems encountered by Chinese node cities during their contribution to the building of the Belt and Road.

The city‐island‐state, wounding cascade, and multi‐level vulnerability explored through the lens of Malta

In this paper, we introduce the concept of “city‐island‐state” into a discussion of small highly urbanised islands. We place the “city” at the forefront of our analysis by bringing together the geographies of the “city” and “state,” together with a wider discussion of factors that may cause both the wounding of the city and an increase in the precariousness of the “island.” We apply this concept to the advanced city‐island‐state of Malta (Central Mediterranean), which is a densely populated, urbanised small island archipelago with about 500,000 inhabitants and operates as a single city with an urban core, suburbs, and a rural hinterland that is rapidly decreasing in size. This city‐island‐state is frequently considered as being “safe” from external geophysical, climatic, and anthropogenic wounding, but, in reality, Malta, as a city, an island, and an independent nation‐state, is faced with multiple internal and external pressures that increase its precariousness and vulnerability to such externalities. Some of these are socio‐economic, but others are environmental. We argue that the potential for wounding is particularly marked in Malta, that it is exacerbated by the contemporary globalised neoliberal world of flows and interconnectivities, and that this represents a multi‐level wounding cascade: wounding the city wounds the island and, by extension, the state.

Consequences of the emergency response to COVID-19: a whole health care system review in a single city in the United Kingdom

BackgroundThe response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom included large scale changes to healthcare delivery, without fully understanding the potential for unexpected effects caused by these changes.The aim was “to ascertain the characteristics of patients, uncertainty over diagnosis, or features of the emergency response to the pandemic that could be modified to mitigate against future excess deaths”.MethodsReview of the entire pathway of care of patients whose death was registered in Salford during the 8 week period of the first wave (primary care, secondary care, 111 and 999 calls) in order to create a single record of healthcare prior to death. An expert panel judged avoidability of death against the National Mortality Case Record Review Programme scale. The panel identified themes using a structured judgement review format.ResultsThere were 522 deaths including 197 in hospital, and 190 in care homes. 51% of patients were female, 81% Caucasian, age 79 ± 9 years. Dementia was present in 35%, COVID-19 was cause of death in 44%.Healthcare contact prior to death was most frequently with primary care (81% of patients). Forty-six patients (9%) had healthcare appointments cancelled (median 1 cancellation, range 1–9). Fewer than half of NHS 111 calls were answered during this period.18% of deaths contained themes consistent with some degree of avoidability. In people aged ≥75 years who lived at home this was 53%, in care home residents 29% and in patients with learning disability 44% (n = 9). Common themes were; delays in patients presenting to care providers (10%), delays in testing (17%), avoidable exposure to COVID-19 (26%), delays in provider response (5%), and sub-optimal care (11%). For avoidability scores of 2 or 3 (indicating more than 50% chance of avoidability), 44% of cases had > 2 themes.ConclusionsThe initial emergency response had unforeseen consequences resulting in late presentation, sub-optimal assessments, and delays in receiving care. Death in more vulnerable groups was more likely to display avoidability themes.

An integrative framework of retailscape: Case of grocery retail stores in Saudi Arabia

The aim of this study is to highlight the importance of retailscapes and their elements and how these elements can enhance customer patronage. The study, therefore, considered customer mood as moderating between retailscapes and customer joy that further leads to customer patronage. Past studies considered some retailscapes elements in a different context such as pure services industries. In contrast, this study considered the retail industry. In order to obtain study findings, a convenient sampling technique was used to collect data from targeted respondents. Respondents were the visitors of different retail stores. Since the study was limited to a single city, therefore data were collected in the capital city Riyadh of Saudi Arabia. 300 questionnaires were distributed among the customers, 289 responses were valid and the rest were discarded due to incomplete information. Collected data were analyzed using Smart-PLS and SPSS. Considered hypotheses were tested and found a significant relationship. Results clearly indicating that retailscapes have the ability to influence customer’s patronage by considering retailscape elements in the retail industry.

Predicting healthcare-associated infections, length of stay, and mortality with the nursing intensity of care index.

The objectives of this study were (1) to develop and validate a simulation model to estimate daily probabilities of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), length of stay (LOS), and mortality using time varying patient- and unit-level factors including staffing adequacy and (2) to examine whether HAI incidence varies with staffing adequacy. The study was conducted at 2 tertiary- and quaternary-care hospitals, a pediatric acute care hospital, and a community hospital within a single New York City healthcare network. All patients discharged from 2012 through 2016 (N = 562,435). We developed a non-Markovian simulation to estimate daily conditional probabilities of bloodstream, urinary tract, surgical site, and Clostridioides difficile infection, pneumonia, length of stay, and mortality. Staffing adequacy was modeled based on total nurse staffing (care supply) and the Nursing Intensity of Care Index (care demand). We compared model performance with logistic regression, and we generated case studies to illustrate daily changes in infection risk. We also described infection incidence by unit-level staffing and patient care demand on the day of infection. Most model estimates fell within 95% confidence intervals of actual outcomes. The predictive power of the simulation model exceeded that of logistic regression (area under the curve [AUC], 0.852 and 0.816, respectively). HAI incidence was greatest when staffing was lowest and nursing care intensity was highest. This model has potential clinical utility for identifying modifiable conditions in real time, such as low staffing coupled with high care demand.

"Wiring a City"

We use a sociotechnical perspective to expand upon prior characterizations of deploying end-to-end urban sensor networks that focus primarily on the technical aspects of such systems. Via exploratory, semi-structured interviews with those deploying a number of urban sensor networks in a single American city, we identify ways that human decision-making and collaborative processes influence how these infrastructures are built. We synthesize these findings into a framework in which sociotechnical factors show up across the phases of data collection, management, analysis, and impacts within smart city projects. Each phase can display variability in immediacy, automation, geographic scope, and ownership. Finally, we use our situated work to discuss a generalizable tension within smart city projects between cross-domain data integration and fragmentation and provide implications for CSCW research, the design of smart city data platforms, and municipal policy.

Regional integration degree and its effect on a city’s green growth in the Yangtze River Delta: research based on a single-city regional integration index

In recent years, China’s economy has shown a trend of coordinated regional development. The integrated construction of urban agglomeration as a space carrier has placed the coordinated governance of the regional environment on the agenda. As such, we need to determine the effect of a city’s degree of regional integration on environmental regulation and green total factor productivity. To this end, a single-city regional integration index based on commodity retail price index is constructed to measure the degree of regional integration. Different from the traditional indexes that measure the integration degree of multiple economies, the proposed index aims to measure the integration degree of a single city into a region. This study also examines the effect of the city’ degree of regional integration on the relationship between environmental regulation and green total factor productivity using panel data on the Yangtze River Delta’s urban agglomeration from 2003 to 2016 for empirical analysis. The results reveal the existence of a positive U-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and green total factor productivity, where the city’s degree of regional integration buffers this relationship. Differing from existed papers, this study provides an index to measure the degree of a single city’s integration into a region and identifies the buffer effect of this regional integration on the city’s green growth based on the urban agglomeration level.

Delineating the Urban Areas of a Cross-Boundary City with Open-Access Data: Guangzhou–Foshan, South China

Cities defined mainly from the administrative aspect can create impact and problems especially in the case of China. However, only a few researchers from China have attempted to identify urban areas from the morphology dimension. In addition, previous studies have been mostly based on the national and regional scales or a single prefecture city and have completely ignored cross-boundary cities. Defining urban areas on the basis of a single data type also has limitations. To address these problems, this study integrates point of interest and nighttime light data, applies the breaking point analysis method to determine the physical geographic scope of the Guangzhou–Foshan cross-border city, and then compares this city with Beijing and Shanghai. Results show that Guangzhou–Foshan comprises one core urban area and six suburban counties, among which the core urban area extends across the administrative boundaries of Guangzhou and Foshan. The urban area and average urban radius of Guangzhou–Foshan are larger than those of Beijing and Shanghai, and this finding contradicts the city size measurements based on the administrative division system of China and those published on traditional official statistical yearbooks. In terms of urban density value, Shanghai has the steepest profile followed by Guangzhou–Foshan and Beijing, and the profile line of Guangzhou–Foshan has a bimodal shape.

Evaluating the multi-task learning approach for land use regression modelling of air pollution

Air pollution has been linked to several health problems including heart disease, stroke and lung cancer. Modelling and analyzing this dependency requires reliable and accurate air pollutant measurements collected by stationary air monitoring stations. However, usually only a low number of such stations are present within a single city. To retrieve pollution concentrations for unmeasured locations, researchers rely on land use regression (LUR) models. Those models are typically developed for one pollutant only. However, as results in different areas have shown, modelling several related output variables through multi-task learning can improve the prediction results of the models significantly. In this work, we compared prediction results from singletask and multi-task learning multilayer perceptron models on measurements taken from the OpenSense dataset and the London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory dataset. LUR features were generated from OpenStreetMap using OpenLUR and used to train hard parameter sharing multilayer perceptron models. The results show multi-task learning with sufficient data significantly improves the performance of a LUR model.

82125 Multiple epidemics of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis revealed by spatial disease mapping and whole-genome sequencing analysis in urban China

ABSTRACT IMPACT: Our study will integrate state-of-the-art methods in pathogen genomics, epidemiology, and geospatial analysis to identify both host- and pathogen-factors driving the MDR-TB transmission and the study outcome can inform the design of targeted interventions OBJECTIVES/GOALS: The emergence of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) poses serious challenges for the global eradication of tuberculosis. Recent research has shown that transmission is now the dominant driver of MDR-TB. However, our limited understanding of where and among whom MDR-TB is transmitted hampers efforts to control person-to-person spread. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We used several analytic approaches to characterize the dynamics of MDR-TB transmission in Shanghai, China. We identified all culture-confirmed MDR cases between 2009-2016 in the city and 1) estimated individual-level risk factors for MDR disease; 2) mapped the TB cases by their home addresses and used a Bayesian spatial disease mapping method to identify regions with an elevated risk of MDR-TB; and 3) we sequenced all MDR isolates to understand whether transmission explained variance in risk that was not attributable to the distribution of individual or location-specific risk variates. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: There were 1034 MDR-TB cases among 16,315 culture-confirmed TB cases during the study period. Bayesian disease mapping identified spatial heterogeneity of MDR-TB and determined four hotspots with an elevated risk of MDR-TB, none of which were fully explained by individual or regional-covariates (Figure 1). Sequencing revealed that more than 40% of the MDR-TB strains were in genomic clusters, indicating recent MDR-TB transmission. Most importantly, MDR-TB cases in three of the four large clades (&gt;8 isolates) were spatially concentrated in three strain-specific hotspots (Figure 2). DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF FINDINGS: With the combination of traditional epidemiological tools, geographical, and genomic methods, this study revealed multiple loci of transmission of specific MDR-TB clades within a single city. Identification of where and among whom MDR-TB is transmitted can inform the design of targeted interventions.

The Effects of Cognitive and Visual Functions of Korean Elderly Taxi Drivers on Safe Driving Behavior.

PurposeIn this study, we investigated the effect of visual and cognitive functions of elderly taxi drivers on safe driving behavior. We aimed to identify factors that interfere with safe driving in an aging Korean society in elderly taxi drivers.Participants and MethodsA total of 203 elderly taxi drivers, aged >65, working at 3 companies in a single city were assessed over 4 weeks from December 1 to December 30, 2017, using the Motor-Free Visual Perception Test, Korean Montreal Cognitive Assessment, and Korean Safe Driving Behavior Measure. To examine the effects of cognitive and visual functions on driving behavior, we performed a stepwise multiple linear regression analysis (p<0.05).ResultsAll 4 subdomains of safe driving behaviors were significantly correlated with the cognitive subdomains of attention and abstraction and the visual perception subdomains of visual closure 1 and figure-ground.ConclusionMore systematic assessments of the relationship between driving behavior and cognitive and visual function in elderly individuals are needed.

Estimating the Impacts of Proximity to Public Transportation on Residential Property Values: An Empirical Analysis for Hartford and Stamford Areas, Connecticut

Public transit infrastructure may increase residential property values by improving accessibility and reducing commute expenses in urban areas. Prior studies have investigated the impacts of the proximity to public transportation on property values and obtained mixed conclusions. Many of these studies were focused on one transit mode for a single city. In this study, a hedonic pricing model is constructed to investigate the impacts of commuter rail/Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and bus lines separately in two different areas: the Stamford area (Stamford–Darien–New Canaan) and the Hartford area (Hartford–West Hartford–East Hartford), Connecticut. Comparison of the results from Ordinary Least Square and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) indicates that estimation accuracy can be improved by considering local variation. Results from GWR show that impacts of proximity to bus and rail/BRT on property values vary spatially in the Hartford area. Negative impacts of bus stops are found in downtown Hartford and positive impacts in the west and east sides of Hartford. Impacts from rail/BRT are relatively minor compared with bus lines, partly due to the relatively recent launching of the BRT and Hartford rail line. In contrast, most properties in the Stamford area show appreciation towards rail service and depreciation to bus service. This study reveals the roles of different public transit systems in affecting residential property values. It also provides empirical evidence for future transit-oriented development in this region for uplifting the real estate market.

An early experience on the effect of solid organ transplant status on hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

We compared the outcome of COVID-19 in immunosuppressed solid organ transplant (SOT) patients to a transplant naïve population. In total, 10356 adult hospital admissions for COVID-19 from March 1, 2020 to April 27, 2020 were analyzed. Data were collected on demographics, baseline clinical conditions, medications, immunosuppression, and COVID-19 course. Primary outcome was combined death or mechanical ventilation. We assessed the association between primary outcome and prognostic variables using bivariate and multivariate regression models. We also compared the primary endpoint in SOT patients to an age, gender, and comorbidity-matched control group. Bivariate analysis found transplant status, age, gender, race/ethnicity, body mass index, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, COPD, and GFR <60mL/min/1.73m2 to be significant predictors of combined death or mechanical ventilation. After multivariate logistic regression analysis, SOT status had a trend toward significance (odds ratio [OR] 1.29; 95% CI 0.99-1.69, p=.06). Compared to an age, gender, and comorbidity-matched control group, SOT patients had a higher combined risk of death or mechanical ventilation (OR 1.34; 95% CI 1.03-1.74, p=.027).

Spatio-temporal analysis of the main dengue vector populations in Singapore

BackgroundDespite the licensure of the world’s first dengue vaccine and the current development of additional vaccine candidates, successful Aedes control remains critical to the reduction of dengue virus transmission. To date, there is still limited literature that attempts to explain the spatio-temporal population dynamics of Aedes mosquitoes within a single city, which hinders the development of more effective citywide vector control strategies. Narrowing this knowledge gap requires consistent and longitudinal measurement of Aedes abundance across the city as well as examination of relationships between variables on a much finer scale.MethodsWe utilized a high-resolution longitudinal dataset generated from Singapore’s islandwide Gravitrap surveillance system over a 2-year period and built a Bayesian hierarchical model to explain the spatio-temporal dynamics of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus in relation to a wide range of environmental and anthropogenic variables. We also created a baseline during our model assessment to serve as a benchmark to be compared with the model’s out-of-sample prediction/forecast accuracy as measured by the mean absolute error.ResultsFor both Aedes species, building age and nearby managed vegetation cover were found to have a significant positive association with the mean mosquito abundance, with the former being the strongest predictor. We also observed substantial evidence of a nonlinear effect of weekly maximum temperature on the Aedes abundance. Our models generally yielded modest but statistically significant reductions in the out-of-sample prediction/forecast error relative to the baseline.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that public residential estates with older buildings and more nearby managed vegetation should be prioritized for vector control inspections and community advocacy to reduce the abundance of Aedes mosquitoes and the risk of dengue transmission.Graphical

GDP forecast of accommodation and catering industry in X city based on multi variable grey model —— Energy saving development of accommodation and catering industry

As the GDP of lodging and catering industry is generally quarterly or annual, the data volume is very small, so it is difficult to accurately predict the GDP of lodging and catering industry in this city for a city. However, a city can accurately predict the GDP development of the lodging and catering industry through electricity consumption. And the local government can formulate relevant policies to promote the stable development of lodging and catering industry and economy, and find the relationship between electricity consumption and GDP development of this industry, so as to achieve the purpose of low energy consumption and fast economic growth.t. This paper first conducted desensitization and normalization processing on the data, and then used Matlab to forecast the GDP of the lodging and catering industry in X City respectively by using GM (1, N) grey model, multiple linear regression model and BP neural network model. The experimental results show that the GM (1, N) grey model is more accurate and reliable than the other two methods in the case of less data. This paper solves the problem that the GDP of accommodation and catering industry in a single city is inaccurate.

Loneliness among Single City Youths beyond Conventional Marriage Age —Analyses Based on Consensual Qualitative Research

大龄单身青年; 孤独感; 共识性质性研究

Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe by Judith Herrin

Reviewed by: Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe by Judith Herrin Kevin Uhalde Judith Herrin Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020 Pp. xxxvii + 537. $29.95. Praise for Judith Herrin’s Ravenna has been widespread and fully deserved. The author is a prominent historian of Byzantium whose scholarly work engages a wide variety of topics. This is not the first time she has used her lucid prose style to render a sensible narrative out of the interconnected political, economic, and religious events of the early medieval Mediterranean. The Formation of Christendom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987) remains one of the best introductions to the intertwined histories of empires and kingdoms in the fifth through tenth centuries and garnered the same sort of praise Ravenna has received. A collection of her essays entitled Unrivalled Influence: Women and Empire in Byzantium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013) shared the same broad, comparative approach to Byzantine history, in which Germanic and to a lesser extent Islamic actors are as integral as their counterparts in Constantinople. Among other recent publications is Ravenna: Its Role in Earlier Medieval Change and Exchange (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2016), co-edited with Jinty Nelson. This collection featured essays by scholars whose work constitutes some of the cutting-edge research informing the book under review. Accessibly written, lavishly illustrated, and available as an audiobook read by the excellent Phyllida Nash, Ravenna also includes ample endnotes and a good index. Ravenna in a sense turns Formation of Christendom inside out, making a single city both the focus and vantage point for events unfolding around the Mediterranean. Rather than the end of antiquity or beginning of the Middle Ages, the author identifies this half-millennium as a discrete and novel period in its own right: “early Christendom.” Readers of this journal should not look here expecting deep analyses of theological, doctrinal, or spiritual issues. Instead, what Herrin argues and her book successfully demonstrates is that Christianity was “a defining force in the exercise of authority as well as the organized means of transmitting community and integrating the economy” (xxxiv). In a nutshell, what this force defined was a “new social, military and legal order” (395) that was as regal, imperial, and ecumenical as it was religious. For several centuries, it was widespread and resilient enough for newcomers such as Theoderic, king of the Ostrogoths, to adapt and become proponents in their own right. As an imperial, royal, and ecclesiastical capital between 402 and 751, Ravenna was [End Page 451] enmeshed in this new order. With surrounding marshes discouraging attack, the Via Flaminia leading to Rome, and nearby Classis providing sea access to Dalmatia, Constantinople, and beyond, it was both protected and connected. Within the city, Herrin finds evidence of linguistic, religious, and ethnic diversity throughout the period, along with relative tolerance compared to elsewhere. Although its political and economic importance waned decisively in the latter half of the eighth century, Charlemagne bore his impressions of the city northward as he forged a new empire, enabling Herrin to claim Ravenna to have been the “first European city” (399). The book is divided into nine parts and further into many short, fast-paced chapters. Most of them use historical figures, both famous and less well known, as titles and to help anchor the narrative. The ninth-century historian Agnellus of Ravenna is inevitably the most important literary source, especially for ecclesiastical affairs, but the author makes use of all the other histories, chronicles, council proceedings, letters, and other literary sources when they are available. Much of the story is dominated by the familiar names who dominated early Christendom. Herrin portrays them skillfully, especially the effective empress but “terrible mother” Galla Placidia (51), and Theoderic, with his “determination to create a little Constantinople in the West” (110). Along with emperors, kings, patriarchs, and popes, Herrin’s subjects also include consorts, regents, and mothers wielding real power, traveling artisans and multilingual scholars, councillors implicated in epic struggles as well as municipal administration, and the townspeople whose affairs they recorded in the papyrus documents preserved in Ravenna’s municipal archives. Here the book is especially rich, as a number...

Multi-criteria analysis of urban policy for sustainable development decision-making: A case study for Warsaw city, Poland

In order to track how cities develop and grow, multidimensional systems of urban development indicators taking into account the balance between economic, social, and environmental aspects are the best solution found so far. However, there is no unique measurement system that would be widely accepted and applied within various urban areas to verify whether a given city is developing in a sustainable way. The aim of this paper is to apply the TOPSIS algorithm on the basis of selected urban indicators, in order to evaluate the progress of a single city towards the concept of sustainable development observed over a longer period of time. A capital city of Poland, Warsaw, faces several challenges associated with development policy evaluation, thus confirming the need for this research. We meticulously selected 48 indicators from the economic, social and environmental areas as an input for TOPSIS algorithm, which allowed us to calculate a new proposed aggregated index for evaluating urban policy on the example of Warsaw. Research has shown usefulness of applied TOPSIS algorithm in assessing the long-run development of an urban area towards the concept of a sustainable city. The results of our analysis indicated that over a period of ten years, during 2008-2017, the urban policy decision-making has been balancing the socio-economic and environmental aspects and the city of Warsaw has been developed in a sustainable manner.

Large-Scale Classification of Urban Structural Units From Remote Sensing Imagery

Remote sensing in combination with deep learning has become instrumental for efficiently and accurately classifying land-use and land-cover across large geographic areas. These technologies have also been successful in characterizing urban environments in terms of their structural units, structure types, or morphological regions. In these approaches, an urban area is partitioned into regions that exhibit homogeneous physical characteristics. However, existing approaches are typically limited to a single city, use inconsistent typologies, and lack scalability and generalization capacity. In this article, we propose an urban structural units categorization scheme and demonstrate its utility by applying it to 13 cities. Inspired by the lack of scalability and generalization capacity in urban structural units mapping, we extend the reach of deep learning and conduct a set of classification experiments in all 13 cities. These experiments offer insights into the strengths and limitations of deep neural networks for classifying urban structural units over diverse geographic regions and on heterogeneous collections of satellite imagery. The efficacy of the proposed deep learning approach is compared to a baseline method of multiscale image features and support vector machines. Our validation on five cities shows that better performance is achieved with deep neural networks. Additionally, we evaluate the impact of input size, model depth, and spatial pyramid pooling to assess the generalization capacity of deep neural networks.