City Space Research Articles

Redefining human thermal perception for the Mediterranean climates

SARS-COV-2 focuses on the comfort of outdoor spaces in large cities. Creating comfortable spaces for children and improving the habitability of cities are essential today. Climate change is real, and its main adverse effects are already being felt: Urban Heat Island and recurring heat waves. Numerous comfort models predict the state of the occupants of space. However, these comfort indices need to be validated in Mediterranean climates. This study tests the COMFA comfort model in a real case in Seville. Thermal monitoring campaigns are carried out during the intermediate seasons of warm weather in a primary school.The main objective is to know the effect of the urban heat island and the climatic conditions to which the person is subjected. For this purpose, fixed, semi-mobile, and mobile sensors were used to carry out surveys. Theoretical predictions provided by the COMFA thermal comfort model were compared with the subjective responses of the occupants. 65% of the model's results predict what people feel and tend to overestimate the real thermal perception, especially in warm climates such as Seville. These results can be helpful to redefine thermal comfort for climate change mitigation solutions assessment in public spaces.

Daily Space

Three articles in this issue of Arquitecturas del Sur are dedicated to collective housing, as the housing shortage has led to new and better forms of citizen participation in its solution. The Indigenous Temporary Accommodation in Florianopolis handles an essentially Latin American problem: access for Indigenous people to protected state housing. In this case, the presence of the city’s original inhabitants examines the possibilities of physical and symbolic spaces in the contemporary city and the professional role that looks into the responses. Next, the text on collaborative housing analyzes the case of Spain, and its relationship with public management mechanisms. The case of Gran Canaria looks at mutual aid issues, transfer of use, cooperativism, and citizen participation. In this way, the self-construction system of the Andalusian Junta, a practice that is as effective as it is controversial, and representative of a socialist cooperativism and cohabitation developed by the Barcelona City Council, converge in the debate on cooperative management. The third text looks into one of the latest events disclosed on CORVI’s actions, before its dissolution in 1976. It explores a management model that revealed the role of construction companies as a new player in the habitational process for the case of the Santiago Amengual Neighborhood. A second thematic group in this issue, materialized in its last 3 articles, returns to the structural issues of modern-day architecture, whose presence is diving deeper into the disciplinary debate. The places of memory seem to exceed the margins of an understanding based on heritage discourse. The memory and belonging of daily spaces, turn one to the nodes of memory and collective coherence. This is the case of the Community School – Center of Memory and Integrated Action to Care for the Forest of Galilea and the Territory of Colombia. Likewise, the individual, isolated, and selective expressions examine those unusual experiences where otherness exercises protagonism over experiences in the architecture and city of Santiago de Chile. Finally, revisiting the works of a master like Niemeyer opens the possibility for rereading, through actions based on the Portuguese decisions in two of his works: the urban complex of Pena Furada, in Portugal (1965), and Plaza XV, in Rio de Janeiro (1991).

Impact of Street Lighting Level on Floodlights

The article presents selected results of research related to the use of outdoor lighting, mainly street lighting, in the design of facility illumination. The indicated subject matter primarily concerns architectural structures that are located in urbanized city spaces and in the strict centers of old cities. It is in these areas that there is usually a significant saturation of historic secular and sacred buildings with significant tourist values. At the same time, the immediate surroundings of the structures are usually wrapped by a dense network of street lighting infrastructure. This illumination can be a major setback in the process of illumination planning. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account the extent of this impact on the planned illumination work, related to the selection, mounting, and direction of illumination equipment. This is related to the distance of the street luminaires from the facade, the height of their installation, the distance of the poles from each other, the power of the street luminaires, and the luminous flux distribution of the luminaires used. The purpose of the work undertaken was to analyze the extent to which outdoor lighting influences the planned illumination of an architectural structure and to explore the possibility of its potential use as a component of illumination. Analytical work was conducted at two levels of detail using advanced graphical computer applications. After general considerations and the derivation of conclusions, an example of illumination of a large sacral building was realized successfully using the element of street lighting as a component of illumination.

Principles of organization of the monumental and decorative design in the Chinese metro: interaction with the recipient

The metro stations are typical public spaces in cities, and they are important for the development of monumental and decorative art. Studying foreign cases has a positive value for considering the problems that the monumental and decorative art of metro stations may face in the new conditions that have arisen with the change of time. This article examines the monumental and decorative art in the rapidly developing Chinese metro system and analyzes the ways in which Chinese authors have established connections between the works, the station space, the city, and the public in order to fully realize the social significance of monumental and decorative art.

Up on the roof: a review of design, construction, and technology trends in vertical extensions

New spaces to accommodate growing urban populations should be created in a way that also reduces building lifecycle carbon emissions. In this context, the vertical extension (VE) has emerged as a novel building typology that can increase space in cities through the construction of additional floor area atop existing base buildings. This paper presents a review of 172 VE projects worldwide to provide an understanding of their design and construction trends, and to classify the technologies applied. Results show that VE construction has accelerated significantly over the past decade. Although most VEs consist of only small vertical additions, often one to two storeys, higher VEs can be built with innovative structural strategies and lightweight materials. Industrial buildings are often found to provide significant opportunities for VE due to their higher structural capacity. By comparing the characteristics and design of VEs, typologies based on architectural, structural, and construction technologies are presented.

The Influence of Street Morphology on Thermal Environment Based on ENVI-met Simulation: A Case Study of Hangzhou Core Area, China

The urban thermal environment has become a challenging issue. Streets, as an essential public space in cities, can be laid out in such a way to effectively alleviate a problematic urban thermal environment. In this study, we calculated the layout characteristics of various types of streets in the study area based on network big data combined with field research. We used ENVI-met thermal environment numerical simulation technology to simulate the thermal environment, with a multiple linear regression model to explore the internal relationship between the street-level thermal environment of each land use type and its layout factors. The results indicate that streets in the study area are primarily oriented north–south and east–west, with distinct layout differences among various street types. Additionally, the daily variation trend of thermal comfort PMV of all street types is similar, though north–south streets show a larger daily variation than east–west streets. Lastly, the optimal thermal environment layout differs for each type of street; the relationship between street form and thermal comfort PMV also varies across different street types. This study provides scientific evidence to better understand the relationship between a street’s layout and its thermal environment, offering a theoretical basis for street layout planning aimed at mitigating the urban thermal environment.

Understanding the Elderly's Needs and Services regarding Services in Public Spaces in Yazd

Introduction: Active aging is among the important concepts of health influenced by effective public services; understanding adults' needs and services are of great importance. This study aims to explain understanding older adults' needs for services in public places in Yazd city. Methods: This qualitative study was done as conventional content analysis. Participants were 20 elderly people from Yazd selected by purposive sampling. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was done in three levels of open coding and formation of sub categories and main categories. The study was evaluated and approved by four criteria of creditability, tranformability, reliability, and confirmability. Results: In total, 564 open codes were extracted. Then, primary codes were compared based on similarity, compatibility, and appropriateness, and 66 subclasses were obtained. 14 main categories were obtained by compressing the subcategories. The 8 main categories regarding different services included: healthcare, recreational, government agencies, transportation, communication and interaction, educational and research, religious and pilgrimage. In addition, regarding the older adults' needs, the 6 main categories included: improving the safety of places; providing effective education, mental, spiritual and social health development programs; improving services quality, reorganizing municipal services and provision of amenities. Conclusion: Paying attention to the needs of the elderly is necessary in planning for public spaces in cities. Regarding the need for comprehensiveness of services, it is suggested that the findings of this study be used in designing, implementing, and evaluating services in public places to their service needs and solve their problems.

Strategies for Green Space Management in Mountain Cities Based on the Habitat Suitability for Urban Birds Breeding

The reproduction suitability of urban birds reflects the health status and service level of urban ecosystems. Therefore, studying the relationship between the nest density of urban birds and environmental factors has certain reference significance for guiding green space management. In this study, 67 green spaces of Liupanshui city in the Wumeng Mountain Area were selected as study sites. Through the statistics of the number of bird’s nests in the plots in 2020, a stepwise regression analysis was conducted on 10 environment-influencing factors. The results show that the nest density of birds in urban green space is not significantly correlated with the plot size, noise, light pollution, vegetation diversity, proportion of paved land, proportion of native plants, or distance from water body, but is significantly correlated with the canopy coverage of arbor, spatial openness, and distance from non-artificial environment to plot. The research identified the environmental factors affecting nest density, and frames a method to compare the density of bird’s nests in urban green space. Based on this, strategies for the construction and management of green space are put forward, so as to provide reference for ecological city construction and alleviate the correlation between the expansion of urban construction land and the deterioration of bird habitats.

Compliance and the social space of cities: Variations in compliance with Covid-19 regulations and capital forms in urban communities

Cities' planned and built environments are key to healthier communities. The Covid-19 pandemic challenged this relationship, when the issue of communities' compliance with government restrictions to mitigate the spread of the pandemic became apparent. Despite the growing literature on the relationship between communities' characteristics and Covid-19 throughout the pandemic, little attention has been paid to the drivers of compliance at the city and community levels. Our paper addresses this lack through the Bourdieusian concept of communities' capital resources. Using Israel as a test case, we explore how the economic, social and cultural capital of urban communities affected compliance with Covid-19 related restrictions. The analysis reveals how the spatial dispersion of the components of these forms of capital explains the likelihood of communities' level of compliance. In particular, it shows how the accumulation of various forms of capital increased compliance with health regulations. The study highlights the explanatory power of local resources in collective spatial behavior patterns, as well as the possibility of exacerbating existing injustices.

Stereo SLAM in Dynamic Environments Using Semantic Segmentation

As we all know, many dynamic objects appear almost continuously in the real world that are immensely capable of impairing the performance of the majority of vision-based SLAM systems based on the static-world assumption. In order to improve the robustness and accuracy of visual SLAM in high-dynamic environments, a real-time and robust stereo SLAM system for dynamic scenes was proposed. To weaken the influence of dynamic content, the moving-object detection method was put forward in our visual odometry, and then the semantic segmentation network was combined in our stereo SLAM to extract pixel-level contours of dynamic objects. Then, the influences of dynamic objects were significantly weakened and the performance of our system increased markedly in dynamic, complex, and crowed city spaces. Following experiments with both the KITTI Odometry dataset and in a real-life scene, the results showed that our method could dramatically decrease the tracking error or drift, and improve the robustness and stability of our stereo SLAM in high dynamic outdoor scenarios.

Challenges and countermeasures of China's research on "sports promoting adolescent socialization"-data mining based on Weibo and CNKI.

Understand the public demand for Adolescent socialization, and compare the hot spots in the researches of "sports promoting Adolescent socialization," so as to clarify the high-quality development direction of sports promoting Adolescent socialization in the new era. Collected the Weibo texts about "Adolescent socialization" from April 13, 2017 to June 1, 2022 through python, and used LDA to understand the relevant hot spots. Used City space to collect CNKI studies related to "sports promote Adolescent socialization," and used keyword co-occurrence network to understand hot spots. A total of 77,900 original Weibo texts were captured. The theme model identified five potential themes: "School and Family Education," "Social Participation," "Community Education," "Ideological and Political Education" and "Media." The semantic network showed that the public concerns of each theme include "Adolescent socialization education content," "relevant policies and regulations," "Adolescent socialization environment," "traditional culture" and "publicity ways and examples"0.52 studies were finally retrieved. The keyword co-occurrence network showed that keywords such as "Adolescent," "Socialization," "Sports Games," "School Sports" and "Family Sports" appeared more frequently and had higher intermediary centrality. Researches focused on Socialization, Internet Addiction, Coupling, School Sports, Sports Socialization Media. The public's attention to "Adolescent socialization" has three characteristics: subject linkage, object susceptibility, and media diversity. The researches on "Sports Promoting the socialization of Adolescents" has some problems, such as the imbalance of subject supply and demand, the inconsistent way of object supply and demand, and the different content of media supply and demand. The reason is that there is an information island between people and scholars. Existing research results can not meet the demands of the public.

Metro Girl: The Alliance of Art and Architecture in the Visual Aesthetics of the Modern Georgian City of the 1960s

Abstract This article explores the way a new specifically Georgian post-Stalinist art form (cheduroba, metal engraving) that emerged in the 1960s became a commonly encountered emblematic feature of the equally new urban spaces of the rapidly changing modernist Tbilisi cityscape. This new, and yet seemingly old, art form, which frequently featured the face of a traditional Georgian girl, usually a Khevsur girl from the mountains, came to be a diagnostic part of the modern urban assemblage of Tbilisi in the 1960s. This traditional face from the Georgian past became a paradoxical figure for the alliance of art and architecture in the visual aesthetics of the modern Georgian city in the 1960s, and the art form became the stereotypical “face” of a specifically Georgian post-Stalinist “traditional-modernist” public urban art. This art form soon became diagnostic of modern Georgian urban spaces, like the Tbilisi metro, which also opened around the same time in the 1960s. The recurrent distribution of this face across newly-created modernist urban spaces together formed a Georgian version of “socialist modernism,” producing a visually-experienced “brand of socialism” for urban spaces, a procession of images traditional or national (in style or theme) in socialist modernist spaces connecting the traditional architecture of the city to the modernist architectural spaces of the new socialist city of the 1960s.

City and public space: The Miriti festival in Abaetetuba/PA

The present work reflects the relationship between city and culture regarding the organization of cultural festivals in public spaces and, in particular, the “MiritiFest”, in Abaetetuba. Therefore, it is proposed to reflect on the city of Abaetetuba/PA, especially with regard to the strategies adopted in view of holding the event “MiritiFest”, in the public space “Praça da Bandeira”. Methodologically, we adopted a qualitative approach, considering the degree of depth that we want to pursue in the study. The main research techniques are, therefore, participant observation and the application of semi-structured interviews. The results reveal that this is one of the main cultural events in the municipality, moving the local economy and adding value to local and regional culture, based on handicrafts.

Urban dynamics through the lens of human mobility.

The urban spatial structure represents the distribution of public and private spaces in cities and how people move within them. Although it usually evolves slowly, it can change quickly during large-scale emergency events, as well as due to urban renewal in rapidly developing countries. Here we present an approach to delineate such urban dynamics in quasi-real time through a human mobility metric, the mobility centrality index ΔKS. As a case study, we tracked the urban dynamics of eleven Spanish cities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results revealed that their structures became more monocentric during the lockdown in the first wave, but kept their regular spatial structures during the second wave. To provide a more comprehensive understanding of mobility from home, we also introduce a dimensionless metric, KSHBT, which measures the extent of home-based travel and provides statistical insights into the transmission of COVID-19. By utilizing individual mobility data, our metrics enable the detection of changes in the urban spatial structure.

Tourists’ Perception of Macau’s City Image: Based on the Analysis of User-Generated Content (UGC) Text Data

City image reflects urban culture and communication and influences tourists’ travel behavior. However, based on field investigations, it was found that Macau’s city space currently faces issues such as an imbalance in practical use efficiency, an overload of historical urban areas, and a mismatch between tourist numbers and spatial capacity. To further understand tourists’ travel experiences and influencing factors in Macau, this study uses user-generated content (UGC) textual data and takes the Macau Special Administrative Region in China as a case study. The ROST CM6.0 software and grounded theory analysis method are utilized to analyze the perceptual content and underlying influencing mechanisms of city image from the perspective of tourists. The research results show that: 1. Tourists’ perception of Macau’s city image mainly stays at the intuitive and superficial level, represented by individual landscapes such as the “Ruins of St. Paul’s”, “Grand Lisboa”, and “Galaxy”. 2. Tourists’ perception of Macau’s city image can be summarized into four main dimensions: architectural and landscape image, cultural and historical image, economic and commercial image, and spatial governance and public service image. 3. Negative aspects of tourists’ perception of Macau’s city image include infrastructure perception, tourism service perception, urban experience perception, and urban safety perception, with spatial scale perception being the most influential factor. Finally, this study proposes effective measures to optimize urban spatial resource allocation, improve urban infrastructure, enhance the spatial environment of the old city, strengthen the promotion of historical culture, improve urban transportation convenience, and enhance urban safety to provide references for enriching the theory of city image perception research and the development of urban tourism in Macau.

Outdoor Thermal Comfort of Urban’s Pedestrian in Tropical City of Kuala Lumpur

In recent years, urbanization in the city have given impact to the climate change of the environment. The increase in urban air temperature have decrease the thermal comfort or ruin the experience of the pedestrian in outdoor spaces. This research explores the impact of air temperature on pedestrian outdoor thermal comfort in shaded spaces of tropical city of Kuala Lumpur. Findings are presented from field measurement based on the environmental parameters on case study area. Surveys are conducted which includes 199 randomly selected pedestrians to subjectively observe their feeling and preferences of the outdoor thermal comfort towards the climatic outdoor temperature. Hence, the result concluded that the urban pedestrian walkway has a significantly high temperature. However, the results show that presence of shading structure improve their comfort being in outdoor spaces. This conclude that thermal sensation of pedestrian can be improved with shading structure and it can increase the walkability of pedestrians. The space can also increase the pedestrian’s comfort with help of mechanical ventilation. Thus, it is recommended for outdoor pedestrian spaces to provide shading and have proper ventilation to reduce heat and make pedestrian feels comfortable outdoor.

Assessment of the ecological state of green spaces of Almaty city on the example of Bostandyk district

The article provides an assessment of the ecological state of green spaces on the example of the Bostandyk district of Almaty. The total area of boulevards, squares and green areas of the Bostandyk district of Almaty today is 147.4 hectares. Bostandyk district of Almaty is one of the three greenest districts of Almaty after Medeu and Turksib districts. As our studies have shown, 95 % of green plantations of tree species in the Bostandyk district of Almaty are represented by introducers and a small part of local species — natives. The landscaping of the territory of the city of Almaty is represented by plantings of different types. These include groves, alleys, gardens, parks, boulevards, squares, green areas, intra-district gardening, street gardening. At the same time, a wide variety of species is observed in gardens, parks, boulevards, groves and a very small use of three or four species in landscaping streets. Among the tree plantations, 35 species are massive, which grow along all the streets, boulevards, squares of the Bostandyk district. From hardwoods: Populus nigra, Populus italica, Populus alba, Fraxinus excelsior and others. From the local natural flora grow — Armeniaca vulgaris, Prunus sogdiana, Fraxinus sogdiana, Rhamnus cathartica, Picea schrenkiana.

Components of Smart Cities: Smart City Applications and Smart Space Management

Increasing human activities and the need to be able to carry out increasingly rapid transactions and the need to quickly solve the problems in the city have brought smart and technological applications to the fore. With this study, it was tried to measure the awareness levels and expectations of the city residents regarding smart cities and e-applications in smart cities and smart city space management. Within the scope of the study, a conceptual framework related to the concept of smart city was presented; smart city components, smart space management policies, strategies and practices, and smart city application examples in the world and in our country were examined, a literature review was conducted and a survey was conducted with 252 people over the age of 18 in 2019. According to the results of the survey, it can be said that citizens do not have enough awareness about e-applications serving at local scale in our country. Therefore, it would be beneficial for local governments to inform citizens about local e-applications and to take a leadership role in smart space management.

Urban Literacy and How to Measure It

In the studies of the last decade, the word "literacy" is one of the most commonly used, one might even say pedagogically fashionable. A number of significant areas of literacy study concretize the concept of "literacy" through the concepts of "space" and "practice", focusing on tools and resources involved with specific goals in a specific space (social, educational, cultural, etc.). Justifying the need to highlight urban literacy, the authors of the article proceed from the premise that the study of this new type of literacy is possible by combining spatial (where literacy is formed and why it goes beyond the school classroom) and practical (how literacy manifests itself and what knowledge and experience it requires) coordinates. The article substantiates that urban literacy is based on the complex nature of reading and writing, is firmly connected with the life of citizens of all ages and is of great importance for learning. Urban literacy of adolescents is considered as literacy, which focuses on the search for the optimal way of action in solving problems in the city space related to the movement, consumption and social interaction of adolescents based on the principles of a healthy lifestyle, responsible behavior, personal safety, as well as knowledge of the history and cultural characteristics of the city. This literacy includes the following practices (or components): pro-social engagement practices; healthy lifestyle practices; practices of intercultural interaction; practices of the use of digital technologies; practices of local awareness; practices of mobility in the city. The proposed tool for measuring urban literacy assumes a comprehensive perspective for assessing important aspects of a child's interaction with the city based on authentic realistic scenario-type tasks.

In the Invisible Space – The Phenomemon of Crypts in Ostia

The article addresses the issue of Mithraism in Ostia. It discusses the latest discoveries, the nature of the Mithra cult in Ostia, with particular emphasis on the place of Mithra’s shrines in the city space.