Urban Planning Tools Research Articles

On the Correlations between Particulate Matter: Comparison between Annual/Monthly Concentrations and PM10/PM2.5

Annual concentration is a key element to assess the air quality of an area for long-time exposure effects. Nonetheless, obtaining annual concentrations from sensors is costly since it needs to have a year of measurements for each required pollutant. To overcome this issue, several strategies are studied to assess annual particulate matter concentration from monthly data, with their pros and cons depending on the risk acceptance and measurement campaign costs. When applied on a French dataset, the error spans from 12–14% with one month of measurement to 4–6% for six months of measurement for PM10 and PM2.5, respectively. A relationship between the mean relative error and 95th percentile relative error is provided with an R2 of 0.99. The relationship between PM10 and PM2.5 was also investigated and improved compared to previous work by considering the seasonality and influence on emission reaching a mean relative error of 12%. Thus, this study provides tools for urban planners, engineers, researchers, and public authorities for improved monitoring of annual air pollution at a lower cost for particulate matter.

Media Coverage of 3D Visual Tools Used in Urban Participatory Planning

The opportunities provided by adopting digitally-generated visual tools in urban participatory planning are compelling. These visual tools can promote interactions between authorities and citizens and among citizens. However, the urban participatory practices of these tools are often described from an academic perspective, which leads to a lack of knowledge from the practitioner's outlook. This study investigates practices of 3D visual tools in applied urban projects. The applied projects were recovered from media coverage. The objective is to describe participatory projects and their adopted 3D tools with a contextual and technical lens. The findings demonstrate that 3D visuals are mostly adopted for communication with a realistic representation and limited interaction in the later stage of the project where negotiation margins are insufficient at a small and medium urban scale. A better understanding of applied practices can help to introduce guidelines that support practitioners in designing approaches that benefit from the full potential of 3D visual tools.

From Policy to Implementation—An Analytic Network Process (ANP)-Based Assessment Tool for Low Carbon Urban and Neighborhood Planning

To achieve the goals of carbon peaking, a national policy instrument for carbon peaking in the building and construction sector has been launched by the Chinese MOHURD (30 June 2022). We have developed an actionable framework for implementing these policy objectives. The framework was designed by classifying and prioritizing selected strategic government recommendations in the form of an interactive indicator system and tool for evaluating the quality of low-carbon urban and neighborhood planning actions based on the decarbonation principles of carbon emission reduction and carbon capture. The analytic network process (ANP) was applied for processing the interactions and prioritizing the indicators (23 in total for the two principles applied). A scorecard was designed for assessing low-carbon urban and neighborhood planning strategies and technologies. The practical implementation of the tool was then tested with two real planning cases, one from a fourth-tier Chinese city and another from a high-density city. The applicability of the tool is further discussed by comparing it with well-developed international assessment tools in other contexts. This article contributes to the literature by first initiating research on the use of this evaluative tool for low-carbon planning and secondly by demonstrating how researchers can convert policies into practical implementations.

Lezha Energy and Ecological Corridor (LEEC). Climate Resilience through Blue and Green Corridors in Lezha Municipality

This research paper builds on the analytical work conducted by the Doctoral Candidate, initiated on November 2021, during the International PhD Workshop between Polis and Ferrara Universities as well as based on his previous experience with Renewable Energy projects and Evaluation of Ecosystem Services conducted by the candidate under the “Green Lungs for Our Cities” project (link), supported by the EU Delegation in Albania. Given the climate and ecological disturbed balance in urban areas, future planning exercises shall be oriented towards climate neutral and decarbonized cities. Urban and territorial strategies nowadays seek to explore and determine the appropriate instruments for that Nature Based Solutions NBS and Ecosystem Based Solution EBS are enabled to decrease the deterioration of human impact on all the ecological networks. Moreover the Sofia Declaration (Regional Cooperation Council, 2020), an instrument that factorizes the EU Green Deal for Western Balkans indicates precisely that one of 5 key development sectors should be Biodiversity preservation and joint management. Ecological networks including here the hydrology, green areas, geography, climatic conditions, energy metabolisms, transport infrastructure and industrial interactions can coexist in harmony if they are extracted form the ideology of approaching them as separate networks within a linear approach. One can always affect the other therefore “Between them there is no contradiction, but only profound opposition: to be resolved projectually” (Dardi, 2009) . Main objective of this research is to initially seek and determine an adequate relationship between ecosystem services provided by Green, Blue and Natural networks within the urban areas of Koder Marlekaj, Lezhe-Shengjin axis to further connecting them throughout a potential Ecological Corridor that would allow the terrestrial biodiversity of Kune-Vain-Tale protected area access high territory in cases of wildfire, flooding or other extreme-climatic events. Such intervention will pose a new systemic approach towards problems and issues, which are caused mainly by a rigid and linear approach from nowadays Urban Planning and Decision- making practices at a local and national leve. The purpose of this research paper is threefold: (i) to verify the biodiversity preservation potential of a new ecological corridor between high- land and lagoon, (ii) in terlink the mix of urban-energy-ecology nexus within a specific case study whereas ne urban planning tools, (iii) propose relevant measures to increase the resilience of the Lezha-Shengjin territory with regard to Climate Change implications.

How the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games were embedded in urban planning documents: The enforcement of a metropolitan strategy in the Bay Area

ABSTRACT This study examines the coherence between the Tokyo Olympic urban project, the national urban planning strategies, and the metropolitan and sub-metropolitan policies. The objective is to understand how the wards are integrated in the definition and design of the Olympic project by questioning the available urban planning tools. This paper shows that the Olympic project is fundamentally top-down and does not take into account the objectives of the wards, while it also seeks to finalize urban strategies decided at the national level from the 1980s. The paper examines 25 strategic documents and urban planning documents in English and Japanese in order to trace the evolution of urban planning choices. The result of the study confirms that it is important for the Olympic movement to reform the preparatory phase of the event, in particular by lengthening the period between the election of the host city and the delivery of the Games, while including more strongly all the public actors and not only the institution signing the host city contract.

Digging up the Past: Re-Visiting the Potential Role Green Roofs can Play in Mitigating the Urban Heat Island (UHI) Effect: A Case Study of the Central Business District (CBD), Durban, South Africa

Across the world, cities and densely populated areas are striving to both uplift the quality of the environment as well as enhance their sustainability. Part of this endeavour entails the promotion of urban greening. In Durban, on the east coast of South Africa, rooftop greening practices are gaining some traction with a view to achieving the sustainable development of a greener environment for the city and surrounding areas, although on a smaller scale than many other cities. There has been little empirical research done on green roofs within a local context, especially concerning green roofs as green infrastructure in urban planning tools for creating sustainable resilient city spaces by helping them mitigate against climate change. The quantitative analysis of this research measured temperatures and the urban heat island effect (UHI) of green roofs, as well as control sites over a seven-year period. The total average temperature differences over a seven-year period during the summer months (January/February) witnessed one green roof measuring 9.2 degrees Celsius lower than the control roof. The rationale for this research was to offer support for the benefits of green roofs in mitigating against an increase in inner-city heat islands in the case of Durban’s Central Business District (CBD).

A crime risk-based approach for urban planning. A methodological proposal

The issue of urban security is of great importance in city policies and a prerequisite for the creation of sustainable cities and communities. The pursuit of secure conditions requires the integration of different existing approaches in order to achieve effective and lasting results. The methodology focuses on the crime risk concept, for which no instrument currently available in Literature provides an unambiguous definition or complete assessment. The aim of the research is the definition of a risk model in which the different security approaches converge and maximise their synergy through the construction of a Spatial Composite Crime Risk Index (IRc), structured according to the disaster risk paradigm. Its spatial nature allows the spatial component of crime risk to be highlighted. The associated crime risk map gives a snapshot of the risk conditions in the area under study. It highlights the presence, the magnitude and the superficial extension of the critical areas for which appropriate intervention strategies can be envisaged. The model was applied to the city of Milan. The quantitative result obtained, i.e. the crime risk map, confirms the usefulness and effectiveness of introducing the latter into the information layers used when defining Urban Planning tools. This would allow an in-depth analysis of the territory through the construction of risk scenarios.

Convergence of the materialistic and idealistic in the methodology of urban planning

The realities of the present require changes and development of urban methodology as a science of methods covering the entire methodological chain – from clarifying concepts, streamlining tasks and establishing characteristics of objects to methods of analysis, evaluation and justification of decisions, and urban planning design and management of urban development. The purpose of this study is to provide an in-depth understanding of the methodology of urbanism in the context of convergence (rapprochement, interconnection, interpenetration) of materialistic and idealistic approaches, and to streamline and develop methodological tools for urban planning. Urban planning activity is considered a set of purposes, criteria, priorities, and constraints. The multiplicity of purposes – strategic, tactical, regulatory, and criteria – necessitates changes in methodology, analysis and assessment of spatial situations, and justification of decisions, including the requirements of multicriteria. The design of territorial systems is oriented towards integrated development, increasing the validity and efficiency of the implementation of the concepts of their spatial organisation. The study is methodological – it emphasises the significance of improving the methodological culture and developing the urbanist’s systemic thinking (reflection, worldview), their creative potential and the set of professional knowledge, skills and abilities to implement projects and other functions of professional activity. It is extremely important in the era of large databases and the Internet, changes in planning and research practices, increased capacity and depth of information analysis, and the emergence of new techniques and procedures. Integration of new research methods should be designed to obtain new knowledge about processes and phenomena, establish regularities and increase the validity of the principles of organisation, functioning and development of urbanised systems and territories

Narrowing the Implementation Gap

Developing new digital tools to fit the needs of communicative urban and green area planning requires understanding of the various prospective user groups, the different contexts of use, the planning tasks, and the communicative activities at hand. However, it is not self-evident that user research can be applied in research and innovation projects with limited human and time resources. In this article, a user-centered design (UCD) approach is applied in the development of new collaborative 3D tools for urban and green area planning in a multidisciplinary research team in the GreenTwins project. This research shows how essential it is to select easy-to-learn user research methods, identify the knowledge needs for tool development, and ensure that user insight is transmitted to development. In the GreenTwins project, this was achieved by applying a simple UCD framework (PACT) and engaging the research and development team in the process. Despite the challenges, the results show that the methodology used was beneficial.

A Circularity Mapping Framework for Urban Policymaking

In the context of urban policies, the circular economy can represent a virtuous model of sustainable and efficient management of resources and services for citizens, generating value for the community. Local policymakers play a central role in accelerating the circular economy transition, given that they organize and manage services that can significantly contribute to urban resilience. For policies to be properly designed, tools aimed at supporting territorial planning are needed to direct local policy towards choices that favor the circular economy and the resilience of cities. Among these urban planning tools, it is particularly important to have dashboards of comparative data on the degree of implementation of the circular economy. This paper provides a circularity mapping framework to map the degree of circularity and identify cities' strengths and weaknesses to design policies accordingly using a data-driven approach. Using a circular economy model based on 5 circular economy pillars, we identified 28 variables and assigned them to each of the pillars according to the variable's scope: sustainable inputs, social sharing, Product as a service, environmental policies, and resource efficiency. Both partial scores based on the five circular economy pillars, and a circularity index are provided for benchmarking and positioning analysis. Since urban life's environmental, economic, and social aspects are intertwined, only an integrated strategy can result in successful urban sustainable development. The paper supports policymakers in creating the conditions for efficient production and consumption markets and resource management systems while designing incentives and communications to citizens to support bottom-up initiatives and encourage virtuous behavior.

Developing a smart tool for integrated climate action planning (ICLAP 2050) in Asia-Pacific Cities

In light of the growing global environmental challenges, smart cities need to serve as testing workshops or labs to smartly tackle complex cross-sectional issues like jobs, seamless mobility, safety and security, sustained growth, while responding to the impending climate change too. This necessitates for developing a smart model or tool that integrates such varied but crucial climate concerns of a city into its direct decision-making and long-term planning. In this research, we conduct a literature review to have an overview of the state-of-the-affairs on urban climate planning in Asia-Pacific Cities covering China, Japan, India, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. This is followed by an intensive theoretical understanding on the need of having a smart tool in urban climate action planning. This includes the study of recent urban climate metrics and tools, their different typologies based on key purpose, method, sectoral and geographical scope, and challenges and gaps in formulating smart urban climate tools. We then introduce the conceptual framework for integrated climate action planning (ICLAP) tool that transects spatial, statistical and bibliometric methods. We establish applicability of ICLAP in case of Indian cities by discerning climate vulnerabilities, GHG trends and relevant urban climate solutions. The paper eventually culminates with major scientific findings and policy recommendations, essentially underscoring more intensive and wider application of ICLAP like smart urban climate tools in local decision making and national urban policies duly supported by international scientific collaborations.

Land Use Efficiency and Value Capture

This article aims to relate intrinsic aspects of urban planning that are becoming increasingly important both within the international scientific debate and within urban planning tools. These aspects are land consumption and land value capture. Their centrality is given by the growing importance that in recent years have assumed the aspects related to the sustainable development of settlements. This article aims to summarize the main theories regarding the relationship between the efficiency of land use and the policies of capturing public value. The reference scenario is dictated by sustainable development policies that, if contextualized in the sphere of urban development, imply a rational use of resources to ensure the formation of resilient, safe, and inclusive settlements. This aspect introduces the existing link between urban form and sustainability. It is therefore understood how the achievement of the targets set at the international level are implemented in local urban policies. For this reason, many scholars have argued that the challenge of adapting to new pressures, such as climate change, necessarily means creating efficient urban settlements. The question becomes: which land use can be considered more efficient than the others? This article intends to answer this question by investigating the main theories that have tried to define the mechanisms and methods of comparison of different urban development scenarios. The article goes on to reconstruct the steps that have helped to evaluate urban development according to purely fiscal aspects up to the introduction of qualitative aspects related to public value. To do so, it analyzes the terms and tools related to the concepts of public value and the capture of public value and attempts to synthesize the main theories and research in the sector.

Interactive soundscape simulation as a co-design tool for urban professionals

Urban professionals are regularly confronted with the complexity of urban sound experiences and have long expressed interest in better sound design opportunities. But, in many urban environments, the common approach based on noise mitigation has proven insufficient to improve the quality of the auditory experience. However, urban professionals rarely have the resources and knowledge to deal with urban sound in a resource-centered manner and to make space for perceptual and contextual suitability for a diversity of experiences. To start bridging this gap, the present research explores the potential of a soundscape simulator prototype to help integrate sound into the urban design process. Through a formative evaluation with urban professionals during an interactive workshop, this study reveals avenues for the development of a simulation tool for urban professionals, including the need to balance flexibility and accuracy, to present changes in real time, and to seamlessly switch between different compositions to support design comparisons. Our findings also hint at a shift away from the visual-centeredness and a willingness amongst urban professionals to consider a more holistic urban sensory experience. We conclude with recommendations for a sound simulation tool for urban planning.

Community gardens as a response to the contradictions of sustainable urban policy: Insights from the Swiss cities of Zurich and Lausanne

In this paper we explore how policy discourses on urban sustainability impact the governing of urban food gardening in favoring community gardens. Our main hypothesis is that community gardens better accommodate the tensions created by the discourses of the compact and green city compared to other types of food gardening, especially allotment gardens. In the context of the Swiss cities of Lausanne and Zurich, analysis of policy documents confirms this hypothesis by identifying four frames that orient policies toward favoring community gardening: (i) Adapting green space planning to densification favors community gardening with their modest, flexible and multifunctional design, (ii) Revaluating the role of urban food gardening in urban sustainability represents community gardening as a new multifunctional benchmark, (iii) Reorganizing urban food gardening fosters diversity in gardening opportunities which in turn supports a variety of forms of community gardening, (iv) Justifying urban food gardening through public values and needs supports community gardening with their cost-efficient green space management, lower land management and more active citizen participation. In this vein, urban policymakers continually turn to community gardens as a strategic urban planning tool that gives urban green space greater legitimacy in the wake of the densifying city. Overall, urban food gardens continue to be negotiated between space-related marginalization and socio-political significance serving different needs to urban citizens. This results in the need of a more sophisticated planning approach considering different types of urban gardens related to their location in the built city, associated functions, and user groups.

The Spaces of Social Services as Social Infrastructure: Insights From a Policy-Innovation Project in Milan

The spatial organisation of social services has long been residual for both urban planning and social welfare policies in Italian cities. This often results in randomly chosen locations and poor design arrangements, which ignore the role that space might play in fostering social life and inclusion. The scarce relevance given to the topic both in research and implementation is connected to the historical evolution of social services in the country and the scant resources devoted to their provision. Basing itself on the debate on welfare spaces and social infrastructures and drawing on a collaborative-research experience within an experimental policy-innovation project developed in Milan, this article tackles the role of space in social services provision following three directions. Firstly, it analyses how, at the urban level, welfare innovations and the interplay between urban planning and welfare policies might contribute to reshaping the traditional physical structures of social services and their map to favour more inclusive patterns of access to local welfare. Secondly, it investigates the role of social services as social infrastructures in increasing accessibility, reducing stigmatisation, and interpreting in a more inclusive way the complex public-private partnerships that allow welfare implementation nowadays. Finally, it discusses how, in the face of contemporary trends in the activation of welfare spaces, traditional urban planning tools are challenged in monitoring their increasingly dynamic distribution in the city. This highlights the need to develop innovative urban planning strategies and tools to effectively support decision-making and design.

Micromunicipality (MM) and Inner Areas in Italy: A Challenge for National Land Policy

The following paper examines urban and territorial planning in Italy, where decision-making is entrusted almost exclusively to the almost 8000 small municipalities present in the country. Plans for and the transformation of built-up areas, infrastructure and social services of all types, and serving all purposes in a national territory of more than 300,000 square kilometers, are controlled by a multitude of Mayors, Boards and Municipal Councils that govern plots of land consisting of polygons of a few kilometers per side. This is generally achieved using urban planning tools developed without any general rule or protocol. Often, most of their content is even ignored as a result of national legislation that weakens them, making them largely irrelevant. This is a European example of urban mismanagement that should be brought to the wider attention of the European technical–scientific community because the debate developed so far on this topic—even by eminent and authoritative urban planners—has been almost entirely published in Italian only. Public and political attention around the issue is still extremely limited, although the serious effects of this “molecular planning” are beginning to be perceived: unjustified overurbanization and very disorganized, extremely energy-intensive and ecosystemically destructive urban layouts that are completely at odds with the public interests of environmental and urban quality. In the following paper, we make some comparisons with other European countries and outline some possible directions—certainly very difficult to follow—to rethink and remedy these negative effects.

How to optimize the 2D/3D urban thermal environment: Insights derived from UAV LiDAR/multispectral data and multi-source remote sensing data

The systematical exploration of how two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) features of urban landscapes influence land surface temperature (LST) is still limited. Therefore, we investigated the influence of three main urban landscapes—urban green space, impervious land, and water bodies on LST, with a particular focus on the 3D vegetation metrics of green volume (GV) and leaf area index (LAI). We used Yinchuan City, China, as a case study. We quantified the impacts of various 2D/3D metrics of the three landscape types on LST using a random forest analysis with multiple sources, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and remote sensing images. We then generated a Bayesian Network (BN) model to identify the optimal configurations for each landscape type. We found that using 11 of the 31 metrics considered, our model could explain 81.8% of the observed variance in LST of Yinchuan City. Among those, water body metrics were the most important, followed by vegetation abundance, impervious land metrics, and landscape pattern of urban green space. The mean classification error of the BN model was only 22.9%. We suggest that this makes the BN model a promising support tool for urban planning with a view to urban heat island mitigation. Our findings also stress the importance of considering both 2D and 3D features when considering urban cooling strategies.

The Process of Digitalization of the Urban Environment for the Development of Sustainable and Circular Cities: A Case Study of Bologna, Italy

The residential heritage that was built during the great expansion of real estate after the Second World War has severe deficiencies in structural safety, fire resistance, energy efficiency, and accessibility and these cannot be solved with sustainable renovation measures. This study focuses on replacement interventions and promotes a management model that addresses three areas (technical, social, and economic) and it refers to the application of the circularity principle to the construction sector for the goal of climate neutrality by 2050. The final objective is to define a protocol—namely, the guidelines—to reference in a decision-making process that promotes urban regeneration by comparing demolition with reconstruction and renovation. The proposed methodology allows for the determination of suitable areas in Bologna for replacement and the joining of the municipal geodatabase with data from archival research on building permits in 1949–1965 by using GIS software. This digital archive can be implemented in a digital twin for an urban block, which can become a predictive tool for urban planning and the management of the whole life of a building. The main result is the characterization of urban blocks by identifying typical features belonging to specific building libraries that are validated with density analyses. These urban clusters and building archetypes can be used to assess targeted intervention measures by using specific tools, such as predictive maps and 3D city models.

The infrastructure transition canvas: A tool for strategic urban infrastructure planning

Increasing pressures resulting from global environmental and societal changes urge cities to adapt their infrastructures. Strategic planning in local governments and utilities has to anticipate these challenges and translate them into innovation and investment strategies. In this setting, a multitude of actors, their interests, and value orientations have to be considered in decision-making. Else, innovation projects are likely to meet resistance and fail. We outline how business model thinking can help navigate the roles and interests of a variety of stakeholders in nature-based infrastructure implementation. This leads to proposing the tool of 'Infrastructure Transition Canvas' (ITC), which draws on insights from business model innovation, and its recent uptake by transition scholars. Potential benefits of applying the ITC are illustrated by the case of urban stormwater management in Germany. We discuss how the ITC may support complex investment decisions, and pave the way to sustainable urban infrastructure transitions.

From satellite interferometry displacements to potential damage maps: A tool for risk reduction and urban planning

Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) is a consolidated tool for detecting and monitoring ground surface displacements. The availability of satellite data with free access policy and high monitoring capabilities (in terms of resolution and acquisition frequency) is increasing. Moreover, the first continental displacement map of Europe will be freely available in quarter one 2022 by the latest Copernicus Service, the European Ground Motion Service (EGMS). The EGMS will provide ground displacement maps, updated every year, delivering valuable information to a wide range of users, such as public or governmental institutions, industry, academia, and citizens. This vast amount of information needs semi-automatic tools and methodologies to derive user-oriented products that can be easily used by land use and urban planning decision-makers, who are often unfamiliar with PSI. This work proposes a semi-automatic procedure to identify damage prone areas in urban environments from wide-area PSI displacement maps. The proposed method identifies the most significant Active Deformation Areas (ADAs) to calculate three products based on the displacement intensity gradient: the Gradient Intensity Map, the Gradient Vectors and Time Series, and the Potential Damage Map. These products allow identifying buildings and urban structures exposed to potential damage, which could be followed by a more detailed building-based vulnerability and risk assessment. The methodology has been applied to an area of the province of Granada (Andalucía, Spain) but it can be applied to any other urban environment where PSI displacement maps are available. To demonstrate the advantages and limitations of the proposed method, results are discussed in five coastal resorts (Cerro Gordo, Punta de la Mona, Marina del Este, Alfa Mar, and Monte de los Almendros), strongly affected by slope movements. The methodology allowed to derive 175 ADAs from about 200,000 measurement points. About 15% of the resulting area has been found to correspond to high or very high gradient intensity class, and 192 out of 633 buildings have been identified to be prone to moderate or high potential damage. A damage prediction test has been realized through Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis, based on a damage inventory map derived from field surveys. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the methodology to localize damaged or potentially damaged buildings, substantially reducing the time of analysis.