Development Of Towns Research Articles

The Evolution of Small Town Spa Resorts in the Global South: The Historical Pathway of Montagu, South Africa

An important resource for small town tourism is maximising the local advantage of natural mineral springs. Only a small international literature exists on the evolution of spa resorts with scant writings for the Global South. For small town South Africa the histories of spa tourism mostly are unrecorded. This article addresses this knowledge gap by investigating the historical development of one spa tourism resort, namely Montagu in the Western Cape. Archival and documentary sources are utilised to analyse the tourism development of this small town from its formal establishment in the early 1850s to the closing apartheid years during the late 1980s. It is shown that Montagu’s rise was part of the wider growth of South Africa as a health destination which was anchored upon its assets of climate and mineral springs. The thermal springs of Montagu put the town on the tourist map resulting in its declaration as a health resort and emergence as a popular holiday destination. By the time of the apartheid period Montagu was becoming a more leisure-tourism dominated and a less health focussed destination.

Methodology for Assessing and Ranking of the Socio-Economic Development of Single-Industry Towns Based on Multifactor Analysis of Fractal Indicators

Methodology for Assessing and Ranking of the Socio-Economic Development of Single-Industry Towns Based on Multifactor Analysis of Fractal Indicators

Changes of the Northern Zhejiang Canal: Renaissance and Cultural Tourism Development of Ancient Towns

Changes of the Northern Zhejiang Canal: Renaissance and Cultural Tourism Development of Ancient Towns

Review Paper on Comprehensive Evaluation and Analysis of India's Urban Planning and Development Process for Managing Architectural Controls and Infrastructure Development in Towns

Review Paper on Comprehensive Evaluation and Analysis of India's Urban Planning and Development Process for Managing Architectural Controls and Infrastructure Development in Towns

Ongoing Implementation and Prospective Validation of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Tools at an African Drug Discovery Center.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are anticipated to accelerate drug discovery programs. Following our development of an end-to-end virtual screening cascade at the University of Cape Town (UCT) Holistic Drug Discovery and Development (H3D) Center, we report the ongoing implementation of open-source AI/ML tools for use in resource-constrained settings.

Dam Construction, Company Towns and Planned Urban Development: The Example of Salto del Esla, Spain

ABSTRACT Company towns are integral to the urban and territorial changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, especially in remote, resource-rich areas. Among these, villages constructed alongside dams stand out due to their profound territorial impact. This study focuses on one such unique settlement near the Ricobayo dam in Zamora, Spain, exploring its construction and environmental integration. At its inception, Ricobayo was Europe’s largest dam, its creation marked by notable feats like relocating a church, and pioneering hydraulic engineering and bridge construction, including a record-breaking design by Torroja. The adjacent company town set a precedent for creating liveable spaces for workers in isolated locales, influencing later developments. Research included on-site investigations, archival work at Iberdrola’s Historical Archive, and review of historical texts, underscoring the cultural and landscape significance of 20th-century dam settlements and the distinctive features of Ricobayo’s surroundings.

AUTHORITY AND BUSINESS IN SMALL TOWNS OF MODERN RUSSIA: FACTORS OF FORMATION OF POWER COALITIONS

The article determines the role of business for the configuration of power coalitions in old industrial towns of Perm Krai (Kizel and Gubakha). The study was carried out within the framework of urban regime analysis, the most widely used theoretical approach to the study of power in urban communities. The empirical base of the study was made up of materials from in-depth interviews with local politicians, officials, leaders of urban communities, journalists of local media, businessmen directly involved in urban politics. A binary comparison of the interaction of business and government in Gubakha and Kizel confirms the theoretical expectation of the importance of localized large high-tech modern business for the configuration of the power coalition, regardless of the involvement of regional authorities in it. The urban regime, where the power positions of big business are determined by its industrial and commercial interests, the town development programs are subordinated to the development strategy of the enterprise itself. The absence of truly large business localized in a small town determines the strength of the town administration, whose resources are seriously limited due to structural socio-economic reasons. This resource deficit stimulates local authorities to involve urban communities and NGOs in patronage networks through programs of social participation.

Exploring non-linear urban vibrancy dynamics in emerging new towns: A case study of the Wuhan metropolitan area

New towns have been extensively developed in many worldwide metropolises to overcome a series of urban crisis caused by over-intensive population and economic activity, such as environmental deterioration, traffic congestion and space shortage. The successful development of new towns has been regarded as a common, international urban challenge aimed at creating vital and lively urban life. Quantifying the complex relationship between new town vibrancy and the built environment provides a theoretical basis for formulating adequate planning regulations and policies to solve the development predicaments of new towns. Taking the Wuhan metropolitan area as the case study, this study employs the gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) machine learning method to delve into the intricate non-linear relationship between urban vibrancy and built environment indicators both in both peripheric new towns (NT) and central mother cities (MC), shedding light on the differences in the characteristics and complexities of vibrancy between NT and MC. The findings reveal stark disparities in vibrancy levels between NT and MC, emphasizing the critical need for tailored revitalization strategies. It is found that the indicators with the highest contribution to the impact of vibrancy in NT and MC are respectively the point of interest (POI) density and Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) development intensity. Model comparison between NT and MC concludes that enhancing POI density to meet the basic needs of citizens is a prerequisite for fostering urban vibrancy. To successfully create similarly vital and lively urban life as that in the MC, NT should focus on the impacts of TOD development and policy factors such as government relocation on vibrancy. Finally, deriving from these findings, we propose some policy insights and practical strategies for urban practitioners and policymakers to enhance the vibrancy and sustainability of the new towns.

Interpretation of Hot Spots in Wuhan New Town Development and Analysis of Influencing Factors Based on Spatio-Temporal Pattern Mining

The construction of new towns is one of the main measures to evacuate urban populations and promote regional coordination and urban–rural integration in China. Mining the spatio-temporal pattern of new town hot spots based on multivariate data and analyzing the influencing factors of new town construction hot spots can provide a strategic basis for new town construction, but few researchers have extracted and analyzed the influencing factors of new town internal hot spots and their classification. In order to define the key points of Wuhan’s new town construction and promote the construction of new cities in an orderly and efficient manner, this paper first constructs a space-time cube based on the luminous remote sensing data from 2010 to 2019, extracts hot spots and emerging hot spots in Wuhan New City, selects 14 influencing factor indicators such as population density, and uses bivariate Moran’s index to analyze the influencing factors of hot spots, indicating that the number of bus stops and vegetation coverage rate are the most significant. Secondly, the disorderly multivariate logistic regression model is used to analyze the influencing factors of emerging hot spots. The results show that population density, vegetation coverage, road density, distance to water bodies, and distance to train stations are the most significant factors. Finally, based on the analysis results, some relevant suggestions for the construction of Wuhan New City are proposed, providing theoretical support for the planning and policy guidance of new cities, and offering reference for the construction of new towns in other cities, promoting the construction of high-quality cities.

Dividing the Periphery: The First Decade of Jurisdictional Delineation Between Development Towns and Regional Councils in The State of Israel

ABSTRACT: The distribution of land in peripheral areas during Israel's first decade stemmed, it is generally held, from the discriminatory practices of Mapai, then the country's dominant political party, against Mizrahi Jews. The present article seeks to shed light on hitherto unexamined aspects of jurisdictional delineation, with a focus on the balance of power between Ofakim and the Merhavim Regional Council, and the circumstances, considerations and ramifications of the decisions taken by Israel's Ministry of Interior. Although the circumstances which led the Ministry to adopt its decisions entailed geographical segregation that led to potential economic inequality, the decisions themselves were not, as revealed by archival material, purposely discriminatory, at least not on ethnic grounds, and the economic inequality was not an inevitable result of those decisions.

Processing Model of LUCC Temporal Characteristics in Urban and Rural Space Based on Remote Sensing Data Validation

The spatial land change of villages and towns can be analyzed through external spatio-temporal characteristics, which can realize the evaluation of historical development and assist the implementation of planning and design norms and the implementation of problem rectification. To explore the specific process and the overall pattern of land use change, it is necessary to analyze and predict all kinds of data in a unified way to grasp the law of development and the direction of future development. This paper takes the spatial development and planning of villages and towns as the research object, selects the remote sensing image data of regional historical development as the driving factor, combines with Gaussian function fitting to calculate the training samples, and constructs the regional spatial environment analysis system. According to the processing model of external characteristics of time series, the spatial distribution and evolution of Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) and its components are analyzed. The multi-dimensional remote sensing data is innovatively fused into the time series processing model. Besides, the curve which can characterize the spatial change law and is not completely symmetrical is obtained through the least square method fitting so that the data with unequal time series intervals can be flexibly processed. Finally, through the experimental analysis, the traditional Asymmetric Gaussian model (A-G) and Savitzky-Golay (S-G) are taken to compare and analyze the effect of various factors on the processing of time series characteristics. Tests show that the proposed algorithm is superior to the comparison method in noise removal of remote sensing data. The data fitting coefficient is 0.02, and the root mean square measurement error is more than 7% higher than the comparison method. It can predict the trend of land use change distribution, play a key role in assisting decision-making for different land use transformations and utilization in villages and towns, and make a scientific evaluation for the impact of social and economic development potential.

Development of New Town in Project Affected Area

Development of New Town in Project Affected Area

The Study of Tourist Experience in Historical and Cultural Towns Based on Online Texts: A Case Study of Gongtan Ancient Town

This paper takes Gongtan Ancient Town of Chongqing as a case study, takes the online comment text of tourists on the websites of Ctrip and Dianping as data, analyzes the online text through content analysis, and uses ROST CM-6 software to conduct word frequency, emotion and semantic network analysis, aiming to deeply explore the tourist experience of Gongtan Ancient Town. The results show that: (1) Tourists' experience of Gongtan Ancient Town consists of five dimensions: tourist destination perception, sensory experience, physical and mental experience, tourist destination characteristic experience and service experience. (2) Natural scenery, local characteristics and service guarantee are the main tourist attractions of Gongtan Ancient Town.(3) Tourists' overall experience and perception of tourism in Gongtan Ancient Town tend to be positive emotions. Tourists' dissatisfaction mainly comes from heavy traffic jams during holidays, poor service attitude of staff and poor accommodation conditions. (4) The semantic network is divided into three levels: the core area is the tourists' objective cognition of the scenic spot name and location; The sub-core circle is the cultural cognition of the ancient town and the characteristic architecture and activity projects; The edge layer is the image characteristic cognition and tourism evaluation of the ancient town. In addition, some optimization suggestions are put forward for the existing problems of Gongtan Ancient Town. The research results not only provide a scientific basis for the tourism development and construction of Gongtan Ancient town, but also provide a reference for the optimization of tourist experience in other ancient towns.

Impacts of New Town developments on carbon sinks: Implications from the Case of Seoul Metropolitan Area, Korea

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ambitious goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 has been embraced by a variety of countries including South Korea. In South Korea, an increasingly vital neutrality strategy is enhancing carbon absorption through land use planning. A key consideration in these strategies is the comprehensive evaluation of carbon sinks present in various land cover categories. These carbon sinks—most notably forests, grasslands, and wetlands—play a critical role in mitigating the effects of climate change by locking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. However, forests and grasslands have long been prime avenues for new exurban development. This study analyzes the effects of large-scale development across several key carbon sinks for the Seoul Metropolitan Area of South Korea. Our findings indicate that the key carbon sinks increased from 2007 to 2021. Regardless, urban development has flourished where greenbelts were released, leading to significant depletion of forests, grasslands, and wetlands. However, converting farmland to New Town developments with massive park systems has contributed to an increase in carbon sinks in some parts of the region. In the perspective of South Korea’s goals for carbon neutrality, absorption is insufficient. Therefore, it is necessary to reflect the loss of sinks as a cost of sprawl and frame policies to expand storage through afforestation or reassessment of idle, undeveloped land.

ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF A CITY-FORMING ENTERPRISE ACTIVITY IN ARCTIC INDIVIDUAL CITY (EVIDENCE OF KOSTOMUKSHA)

An extended use of natural and geostrategic potential of the Arctic determines the relevance of studying the development of mono-cities as key elements of settling framework of a macroregion. GO Kostomuksha has been a positive exception for a long time due to a favorable socio-economic situation and successful leveling of environmental risks. The article examines social and environmental aspects of the activity of the city-forming enterprise GO Kostomuksha. The purpose of the work is to identify the key social and environmental aspects of the activity of a city-forming enterprise that determines the sustainable development of a single-industry town. The research methodology includes the concept of sustainable development, dialectical and formal-logical approaches, a combination of methods of statistical and sociological analysis. The originality of the study lies in the choice of an object - the city of Kostomuksha, which recently received “Arctic” status, which has not been sufficiently studied in this status from a socio-economic point of view. The study is based on official statistics, reporting data of holdings and enterprises, as well as the results of a survey of the population of Kostomuksha. The study reveals that, despite a high burden of existing production on the environment, ecological problems occupy the last place (only 3,7% of respondents noted the environmental situation as a problem) on the list of crucial issues for the city. At the same time, almost half of respondents share the responsibility for the environment condition as personal. The perceived connection of the personal future with the city is higher among the employees of the enterprise than among other residents (78,6% vs. 60%). The conclusion is made about the expediency of a wider media and social networks coverage of such areas of the enterprise's activity as “preservation of the environment”, “social security and charity”, “household welfare of the population”, as well as a more intensified interaction in these areas with local authorities. The results are applicable in the framework of regulating the development of local communities in single-industry towns in the Arctic and maximizing social effects as a part of ESG agenda by large holdings and enterprises.

Policy of Small Town Development: Lessons of Overseas Experience for Russia

The article studies the world experience in pursuing state policy of space development in remote territories and small towns in Germany, Japan, Poland, Slovenia, Check Republic and Italy. The article describes experience of these countries in developing territories characterized by depopulation, reducing real sector of economy and jobs, declining standard of living, rising costs of social infrastructure. It also analyzes dynamic of priorities in policy of territorial development depending on predominant academic concepts: from policy of leveling-up, developing endogenous factors of territories (policy established in the spot) to policy beyond growth limits. Negative experience of developing Check municipalities was shown and results of certain stages of policy in countries that could not reach the set goals were highlighted. On the basis of the analysis some common approaches were found, as well as tools, which proved their effectiveness in testing this experience for small towns in Russia. By analyzing practices of six overseas countries the author came to the conclusion that small towns often experience after-effects of urbanization, such as population outflow, its aging and economic stagnation. The most important conditions of pursuing state policy on such territories are as follows: search for finance sources for their support, maintenance of infrastructure and improvement of quality of state service rendering and creation of sources of endogenous development. Today we can observe the development of such concepts as ‘The Slow Town’ (Italy), ‘Life beyond Growth’ (Japan) that aim at shaping living conditions for people focusing on benefits of remote territories. At the same time trends of developing small towns advance specific requirements to implementing state branch policies, in particular, in the field of education, public health service, to new formats of rendering basic services, including remote territories in conditions of their low budget support.

Assembling state power through rescaling: Inter-jurisdictional development in the Beijing-Tianjin Zhongguancun Tech Town

Recent studies have applied the explanatory framework of state rescaling to interrogate China's emergent city-regional governance. Much of the extant literature has concentrated on either the centrally driven city regionalism from above or local efforts on cross-boundary cooperation from below. Rather than simply abstracting the multi-dimensional and multi-scalar dynamics in the rescaling process around one singular state project, this paper moves forward to explore the co-existence and co-functioning of variegated rescaling processes contributing to regional governance by deploying assemblage as a heuristic approach. This paper examines an inter-jurisdictional development zone – Beijing-Tianjin Zhongguancun Tech Town in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region to provide a relational and processual understanding of scalar politics on the ground. Our analysis demonstrates how discrete and fragmented spaces and actors are assembled within a specific entity through various rescaling processes. The interplay of local, regional and national actors with different motivations gives rise to a new inter-scalar and inter-jurisdictional regulatory regime for regional industrial integration with relative coherence. This emergent governance regime is sustained and embedded in both topological and territorial political relations. This article furthers the understanding of China's city regional governance by analysing a situated assemblage. It provides an applicable perspective for investigating other trans-local projects and city regionalism.

Is Development Type a Determinant of College and Graduate Students’ Commute Time to School? The Case of Seoul Metropolitan Area

This study examines the impact of large-scale suburban new town development on the commuting time of college and graduate students in the Seoul Metropolitan Area. Household travel diary data from 2016 were analyzed to categorize residential areas and quantify the impacts on commute time to school. Multiple linear regression modeling is used to explore the relationships between development type, individual, and household characteristics and their impact on commute times. The results of the study show that students living in new urban areas have significantly longer commute times than those living in central Seoul, highlighting the differences that result from urban expansion policies targeting middle-class housing. These results suggest that the development of suburban new towns, which was intended to alleviate the housing shortage, has inadvertently lengthened the daily commute time of many students. Thus, a critical reassessment of suburban development strategies is needed to better balance the advantages of residential neighborhoods against the educational and living costs associated with increased travel time.

Accommodating the Rise in Urbanisation: Are New Towns a Good Solution?

Abstract This paper studies the performance of New Towns, that is, planned large urban sub-centres, as a central tool to accommodate the global rise in urbanisation. A spatial quantifiable general equilibrium framework suitable to study large-scale urban master plans is presented. The framework is then used to investigate the equilibrium effects of five New Towns developed in the 1970s in Paris’s metropolitan area. By 2015, the development of New Towns appears to have increased metropolitan population ($+$18%), metropolitan gross domestic product ($+$11%) and reduced average commuting times (−6.9%). The results obtained for Paris’s metropolitan area are externally validated using a difference-in-differences approach on all 314 New Towns developed worldwide between 1992 and 2012.

Two forgotten Anglo-Catholic pioneer priests

Peter Green (Salford) and Charles Jenkinson (Leeds) were Anglo-Catholic parsons who devotedly worked in northern England either side of the Second World War. Are they models for today? Green prioritized ‘intentional evangelism’. Jenkinson was a Christian socialist and Modernist who ‘meddled in politics’ as a city councillor: his priority was housing reform. Green remained a parish priest; Jenkinson moved into new town development. Despite their shortcomings, each cleric distinctively represents a relevant kind of priesthood: the parish missionary sharing the archbishops’ commitment to ‘mission-shaped’ church (Green), and the activist intent on building the kingdom by transforming his parishioners’ built environment (Jenkinson).