Urban Categories Research Articles

Perceiving urban liveability in an emerging migrant city

Gulf cities have witnessed rapid urban growth where new migrant communities from various cultural backgrounds have been evolving over the last two decades. This paper explores perceptions of liveable urban environments in Qatar's capital city, Doha. An attitude survey of 280 migrant professionals from different cultural backgrounds engaged in the high service sector was conducted. A profile for each cultural group including westerners, middle easterners, Indians and Southeast Asians was developed to analyse the way in which the key liveability factors are perceived. Factors were classified into two overarching categories: urban life and urban spaces. Urban life category included aspects that pertain to traffic and movement experience, residential satisfaction, shopping experience, and satisfaction regarding leisure and service spaces. Urban space category included attractiveness, iconicity and familiarity, which were attitudinally explored in four public open spaces. The inquiry has uncovered a number of concerns related to traffic experience, housing quality, parking spaces, school facilities and shopping opportunities. This may stymie the city's global attractiveness success on the global stage while warranting the need for addressing liveability as a part of future development plans.

Impact of high‐resolution sea surface temperature and urban data on estimations of surface air temperature in a regional climate

AbstractWe investigated the impact of using high‐resolution sea surface temperature (SST) data and a sophisticated urban model on the simulation of surface air temperature (SAT) in the Nagoya metropolitan area using a regional climate model. The spatially detailed structure of SST, expressed in high‐resolution SST data, had relatively little impact on SAT. On the other hand, the difference in areal mean value of SST strongly affected SAT across a wide range of land surfaces. When a spatially inhomogeneous distribution was used for the urban fraction and anthropogenic heat, and appropriate physical properties for building materials were given according to the specific urban categories, we achieved significant improvements in both the diurnal range of SAT and its daily mean. Based on a comparison with an additional sensitivity experiment for building albedo, the sophistication of urban fraction and thermal parameters related to building materials had a comparable impact on SAT as presumable building albedo in the daytime, while they indicated a larger impact on the nighttime SAT. We conclude that (1) the areal mean SST is critical rather than its resolution for the climatological average of SAT over the land; (2) the simultaneous refinement of the urban fraction and building material parameters, as well as an appropriate building albedo setting, greatly improves the representation of SAT; and (3) the refinement of areal mean SST and the urban data have the same degree of importance for a better representation of the SAT.

Differences in Selected HIV Care Continuum Outcomes Among People Residing in Rural, Urban, and Metropolitan Areas-28 US Jurisdictions.

The HIV care continuum is used to monitor success in HIV diagnosis and treatment among persons living with HIV in the United States. Significant differences exist along the HIV care continuum between subpopulations of people living with HIV; however, differences that may exist between residents of rural and nonrural areas have not been reported. We analyzed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National HIV Surveillance System data on adults and adolescents (≥13 years) with HIV diagnosed in 28 jurisdictions with complete reporting of HIV-related lab results. Lab data were used to assess linkage to care (≥1 CD4 or viral load test ≤3 months of diagnosis), retention in care (≥2 CD4 and/or viral load tests ≥3 months apart), and viral suppression (viral load <200 copies/mL) among persons living with HIV. Residence at diagnosis was grouped into rural (<50,000 population), urban (50,000-499,999 population), and metropolitan (≥500,000 population) categories for statistical comparison. Prevalence ratios and 95% CI were calculated to assess significant differences in linkage, retention, and viral suppression. Although greater linkage to care was found for rural residents (84.3%) compared to urban residents (83.3%) and metropolitan residents (81.9%), significantly lower levels of retention in care and viral suppression were found for residents of rural (46.2% and 50.0%, respectively) and urban (50.2% and 47.2%) areas compared to residents of metropolitan areas (54.5% and 50.8%). Interventions are needed to increase retention in care and viral suppression among people with HIV in nonmetropolitan areas of the United States.

A Three-Step Approach for TLS Point Cloud Classification

The ability to classify urban objects in large urban scenes from point clouds efficiently and accurately still remains a challenging task today. A new methodology for the effective and accurate classification of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) point clouds is presented in this paper. First, in order to efficiently obtain the complementary characteristics of each 3-D point, a set of point-based descriptors for recognizing urban point clouds is constructed. This includes the 3-D geometry captured using the spin-image descriptor computed on three different scales, the mean RGB colors of the point in the camera images, the LAB values of that mean RGB, and the normal at each 3-D point. The initial 3-D labeling of the categories in urban environments is generated by utilizing a linear support vector machine classifier on the descriptors. These initial classification results are then first globally optimized by the multilabel graph-cut approach. These results are further refined automatically by a local optimization approach based upon the object-oriented decision tree that uses weak priors among urban categories which significantly improves the final classification accuracy. The proposed method has been validated on three urban TLS point clouds, and the experimental results demonstrate that it outperforms the state-of-the-art method in classification accuracy for buildings, trees, pedestrians, and cars.

Tra mondo di Dio e mondo del Diavolo: Esperienze urbane e Pentecostalismo in/da una favela di Rio de Janeiro

L’articolo si propone di indagare la relazione tra religione, città e costruzioni della soggettività a partire da una ricerca etnografica condotta tra l’aprile 2013 e l’ottobre 2014 in alcune favelas di Rio de Janeiro. L’obiettivo è quello di esplorare i modi in cui il linguaggio e le grammatiche pentecostali riconfigurano le esperienze di vulnerabilità urbana in Rocinha, la più grande favela della città. I processi di riconfigurazione delle soggettività guidati dalla conversione sono messi in relazione con nuove comprensioni - in termini biblici - di una Rocinha e una città vissute all’incrocio tra mondo di Dio, mondo del Diavolo e forze sociali, politiche ed economiche che congiurano a strutturare l’esperienza di discriminazione e violenza in favela. Dialogando con le voci e le traiettorie di vita di alcuni interlocutori, il contributo analizza i modi in cui il linguaggio pentecostale permette di ri-organizzare la comprensione delle dinamiche urbane, dei soggetti, delle relazioni e delle categorie che producono l’esperienza di vulnerabilità urbana a Rio de Janeiro.

Spatio-temporal assessment of urbanization impacts on ecosystem services: Case study of Nanjing City, China

Rapid urbanization is a global phenomenon that has altered many ecosystems, causing a decline in many ecosystem services, generating ecological risks such as water shortages, air pollution, and soil pollution. Here, we present a conceptual framework quantifying how urbanization influences the ecosystem services in a typical city (Nanjing) of China. Between 2000 and 2010, we separated the city into three urbanization categories (developing urban, developed urban, and rural areas) and quantified the status of six critical ecosystem services (food supply, carbon sequestration, soil water storage, air pollution removal, habitat suitability, and recreation potential). Our results show that urbanization significantly impacted all ecosystem services, with detected changes in ecosystem services being spatially heterogeneous due to urban expansion and population mobility. Developed areas contained greater amounts of green infrastructure, which improved carbon storage and reduced air pollution. In contrast, the rapid expansion of urban and industrial land in developing urban areas led to lower food supply, carbon sequestration, soil water storage, and habitat suitability. The expansion of rural residential areas led to lower soil water storage, carbon sequestration, and food supply, while greater amounts of abandoned cropland resulted in increased carbon sequestration, but decreased food supply in rural areas. Analysis of the interactions between pairs of ecosystem services identified urbanization development problems, including abandoned cropland and the expansion of rural residential land. Lastly, we proposed four key urban planning measures to mitigate the loss of ecosystem services during rapid urbanization. Acquiring quantitative knowledge about how rapid urbanization drives changes to ecosystem changes may help guide sustainable urban planning with respect to ecosystem service use, urban development, and human welfare benefits.

WRF/UCM Simulations of Urban Heat Island in Guangzhou with an Extracted Land-use Map from the Remote Sensing Data

In order to investigate the performance of weather research and forecasting (WRF) model coupled with an urban canopy model (UCM) with an extracted land use data from Remote Sensing data (RS), three numerical experiments with different geographic models were carried out. Supervised classification with the maximum likelihood was applied to extract the land-use map in Guangzhou 2012 named the geographic model RS_12. Then based on the satellite-measured night time light data and the normalized difference vegetation index, a human settlement index was used to classify the urban land category to three urban land subcategories in the UCM as another geographic model named UCM_12. Both new geographic model simulation results are capable of reasonably modeling the observation result. The UCM_12 reasonably reproduced the best 2-m temperature evolution and the minimum root-mean- -square-error as compared with other experiments. Experiments with new geographic models can capture the strongest UHI time occured at night and gradually decreases in the morning but failure to get negative at noon. A better accuracy when comparing the new geographic models to the observation proved that extract land use data from RS can be used in urban scale simulation under the fast urbanizition in China.

Architectures émergentes à El Alto (Bolivie): essai d’interprétation sociologique

This article applies Bourdieu’s analysis of the formation of the “scholastic habitus” in medieval times, elaborated in his 1967 afterword to his French translation of Erwin Panofsky’s Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (2005 [1967]), to a different historical case and social context, namely the correspondence between indigenous mental categories and architectural efflorescence in a city of the contemporary Andes: El Alto. This same principle of homology between mental categories and building layout (rooted in a common habitus) can be used to interpret one of the most spectacular characteristics of “emerging architectures” known as chalets in Bolivia. The term chalet designates a hybrid structure consisting of a penthouse and storey dwelling built on the rooftops. The chalets are architectural forms embedded within an economy of symbolic goods characterized by a “dual truth”: they are at once material and symbolic; they perform economic functions while at the same time seeking conspicuous exposure and public visibility. The hypothesis developed here is that the conspicuous lifestyle revealed by the construction of chalets on the rooftops can be understood by reference to the emerging social power of the indigenous (cholos) elites. This article thus identifies in the fraternities of El Alto the structural equivalent of the scholastic institution that Bourdieu associated with Gothic architecture, in order to reveal the formation of a specific habitus, shared among urban categories defined by similar residential locations, economic activities and forms of collective organization.

Analysis of Settlement Expansion and Urban Growth Modelling Using Geoinformation for Assessing Potential Impacts of Urbanization on Climate in Abuja City, Nigeria

This study analyzed the spatiotemporal pattern of settlement expansion in Abuja, Nigeria, one of West Africa’s fastest developing cities, using geoinformation and ancillary datasets. Three epochs of Land-use Land-cover (LULC) maps for 1986, 2001 and 2014 were derived from Landsat images using support vector machines (SVM). Accuracy assessment (AA) of the LULC maps based on the pixel count resulted in overall accuracy of 82%, 92% and 92%, while the AA derived from the error adjusted area (EAA) method stood at 69%, 91% and 91% for 1986, 2001 and 2014, respectively. Two major techniques for detecting changes in the LULC epochs involved the use of binary maps as well as a post-classification comparison approach. Quantitative spatiotemporal analysis was conducted to detect LULC changes with specific focus on the settlement development pattern of Abuja, the federal capital city (FCC) of Nigeria. Logical transitions to the urban category were modelled for predicting future scenarios for the year 2050 using the embedded land change modeler (LCM) in the IDRISI package. Based on the EAA, the result showed that urban areas increased by more than 11% between 1986 and 2001. In contrast, this value rose to 17% between 2001 and 2014. The LCM model projected LULC changes that showed a growing trend in settlement expansion, which might take over allotted spaces for green areas and agricultural land if stringent development policies and enforcement measures are not implemented. In conclusion, integrating geospatial technologies with ancillary datasets offered improved understanding of how urbanization processes such as increased imperviousness of such a magnitude could influence the urban microclimate through the alteration of natural land surface temperature. Urban expansion could also lead to increased surface runoff as well as changes in drainage geography leading to urban floods.

Fertility and Child Mortality in Urban West Africa: Leveraging geo-referenced data to move beyond the urban/rural dichotomy.

Demographic research in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has long relied on a blunt urban/rural dichotomy that may obscure important inter-urban fertility and mortality differentials. This paper uses Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) geo-referenced data to look beyond the simple urban/rural division by spatially locating survey clusters along an urban continuum and producing estimates of fertility and child mortality by four city size categories in West Africa. Results show a gradient in urban characteristics and demographic outcomes: the largest cities are the most advantaged and smaller cities least advantaged with respect to access to urban amenities, lower fertility and under-5 survival rates. There is a difference in the patterns of fertility and under-five survival across urban categories, with fertility more linearly associated with city size while the only significant distinction for under-5 survival in urban areas is broadly between the larger and smaller cities. Notably, the small urban "satellite cities" that are adjacent to the largest cities have the most favorable outcomes of all categories. Although smaller urban areas have significantly lower fertility and child mortality than rural areas, in some cases this difference is nearly as large between the smallest and largest urban areas. These results are used to argue for the need to give greater consideration to employing an urban continuum in demographic research.

Green logistics as urban transportation category

The aim of this paper is to investigate green logistics as a predetermined theory category. By bibliographic research, the study presents, describes and relates the concept of green logistics approaching theory and practices specialists with urban transportation categories. The results show that green logistics is less associated than expected.

Incidence of tonsillar cancer in northern Sweden: Impact of human papilloma virus.

The incidence rate of tonsillar cancer is increasing worldwide. The current study identifies a parallel increase in the incidence of tonsillar cancer, human papilloma virus (HPV) and p16 expression among a population from northern Sweden, a sparsely populated area, confirming the strong association between p16 and HPV infection in tonsillar tissue. Data from the Swedish Cancer Registry was assessed to identify cases of tonsillar cancer in the northern territorial area of Sweden. HPV DNA was extracted from paraffin embedded diagnostic biopsies and detected by polymerase chain reaction using general primers Gp5+/6+ and CpI/IIG. Expression of p16 was identified by immunochemistry. Patients were grouped into urban or rural residence categories. A total of 214 cases were identified, comprising 155 (72.4%) men and 59 (27.6%) women, and 65 of these patients, who presented between 2000 and 2012, were analyzed. The overall median age for the analyzed patients was 58 years; 48 (74%) were males (median age, 57.5 years) and 17 (26%) were females (median age, 65 years). Of the 65 specimens, 59 (91%) were positive for HPV, and 62 (95%) expressed p16. The incidence of tonsillar cancer in the cohort demonstrated a 2-fold increase between 1990 and 2013; specifically, a 2.7-fold increase was observed in men whilst the female group exhibited only a small increase. These findings demonstrate a strong association between p16 expression and HPV infection in tonsillar malignancies. The incidence of HPV-positive tonsillar cancer has increased in recent years, even in sparsely populated regions, as demonstrated in northern Sweden.

Landscape change assessment of reservation areas using remote sensing and landscape metrics (case study: Jajroud reservation, Iran)

Understanding and analyzing the dynamics of reservation areas, as one of the most valuable ecological resources, is of great importance for effective management of these environments. Monitoring the process of land-use/land-cover (LULC) transformations in these areas and knowing their driving forces would contribute to an informed decision making. In this study, an integrated application of satellite imagery interpretation and landscape ecology approach is implemented to quantify and analyze the landscape dynamics of Jajroud reservation area, Iran. The digital images collected by satellite at 1986, 2000, and 2010 were classified following an ensemble classification method. The resultant LULC maps included six categories of orchard, healthy rangeland, degraded rangeland, afforest, water, and urban. Landscape metrics-based analysis of temporal patterns of LULCs indicated that Jajroud reservation area has been undergoing rapid and drastic changes over the past 25 years. Based on class area metric at landscape level, changes were mostly due to the conversion of degraded rangeland and orchard to urban category. The impervious area expanded approximately fivefold from 1986 to 2010. Based on Largest Patch Index metric, the dominant land-cover class across the study time frame was degraded rangeland that decreased from 1986 to 2010. The main driving forces of urban growth in the area were willingness of local residents to sell their orchard lands and having financial interests. Because of rapid economic development and expansion of human-constructed elements, the landscape of the area experienced a fragmentation process during the last three decades. The study demonstrated that integrated application of satellite imagery and landscape metrics can be a useful and easy-to-implement tool for environmental impact assessment of an ongoing urbanization process.

Patterns and selectivities of urban/rural migration in Israel

1. Introduction3Israel, like other more developed nations, is highly urbanized. In fact, as early as 1955, some eight out of every ten people were concentrated in places with 2,000 or more persons. 4 The urban share has risen to nine of every ten today. Hence, one might ask, why study urban-rural migration if only 10% of the nation's population lives in rural areas? The reason is because even with such high rate of urban population concentration, people still move in and out of such places, and the selectivities of these migration streams can change the composition of urban and rural populations, even if they have little effect on the sizes of urban and rural places or the overall level of urbanization.Older persons are less likely to move, for example, but those who do move are highly likely to seek rural destinations, thereby aging the rural population (Brown and Glasgow 2008). By contrast, people with advanced education and high professional qualifications are more likely to move from rural areas to cities, which offer better economic opportunities, higher returns on human capital, and cultural activities (Anderson 2011; Lichter and Brown 2011). Other research shows that some persons in later middle age, especially those with intact marriages and relatively high incomes, tend to move from cities to rural areas largely for lifestyle reasons (Champion and Sheppard 2006). Such selectivities alter the socioeconomic profile of rural localities, given their smaller relative size.A focus on rural areas in metropolitan society is justified for many reasons regardless of such areas' small share of a nation's overall population. As Kulcsar and Curtis (2012) indicate in the International Handbook of Rural Demography, rural areas and their populations continue to matter in more developed and highly urbanized countries because while only containing a minority of the population, they often account for a majority of a nation's land, water, minerals, energy, and other natural resources; as well as large parts of a nation's infrastructure such as roads, bridges, pipelines, and of course most of its domestic food production. (Brown and Schafft 2011).In this paper we examine internal population mobility in Israel between urban and rural areas, as well as movement among places within the respective categories. We are interested in learning if migrants with certain social and economic characteristics are more likely to move from urban to rural locations, rural to urban locations, or to circulate within the urban and rural categories themselves. Not surprisingly, the migration selectivity of the Jewish and non-Jewish populations is of interest to Israel, hence, the first part of our analysis examines differences in migration propensity and direction of migration between Jews and non-Jews. Thereafter, because of a lack of data on non-Jews, we narrow the focus to Jews alone, examining the determinants of internal migration, and how such determinants might differ between rural-urban vs. urban-rural streams and between rural-urban and within category moves. In our analysis we examine the impact of individual demographic and socioeconomic characteristics on the direction of migration. Despite being a small country with relatively short distances between places, Israel has experienced extensive development outside of its major cities. This has been accompanied by continuous population dispersion. Insight into the Israeli case, which to the best of our knowledge has not been investigated over the last several years, contributes to the empirical and theoretical literature on urban and rural migration and population redistribution in contemporary, industrialized countries.2. BackgroundSince its establishment in 1948, Israel's governments have viewed population as an instrument for spatial planning and resettlement (Eisenstadt 1973; Newman 2000). In a country where agricultural workers account for only a small fraction of the labor force and the location of industries is not affected by the dispersion of natural resources, considerations of social, economic, and geopolitical factors as well as environmental preferences become major determinants of the desired pattern of population distribution (Brotskos 1973). …

A39 Tangible and perceptual factors on active travel by children: Quebec City case study

Abstract Background Many western countries have experienced a significant drop in children’s active transportation rates. Previous research shows that many of the factors that influence children’s active transports are tangibles (residential density, mixed activity etc.), while others are more related to perceptions (neighbourhood safety, social norms, etc.). These two types of factors are part of a matrix of influences ultimately leading to the child’s transport mode but, few studies have quantified the respective weights of tangible and perceptual factors in children’s modal choice. Thus, this study aims to explore if the likelihood that a child makes a trip by an active mode of transport depends more on tangible or perceptive factors. Methods In the fall of 2014, questionnaires were distributed in ten fifth grade classes from six primary schools located in peri-urban (2), suburban (2) and central neighbourhoods (2) of Quebec City. These questionnaires consist on a trip diary, in which the children reported all their trips for the previous two days, for a total of more than 750 trips by 213 children. The proportion of active trips (AT%) by each school’s urban category (peri-urban, suburban, or central) were compared using chi-squared test of independence to determine whether differences existed by built environment. WalkScore, a measure of the walkability of a location (associated with each child’s postal code), was used as a proxy for the tangible factors and the right to independent mobility (IM) associated with each child represented the perceptual factors. Logistic regressions were then used to examine how actives trips were influenced by tangible (WalkScore) and perceptual (IM) factors. Results After preliminary analysis on three schools, it is noted that AT% respectively accounts for 25%, 52% and 82% of trips recorded in peri-urban, suburban and central neighbourhoods. Secondly, the results indicate a strong correlation between IM and AT% (OR: 3.3) when the three school are analysed simultaneously. Separately, the correlation is highest in the suburban neighbourhood and non-significant in the peri-urban and central districts. Similarly, WalkScore and AT% show a clear correlation (OR: 1.035) when taken globally, but a significant correlation is found only for the central neighbourhood school when each is analysed separately. Conclusions These preliminary results show that in our case study, tangible and perceptual factors seem to influence active transportation on a different degree, according to which type of neighbourhood is taken into account. The results of the complete study are still under analysis at the moment.

Bag of Lines (BoL) for Improved Aerial Scene Representation

Feature representation is a key step in automated visual content interpretation. In this letter, we present a robust feature representation technique, referred to as bag of lines (BoL), for high-resolution aerial scenes. The proposed technique involves extracting and compactly representing low-level line primitives from the scene. The compact scene representation is generated by counting the different types of lines representing various linear structures in the scene. Through extensive experiments, we show that the proposed scene representation is invariant to scale changes and scene conditions and can discriminate urban scene categories accurately. We compare the BoL representation with the popular scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) and Gabor wavelets for their classification and clustering performance on an aerial scene database consisting of images acquired by sensors with different spatial resolutions. The proposed BoL representation outperforms the SIFT- and Gabor-based representations.

Dynamics of land use/cover changes and landscape fragmentation analysis in Rustenburg area, South Africa

Many factors contribute to rapid urban expansion and large-scale land use/land cover (LULC) changes. This paper analyses spatiotemporal patterns of LULC and quantifies landscape structures in the Rustenburg district, South Africa, locus of a platinum mining boom. Using multi-temporal Landsat images from 1973 to 2002, LULC changes are evaluated to derive transition matrices of patterns and rates of change of LULC classes. These matrices are integrated with landscape metrics to assess impacts of LULC changes on landscape fragmentation. Changes in LULC are coincident with expansion of mining; urban and mining categories increase at the expense of cultivated land, woodland and grassland. The landscape becomes highly fragmented with decreases in mean and largest patch size, and increases in patch density. The pre-existing natural land cover, grassland, shows a high degree of fragmentation. To ensure proper landscape planning for resource management, this study has implications for rapidly growing cities and mining regions.

AFFINITY PROPAGATION CLUSTERING IN DEFINING LEVEL OF SERVICE CRITERIA OF URBAN STREETS

Defining Level Of Service (LOS) criteria is very important as this is the first step of LOS analysis but this is not well defined in Indian context. The analysis followed in India is basically adaptation of Highway Capacity Manual (HCM 2000) methodology which is more suitable for developed countries having homogenous traffic pattern. An attempt has been made in this study to define LOS criteria of urban streets for developing countries having heterogeneous traffic flow condition. Defining LOS is basically a classification problem and to solve it Affinity Propagation (AP), a very recently developed cluster algorithm is used. Inventory details and the required speed data are collected from five major street corridors of Greater Mumbai Region in India through the application of Trimble GeoXT Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. Six validation parameters are used on Free Flow Speed (FFS) data to find the optimal number of clusters, which is required for the classification of street segments into number of classes. After that speed data collected during both peak and off-peak hours are averaged over street segments and clustered into six groups to get the speed ranges of different LOS categories. Using validation parameters, considering the physical and surrounding environmental characteristics it is found that street segments can be classified into four classes in Indian context as mentioned in Highway Capacity Manual 2000. However, the FFS range for urban street class IV (urban design category) is significantly lower because of varying road geometric characteristics. The speed ranges of LOS categories under urban street classes are proportionately lower to that values mentioned in HCM 2000 because of highly heterogeneous traffic flow on urban Indian roads. The travel speed data collection procedure using GPS is simple and accurate. In addition, AP clustering is highly efficient in terms of time saving and provides a very accurate solution to classification problems. Hence, both GPS and AP techniques can be applied in other countries to define the speed ranges of LOS categories considering the local conditions.

Age-friendly cities and environments: an investigation of the living environment of older people in England based on the MRC Cognitive Function and Ageing Study II

BackgroundWith trends in population ageing, the idea of age-friendly cities has been proposed with a focus on built and social environmental features related to active ageing. We aimed to describe the living environment of older people at small area level using data from the Cognitive Function and Ageing Study II (CFAS II), a representative sample of 7505 people aged 65 years and over in England. MethodsLiving environment was described at the community and street level. At community level, postcodes of the CFAS II participants were mapped onto 557 Lower Layer Super Output Areas and linked to environmental data in Neighbourhoods Statistics including area deprivation, crime, distance to services, land use, and green space. Street level assessment was based on an observational instrument designed for UK postcodes, the Residential Environmental Assessment Tool, by use of visual streetscape images of Google Street View. The measurement method was validated and showed acceptable intermethod reliability of physical and visual image audits. Three rural and urban categories (urban conurbation, urban city and town, rural areas) were defined by the 2011 rural–urban classification. FindingsTwo-thirds (n=4905) of the older population lived in an urban conurbation. More of the younger old (aged 65–79 years) than older old (≥80 years) lived in rural areas (1158 vs 396). In the overall population, we found moderate associations between area deprivation and crime (Spearman correlation=0·6), distance to services (−0·2), land use mix (0·5), and green space (−0·3), but they were weaker in rural areas. In addition to rural–urban and area deprivation differences, substantial variations in built and social environmental features were found at community and street levels: communities in urban conurbations generally had high crime, shorter distance to services, high heterogeneity of land use, and low proportion of green space with worse quality of street level conditions than did communities in rural areas. InterpretationOlder people in England live in a wide variety of environments with potential effect on health and wellbeing. Use of new technology can help to observe and explore variations in living environments at the small area level systematically and comprehensively; this provides opportunities to identify important environmental features related to healthy ageing and develop practical guidelines for policy planning to create age-friendly cities and environments through an evidence-based approach. FundingThere is no specific funding contributing to this study. Medical Research Council Cognitive Function and Ageing Study II (MRC CFAS II) was funded by the Medical Research Council (grant number G0601022).

The effects of horizontal advection on the urban heat island in Birmingham and the West Midlands, United Kingdom during a heatwave

Birmingham is the second most populous city in the United Kingdom and observations indicate that it has a pronounced urban heat island (UHI), i.e. higher ambient temperatures in the city centre compared with surrounding suburban and rural areas, particularly at night. The effects of UHIs are often amplified during anticyclonic summer weather conditions, which can cause or exacerbate heatwaves. Enhanced temperatures in highly populated regions can mean that significant numbers of people are at risk from heat‐related illness during hot weather. Climate change projections often do not include the effects of the UHI, which can mean that assessments of heat‐related health effects using these projections underestimate the actual magnitude of future health impacts. We present numerical simulations of the UHI in Birmingham and the West Midlands Metropolitan region during the heatwave of August 2003 using the high‐resolution, regional meteorological Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, with an urban canopy scheme. We evaluated the model using local air‐temperature observations, and found good model performance in capturing the temporal and spatial signature of the UHI. We performed a sensitivity test, replacing urban land categories with rural ones, and found that the difference in temperature between the two model runs throughout the heatwave period (2–11 August 2003) was around 3°C on average, and reached a maximum of 7°C. Finally, we present a novel generic methodology to enable the examination of the extent of horizontal advection of warm air downwind of the conurbation area. We found that during the heatwave, temperatures downwind of Birmingham were up to 2.5°C warmer than those upwind. This methodology has the potential for improvements to, or parametrizations for, diagnostic models that do not explicitly include dynamics and where local conditions are driven largely by land‐surface type.