Urban Entities Research Articles

Current Systems of Protected Areas Integrated with Urban Agglomerations

The article considers current systems of national parks and reserves mutually integrated with urbanized territories located in close proximity to cities: the “Stolby” natural reserve near the city of Krasnoyarsk, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Russia, and the Vesuvius National Park, the municipality of Naples, Italy, and gives a characteristic of their geographical position, their relief and stages of its formation, along with the climatic conditions and history of their development. Here the authors regard the role of geomorphological objects as pivotal city-forming dominants in the formation of a human environment and compare aspects of historical and geographical development of the specially protected natural areas with the current state of the studied regions. We implemented the analytical methods based on studying the scientific, historical and cultural sources, and used the materials of field research in 2016-2017. The analysis resulted in conclusions on the influence of geological structures and reliefs on the complex development of the city-forming structures of large urban entities, but with that, legislative programs for integrated environmental development of urbanized areas in connection with the adjacent natural objects are necessary to create a comfortable self-reproducing urban environment

Urbanisation in Rural Regions: The Emergence of Urban Centres in Tanzania

This paper focusses on urbanisation in rural regions of Africa, and in particular on the type of settlement growth that occurs not in proximity to, but rather disassociated from, existing urban centres. What characterises such settlements is that they are generally not acknowledged as urban entities, but are involved in an administrative process in which they form part of a larger entity that is about to be given urban administrative status; to capture this process, the concept of emerging urban centres is suggested. The empirical analysis focusses on how rural Tanzania is urbanising. By comparing four different growth trajectories, it is illustrated how settlement growth varies due to different pre-conditions and due to specific dynamics of crop value chains. It is also shown how migration to the settlements and the establishment of businesses are part of this growth and gradually occur detached from the crop value-chain dynamics. In conclusion, it is identified how these developments produce challenges to existing governance systems, and finally it is discussed how the findings provide new insights into debates on rural transformation and the fuzzy distinction between rurality and urbanity.

Estimating infiltration increase and runoff reduction due to green infrastructure

Abstract To aid urban entities desiring to reduce runoff from precipitation while increasing aquifer recharge, we present an approach for simultaneously quantifying runoff and infiltration. Developing the approach involved using: (1) the Windows version of the Source Loading and Management Model (WINSLAMM) to estimate runoff from precipitation in areas with green infrastructure (GI); and (2) the SCS runoff curve method to estimate infiltration. Computed infiltration and runoff values enable the estimation of the runoff reduction and infiltration increase due to alternative GI construction modes. We relate infiltration ratios to land use for a range of event rainfall depths in southwestern USA. These ratios can aid estimation of aquifer recharge while improving storm water management. We apply the approach to a Salt Lake City residential area for current land use and three assumed runoff control practices. Although currently applicable for a wide range of precipitation and urban land use situations in southwestern USA, the approach is extensible to guide urban development elsewhere.

Alexander’s Theories Applied to Urban Design

Christopher Alexander has presented key concepts, such as wholeness, centres, and harmony-seeking computations, related to the coherence reached by a system. Wholeness is the global structural character of a given configuration existing in space. According to Alexander, wholeness is measurable although we do not have a mathematical language to describe it yet. Some authors have proposed a network perspective to address this problem. However, it is still poorly developed. This paper discusses how to improve the network approach already suggested in the literature. The aim is contributing to the debate on how to operationalise Alexander’s theories through a network perspective. We check out different descriptive systems and different centrality measures, which can be used to reveal the spatial relationship between urban entities and its hierarchy. The main conclusion is that centrality measures seem to offer an opportunity to get closer to Alexander’s concepts. However, a key point to move forward is a deeper investigation on how to describe the urban elements, how to identify spatial differentiation, and how to visualize the results. The relevance of such kind of research is the possibility of using those insights as analytical methods for supporting urban design.

Astronomy in Roman Urbanism: A Statistical Analysis of the Orientation of Roman Towns in the Iberian Peninsula

The work presented in this article is part of a wide-ranging and ambitious project, started few years ago, to study the role of astronomy in Roman urban layout. In particular, the main aim is to check whether Roman cities present astronomical patterns in their orientations. The project emerged from ideas on how to properly orientate the main streets of a Roman town, as attested in a number of ancient texts and later discussions led by contemporary scholars. We present here the final conclusions of a particular study developed in the Iberian Peninsula (Roman Hispania), where the urbanism that we tend to characterize as properly Roman flourished during both the Republic and the Empire. The sample analysed includes 81 measurements of Roman urban entities spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula and is the largest dataset obtained in a specific region so far. Our results present suggestive orientation patterns that seem to point towards an astronomical intentionality.

Exploring the dynamics of spatial inequality through the development of sub-city typologies in English Bazar Urban Agglomeration and its peri urban areas

The term peri-urban can be defined as the settlements beyond, about or around core cities. It has often observed that the areas congested with the core city are enjoying some basic facilities/amenities as urban entity whereas the areas beyond the city are lagging behind. Thus the uneven distribution of amenities increases the inequality from core to peripheries. These heterogeneous characteristics within a city and around its periphery increase the inequalities which are characterized by the formation of sub-city typologies within the city and its peripheral settlements. The goal of this study is to explore extent and magnitude of spatial inequality in levels of living and the resultant sub-city typologies of English Bazar city and its peri-urban settlements, one of the most dynamic urban agglomerations of West Bengal. Village level House listing and housing data from the 2011 census are used here to find out the magnitude of inequality and construct sub-city typologies. 19 variables from the census are selected to represent three broad class of attributes such as housing quality, access to amenities and availability of household assets through different standardize indices for developing sub-city typology. Hierarchical and non-hierarchical cluster analysis methods are then used to identify empirical typologies considering relevant principal factors from PCA analysis. It identifies a five cluster solution corresponds to five spatial typological categories (High SE-Area, Average SE-Area, Good SE-Area, Average Area, Low socio-economic area). Identification of five spatial typological categories helps to explore the urban inequality at micro level for English Bazar Urban Agglomeration and its peri-urban settlements. The result also shows that settlements lying contiguous to the Old Malda city are deprived in asset holding and household quality whereas the peripheral settlements lying along English Bazar city have better standard of living conditions.

La gran aldea. Genética urbana de la actual megalópolis de Tokio

The origin of the urban form of the Tokyo mMegalopolis, its urban genetics, is found in nature. Before Tokyo was a big city, it was a large village immersed in a large garden. The qualities of the urban space of Tokyo come from that urban entity that remained stable during the three centuries that Pax Tokugawa lasted (1603-1868). Tokyo was a huge urban organization where lived more than 4 million people and it extended by the fluvial plain of 32,000 km 2 of Kanto plateau. The large village has been identified as the pre-urban state of Tokyo's current megalopolis, a state of lethargy prior to the rapid process of densification that transformed the large village into a large city in a few decades, and a place as complex and extensive as the contemporary scattered city. The methodology performed consists of a scalar analysis of the great village in a downward direction, starting from a wide view of the Kanto plateau until arriving at the urban landscapes built on the periphery of Edo, its metropolitan center. The article is a compendium of eight short texts, which together with their respective eight graphic documents, build the corpus of the research. The reader faces a graphic essay formed by small chapters that will immerse him in the great village, the genesis of the largest urban agglomeration on the planet.

Significance of management in valorization of old urban units based on Montenegrin example

This paper, through study case of Montenegro, deals with significance of sophisticated management in process of activation of old urban units and some architectural facilities for tourist purposes. Starting fact is that one of the most important segments of tourist offer is immobile cultural heritage, having the value manifested in few segments, emphasizing two most famous. The first one represents urban agglomerations, successfully transposed into tourist offer, while the other segment is vencular residential architecture of indeginous type, which can also contribute to tourist offer with appealing its contents. This work also gives the example of target potentials. Examples mentioned in this work proved as successful and profitable (in economic way). Also, some of examples in the work are opportunities missed because of serious devastation of architectural and urban designing heritage, as well as real chances certain localities have. Specific case analysis proved that management is not present enough and not educated enough - it is far below disposable potentials Montenegro possesses. This work also points, through implemented researches, the degree of personnel, who are in charge for promoting values of traditional architecture for tourist purposes. However, logical conclusion can be drawn that the conscience about quality of old urban entities and vernacular heritage is not developed enough. That initiates requirement for educating managers and forming of multidisciplinar teams so the knowledge could be used for proper valorization of potentials. Significance of proper and qualified personnel is specially emphasized when this topic is studied, because investors are not educated enough on this issue, so disposable means are used for some other things marked and recognised as proper and profitable investments.

Complex Adaptive Systems and Urban Morphogenesis

Complex Adaptive Systems and Urban Morphogenesis

Characterisation and comparison of spatial patterns in urban systems: A case study of U.S. cities

Understanding the morphology of an urban system is an important step towards unveiling the dynamical processes of its growth and development, which can be achieved through a study of its transportation system. Without doubt, transportation is the foundation of every urban system, and it is a crucial component that enables diverse social and economic functions within a city. In this paper, we studied the spatial pattern of 53 cities in the U.S. by analysing its distribution of public transport points, using a method based upon clusters of percolation known in statistical physics. Our analysis revealed that different spatial distributions of points can generally be classified into four groups with distinctive features: clustered, dispersed, or regularly distributed. From visual inspection, we observed that cities with regularly distributed patterns do not have apparent centre. This is in contrast to the other two types where monocentric (or star-node structure) can be clearly observed. In particular, our results provide quantitative evidence on the existence of two different forms of urban system: well-planned and organically grown. In addition, we had also investigated into the spatial distribution of another important urban entity—the amenities, and found that it possessed universal properties regardless of the city's spatial pattern type. This result has an important implication: urban dynamics cannot be controlled at the local scale even though regulation has been meted out at the scale of the entire urban system. Furthermore, interesting relationships between the distribution of amenities within the city and its spatial pattern are detailed in the paper.

Urban Planning Aspects of Museum Quarters as an Architectural Medium for Creative Cities

Since the second half of the 20th century, urban environment has experienced significant transformation. Splash of interactivity, bottom-up initiations with development of creative sector of city economy and participatory planning, irretrievably changed the attitude to the urban medium. One of the most intensively growing field – creative industry – provided cities with numerous cultural clusters, which boosted urban economic development and social cohesion. Supported in many cases by gentrification and revitalization, these processes brought renovation of brownfield and more comprehensive approaches to urban design. Understanding of the economic benefits made city managers start an active promotion of creative clusters and their intensive integration into urban life, involving the main museums and cultural institutions. Thus, a new type of cultural clusters – Museum Quarter - appeared. Holding the position of cultural flagman in the historical heart of the city, Museum Quarters (MQs) pretend to take on an important role both in urban planning structure and in social life. Furthermore, such role usually has strong influence on the surrounding districts, in a positive or negative way. Although basic principles are still applied for all types of cultural districts, the phenomena of “Museum Quarters” due to the complexity of planning, operating and maintenance issues, stepped far above basic cultural clusters, requiring substantially new attitude to the planning of such urban entities. Five clusters were chosen for this study: MQs in Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and the currently developing project in Budapest. The main purpose of this paper is to elaborate the principles for the practical implementation of Museum Quarters by the definition and classification of their specific urban planning aspects. The complexity of target object – Museum Quarter - and its multi-level relationships with the whole city, require from the research interdisciplinary approach and methodology of systemic-structural analysis. The typology of different MQs - identifying specific and common features – is based on studies of urban grids and architectural characters. The critical observation and comparison of the sociopolitical background and the traditional and modern understanding of museum environment helped to define some crucial misconceptions in interpretation, such as the widespread attitude to the Museum Quarter as a museum building, not as a part of urban medium, causing documented obstacles to development. Consideration of drawbacks and advantages, as the results of this study, showed potential of Museum Quarters as new models of urban environment for smart-governed, economically and socially sustainable contemporary city life.

Calibrating a Land Parcel Cellular Automaton (LP-CA) for urban growth simulation based on ensemble learning

ABSTRACTThe reliability of raster cellular automaton (CA) models for fine-scale land change simulations has been increasingly questioned, because regular pixels/grids cannot precisely represent irregular geographical entities and their interactions. Vector CA models can address these deficiencies due to the ability of the vector data structure to represent realistic urban entities. This study presents a new land parcel cellular automaton (LP-CA) model for simulating urban land changes. The innovation of this model is the use of ensemble learning method for automatic calibration. The proposed model is applied in Shenzhen, China. The experimental results indicate that bagging-Naïve Bayes yields the highest calibration accuracy among a set of selected classifiers. The assessment of neighborhood sensitivity suggests that the LP-CA model achieves the highest simulation accuracy with neighbor radius r = 2. The calibrated LP-CA is used to project future urban land use changes in Shenzhen, and the results are found to be consistent with those specified in the official city plan.

Toponymy and the City, the Past and the Future

The article reviews and analyses the concepts of toponymy, basing on the exchange of ideas between the members of the Toponymy Council and the Editorial Board of the journal. The names of the new urban entities of Irkutsk are proposed.

An urban climate assessment and management tool for combined heat and air quality judgements at neighbourhood scales

Meteorology and air quality are key aspects for city life and urban metabolism. Both aspects build upon urban and natural processes, involve stocks and flows of heat and pollution, with in the end consequences for stocks and flows concerning other urban entities and processes such as human outdoor activities, leisure, transport modes, as well as for urban design and planning. During hot summer days cities experience an urban heat island effect mainly at the start of the evening and at night. As a result inhabitants might be subject to a reduced human thermal comfort. Hot summer days often also coincide with relatively poor air quality conditions. Both short-term effects are known to increase the mortality rates, and it is challenging to distinguish their impacts on health effects. Moreover, climate change scenarios indicate an enhancement of future heat wave frequency and intensity and a further deterioration of human thermal comfort. These issues raise the need and the urgency for city adaptation, but an integrated method for the assessment is still missing. Effective city adaptation is hampered by the complexity of the urban climate (induced by both meteorology and urban morphological characteristics) and its potential health risks, combined with the complex spatial interaction of stakeholders and economical functions. To warn the general public, and to effectively perform urban planning interventions, straightforward environmental indicators are required. Indicators have been developed for the individual aspects before, but indices that combine both air quality and urban heat are rather scarce (Rainham and Smoyer-Tomic, 2003). This study develops a novel metric that combines the impact of thermal comfort and air quality by accounting for the relative health risk for both aspects. A straightforward quantification method for this metric has been developed to provide an objective, rational assessment. The application of this new Urban Climate assessment tool is then applied to a case study for a heat wave in the Northwestern Europe, and applied for a sample intervention in the city center of Ghent (Belgium).

Rethinking Cultural Identities in the Context of Globalization: Linguistic Landscape of Kazan, Russia, as an Emerging Global City

Abstract The article looks at two possible directions of cultural identity changes taking place in the era of globalization, analyzing the underlying forces and motivation behind certain shifts in linguistic and cultural behavior. Conformity to the leading dominant culture acquired through lingua franca at the expense of erasing parts of one's original mother tongue and cultural identity is juxtaposed to deliberate preservation and enhancement of minor cultural identities and minority languages. Linguistic landscape of Kazan is analyzed as an example of initially bilingual urban entity turning multilingual due to globalizing trends.

Creation of virtual 3D models of the existing architectonic structures using the web resources

Digital three-dimensional models of the existing architectonic structures are created for the purpose of digitalization of the archive documents, presentation of buildings or an urban entity or for conducting various analyses and tests. Traditional methods for the creation of 3D models of the existing buildings assume manual measuring of their dimensions, using the photogrammetry method or laser scanning. Such approaches require considerable time spent in data acquisition or application of specific instruments and equipment. The goal of this paper is presentation of the procedure for the creation of 3D models of the existing structures using the globally available web resources and free software packages on standard PCs. This shortens the time of the production of a digital three-dimensional model of the structure considerably and excludes the physical presence at the location. In addition, precision of this method was tested and compared with the results acquired in a previous research.

КРЕАТИВНЫЙ КЛАСС – КРЕАТИВНЫЙ ГОРОД: РЕАЛЬНАЯ ПЕРСПЕКТИВА ИЛИ УТОПИЯ ДЛЯ ИЗБРАННЫХ?

The world experience explicitly shows that popular concepts of urban development in post-industrial societies coming from the ideology of creativeness are inapplicable not only universally to any urban entity in the world, but also to most of cities in the respective societies. This is due to: a) historical non-simultaneity of mankind’s development, when different societies solve distinctive problems of survival, accelerated modernizations, adaptation to post-industrialism, creative self-actualization, etc.; b) capitalist world system asymmetries that increase the class-based, economical and geographical polarization; c) narrowness of the world post-industrial economy segment and of the post-material values space; d) dependence of cities on networks and peripheries beyond agglomerations, regions, states. As a result, such concepts and proposed drivers of urban development as "urban city" (S. Sassen), "creative city" (Ch. Landry), "creative class" (R. Florida), "creative economy" (J. Howkins), "smart city" (A. Townsend, R. Hollands et al.), "gentrification" (D. Ley), "urban networked communities" (M. Castells), "symbolic positioning" and "cities branding" (by D. Vizgalov, K. Kiselev, M. Nazukina and other) uncover their nature as limited social utopias. Even in places where the level of urban economy capitalization enables to use potential drivers of development suggested by creative theories, their impact is usually in favour of distinct privileged urban minorities. Without any significant multiplicative economic effect, these theories use neoliberal rhetoric which helps to legitimate the decrease of social state, spatial segregation and reinforcement of different inequalities within a city. Thus they deprive urban dwellers of the conventional right to the city. As a result, creative city politics turns out to accumulate tensions and problems, and the creative class shows its accursed part – the precariat – as vulnerable at the labor market and politically dangerous class.

It’s all about the birds! Non-human actors’ situational power in creating conditions for human engagement

In this article, we aim to understand how planning theory and practice should approach new urban entities and their transforming meanings. We argue that planning practice has difficulties in identifying and recognising developmental processes where the human attachment to the local environment gradually changes the identity and use of an area. Instead, these processes are interpreted as disruptions in the planned course of action. We illustrate our viewpoint with an empirical example from Finland. The case is about a significant spot of biodiversity in a completely man-made environment. The study serves as an example of how artefacts actively co-shape the events and environment around them and thus create a relationship between humans and their surroundings. Drawing on a science and technology studies-inspired perspective on the relationships between human and non-human actors, we stress the importance of artefacts, local setting and processual development in urban planning.

Encounters of discrete urban practices

In an attempt to understand the reality of urban life, this work tries to examine how the distinct, discrete urban entities interact and interrelate. It argues that if the city, at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century, is interpreted as fragments or regions that try to coexist, then these distinct units are not set in final solid forms. Rather, these tend to dismantle and alternate, at least momentarily. Encounters of the practices and rituals of daily life illustrate an instance of such interactions. As an example, in the Arab/Islamic cities (with specific reference to the case of Tripoli, Lebanon), funeral processions are rituals that encounter randomly discrete individuals walking in the street under distinct spatio-temporal conditions. These encounters go through a process of ‘conjunction’ and ‘disjunction’, which alternates the individual's belongingness to his or her logic and system in order to operate within others' systems. The alternation resets the individual's sensory and mental perception of their context, which reorders their framing within the fragment or region they are set in.

INVESTIGATING GEOSPARQL REQUIREMENTS FOR PARTICIPATORY URBAN PLANNING

Abstract. We propose that participatory GIS (PGIS) activities including participatory urban planning can be made more efficient and effective if spatial reasoning rules are integrated with PGIS tools to simplify engagement for public contributors. Spatial reasoning is used to describe relationships between spatial entities. These relationships can be evaluated quantitatively or qualitatively using geometrical algorithms, ontological relations, and topological methods. Semantic web services utilize tools and methods that can facilitate spatial reasoning. GeoSPARQL, introduced by OGC, is a spatial reasoning standard used to make declarations about entities (graphical contributions) that take the form of a subject-predicate-object triple or statement. GeoSPARQL uses three basic methods to infer topological relationships between spatial entities, including: OGC's simple feature topology, RCC8, and the DE-9IM model. While these methods are comprehensive in their ability to define topological relationships between spatial entities, they are often inadequate for defining complex relationships that exist in the spatial realm. Particularly relationships between urban entities, such as those between a bus route, the collection of associated bus stops and their overall surroundings as an urban planning pattern. In this paper we investigate common qualitative spatial reasoning methods as a preliminary step to enhancing the capabilities of GeoSPARQL in an online participatory GIS framework in which reasoning is used to validate plans based on standard patterns that can be found in an efficient/effective urban environment.