Urban Environmental Research Research Articles

Preliminary comparison of soundscape preferences in community public spaces between the individuals with visual impairment and with normal vision

Hearing is an important way for the visually impaired to perceive the environment, and the visually impaired have a different preference for urban soundscape than those with normal vision. Therefore, understanding the differences in the preference of the visually impaired and the normal vision to the urban soundscape will help to create a sound environment that is suitable for both of them, so as to enhance the inclusiveness of the urban environment. This study took the community public spaces as the typical urban environment research object, and used the Evaluation Grid Method (EGM) to conduct semi-structured in-depth interviews on soundscape preferences of 20 visually impaired individuals and 25 individuals with normal vision. By sorting out the interview results, 18 soundscape attributes preferred by the visually impaired and 12 soundscape attributes preferred by the normal vision individuals were extracted. Through comparison, it was found that visually impaired individuals have richer descriptions and preferences of soundscape compared to those with normal vision, and the particularity of their preference is mainly reflected in its semantics and its promotion of spatial cognition of the visually impaired.

Research on the Evaluation Methods of Microclimatic Impacts of Traditional Residential Architectural Layouts in Shenyang

Urban environments are complex ecosystems where buildings, spaces, and human activities intertwine to influence the local climate, giving rise to what is known as the urban microclimate. This microclimate encompasses variations in temperature, humidity, wind patterns, and precipitation that occur in urban areas compared to their rural counterparts. These variations are not trivial; they significantly affect energy consumption, human comfort, and health, making the study of urban microclimates an essential aspect of sustainable urban planning [81]. The interplay between residential architecture and microclimatic conditions is a critical facet of urban environmental research. As cities grow, the configuration of built environments can significantly affect thermal comfort, air quality, and energy consumption, thereby dictating the liveability and sustainability of urban spaces. This study explores how specific residential layouts—row, diagonal, staggered gable, and enclosed—each manipulate air flow, sunlight exposure, and heat retention differently, contributing to varied microclimatic outcomes within urban neighborhoods.

Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (2014-2023) by Using Bibliometric Analysis Method

Sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) are increasingly crucial for stormwater management. This bibliometric review analyses research trends on sustainable urban drainage systems over the past decade (2014- 2023) using data from Scopus. The analysis found 705 articles, 192 conference papers, 85 book chapters, and 64 reviews on sustainable urban drainage systems. Publication volume increased by 66% during the study period, indicating rising research interest. The most cited article (294 citations) was a 2019 review by Andrés-Doménech et al. on innovations in sustainable urban drainage systems. Analysis of author keywords revealed 8 clusters of research topics, with "sustainable urban drainage systems" being the dominant term with 889 keywords. Although general sustainable urban drainage system terms prevail, the use of keywords related to network visualization methods like VOS viewer is rapidly increasing. The United Kingdom published the most SUDS research (315 articles), followed by China (149), Spain (135), the United States (126), and Italy (107 articles). Research was concentrated in the environmental science and engineering fields. However, this bibliometric analysis provides insights into SUDS research trends, the most active countries and institutions, and emerging topic areas. The rapid increase in publications and use of network visualization techniques demonstrates SUDS' growing importance in urban stormwater management. The results can help inform future research directions, such as applying advanced data analytics to improve SUDS design and performance. Expanding bibliometric analyses with additional techniques like VOS viewer could further enhance understanding of this critical area of urban environmental research. Developing bibliometric methods and adding feature extraction algorithms when selecting features used to model data can increase the efficiency and accuracy of the data on sustainable urban drainage systems. The development of research data using Vos viewers images with this type of data processing research can also be maximized for research related to the sustainable urban drainage system.

Evaluation of carbon emission efficiency based on urbanscaling law: take 308 cities in China as an example.

The development of urban low carbonization is an important foundation for achieving the goal of "dual carbon." The differences in spatial differences based on scientific methods revealing the characteristics of urban carbon emissions and its efficiency are of great significance for shaping the green low-carbon land space pattern. This article uses urban standard models and scale adjustments to the urban index (SAMIs) identification in 2006-2017 308 Chinese urban carbon discharge standards and efficiency time and space evolution pattern and their characteristics. The results of the study show that there is a stable secondary relationship between carbon emissions and urban population scale, which means that the growth rate of urban carbon emissions is significantly lagging behind the growth of urban systems. The analysis of urban carbon emission efficiency based on SAMI values shows significant spatial heterogeneity: the carbon emission efficiency of cities in North China, East China, and Northeast China is lower than that of other regions. In terms of temporal changes, there was a phenomenon of SAMI high-value cities moving north and low-value cities moving south between 2006 and 2017, and △SAMIs showed a pattern of hot in the west and cold in the east. This study broadens the applicability of urban scaling law models in urban environmental research, providing a new perspective for evaluating urban carbon emission efficiency and China's energy conservation and emission reduction work.

Automatic assessment of public open spaces using street view imagery

Public open space (POS) is essential to urban areas. Assessing them usually requires tedious approaches such as fieldwork and manual processes. Street View Imagery (SVI) and Computer Vision (CV) have been adopted in some urban environment research, bringing fine granularity and human perspective. However, limited aspects have been subject in these studies, and SVI and CV have not been used for holistic POS assessment. This research introduces a novel approach of employing them in conjunction with traditionally used geospatial and remote sensing data for automating POS assessment and doing so extensively. Indicators from both subjective and objective perspectives are developed, and CV algorithms are adopted for retrieving visual features. In a case study spanning 800 POS in Hong Kong and Singapore, a method is designed to predict both subjective and objective scores. The results demonstrate the perceptual models achieved acceptable to high accuracy scores, and suggest that SVI reflects different aspects of POS compared to previous approaches. The paper concludes that SVI can be adopted in POS assessment as a new instrument, extending their research scope to rarely considered off-road areas, and contributing with a new approach for the design and allocation of POS in urban planning.

Parks, People, and Pollution: A Relational Study of Socioenvironmental Succession

The urban environmental inequality literature holds that marginalized communities are generally concentrated in neighborhoods with greater levels of industrial pollution and lesser access to parks and playfields. Yet, “green” and “brown” land uses are also linked historically and through contemporary practices of green redevelopment. This article thus begins from the understanding that it is important to analyze both forms of urban land use at once, to avoid mistaking one historical process for another. Focusing on Providence, Rhode Island (1970–2010), we leverage original historical data on the location and operating years of public parks alongside comprehensive industrial site data to analyze the joint transformation of residential populations, parks, and industry over time. We find that park access generally increases for Latinx residents; however, after accounting for increases in park access associated with past industrial land use, we find that census tracts with growing proportions of African American residents are associated with relatively less access to parks than other census tracts. Results reveal additional dimensions to the role of industrial history in shaping the socioenvironmental trajectory of local neighborhoods and additionally emphasize the importance of a historical and relational view of urban land use in urban environmental research.

Decoupling of the Municipal Thermal Environment Using a Spatial Autoregressive Model

In the rapid urbanization process, climate change has a huge impact on the urban thermal environment, and the urban heat island has attracted widespread attention from society. How to better detect, analyze, and evaluate the urban heat island effect has become a hot issue in current urban environmental research. However, the correlation analysis of heat island factors mostly adopts the conventional least square method, without considering the correlation of and the interaction between spatial elements. At the same time, the single analysis method makes it difficult to analyze environmental problems scientifically, which leads to great bias. Therefore, in this paper, the spatial autoregressive confusion model was used to analyze the satellite data of Beijing, and a preliminary temperature model of Beijing for all seasons was established. The regression results show that the surface temperature of Beijing has a strong spatial autocorrelation, and that the modified normalized difference water index and the normalized differential vegetation index have a strong negative effect on the land surface temperature. The prediction models established in this study can provide accurate and sustainable data support in the urbanization process and aid in the creation of a sustainable and effective urban environment.

Spatial Heterogeneity and Temporal Variation in Urban Surface Albedo Detected by High-Resolution Satellite Data

Albedo is one of the key parameters in the surface energy balance and it has been altered due to urban expansion, which has significant impacts on local and regional climate. Many previous studies have demonstrated that changes in the urban surface albedo are strongly related to the city’s heterogeneity and have significant spatial-temporal characteristics but fail to address the albedo of the urban surface as a unique variable in urban thermal environment research. This study selects Beijing as the experimental area for exploring the spatial-temporal characteristics of the urban surface albedo and the albedo’s uniqueness in environmental research on urban spaces. Our results show that the urban surface albedo at high spatial resolution can better represent the urban spatial heterogeneity, seasonal variation, building canyon, and pixel adjacency effects. Urban surface albedo is associated with building density and height, land surface temperature (LST), and fractional vegetation cover (FVC). Furthermore, albedo can reflect livability and environmental rating due to the variances of building materials and architectural formats in the urban development. Hence, we argue that the albedo of the urban surface can be considered as a unique variable for improving the acknowledgment of the urban environment and human livability with wider application in urban environmental research.

A comprehensive evaluation of built-environment as a risk factor for sleep disruption

Background/ Aim Sleep disruption is a significant public health issue, given its high prevalence and links to both injury and chronic disease. Interventions for improving sleep often focus on individual-level behaviour change. Modifying aspects of the built environment may be a strategy for population-level improvements. Few studies have evaluated the impacts of built environment on sleep. We assessed relationships between the built environment and sleep disruption using a well-characterized, population-based cohort. Methods Analyses were conducted among participants of the British Columbia Generations Project (BCGP) with complete data on built environment factors and self-reported sleep duration and quality(n=23,556). Measures of air pollution (PM₂.₅, NO₂), greenness (density within 250-metres) and intensity of light-at-night (LAN) were obtained from the Canadian Urban Environmental Research Consortium (CANUE), and linked to participants residential postal codes. Logistic regression analysis, adjusted for age and sex, was used to estimate the association between each built environment factor and self-reported sleep duration (<7 hours, ≥7 hours) and difficulty in falling or staying asleep (sometimes/most of the time/ always vs. rarely/never). Results Increased PM₂.₅ was associated with lower odds of insufficient sleep duration (OR=0.85/5µg/m³; 0.74-0.97) and greater odds of difficulty falling/staying asleep (OR 1.54/5µg/m³; 1.37-1.74). Increased LAN intensity was associated with greater odds of insufficient sleep (OR=1.04/10-unit; 1.02-1.07) but not with difficulty falling/staying asleep. Greenness exposure in the top quartile was associated with reduced odds of insufficient sleep (OR=0.92; 0.86-0.99) and difficulty staying/falling asleep (OR=0.97; 0.95-0.99) compared to those in the bottom quartile. Greenness, LAN and PM₂.₅ were moderately correlated (-0.5 < r < 0.5). Conclusions BCGP’s rich data enabled a comprehensive evaluation of the built-environment as a modifiable determinant of sleep disruption. Further analyses will elucidate the mediating effects of sleep on the links between built-environment and chronic disease. Keywords Sleep; Built Environment; Air Pollution; Greenness; Light pollution

Multitemporal impervious surface estimation via an optimized stable/change pixel detection approach

ABSTRACT Remote sensing techniques have proved its efficacy for the impervious surface mapping, which is a significant indicator of urbanization process and environmental status. However, systematic and random errors in the existing methods still impact the reliability of subpixel impervious surface estimation, generating compounded errors when conducting multitemporal monitoring. The compounded errors of the conventional methods often significantly impact the temporal consistency of the results. In this study, a novel method based on a straightforward pixel change detection approach was put forward to improve the estimation of multitemporal impervious surface area. Two experimental areas located in Rome in Italy and Shenzhen in China were chosen to testify the generality of the proposed method to estimate different types of impervious surfaces worldwide. By reducing the compounded errors, the proposed method demonstrated its efficiency in achieving higher accuracy in both study areas without involving extensive data sources and intensive manual tasks. Compared with the conventional classification and regression tree algorithm, the overall mean average error and root mean square error of this study declined by more than 15.55% and 8.63%, respectively, and R2 increased from approximately 0.93 to 0.96. The proposed method also drastically reduced the standard deviation of the multitemporal percent ISA of the stable pixels. The accurate change estimation of percent ISA has been a fundamental but challenging issue associated with monitoring and understanding the urban environment. Therefore, our proposed method, with its improved ability to estimate impervious surface change both spatially and temporally, can provide accurate information required for urban environment research.

A Case Study of the Relationship Between Vegetation Coverage and Urban Heat Island in a Coastal City by Applying Digital Twins.

While urban vegetation affects the urban thermal environment directly, the effects of different plant layouts and vegetation cover on urban microclimate regulation are different. This study has applied digital technologies to advance urban environmental research and forestry analysis. With a focus on a coastal city located on the eastern coast of the North Temperate Zone as a study area, this study collected the Landsat archive satellite remote sensing image data covering the study area in 2000–2020 and analyzed the temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of vegetation coverage, land surface temperature, and urban heat island (UHI) ratio index. The study results included the following findings: (1) The area of high fractional vegetation cover (FVC) (0.8–1.0) in the study area is increasing. Those areas are located in the mountain forests in the near-coastal area. The lowest temperature was also detected in the mountain area. (2) The distance from the coastline causes a negative correlation between land surface temperature and FVC. The land surface temperature in the regions with a distance of more than 25 km from the coastline decreases obviously with increasing FVC in summer. However, the correlation between the land surface temperature and FVC showed a slight change in the winter period. (3) UHI ratio index decreases along with the area of high FVC (H-FVC) area. The influence of ocean climate on seasons is different, which results in the reduced effect of the H-FVC area and differences in the UHI ratio index. (4) The distance from the coastline should be considered as an important factor in the forestry development planning of the coastal cities.

Exploring the distribution of city street greenery from eye-level: an application of Baidu Map panoramic images data

ABSTRACT Increasing attention has been paid to the analysis of street greenery using the Green View Index (GVI). Current methods of vegetation extraction are not suitable for processing large amounts of data. This study introduces Visible Difference Vegetation Index (VDVI) to process Baidu Map panoramic static images which is relatively convenient for GVI calculation. The method is used to analyse the spatial distribution of street greenery in Guangzhou city in China. The results show that: (1) The spatial distribution of GVI values in Guangzhou show obvious agglomeration. (2) The average level and evenness of street greenery distribution is analysed. Tianhe and Yuexiu districts had high levels of evenly distributed street greenery; Liwan, Haizhu, Huangpu, and Panyu districts had good levels of street greenery but uneven distributions; Baiyun and Nansha had low levels of street greenery. (3)There is a significant correlation between road grade, house price, building age, land use and GVI values, which reveals the driving factors of GVI value distribution in Guangzhou. The GVI calculation method in this method is relatively convenient and accurate. GVI can be a new evaluation tool for street greenery in urban planning, additionally used as an index for urban environmental research.

Sociologiniai urbanizuotos aplinkos tyrimai: patirtis ir kryptys

The social dimension is gaining an increasing importance in the fields of shaping our environment, such as territorial planning and architectural design. In order to create the living environment, which would be not only comfortable, but also aesthetic and psychologically acceptable, it is important to analyze the experience and possibilities of application of sociological research methods to physical and social environment of urbanized areas. In order to reach this aim, the article presents the review of experience of application of the sociological research methods to urban environment distinguishing the characteristic cases in this field and their analogies in Lithuanian practice and the distinguishing and classification of the types and aims of sociological research of urban environment based on the analysis of literature.

A review of urban physical environment sensing using street view imagery in public health studies

ABSTRACT Urban physical environments are the physical settings and built environments in neighbourhoods and cities which provide places for human activities. Evidence suggests that there are substantial associations between urban physical environments and various health outcomes, e.g. people’s physical activities might be influenced by surrounding physical environments, thereby affecting their health behaviours; more exposure to urban physical environments may benefit human mental health. Street view imagery enables us to capture the landscape at eye-level, making it a promising data source for observing and analysing the realistic dynamics of urban physical environments. Compared with traditional in-person assessments and field observations, street view imagery-based data collection is relatively time-effective and cost-effective. Researchers from epidemiology, psychology, and geography have used street view imagery to quantify the built environment and understand its impacts on public health. To summarize current research trends, this paper systematically reviews the use of street view images for sensing urban environments in public health studies. Specifically, we describe the characteristics of street view imagery and review the methodology for image processing and semantic understanding. We then summarize the challenges that remain for quantifying urban environments in terms of data and methodology. Several future research directions that would benefit public health research and practices are recommended in urban environment research.

Multi-point measurement stations and adjustment methods for mapping air temperatures of Wuhan City, China

The micro-climate condition is important topic in urban environment research. Field measurements can provide the characteristics and distributions of the climatic parameters, such as air temperature accurately in built environments. How to deal with the limitation of measurement on the large area and compare the data of a large number of measuring points simultaneously needs further research. In this study, The Triangle Method and Thiessen Polygon Method were proposed to get the adjustment coefficients of mobile stations and thus the air temperature values of all measuring stations were adjusted to a certain time for obtaining the distribution maps of Wuhan City in summer and winter. The data of 17 fixed meteorological stations were compared with those of 101 mobile stations established in different time periods. The two methods’ accuracy, applicability and data comparison was researched. From the derived distribution maps of air temperature, urban areas showed different climate conditions that the maximum temperature difference in the summer was above 11 °C, whereas, in the winter, it was 2–3 °C. The mean correlation values in the adjustments were 0.793 and 0.764 for the Triangle Method and Thiessen Polygon Method respectively, indicating that both methods were feasible for the adjustment of the measured data and could effectively solve the problem of the time inconsistencies of each station. The Triangle Method carried on the mean value processing, which is better at avoiding the errors and the Thiessen Polygon Method has the advantages of a simple algorithm and high boundary adaptability.

Impact Quantification of Decentralization in Urban Growth by Extracting Impervious Surfaces Using ISEI in Model Maker

Decentralization problems in Africa have caused some infrastructure disparity between country capitals and distant districts. In Ghana, less public investment has created a gap between implementation results and theoretical benefits. Spectral indices are a good approach to extracting impervious surfaces, which is a good method of measuring urbanization. These are restricted by complexity, sensor limitation, threshold values, and high computational time. In this study, we measure the urbanization dynamics of Wa District in Ghana by applying a proposed method of impervious surface extraction index (ISEI), to evaluate the decentralization policy using Landsat images from 1984–2018 and a single S2A data. Comparing our proposed method with five other existing indexes, ISEI provided good discriminated results between target feature and background, with pixel values ranging between 0 and +1. Other indexes produced negative values. ISEI accuracy varied from 84.62–94.00% while existing indexes varied from 73.85–90.00%. Our results also showed increased impervious surface areas of 83.26 km2, which is about 7.72% of total area while the average annual urban growth was recorded as 4.42%. These figures proved that the quantification of decentralization is very positive. The study provides a foundation for urban environment research in the context of decentralization policy.

Круг средового знания и его сегментация в теории архитектуры

Рассматривается раздел российской теории архитек­туры, ассоциируемый со средовой парадигмой. Исходя из отмечаемого рядом исследователей факта неоднородности этой сферы знания, автор пытается выделить и рассмотреть формирующие её проблемно-тематические поля, проследить специфику средового видения, истоки и причины своеобра­зия теоретических установок. Различия в трактовке базовых понятий («среда», «средовое проектирование», «средовой подход» и др.), внимание к разным теоретико-методологиче­ским основаниям и дисциплинам (от философии и методо­логии деятельности до психологии зрительного восприятия и средовой психологии, от экспериментальной эстетики до искусствознания), разное толкование адептами средового видения решаемых профессиональных и социокультурных проблем (от композиционной контекстуальности архитек­турных решений до соучаствующего проектирования, от преодоления узости функционалистского видения жизни до обеспечения экологических стандартов) показывают на­личие семи сегментов средового знания. С использованием самоназваний некоторых сегментов они могут быть обозначены как «дизайн архитектурной среды», «исследование потребностей пользователей», «социально-культурные ис­следования городской среды», «исследования методологии проектирования», «исследования визуального восприятия», «поведенческо-средовые исследования» и «архитектурно­экологические исследования». С использованием ресурса Научной электронной библиотеки России (НЭБ) подвергнуты наукометрическому анализу «ключевые слова», аннотации и списки цитируемой литературы примерно 2500 публикаций, а в ряде случаев проведён понятийно-терминологический ана­лиз полных текстов средового раздела теории архитектуры. Показано, что авторы могут мигрировать между сегментами, в разных своих работах демонстрировать приверженность цен­ностям разных средовых платформ, но определённость теоре­тических установок каждой из них при этом не нарушается.

Enhanced Super-Resolution Mapping of Urban Floods Based on the Fusion of Support Vector Machine and General Regression Neural Network

Super-resolution mapping of urban flood (SMUF) is one of the hotspots in remote sensing and urban environment research. In this letter, a new SMUF method based on the fusion of support vector machine and general regression neural network (FSVMGRNN) was proposed to achieve enhanced performance. An SVM-SMUF algorithm was developed and a fusion criterion was formulated. Then, the FSVMGRNN-SMUF algorithm was developed. The results of FSVMGRNN-SMUF were evaluated using Landsat 8 OLI imagery of two representative cities in China. FSVMGRNN-SMUF yielded the most accurate SMUF results among the five SMUF methods according to visual comparisons and quantitative comparisons. The mapping accuracy of FSVMGRNN-SMUF related to the kernel functions was also analyzed and discussed. The results of this letter will help to boost practical applications of median-low resolution remote sensing images in urban flooding mapping, and to strengthen the means for monitoring and assessing urban flooding disasters.

Russian Urban Environment Research Review

Russian Urban Environment Research Review

AN ASSESSMENT OF SPATIAL VARIATION OF LAND SURFACE CHARACTERISTICS OF MINNA, NIGER STATE NIGERIA FOR SUSTAINABLE URBANIZATION USING GEOSPATIAL TECHNIQUES

AN ASSESSMENT OF SPATIAL VARIATION OF LAND SURFACE CHARACTERISTICS OF MINNA, NIGER STATE NIGERIA FOR SUSTAINABLE URBANIZATION USING GEOSPATIAL TECHNIQUES