Urban Hierarchy Research Articles

Hierarchies and Panoramic Aspects of Anne Tyng’s Urban Projects and the Contemporary Vision of the City

This article focuses on Anne Tyng’s Urban Hierarchy proposal considering the geometric reasoning, namely the helical structure and intrinsic progressions, as well as some coeval experiences and assumptions, especially regarding the developed visions revising urban standards and images. Starting from ​​these two complementary paths, it is possible to fully comprehend the image of the formulated project, which is essentially based on the configuration of the helical megastructure and the infinite possibilities provided by the application of modularity and aggregation principles. Through the virtual reconstruction of this structure, combining clusters of houses and multiple hierarchical levels of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, it is possible to create different images. This process starts from the traditional terraced house to the multilevel panoramic vision (bilateral unit and its helicoidal aggregation), up to the view of the aggregate of the various units (spiral) in a potentially infinite arrangement based on the Divine Proportion.

Simulating inter-city population flows based on graph neural networks

Inter-city population mobility, a critical phenomenon in the modern urbanisation process, is closely related to urban industrial structure and socioeconomic development. This paper aims to investigate the dynamics of population flows and their intricate ties to industrial structure, so we employ the graph neural networks (GNNs) method to simulate inter-city population flows in China, which efficiently integrates demographic and socioeconomic data with Tencent migration big data while accounts for geographical relationships between cities. The results show that the model’s predictive accuracy using the CPC index was high for road and rail traffic and moderate for air transportation. A comparison with real-world data verified the model’s effectiveness in predicting the urban hierarchy and regional aggregation of flows. Using GNNExplainer, the results indicated that population size positively influenced population flow, while developed manufacturing reduced population mobility for road and rail traffic but increased it for air transportation. By conducting scenario simulations in Northeast China, we found that enhancing the region’s industry and consumer service industry could mitigate negative population outflows. The conclusions drawn from this study offer valuable perspectives to policymakers and urban planners, enabling them to make well-informed and judicious choices concerning urban planning, transportation, and resource allocation.

Global (Sustainable) Commercial Urbanism and Culture

The decision makers of western cities have utilized commercial urbanism to help improve urban livability for several decades. The upgrade and redesign of shopping areas as well as the modernization of small and medium size retail establishments appear central to this goal. However, the unpredictability of technological innovations, lifestyles, consumer demand, and the uncertainty of global and regional markets contribute to the difficulty in delivering the most adequate and long-lasting urbanistic solutions. To what extent can professionals and elected officials utilize local cultures and regional identities to craft urban policies and programs capable of enabling flourishing businesses with both positive impacts in local economies and urban cultures? The purpose of this paper is to revisit a series of urban planning research programs, which the author studied over the past three decades in the Iberian Peninsula, the Americas, and Macau SAR. The research methods comprised literature reviews, public policy and case study analyses, teaching and research engagements, residence periods, and extended visits in Portugal, the northeast and southwest of the United States, Latin America, and Macau SAR. The argument is twofold: First, globalization is simultaneously homogenizing commercial landscapes while contributing to environmentally damaging car dependent lifestyles; and second, professionals ought to establish localized and culture-based (sustainable) commercial urbanism programs capable of assuring the long-term success of cities. The key finding is that livability assurance guarantees and cultural patterns are highly dependent on each city’s idiosyncratic characteristics such as size, place in the urban hierarchy, as well as historic roles performed in regional, national, and global dynamics.

Higher education and sustainable creative cities: The development of creative and cultural ecosystems in the (new) capital city of Kazakhstan

This article examines the role creative and cultural higher education plays in the top-down development of Astana – the new capital of Kazakhstan. Drawing on a mapping of higher education institutions in Kazakhstan’s old (Almaty) and new capital cities as well as qualitative interview data with creative and cultural practitioners, academics and policymakers, we explore the complex relationship between the development of higher education infrastructure and the broader development of the local creative and cultural ecosystem of the new capital. By exploring challenges and opportunities surrounding these developments within the new capital city, we draw some insight regarding the sustainable development of higher education and the creative and cultural ecosystem more broadly. We find that creative and cultural higher education plays an essential role in the development of the new capital city and its opportunity to lead as a creative and cultural capital. In turn, we argue that creative and cultural HE development cannot happen in isolation but needs to be planned and carried out as part of the more comprehensive creative and cultural ecosystem development, reinforcing the local creative and cultural economy and being shaped by it. It also needs to be seen as a long-term development strategy rather than a short-term solution to jump ahead in urban hierarchies. However, we warn that wider political influences may hinder the development of a genuinely independent creative and cultural higher education system.

Population size spatial distribution adjustment at different urban hierarchies in China

ABSTRACTUrban population size dynamic adjustment has been widely studied for a long time; however, the dynamic adjustment at the urban hierarchy level remains unknown. This study utilises China’s urban population data to investigate the dynamic adjustment. Specifically, we utilise methods of the Gini coefficient, linear regression, and coefficients of Spearman, and Moran’s I to explore the dynamic adjustment tendency, adjustment rate and correlation of urban population size distribution of different urban hierarchies and groups of different urban hierarchies. We find that the urban population size spatial distribution is gradually even within the same urban hierarchy. The adjustment rate to be even of Megacity II is the highest, and Megacity I is the bottom. We also find the population size spatial distribution of the whole urban system is gradually uneven. We explore the dynamic process by sorting urban hierarchies into six groups. Furthermore, we find there is a complex correlation between different urban hierarchies and global spatial correlation among China cities. These results are valuable as references for Chinese policy-makers and practitioners and will enable them to adopt sustainable land use and urban population management measures. The study outcomes will also benefit future studies on spatial population size distribution in international communities.

East-west or up the urban hierarchy? Internal migration patterns in Slovakia since post-socialist transformation to COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT Changing spatial patterns of migration are closely related to the transformation of economy and society. Most current studies focus either on international migration or on the migration of particular urban regions. Our study evaluates migration trends in the entire national regional system, and thus it contributes to its comprehensive understanding. The study aims to evaluate the relationship of internal migration from economically lagging eastern to more developed western regions of Slovakia on the one hand, and migration between categories of regions according to the hierarchical position of their urban core on the other hand. The study follows the differential urbanization concept and analyses detailed data on individual migrations in Slovakia in 1996–2020. It thus covers the period from the post-socialist transformation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show the increasing intensity of east-west and up the urban hierarchy migration. Due to the significant polarization of migration between the eastern and western regional subsystems, we examined separately in both subsystems the migration excluding flows between the subsystems. The results revealed a concentration of population into metropolitan regions in both subsystems, although the intensity of the processes was lower and the onset of trends delayed in the eastern subsystem. A significant feature of development in the post-socialist period was intensive exurbanation in both subsystems. The study thus points to the importance of subnational and regional approaches to migration research, and reveals trends that can contribute to the explanation of migration development even in countries where such detailed migration statistics are not available.

Spatial–temporal evolution and spatial spillover of the green efficiency of urban construction land in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

There are urgent ecological and environmental problems in the process of the utilization of urban construction land, promoting green utilization of construction land is conducive to urban sustainable development and high-quality economic development. Based on the panel data of 108 prefecture-level and above cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China from 2003 to 2017, this paper uses the super-efficiency SBM model to measure the green efficiency of urban construction land (GEUCL), analyzes its spatial–temporal evolution characteristics, and constructs the spatial autoregressive model to study its spatial spillover effects from the perspective of urban hierarchy. It is found that, in terms of temporal variation, the average efficiency value shows a fluctuating upward trend during the study period, rising from 0.27 in 2003 to 0.39 in 2017, the cumulative growth rate is 44.44%, with an average annual growth rate of 3.14%. In terms of spatial distribution characteristics, during the study period, the number of medium-efficiency and high-efficiency cities increases significantly, while the number of low-efficiency cities decreases sharply; high-efficiency cities always present scattered distribution, while medium-efficiency cities change from scattered distribution to agglomeration distribution. In addition, GEUCL has significantly positive spatial spillover effects between neighboring cities of different grades and between neighboring cities of the same grade, among them, the increase of GEUCL in higher-grade cities has significantly positive spatial spillover effects on that in adjacent lower-grade cities; the increase of GEUCL in lower-grade cities has significantly positive spatial spillover effects on that in neighboring higher-grade cities; GEUCL has significantly positive spatial spillover effects between neighboring cities of the same grade.

Who owns France? Uncovering the structure of property ownership for a better understanding of the socio-spatial distribution of wealth

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the structure of French property ownership and shows how it is crucial input to understand the socio-spatial distribution of wealth and inequalities in cities. To date only partial information exists on this given that we are in a period of financial opacity. In this paper, we provide a theoretical framework to analyze the structure of property ownership. It is defined by four dimensions: the distribution of properties among different categories of owners, the spatial patterns of the properties held by these categories, their estimated financial value, and their concentration within the categories—the latter not studied here, for legal and confidentiality reasons. Drawing on unpublished cadastral data on property owners and property transaction prices, we carry out an empirical analysis which reveals the dominance of household and public ownership, contrasting with the marginal position of private investors. Despite the fact that the structure of ownership is fairly uniform throughout the urban hierarchy, some groups of owners do however hold strategically located properties. Our results show the embeddedness of the property ownership in different accumulation regimes, and relativize any consideration of financialization or neoliberalism as a global all-encompassing framework when analyzing real estate property.

The Changing Shape of Spatial Income Disparities in the United States

Spatial income disparities have increased in the US since 1980, a pattern linked to major social, economic, and political challenges. Yet, today’s spatial inequality, and how it relates to the past, remains insufficiently well understood. The primary contribution of this article is to demonstrate a deep polarization in the American spatial system—yet one whose character differs from that commonly reported on in the literature. The increase in spatial inequality since 1980 is almost entirely driven by a small number of populous, economically important, and resiliently high-income superstar city-regions. But we also show that the rest of the system exhibits a long-run pattern of income convergence over the study period. A secondary contribution is historical: today’s superstars have sat durably atop the urban hierarchy since at least 1940. Third, we describe six distinctive pathways of development that regions follow between 1940 and 2019, with certain locations catching up, falling behind, and surging ahead. We explore the role played by initial endowments in driving locations down these pathways, finding population, education, industrial structure, and immigrant attraction to be key distinguishing features. These insights are enabled by a fourth contribution: methodologically, we use group-based trajectory modeling—an approach new to the field that integrates top-down and bottom-up views of the evolving national spatial system. We conclude by exploring implications for the mid-twenty-first century.

A Comparative Analysis of Museum Accessibility in High-Density Asian Cities: Case Studies from Seoul and Tokyo

We investigated the relationship between urban accessibility of museums in the urban spaces of Tokyo and Seoul within limited travel distances. Similarities and differences were identified in the museum accessibility between the two cities. The urban accessibility of museums was set as the dependent variable, calculated via space syntax. For the spatial accessibility of museums, five walking ranges (1000–2000 m) were set as independent variables, with a distance of 250 m as the basic unit. Data normality and independence of the derived data were checked, and polynomial curve fitting was performed to interpret the accessibility of museums in each city. A comparative analysis was conducted on museum accessibility. The results show areas with a high concentration of museums in Tokyo and Seoul partially deviated from the center of the urban hierarchy. The urban and spatial accessibilities of museums in both cities quantitatively correlated with limited travel distances. Museum visitors in Tokyo were more likely to have relatively free-flowing routes in the city. The museums in Seoul had a lower overall accessibility than those in Tokyo, and travel patterns and routes to these museums were likely to be restricted when located in urban areas and consequently resembled a forced movement pattern.

ECONOMIC PROCESSES OF INCREASING GLOBALIZATION IN THE STRUCTURAL AND SPACE MUTATIONS OF ALGIERS TERRITORIES, IN THE WAY OF METROPOLISATION

Algiers is experiencing spatial and structural changes in its economy, as a result of globalization working in the world's metropolises, targeting the tertiary activities of the new global economy. The metropolis of Algeria, concentrates: population, activities and wealth, at the head of its network at three scales: urban, regional and national providing an international position in the Mediterranean basin on its south shore. Gateway to Globalization, Algiers is transforming the economic organization of its national urban system. This new tertiary sector concerns higher services, and calls for metropolitan functions (high level) and attaches to reinforce the higher level of the urban hierarchy. Our approach is based on GIS to capture changes; territorial and metropolitan movements (overconcentration and deconcentration) take place between central and peripheral neighborhoods, producing a new organization, which is the global metropolisation, linked to economic internationalization, the official beginning of which dates from 1997.

New Towns In Algeria Purism Of Plans & Perspectives Vs. Perplexity Of Policy-Makers

The New Towns policy in Algeria is a planning tool of the SNAT National Strategic Plan (2030), which aims to correct the double distortion of the national urban hierarchy and promote the post-oil smart economy. The country is facing continuous urbanisation of coastal areas and growth of some major cities, especially the capital. Contrary to the vetted plans, alluring 3D images and virtual animations approved and shown in the media, the implementation process looks quite fuzzy and faces many challenges. Some of the launched New Towns are lagging behind schedule and are being converted into mass housing only programmes. Others are temporarily on hold. The aim of the study is to assess current planning practises in the light of global experience. The extensive literature review provides key principles that help to validate these experiences. The paper aims to draw the attention of decision-makers to the gap between master plans and current practises, and provides unedited information on the scarce knowledge about New Towns in the country.

Migration up and down the urban hierarchy: The mediating effects of geographic mobility on migrants' homeownership

AbstractIn the past two decades, migrants' homeownership has received increasing attention, as migrants have become increasingly heterogeneous in terms of socio‐economic status and choice of the destination city. However, how migrants move across the urban hierarchy and thereby affect their housing consumption has received scant attention. Using the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey, this study examines the relationship between migrants' socio‐economic status and their geographic mobility along the urban hierarchy, as well as the impacts on their housing outcomes in the destination city. Employing generalised structural equation modelling, the results show that migrants with higher education levels and higher family income are more likely to make an upward movement, through which they accumulated their capital and advantages to overcome difficulties and settle in the destination. However, the steeper they climb along the urban hierarchy, the less likely they could own a home in the destination city. This study contributes to the existing literature by highlighting the divergence in migrants' geographic mobility and its importance in understanding the variegated housing outcomes among the migration population.

Criticising Capitalism in the City and on the Stage: The City Street Movement Occupy Wall Street and Tim Price’s Protest Song

Abstract Following the 2022 CDE conference’s concern regarding “how theatre and the city are productively embroiled and [. . .] how contemporary Anglophone theatre has redefined [. . .] [and blurred the] borders between centre and periphery, street and stage, performer and spectator” (Garson et al.), I will focus on Tim Price’s Protest Song, which was commissioned by the National Theatre and was staged there in December 2013. Setting the play in the streets of London in front of the iconic urban space of St Paul’s Cathedral, starring a homeless main character, and transgressing the boundaries between theatrical and actual spaces, Price arguably questions conventional urban and social binaries as well as economic and social hierarchies. With the help of experimental and critical strategies, he examines the city street movement Occupy Wall Street and its repercussions. The present article analyses these strategies and asks how they represent, perform, question, and assess urban hierarchies, city street activism, and the financial sector, as they are symbolised by the (urban and mental) spaces of London as capital and London as city of capital. I will furthermore look into how Price’s strategies reframe social inequality and turbo-capitalism as well as to what extent they redefine the borders between centre and periphery, street and stage, performer and spectator.

A ‘donut effect’? Assessing housing transactions during COVID-19 across the Spanish rural–urban hierarchy

ABSTRACT We assess if a 'donut effect' has occurred in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results show a synchronized 30% drop in housing purchases during the national lockdown in 2020, followed by a significant increase from 2021 across the rural-urban continuum, including core cities, suburbs, towns and rural areas, exceeding pre-pandemic levels. We thus found no evidence of a ‘donut effect’ in Spain.

Does the Green Development of Cities Need High-Level Opening Up? A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on China’s Pilot Free Trade Zone

The contradiction between urban open development and the environmental pollution of cities becomes increasingly serious. People begin to pay attention to the green development effect of Free Trade Zones. Based on 278 prefecture-level cities in China from 2009 to 2019, we use the time-varying DID method with the implementation of PFTZ establishment policy as a quasi-natural experiment to explore whether the green development of Chinese cities needs high-level opening up. The main findings of this paper are as follows: (i) Compared with cities without PFTZs, the environmental pollution composite index (EPI) of cities with PFTZs decreases significantly by 5.278% on average; that is, the establishment of PFTZs significantly improves the green development level of those cities. (ii) After the establishment of PFTZs, the green development level of Chinese coastal cities will be enhanced to a greater extent than that of inland cities. In addition, the higher Chinese cities are in the urban hierarchy, the more they can grasp the development opportunities from the establishment of PFTZs. (iii) The establishment of PFTZs effectively reduces the EPI and significantly improves the green development level of cities through three paths: the scale effect, the structure effect and the technology effect. This paper provides micro-empirical evidence for literature related to the environmental benefits and green development of PFTZ construction and provides a reference for most developing countries to learn from China’s experience.

Efficiency of large cities: Theory and empirics

The paper assesses the advantages of large cities as places of concentration of economic activity in terms of production efficiency. For this purpose; we made quantitative estimates of the relationship between the size of cities and indicators of productivity. The theory justifies the presence of such relationships by various agglomeration effects; estimates of which have been reduced over the last 20 years as the number of empirical studies has been growing. The calculations are based on Russian municipal statistics; taking into account its limitations. The study has demonstrated that the direction of the relationship between city size and productivity depends on the characteristics of the industry structure of the city economy; which; in turn; depends on the city’s place in the urban hierarchy. A negative relationship is characteristic of highly specialized cities; while a positive one emerges as industry localization declines and diversification of the city economy increases.

Patterns of onwards migration within the urban hierarchy of China: Who moves up and who moves down?

This paper examines onwards migration patterns and the factors that influence them in urban China. In contradiction to Ravenstein’s laws of step migration, we argue that movement up the urban hierarchy does not dominate onwards migration in the Chinese context. Using the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey, we model how past migratory experiences intersect with migrants’ demographic and socio-economic characteristics to explain the stay-versus-move decision and who moves up as well as who moves down within China’s urban hierarchy. The general pattern of China’s domestic migration is a movement up the urban hierarchy in the first migration and a movement down in onwards migration. We identify a transition-levels effect whereby the larger the difference between the hukou-registered place and the first migration city in the urban hierarchy, the greater the probability of onwards migration, with the effect manifesting most strongly for less-educated, mid-age (the 1970s and 1980s birth cohorts) migrants with rural origins. As to onwards migration direction, mixed results were found for migrants’ demographic and socio-economic characteristics whereas educational level and the transition-levels effect are both highly predictive of movement up and down the urban hierarchy. Our findings suggest that ‘jumping too high’ in previous migration(s) predicts a greater likelihood of moving down the urban hierarchy in response to insurmountable obstacles to settling in cities classified as large and above. Our research advances migration scholarship by considering the multipolar nature of onwards migration and offering an integrated approach to analysis that foregrounds the causes and effects of multiple-step migration.

The regional variation of a housing boom. Disparities of land prices in Austria, 2000–2018

Debates accompanying the global housing boom have primarily focussed on the economic and social implications for urban housing markets. Against this background, this paper analyses the repercussions for regional land prices of a national housing boom in and beyond agglomerations. Convergence and divergence dynamics, regional price drivers, and spatial diffusion are investigated by examining average building-land prices of 95 Austrian regions between 2000 and 2018. The results indicate a clear increase in regional disparities in land prices, with the main rise taking place during a high price-growth period. Regions with high land prices are the main drivers of divergence, while a substantial number of peripheral regions with converging land prices were hardly affected by the national price boom. Land-price growth rates are positively affected by the number of households but negatively impacted by income growth, which points to a problematic decoupling of household income and land prices. Finally, the diffusion of the land-price boom occurs along the urban hierarchy as well as via neighbouring regions, confirming the ripple-effect hypothesis.

Changes in migration determinants along the urban hierarchy in China

ABSTRACT This paper examines trends of internal migration in China across two decades, with a focus on changes in socio-demographic predictors of origin-destination patterns. We use four microdata samples of the China decennial census and minicensus. After introducing a description of overall internal migration trends and providing a discussion of the utility of the urban hierarchy framework, we proceed with a two-step statistical approach. We look first descriptively at interprovincial bilateral migration flows. We then turn to a multivariate analysis of outmigration and destination selection as a function of age, sex, educational attainment and hukou status. Our results reveal the differential attractiveness of origins (for retention) and destinations by demographic characteristics and position within the urban hierarchy, and also indicate shifts in the strength of predictors over time. Greater educational attainment and urban hukou strongly favour the selection of a destination within the top levels of the urban hierarchy. Over time, selectivity by gender weakens. Although urban hukou and schooling become slightly less powerful predictors of interprovincial migration, attractiveness of top-tier destinations increases once individual demographic characteristics are controlled.