Urban Places Research Articles

The Six Qualities of Great Urban Places framework: combining theory and practice to decode the components of places that deliver for people and planet

ABSTRACT The Six Qualities of Great Urban Places is a practice-based framework for designing cities and neighbourhoods that deliver for people and planet. Our approach is grounded in practical experience and a literature review, which aimed to identify the key factors that contribute to thriving ecological, economic, and social systems. We also drew inspiration from established design frameworks, such as the Government Architect of NSW’s ‘Better Placed’ design policy, The Scottish Government’s ‘Place Standard Tool’, and the ‘City Resilience Framework’ by the Resilient Cities Network. Moreover, we incorporated insights from Hassell’s experience in urban design and landscape architecture. From our research and practice, we identified six common characteristics of well-functioning places and ecosystems: 1) Beautifully Original, 2) Conveniently Compact, 3) Richly Diverse, 4) Openly Networked, 5) Playfully Dynamic, and 6) Naturally Regenerative. We discovered that what distinguishes these qualities from other design frameworks we have analysed is their dual manifestation in both the physical design of spaces and their social and economic fabric. In this article, we present these qualities and share reflections from our practical application of the framework. Our aim is to contribute to the ongoing dialogue about how to foster healthy urban environments.

Reimagining the familiar stranger as a source of security: generating guardianship through everyday mobility

The familiar stranger is a social phenomenon that emerges from the serial reproduction of daily routines, structured around urban places and practices, that results in repeated encounters with the same individuals over time. Scholarship suggests that increased familiarity among individuals might incur crime control benefits at places by reducing individual anonymity and enhancing the moral obligation to obey behavioural norms. Familiarity with place-based norms and regularities can also enhance guardianship capacity and willingness to intervene when problems arise. In this paper, we detail a framework that integrates geographical, sociological, and psychological understandings of urban daily life to conceptualize the familiar stranger as a uniquely urban phenomenon emerging from multiple social processes synchronising in time-space. Our framework highlights the capacity for variation in relation to intensity contingent on daily regularities, place attributes, structures and social norms and provides for future measurement, modelling, and monitoring of familiar strangers as a protective factor against crime that can be ascribed to individuals, places and/or social systems. We include an operationalisation of our framework for a single use case, namely familiar stranger encounters in a public transit network.

Comparing individual and collective valuation of ecosystem service tradeoffs: A case study from montane forests in southern California, USA

Accounting for the tradeoffs and importance urban, disadvantaged communities place on ecosystem services has implications for the management of nearby forests. Although stated preference valuation approaches are often used, they are based on an individual’s perspective and rarely account for collective or societal values. Thus, alternative methods are needed to capture this dichotomy from urban communities who may not even be aware of these benefits to themselves or society at-large. We explored individual and collective importance of, and tradeoffs for, ecosystem services (ES) and ecosystem disservices (ED) by urban residents living near montane forests in greater Los Angeles, California, USA. Using an online panel survey, individual (I-rationality) versus collective (We-rationality) scenarios, best-worst scaling (BWS) choice experiments, and latent class analyses, we ranked the importance and tradeoffs among ES-ED attributes tonearby residents based on the frequency of visits to montane forests as well as Hispanic ethnicity. Results show statistically significant tradeoffs and differences in importance rankings between individual versus collective valuation scenarios. Under the individual valuation scenario, non-Hispanics highly ranked the high forest density indicator, which has implications for wildfire EDs to montane forests and communities. Gender and income were more influential sociodemographic factors affecting importance for water and recreation-related ES than was education. Our BWS and econometric methods, attributes, and importance rankings can facilitate participatory processes with diverse urban communities and designing more effective policies and management guidelines. This approach canalso more inclusively, and equitably, account for the tradeoffs and values that nearby urban communities place on ES/ED from Wildland-Urban Interface forests.

Multimodal Analysis of the Spanish Linguistic Landscape in Alabama

The study of linguistic landscapes (LL) examines the use of signage in public spaces, often with a focus on the use of non-majority languages. The main goals of this project are to map, quantify, and analyze signage in Spanish within Tuscaloosa County, AL, an emerging site of Spanish language use which differs from the large urban places often studied in the LL literature. Photographs of public signage in Spanish were taken and uploaded to an ArcGIS Field Maps app to allow for both geolocation of the image and tagging of the image for specific linguistic and visual characteristics, which are subsumed under multimodality. Multimodality refers to the interaction of the linguistic code with other modes of communication such as images, colors, flags, and other cultural objects to make meaning in a given LL text. Within the multimodality framework, we examine the use of Spanish by itself or with English, location of the signage, communicative functions (symbolic, informative), and the combination of multimodal resources to index the actors originating the text and their intended audience.

From communal places to comfort zones: Familiar stranger encounters in everyday life as a form of belonging

Familiar strangers, individuals who are visually recognisable yet do not engage in verbal conversations, emerge in communal urban places on the way and in between regular daily activities in the home and workplace. Described as invisible social ties and light touch community, familiar strangers represent an understudied and untapped source of sociality that offer promise by way of an antidote to the global increase in reports of loneliness. In this study, we examine the extent to which familiar stranger encounters in communal everyday places might act as an important source of social identity, belonging and perceived attachment. We estimate regression models using data from a 2022 intercept survey of 278 residents in Brisbane, Australia conducted in situ at public parks, transit stations, retail environments, and thoroughfares to estimate the influence of familiar strangers and frequency of visitation on sense of belonging and place attachment. Our results show belonging emerges through familiar stranger encounters in everyday communal places outside of the residential neighbourhood and suggest that coupling urban design features that enhance visible proximity with scheduling that encourages repeated, synchronised visitation can contribute to bounded communities of belonging at everyday communal places.

Cells and the city: The rise and fall of urban biopolitics in San Francisco, 1970-2020.

STS theories of biocapital conceptualize how biomedical knowledge and capital form together. Though these formations of biocapital often are located in large urban centers, few scholars have attended to how they are transforming urban spaces and places. In this paper we argue that the twinned technological development of cells and cities concentrates economic and symbolic capital and sets in motion contentious practices we name urban biopolitics. We draw on archival research and a nearly decade-long ethnography of the expansion of biomedical campuses in a major American city to show how the speculative logics of land development and biomedical innovation become bound together in a process we describe as speculative revitalization. We examine how the logics of speculative revitalization imagine a future in which cities and biomedicine produce wealth and health harmoniously together. However, in practice-as buildings of new biomedical urban campuses get built-the dreams of billionaire philanthrocapitalists to create global cities clash with the plans of biomedical researchers to create global health. We document the reproduction of stratified and racialized biomedical exclusions that result while also highlighting the unlikely opportunities for creating alliances committed to creating equitable biomedical research and healthcare in urban communities.

Comparative analysis of the clinical and social characteristics of persons with organic mental disorders suffering from mental retardation who have repeatedly committed socially dangerous acts

BACKGROUND: The study of various characteristics of mentally ill persons suffering from mental disorders that influence the possibility of committing a repeated socially dangerous act. This has been one of the most urgent tasks of forensic psychiatry in recent years. The identification of such factors will significantly improve the secondary prevention of crime among the mentally ill. AIM: The purpose of the study — a comparative analysis of clinical and social characteristics in patients with mental retardation and organic psychological disorders (hereinafter referred to as DIS) who have repeatedly committed socially dangerous acts (hereafter referred to as DIS) and the identification of factors specific to patients with mental retardation that contribute to the commission of repeated DIS. Design: comparative study. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The comparative study included 65 patients diagnosed with mild and moderate mental retardation (who made up the main group A) and 45 patients with organic mental disorders (who made up the comparative group B) had repeatedly committed socially dangerous acts (OOD), who had been recognised as insane and who had undergone two or more periods of court-ordered compulsory medical treatment (hereafter referred to as MMMT) of various types. The study was carried out both in the form of a personal questionnaire and through a retrospective study of the patients' medical records. Correlation and comparative analysis were the main research methods used in the thesis. RESULTS: A number of clinical and social characteristics such as: hereditary burden of exogenous diseases (r +0.58, pi 0.05); single lifestyle (r +0.33, pi 0.05); urban place of residence (r +0.21, pi 0.05) increase the risk of repeated OOD, and are specific predictors for patients with mental retardation. A number of characteristics had a negative impact on the possibility of repeated OOD and negative correlations: the absence of any hereditary burden (r –0.44, pi 0.05), the presence of severe endogenous heredity (r –0.35, pi 0.05), living in rural areas (r –0.21, pi 0.05), concomitant alcohol dependence (r –0.29, pi 0.05). CONCLUSION: The data obtained will form the basis for the development of practical recommendations for secondary forensic psychiatric prevention, specifically for this nosological group, as well as methods for predicting and preventing recurrent DIS.

Moving Beyond Clinical Imaginaries: Technogeographies of the Everyday Urban.

In this paper, we analyse the intersections between care and place in mundane spaces not explicitly designed for the provision of care, and where digital technologies are used to mediate ecologies of distress in the city. We locate our analysis alongside studies of how digital technologies impact the experience of care within non-clinical spaces, whilst noting that much research on the use of technologies for care remains haunted by clinical imaginaries. Bringing together ideas of multi-sited therapeutic assemblages, technogeographies of care, and how places-by-proxy can act as conduits for care, we explore an example of an online app being used in public space to manage experiences of anxiety in an everyday urban environment. We reflect on this illustrative example to trace the movement of care as it is mediated through digital technologies-out of the clinic, beyond the home, and into the ordinary spaces of the city. We conclude that the entanglements of digital technologies and ordinary urban places prompt us to entirely reconsider questions of the where of care.

Effectively planning waterfront public place affected by the ecological environment

Abstract Urban waterfront area planning is a very important part to improve the quality of the urban ecological environment. Research effective planning paths of urban waterfront guided by ecological environment effect can promote landscape diversity index and other indicators are selected as the relevant indicators of the ecological environment which establish comprehensive evaluation index system of urban waterfront public place planning path. Use the fuzzy statistical path to determine the evaluation index weight, establish the waterfront public place planning path evaluation model according to the waterfront public place planning evaluation index weight, and use the model evaluation results to determine the effective planning paths of urban waterfront guided by the ecological environment effect. The experimental results show that the evaluation score of urban waterfront planning path 2 is the highest, which verifies that planning path 2 is an effective planning path of waterfront public places guided by considering the ecological and environmental effects.

Active guardianship in urban public places: place attachment and social cohesion

ABSTRACT Everyday users of public places are vital crime guardians because they are often present when formal security is absent. In this study, we use survey data from 940 Australian residents to examine the influence of place type, place attachment and perceived social cohesion on responses to disorder in public places. We find that individuals are more likely to intervene directly in disorder problems at places that are associated with a specific activity and have a defined in-group of participants (e.g. places of worship, health clubs) compared to consumption places (e.g. shops) or open public parks. We also find that perceived social cohesion can reduce the likelihood of guardianship-in-action when place attachment is high. We suggest that in public places the perception that other individuals are capable and willing to intervene may lead to diffusion of responsibility.

Disease and Creativity in the Diasporic City: A Gendered View on Two Atypical Transnational Novels

The topographical turn in literary and cultural studies has shed new light on the deeply symbolic significance of the natural and urban places where stories unfold. This focus on spatiality is particularly evident in the South Asian literature by contemporary women writers, where locations acquire a personality and significantly contribute to the shaping of gender identities. Although most of these narratives portray female protagonists who develop strategies of resistance and sisterhood within traditional domestic spaces, the widely praised transnational novels Brick Lane and The Mistress of Spices show that women can also achieve independence and self-realization in the bustling urban environment. Drawing on cultural geography as well as gender and social studies, this essay argues that the global dimension of the city offers diasporic women the opportunity to forge new empowered selves in the above-mentioned books. First, the article maintains that London and Oakland, CA, where the main characters live, exert a centripetal force on women, thus triggering change and mobility, both in physical and psychical terms. Second, it claims that the two cities are gendered “heterotopias”, i.e., heterogeneous spaces where border-crossing women, like those featured in the two novels at hand, can overcome alienation and develop creativity, resilience, and self-confidence. In conclusion, urban spaces serve as “safe houses” for immigrant women, where they can cure their emotional and physical diseases and become figures of adaptive hybridity.

Investigating the relation between emotional and cultural mapping by considering collective memory in Urban design from perspective of citizens (case study: Tehran, Iran)

Perception of Citizens about a city is an essential issue in urban planning. Hence, having an understanding of the people’s perception can help designers improve city planning. This study aimed to discover the emotional and cultural parameters of urban places by considering the collective memory of citizens. The main gap in the studied subjects was the lack of a combination of cultural and emotional mapping from the perspective of citizens. To fill the mentioned gap, the findings of this study emphasize the importance of engendering emotions and cultural mapping in the citizens in urban spaces. Respectively, a quantitative method was conducted through a comprehensive case study in the form of a questionnaire. Results indicated that emotional mapping is more important than cultural mapping for collective memory. Moreover, emotional parameters were substantial to female participants as cultural factors were for male respondents. Same as gender, Level of education, and age were two factors that affect cultural mapping or emotional mapping choices. Besides, pride, a sense of power, pleasure, excitement, peace, compassion, vitality, and happiness were found important emotions in this study. Our findings revealed that designing urban places based on the culture of each society has a significant role in engendering emotions and drawing the interest of citizens.

The association between street construction projects and community violence in New York City.

Community violence is a major cause of injury and death in the United States. Empirical studies have identified that some place-based interventions of urban private places, such as remediations of vacant lots and buildings, are associated with reductions in community violence in surrounding areas. The aim of this study was to examine whether routine maintenance and repair of urban public places (e.g., street construction projects) are also associated with reductions in community violence, proxied by violent crime. This staggered adoption difference-in-difference analysis investigated the association between street construction projects and community violence in New York City from 2010-2019, divided into 40 calendar quarters. The units of analysis were street-quarters (n = 155,280). Intervention street-quarters were those with completed projects in 2010-2019; control streets were those where projects were scheduled but not completed before 2019. The outcome of community violence was proxied by counts of crime and violence incidents reported to the New York Police Department, within street-quarters. There were 79,592 street-quarters with any community violence incidents (51.2%). We found that street construction projects were associated with a decrease in reckless endangerment (ATT = -0.013; 95% CI = -0.021, -0.004), robbery (ATT = -0.035; 95% CI = -0.063, -0.007), and weapons offenses (ATT = -0.016; 95% CI = -0.031, -0.001) occurring on street-quarters. Street construction projects may be yet another type of place-based intervention to reduce community violence.

Can community festivals make urban places more hospitable?

Cultivating places and spaces to encourage sociality and foster sociocultural inclusion is a very pertinent societal challenge. Community festivals are often marshalled in the interest of making cities more hospitable for the increasing numbers of migrants, refugees, remote workers and tourists internationally on the move. This study investigates if and how community festivals are constructing hospitality through their practices. The findings are drawn from a qualitative study of two community festivals in Dublin’s North East Inner City, an ethnically diverse area characterized by social disadvantage. They suggest that community festivals can make places more hospitable. However, the approaches taken to inculcating hospitality can differ substantially. Here, the two study festivals were found to differ in terms of how they extended welcome and exerted social control, how they constructed the host-guest dynamic and how they operationalized the concept of gifting. Overall, the findings encourage further analysis of festivals using the concept of hospitality.

Home-based tele-exercise training and physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic in chronic kidney disease patients.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and lockdown reduced physical activity levels in hemodialysis (HD) patients and kidney transplant recipients (KTRs). This study aimed to describe physical activity levels during lockdown and assess the effects of an online home-based exercise training program on physical activity levels in HD patients and KTRs. Forty-five HD patients and thirty-five KTRs were divided into four groups: exercise groups 1 (ΕΧ-HD) and 2 (EX-KTR) followed a 4-month tele-exercise training program, while control groups received usual care. All participants at baseline and at the end of the study completed the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), while their daily physical activity levels were recorded via a step counting application. At the end of the study, the repeated measures analysis revealed a significant effect of time, group, and time-by-group interaction in the average steps per day, walking, and moderate activity for the exercise-HD group (p < 0.05). Similarly, the analysis revealed a notable effect of time, group, and time-by-group interaction in the exercise-KTR group in average daily steps, vigorous and walking activity (p < 0.05). Multiple regression analysis showed that the level of physical activity at the end of the study was related to the urban place of residence and theparticipation in the 4-month exercise program of both HD patients and KTRs. Participation in a tele-exercise training program led to favorable effects on physical activity levels both in HD patients and KTRsduring lockdown.

The Cyclist's Behavior in Yogyakarta's City Landmark

The paper explores cyclists' behavior in Yogyakarta's Tugu area, a popular destination for cyclists on Sunday mornings. The analysis in this study was carried out quantitatively by mapping the number of cyclists' movements recorded during their peak periods at the place. This study maps out the behavior of cyclists, forming certain patterns and habits in the place. The research mapped that the peak activity is between 06:00 am and 08:00 am. They enter and exit the place in the four cardinal directions. Most of them come to the place from the east and exit to the south. The study also highlights the specific cyclists' behaviors, such as pausing to enjoy the atmosphere, gathering in groups, and taking pictures with the Tugu monument in the background. The southern part is the area where the most activities are concentrated. The research findings also show that some of the cyclists have a unique behavior when taking themselves pictures by choosing a spot as close to the Tugu monument as possible, even though it is dangerous because it is at a crossing point for motorized movement, to get a stunning photo due to the strong attraction of the monument. Furthermore, this study's findings can be utilized by city managers to organize the Tugu area as a landmark of Yogyakarta City. Keywords: The cyclists' behavior; Tugu pal putih; Urban place; Yogyakarta

Community Quality Evaluation for Socially Sustainable Regeneration: A Study Using Multi-Sourced Geospatial Data and AI-Based Image Semantic Segmentation

The Chinese urban regeneration movement underscores a “people-oriented” paradigm, aimed at addressing urban challenges stemming from rapid prior urbanization, while striving for high-quality and sustainable urban development. At the community level, fostering quality through a socially sustainable perspective (SSP) is a pivotal strategy for people-oriented urban regeneration. Nonetheless, explorations of community quality assessments grounded in an SSP have been notably scarce in recent scholarly discourse. This study pioneers a multidimensional quantitative model (MQM) for gauging community quality, leveraging diverse geospatial data sources from the SSP framework. The MQM introduces an evaluative framework with “Patency, Convenience, Comfort, and Safety” as primary indicators, integrating multi-sourced data encompassing the area of interest (AOI), Point of Interest (POI), Weibo check-ins, and Dianping data. The model’s efficacy is demonstrated through a case study in the Gusu district, Suzhou. Furthermore, semantic analysis of the Gusu district’s street view photos validates the MQM results. Our findings reveal the following: (1) AI-based semantic analysis accurately verifies the validity of MQM-generated community quality measurements, establishing its robust applicability with multi-sourced geospatial data; (2) the community quality distribution in Gusu district is notably correlated with the urban fabric, exhibiting lower quality within the ancient town area and higher quality outside it; and (3) communities of varying quality coexist spatially, with high- and low-quality communities overlapping in the same regions. This research pioneers a systematic, holistic methodology for quantitatively measuring community quality, laying the groundwork for informed urban regeneration policies, planning, and place making. The MQM, fortified by multi-sourced geospatial data and AI-based semantic analysis, offers a rigorous foundation for assessing community quality, thereby guiding socially sustainable regeneration initiatives and decision making at the community scale.

A legal walk of Sheffield: foregrounding the everyday presence of law in the city

PurposeThis account becomes both a theoretical and a methodological exploration of walking with the law; as such the purpose of the paper is to demonstrate how we migh walk in order to attend to how the law makes the built environment possible, how it shapes and creates places to be lived in, visited and experienced and how the law manifests in human encounters and interactions in the everyday life of the city.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the authors combine a walking narrative approach with an open-ended interview to raise awareness of the law’s hidden presence in the urban environment. The authors explore the city of Sheffield, in Yorkshire, in the North of England, to learn about its past, regeneration and future development by combining the appreciation of the built environment, as experienced by the senses and movement, with a guided tour.FindingsThis study highlights the interconnectivity of law and place both objectively and subjectively: the authors discuss sensorial experiences of law, and also elaborate on the normativity of law, as manifested in the regulation and the making of urban places in Sheffield.Originality/valueThe originality lies in the combination of methods used to appreciate the manifestation of law in the built environment, comprising interview, autoethnographic elements and walking (multisensory experience).

Assessment of mothers’ satisfaction towards child vaccination service in South Omo zone, South Ethiopia region: a survey on clients’ perspective

BackgroundEven though childhood vaccination is a common and cost-effective public health intervention in preventing and reducing childhood disease and death, significant numbers of children do not complete vaccination within the first year of life. Studies indicated that user satisfaction influences service utilization and used as a key indicator of quality care. However, evidence on the level of mothers’ satisfaction with immunization service are limited in urban and accessible places and not well investigated among remote and pastoral communities. As such, this study aimed to address this gap and investigated mothers’ satisfaction towards child vaccination in a pastoralist and agrarian community of the South Omo zone in Southern region of Ethiopia.MethodsAn institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 1221 randomly selected mothers with children eligible for childhood vaccination using a structured, pretested, and interviewer-administered questionnaire. Maternal positive evaluations of the overall vaccination service were measured using 5-point Likert scale questions. Data were entered into Epi data version 3.5.1 and analyzed using IBM SPSS statistical package version 25. Exploratory factor analysis was used for Likert scale questions to extract factor scores which facilitate treatment of variables as continuous for further analysis. Bivariate and multivariable logistic regression analysis was employed to identify factors associated with the outcome variable. A P-value < 0.05 and adjusted odds ratio with 95% CI respectively were used to declare statistical significance and degree of association.ResultA total of 849 (69.53%) study participants were satisfied with the vaccination care provided for their children. Factors associated with mother’s satisfaction with child vaccination care include maternal age less than 30 years (AOR = 2.12; 95% CI = 1.61–2.79), infants age between 8 and 12 months (AOR = 1.83; 95% CI = 1.28, 2.62), not having history of adverse events following immunization (AOR = 1.57; 95% CI = 1.01–2.45), having 1 child under the age of 5 years (AOR = 1.34; 95% CI = 1.02–1.76), waiting 30 min or less to get the service (AOR = 1.39; 95% CI = 1.05–1.85), traveling 30 min or less to the vaccination center (AOR = 1.46; 95% CI = 1.08–1.98), having poor knowledge about the importance of vaccination (AOR = 1.51; 95% CI = 1.06–2.16), and having moderate knowledge about the importance of vaccination (AOR = 1.52; 95% CI = 1.06–2.18).ConclusionInterestingly, mothers’ satisfaction with their children’s vaccination service was relatively higher in a predominantly pastoral community compared with most of previous studies conducted in Ethiopia. Maternal and child age, number of children under the age of 5 years, history of adverse events following immunization, distance to the vaccination center, waiting time to get service and maternal knowledge were factors significantly associated with mothers’ satisfaction. Proactive measures with focus on increasing access to vaccination service, improving waiting time and raising awareness among mothers were recommended.

At the crossroads: photography, ecology and heritage in Istanbul

This article looks at three contemporary photo-based projects that reference Istanbul’s visual histories and document its endangered ecologies. These works take a critical approach to cultural heritage practices in contrast to official discourses that serve state power or justify capital accumulation. Osman Bozkurt’s Scenes, Ali Taptık’s Topographic Nostalgia, and Cemre Yeşil and Maria Sturm’s For Birds’ Sake focus on the relationships between the human and non-human elements of urban geographies. Their projects conceive of heritage as a practice that combines ecological concerns with preserving the cultural remnants of the urban past. Whether critiquing the aesthetic conventions of the picturesque, evoking an affective engagement with the viewer, or conjuring memories of displaced populations, these artists explore different visual approaches to embodying and remembering urban space and place. Taking a cue from their works, this article contemplates the possibility of envisioning heritage futures that can protect Istanbul’s biodiversity while being inclusive of cultural difference.