Urban Spatial Distribution Research Articles

Mapping of urban environmentally sensitive areas in Bratislava city

Environmentally sensitive areas within urban environment (U-ESA) play an essential role in maintaining urban ecological balance and ecological safety. The aims of our study were to analyse and evaluate the U-ESA spatial distribution in Bratislava city, in terms of the impact of sealed area, soil quality and urban green areas infrastructure as well as the occurrence of urban heat island in the summer months. These phenomena significantly reduce the ecological functions and ecosystem services of urban soils and can result in negative affect of the living standard and health condition of urban population. The methodology for assessing U-ESA is based on a multi-criteria process in which the following parameters have been identified and synthesized: pedo-urban complexes and their quality, urban heat island (UHI) areas and spatial distribution of urban vegetation types. Pedo-urban complexes (soil units including sealing areas, land use and soil degradation forms) were classified according to WRB. Georeferenced databases and maps became the basis for the identification of parameters involved within identification of U-ESA. Several partial products were compiled: vectorized land cover/land use categorized according to the Extended Nomenclature Urban Atlas 2012, database of pedo-urban complexes, modelled urban heat island map and map of urban vegetation types. Overlaying and synthesis of these partial results confirm thesis that sealed surfaces are one of the main causes of the increased incidence urban heat islands, but not entirely. The resulting U-ESA, designed areas in Bratislava, which are under increased risk in terms of quality of living standards. The key point of the research in the future is to find assessment of the soil quality in urbanized areas. We assume that the assessment should be based on ecosystem functions of pedo-urban complexes, i.e. anthropogenic soils. The identification of the U-ESA can be used for solving of housing comfort and quality of living standards in the frame of urban development and balanced spatial urban planning.

Mapping Fine-Scale Urban Spatial Population Distribution Based on High-Resolution Stereo Pair Images, Points of Interest, and Land Cover Data

Fine-scale population distribution is increasingly becoming a research hotspot owing to its high demand in many applied fields. It is of great significance in urban emergency response, disaster assessment, resource allocation, urban planning, market research, and transportation route design. This study employed land cover, building address, and housing price data, and high-resolution stereo pair remote sensing images to simulate fine-scale urban population distribution. We firstly extracted the residential zones on the basis of land cover and Google Earth data, combined them with building information including address and price. Then, we employed the stereo pair analysis method to obtain the building height on the basis of ZY3-02 high-resolution satellite data and transform the building height into building floors. After that, we built a sophisticated, high spatial resolution model of population density. Finally, we evaluated the accuracy of the model using the survey data from 12 communities in the study area. Results demonstrated that the proposed model for spatial fine-scale urban population products yielded more accurate small-area population estimation relative to high-resolution gridded population surface (HGPS). The approach proposed in this study holds potential to improve the precision and automation of high-resolution population estimation.

Freight transportation planning for regular and hazmat materials with simplified risk functions

Routing regular and dangerous commodities in railway freights transportation is discussed in this paper. Based on a link-based modeling approach, a mixed integer nonlinear programing model is developed. The model takes into account weather stability conditions of urban and rural areas and spatial distribution of risk at yards and around links as it impacts these zones along the routes. This paper also discusses the advantages of using bifurcation of flows on risk-cost tradeoffs and route planning decisions. The widely used nonlinear risk function is linearized and then the problem was solved to optimality using a commercial software. Results of the experiments on two hypothetical networks and one based on the rail network of the Province of Québec in Canada are presented and analyzed. Routing decisions associated with both variants of the proposed model with bifurcation of the material flows are compared to obtain managerial insights on the model in solving hazmat freight routing problems.

Definition of a new morphological parameter to improve prediction of urban heat island

The impact of the urban heat island (UHI) on health of urban residents, energy consumption, and urban air quality has become increasingly significant in cities. Despite of multiple recent studies on developing UHI predictive models, the impact of vertical morphological parameters on the UHI formation is barely investigated. The current work investigates the extent of vertical morphological components impact on the UHI intensity and proposes a novel vertical urban morphological parameter defined as the elevation factor. Using remote-sensing satellite images and a GIS based approach, both horizontal and vertical morphological components of San-Francisco, as the case study city, was investigated for 20 representative built up areas. High-resolution geometrical data of these areas were then correlated with their land surface temperatures (LST). Linear regression analysis and ANOVA test revealed that the model with the newly proposed elevation factor has a significant impact on representing of the UHI behaviour with a coefficient of determination factor (R²) of 0.68. The model was then successfully validated with the UHI prediction of 24 randomly selected points from each of the five new areas. Furthermore, the impact of elevation morphology on the UHI intensity was investigated as the elevation factor was seen to provide a stronger correlation between urban morphology and UHI spatial distribution.

Rationality analysis of urban spatial distribution and development direction based on environmental impact assessment——On to the Jianghua Yao nationality autonomous county

The rational planning of urban spatial distribution and development direction could benefit the urban economy, social environment and other aspects, as an essential part of urban planning. Since the Law of EIA promulgated in 2003, the scope of environmental impact assessment has been upgraded to a higher level of overall urban planning whereas the influence is not significant. In 2018, urban and rural planning function was merged into the Ministry of Natural Resources, from leading urban construction to serving the protection of urban natural resources. It is also a new and significant approach to analyse the rationality of urban spatial distribution and development direction from the perspective of environmental impact assessment. The purpose of Jianghua Yao autonomous county is to build an eco-tourism civilized city, which is representative in the selection of cities for environmental impact assessment. On the space structure of functional areas and the development direction to the indicator elements of Yao nationality autonomous county class was divided into 4 categories, 5 layers,15 index factors were selected to construct the environmental impact assessment index system. Using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to select the indexes weights assignment, then according to the evaluation criterion to evaluate it, we draws the analysis conclusion in the environment aspect. The planned urban spatial distribution and development direction of Jianghua Yao autonomous county from 2014 to 2020 are reasonable, have little negative impact on the environment, and are suitable for the green development of the city.

Metrópolis: un juego serio emergente en una ciudad inteligente

Emerging serious games mark the beginning of a new era in video games. Emerging serious games introduce advances in distributed artificial intelligence into their design in order to guide the player’s manipulation of a specific subject in an adaptive way. In this article, we present a city simulator game, called Metropolis, which generates emergent properties. Metropolis can be used by a smart city for city planning, to make collective decisions, and for other purposes. This paper describes why Metropolis can be classified as a serious game. It also analyzes how its emergent properties can be used for managing a smart city, and especially how it promotes e-participation as an e-decision-making tool within the context of urban planning. In addition, this paper explores how Metropolis can be used to analyze a smart city’s emergent citizen and urban patterns (urban spatial distribution) based on strong e-participation.

Remote sensing monitoring of multi-scale watersheds impermeability for urban hydrological evaluation

Urban impervious surface coverage is an important parameter to understand effects of hydro-environment on the process of urbanization. Impervious surfaces have altered urban hydrological process, spatial and temporal distribution of water resources and water environment quality and led to increasing frequency and intensity of urban waterlogging. In view of the impact of the increase of impervious surface on urban hydrological environment, there are two problems in current research and application: (1) urban hydrological modeling and impermeability ratio are computed according to multi-level administrative units rather than watersheds; (2) the entire urban hydrological environment is an organic whole, but the urban watersheds system within a city have not been monitored dynamically by considering adjacent watersheds. In view of these two problems, the main innovative points in this research work include (1) first, urban multi-scale watersheds are defined, and impermeability ratios are calculated at multi-scale watersheds level for urban hydrological modeling. (2) Based on urban DEM analysis, considering the interconnection of multiple urban water systems by calculating the dynamic impermeability ratios, the dynamic impact of urban rainfall and runoff changes on the whole urban hydrological environment is monitored. The results show overall impervious surface ratio of each watershed is proportional to the runoff. The ratio of the impervious surface reaches 20%, and the discharge is more than twice that when impervious ratio is 4%. It can be concluded that at watershed level a higher the degree of urbanization can lead to a larger change in the total run off, and the earlier shift of the peak flow.

Exploring Urban Population Forecasting and Spatial Distribution Modeling with Artificial Intelligence Technology

The high precision population forecasting and spatial distribution modeling are very important for the theory and application of population sociology, city planning and Geo-Informatics. However, the two problems need to be solved for providing the high precision population information. One is how to improve the population forecasting precision of small area (e.g., street scale); another is how to improve the spatial resolution of urban population distribution model. To solve the two problems, some new methods are proposed in this contribution. (1) To improve the precision of small area population forecasting, a new method is developed based on the fade factor and the slide window. (2) To improve the spatial resolution of urban population distribution model, a new method is proposed based on the land classification, public facility information and the artificial intelligence technology. For validation of the proposed methods, the real population data of 15 streets in Xicheng district, Beijing, China from 2010 to 2016, the remote sensing images and the public facility data are collected and used. A number of experiments are performed. The results show that the spatial resolution of proposed model reaches 30m*30m and the forecasting precision is better than 5% using the proposed method to forecast the population of 15 streets in Xicheng district in the next four years.

Unregulated urban sprawl and spatial distribution of fire events: evidence from Greece

ABSTRACTFire events are an annual phenomenon in Greece with damages and even casualties, making their understanding and management important. In this paper, we present fire events provided by NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System and place them along a number of spatial types defined by relief and land cover classes. Results demonstrate that the occurrence of fire events is related more to some land cover classes than others. The most important in terms of overall frequency in all types of terrain is ‘Agricultural Areas’, as a result of farming practices that involve fire. The second more important type of areas is ‘Artificial Surfaces’, especially in low lying areas. These events are related to urban growth and sprawl and are very often a direct outcome of speculation practices with land properties, encouraged by the absence or poor implementation of spatial planning.

Urban heat island mesoscale modelling study for the Budapest agglomeration area using the WRF model

The present paper evaluates modelled surface urban heat island intensities (SUHI) and other essential urban meteorology-related variables for Budapest(located in the central part of the Carpathian Basin). This analysis uses the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with updated surface characteristics databases (i.e. land use, albedo, topography, emissivity, soil texture). The horizontal resolution of the newly created land use-land cover (LULC) database is around 90m, and is compiled on the basis of the OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Google Earth satellite images. The urban classes of the new LULC database have been expanded to five, and the urban parameter spatial distribution database was also created. Three simulations with different LULC databases (MODIS, USGS, and newly defined OSM) are validated against remotely-sensed observations (MODIS Land Surface Temperature Product). The results from the WRF using the OSM (WRF/OSM) show the best agreement with the observations both in rural and urban areas, in contrast to the simulation using the USGS LULC, which results in the greatest errors. According to the mean normalised bias calculations, the WRF/OSM simulation estimates the lowest bias in urban areas, nevertheless, an overestimation can be detected over the surrounding rural areas, which results in weaker SUHI intensity.

Research on Beijing Urban Rail Transit Network Based on Traffic Efficiency

The coordination between urban rail transit network and city spatial functional distribution plays an important role in the process of urbanization. This paper, based on an empirical analysis, studies the characteristics of the Beijing urban rail transit network from the perspective of time and space. Then, according to statistical analysis, a series of reasonable evaluating indicators and comparison among the typical cities in the world, we summarize the obvious problems existing in the network. At last, we draw the conclusions that the network needs improvement and we put forward six suggestions aiming to increase the transport efficiency and optimize the network layout.

An activity-based integrated land-use transport model for urban spatial distribution simulation

This research develops an activity-based integrated land use/transport interaction model based on the concepts – activities (mainly, households and employment activities), activity location and relocation for Chinese regions. It consists of a residential and employment location sub-model, a transport sub-model and an implicit real estate rent adjustment sub-model. The model is developed to model the urban activity distribution evolution, predict urban spatial development trends and examine various planning decision implications. It spatially distributes household and employment activity change of a study area by zone based on the current activity distribution, land use policies and the accessibilities of the zones. The model is subsequently calibrated to predict the distribution of households and employment activities in Beijing metropolitan area in 2025. Model results show that the resident and employment densities are still high in central Beijing in 2025, and most zones’ resident densities are higher than their employment densities. However, there is also significant population density increase along the 6th ring road, indicating the relocation trend of the residents and businesses to the outskirts. This is consistent with the government objectives to decentralize activities within the central urban area. The paper also suggests that the model should be used mainly in examining the possible differences arising from the adoption of different policies though predicting future of a city distribution proves feasible.

행정구역 통합과 도시공간분포 변화분석-(통합)창원시 사례

이 논문은 행정구역 통합으로 나타난 공간분포의 변화를 2010년 7월 1일 마산시 · 창원시 · 진해시가 합쳐져 출범한 (통합)창원시를 대상으로 분석하여 향후 통합정책에 대한 함의를 모색하고자 하였다. 공간통계분석 방법인 Moran’s I 측정결과, (통합)창원시는 공간적 자기상관이 강하게 나타나 공간적으로 군집됨을 보였다. 그러나 3개시를 세분화하여 측정한 결과, (통합)창원시 전체의 Moran’s I 값만으로는 해석할 수 없는 함의를 추출할 수 있었다. (통합)창원시가 공간적 자기상관 추정계수가 높게 도출된 이유는 창원시의 높은 공간적 군집에서 연유한 것이지 마산시와 진해시의 공간적 군집행태로 인한 것이 아님을 알 수 있었다. 또한 창원시는 통합 후 더 강한 공간적 군집을 보인 반면, 마산시는 통합 후 공간적 독립의 분포를, 진해시는 통합 후 뚜렷한 공간패턴을 보이지 않는 불특정한 양상의 지역적 특징을 보였다. 즉 (통합)창원시의 경우 통합후 공간군집성이 약화되었고 그 변화도 3개 시가 각기 다른 양상을 보임으로써 통합지역에 대한 공간분포의 변화는 일반적인 경우보다 복잡하고 차별화되는 것으로 나타났다.

Spatiotemporal patterns of urban change and associated environmental impacts in five Saudi Arabian cities: A case study using remote sensing data

Urban growth is a serious threat and challenge worldwide due to its role in altering ecosystem processes and contributing to negative environmental impacts. The natural environment of Saudi Arabia has been affected by the increased pace of urban and economic development, which has been supported by large oil revenues in recent years. Measuring the spatiotemporal patterns of urban growth is important to better understand the qualitative and quantitative impacts of urban spatial distribution over periods of time. Optical remote sensing can be a reliable data source that provides valuable information regarding the spatial and temporal distributions of urban growth. This research used two sets of Landsat images from 1985 and 2014 to map and monitor the spatial distribution of the urban extent among five Saudi Arabian cities: Riyadh, Jeddah, Makkah, Al-Taif and Eastern Area. A decision tree classifier was applied using object-based image analysis (OBIA) to analyze urban land cover in the five cities. The accuracy assessment of the urban change detection maps indicated a high overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient. The results of this research show a high rate of urbanization and complex dynamics across the five cites. The significant changes were the result of a rapid increase in land development, exhibiting complex patterns in the urbanization process across the five cities. The government's policy and increased oil revenues significantly contributed to increasing the urban cover in the five selected cities.

Do outdoor environmental noise and atmospheric NO2 levels spatially overlap in urban areas?

The urban environment holds numerous emission sources for air and noise pollution, creating optimum conditions for environmental multi-exposure situations. Evaluation of the joint-exposure levels is the main obstacle for multi-exposure studies and one of the biggest challenges of the next decade. The present study aims to describe the noise/NO2 multi-exposure situations in the urban environment by exploring the possible discordant and concordant situations of both exposures. Fine-scale diffusion models were developed in the European medium-sized city of Besançon (France), and a classification method was used to evaluate the multi-exposure situations in the façade perimeter of 10,825 buildings. Although correlated (Pearson's r = 0.64, p < 0.01), urban spatial distributions of the noise and NO2 around buildings do not overlap, and 30% of the buildings were considered to be discordant in terms of the noise and NO2 exposure levels. This discrepancy is spatially structured and associated with variables describing the building's environment. Our results support the presence of several co-existing, multi-exposure situations across the city impacted by both the urban morphology and the emission and diffusion/propagation phases of each pollutant. Identifying the mechanisms of discrepancy and convergence of multi-exposure situations could help improve the health risk assessment and public health.

吉林省城镇体系空间分布特征及其变化

本文分析了吉林省城镇体系空间结构的现状特点，1985年到至今的城镇人口、数量、城镇化等变化，以及通过对吉林省城镇网密度、理想随机分布平均距离、信息熵等的研究分析，可以得出吉林省城镇体系空间分布特征及其变化的相关内容：吉林省城镇数量、城镇规模、城镇化水平均处于较低水平阶段；吉林省城镇密度从1985年到至今的变化趋势小于全国的变化趋势；吉林省城镇空间发展不平衡，地域结构不协调；吉林省在30年期间的城镇空间分布向均匀发展。对吉林省城镇体系的发展提供相关建议。在现实意义上，也可为长吉图开发开放先导区城镇体系空间协调发展提供实践路径依据；为吉林省城镇体系规划提供客观、科学依据。 This paper has analyzed the present status and characteristics of the spatial structure of urban sys-tem in Jilin Province, since the urban population, quantity, urbanization change in 1985, and the study of Jilin Province towns’ density, ideal average distance of random distribution, information entropy analysis. We could come to the relative contents about Jilin Province urban system spatial distribution characteristics and variation: the number of cities and towns, the size of the towns, the level of urbanization were in a relatively low level stage; urban density in Jilin Province from 1985 since the trend is less than the trend in China; urban spatial development is not balanced, and the regional structure also lacks of coordination; during 30 years, its urban spatial distribution will in uniform development. We will also make some suggestions on the development of the urban system in Jilin province. On the practical significance, it will also provide basis path practice for Changjitu plans to open and develop pilot area of urban system spatial coordinated development, for the plan-ning of cities and towns in Jilin Province to provide objective and scientific basis.

Mapping the urban microclimatic spatial distribution in a sub-tropical high-density urban environment

Understanding the urban microclimatic spatial distribution and its impact on thermal comfort is important for integrating climatic consideration into urban design process. This article presents a case study in Tsim Sha Tsui and Tai Po of Hong Kong densely built-up areas to investigate the spatial distribution of microclimatic condition. Air temperature (Ta), wind speed (v), relative humidity (RH) and globe temperature (Tg) of 87 locations in two selected sites were measured on a summer day and a winter day respectively. Physiological Equivalent Temperature was calculated to analyse the thermal comfort condition in two sites. Both numerical simulation and geographical mapping approach were used for the estimation of the microclimatic spatial distribution. Results show that the influence of urban morphology on the microclimatic spatial distribution can be well investigated by using numerical simulation while geographical mapping based on measured data shows higher estimation accuracy due to the consideration of anthropogenic heat and other factors associated with human activities. In summary, this article presents a pragmatic approach of mapping the urban microclimatic spatial distribution that can be referenced by architects and urban designers to raise climatic considerations for designing better cities.

Urban area types and spatial distribution of pedestrians: Lessons from Tel Aviv

This study examines the role of two urban area types – traditional and contemporary – with regard to pedestrian movement volume and distribution. This study focuses on four dimensions of urban areas which have potential influence on pedestrian movement: (i) a spatial dimension based on road network structure; (ii) a functional dimension of land uses such as retail fronts; (iii) a physical dimension of road sections; and (iv) a demographic dimension of population and employment densities. Four research areas in Tel Aviv are examined and each of these areas is divided to two adjacent sub-areas — a traditional sub-area and a contemporary one. The aim is to clarify: (i) the character of urban areas that were created following different urban design paradigms; (ii) the relative contribution of the spatial, functional, physical and demographic dimensions to pedestrian movement in urban areas of different types. The findings show significant differences between adjacent traditional and contemporary sub-areas. Specifically, traditional sub-areas have higher levels of spatial connectivity and retail fronts distribution as well as higher pedestrian movement volume. The spatial dimension has the strongest overall connection to pedestrian movement, and particularly for traditional sub-areas, while the physical dimension has the strongest connection to pedestrian movement for the contemporary sub-areas.

The transformation of urban industrial land use: A quantitative method

A large number of cities around the world today owe their land use growth to the rapid development of industrial areas. The spatial structure of industrial distribution in cities shape urban spatial morphology linking with land use, transportation, economic activities, and housing. Meanwhile, growth and expansion of city population and land use reconfigure the spatial structure of industrial distribution. Research into urban industrial spatial distribution and its transformation process may help urban planners and decision makers understand the land use and population dynamics of a city. Genetic algorithms are believed to be one kind of the promising methods to simulate this dynamic process. In this paper, we propose a novel method to simulate urban industrial spatial distribution and its transformation process in Shanghai, China. The results show that along with increasing urban land price over time, industries are going to move outward from the city center. However, the maximum profit of a firm tends to decrease, which could lead industrial factories to move beyond city boundary. The analysis of the current industrial spatial distribution in Shanghai indicates that, when land price in a city rises above a specific threshold, new government policies and other competitive advantages need to be enacted if the city wants to retain industrial firms within the city boundary.

Global urbanization projections for the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways

The new scenario process for climate change research includes the creation of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) describing alternative societal development trends over the coming decades. Urbanization is a key aspect of development that is relevant to studies of mitigation, adaptation, and impacts. Incorporating urbanization into the SSPs requires a consistent set of global urbanization projections that cover long time horizons and span a full range of uncertainty. Existing urbanization projections do not meet these needs, in particular providing only a single scenario over the next few decades, a period during which urbanization is likely to be highly dynamic in many countries. We present here a new, long-term, global set of urbanization projections at country level that cover a plausible range of uncertainty. We create SSP-specific projections by choosing urbanization outcomes consistent with each SSP narrative. Results show that the world continues to urbanize in each of the SSPs but outcomes differ widely across them, with urbanization reaching 60%, 79%, and 92% by the end of century in SSP3, SSP2, and SSP1/SSP4/SSP5, respectively. The degree of convergence in urbanization across countries also differs substantially, with largely convergent outcomes by the end of the century in SSP1 and SSP5 and persistent diversity in SSP3. This set of global, country-specific projections produces urbanization pathways that are typical of regions in different stages of urbanization and development levels, and can be extended to further elaborate assumptions about the styles of urban growth and spatial distributions of urban people and land cover occurring in each SSP.