Urban Planning

This paper presents a water resilience assessment framework that includes a set of resilience indicators that will guide in building urban water resilience.
Elsevier, Transportation Research Procedia, Volume 60, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated communities throughout the world. However, the negative impacts of another pandemic, affecting cities worldwide, arguably rival those of COVID. This destructive global health problem, which we have largely ignored, has been described as the “hurry virus” – the culture of speed that dominates modern lives and cities, causing us to constantly strive to ‘go faster’. This hurry virus has comprehensively infected our city transport systems from the early 20th century.
Location-based social media data can offer useful insights on the spatial and temporal dynamics of public attitudes. In this study, we aim to investigate the gendered attitudes toward transit services in China, utilizing the case of Shenzhen. We collected 44,257 Weibo microblogs, a major source of social media data in China, and applied a series of text mining and visualization techniques to examine the gender differences among our focused themes. The microblogs reveal a distinct gender gap in terms of quantity, as nearly 74% are posted by women.
The climate emergency and population growth are challenging water security and sustainable urban design in cities worldwide. Sustainable urban development is crucial to minimise pressures on the natural environment and on existing urban infrastructure systems, including water, energy, and land. These pressures are particularly evident in London, which is considered highly vulnerable to water shortages and floods and where there has been a historical shortage of housing. However, the impacts of urban growth on environmental management and protection are complex and difficult to evaluate.
Elsevier, Cities, Volume 108, January 2021
Cities have a significant influence on people's mental and physical health. City planning has the potential to change behaviors and incentivize a healthier lifestyle through the provision of public goods and urban infrastructure. The bulk of the evidence correlating city configuration and population health comes mostly from cities in the global north, with little evidence from cities in developing countries. This analysis seeks to contribute to bridging this evidence gap.
This paper assesses the influence of land development patterns on intra-urban thermal variation in a densely-developed subtropical city, considering joint effect from greenspace pattern and built-up geometry. Despite growing research on urban climates, research at a scale that can support urban planning with scientificallyinformed strategies is still not as well documented for warm climate cities as for temperate cities. In response, this paper uses land surface temperature and geoinformation to assess the subtropical city of Taipei, Taiwan.
Cities with many pedestrian barriers can inhibit community mobility, access to services, and social participation for people with disabilities. Although National Disability Rights policies have been enacted in several nations, it is unclear what progress local governments have made in developing plans and implementing accessibility improvements to the pedestrian infrastructure. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the existence and quality of city plans used to remove barriers for pedestrians with disabilities.
Elsevier, Environment International, Volume 134, January 2020
Background: Car-dependent city planning has resulted in high levels of environmental pollution, sedentary lifestyles and increased vulnerability to the effects of climate change. The Barcelona Superblock model is an innovative urban and transport planning strategy that aims to reclaim public space for people, reduce motorized transport, promote sustainable mobility and active lifestyles, provide urban greening and mitigate effects of climate change. We estimated the health impacts of implementing this urban model across Barcelona.
Circular economy strategies seek to reduce the total resources extracted from the environment and reduce the wastes that human activities generate in pursuit of human wellbeing. Circular Economy concepts are well suited to the building and construction sector in cities. For example, refurbishing and adaptively reusing underutilized or abandoned buildings can revitalize neighborhoods whilst achieving environmental benefits. Cultural heritage buildings hold a unique niche in the urban landscape.
Municipal advisory committees are becoming increasingly influential in guiding decision-making processes that address climatic issues. According to the Adaptigation Institutionalization Framework (included in the recent IPCC report), the implementation of such participatory structures is vital for the effective, joint institutionalization of climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support this claim. Against this background, this paper tests the Adaptigation Framework using the example of municipal advisory committees in Germany.

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