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This paper reports the insights into environmental impacts of the ongoing transformative land use and transport developments in Greater Beijing, from a new suite of dynamic land use, spatial equilibrium and strategic transport models that is calibrated for medium to long term land use and transport predictions. The model tests are focused on urban passenger travel demand and associated emissions within the municipality of Beijing, accounting for Beijing’s land use and transport interactions with Tianjin, Hebei and beyond. The findings suggests that background trends of urbanization, economic growth and income rises will continue to be very powerful drivers for urban passenger travel demand across all main modes of transport beyond 2030. In order to achieve the dual policy aims for a moderately affluent and equitable nation and reducing the absolute levels of urban transport emissions by 2030, road charging and careful micro-level coordination between land use, built form and public transport provision may need to be considered together for policy implementation in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most fast-urbanising cities there is an enormous challenge in the provision of decent housing for the urban poor. It is common for the housing for the urban poor to be sited in areas of poor transport and job accessibility. This paper hypothesizes that for those cities that have reasonable growth potentials, the priority for such housing provision should be a much greater effort in coordinating the distribution of jobs and transport infrastructure construction with housing. To examine this hypothesis, we establish a systematic and quantitative approach to evaluate the long-term impacts of alternative urban development strategies by extending a recursive spatial equilibrium model through differentiating socio-economic groups based on the Erikson-Goldthorpe-Portocarero schema. The model is tested using empirical data from Beijing, a city where the imbalance among housing, jobs and transport has become an acute issue. The model results show that the current required level of effort in the coordination is likely to be a magnitude higher than what the current policies envisage. Further decentralisation of employment coordinated with improved transport interventions and enhanced housing supply in new towns is critical in resolving the problems of increased commuting demands and low job accessibility. • Only when housing, jobs and transport are in good balance can large-scale housing in the outskirts benefit the urban poor. • A much greater effort in the coordination than currently planned is needed to avoid serious costs to all citizens. • Continuous and sufficient coordination strategies are required to solve the job accessibility problem for the poor. • The RSE model provides a systematic approach to assess the long-term impacts of strategies for housing the urban poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outlines some of the major challenges in land use and transportation planning facing the metropolitan area of Beijing, China. Urban planning; Lessons from the experiences of foreign capital cities.

Objectives: Studies documenting the association between rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) and subtypes of multiple system atrophy (MSA) are rare. In this study, we investigated the presence of clinical RBD in MSA patients and compared the prevalence and severity of RBD in patients with MSA-P and MSA-C subtypes. Methods: We evaluated 54 consecutive patients presenting with MSA and hospitalized in the neurology ward of Beijing Hospital from February 2012 to June 2020. The healthy control (HC) group consisted of 100 healthy individuals who came to our hospital for physical examination. The clinical diagnosis of RBD was based on the minimal diagnostic criteria of International Classification of Sleep Disorders, revised. The severity of clinical RBD was rated on a digital scale from 0 to 3. The patients were divided into 2 subgroups: MSA-P and MSA-C. The MSA and HC groups were compared in terms of frequency of clinical RBD. The MSA-P and MSA-C subgroups were compared with each other for age, sex, onset age, disease duration, and features of clinical RBD. The correlation between severity of clinical RBD and clinical characteristics of MSA was analyzed in the patient groups. Results: The frequency of clinical RBD in MSA and HC groups was 70.4% (38/54) and 5% (5/100), respectively. The difference between 2 groups was significant (χ2 = 74.453, p = 0.000). Among the patients, 57.4% (31/54) had the MSA-P subtype. There were no significant differences between MSA-P and MSA-C subtypes in the prevalence (χ2 = 1.734, p = 0.188) and severity (χ2 = 1.776, p = 0.412) of clinical RBD. The onset of clinical RBD during the premotor period was not different between the subtypes of MSA, either in patients' number of preceding the onset of motor symptoms (χ2 = 0.581, p = 0.446) or the preceding time (Z = −0.550, p = 0.582). For the MSA-C patients, there was a negative correlation between the score of severity of the RBD scale and RBD preceding motor symptoms (r = −0.482, p = 0.020). Conclusion: In our study, the prevalence of clinical RBD is unrelated to the subtypes of MSA. The onset of clinical RBD during the premotor period was not different between subtypes of MSA. However, we found that the severity of RBD occurring before the motor symptoms was more than that occurring after the motor symptoms in MSA-C patients. Our results showed that MSA-P and MSA-C patients may have a probable indicator for the similar pathologic mechanism of the disease and its sleep problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]