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The ‘urbanising village’ is a uniquely Chinese urban form that emerged during the period of rapid urbanisation in the reform era. The absence of state governance in rural areas relegates considerable decision-making power to village collectives, and the social capital inherited from traditional rural villages may remain in place after villages are urbanised. To explore the role of social capital and its mobilisation in solving the land use challenges posed by the urbanisation of rural settlements, we analysed the growth processes of Huanggang village as a typical example of a ‘collective-led’ self-organised urbanising village in Shenzhen. Qualitative analysis using semi-structured interviews and abundant secondary data provides credible evidence that defining property rights through land titling is not the only way to achieve orderly development, safe and sanitary living conditions and efficient land use in informal settlements. Social capital, measured by networks, norms and trust passed down among long-term acquaintances in rural villages, plays an important role in the development of communities. Village collectives can unite villagers and mobilise their social, cultural and material capital to compensate for the absence of formal governance institutions and government-provided community services. The implications of these findings suggest a new strategic pathway for managing urbanising villages in China and informal settlements in other developing countries.

Geography of innovation, creative clustering, urban buzz and innovation districts are place-based concepts that have emerged as a result of the US economy’s transformation to knowledge-intensive economies. The notable built environment characteristics of these concepts are spatial clustering, walkability and proximity to urban amenities, diversity, regional connectivity and agglomeration. While several of these characteristics have been associated with urban sprawl in previous studies, there is a lack of direct evidence on how urban sprawl affects innovation productivity. This national study seeks to examine the relationship between urban sprawl, place-based characteristics and innovation productivity. We used Multilevel Modelling to account for built environment characteristics at both neighbourhood and regional levels. We found that innovative firms tend to locate more in census tracts that are less compact but offer spatial proximity to firms in related business sectors. This is likely due to the higher land and property value in compact areas, which could make it unaffordable for small businesses. We also found that the regional compactness positively and significantly affects the number of innovative firms. This is likely due to the role of compact regions in supporting public transit investments, enhancing social capital and reducing poverty and racial segregation.

Urban decentralisation in the USA during the past five decades has created an automobile-dependent landscape characterised by low-densities, largely single-use zoning and disconnected street networks. Longer distances between dispersing destinations, resulting from urban decentralisation, negatively affects the mobility of socially disadvantaged groups, including women, minorities and lower-income populations. Furthermore, the urban poor and minorities in communities experiencing severe disinvestment and decline, as evident in Detroit, suffer from greater transportation burdens in accessing basic necessities, such as employment and shopping. This study explores gendered travel patterns in six neighbourhoods within the Detroit region, including neighbourhoods experiencing severe disinvestment and decline. This analysis into the gendered dimensions of travel, with a particular focus placed on women, involves a full array of trips, including work and non-work. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis and ANCOVA (Analysis of Covariance) were used to further examine gender differences by childcare responsibility in an extensive array of disaggregated travel, including trips to work, shopping and personal services, restaurant visits and leisure destinations. This study reconfirms that the traditional gender role is reflected in women’s daily travel. It also reveals the burdens of travel placed on women living in racially segregated and socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods experiencing extreme disinvestment and decline. In addition, the research shows the importance of class and race in shaping travel behaviour.

Poor urban air quality in China has received global attention. This article analyses the extent to which the urban form of all provincial and prefectural cities in China affects urban air quality. A geographically weighted regression model was used to quantify the relationship between the urban form indices, as well as the satellite-derived pollutant column density of NO2 and SO2. The results show that urban form has a significant effect on the urban air quality in China. The effect of urban form on air quality varies among the cities in this vast region. The compact ratio index is negatively correlated with both NO2 and SO2 column density for most of the cities. An ‘X’- or ‘H’-shaped city has less air pollution than a rhomboid-shaped city when the city is located in northern or central China. In comparison, the fractal dimension index is not a statistically significant predictor of air quality. Urban form can have effects on air quality that are equivalent to some meteorological and socioeconomic factors.

In this study, we introduce an integrated framework for managing the complex interdependence between urban infrastructures and the socioeconomic environment within which it evolves, in pursuit of sustainable and environmentally cleaner urban living. The framework addresses the nature of individual preferences for more sustainable urban infrastructures, and how we can use this knowledge to improve urban form in ways that reduce environmental impacts. Using metropolitan Atlanta as a case study, we developed a survey that focuses on the preferences of Atlanta residents for low-impact development (LID) and transit-oriented development (TOD), with responses collected on the Mechanical Turk crowed-source platform. Using these responses we developed a latent-class residential community choice model for four distinctive classes of respondents that revealed heterogeneous preferences for community amenities. Next, we integrated the results of these individual choices into an agent-based market diffusion model, to predict land-use pattern, and to explore policies that drive greater adoption of more compact development. Finally, we used the results of this data collection and modelling to estimate the carbon emission reduction potentials from more compact development driven by LID and TOD. In the future, we will continuously refine the steps and address the issues including survey sample bias to make the framework more reliable and useful for sustainable urban infrastructure planning, design and implementation.

Accompanied by higher levels of car ownership, suburbanisation in Western countries has a significant impact on motorised travel and long-distance trips. Chinese cities share some of the suburbanisation trends and patterns of the United States as well as an increasing number of cars, while there are still great contextual variations. Through a comparative study of activity space in two inner suburban areas with different built environments, Beijing in China and Chicago in the US, this paper examines how suburbanisation influences individuals’ activity-travel behaviour. The results indicate that changing urban form has a significant impact on activity space. However, the determinants of activity space in Beijing are quite different from those in Chicago. In Beijing, increasing car ownership leads to more differentiation among suburban residents. In Chicago, encouraging high-density land use patterns may lead to more localised activity space.

Using Metro Manila as a case study, this paper investigates whether and how its current urban form and pattern of transformation can be explained by the theories of gentrification developed within the cities of the Global North. Two core features of gentrification are examined: the production of exclusive spaces and the related displacement of the poor or low-income households. The uneven development across the metropolis is discussed in terms of the longstanding tension between the weak city-state and the dominance of the landed elites. Falling through the gap are the urban poor, who arrange their housing within informal settlements and are exposed to multiple vulnerabilities, including the risk of displacement. Drawing on an empirical study of the displacement impacts of a public transportation project, this paper provides useful insights into how gentrification-induced displacement may unfold if land-based development takes place in a densely populated metropolis such as Metro Manila.

This study is an attempt to develop an internationally applicable compact city index that measures the performance of physical urban forms with regard to compact city policies. Based on key characteristics of the compact city that are high density, mixed land-use, and public transport systems, we formulate a new index called ‘compact city index’ (CCI) to assess urban compactness of populations, facilities and amenities centred on public transport systems at both community and city levels. Then sensitivity analyses follow simulating different scenarios varying hypothetical urban forms to check a dominant bias to specific variables in the CCI equation. Finally four types of CCI, in different measurements of time and distance, are applied to 41 middle-sized Japanese cities. It is found that cities can achieve urban compactness in the time aspect by utilisation of well-networked public transport systems, even though physical urban forms of those cities are largely sprawled.

The concept of an urban growth wave expanding outwards is used to examine the commuting characteristics of residents of recently developed housing areas within the 50 largest US metropolitan areas at multiple points of time between 1980 and 2000. The results show that not only do areas of recent housing booms have longer commuting times and differing socioeconomic characteristics than older parts of the cities, but this commuting time will subside as these areas age (although average commuting times may rise for the entire metropolitan area). Like a growth wave, a commuting transition move outwards and therefore newer growth areas (or sprawl) should be considered as a temporary stage in the ongoing process of urban growth. Focusing on building cycles avoids the pejorative sprawl label and reconceptualises this sort of low density, auto-dependent urban form as a normal part of the urban growth process.

In this paper, a method is proposed that relates several measures of average commute distance (actual, minimum, maximum) explicitly to urban form. Specifically, Brotchie’s urban triangle is modified to represent the commuting benchmarks (minimum and maximum commutes) and urban form of a city. By comparing the urban triangle of a city at different points in time, it is possible to determine whether commuting behaviour is becoming more or less efficient with respect to urban form. Also, comparisons can be made across multiple cities for a specific point in time. The method is applied empirically to examine the commuting efficiencies of three Canadian cities (Hamilton, Halifax and Vancouver) for three census years (1996, 2001 and 2006). Comparative analyses reveal the drawbacks of the excess commuting and commuting potential utilised approaches and demonstrate that the proposed method overcomes these limitations.

India’s cities are characterised by strong land use controls, but their impacts on city growth and the urban poor have drawn little attention. This paper deals with strong land use regulations prevalent in India’s cities, which have negative impacts on urban form, the consumption of floor space and affordable housing. The impact of land use controls, such as floor area ratio and urban land ceiling, on suburbanisation in India is studied using standard econometric techniques. It is found that population suburbanises in response to a relaxation of floor area ratio norms in the suburbs. However, land use controls have no impact on the suburbanisation of jobs in India’s cities. The paper concludes by summarising policy implications of the research.

The article explores whether Mexico City is a polycentric metropolis. Building upon previous methodologies, an alternative criterion is proposed for identifying employment centres, using a jobs to working residents ratio, while taking into account economic informality. Although a small set of minor sub-centres is traced, it is found that most jobs are concentrated in a large central agglomeration, with a moderate percentage of jobs concentrated in corridor-like shapes. Within this central agglomeration, are found inner nodes and corridor-like structures that had been identified in previous research as sub-centres. Additionally, economic specialisation is identified with the use of location quotients and the results are compared with those of previous methodologies. It is concluded that Mexico City has a hybrid, although still predominantly monocentric, urban form.

There is no consensus on the relationship between urban form and commuting behaviour in the international literature. However, there has been limited Australian research on commuting patterns. In this paper, an integrated spatial econometric model which utilises a number of proxies for urban form is employed to analyse the determinants of average commuting distance by occupation across Statistical Local Areas in the Sydney metropolitan area of New South Wales. It is found that, in contrast to a number of US studies, the jobs to residents ratio is an inadequate proxy for urban form and that both the minimum commute and measures of job proximity have superior explanatory power in concert with a range of socioeconomic variables, including occupational prestige, educational attainment and weekly hours of work.

Despite growing recognition of the important role of cities in economic, political and environmental systems across the world, comparative, global-scale research on cities is severely limited. This paper examines the similarities and differences in urban form and growth that have occurred across 25 mid-sized cities from different geographical settings and levels of economic development. The results reveal four city types: low-growth cities with modest rates of infilling; high-growth cities with rapid, fragmented development; expansive-growth cities with extensive dispersion at low population densities; and frantic-growth cities with extraordinary land conversion rates at high population densities. Although all 25 cities are expanding, the results suggest that cities outside the US do not exhibit the dispersed spatial forms characteristic of American urban sprawl.

The walkability of urban neighbourhoods has emerged as a strong component in policy and design models for active, liveable communities. This paper examines the proposition that more walkable neighbourhoods encourage local social interaction, a sense of community, informal social control and social cohesion; and that the relationship is explained by walking for transport or for recreation. Multilevel analyses of data from an Australian sample showed a modest association between the walkability of a neighbourhood and sense of community only. Walking for transport, but not recreation, mediated this relationship although the effect was small. These results support contentions that 'walkability' is more complex than usually defined and that factors influencing neighbourhood sociability extend beyond issues of urban form.

Gated communities are fast becoming global commodities and cultural icons eagerly consumed by the urban elite world-wide. This article examines the rise of gated communities in Istanbul and presents a case study of one of the leading gated communities in the city. It shows how this global urban form has been transplanted and translated into the city's landscape with the help of urban and cultural politics and has transformed the dynamics through which elite localities and identities are produced. The case study documents discourses and practices of this new urbanism at work and discusses their socio-political ramifications.

The results of a recent survey conducted in eight residential areas in the Greater Oslo Region support the hypothesis that there is a connection between land use characteristics and household consumption of energy and transport. Findings from the survey also lend great support to the compact city as a sustainable urban form. However, three distinct findings indicate that decentralised concentration could lead to even lower energy use in households: while the extent of everyday travel decreases in densely populated areas, the central urban areas represent the highest level of leisure-time travel by plane; the access to a private garden limits the extent of leisure travel; and, the difference in energy use for housing between single-family and multifamily housing is reduced in housing built after 1980, indicating that the established conclusions on the most energy-efficient housing should be questioned.

This paper develops a set of quantitative variables to characterise urban forms at the metropolitan level and, in particular, to distinguish compactness from 'sprawl'. It first reviews and analyses past research on the definitions of urban form, compactness and sprawl, and corresponding quantitative variables. Four quantitative variables are developed to measure four dimensions of urban form at the metropolitan level: metropolitan size, activity intensity, the degree that activities are evenly distributed, and the extent that high-density sub-areas are clustered. Through a series of simulation analyses, the global Moran coefficient, which characterises the fourth dimension, distinguishes compactness from sprawl. It is high, intermediate and close to zero for monocentric, polycentric and decentralised sprawling forms respectively. In addition, the more there is more local sprawl, composed of discontinuity and strip development, the lower is the Moran coefficient.

This paper explores the relationship between land-use patterns and individual mobility from a comparative international perspective. There is a vast literature on US automobile dependence. Major explanatory factors include: transport, housing, land-use and tax policy; per capita incomes; American cultural preferences; national geography; and the spatial structure of US metropolitan areas (itself a result of the first three factors). Emphasising the policy environment, many researchers have cast their analysis in comparative terms, noting the differences in automobile use between European countries and the US. It is argued that US patterns of metropolitan form, with low development densities and dispersed population and employment, reinforce vehicle dependence. In contrast, most European metropolitan areas, with higher densities and more centralised land-use patterns, have lower levels of car use. Stronger controls on land use employed in many European countries are seen as having preserved the compact form of metropolitan areas. These arguments imply significant relationships between land-use patterns and travel behaviour. Using travel diary data from the US and Great Britain, these relationships are compared across the two countries. It is found that differences in daily trips and miles travelled are explained by differences in both the urban form and household income. While the effect of income on daily travel is similar for the US and Great Britain, the effect of density is more pronounced in the US.

Within the Asia-Pacific region, over the past few decades, cities have undergone massive transformations. These changes were underpinned by globalisation flows and new technologies and mediated by, inter alia, political institutions and policies. Given the seemingly ubiquitous nature and power of these influences, studies of emerging urban patterns within the region suggest that cities are growing more alike. At the same time, while cities articulated to the regional economic system are undergoing similar world city formation processes, they are also experiencing unique pressures. These influences are related to aspects of globalisation as well as to the 'nested' governmental policy responses to development pressures. Two differentiating globalisation-related pressures include the need for specialisation of functional roles within the competitive regional economic system and the rapid transfer of technologies and knowledge previously unavailable at lower income levels. The functional niche within the regional city system has forced cities to differentiate in terms of their economic activities, which has impacted their urban form. Transfers of technologies and information through trade and investment have benefited recipients and have also 'compressed' or 'telescoped' development, sped-up national urbanisation rates and created new types of environmental challenge through overlapping sets of environmental problems. Further, these impacts have been mediated differently by a variety of national and local policies. Together, this bundle of influences is creating an assortment of urban forms and environmental conditions within cities in the region. The results cast doubt on whether the physical forms of or environmental conditions within cities currently at different development levels are converging.

This paper demonstrates that over the 25-year period, 1971-96, the majority of Canadian cities have undergone transition towards an increasingly decentralised urban form. The trends, however, are quite diverse, pointing to fundamental differences in the respective importance of growth in central and outer parts of the metropolitan area. On the whole, the relatively high densities observed in Canadian central cities, in comparison with US ones, appear to reflect residual centralisation rather than continued growth in metropolitan regions' innermost parts. Only Vancouver, and to a lesser extent Toronto and Victoria, exhibit indisputable evidence of post-1971 central-area growth. The predominant trend has been towards suburban-style, low-density expansion, albeit with considerable intercity variation regarding changes in central-area and suburban density. Findings presented here point to previously unidentified trends towards recentralisation in a few CMAs and, in about half of the surveyed metropolitan areas, densification of suburban tracts.

With recent advances in communications technology, telecommuting appears to be an increasingly viable option for many workers. For urban researchers, the key question is whether this growing ability to telecommute is altering residential location decisions and leading households to live in smaller, lower-density and more remote locations. Using the Work Schedules supplement from the 1997 Current Population Study, this paper explores this question. Specifically, it examines the prevalence of telecommuting, explores the relationship between telecommuting and the residential choices of white-collar workers and, finally, speculates about future impacts on residential patterns and urban form.

Many countries now have policies to reduce distances travelled by private car and to favour the use of public transport, cycling and walking. The development of compact urban forms and the design of urban communities which favour walking are seen as particularly effective strategies for reducing car dependency. The factors which determine travel behaviour are not fully understood, so that effective policies influencing travel patterns are difficult to formulate. Apart from urban form and design, personal attributes and circumstances have an impact on modal choice and distances travelled. People with higher incomes are more likely to own and use a private car than low-income households. Families with children use cars more often than one-person households. The purpose of a trip-work, shopping and leisure—also influences travel mode and distance. We used the Netherlands National Travel Survey (OVG) to explore some of these relationships in more depth. The relative importance of personal attributes and the characteristics of residential environments as determinants of modal choice and travel distance were explored. Both sets of factors maintain a clear, strong relationship with travel behaviour in multivariate models of travel behaviour.

Recently, the use of the term polycentric or polynuclear urban region has clearly increased greatly in the European urban (planning) literature and also in policy documents. Literally, polycentricity in urban form refers to nothing more than the existence of more than one centre in a city, region or other geographical unit. It is not surprising to find that many more specific elements have been added to this rather broad and empty definition. These additions are strongly contingent on the viewpoint of researchers, especially with respect to the geographical unit that is being referred to. In this contribution, the different concepts and definitions are discussed from the perspective of changing households and related changes in activity patterns and residential preferences. We argue that, from a household perspective, polycentric urban regions the size of the Randstad or Rhine-Ruhr area are too large to constitute relevant geographical units. However, at more local spatial level, the notion of polycentricity is relevant. Rather than focusing on the size of the urban region too much, we believe it makes sense to look at residential milieus. Over recent decades, households have diversified and have, on average, become more affluent and mobile, resulting in increased opportunities for choosing both a house and a residential environment. Simultaneously, polycentric milieus with different sub-milieus have emerged. In this contribution, it is argued that, together, these developments have made the functional uniqueness and complementarity of places more important. Therefore, the unique, spatially bounded qualities of places should play a more prominent part in the development of residential environments in polycentric urban areas than they do at present. Data from the Netherlands are applied to illustrate our viewpoint.

The aim of the research described in this paper is to examine the validity of the claims that higher-density urban form promotes social equity—that is, promotes benefits for the life-chances of low-income groups. Overall, the evidence suggests that, for medium-sized English cities, higher urban densities may be positive for some aspects of social equity and negative for others. More specifically, likely benefits include improved public transport, reduced social segregation and better access to facilities, while the main problems are likely to be reduced living space and a lack of affordable housing. Investigations of different aspects of density show that the cities that most support social equity appear to be those that have a large proportion of high-density housing.

This paper uses US Census Bureau data from 1990 to identify employment centres in the five counties surrounding Cleveland, Ohio. The results indicate the extent to which the former dominance of downtown Cleveland has been eroded by the growth of suburban employment centres. Location quotient analysis is used to identify the specialisations of each of the employment centres. The results illustrate the extent to which the changes in urban form identified by researchers examining cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago have become the norm for cities throughout the US.

New urban and economic development are transforming the fundamental nature and structure of China's cities. The distinctive patterns wrought by overlaying socialist ideals on the pre-1949 city are giving way to new forms reflecting the country's dynamic economic, social and political conditions. This article provides an analysis of the patterns and processes of change in urban form in contemporary Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Analysis of these rapidly changing cities highlights both the regional variation in urban development in China and the emergence of common trends in development and form. The article focuses on patterns of land-use specialisation, circulation and building height, and processes of planning, urban renewal and privatisation of the real estate market.

The spatial configuration of cities and its relationship to the urban environment has recently been the subject of empirical, theoretical and policy research. Because of the disciplines involved, relevant articles are scattered over a large number of journals. The objective of this paper is to put the issues in perspective by reviewing the basic concepts and relationships involved, and to evaluate critically the current state of knowledge about urban form, energy utilisation and the environment. The scope of the paper is limited to urban transport energy use and the associated emissions. Suggestions for further progress in the field are offered, with emphasis placed on integrated urban models as useful and policy-sensitive analytical tools.

Differences between urban patterns in the United States and Canada are analyzed. The focus is on differences in urban form identified through a comparative investigation of the density gradients of residential population for metropolitan centers in both countries. (ANNOTATION)