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This paper examines scaling behaviors of urban landscape and street design metrics with respect to city population in Latin America. We used data from the SALURBAL project, which has compiled and harmonized data on health, social, and built environment for 371 Latin American cities above 100,000 inhabitants. These metrics included total urbanized area, effective mesh size, area in km2 and number of streets. We obtained scaling relations by regressing log(metric) on log (city population). The results show an overall sub-linear scaling behavior of most variables, indicating a relatively lower value of each variable in larger cities. We also explored the potential influence of colonization on the current built environment, by analyzing cities colonized by Portuguese (Brazilian cities) or Spaniards (Other cities in Latin America) separately. We found that the scaling behaviors are similar for both sets of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban flood risk is significantly shaped by ground conditions and the built environment, which are constantly modified and transformed by human actions. This paper examines the intertwinement of flood risk and unregulated urban expansion processes in three selected sites in Accra's expanding periphery. All three sites have been included in Accra's urban extent since the 1990s, but differ with regard to the timing of development and socio-economic characteristics of residents. The research illuminates how flood risk is produced and "built-in" to the urban fabric through widespread practices associated with unregulated urban expansion processes, especially the persistent encroachment on water retention areas, wetlands and riparian zones and the highly fragmented provision of transport infrastructure in emerging residential areas in the periphery. Such harmful development practices are neither confined to homebuilders from poorer segments of the urban population nor spatially concentrated in low-income areas. The research highlights how the actions and inactions of a wide range of social groups and actors engaged in urban land administration and development contribute to flood risk in various ways, making flooding an increasingly alarming issue of citywide concern. Different stakeholders highlight fragmented urban governance as an underlying root cause for the obstruction of sustainable land and water management. Overall, the study calls for a more robust recognition of spatial planning and transport infrastructure provision in flood risk mitigation and highlights the urgent need for planning and governance practices that challenge the existing fragmentation of urban governance systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of smart mobile devices and global positioning technology, people's daily travel has become increasingly dependent on online car-hailing. Meanwhile, it has also become possible to use multi-source data to explore the factors influencing urban residents' car-hailing trips. Using online data on car-hailing trajectories, points of interest (POIs) data and other auxiliary data, the paper explores how the built environment impacts online car-hailing passengers. Within a 200 x 200m research grid, the unique spatiotemporal patterns of weekday car-hailing trips during a one-week period are analyzed, using statistics on pick-ups and drop-offs at different time of the day. By combining these data with built environment variables and various economic and traffic indicators, a multi-scale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) model is developed for different time scales. The MGWR model outperforms the classical geographically weighted regression (GWR) model and the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model in terms of goodness of fit and all other aspects. More importantly, this study finds a high degree of temporal and spatial heterogeneity in the impact of built environment factors on local car-hailing trips across different regions, and the paper analyzes the business residence coefficient in detail. The study provides valuable insights to help improve the level of urban transportation services, as well as urban transportation planning and construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A longstanding line of research in urban studies explores how cities can be understood through their appearance. However, what remains unclear is to what extent urban dwellers' everyday life can be explained by the visual clues of the urban environment. In this paper, we address this question by applying a computer vision model to 27 million street view images across 80 counties in the United States. Then, we use the spatial distribution of notable urban features identified through the street view images, such as street furniture, sidewalks, building façades, and vegetation, to predict the socioeconomic profiles of their immediate neighborhood. Our results show that these urban features alone can account for up to 83% of the variance in people's travel behavior, 62% in poverty status, 64% in crime, and 68% in health behaviors. The results outperform models based on points of interest (POI), population, and other demographic data alone. Moreover, incorporating urban features captured from street view images can improve the explanatory power of these other methods by 5% to 25%. We propose "urban visual intelligence" as a process to uncover hidden city profiles, infer, and synthesize urban information with computer vision and street view images. This study serves as a foundation for future urban research interested in this process and understanding the role of visual aspects of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advent of the information technology revolution and the Internet era, information technology is gradually occupying an important position and becoming an important strategic factor in economic development. As an emerging technology that has been developing continuously in recent years, big data is becoming an important industry to improve the innovation and development of the urban economy. Like AI technology, cloud computing, and the Internet, big data has become an important application technology for economic growth and economic efficiency improvement in today's world. It is an effective means of progress and development in a region and an important strategic resource. As a new technology, big data has attracted more and more attention from all walks of life. Many companies have turned their attention to developing big data for economic benefits. "Enjoy your old age" is the yearning of every old man and his family. In recent years, the national level has been committed to "creating an urban built environment for the elderly to achieve healthy aging." From the perspective of promoting the physical and mental health of the elderly, this paper analyzes the impact of the urban built environment on the physical and mental health of the elderly based on the needs of the elderly and puts forward countermeasures and suggestions based on the current status and existing problems of the urban built environment for the elderly. Based on the combined data analysis method and technology in big data, this paper conducted a field questionnaire survey on a total of 4,000 elderly people in urban and rural areas by means of the questionnaire survey. It is found that the existing problems of the built environment in the old cities include scattered content, one-sided understanding, and rigid design. According to the problems, the solutions of building consensus, paying attention to planning, combining urban characteristics, and the joint efforts of all sectors of society are put forward. And programming tools are used to combine formulas and analyze related data in detail. The analysis results show that the physical and mental health index of the elderly is highly correlated with factors such as changes in the consensus degree of the urban built environment, urban built environment planning, urban built environment policy support, and multiparty efforts in the urban built environment. Changes show a positive change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the development and legacy of nineteenth-century "animal suburbs," focusing on Boston and Brighton, Massachusetts. As domesticated animals were pushed from downtowns—and as large-scale animal industries emerged in the 1800s—urban areas grappled with what to do with livestock populations for urban consumers and markets. Animal suburbs like Brighton marked important developmental forms—marking key changes in human-animal relationships, and also in urban development, law, politics, and environmental change. These animal suburbs had distinctive built environments, ecologies, economies, and social landscapes that shaped development in the nineteenth century and in the many decades that followed. This paper explores the life and death of one animal suburb—Brighton—and shows the centrality of these marginal spaces in explaining why parts of American cities look the way they do today, while also providing insight into developments of nineteenth-century law, political development, and capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although studies have explored the travel behavior of residents in informal housing communities in recent years, few have been conducted in the context of a time series before and after the outbreak of COVID-19. This paper tracks individual-level daily mobility response for three months, using an interrupted time series (ITS) quasi-experimental design to infer daily causal effects of COVID-19 and community close-off management on individuals' daily travel distances. This study compares the mobility response to COVID-19 between people living in urban villages and commodity housing communities in Shenzhen, China. The results reveal that urban village residents reduced their travel less, with slower response and recovery rates after the COVID-19 outbreak. The community close-off management was less effective for urban village residents, with a smaller abrupt reduction in mobility and their recovery rate increasing faster during the post-lockdown period. Therefore, urban village residents may have experienced greater limitations in adjusting travel with higher exposure risks during the pandemic, compared with commodity housing residents. The variations in mobility change are significantly affected by some inherent differences between these two groups, even after controlling for their socioeconomic and built environment features. These results provide important insights for designing mobility restriction policies for different housing groups and planning more resilient neighborhoods in the post-COVID era. • Adopting an interrupted time series quasi-experimental design to infer daily causal effects of COVID-19 • Comparing mobility effects of COVID-19 in urban villages and commodity housing communities • Urban village residents reduced their travel less, with slower response and recovery rates. • The community close-off management was less effective for urban village residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The metro has developed rapidly in the past two decades and has become one of the crucial patterns of transportation for urban residents in China. Many studies have explored the factors affecting metro ridership, but few have focused on the metro usage of specific groups, such as the elderly and students. This paper uses the negative binomial regression model to explore the relationship between the built environment and the metro ridership of three types of people (adults, the elderly, and students) by using the metro smart card data of Qingdao. We also used the fractional response model to discuss the factors that influence the ridership share for the elderly and students. The results show that most variables promote the metro usage of the three groups of people but have a significantly different effect on the market share of those groups. Specifically, the number of schools, hospitals, supermarkets, squares, parks, and scenic spots near metro stations significantly increases the proportion of the elderly metro usage. The number of bus stops and schools substantially increases the share of metro ridership by students. The research results can provide valuable insights for promoting the metro's overall ridership and minimizing the gap in allocating public transport resources among different groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Travel burden on rural residents is an important theme in transport geography. However, the empirical evidence for this remains scarce. This paper aims to shed light on rural travel burden by examining the relationship between the rural built environment and villagers' travel burden, as measured by the time and money spent on essential and regional trips. A national survey of rural residents in 287 villages across China is analysed. The results show that residents living in rural areas are more likely to be faced with travel burden than are urban residents when accessing livelihood opportunities in local rural settlements and regional urban centres. The built environment attributes are significantly correlated with residents' travel burden. Specifically, the distance from the village to the destination has the strongest relationship with essential trips compared with other built environment variables. Villagers tend to incur higher time costs for an essential or regional trip when paved roads, bus stations and high-quality roads are less accessible. Bus transfer times from the village to the town centre, the population density, and the accessibility of local facilities also show significantly correlation with villagers' travel cost. Moreover, those residents who are elderly, low-income, or have a physical disability are more likely to suffer from high travel burden. The findings will enhance our understanding of the role of land use and transport policies in releasing villagers' travel burden to achieve sustainable transport development in rural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many coastal urban areas are experiencing impacts of accelerated chronic and episodic flooding on the built environment and people's livelihoods and quality of life. These impacts sometimes exceed the households' adaptive and coping capacities to deal with flooding, prompting residents to consider relocation. It is unclear how urban dwellers living in flood-prone locations perceive this adaptation strategy and under what flood-driven circumstances they would consider permanently moving. This paper provides empirical evidence on relocation preferences among urban residents along the U.S. East Coast. It further explores how this decision is influenced by socioeconomic determinants, experiences with flood exposure, comprehensive concerns with flooding, and preferences for relocation destinations. We administered an online survey to 1450 residents living in flood-prone urban areas across multiple states, from New York to Florida, and analyzed the results using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results show that almost half of respondents would consider relocating due to coastal flooding, with only 13 percent declining this option. The results show that age and race, several determinants of place attachment, problem-solving capacity, and flood-related household- and community-level concerns play a significant role in willingness to relocate. • Accelerated flooding in coastal urban areas will increase the need for relocation. • Empirical evidence about coastal relocation drivers is limited. • Survey responses indicate that many urban coastal residents are willing to relocate. • Willingness to relocate is affected by age and race, and other personal concerns. • Crime, future flooding, community support, and living costs predict relocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the politics of shelter provision in three African cities, focusing on the needs of, and provision for, the low- and middle-income residents. The significance of housing to citizen well-being means that governments influence multiple facets of land and shelter, affecting the shelter options realizable for urban residents. The framework of political settlements is increasingly used to understand national political outcomes. In this paper it is used to analyse shelter outcomes at the city scale. In all three cities, national political elites have influenced housing outcomes. In the two capital cities, elites use clientelism (backed up by violence) to advantage themselves and influential local groups. Approaches to housing are used to gain political legitimacy (both through the ideas that the built environment can encapsulate and through improved access to housing). In all three cities, territorial controls are used to influence electoral outcomes (with consequences for housing outcomes). The findings reinforce the importance of understanding the political context within which shelter outcomes emerge. They also highlight that more needs to be understood about the relation of sub-national politics to national-level political settlements. • National elites are a significant influence on shelter outcomes in all three cities. • Shelter offers political elites both rents and legitimacy. • Residential areas are controlled – sometimes violently - by elites to win elections. • Non-elites are able to have some influence and elites have introduced shelter programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to rapid informatization and increasing urban sprawl, currently, metropolitan residents are facing challenges regarding spatial imbalance between their home, workplace, and activity locations, which seriously affects the quality of life and subjective well-being of urban residents. However, only a few existing studies have analyzed the relationship between home, workplace, and other activity spaces of urban residents and the influence mechanism of spatial separation of the three locations. In this study, we used the mobile phone signaling data of the residents of Beijing for May 2019 to explore the degree of mutual separation of the three locations, based on the identification of the homes, workplaces, and main activity spaces of over 2.3 million residents in Beijing. Leveraging these data, we discussed the influence mechanism of activity separation, in terms of the built environment and socioeconomic factors. The results indicated that the degree of the home-workplace separation was the highest, followed by the home-workplace-activity space separation, and the home-activity space separation was the lowest. Notably, the three types of spatial separations had significant spatial disparities. Attribution analysis indicated housing price as the dominant factor affecting the spatial separation of the residents, while the accessibility and location also having important effects. Moreover, the interaction of these factors had a stronger explanatory power for the spatial separation of the daily activity spaces of the urban residents. This study is the first to estimate the degree of spatial separation among the homes, workplaces, and other activity spaces of urban residents and analyzed their correlation using geographic context factors. Our results can provide useful scientific insights to explore the spatial characteristics of the home-work-activity relationship with respect to metropolitan residents and optimize the spatial distribution of urban functions. • 2.3 million Beijing residents' homes, workplaces, and major activity spaces were identified based on mobile phone data. • This study is the first paper to estimate the spatial separation among the homes, workplaces, and activity spaces. • The separations of homes, workplaces, and activity spaces had significant spatial heterogeneity at the subdistrict scale. • Housing price is the dominant factor for the spatial separation, and accessibility and location also had important effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theories of Jane Jacobs have gained momentum as a framework to address the challenges faced by present-day cities. Of special relevance is the concept of urban vitality as an indicator of street vibrancy and quality of life among city residents. This study aims to revisit her principles from an applied perspective by developing an updated index that measures the conditions for urban vitality as described in her most celebrated book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), and by also incorporating contemporary contributions made by recent literature on the topic. We develop a composite measure of 22 variables of the built and social environment, and we test it in the urban context of a peripherical and low-income district in Barcelona (Spain). Results show that urban vitality can be found in a wide variety of urban spaces such as compact fabrics and even housing projects, only when population density is combined with physical features that promote intense and diverse human activity. The methodological tool developed in this paper is intended to serve as a basis for future research as well as to guide public policies that aim to address some of the key challenges of contemporary urban agenda. • We present an updated version of Jane Jacobs urban vitality index. • Peripheral and low-income enclaves are able to foster the conditions for vitality. • Keys for vitality: population density, everyday facilities, dense network of local business and accessibility. • An index of urban vitality is a useful and replicable tool for urban practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-carbon travel of urban residents is an important issue of public concern for sustainable development of global cities under climate change. The carbon emissions generated by school trips occupy a significant proportion of the carbon emissions of people's travel and are increasing year by year. In this paper, we review the progress in research on carbon emissions generated by school trips, the socio-spatial differences in school trips, and the influence mechanisms and optimization simulations of carbon emissions from school trips. Two major dilemmas are observed in the human-environment relationship of low-carbon school trips. First, the dramatic reconstruction of social space in cities and the imbalanced development of public service supply in the rapid urbanization process have led to the socio-spatial heterogeneity of the complex environment of school trips, thus making it difficult to form an effective model of governance of urban space that is conducive to low-carbon school trips. Second, the interaction mechanisms related to school trips remain unclear due to the dynamic and multi-scale nature of the geographic environment, which hinders a clear description of the effects of the built environment on low-carbon school trips and the in-depth simulation of the optimization path. Therefore, in future research, researchers should focus on multi-paradigm crossover and fusion, carry out prospective exploration on the human-environment interactions associated with low-carbon school trips, enrich the research methods of human-environment relationship, discuss the mechanisms of the complete built environment on low-carbon school trips, simulate the spatial nested structure and refine the governance model to meet the needs for low-carbon school trips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]