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The concept of a smart city is still being developed despite the lack of a single universally accepted definition. It is implemented through different approaches in different cities around the world. The presented study concerns the improvement of this idea and the possibility of applying the solutions from Barcelona to the city of Kraków. This paper is based on the author's experience and observations during a trip to Catalonia and its capital - Barcelona - as well as a study of literature on the smart city. The author takes into account the specific topographical and environmental conditions of each city and the human-environment interactions that have shaped both cities over the centuries. The paper continues to focus on the challenges to smart cities following the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has demonstrated the need to modify ICT (Information and Telecommunications Technologies) applications related to the functioning of the city. Preliminary conclusions drawn from the pandemic also indicate that further development of smart cities should be based not only on ICT applications in public services and public spaces, but also on guaranteeing individual spaces for citizens to live in long-term isolation. In addition, attention was drawn to the need to improve both direct and electronic communication, especially by telephone with the authorities of Kraków, to enable "co-governance" in areas where the voice of the city's residents can be very valuable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tourism & Rural Development Studies / Turisztikai és Vidékfejlesztési Tanulmányok is the property of CampInvest Kft. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Satellite nocturnal images of the earth are a useful way to identify urbanisation. Nighttime lights have been used in a variety of scientific contributions, including studies on the identification of metropolitan areas as well as landscapes impacted by urbanization. However, the study of urban systems by nighttime light imagery has had a fundamental limitation to date: the low spatial resolution of satellite sensors. Although the DMSP Operational Linescan System (OLS) has been gathering global low-light imaging data for over 40 years, its 2.7 km/pixel footprint has limited its use for in-depth studies of urban development. The 2011 launch by NASA and the NOAA of the Suomi National Polar Partnership (SNPP) satellite, with the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor on board, has led to a significant improvement. This instrument has better spatial resolution (742 m/pixel), on-board calibration, a greater radiometric range, and fewer saturation and blooming problems than DMSP-OLS data. However, it still has considerable limitations for the in-depth study of the area and internal structure of urban systems.The launch of Luojia 1-01 in June 2018 has increased expectations. LJ1-01 is a nano satellite that can obtain high-resolution nocturnal images (130 metres/pixel). The aim of this paper is to analyse, and compare with previous satellites, the new instrument's capacity to delimit the urbanised area and its efficiency in identifying types of urban landscape (compact, dispersed and rurban). The study cases are Barcelona Metropolitan Region (Spain) and Shenzhen City (China). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles is the property of Asociacion de Geografos Espanoles and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In 2000 the municipality of Barcelona launched an ambitious project called 22@bcn. This had two main goals: to make the city a leading center of scientific and technological production in the knowledge economy and to promote the integration and functional reconversion of a traditional industrial neighborhood located near the downtown area. This urban strategy is known as knowledge-based urban development (KBUD). The aim of this paper is to analyze the development of 22@bcn from the urban planning perspective, giving attention both to the theoretical framework of KBUD, as well to the social resistance and ideological, political and technical disagreements between residents, scholars and municipal advisors along this first decade. We state that 22@bcn constitutes an interesting case study of the creation of a knowledge-based district within a complex industrial area, with a rich urban heritage but also full of social diversity that must be taken into account in knowledge-based urban development initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iraqi cities, particularly the capital Baghdad, have great historical and cultural value, embodied in their historical centers' distinctive architectural and urban character. Baghdad experienced multiple wars and political conflicts that led to severe neglect, combined with an absence of clear strategies to rehabilitate its historical city center. These circumstances accelerated the decay and deterioration of its buildings and urban fabric, eventually leading to the mass emigration of historical centers' inhabitants. In the process of remedying this situation, two contradictory trends emerged. The first focused on looking to old, nearby cities for ideas and solutions. The second trend called for the examination of successful strategies employed elsewhere, for the purpose of benefiting and learning from them. This research adopts the second strategy, as it contains an implicit reference to dialogue between cities, and investigates its impact on strategies and plans for urban renewal. The present research aims to identify the possibilities and opportunities for dialogue between different cities, based on their ideological and experimental urban renewal strategies. The result of the dialogue can be translated into futuristic visions to serve the advancement and revitalization of any city, which will help address its occupants' needs. Therefore, this research focuses on Barcelona's urban renewal model, which has been one of the most successful for a city that has suffered experiences similar to those of Baghdad. This research relies on chronologies and spatial comparative methods to compare Baghdad and Barcelona. It concludes that the dialogue between cities is a dialogue of ideas, which provides the opportunity to benefit from others' experiences and strategies. This dialogue supports the exploration of new methods for the development of urban areas and the formulation of appropriate planning solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid growth of cities in recent decades has unleashed several challenges for urban planning, which have been exacerbated by their aging population. Among the most pressing problems in cities are those related to mobility and environmental quality, by which a global concern has flourished around enhancing pedestrian accessibility for both environmental and health-related reasons. To tackle this issue, this paper presents a new framework that combines multi-objective optimization with a graph model that aims to support urban planning and management to enhance age-friendly cities. The framework allows designing urban projects that improve accessibility and reduce noise and/or air pollution through the installation of urban elements (ramps and escalators, elevators, acoustic and vegetation panels), while considering the overall economic cost of the installation. To explore the trade-off between these objectives, we resort to multi-objective evolutionary algorithms, which permit to compute near Pareto-optimal interventions over the graph model of the urban area under study. We showcase the applicability of the proposed framework over two use cases in the city of Barcelona (Spain), both quantitatively and qualitatively. Results evince that the framework can help urban planners make informed decisions towards enhancing urban accessibility and the environmental quality of age-friendly cities. • Improvement of urban accessibility and environmental quality is formulated as a multiobjective optimization problem. • A framework using graph modeling and multiobjective metaheuristics is used to efficiently solve the formulated problem. • Results over two scenarios in the city of Barcelona (Spain) are examined quantitatively and qualitatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge of the link between church and public space remains limited. However, there seems to exist a relationship between the church and the city, dating back to the first foundational temples. This relationship is still present in the churches of the most recently created neighborhoods, including those that are now gone and gave way to new squares, as well as those that were repurposed to house new activities. In this study, the relationship between public space and 132 parish churches within the municipal limits of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain) was analyzed, with the aim to highlighting the most representative examples to understand the role of religious buildings in the urban landscape of the contemporary city. Morphological analyses and comparative views were the methodological research tools used for drawing new maps highlighting how they configure urban axes and homogeneous patterns. Finally, we included a relevant case study of urban regeneration, Mare de Déu dels Àngels church, as an example to demonstrate that a church without a square can have one. In conclusion, churches influenced both the public space adjacent to the parish temples and the urban growth and expansion of the city of Barcelona. Moreover, urban regeneration and new uses of some underutilized churches are a non-negligible future perspective. Churches are relevant for understanding the past of the city of Barcelona, but they are also important for the present and future of the city's public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's cities face simultaneous challenges due to rapidly growing populations, urban sprawl, climate change, and environmental pollution which pose a pressure on our traditional urban drinking water supplies. In this context, stormwater could augment our over-drafted urban groundwater resources. However, urban stormwater runoff carries a myriad of dissolved contaminants (e.g., organics, metals, nutrients), which pose a serious risk to the environmental and public health. Moreover, dissolved contaminants of urban origin – such as trace metals and organic compounds of emerging concern – may not be adequately removed by conventional stormwater treatments. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance to fully understand stormwater contaminant presence, transport, and fate in the built environment to design novel or improve conventional treatment systems. To address this knowledge gap, we have conducted 7 field sampling campaigns during storm events at different Barcelona locations (within 3 districts) to investigate contaminant presence in different urban compartments (e.g., roofs, conventional streets with automobile traffic, pedestrian streets, and green infrastructure outlets). Preliminary results have confirmed presence of toxic metals in Barcelona urban rain and stormwater runoff along with significant differences depending on the catchment areas. After a storm event, trace metal concentrations followed the order: roof rain < pedestrian street runoff < conventional street runoff. Additionally, blue-green infrastructures (bioretention systems) had lower mean metal concentrations at the effluent (outlet) than the influents (inlet). Our initial results on metal occurrence in stormwater collected in the city of Barcelona will provide stormwater quality foundation for water agencies, municipalities, and companies in other water-stressed regions with Mediterranean climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tributary streams or torrents form runoff axes that are unique to the Mediterranean. They have contributed to the formation and growth of some cities. The approach in this paper is to investigate the importance of the streams in the process of urbanization in Barcelona, as well as interventions in these urban axes as public spaces. The study was conducted in two phases. The: first was a literature review and an analysis old maps obtained in the Historical Archive of Barcelona City. AHCB with satellite photographs and current mapping in CAD format obtained from the Cartographic Institut of Catalonia ICC. The second phase studied the characteristics of the Ramblas as emblematic streets for their design characteristics as public spaces, and from an empirical study based on the observation through field visits. The work concludes by recognizing the contribution of urban interventions carried out in the Ramblas to become one of the most emblematic streets of Barcelona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lot of attention is currently paid to the success or failure of European cities in terms of competitiveness. Barcelona is usually viewed as a successful city, performing well in terms of its business indicators and considered as an international cultural reference and an attractive location for creative and knowledge workers. Some authors attribute this success to the good job that the city has done in promoting the Barcelona brand. On the contrary, others highlight the importance of the joint effort that institutions, policies and actors have put forward in embracing coherent long-term objectives for the development of the city. Both arguments will be discussed in this paper as well as the challenges and opportunities that the city is facing today in terms of its future development. The Barcelona Metropolitan Region: From Non-Existence to Fame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An energy-landscape optimization nonlinear model is designed for land use planning. • The model is tested in a mediterranean biocultural landscape using diverse objectives. • The model integrates socio-metabolic balances and landscape functional structures. • Results allow different land use configurations for conventional-organic agriculture. • The model helps policies advancing toward green infrastructures in metropolitan areas. Image, graphical abstract Rapid population growth and urban expansion in metropolitan areas have led to a dramatic increase in food demand. In most cases, urban sprawl occurs in unplanned ways, forcing peri-urban agriculture to adopt detrimental practices for biodiversity conservation and metabolic efficiency (i.e. landscape homogenization and dependence on non-renewable external inputs), facing the food-biodiversity dilemma. In order to ameliorate these negative effects over the metropolitan socioecological system, researchers have focused on developing comprehensive indicators to support sustainable urban expansion in metropolitan areas. In this paper, we use these indicators to develop an Energy-Landscape Optimization (E-LO), a nonlinear model designed for land use planning by means of considering biophysical constraints. Then, we test the model in a representative Mediterranean bio-cultural landscape in the Barcelona metropolitan area (Spain). The E-LO results allow us to propose different land use configurations for both conventional and organic agriculture, taking into account the associated socio-metabolic balances and the related landscape functional structures, with the aim to meet different societal objectives. We have fruitfully tested three settings: i) to increase conditions to host farm associated biodiversity, ii) to increase agricultural production, and iii) to minimize dependence on non-renewable external inputs. According to these socioecological objectives, we have obtained the best landscape-metabolism integration, which is a useful methodology for sustainable land use policy. This socioecological perspective is necessary for the new paradigm on agroecosystem management and landscape planning, and can help advancing towards functional green infrastructures in metropolitan areas, especially in the climate change and agroecological transition global context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]