Search

With an increasingly urbanized world, there is an urgent need to examine how cities may evolve and achieve sustainability. This paper systematically looks at the Greater Bay Area (GBA) and the Poyang Lake Region (PLR) in China to examine the spatial processes for insights into cities and urbanization, balancing the environmental and socio‐economic dimensions. A total of 226 805 cells are analyzed to unveil the relationship between sustainability changes in 2015–2019 period and urban form indicators, considering sociodemographic variables, geographical features, and city size as control variables. Two tree‐based machine learning models (Random Forest and XGBoost) are developed. This study provides evidence that a monocentric urban form and a high share of small activity clusters are not good for sustainability. For each urban form indicator, there is a non‐linear relationship with sustainability. The results of the machine learning models reconfirm the sustainability benefits of having a strong second activity cluster comparable to the largest one. When planning cities, some forms of land use buffering are desirable. There is also support for developing relatively large activity nodes and promoting compactness in urban form. Beyond urban form characteristics, the levels of urbanization, economic development, and population are still highly relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban population are increasingly suffering from rising transport costs, worsening air quality, longer commuting time, and traffic congestion. Although much scholarly attention has focused on modeling urban traffic congestion, news contents about traffic jam have rarely been examined systematically. This study selects 12 large metropolitan cities across Asia (Beijing, Bengaluru, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Singapore), Oceania (Auckland and Sydney), Europe (London) and North America (Los Angeles and Toronto) for an in-depth content analysis. More than 40,000 pieces of congestion-related articles in the 2009–2018 period have been identified in the local news media of these cities. We apply techniques of text analytics to analyze underlying themes in relation to sustainable transport and congestion-mitigation measures. Also, a sentiment analysis is conducted to examine the level of frustration expressed. Results show that traffic congestion is no longer perceived to be primarily an economic issue. Concerns over the environmental impacts of traffic congestion were increasingly discussed. Based on the content analysis, cities in Asia mentioned a lot about congestion-related PM2.5 pollution and climate change was a recurrent theme among non-Asian cities. Economic cost related to traffic congestion has received much more attention in high-income cities. With regard to congestion mitigation measures, terms related to promoting public and active transport was the most popular, followed by restriction and regulation measures, and then intelligent transport system (ITS) or smart mobility adoption. It is noteworthy that road capacity expansion has attracted the lowest coverage. Generally, high-density cities discussed more about public and active transport in alleviating traffic jams; and police enforcement was seen as important in tackling traffic congestion across all cities. In relation to the sentiment, there is a positive association between the overall traffic congestion level and the congestion frustration level expressed in local news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Proposes an urban rail transit vulnerability assessment matrix. • Applies this framework to assess metro station vulnerability in Hong Kong. • Half of the metro stations had ambient roads more congested during disruptions at peak-hours. • Very highly vulnerable stations were identified for targeted resilience plans. Transport systems are confronting challenges under disruptive events. In transit-oriented cities, the heavy reliance on urban railways makes the transport system ever more vulnerable. Extant literature has paid much attention to urban rail transit vulnerability and resilience against natural disasters. Yet, less focus has been put on disturbances caused by people. In this study, by integrating the on- and off-road situations, we assess the urban rail transit vulnerability under the Anti-extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) movement in Hong Kong in 2019, during which the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) services were severely disrupted. Our results show that very highly vulnerable stations are spatially concentrated in traditional urban core areas. It is also observed that roads around some new town stations became more congested during service disruption. When disruptive events occurred during non-peak hours, the level of congestion in more than half of stations' ambient roads did not show significant changes. This study sets forth a rail transit vulnerability assessment matrix and suggests that future assessments of transport vulnerability should take a more holistic approach and consider both on- and off-road traffic situations. The findings also provide directions for building resilient cities in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the nexus between high-speed rail (HSR) stations and city evolution from an urban science perspective. We analyzed 1627 HSR stations built from 1976 to 2021 in 533 Chinese and European cities. Node or activity clusters in cities are identified through the street network. Then, the urban forms of Chinese and European cities are compared and the Zipf's law is tested. We found that activity clusters in Europe tend to be more contiguous and clustered, suggesting a clear downtown. In Chinese cities, these clusters are more scattered, suggesting polycentric urban development. When the Zipf's law is applied to the size distribution of activity clusters, the rank-size rule is supported both at the aggregate and country levels. Generally, it takes roughly two decades for an HSR station to be able to mature in attracting related development, such as residence and businesses, to complete the exploration process of city evolution. Finally, contributory factors for the integration of HSR stations with the urban fabrics are examined. Apart from the size of the city, economic power, station features and the spatial pattern of activity clusters, the relative location of the HSR station in relation to the urban form matters. Our study contributes both to the HSR and urban science literature, and has practical implications for locational decisions about HSR stations. • Analyzed 1627 HSR stations built from 1976 to 2021 in 533 cities • Measured activity clusters from an urban science perspective • Urban forms of Chinese and European cities are compared and Zipf's law is tested. • Contributory factors for integration HSR stations with urban fabrics are identified. • City size, GDP, station features, and size of nearest node clusters matter [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]