Search

Urban land use provides essential information about how land is utilized within cities, which is critical for land planning, urban renewal, and early warnings for natural disasters. Although existing studies have utilized multi-source perception data to acquire land use information quickly and at low cost, and some have integrated urban morphological indicators to aid in land use identification, there is still a lack of systematic discussion in the literature regarding the potential of three-dimensional urban morphology to enhance identification effectiveness. Therefore, this paper aims to explore how urban three-dimensional morphology can be used to improve the identification of urban land use types. This study presents an innovative approach called the UMH–LUC model to enhance the accuracy of urban land use identification. The model first conducts a preliminary classification using points of interest (POI) data. It then improves the results with a dynamic reclassification based on floor area ratio (FAR) measurements and a variance reclassification using area and perimeter metrics. These methodologies leverage key urban morphological features to distinguish land use types more precisely. The model was validated in the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration using random sampling, comparative analysis and case studies. Results demonstrate that the UMH–LUC model achieved an identification accuracy of 81.7% and a Kappa coefficient of 77.6%, representing an 11.9% improvement over a non-morphology-based approach. Moreover, the overall disagreement for UMH–LUC is 0.183, a reduction of 0.099 compared to LUC without urban morphology and 0.19 compared to EULUC-China. The model performed particularly well in identifying residential land, mixed-use areas and marginal lands. This confirms urban morphology's value in supporting low-cost, efficient land use mapping with applications for sustainable planning and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green city areas are crucial in mitigating the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI). However, the cooling effect of green city areas can be influenced by the surrounding complex urban spatial environment. This study focuses on Changsha, a subtropical city in China, where 40 green city areas were screened and analyzed. The study aims to quantify the specific impact of urban spatial morphology on the cooling effect of green city areas. Through statistical correlation and regression analysis, this study focused on six urban spatial morphology indicators: building density (BD), building floor area ratio (BFR), building volume density (BVD), building evenness index (BEI), building average height (BH), and building height standard deviation (BSD). The results indicate that the cooling effect of green city areas could be influenced by urban spatial morphology. Factors such as BD, BFR, BH, and BSD were found to be significantly correlated with the cooling effect of green city areas, with BH showing the strongest influence. BD and BFR were negatively correlated, while BH and BSD were positively correlated. The range values of BD, BFR, BH, and BSD were determined to achieve the optimal conditions for the cooling effect of green city areas. Additionally, the relative position of the green city areas in the neighboring urban areas affects the cooling effect of the green city areas. The cooling effect is most pronounced in the urban area situated to the south of the green city areas. These findings provide a solid foundation for urban planning around green city spaces and offer scientifically sound evidence for mitigating the UHI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, in recent years it has become a prevailing trend to promote the spatial maturity and high-quality transformation of new towns, yet there are few quantitative methods to evaluate their urban morphological maturity. From the perspective of quantitative urban morphology, this paper integrates street view data and cutting-edge analytical techniques into classic urban morphological study and develops a quantitative index for evaluating urban morphological maturity that fits Chinese cities by adjusting the indicators in line with the unique characteristics of the built environment of Chinese cities. Focusing on five new towns, as well as a historic area, of Shanghai, the paper evaluates their urban morphological maturity with this quantitative index and verifies its validity by comparing the evaluation result with that of expert consensus. It then proposes some design guidelines that may provide robust support for the regeneration of these new towns. Given its reliance on the multi-source data of open access and ready availability, this index holds promise for evaluating the urban morphological maturity of other new towns, to provide support for urban form improvement from both holistic and detailed perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban spatial morphology reflects the processes of external urban expansion and the internal spatial structure of the human economy, and exploring urban spatial morphology is important for regional management of PM2.5 pollutants in the air environment. Whether urban spatial morphology can influence air pollution is a question that has been explored and evaluated. Therefore, we constructed a spatial-temporal driving mechanism framework and explored the interactions among urban expansion and PM2.5 pollutants in the "2 + 26" cities of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH). Based on 2010, 2015, and 2020 urban expansion factors and PM2.5 pollutants data from the "2 + 26" cities of BTH, the results of the Geo-Detector medal imply that: (1) The spatial distribution characteristics of areas with high PM2.5 pollutants in the "2 + 26" cities of BTH were affected by the PM2.5 concentration value, and the high-value phenomenon appeared to decrease with the improvement of PM2.5 pollutants. (2) The level of urbanization in the "2 + 26" cities of BTH had been increasing annually, with the most significant growth in construction land area located in the northeastern coastal cities. (3) The compactness index, was the most critical influencing urban expansion factor, explaining 0.63, 0.64, and 0.66 of PM2.5 pollutants in 2010, 2015, and 2020. (4) In factorial interactions, the compactness index and the centrality ratio explained spatial and temporal analysis characteristics of PM2.5 pollutants, and the interaction factor enhanced the explanation for the spatial-temporal characteristics. This study reveals the coupled spatial-temporal driving mechanism of air pollution in the "2 + 26" cities of BTH and also shows that reasonable urban planning has a positive impact on the regional ecological environment in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advent of the era of Industry 4.0, big data and the Internet of Things came into being. The rise of big data and the Internet of Things has had an impact on all walks of life. The development of big data and the Internet of Things provides an opportunity for the evolution of street form. With the rapid development of smart cities, the street shape is also changing more and more towards the direction of intelligence. Taking Chunxi Road in Chengdu as an example, this paper studies the generation mechanism of street morphology. The factors influencing the generation of street form are divided into two categories: (1) legal factors. (2) Architectural design factors. By building a model, the article quantitatively analyzes the impact of these two types of factors on street form. At the same time, the article conducts an in-depth study on the evolution of ancient Chinese street morphology. The ancient Chinese street form is divided into four stages, namely the Tang and Song Dynasties, the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Late Qing Dynasty, and the founding of New China. The influencing factors of street shape are divided into four categories, namely, the influence of commodity economy, the influence of foreign culture, the influence of building materials, and the influence of traffic. This paper elaborates the influence mechanism of these four factors on the street form in China. The article finally puts forward the development trend of my country's future street form, and points out that the evolution of my country's street form will develop in the direction of intelligence, and intelligent transportation, intelligent garbage classification system, etc. will be applied. The number of brick-and-mortar stores in my country's street layout may decrease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building height serves as an essential feature of urban morphology that provides valuable insights into human socio-cultural behaviors and their impact on the environment in an urban milieu. However, openly accessible building height information at the individual building level is still lacking and remains sorely limited. Previous studies have shown that the ICESat-2′s ATL03/08 products are of good accuracy for urban building heights retrieval, however, these studies are limited to areas with available data coverage. To this end, we propose a method for extracting urban building height by using ICESat-2 ATL03 photons and high-resolution remote sensing images. We first extracted the information of building roof to footprint offsets and building shadows from high resolution imagery using multitasking CNN frameworks. Using the building height samples calculated from ICESat-2 ATL03 photons, we developed a building height estimation method that combines building offset and shadow length information. We assessed the efficacy of the proposed method in the Wujiaochang area of Shanghai city, China. The results indicated that the proposed method is able to extract building height with a MAE of 4.7 m, and outperforms the traditional shadow-based and offset-based method. We believe that the proposed method is a good candidate for accurately retrieving building heights on a city-wide scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vigorous emphasis has been placed on optimizing land spatial planning to protect carbon storage and enhance ecosystem resilience. What is the effectiveness of the Major Function-Oriented Zone (MFOZ) planning implemented to achieve this goal in China? Especially in urbanized areas where there are more pronounced conflicts between humans and land. Taking the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration as the target area, this study explored the response of carbon storage to land use/cover change (LUCC) and its vulnerability to ecological service functions under MFOZ planning. The 30 m × 30 m spatially resolved Landsat TM/ETM remote sensing images from 2000 to 2020 were used. The data preprocessing was performed mainly through radiometric calibration, clipping, and reclassification through the ArcGIS 10.7 software. Applying the InVEST model, which uses the LUCC map and carbon storage density of the four carbon pools, including above-ground carbon density, below-ground carbon density, dead organic carbon density, and soil organic carbon density, to evaluate the carbon storage under the current landscape or in the future, the results show that: (1) The BTH ecosystem experienced a carbon storage reduction of about 7.25 × 107 Mg from 2000 to 2020 due to the expansion of construction land, which crowded out cropland. Carbon storage in the BTH showed a high concentration in the "northeast-southwest" direction and a tiny distribution in the "middle-east" direction. (2) From 2015, the initial effects of the MFOZ planning were seen, with the ecological land in the Central Core Zone and Eastern Coastal Development Zone decreasing while the proportion of high-carbon storage areas in the Eastern Coastal Development Zone increasing. (3) Over the two decades, the land use intensity index improved by 4.65 overall, and vulnerability worsened from 2000 to 2015 and was alleviated from 2015 to 2020. This study will provide a scientific reference for optimizing urban spatial land use planning and promoting carbon sequestration in ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there have been many discussions about the influencing factors of urban expansion, the heterogeneity of the driving mechanisms behind urban form remains poorly understood. Therefore, this paper evaluated the heterogeneous impacts of potential determinants on urban form, considering regional disparities and the stage of development. Based on land use data collected from Landsat ETM and TM scenes, the landscape metrics of urban size, urban centrality, urban shape irregularity, and urban fragmentation were measured to describe the urban form of 265 Chinese cities. We find that the regional disparities and development-stage variations significantly affect urban form. All urban form variables showed a significant stair-stepping difference in cities at various development stages, indicating that as a city upgrades its level of development, the intensity of urban expansion gradually increases, the shape of the urban edge becomes more fragmented and the urban built-up area becomes more compact. Urban form in Chinese cities shows significant geographical heterogeneity in terms of its driving forces. The effect of the socioeconomic factors on urban form also presented changes depending on the development stage. Our results provide helpful references for policymakers within urban spatial structure planning and land resource management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of border resilience is an effective means to analyze the development status of border cities. This study constructs a border city resilience assessment framework, measures the urban resilience level of 13 prefecture-level administrative regions in China's northeastern border region from 2010 to 2019, reveals their temporal and spatial differentiation characteristics, analyzes the main obstacles, and proposes development strategies. This study reveals the following: (1) The overall resilience of the northeast border cities is at a medium level, and differences between regions and cities are large. (2) The resilience of the northeast border cities increased rapidly between 2010 and 2015, especially in the western area; the improvement effect was poor between 2015 and 2019, and except for the increased resilience of individual cities in the eastern area, the development of other cities was slow and some even declined. (3) At the city scale, the development potential, economic structure, residents' security, and environmental governance capabilities are the main factors restricting improvement in the basic resilience of the northeast border cities. Insufficient national policy support and the poor development of neighboring countries have become obstacles to cities' exclusive resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since China is the largest developing country in the world, its urban reconstruction has significance for countries undergoing rapid urbanization. The recent development of its central cities has gradually changed from large-scale incremental expansion to stock optimization. District boundary reorganization has become a new trend in reforming China's administrative division of central cities. From the perspective of scalar reorganization and regional reconstruction, the adjustment of urban administrative divisions can be regarded as a regional construction strategy initiated by city governments to reshape the spatial structure, improve the governance relationship, and enhance the cities' competitiveness. This study takes Hangzhou, an important central city in eastern China, as a case study to illustrate two ways in which a central city can optimize its urban spaces through district boundary recombination: scale recombination and regional recombination. The findings demonstrate two advantages of district boundary reorganization for China's central cities: it eases the integration of new city districts and urban areas and promotes balanced development within the city. In the future, more Chinese cities will likely choose to reorganize their district boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's high-tech industrial development zones (HIDZs) is a key "place-based" policy targeting national innovation-driven development. Despite the extensive research on HIDZs, it remains unclear whether and to what extent the policy has fostered cities' innovation output and quality. Basing our research on panel data of Chinese cities from 2001 to 2019, we employed the PSM-DID model to examine the impact of HIDZs policy on their host cities' innovation output and quality. The empirical results show that: (1) In general, the establishment of HIDZs has a more significant positive effect on fostering urban innovation output compared to its role in promoting urban innovation quality. However, (2) the effect on urban innovation output and quality varies across different cities. For cities with more advantageous locations and policies, HIDZ policy plays a more instrumental role in promoting the quality of urban innovation, while the establishment of HIDZs in other cities is more conducive to increasing the output of urban innovation. Ultimately, we argue that authorities must recognize the importance of integrated development of HIDZs and their host cities and incorporating HIDZs' impact on the host cities into the HIDZ evaluation. It is necessary to understand that HIDZs have multiple development modes due to their specific local conditions. Hence, differentiated guidance must be carried out rather than directly replicating the experience from developed regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban morphology plays a significant role in shaping the spatial distribution of crime. This study takes an environmental criminology perspective on crime and examines how residential burglary is related to two typical morphology features—housing density and composition, which were rarely concerned by previous research. Wuhan, the largest city in central China, was selected as the case study. We first applied a new urban morphology approach to identify the morphology category of each neighborhood based on its housing density and composition. Negative binomial regression models were adopted to evaluate the impacts of morphology factors on the residential burglary at the neighborhood level while controlling for socio-demographic features, transport facilities, housing price and age. Results suggest that both housing composition and density are significantly associated with residential burglary. In particular, one unit increase in Floor Space Index, an indicator of housing density and Ground Space Index, an indicator of housing composition could lead to an 11.9% and 9.1% increase in the incident rate of residential burglary. The 'block' and 'strip' composition exert more substantial impacts than 'point' composition; neighborhoods with 'high' and 'medium' residences tend to be more dangerous than neighborhoods with 'low' residences. Results of this study reveal that communities must be designed with the relationship between risk levels of residential burglary and the ways by which communities are designed in mind. Implications regarding burglary prevention and neighborhood planning practices are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of New Architecture is the property of New Architecture Editorial Office 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 both developed and developing countries, port-city relationships have always attracted much attention. However, in the port–city interface, views differ as to whether the port drives the city or vice versa. The combination of remote sensing data and geospatial big data (point of interest) has provided a favorable solution. Taking the typical estuarine and coastal port cities in China's coastal zone as an example, this study examines the following contents based on the port–city interface: the formation age of urban built-up areas and port areas on both sides of the port–city boundary; interaction between port and urban built-up areas; and the distribution of urban functional areas outside the port. Results show that the degree of spatial integration in estuarine port cities is higher than that of coastal port cities and that in the past 30 years, the expansion of ports has led to the expansion of cities. This expansion is port- and sea-oriented, and the expansion direction of the port city is consistent. On the port–city interface, the estuarine and coastal port cities form different urban regional structure modes. Aside from enriching literature on the port–city relationship, this study provides a reference for the spatial planning and transformation of ports and cities in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring the driving factors behind urban polycentricity is of paramount significance for advancing the implementation of urban polycentric strategies. In this, paper takes 41 cities in the China's Yangtze River Delta region are taken as the research objects, and the degree of urban polycentricity is measured using non-parametric and social network methods. Then, the geographic probe method is applied to reveal the driving factors of the spatial differentiation of urban polycentricity. The research results showed that (1) the distribution of hot and cold spots of the urban polycentricity index was roughly the same between 2006 and 2015, while and the distribution of hot and cold spots of the urban polycentricity index varied greatly between 2015 and 2020. (2) In 2010, the proportions of the secondary and industry tertiary industries and the topographic relief were the main driving factors of urban polycentricity. By 2020, the population size and topographic relief were the key drivers of urban polycentricity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis and modeling of spatial and temporal changes in land use can reveal changing urban spatial patterns and trends. In this paper, we introduce a linear transformation optimization Markov (LTOM) model that can be exploited to estimate the state transition probability matrix of land use, building a loosely coupled ANN-CA-LTOM model for simulating and predicting land use changes. The advantages of this model are that it is flexible and high expansibility; it can maintain semantic coupling between the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Cellular Automata (CA), and LTOM model and enhance their functions; and it can break the limitation of requiring two periods of land use data when calculating the transition probability matrix. We also construct a suitability atlas of land use as the transition rules into the CA-LTOM model, taking into account the regional natural and socioeconomic driver factors, by exploiting the ANN model. The ANN-CA-LTOM model is employed to simulate the distribution of the three major types of land use, i.e., construction land, agricultural land, and unused land, in the Nansha District, China, in 2018 and 2020. The results show that the model performs well and the overall accuracy of the land use simulation was 97.72%, with a kappa coefficient of 0.962761. Furthermore, the simulated and predicted results of land use changes from 2021 to 2023 in Nansha District show changing trends in construction, agricultural, and unused land use. This study provides an approach for estimating a Markov transition probability matrix and a coupled mode of the models for simulating and predicting land use changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of New Architecture is the property of New Architecture Editorial Office 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.)

Kaifeng is a well-known ancient capital in Chinese history. However, existing knowledge of its urban history derives primarily from historical documents rather than archaeology. In the last decade, archaeologists, including several authors of this article, have conducted many systematic excavations in Kaifeng city and unearthed large amounts of cultural material. Based on these materials, this article attempts to reconstruct the history of Kaifeng's urban development beyond text, explores the local depositional features and summarizes experience of urban archaeology. Our investigation suggests that the urban space of Kaifeng has been continuously used for over 1000 years, while its city boundaries, political core zones and central axis have remained relatively unchanged; the flood deposits make it possible to conduct fieldwork under the 'Pompeii premise'. Additionally, our experience suggests that an holistic design, an applied multi-disciplinary approach, and coordination with city administrators, constructors and residents are key to successful urban archaeology programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China's fourteenth five-year plan, urban regeneration has become one of the most crucial strategies for activating the existing cities. Since creating vibrant urban spaces is a critical component of urban regeneration, understanding the patterns of community vitality helps formulate reactive regeneration policies and design interventions. However, the lack of local-scale measurement criteria and data collection methods has posed significant constraints to assessing and rejuvenating community vitality. Taking Suzhou Nanhuan New Village as a study area, our research involved a comparative study approach to investigate the fundamental driving mechanism of urban vitality with the support of a theoretical model (5D theory), multi-source data input, real-time photography technologies, and statistical analysis tools (Analytic Hierarchy Process). The result shows at the community level, the original '3d' dimensions ('Density', 'Diversity', 'Design') remain key elements for forming vibrant spatial quality and functionality, and density factors matter significantly. This study intends to provide a new paradigm for small-scale community vitality assessment, verification, and regeneration by combining urban morphology with people-oriented and environmental-oriented perspectives. This research could support quantitative research on creating vibrant high-density communities in the urban regeneration process and bring insights to academics and design practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban morphology refers to the physical form of a city that is constantly transformed and updated in the process of urbanization. A valuable source of data on 'built forms' is modern remote sensing technology, which provides a variety of products on building footprints and heights at national, continental, and global levels. A large-scale comparison of urban morphologies is important for assessing urban development as well as its influence on urban ecology; however, this has not been well documented so far. This study includes 41 cities in China and 36 in Europe with various city sizes, population densities, and climate features. We applied 3D landscape metrics and principal component analysis (PCA) to compare the spatial aspects of the urban morphology of these cities. We found: (1) measurements of the building height, surface fluctuation, and texture directionality of urban building layouts in China are higher than those of European cities, while the latter are high-density and compact built landscapes; (2) a significant clustering phenomenon for Chinese and European cities revealed by PCA, with the former showing a much more aggregated pattern, indicating a relatively uniform morphology of urban buildings in China; (3) distinctions between cities in China and Europe are suggested by the first principal component, to which building height, surface fluctuation, building complexity, and spatial distance among buildings contribute significantly; and (4) the second principal component (mainly represented by maximum building height, surface area, volume, and shape metrics) can separate large metropolitan cities and provincial capitals from cities with lower urban population, smaller size, and slower economic development. Our results demonstrate the potential of 3D landscape metrics for measuring urban morphology. Together with a temporal analysis, these metrics are useful for quantifying how urban morphology varies in space and time on a large scale, as well as evaluating the process of urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of South Architecture / Nanfang Jianzhu is the property of South Architecture Editorial Office 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.)

Accurate urban morphology provided by Local Climate Zones (LCZ), a universal surface classification scheme, offers opportunities for studies of urban heat risk, urban ventilation, and transport planning. In recent years, researchers have attempted to generate LCZ maps worldwide with the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT). However, the accuracy of LCZ mapping is not satisfactory and cannot fulfill the quality demands of practical usage. Here, we constructed a high-quality sample dataset from Chinese cities and presented a patch-based classification framework that employs chessboard segmentation and multi-seasonal images for LCZ mapping. Compared with the latest WUDAPT method, the overall accuracy for all LCZ types (OA) and urban LCZ types (OAu) of our framework increased by about 10% and 9%, respectively. Furthermore, based on the analysis of population distribution, we first gave the population density of different built-up LCZs of Chinese cities and found a hierarchical effect of population density among built-up LCZs in different size cities. In summary, this study could serve as a valuable reference for producing high-quality LCZ maps and understanding population distribution patterns in built-up LCZ types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic expansion has caused increasingly serious land resource problems, and the decoupling of urban industrial land expansion from economic development has become a big topic for intensive development. The current research has mainly concerned industrial land efficiency, a single, static indicator, compared to a decoupling model, which takes into account two variables and gives a full expression of the spatio-temporal dynamic characteristics. However, little attention has been paid to the relationship between industrial land expansion and economic development in China from the perspective of decoupling. Based on a combination of Tapio's decoupling model and spatial analysis methods, this paper investigates the decoupling relationship between industrial land expansion and economic development in Chinese cities from 2010 to 2019. On that basis, we divided the study area into three policy zones and made differentiated policy recommendations. In addition, based on the decoupling model, we obtained the decoupling indices of the cities and grouped the cities into eight decoupling types. After the spatial autocorrelation analysis, we further verified the spillover effect of decoupling with the results of urban spatial differentiation. This paper draws the following conclusions: (1) Urban industrial land expansion and economic development exhibit marked and increasingly significant spatial heterogeneity and agglomeration. (2) Industry and economy are in weak decoupling in most cities, but there are a growing number of cities in negative decoupling. (3) Decoupled cities are shifting from the southeast coast to the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and Yangtze River, while negatively decoupled cities keep spreading from northeast and south China to their periphery, with clear signs of re-coupling. (4) It is necessary to develop urban industrial land supply and supervision policies according to local actuality and to implement differentiated control of industrial land for cities and industrial sectors with different decoupling types. To some extent, this paper reveals the evolution dynamics, performances, and strategies of industrial land, providing a decision basis for industrial land management policies and industrial planning in China and other countries at similar stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We have redefined six types of urban morphology, finding that Chinese cities mostly exhibit a monocentric sprawl pattern, with polycentric development less prevalent than expected. • The degree of polycentricity of urban morphology affects the degree of intensification of land use, which further acts on the spatial growth of the city. • The mechanisms of urban spatial growth under different urban morphologies vary. Overall, urban spatial growth is a result of the interactive effects of multiple factors. Different urban morphologies significantly influence urban spatial growth, yet existing studies seldom directly address this issue. To fill this gap, we develop a novel methodology to analyze the processes and intrinsic mechanisms of urban spatial growth under varying urban morphologies. This study initially identifies urban morphologies through multisource data fusion, then examines urban spatial growth processes based on Morphological Center Indices, and finally analyzes the mechanisms driving urban spatial growth across different urban morphologies. The results indicate, firstly, that among the newly defined six urban morphologies in China, monocentric–dispersed is predominant, with the polycentric urban morphology not developing as anticipated. Secondly, the process of urban spatial growth varies across different urban morphologies, with higher polycentricity correlating with more infilling development, leading to more intensive land use and less influence from the infilling growth model. Conversely, lower polycentricity results in more edge-expansion and spontaneous growth, causing more dispersed land use. Thirdly, the growth patterns and influencing factors differ among various urban morphologies, but overall, urban growth is driven by a complex interplay of multiple factors, which significantly intensifies when these factors interact. This study enriches the theoretical understanding of urban morphology and spatial growth, offering practical insights for differentiated urban development planning in urban spatial growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of New Architecture is the property of New Architecture Editorial Office 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.)

Energy-efficient urban design is an important prerequisite to sustainable urban development and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This study proposes an automatic framework to optimize urban design through the use of an urban building energy model. Three optimization goals were defined: maximum solar energy utilization, solar lighting of the first floor, and minimum building energy demand. Urban morphology was integrated into the optimization process as the bridge between the urban design scenario and the actual urban block. To validate the model, this study abstracted basic urban forms from actual urban contexts to generate urban blocks with the Rhino tool and run optimization in the Wallacei X, for multi-objective optimization in Rhino. The long short-term memory (LSTM) network was applied to infer energy performance of 41 actual urban blocks in Jianhu, China. In the results, the proposed framework can be validated feasibly with optimization of 100 iterations. A set of optimal results will be achieved for three goals and five clusters defined for different concerns of urban design strategies. The LSTM can achieve the best accuracy of 1.21% and 1.37% for energy generation of photovoltaic and total building energy use intensity respectively. • Low-energy urban design is important to sustainable urban development. • Enhancing solar utilization and reducing energy demand are important in urban design. • Urban building energy modeling is a popular and inspiring tool in urban design. • This study proposes an automatic low-energy urban design using simulation and data-driven approach. • The framework is validated feasibly by actual urban design and real urban blocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the impact of the Japanese invasion of 1937 on Chinese cities. Focusing on Wuxi, one hundred miles to the west of Shanghai, the author argues that bombing was mainly limited to those commercial and industrial areas of the city that had come to define its modern identity. At the same time, municipal authorities also took steps to prepare the city and its inhabitants for war, although these were largely ineffective. However, the destruction of the invasion actually led to changes in urban morphology as the city was rebuilt in 1938. Meanwhile out in the countryside, some towns and villages remained wholly unaffected by the invasion. This exposes the need for a spatial analysis of how violence affects different areas in the city and countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on urban physical space and theory of landscape ecology, a triune assessment framework —'size-density-morphology'—was constructed in order to analyze the spatial pattern and the scale effect of urban resilience in Shenyang of China in 2015, and to explore the main impact factors of landscape under different spatial scale backgrounds. The results show that: 1) Urban resilience is an optimal combination of the resilience of size, density, and morphology. The urban resilience of Shenyang displays scale effect; the overall resilience level increases with the increase in scale, while the spatial difference and spatial similarity tend to decrease resilience. 2) As 2 km, 1 km and 2 km are scale inflection points of average value curves for size resilience, density resilience and morphology resilience, respectively in an urban setting; the optimal scale unit of comprehensive resilience is 1 km. Choosing 1 km–2 km as the basic spatial scale better depicts overall pattern and detailed characteristics of resilience in Shenyang. The spatial amplitudes of 0.5 km and 1 km are sensitive points for spatial autocorrelation of morphology and density resilience, size, and comprehensive resilience to scale effect. 3) The major landscape factors of urban size and morphology resilience transform with scale expansion. Aggregation index (AI) has a significant impact on urban resilience at different scales; its influence increases significantly with the increase in scale. 4) The high-level area of comprehensive resilience in Shenyang is the eastern ecological corridor area, while the low value area is the peripheral extension area of the city. To promote the overall level of resilience in Shenyang, this paper argues that the construction of ecological infrastructure should be strengthened in the peripheral extension area in a balanced manner. In the city center, population and building density should be controlled; the intensity of human activities should be reduced; impetus should be placed on landscape heterogeneity; and the homogeneous expansion of the area of construction should be prevented. In the eastern ecological corridors, the exploitation of ecosystem lands should be strictly controlled, and the integrity of the green landscape patches should be maintained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the process of rapid urbanization, urban heat island (UHI) effect has been showing more and more significant impacts on human well-being. Therefore, a more detailed understanding of the impact of three-dimensional (3D) building morphology on UHI effect across a continuum of spatial scales will be necessary to guide and improve the human settlement.This study selected 31 provincial capital cities of mainland China to analyze the impacts of the 3D building morphology, including the number, area, height, volume, and the surface area of the buildings, on the land surface temperature (LST). By exploring how the influence of 3D building morphology on LST changes with the increase of spatial scale (between 0 and 600 m radii), this study finally recognized which 3D building morphology index is the most significant index affecting LST in different cities, and which spatial scale these 3D building morphology indexes have the most significant impact on LST. The results showed that the building area is the most important 3D building morphology parameter affecting the LST, while the building height has the slightest influence on the LST. These effects are more significant in the spatial scale of 150 m–540 m, and the spatial scale increases with the increase of building areas in developed cities. These results highlight the necessity of considering fine-grained management in the governance and alleviating of the urban thermal environment through urban planning and urban renewal strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel multilevel gravity model of migration to study the under-researched topic of urban to urban migration in China. Many previous studies have looked at rural to urban migration in the context of urbanisation and economic development, and at return migration. Very few have looked at what is becoming more important in increasingly urbanised countries, which is the movement from one urban location to another. In the study, we develop a new method that allows for the interconnections between migration flows: between those that share an origin, those that share a destination, and where there is a reciprocal flow between places. A conventional gravity model of migration ignores those connections, risking erroneous estimation of the regression parameters and of their statistical significance. It also ignores that those connections are of substantive interest—they reveal the interconnections between places regarding the numbers of migrants that they send and receive. We motivate and illustrate the advantages of our approach using 2010 interprovincial migration census data for China. The results obtained from the model confirm the effect of distance, of population size and of regional income levels. They show that there is greater variation in the numbers of migrants received by provinces than there is in the numbers sent, and that reciprocal migration between pairs of provinces is an important feature of what is happening in China, especially between the neighbouring provinces of Sichuan and Tibet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • We calculated the intensity of urban air pollution islands of 2273 china's cities. • Urban air pollution island intensities reduced significantly after 2013. • The influence of economic development on it shows an environmental Kuznets curve. • Urban sprawl, polycentric development, and urban green reduce urban air pollution. • Climate mitigation-oriented pollution control policies are essential in the future. Air pollution levels tend to be higher in urban areas than in surrounding rural areas, and this air pollution has a negative effect on human health. However, the spatiotemporal patterns of urban–rural air pollution differences and the determinants of these differences remain unclear. Here, we calculate the Urban Air Pollution Island (UAPI) intensity for PM 2.5 and PM 10 on a monthly, seasonal, and annual scale for 2273 cities in China from 2000 to 2020. Subsequently, we analyze the influence of urban characteristics using a combined approach of a two-way fixed effects model and a spatial Durbin model. Results show a strong downward trend in the UAPI intensity since 2013, with reductions ranging from 42 % to 61 % until 2020, for both pollutants and in summer as well as winter. Consistently, the proportion of the cities experiencing the UAPI phenomenon decreased from 94.5 % to 77.3 % for both PM 2.5 and PM 10. We find a significant influence of urban morphology on UAPI. Specifically, urban sprawl, polycentric development, and an increase in urban green spaces are associated with a reduction in UAPI, while dense urban areas intensify it. Our study also reveals a robust inverted U-shaped relationship between stages of economic development and UAPI. Moreover, economic development and air pollution itself show spillover effects that oppose their direct impacts. These results suggest that urban and regional planning and more ambitious climate change mitigation policies could be more effective strategies for mitigating air pollution in cities than end-of-pipe control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• New framework to quantify the heating/cooling effect of urban morphology. • Tree height contributes mostly to LST, but varied over cities and seasons. • BCR, BH and SDR are the dominant building factors to variations of LST. • Human activities significantly affect the heating/cooling effect of buildings. Urban morphology varies within and among cities. Previous literature well discussed how 2D/3D morphology affects land surface temperature (LST) from physical form, scale and time. However, they focused on ranking the contributions. How quantifying the heating/cooling efficiency and conducting multi-cities comparisons is challenging. This study proposed a new framework to process this issue by integrating cities, scales, and seasons. Among 24 cities close to China's Eastern Seaboard, building coverage ratio (BCR), building height (BH), surface developed ratio (SDR), and tree height (TH) were dominant contributors to LST over seasons. Among them, TH had the highest cooling efficiency, although it varied from cities. For every 1 m increase, LST decreased about 0.3 °C in northern cities during summer and tiny during winter, while LST decreased about 0.2 ∘ C in southern cities during both summer and winter. Economic activities significantly affected the heating/cooling efficiency of dominant building features. High economic levels and population aggregation cause a significant increase in the heating effect of BCR, but a decrease in the cooling effect of BH and SDR, which collectively leads to a warmer environment. According to the results, this study offered several recommendations for better local adaptation strategies of urban transformation, with a focus on heat management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city's local climate zone (LCZ) has been considered as a useful guiding tool for urban climate mapping and classification of urban canopy in cities. However, the LCZ classification methods and results are different in different cities in different countries and regions. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a targeted research that would take into account local urban morphology and canopy characteristics. In the current work, a LCZ classification method is proposed. This would provide a useful guide for city planning and operation. In the newly proposed method, the LCZ types were first adjusted, according to the characteristics and urban morphology of Chinese cities, in relation to existence of high- and low-rise buildings and high density residential population and land cover of greeneries. Based on investigations of two LCZ classifications of the City of Xi'an, a coupling method was proposed. This method couples the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools method based on remote sensing data with the classification method based on road network divided by land parcels. The proposed method was validated in this study against the actual land use and construction data that were surveyed in Xi'an, which showed acceptable accuracy. Our results have illustrated the feasibility of our proposed classification for urban LCZ mapping in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To reduce the vulnerability of urban areas facing high temperatures, it is useful to develop methods to obtain the urban heat island (UHI) intensity. However, it is hard to equip all cities with extensive measurement networks and alternative UHI diagnostic methods are needed. Accordingly, in this paper we evaluate and revise the diagnostic equation designed by Theeuwes et al. (2017) and analyze its application for Xi'an (China), based on long-term summer meteorology data. The evaluation of the default diagnostic equation shows that limited accuracy for Xi'an is caused by the sum of morphological parameters being used outside the original range of calibration. Subsequently, we propose an extended equation, which adds the building fraction to express the morphology of additional spatial categories. This new equation is calibrated against a 3-year dataset and independently validated with data from another year. In addition, a class prediction with three spatial categories is proposed, and verified by independent data of 20 stations in Xi'an in 2018, which enables this formula to be applied in more cities. Altogether, the extended diagnostic equation is an effective method to evaluate the daily maximum UHI intensity (UHI max) on neighborhood-scale, which can be generalized for a whole city area and presents internal intensity differences with multi-points. Image 1 • A diagnostic equation for the maximum urban heat island is applied in Xi'an (China). • Building fraction is added to the diagnostic equation to represent morphology. • Sky-view factor and vegetation fraction are used for spatial categorization. • The extended equation is an effective method for UHI max evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Urban heat island (UHI) effect is an increasingly serious problem in urban areas. Information on the driving forces of intra-urban temperature variation is crucial for ameliorating the urban thermal environment. Although prior studies have suggested that urban morphology (e.g., landscape pattern, land-use type) can significantly affect land surface temperature (LST), few studies have explored the comprehensive effect of 2D and 3D urban morphology on LST in different urban functional zones (UFZs), especially at a fine scale. Therefore, in this research, we investigated the relationship between 2D/3D urban morphology and summer daytime LST in Wuhan, a representative megacity in Central China, which is known for its extremely hot weather in summer, by adopting high-resolution remote sensing data and geographical information data. The "urban morphology" in this study consists of 2D urban morphological parameters, 3D urban morphological parameters, and UFZs. Our results show that: (1) The LST is significantly related to 2D and 3D urban morphological parameters, and the scattered distribution of buildings with high rise can facilitate the mitigation of LST. Although sky view factor (SVF) is an important measure of 3D urban geometry, its influence on LST is complicated and context-dependent. (2) Trees are the most influential factor in reducing LST, and the cooling efficiency mainly depends on their proportions. The fragmented and irregular distribution of grass/shrubs also plays a significant role in alleviating LST. (3) With respect to UFZs, the residential zone is the largest heat source, whereas the highest LST appears in commercial and industrial zones. (4) Results of the multivariate regression and variation partitioning indicate that the relative importance of 2D and 3D urban morphological parameters on LST varies among different UFZs and 2D morphology outperforms 3D morphology in LST modulation. The results are generally consistent in spring, summer and autumn. These findings can provide insights for urban planners and designers on how to mitigate the surface UHI (SUHI) effect via rational landscape design and urban management during summer daytime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study exposes and maps a hitherto little‐known dimension of China's urban geography – that of shrinkage, directly affecting one in 10 of its cities. Urban shrinkage is revealed to be a growing concern for the most populous country on earth, with the absolute number of shrinking cities rising by 71% from 164 in the 1990s to 281 in the 2000s. By developing its own definition of the city as an urban area (UA) in the Chinese political‐administrative context, this paper builds a morphologic taxonomy of China's shrinking cities. This reveals the overall net population loss across Chinese shrinking cities more than doubling since 1990, reaching 7.3 million inhabitants in 2010. Sixty‐eight Chinese UAs, mostly in north‐eastern China, are found to have been shrinking continuously since 1990. Despite the multifaceted and entangled make‐up of urban shrinkage, the paper identifies four distinct causes of this geographical phenomenon in China: (1) state‐incubated reindustrialisation and economic restructuring, impacting upon 63% of all shrinking UAs; (2) the country's new economic geography, with the underlying centripetal forces of agglomeration pushing around 34% of all shrinking cities towards marginalisation; (3) state‐propelled demographic change, leading to natural population decline in 26% of Chinese shrinking cities; and (4) state‐sponsored mega‐shrinkage, responsible for urban population loss in almost 20% of all the cases. This study further provides a theoretically informed reflection on the peculiarity of shrinkage in China and its public policy implications. This study exposes and maps a hitherto little‐known dimension of China's urban geography – that of shrinkage, directly affecting one in ten of its cities. The paper also identifies four distinct causes of this geographical phenomenon in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In addition to socioeconomic factors, urban morphology is increasingly being recognized for the potential role it might play in tackling climate change. Meanwhile, improving CO 2 emission efficiency has become a significant aim in reducing CO 2 emissions without sacrificing economic development. Hence, investigating the effects of urban landscape pattern on CO 2 emission efficiency is of great importance. As thus, this study is designed to quantitatively estimate the associations between urban landscape pattern and CO 2 emission efficiency, using panel data for five megacities in China in the period 1990–2013. A series of landscape metrics were first selected to quantify three dimensions of urban landscape pattern, namely urban expansion, urban shape complexity, and urban compactness. CO 2 emission efficiency was then evaluated using three quantitative indicators, namely per capita CO 2 emission, CO 2 emission intensity, and CO 2 emission performance. Finally, panel data models were performed to estimate the influences of urban landscape pattern on CO 2 emission efficiency. The results demonstrate that both urban expansion and urban shape complexity inhibited the improvement of CO 2 emission performance. In addition, urban compactness was found to be conducive to the reduction of CO 2 emission per capita and CO 2 emission intensity, as well as the improvement of CO 2 emission performance. The findings obtained through this study cast a new light on the significance of city planning and the optimization of spatial structure in improving CO 2 emission efficiency, providing decision makers and urban planners with a scientific basis from which to approach the task of reducing CO 2 emissions whilst maintaining economic development. Graphical abstract Image 1 Highlights • The impact of urban landscape pattern on CO 2 emission efficiency was investigated. • A panel data model was employed, taking the period 1990–2013. • Urban expansion was found to negatively correlate with CO 2 emission performance. • Urban shape complexity had an inhibitory effect on the improvement of CO 2 emission performance. • Urban compactness decreased CO 2 emission per capita and CO 2 emission intensity, but increased CO 2 emission performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The street networks and the urban morphology are assumed to mutually influence each other. Via space syntax, this paper focuses on structural features and evolutionary guidelines of the street network in old Beijing city to examine what changes and what remains. The conclusions are as follows: (1) the deep-layer topological relationship of the street network can also clearly reveal the corresponding political, economic and cultural characteristics; (2) old Beijing city developed its grid-like street network over the past several centuries, which shows a good flexibility and continuity, but also with a long period of traffic pressure in history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how urban form is related to air pollution is important to urban planning and sustainability, but the urban form-air pollution relationship is currently muddled by inconsistent findings. In this study, we investigated how the compositional and configurational attributes of urban form were related to different air pollution measures (PM2.5, API, and exceedance) in 83 Chinese cities, with explicit consideration of city size and seasonality. Ten landscape metrics were selected to quantify urban form attributes, and Spearman’s correlation was used to quantify the urban form-air pollution relationship. Our results show that the urban form and air pollution relationship was dominated by city size and moderated by seasonality. Specifically, urban air pollution levels increased consistently and substantially from small to medium, large, and megacities. The urban form-air pollution relationship depended greatly on seasonality and monsoons. That is, the relationship was more pronounced in spring and summer than fall and winter, as well as in cities affected by monsoons. Urban air pollution was correlated more strongly with landscape composition metrics than landscape configuration metrics which seemed to affect only PM2.5 concentrations. Our study suggests that, to understand how air pollution levels are related to urban form, city size and seasonality must be explicitly considered (or controlled). Also, in order to mitigate urban air pollution problems, regional urban planning is needed to curb the spatial extent of built-up areas, reduce the degree of urban fragmentation, and increase urban compactness and contiguity, especially for large and megacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial agglomeration and public services play a vital role in urban expansion. However, from a spatial perspective, the interaction between industrial agglomeration, public services and urban scale is unclear. Based on spatial autocorrelation model and spatial econometric model, this study analyses the effects of industrial agglomeration and public services on urban scale using data from 286 Chinese cities during 2014–2018. The results are as follows: (1) Local industrial agglomeration can attract the labour force and has a negative spatial spillover effect on surrounding cities; (2) public services contribute to the expansion of local cities' scale and have a positive spatial spillover effect; (3) industrial agglomeration and public services play a coordinated and complementary role in expanding the size of cities This study has the following policy implications: (i) Local governments should combine their resources to develop industries and coordinate industrial development in cities; and (ii) governments should increase expenditures on public services and optimize public services by utilizing social capital. These policy implications can help developing countries expand the scale of cities and promote urbanization. • Industrial agglomeration and public services play a vital role in urban expansion. • However, from a spatial perspective, the interaction between industrial agglomeration, public services and urban scale is unclear. • This study aims to analyse the effects of industrial agglomeration and public services on urban scale based on data from 286 cities from 2014 to 2018. • Industrial agglomeration and public services play a vital role in urban expansion. However, from a spatial perspective, the interaction between industrial agglomeration, public services and urban scale is unclear. Research methods and policy implications are the highlights of this paper. • These policy implications can help developing countries expand the scale of cities and promote urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building height is a crucial variable in the study of urban environments, regional climates, and human-environment interactions. However, high-resolution data on building height, especially at the national scale, are limited. Fortunately, high spatial-temporal resolution earth observations, harnessed using a cloud-based platform, offer an opportunity to fill this gap. We describe an approach to estimate 2020 building height for China at 10 m spatial resolution based on all-weather earth observations (radar, optical, and night light images) using the Random Forest (RF) model. Results show that our building height simulation has a strong correlation with real observations at the national scale (RMSE of 6.1 m, MAE = 5.2 m, R = 0.77). The Combinational Shadow Index (CSI) is the most important contributor (15.1%) to building height simulation. Analysis of the distribution of building morphology reveals significant differences in building volume and average building height at the city scale across China. Macau has the tallest buildings (22.3 m) among Chinese cities, while Shanghai has the largest building volume (298.4 108 m3). The strong correlation between modelled building volume and socio-economic parameters indicates the potential application of building height products. The building height map developed in this study with a resolution of 10 m is open access, provides insights into the 3D morphological characteristics of cities and serves as an important contribution to future urban studies in China. • A first country-wide 10 m building height map for China. • Shading index is the most important variable in estimating building height. • High degree of building height accuracy with RMSE of 6.1 m. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid urbanization of cities, the morphology of urban blocks develops from a single and low-density type to a diversified and high-density one, which has great influence on the underlying ground surface conditionings, ventilating performance and heat gain at a district scale, thus enhancing urban heat island effect and increasing building energy consumption. In this paper, the distinct urban attributes (greening rate, building density, and volume ratio) of ten districts around the county meteorological stations of Shanghai were collected to explore the relationships between the urban heat island effect and the urban morphology attributes. In addition, an energy model for a typical office building was setup to investigate the quantity effect of these distinct urban attributes on the energy performance of the buildings located around these ten county meteorological stations. The results show that the correlations between the urban island effect and distinct urban attributes exist. The heating load indexes of the buildings located in downtown are 1.5-5% less than those in the suburbs. As the heat island intensity raises by 1℃, the average heating energy consumption will decrease 5.04%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The island city of Macau, part of China's Pearl River Delta megacity region, has undergone urban fragmentation, occasioning transport problems and environmental inequalities as well as conditioning future urban development. Land scarcity associated with island spatiality encourages dense and incremental urban expansion, facilitated by coastal land reclamation, causing spatiotemporal urban fragmentation. The Macau Peninsula, formerly a hilly island, has expanded and become increasingly connected to the mainland over the centuries. Macau faces critical challenges regarding traffic congestion, environmental pollution, and lack of space for housing and other urban functions. As Macau becomes increasingly integrated into the Pearl River Delta megacity region, particularly through the construction of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, the island city's urban planning strategy uses land reclamation to create new urban zones. This may produce new urban space for social and economic development yet risks further urban fragmentation. We argue that spatially and historically sensitive geographical understandings of island city development and urban morphology are necessary for understanding Chinese urbanisation and coastal cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the role of local citizens in the morphological transformation of China's urban historic neighborhoods. With a focus on ordinary neighborhood properties, this research explores how local citizens have consumed different types of properties, and critically investigates socio-spatial problems that arise from such consumptions. By the case of the Stele Forest Neighborhood in Xi'an, the study argues that both the local state and local citizens recognize heritage resources as an important source of profit and that the competition for exchange values between the two has contributed to historic neighborhood physical patterns. Local citizens' resistance against and dissent from local government's conservation policies are manifested through passive bargains and tolerated illegalities, and are eventually reflected in their neighborhood morphological forms. Morphological pattern-related decision-making and subsequent actions in China's neoliberal urban setting are no longer monopolized by the local state, but shared by the local state and non-state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work is an experimental study focusing on the impact of urban morphology on the urban heat island (UHI) intensity, microclimate conditions and thermal comfort in a newly-developed urban area in Tianjin city, China. According to the Köppen–Geiger climate classification system, the studied area is classified as hot summer continental climate, characterized by hot and humid summers as well as cold and dry winters. Air temperature, relative humidity (RH) and wind speed at 46 points within an 8-km 2 area are measured during both winter and summer seasons. Based on measured results and climatic mapping, the impacts of urban constituents such as building, pavement, greenery and water area on UHI intensity and microclimate conditions are analyzed. Results show that UHI intensity reaches up to 4.5 °C during daytime and 5.3 °C at night in summer, and 2.6 °C during daytime and 5.0 °C at night in winter. Thermal comfort level at the measurement points is predicted using the Thermal Sensation Vote (TSV) model developed for the local climate. The cooling effect of trees is evident during both daytime and nighttime in summer, but negligible in winter due to the reduction of leaf area and evaporation. The presence of both greenery and water body result in an increase in RH in air. Trees tend to reduce wind speed and improve thermal comfort in winter. Radiant heat dissipated from buildings and roads is the main contributor to nighttime UHI in both summer and winter seasons. Based on research results, urban design recommendations are proposed so as to improve outdoor thermal comfort in urban areas located in temperate climate zone during summer and winter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to determine methods to reduce traffic noise levels and to enlarge quiet areas in the rural residential areas in China by controlling relative locations and urban morphological parameters. Six urban morphological parameters, including complete aspect ratio (CAR), landscape shape index of buildings (LSI_B), patch density (PD), road length fraction (RLF), road intersections fraction (RIF), and landscape shape index of roads (LSI_R), are selected and developed. The relationships of the urban morphological parameters to the spatial noise level attenuation and the size of noisy areas were subsequently determined. The effects of motorway horizontal distances and orientations are considered based on spatial traffic noise attenuation. The results indicate that the effect of distance on traffic noise level attenuation is significant and varies widely among the 60 sites studied. A distance of more than 600 m can make the acoustic environment suitable as residential areas. Changing the orientation relationship between the village and the motorway is not always effective for increasing the traffic noise resistance of villages. The results highlight the importance of using urban morphology to improve the traffic noise resistance of rural residential areas; LSI_B and LSI_ R are the most important parameters that correlate to the traffic noise attenuation of motorways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban megaregions have emerged as a new urbanized form. However, previous studies mostly focused on urban expansion at the city scale, particularly for large cities. Understanding urban expansion at the regional scale including cities having different sizes is important for extending current knowledge of urban growth and its environmental and ecological impacts. Here, we addressed two questions: (1) How do the extent, rate, and morphological model of urban expansion vary at both the regional and city scales? (2) How do factors, such as city size and expansion rate, influence urban expansion models? We focused on the three largest urban megaregions in China, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH), Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Pearl River Delta (PRD). We quantified and compared the spatiotemporal pattern of urban expansion during 2000-2010 at both the regional and city scales based on remote sensing data. We used correlation analysis and linear regressions to address our research questions. We found that (1) the three urban megaregions experienced rapid and massive urban growth, but the spatiotemporal pattern varied greatly. Urban expansion was dominated by edge-expansion in the BTH, edge-expansion and infilling in the YRD, and infilling in the PRD. Cities in the same megaregion tended to have similar expansion morphology; (2) geographical location influenced the model of urban expansion the most, followed by city size and by its expansion rate. Small-sized cities were more likely to develop in a leapfrogging model, while cities with relatively rapid expansion tended to grow in an edge-expansion model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We quantify the correlation between urban morphology and heat island. • 1D surface roughness emerges as a good indicator of urban morphology. • Urban planning needs to consider potential nonlinearity in the correlation. As important determinants of urban thermal environment, surface roughness and morphology have been extensively studied for sustainable urban development. In this study, we quantify the effect of urban roughness and morphology on the surface urban heat island (SUHI) intensity and its spatiotemporal patterns, over seventeen major cities in six urban agglomerations of China. We employ multisource dataset and derive multiple measures, representative of the roughness and horizontal/vertical indicators of urban morphology. The results show that the correlation between the SUHI intensity and urban morphological indices is significantly strengthened with the heat island intensity, manifested by the contrasting Pearson's r in summer (r = 0.59 ± 0.13) and winter (0.11 ± 0.35). In general, the impact assessed using different measures of surface morphology is consistent on the SUHI intensity, while the one-dimensional (1D) roughness emerges as an adequate index not inferior to more complex morphological parameters. Our study also shows that the impact of urban morphology varies in different geographic and climatic regions, as well as with different urban management, which highlights the importance of locality and site-specific design in implementing effective urban heat mitigation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The 2.2 m resolution VHR image can expand the LCZ class from 17 to 20 classes. • Different CNNs have diverse sensitivity to each LCZ. • "Vote-Filter-Overlay" method can remove misidentified patches and noise. Local Climate Zone (LCZ) is a significant classification system of urban form and function, which can reflect the 3-dimensional urban information specifically. However, previous studies of LCZ lack class expansion, comparison of classification accuracy of different CNNs, and results post-processing methods. Therefore, using very-high-resolution (VHR) images (2.2 m resolution) to expand LCZ classes, we compare three different biclassified convolutional neurel networks (CNNs),namely MobileNet-Segnet (MS), MobileNet-Unet (MU) and MobileNet-Pspnet (MP), and select optimal CNN to classify Fujian Delta images. Then, we combine "Vote-Filter-Overlay" methods to remove misidentified patches and smooth boundaries for biclassified LCZ maps. The study results show that: (1) The 2.2 m resolution VHR image can expand the LCZ class from 17 to 20 classes. (2) Different CNNs have diverse sensitivity to each LCZ, the more distinctive texture characteristics of LCZs, the higher their identification rate. Among the three CNNs, MP is the best model for LCZ (2,4,8,9,10, B,C,D,G) and MU is the optimal models for LCZ (1,3,5,6,11,A,F,H,I). (3) "Vote-Filter-Overlay" method can remove misidentified patches and noise and make the LCZ map more in line with actual urban form and functions. (4) Fujian Delta urban areas form a continuous urban belt along the southeastern coast, while the villages and forests distribute in the northwestern. Many small patches of vegetation and water, which can serve as potential urban ecological corridors, were found in the urban core area. Fujian Delta urban are dominated by compact LCZ (1–3), and Xiamen has the highest proportion of LCZ (1), especially in Xiamen island. The results of this study will provide a reference for LCZ classification and basic data for urban morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]