scholarly journals US cities can manage national hydrology and biodiversity using local infrastructure policy

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (36) ◽  
pp. 9581-9586 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan A. McManamay ◽  
Sujithkumar Surendran Nair ◽  
Christopher R. DeRolph ◽  
Benjamin L. Ruddell ◽  
April M. Morton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Hard Water ◽  
City Size ◽  
Indigenous Species ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
City Governments ◽  
Ecosystem Impacts ◽  
Infrastructure Policy ◽  
Local Extinctions ◽  
Major River ◽  
Us Cities

Cities are concentrations of sociopolitical power and prime architects of land transformation, while also serving as consumption hubs of “hard” water and energy infrastructures. These infrastructures extend well outside metropolitan boundaries and impact distal river ecosystems. We used a comprehensive model to quantify the roles of anthropogenic stressors on hydrologic alteration and biodiversity in US streams and isolate the impacts stemming from hard infrastructure developments in cities. Across the contiguous United States, cities’ hard infrastructures have significantly altered at least 7% of streams, which influence habitats for over 60% of North America’s fish, mussel, and crayfish species. Additionally, city infrastructures have contributed to local extinctions in 260 species and currently influence 970 indigenous species, 27% of which are in jeopardy. We find that ecosystem impacts do not scale with city size but are instead proportionate to infrastructure decisions. For example, Atlanta’s impacts by hard infrastructures extend across four major river basins, 12,500 stream km, and contribute to 100 local extinctions of aquatic species. In contrast, Las Vegas, a similar size city, impacts <1,000 stream km, leading to only seven local extinctions. So, cities have local policy choices that can reduce future impacts to regional aquatic ecosystems as they grow. By coordinating policy and communication between hard infrastructure sectors, local city governments and utilities can directly improve environmental quality in a significant fraction of the nation’s streams reaching far beyond their city boundaries.

scholarly journals Evidence and theory for lower rates of depression in larger US urban areas

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (31) ◽  
pp. e2022472118
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Stier ◽  
Kathryn E. Schertz ◽  
Nak Won Rim ◽  
Carlos Cardenas-Iniguez ◽  
Benjamin B. Lahey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Determinants ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
City Size ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Us Cities ◽  
Systematic Framework

It is commonly assumed that cities are detrimental to mental health. However, the evidence remains inconsistent and at most, makes the case for differences between rural and urban environments as a whole. Here, we propose a model of depression driven by an individual’s accumulated experience mediated by social networks. The connection between observed systematic variations in socioeconomic networks and built environments with city size provides a link between urbanization and mental health. Surprisingly, this model predicts lower depression rates in larger cities. We confirm this prediction for US cities using four independent datasets. These results are consistent with other behaviors associated with denser socioeconomic networks and suggest that larger cities provide a buffer against depression. This approach introduces a systematic framework for conceptualizing and modeling mental health in complex physical and social networks, producing testable predictions for environmental and social determinants of mental health also applicable to other psychopathologies.

scholarly journals Rethinking Depression in Cities: Evidence and Theory for Lower Rates in Larger Urban Areas

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J Stier ◽  
Marc G Berman ◽  
Luis M.A. Bettencourt ◽  
Kathryn E Schertz ◽  
Nak Won Rim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Determinants ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
City Size ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Us Cities ◽  
Systematic Framework

It is commonly assumed that cities are detrimental to mental health. However, the evidence remains inconsistent and, at most, makes the case for differences between rural and urban environments as a whole. Here, we propose a model of depression driven by an individual's accumulated experience mediated by social networks. The connection between observed systematic variations in socioeconomic networks and built environments with city size provides a link between urbanization and mental health. Surprisingly, this model predicts lower depression rates in larger cities. We confirm this prediction for US cities using three independent datasets. These results are consistent with other behaviors associated with denser socioeconomic networks and suggest that larger cities provide a buffer against depression. This approach introduces a systematic framework for conceptualizing and modeling mental health in complex physical and social networks, producing testable predictions for environmental and social determinants of mental health also applicable to other psychopathologies.

scholarly journals “We just need the developer to develop”: Entrepreneurialism, financialization and urban redevelopment in Lexington, Kentucky

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110450
Author(s):  
Kevin Ward ◽  
Andrew Wood
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Fiscal Crisis ◽  
General Tendency ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Financial Instruments ◽  
City Governments ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Us Cities

Since the 1980s US city governments have increased their use of more speculative means of financing economic redevelopment. This has involved experimenting with a variety of financial and taxation instruments as a way of growing their economies and redeveloping their built environments. This very general tendency, of course, masks how some cities have done well through the use of these instruments while others have not. The work to date has tended to pivot around a “winner-loser dichotomy”, which emphasises either the capacity of US cities to be able to experiment and speculate through the use of one financial instrument or another or their failings with these instruments, resulting in bankruptcy and fiscal crisis. This paper presents a case study of Lexington, Kentucky and using archival research and interviews we argue that speculative financial instruments are harder to choreograph for some cities than for others. We draw particular attention to US cities beyond those that tend to be over-represented in the metro-centric academic literature. This argument has conceptual significance. Building theory out of the experiences of US cities such as Lexington, Kentucky turns attention to the work required by city governments as they seek to finance the redevelopment of their downtowns. We make the case for a continued appreciation of the messy politics around the use of financial instruments, and its indeterminate, open and unpredictable nature in an era of fragile and uncertain entrepreneurial US urban policy-making.

scholarly journals Pollution and city size: can cities be too small?

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 995-1020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainald Borck ◽  
Takatoshi Tabuchi
Keyword(s):  
Population Size ◽  
City Size ◽  
System Model ◽  
City System ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Marginal Damage ◽  
Us Cities ◽  
Population Equilibrium

Abstract We study optimal and equilibrium sizes of cities in a city system model with pollution. Pollution is a function of population size. If pollution is local or per-capita pollution increases with population, equilibrium cities are too large under symmetry; with asymmetric cities, the largest cities are too large and the smallest too small. When pollution is global and per-capita pollution declines with city size, cities may be too small under symmetry; with asymmetric cities, the largest cities are too small and the smallest too large if the marginal damage of pollution is large enough. We calibrate the model to US cities and find that the largest cities may be undersized by 3–4%.

scholarly journals Medical Intelligence Team Lessons Learned: Early Activation and Knowledge Product Development Mitigate COVID-19 Threats

2021 ◽  
Vol 186 (Supplement_2) ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
Laurie Migliore ◽  
Dawnkimberly Hopkins ◽  
Savannah Jumpp ◽  
Ceferina Brackett ◽  
Jessica Cromheecke
Keyword(s):  
Policy Development ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Therapeutic Interventions ◽  
Response Strategy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Infrastructure Policy ◽  
Pandemic Threat ◽  
Threat Mitigation ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

ABSTRACT Leadership during the emergence of the novel coronavirus pandemic is complex and involves coordinated efforts between multiple levels of leadership from the medical, installation, local, state, and federal levels. Medical intelligence is critical to successful pandemic threat mitigation. We describe one of the first coronavirus (Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19)) impacted Department of Defense Medical Treatment Facility’s strategic activation of a COVID-19 Medical Intelligence Team (MIT), the products developed, and lessons learned during the pandemic onset. The MIT bridged COVID-19 knowledge and policy gaps by developing and delivering daily intelligence briefings on four domains: epidemiology and infectious disease, healthcare capabilities and infrastructure, policy and regulations, and diagnostics and therapeutic interventions. Twenty-three products were developed and delivered to aid in leadership decision-making and local policy development in the absence of higher-level policy and guidance. Employing MITs in future pandemic response strategy may more effectively mitigate pandemic threats and improve force health protection.

scholarly journals COVID-19 attack rate increases with city size

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Stier ◽  
Marc G. Berman ◽  
Luis M. A. Bettencourt
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
City Size ◽  
Economic Threat ◽  
Scaling Relationship ◽  
The Social ◽  
City Population ◽  
Current Outbreak ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Us Cities

The current outbreak of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses an unprecedented global health and economic threat to interconnected human societies. Until a vaccine is developed, strategies for controlling the outbreak rely on aggressive social distancing. These measures largely disconnect the social network fabric of human societies, especially in urban areas. Here, we estimate the growth rates and reproductive numbers of COVID-19 in US cities from March 14th through March 19th to reveal a power-law scaling relationship to city population size. This means that COVID-19 is spreading faster on average in larger cities with the additional implication that, in an uncontrolled outbreak, larger fractions of the population are expected to become infected in more populous urban areas. We discuss the implications of these observations for controlling the COVID-19 outbreak, emphasizing the need to implement more aggressive distancing policies in larger cities while also preserving socioeconomic activity.

Leading Edge Information Technologies and Their Adoption

2013 ◽  
pp. 137-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald F. Norris
Keyword(s):  
Information Technologies ◽  
Leading Edge ◽  
Future Trend ◽  
City Size ◽  
National Study ◽  
City Governments ◽  
Edge Information ◽  
City Population ◽  
Successful Innovation ◽  
American Cities

Based on a national study of the adoption of leading edge technologies, this essay surveys the range of information technology innovation in American cities and outlines the management and environmental characteristics associated with successful innovation diffusion and adoption. In part because city governments believe that leading edge information technologies produce largely positive impacts, one obvious future trend will be that more city governments will adopt these technologies. Additionally, more leading edge technologies will be adopted by cities. A third trend is that leading edge information technologies will continue to penetrate cities more deeply, and as deeper penetration occurs, so will greater payoffs from use. A fourth trend is that as new and more sophisticated information technologies are adopted by city governments, integration of and support for them will become even more critical than is currently the case. Finally, although more of a finding than a trend, city population as a measure of city size will remain a key determinant in the number and type of leading edge information technologies adopted. While the overall extent of adoption of leading edge information technologies among city governments can be expected to increase, the greatest extent of adoption will be among larger jurisdictions. &lt;BR&gt;

Estimating the Size of High-risk Populations for COVID-19 Mortality across 442 US Cities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Jin ◽  
Neha Agarwala ◽  
Prosenjit Kundu ◽  
Nilanjan Chatterjee
Keyword(s):  
Total Population ◽  
Social Deprivation ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Average Risk ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Us ◽  
High Risk Populations ◽  
Risk Thresholds ◽  
Us Cities

AbstractA variety of predisposing factors have been associated with serious illness and death from COVID-19. Understanding the distribution of risks associated with these factors by local communities can provide important opportunities for targeting interventions. We characterize the distribution of risk for COVID-19 mortality for populations at large across 442 US cities, by utilizing recently published estimates of risk associated with age, gender, ethnicity, social deprivation and 12 health conditions from a very large UK-based study, combined with the information available on prevalence and co-occurrence of these factors in the US through a variety of population-based public databases. We estimate that across all the cities, an underlying weighted risk-score can identify a total of approximately 12.65 million, 4.09 million and 1.34 million individuals who are at 2−, 5− and 10-fold higher risk, respectively, compared to the average risk for the US population. The percentage of population which exceed the respective risk thresholds varies across the cities in the range (1st-99th percentile), 3.6%−20.1%, 0.7%−8.0% and 0.1%−3.2%, respectively. The percentage of deaths within a city that are expected to occur above these risk-thresholds varies in the range of 20.1%−53.5%, 8.5%−38.2% and 2.9%−25.4%, respectively. Our analysis can provide guidance to national and local policy makers regarding resources needed to protect the most vulnerable populations in these communities, and how much utility such interventions may have in reducing the total population burden of death.

Pushing the City Limits

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Levine Einstein ◽  
Vladimir Kogan
Keyword(s):  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Direct Control ◽  
Substantial Variation ◽  
City Governments ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Service Areas ◽  
Local Fiscal Policy ◽  
The City

Are city governments capable of responding to the preferences of their constituents? Is the menu of policy options determined by forces beyond their direct control? We answer these questions using a comprehensive cross-sectional database linking voter preferences to local policy outcomes in more than 2,000 midsize cities and a new panel covering cities in two states. Overall, our analysis paints an encouraging picture of democracy in the city: we document substantial variation in local fiscal policy outcomes and provide evidence that voter preferences help explain why cities adopt different policies. As they become more Democratic, cities increase their spending across a number of service areas. In addition, voter sentiment shapes the other side of the ledger, determining the level and precise mix of revenues on which cities rely. In short, we show that cities respond both to competitive pressures and the needs and wants of their constituents.

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