Are large urban areas sustainability champions?: A Double Delinking Analysis of Environmental Performance of Global Cities

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 205-223
Author(s):  
SURENDRA SINGH
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
City Size ◽  
Kuznets Curve ◽  
Data Envelopment ◽  
Global Cities ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Efficient Data ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between both city size and welfare or prosperity on the one hand, and environmental-climatological outcomes on the other hand. This will be done by examining this intriguing relationship for a sample of 40 large cities in our world (with different size categories and located in countries with different welfare levels). Based on detailed statistical data on a multiplicity of relevant characteristics of these cities (stemming from the GPCI metropolitan data base of the Mori Memorial Foundation (2016)), we have used a super-efficient Data Envelopment Analysis (SE- DEA) to analyse the relative economic-environmental efficiency outcomes of distinct classes of global cities, so as to test the above mentioned double proposition, coined here double delinking or the double Kuznets curve phenomenon.

scholarly journals Mediterranean Morphologies in Hot Summer Conditions: Learning from France’s “Glorious Thirty” Holiday Housing

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Marjan Sansen ◽  
◽  
Andrés Martínez ◽  
Philippe Devillers
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Morphology ◽  
Coastal Development ◽  
City Centre ◽  
View Factor ◽  
Individual Housing ◽  
Mediterranean Regions ◽  
The One

Climate change and rising temperatures lead to air-conditioning proliferation in summertime in Mediterranean regions. This study links urban morphology to microclimate. It claims that we can learn from holiday housing morphologies designed with an additive approach during the “Glorious Thirty” (1946-75) French coastal development. It is based on a morphological analysis of four case studies, with on the one hand re-drawing and site visiting, on the other hand assessment of environmental performance through key parameters: Absolute Rugosity, Compactness Ratio, Building Density, Mineralization, Sky View Factor (SVF) and H/W Ratio. Compared to literature reference values of a traditional courtyard morphology, the case studies are less compact and with lower H/W Ratio (higher SVF), but they are less mineral than an historical medieval city centre. This research contributes to the search for semi-collective alternatives (for example additive morphologies) to individual housing in peri-urban areas, with a high environmental performance in summertime.

Explorations into the Relationship between Spatial Structure and Spatial Interaction

1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
D A Griffith ◽  
K G Jones
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Structure ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Spatial Interaction ◽  
Distance Decay ◽  
City Size ◽  
Spatial Interaction Models ◽  
Geographic Structure ◽  
Journey To Work ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This paper explores the relationship between spatial structure and spatial interaction at the intraurban level. To examine this relationship an experimental framework is designed based on the application of a doubly constrained entropy-type gravity model to journey-to-work data for twenty-four Canadian urban areas. The study demonstrates that distance-decay exponents are strongly influenced by geographic structure and the geometry of origins and destinations. As such, both the influence of map pattern and the friction of distance should be explicitly incorporated into spatial interaction models. The paper also explores the impact of city size and the nature of the economic base of the urban area upon distance-decay exponents.

scholarly journals Promoting or Inhibiting? The Impact of Enterprise Environmental Performance on Economic Performance: Evidence from China’s Large Iron and Steel Enterprises

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6465
Author(s):  
Rong Liu ◽  
Feng He ◽  
Jianyu Ren
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Data Envelopment ◽  
Corporate Environmental Responsibility ◽  
Iron And Steel ◽  
Competitive Edge ◽  
Environmental Performance Evaluation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Production And Operation

In recent years, the importance of corporate environmental responsibility has gradually become more prominent. This study combines the Slack-based Measurement (SBM) model with the “Super-efficiency” model to construct an environmental performance evaluation based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), which is used to measure the environmental performance of China’s large iron and steel enterprises from 2009 to 2017. Moreover, the impact of environmental performance on enterprise economic performance is studied by regression analysis. The results show that that environmental performance and economic performance of large iron and steel enterprises in China are in an inverted U-shaped relationship. This encourages enterprises to be proactive in environmental management to maintain and enhance their competitive edge. Therefore, this research suggests that iron and steel enterprises should balance the relationship between environmental performance and economic performance, and adopt environmental protection behaviors to carry out production and operation, to maximize enterprise performance.

scholarly journals Promoting or Inhibiting? The Impact of Enterprise Environmental Performance on Economic Performance: Evidence From China's Large Iron and Steel Enterprises

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rong Liu ◽  
Feng He ◽  
Jianyu Ren
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Environmental Responsibility ◽  
Data Envelopment ◽  
Corporate Environmental Responsibility ◽  
Iron And Steel ◽  
Environmental Performance Evaluation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Production And Operation

Abstract In recent years, people have realized the importance of corporate environmental responsibility. In this study, we combine the Slack-based Measurement (SBM) model with the "Super-efficiency" model to construct the environmental performance evaluation based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to measure the environmental performance of China's large iron and steel enterprises from 2009 to 2017. Then, it studies the impact of environmental performance on enterprise economic performance through regression analysis. The results show that the impact of environmental performance of China's large iron and steel enterprises on economic performance shows an inverted U-shaped relationship. The conclusion is helpful to encourage enterprises to actively carry out environmental management, so as to maintain and enhance the competitiveness of enterprises. Therefore, this paper suggests that iron and steel enterprises should balance the relationship between environmental responsibility and economic performance in order to maximize enterprise performance. The main purpose of this paper is to let enterprises solve the negative externalities in production through internalization, and encourage enterprises to adopt environmental protection behavior for production and operation.

Navigating the Regulatory Environment in American Urban Areas

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-71
Author(s):  
Matthew Lehnert ◽  
Isabelle Nilsson ◽  
Neil Reid
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Neighborhood Revitalization ◽  
Zoning Regulations ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
American Cities

The impressive growth in the number of craft breweries in the United States has created both opportunities and challenges for municipalities. On the one hand, it is evident that craft breweries can add to the diversity of the urban fabric and contribute in a meaningful way to neighborhood vitality and, in the case of distressed areas, to neighborhood revitalization. On the other hand, zoning regulations in many municipalities have not been particularly accommodating. Craft breweries pose a challenge to municipalities, as their businesses represent a hybrid of restaurant, manufacturer, and entertainment. To capitalize on the growing popularity of craft breweries, municipalities have been changing their zoning ordinances. In this chapter, we examine the relationship between craft breweries and zoning in three American cities. We seek to highlight the differences and similarities that craft breweries face in seeking optimal locations, in the face of zoning challenges.

scholarly journals Demography and the emergence of universal patterns in urban systems

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luís M. A. Bettencourt ◽  
Daniel Zünd
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
City Size ◽  
Zipf’S Law ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Size Distributions ◽  
Vital Rates ◽  
Zipf's Law ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Population Sizes

Abstract Urban areas exist in a wide variety of population sizes, from small towns to huge megacities. No proposed form for the statistical distribution of city sizes has received more attention than Zipf’s law, a Pareto distribution with power law exponent equal to one. However, this distribution is typically violated by empirical evidence for small and large cities. Moreover, no theory presently exists to derive city size distributions from fundamental demographic choices while also explaining consistent variations. Here we develop a comprehensive framework based on demography to show how the structure of migration flows between cities, together with the differential magnitude of their vital rates, determine a variety of city size distributions. This approach provides a powerful mathematical methodology for deriving Zipf’s law as well as other size distributions under specific conditions, and to resolve puzzles associated with their deviations in terms of concepts of choice, symmetry, information, and selection.

scholarly journals Chatty maps: constructing sound maps of urban areas from social media data

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 150690 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Maria Aiello ◽  
Rossano Schifanella ◽  
Daniele Quercia ◽  
Francesco Aletta
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Noise Pollution ◽  
Social Media Data ◽  
Pollution Levels ◽  
The One ◽  
Sound Maps ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Media Data ◽  
People’S Perceptions

Urban sound has a huge influence over how we perceive places. Yet, city planning is concerned mainly with noise, simply because annoying sounds come to the attention of city officials in the form of complaints, whereas general urban sounds do not come to the attention as they cannot be easily captured at city scale. To capture both unpleasant and pleasant sounds, we applied a new methodology that relies on tagging information of georeferenced pictures to the cities of London and Barcelona. To begin with, we compiled the first urban sound dictionary and compared it with the one produced by collating insights from the literature: ours was experimentally more valid (if correlated with official noise pollution levels) and offered a wider geographical coverage. From picture tags, we then studied the relationship between soundscapes and emotions. We learned that streets with music sounds were associated with strong emotions of joy or sadness, whereas those with human sounds were associated with joy or surprise. Finally, we studied the relationship between soundscapes and people's perceptions and, in so doing, we were able to map which areas are chaotic, monotonous, calm and exciting. Those insights promise to inform the creation of restorative experiences in our increasingly urbanized world.

Assessing nighttime lights for mapping the urban areas of 50 cities across the globe

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 1097-1114
Author(s):  
Hasi Bagan ◽  
Habura Borjigin ◽  
Yoshiki Yamagata
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Comprehensive Evaluation ◽  
Grid Cell ◽  
Small Cities ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Nighttime Lights ◽  
Defense Meteorological Satellite Program ◽  
Nighttime Light ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Meteorological Satellite

Nighttime data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System have been widely used to map urban/built-up areas (hereafter referred to as “built-up area”), but to date there has not been a geographically comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of using nighttime lights data to map urban areas. We created accurate, convenient, and scalable grid cells based on Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System nighttime light pixels. We then calculated the density of Landsat-derived built-up areas within each grid cell. We explored the relationship between Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System nighttime lights data and the density of built-up areas to assess the utility of nighttime lights for mapping urban areas in 50 cities across the globe. We found that the brightness of nighttime lights was only in moderate agreement with the density of built-up areas; moreover, correlations between nighttime lights and Landsat-derived built-up areas were weak. Even in relatively sparsely populated urban regions (where the density of the built-up area is less than 20%), the highest correlation coefficient ( R2) was only 0.4. Furthermore, nighttime lights showed lighted areas that extended beyond the area of large cities, and nighttime lights reduced the area of small cities. The results suggest that it is difficult to use the regression model to calibrate the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System nighttime lights to fit urban built up areas.

scholarly journals Are Small Cities More Environmentally Friendly? An Empirical Study from China

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 727 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuai Liu ◽  
Fei Fan ◽  
Jianqing Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Fine Particulate Matter ◽  
Urban Air Pollution ◽  
Urban Pollution ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
City Size ◽  
Kuznets Curve ◽  
Dynamic Panel Model ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Panel Model ◽  
Great Pressure

City sizes are rapidly expanding, and urban air pollution is a serious challenge in China. PM2.5 (fine particulate matter) is the primary pollutant of urban pollution. This study aimed to examine the correlations between PM2.5 and city size. In this paper, using the panel data of 278 cities in China from 2007 to 2016, we constructed a static and dynamic panel model based on the STIRPAT (Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology) analytical framework. We found that there was a significantly inverted N-shaped correlation between PM2.5 and city size. Two inflection points were found at 949,200 and 3,736,100. We found no evidence to support the EKC (Environmental Kuznets Curve) hypothesis, while the “Pollution Haven Hypothesis” gained support. The contradiction between PM2.5 and city size will exist for the long term. Policy recommendations were proposed based on our findings. Controlling the city size does not seem to be necessary for very large cities as they have passed the second inflection point. Cities with a growing population are under great pressure to prevent PM2.5 pollution and need to implement greater measures to reduce pollution.

scholarly journals Revisiting The Relationship Between Financial And Environmental Performance: Does Granger Causality Matter?

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 1861 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyungho Kim
Keyword(s):  
Financial Performance ◽  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Reverse Direction ◽  
Industry Group ◽  
Dynamic Setting ◽  
Causal Direction ◽  
Financial Performance Measures ◽  
One Year ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

This study rigorously investigates two ongoing issues about the relationship between environmental performance and financial performance: its sign (negative or positive) and direction of causation. The results from the longitudinal sample of US heavy-polluting industries between 1991 and 2005 support the positive relationship between EP and FP. We also test the Granger causal relationship by applying Arellano-Bond estimator. The results present that the causal direction is contingent on the selection of financial performance measures and on the characteristics of sub-groups classified by environmental performance. Namely, we find that the causality is valid only in high pollution-intensive industry group in terms of the one-year lagged accounting-based FP. A weak reverse direction was found only in the pollution-intensive industry group with Tobins q. The findings clearly suggest that it is necessary to use a consistent estimator when examining causality with longitudinal data in a dynamic setting.

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