scholarly journals A Review on Coastal Urban Ecology: Research Gaps, Challenges, and Needs

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgia Graells ◽  
Nao Nakamura ◽  
Juan L. Celis-Diez ◽  
Nelson A. Lagos ◽  
Pablo A. Marquet ◽  
...  

Coastal urban areas have dramatically increased during the last decades, however, coastal research integrating the impacts and challenges facing urban areas is still scarce. To examine research advances and critical gaps, a review of the literature on coastal urban ecology was performed. Articles were selected following a structured decision tree and data were classified into study disciplines, approaches, type of analysis, main research objectives, and Pickett's paradigms in-, of-, and for- the city, among other categories. From a total of 237 publications, results show that most of the research comes from the USA, China, and Australia, and has been carried out mostly in large cities with populations between 1 and 5 million people. Focus has been placed on ecological studies, spatial and quantitative analysis and pollution in coastal urban areas. Most of the studies on urban ecology in coastal zones were developed at nearshore terrestrial environments and only 22.36% included the marine ecosystem. Urban ecological studies in coastal areas have mainly been carried out under the paradigm in the city with a focus on the disciplines of biology and ecology. Results suggest a series of disciplinary, geographical, and approach biases which can present a number of risks. Foremost among these is a lack of knowledge on social dimensions which can impact on sustainability. A key risk relates to the fact that lessons and recommendations of research are mainly from developed countries and large cities which might have different institutional, planning and cultural settings compared to developing and mid-income countries. Scientific research on coastal urban areas needs to diversify toward an ecology of and for the cities, in order to support coastal development in a diversity of countries and settings.

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (139) ◽  
pp. 20170946 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan R. Frank ◽  
Lijun Sun ◽  
Manuel Cebrian ◽  
Hyejin Youn ◽  
Iyad Rahwan

The city has proved to be the most successful form of human agglomeration and provides wide employment opportunities for its dwellers. As advances in robotics and artificial intelligence revive concerns about the impact of automation on jobs, a question looms: how will automation affect employment in cities? Here, we provide a comparative picture of the impact of automation across US urban areas. Small cities will undertake greater adjustments, such as worker displacement and job content substitutions. We demonstrate that large cities exhibit increased occupational and skill specialization due to increased abundance of managerial and technical professions. These occupations are not easily automatable, and, thus, reduce the potential impact of automation in large cities. Our results pass several robustness checks including potential errors in the estimation of occupational automation and subsampling of occupations. Our study provides the first empirical law connecting two societal forces: urban agglomeration and automation's impact on employment.


Author(s):  
Vitali Chulkov ◽  
Bakhruz Nazirov

In the process of urbanization of large cities in different countries, there are similar problems of reorganization, involving the demolition of physically and morally obsolete buildings and structures, as well as the subsequent construction reorganization of the territories vacated or re-cut to the city. In the process of demolition of obsolete buildings and structures, as well as the construction of new buildings, inevitably significant amounts of waste and construction debris arise that should be recycled as much as possible into secondary building materials (to carry out the so-called «recycling» of waste). Types of construction reorganization of urban areas are divided into traditional, widely known and standardized (repair, reconstruction, restoration), and innovative, arising in the processes of reorganization of society. Among the innovative types of construction reorganization, renovation is currently the most relevant, meeting the need to renovate the dilapidated housing stock of cities. The article discusses the main types of construction waste generated during demolition and new construction, as well as the technologies used for recycling these wastes during the renovation of territories and pavements of large cities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 718
Author(s):  
S Haryani

Large cities still peak the interests of some Indonesian society. Big city development as the center of economic activity is a powerful pull for society, influencing high workforce from both inside and outside of the city, causing a strong current of urbanization. One main problem that always accompanies urban areas development is density population. Urbanization has caused a very rapid explosion in the city population; one implication is the clumping workforce in large Indonesian cities. The high number of people who choose to settle in the city increase the number of both legal and illegal settlements. In the high-density settlement, many houses are not liveable and irregular. The densely populated settlements find many houses unfit for habitation and irregular. The research aims to formulate the sustainability level of Urban communities, Lowokwaru District, Malang City using quantitative method through sustainability level calculation. Jatimulyo Urban Communities is measured by the sustainability criteria of density, diversity, mixed-use, and compactness to formulate the related sustainable urban spatial structure. Interpretation of the calculation results references similar research. The calculation result shows that Jatimulyo Urban Communities is included in the moderate sustainability level, where density is moderate (101.1-200 people/ha), has a moderate building density (20-40 buildings/ha), has a random diversity level (1.0) and an entropy index (0.51), and compactness is near perfect inequality (Gini Coefficient 0.99).


2019 ◽  
Vol 101 ◽  
pp. 04003
Author(s):  
Stela Todorova ◽  
Kaloyan Haralampiev

Aviation, as every type of transport, is responsible for a number of negative external effects to the environment. The main goal of this study is to reveal the relation between the noise level in the urban areas near to the Burgas airport and the air traffic. Our main research tasks are: to make a literature review of the problem; to gather data for the noise levels; to gather data for the air traffic; to choose relevant statistical methods and models for the revealing of the relation between the noise level and air traffic; to draw conclusions and to make recommendations about the noise pollution in the vicinity of Burgas Airport. The data are on monthly basis and cover the period from January 2015 to December 2017, i.e. 36 months. In our regression model we use three traffic indicators as independent variables: aircraft movements; passengers and freight. In the established regression model we introduce ‘the time’ as an additional factor, which provides concrete practical advantages. Our results show that two independent variables (aircraft movements and freight) affect the Twenty-four hours average equivalent level of noise due to flights. Aircraft movements are the most important factor and we expect their increasing in the future. This will lead to increased noise levels.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Lacilla ◽  
Jose Maria Ordeig

<p>The renovation of the waterfronts, such as those in the main public spaces of large cities, started in 1970s. Core industries had found other places to develop far from the city; thereafter key areas fell out of use and into disrepair. As a consequence, a huge number of urban areas became in urgent need of renewal. However, urban design guidelines to regenerate these open spaces have significantly changed since then. The approach towards returning these parts of the city to its inhabitants has evolved from an emphasis on building new housing in the nineties, to considering the broader aspects of sustainability in the early years of the current century and finally to searching for the areas’ identity in more recent years. Therefore, currently this identity is one of the main aspects designers are looking for. At the same time, the sustainability of the waterfront areas may be achieved through the establishment of this place´s sense of identity. In order to do this, we assess three urban actions undertaken in Portland and Vancouver -False Creek North, South Waterfront and Southeast False Creek-. The article suggests that the interplay between urban design, sustainability and identity is becoming the new driver for the design of the waterfronts.</p>


Author(s):  
Mamoona Humayun ◽  
N. Z. Jhanjhi ◽  
Malak Z. Alamri ◽  
Azeem Khan

With the ubiquitous low-cost sensor devices and widespread use of IoT, the paradigm is shifted from urban areas towards a smart city. A smart city is an urban area that uses IoT technologies to collect data and manage resources efficiently. The vision is to improve the capabilities and to solve the citizens' problems (e.g., energy consumption, transportation, recycling, intelligent security, etc.) in an efficient way. A smart city is a multidimensional term including a smart economy, smart mobility, smart living, smart environment, smart people, and smart governance. Although the concept of a smart city is increasing and currently there exist many such cities in many developed countries, one of the key challenges faced by these cities is good governance. Smart cities need smart governance to run the city in a smarter way, and effective digital governance is a solution to this end. Digital governance refers to the use of digital technology in government practices.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Thunis ◽  
Alain Clappier ◽  
Alexander de Meij ◽  
Enrico Pisoni ◽  
Bertrand Bessagnet ◽  
...  

Abstract. While the burden caused by air pollution in urban areas is well documented, the origin of this pollution and therefore the responsibility of the urban areas in generating this pollution is still a subject of scientific discussion. Source Apportionment represents a useful technique to quantify the city responsibility but the approaches and applications are not harmonized, therefore not comparable, resulting in confusing and sometimes contradicting interpretations. In this work, we analyze how different source apportionment approaches apply to the urban scale and how their building elements and parameters are defined and set. We discuss in particular the options available in terms of indicator, receptor, source and methodology. We show that different choices for these options lead to very large differences in terms of outcome. In average over the 150 EU large cities selected in our study, the choices made for the indicator, the receptor and the source each lead to an average factor 2 difference. We also show that temporal and spatial averaging processes applied to the air quality indicator, especially when diverging source apportionments are aggregated into a single number lead to favor strategies that target background sources while occulting actions that would be efficient at the city center. We stress that methodological choices and assumptions most often lead to a systematic and important underestimation of the city responsibility, with important implications. Indeed, if cities are seen as a minor actor, plans will target in priority the background at the expense of potentially effective local actions.


2020 ◽  
pp. 66-74
Author(s):  
Nataliya Komar

Introduction. Migration is a global phenomenon that has no borders and affects all countries without exception. Subjective and objective reasons determine migration flows in the world. More than half of the world's population lives in urban areas. Popular and attractive, with their infrastructure, dynamic labor force market, development of integration and consolidation, inclusion, countries / destination cities of migrants who are looking for a better life and more possibilities for employment and social protection. Cities meet the urgent needs of migrants and respond to amount of integration challenges. The majority of cities, which are under considerable pressure from migrants, especially refugees, are awareness that well-managed migration can bring not only challenges but also opportunities and initiatives which can benefit from the economy and society, especially in the long time period. The goal of the article is to research the European continent as a location for migrants and refugees and also to analyze challenges and opportunities for cities destination under influence of migrant’s flows. Method (methodology). The methodological basis of the article are the following general scientific and empirical methods, such as: historical, systemic, generalization method, grouping, comparative method. Results. According to the ratings, Germany (Berlin), Great Britain (London), France (Paris), Poland (Gdansk) are the most popular countries / cities for migrants in the European continent. Migrants may be a burden to the city, because in its turn mentioned one spends public money on their upkeep. At the same time, migrants may be more talented and skilled workers, less demanding than local population. That is why a government and business of destination city of migrants can cooperate effectively in order to maximize potential of immigrants in cities. The main factors which attract migrants in destination cities are economic opportunities of ones. In particular, the attractiveness of Berlin for migrants is due to the fact that the city is innovative, creative and open to thought. Apart from the city has also dynamic labor market and low labor costs. It is worth noting that the majority of developed countries have demographic issues and aging nation, while young people in developing countries look for work due to imbalances in the domestic labor market. Migration, in the following destination cities (Berlin, Athens, Paris), has made its adjustments in the field of infrastructure, education, health care, urban planning, etc. In particular, the private and public sectors combine own attempts in order to solve migration issues in the long term period.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Safieddine ◽  
Maya George ◽  
Cathy Clerbaux ◽  
Ana Paracho ◽  
Anne Boynard ◽  
...  

&lt;p&gt;IASI is a versatile mission, allowing the measurement of both meteorological parameters such as temperature and atmospheric composition for infrared absorbing species. With its long observation record and frequent overpasses, IASI is able to follow changes at different spatial scales. We studied IASI&amp;#8217;s capability to track the anthropogenic signature associated with large cities, both in terms of temperature fingerprint (urban heat islands) and carbon monoxide (CO) content, a good tracer of human activity (transport, heating, and industrial activities). For this study we averaged the IASI data available since the launch of the first IASI, in order to increase the signal to noise, and allow discriminating the city from its surroundings.&amp;#160;For skin temperatures we show that some cities experience much warmer temperatures than nearby rural areas, with day and night differences, whereas other urban areas appear as cold urban islands when surrounded by deserts Examples will be shown and compare with MODIS observations. For CO emitted by human activities, we identified some cities that stand out from their background, and were able to compare their CO associated signatures with measurements provided by other available spaceborne instruments such as Mopitt and TROPOMI.&lt;/p&gt;


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (45) ◽  
pp. 293-301
Author(s):  
Rinad A. Popov ◽  
Aleksandr N. Sekisov ◽  
Ekaterina V. Solovyova ◽  
Nataliya A. Shipilova ◽  
Andrey A. Savenko

The purpose of the article is to identify the problems of Russian cities and urban-type settlements from the standpoint of their historical and economic development. Using the methodology of economic, statistical and retrospective analysis, it was revealed that along with the growth of large cities in recent years, there has been a tendency towards a reduction in small settlements, which is associated with a decrease in industrial production. The result of this is the active development of urban processes, leading to the concentration in large cities of the scientific, technical and intellectual and production potential of the regions, their transformation into self-sufficient centers for the development of territorial socio-economic locations. The result of the study is the substantiation of the need to create new methodological approaches to the development and placement of productive forces, planning of urban areas, solving problems of energy and resource supply of territories on the basis of achieving their ecological and economic efficiency. The concept of the decisive role of the resource-saving factor in the process of urbanization of territories is substantiated. It was revealed that the approach to the analysis and modeling of the city economy when considering it as a "quasi-corporation" involves the formation of an integrated reproduction system based on increasing the efficiency of the use of territory resources, which translates the process of planning the development of the urban environment into the category of business process technologies.


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