Epilogue: The Business District Improvement Movement and its Management: Looking Forward

Despite cross-disciplinary attention to laws targeting homeless behavior in cities, systematic analysis of the power dynamics behind the adoption and implementation of such laws is surprisingly scarce. This article addresses that oversight by investigating the politics of anti-homeless policies in San Francisco, a critical and revealing case. Using a mixed-methods approach that joins qualitative analysis of public records with spatial and statistical analysis of precinct-level election results, census data, and geocoded police and 311 records, it evaluates previously unmeasured claims concerning the relative influence of social and economic forces in determining policy adoption and assesses whether enforcement patterns betray preferential treatment. Findings suggest that in the face of mobilized opposition, an anti-homeless regime composed of business and neighborhood merchants, elected officials, conservatives, and homeowners each contribute resources required to pass anti-homeless laws. Contrary to past claims, enforcement practices do not appear to privilege only the downtown business district.

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Analysis of Urban Effects in Oklahoma City using a Dense Surface Observing Network

Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology ◽

10.1175/jamc-d-15-0206.1 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 55 (3) ◽

pp. 723-741 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Xiao-Ming Hu ◽

Ming Xue ◽

Petra M. Klein ◽

Bradley G. Illston ◽

Sheng Chen

Keyword(s):

Metropolitan Area ◽

Land Surface ◽

Critical Role ◽

Central Business District ◽

Temperature Inversion ◽

Oklahoma City ◽

Near Surface ◽

Open Questions ◽

The Stability ◽

Business District

AbstractMany studies have investigated urban heat island (UHI) intensity for cities around the world, which is normally quantified as the temperature difference between urban location(s) and rural location(s). A few open questions still remain regarding the UHI, such as the spatial distribution of UHI intensity, temporal (including diurnal and seasonal) variation of UHI intensity, and the UHI formation mechanism. A dense network of atmospheric monitoring sites, known as the Oklahoma City (OKC) Micronet (OKCNET), was deployed in 2008 across the OKC metropolitan area. This study analyzes data from OKCNET in 2009 and 2010 to investigate OKC UHI at a subcity spatial scale for the first time. The UHI intensity exhibited large spatial variations over OKC. During both daytime and nighttime, the strongest UHI intensity is mostly confined around the central business district where land surface roughness is the highest in the OKC metropolitan area. These results do not support the roughness warming theory to explain the air temperature UHI in OKC. The UHI intensity of OKC increased prominently around the early evening transition (EET) and stayed at a fairly constant level throughout the night. The physical processes during the EET play a critical role in determining the nocturnal UHI intensity. The near-surface rural temperature inversion strength was a good indicator for nocturnal UHI intensity. As a consequence of the relatively weak near-surface rural inversion, the strongest nocturnal UHI in OKC was less likely to occur in summer. Other meteorological factors (e.g., wind speed and cloud) can affect the stability/depth of the nighttime boundary layer and can thus modulate nocturnal UHI intensity.

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