Livy’s Cato and Commodities at Centre and Periphery

This paper is part of a larger project on how Livy represents the Elder Cato, from his entrance into the text in Book 29 to his last witticism preserved in the summary of Book 50, the longest biographical arc in this first third of Livy’s text. It views Cato through the lens of his relationship with objects, and with Livy’s narrative as an object as well. This paper focuses on one episode in the life of Livy’s Cato, the debate over the repeal of the Lex Oppia, and builds on previous scholars’ work to unite three arguments: 1) Livy weaves together textual space and Roman topography so as to emphasise the simultaneous marginality and centrality of this debate; 2) Livy’s Cato and Valerius fill Rome’s urban topography with images of things so as to draw attention via women’s bodies to the relationship between luxury and Rome’s imperium; 3) Livy uses this episode to make an argument about his own historical writing and its active relationship to the expansion of empire. This project focusing on Livy’s Cato is itself part of an even larger reexamination of how we read, and might read, Livy.

Effects of Urban Topography and Traffic Emissions of Ultrafine Particulate Matter, Reactive Nitrogen Species, and Ozone in Greater Los Angeles Area

Traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) is a major source of pollutant exposure in urban areas. Particulate species concentrations have drastically increased over the past decade and little has been done to understand them further. This study aims to further research in atmospheric and environmental sciences and influence decisions made regarding urban climate policy by furthering the understanding of UFP size and concentrations. It will lead to a better understanding of dangerous particles and act as a basis for future studies that aim to further understand or mitigate anthropogenic ultrafine particle emissions. This can help policymakers design and implement better, more effective policies that aim to reduce traffic-related air pollution exposure in urban areas.

A Most Notable Dwelling: The Domus Romana and the Urban Topography of Roman Melite

This paper offers an overview of Roman Melite: the paper examines the epigraphic evidence for the topography of the urban centres of Gaulos and Melite in particular, the activities of wealthy benefactors and the civic government of the municipia through benefactions to the Temples to Apollo and Proserpina and dedications to the Imperial Cult. There is only limited evidence for the buildings themselves apart from the Domus Romana that was discovered on the outskirts of Rabat in 1881. The urban area appears to have been in decline by the fourth century AD despite the presence of a Late Roman see and Byzantine officials. The paper concludes with the abandonment of the island as a consequence of the Aghlabid sack of 870.

Questioning COVID-19 Pre-packaged Solidarity Initiatives in the Dutch Urban Spaces

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown has drastically transformed the urban topography and rhythms of the Dutch cities, both in the streets and when “seen from the window” (Lefebvre 1992/2004, 27). Windows and balconies, the liminal spaces where the private and public meet and depart, have become sites not only to “gaze from” but also to “gaze at”. Teddy bears, children’s drawings and letters, white T-shirts with red hearts hanging on/from the windows, as well as flags fluttering from balconies, all contributed to transforming this retracted border of cityness into a political space of communication. Similarly, the windows of commercial spaces have turned into message boards of unity and solidarity, with posters at once inviting customers to support local businesses and boosting feelings of locality...

A Multi-Scale Mapping Approach Based on a Deep Learning CNN Model for Reconstructing High-Resolution Urban DEMs

The scarcity of high-resolution urban digital elevation model (DEM) datasets, particularly in certain developing countries, has posed a challenge for many water-related applications such as flood risk management. A solution to address this is to develop effective approaches to reconstruct high-resolution DEMs from their low-resolution equivalents that are more widely available. However, the current high-resolution DEM reconstruction approaches mainly focus on natural topography. Few attempts have been made for urban topography, which is typically an integration of complex artificial and natural features. This study proposed a novel multi-scale mapping approach based on convolutional neural network (CNN) to deal with the complex features of urban topography and to reconstruct high-resolution urban DEMs. The proposed multi-scale CNN model was firstly trained using urban DEMs that contained topographic features at different resolutions, and then used to reconstruct the urban DEM at a specified (high) resolution from a low-resolution equivalent. A two-level accuracy assessment approach was also designed to evaluate the performance of the proposed urban DEM reconstruction method, in terms of numerical accuracy and morphological accuracy. The proposed DEM reconstruction approach was applied to a 121 km2 urbanized area in London, United Kingdom. Compared with other commonly used methods, the current CNN-based approach produced superior results, providing a cost-effective innovative method to acquire high-resolution DEMs in other data-scarce regions.

Conclusions

Chapter 8 outlines five key findings from the book: the importance of property transactions, the significance of urban topography, the importance of the family, the importance of charitable giving to institutions and the significance of the regional and national context.

Characterizing the dominant conditioning factors of urban waterlogging in highly urbanized coastal cities

<p>Under the background of global climate change and rapid urbanization, the low-lying coastal cities are vulnerable to urban waterlogging events, which seriously interrupt the sustainable development of society and economy. Urban waterlogging is a stagnant water disaster, which process affected by natural conditions and human activities. Previous studies had explored the effect of land-use type on waterlogging in relatively small watersheds. Few, however, have comprehensively revealed the relative contributions of the natural and anthropogenic factors to urban waterlogging concerning analysis scale variations. What is less known, are the dominant factors and the best analysis scale. The natural and anthropogenic factors such as topography, land cover characteristics (composition and spatial configuration), drainage density, and urban morphology are not comprehensively considered, which leads to some biases. To overcome this limitation, this study aims to investigate the complex mechanism of urban waterlogging by identifying the relative contribution of each influencing factor and the stability linking waterlogging to influencing factors at multiple analysis scales (i.e. 1 km, 2 km, 3 km, 4 km, and 5 km). We consider waterlogging events in the central urban districts of Guangzhou (PR China) from 2009 to 2015 as a case study. A novel method that integrates the stepwise regression model with hierarchical partitioning analysis is presented to quantify the complex relationship between urban waterlogging and influencing factors. Results show that the spatial distribution of waterlogging events in the central urban area presents a strong agglomeration pattern. The waterlogging hotspots are mostly concentrated in the historical area of Guangzhou (Liwan district, Yuexiu district, the northern part of Haizhu district and western part of Tianhe district). Under all analysis scales, urban waterlogging is confirmed to mainly affect by both land cover characteristics (the percent cover of urban green spaces and residential area) and urban topography (slope.std). However, the dominant factor of waterlogging varied noticeably among different analysis scales, which presents a strong scale effect. At a small analysis scale (1km), the urban topography factors (slope.std and relative elevation) are the dominant conditioning factors of urban waterlogging events; however, with the increase of analysis scale, the contribution of topographic factors gradually declines, while the relative contributions of land cover composition (greenspace, residence area, grassland) and land cover spatial configuration (LPI, AI, Cohesion index) are much higher than other factors. These results also reveal that both of the land cover composition and spatial configuration can significantly affect the magnitude of waterlogging, which indicates that even if the proportion of land cover remains constant, changing the spatial distribution pattern of land cover will also affect the magnitude of waterlogging. This finding improves our understanding that urban waterlogging can be alleviated by balancing the composition of land cover as well as by optimizing the land cover spatial pattern. This study extended our scientific understanding of the complex mechanisms of waterlogging in the highly urbanized coastal city with respect to a multi-scale analysis perspective, providing useful support for the prevention and management of urban waterlogging.</p>