Detecting Vicious Cycles in Urban Problem Knowledge Graph using Inference Rules

Urban areas have many problems, including homelessness, graffiti, and littering. These problems are influenced by various factors and are linked to each other; thus, an understanding of the problem structure is required in order to detect and solve the root problems that generate vicious cycles. Moreover, before implementing action plans to solve these problems, local governments need to estimate cost-effectiveness when the plans are carried out. Therefore, this paper proposes constructing an urban problem knowledge graph that would include urban problems' causality and the related cost information in budget sheets. In addition, this paper proposes a method for detecting vicious cycles of urban problems using SPARQL queries with inference rules from the knowledge graph. Finally, several root problems that led to vicious cycles were detected. Urban-problem experts evaluated the extracted causal relations.

Committing to Keep Clean: Nudging Complements Standard Policy Measures to Reduce Illegal Urban Garbage Disposal in a Neighborhood With High Levels of Social Cohesion

Illegal garbage disposals are a persistent urban problem, resulting in high clean-up costs, and nuisance and decreased satisfaction with the neighborhood among residents. We compared three adjacent city-areas in Rotterdam in the Netherlands which, for 2 weeks, either: (1) no action to decrease illegal garbage disposals was taken; (2) standard door-to-door canvassing was carried out; or (3) door-to-door canvassing was enriched with several nudges, most importantly a commitment-nudge. The nudge treatment proved highly effective, reducing illegal disposals at post-test and follow-up (2 months later) with two-thirds, resulting in a very large effect size (d = 2.60). At post-test, standard door-to-door canvassing did not differ from the control treatment, but at follow-up results were comparable to the nudging-treatment. This could, however, be due to spill-over effects. Using a commitment nudge thus proved highly effective in decreasing illegal garbage disposals, however, effects might be specific to neighborhoods with strong social cohesion.

Policing Prostitution

Policing Prostitution examines the complex world of commercial sex in the final two decades of the Russian Empire before its collapse in 1917. From the 1840s until 1917, prostitution was legally tolerated across the Empire under a system known as regulation. Medical-police were in charge of compiling information about registered prostitutes and ensuring that they followed the strict rules prescribed by the imperial state governing their visibility and behaviour. The vast majority of women who sold sex hailed from the lower classes, as did their managers and clients. Official interest in prostitution generated a mass of documentation, which allows us to glimpse the lives and challenges of various groups of the Empire’s urban lower classes, including women who sold sex, their clients, brothel madams, police, and wider urban communities. In the late imperial period, prostitution was not just an urban ‘problem’ to be controlled and contained, but also a lucrative commodity due to the formal and informal financial relationships forged between brothel madams, registered prostitutes, and the police. This study is a social history of prostitution, drawing on archival material from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. It focuses on how regulation was implemented, experienced, and resisted in various urban centres in the northwest of the Russian Empire, and how everyday experiences of regulation varied widely from place to place. In principle, the tsarist state regulated prostitution in the name of public order and public health; in practice, that regulation was both modulated by provincial police forces who had different local priorities, resources, and strategies, and contested by registered prostitutes, brothel madams, and others who interacted with the world of commercial sex.

Review of Brownfield Redevelopment in China and a Comparison with that in OECD Countries

Concomitantly with China’s rise as the manufacturing hub of the world as the 20th Century faded and the Western countries witnessed industrial restructuring, brownfields emerged as an urban problem in city regions, prompting research into how to achieve brownfield redevelopment. More recently, as the global economy diversified, brownfields, and demand for redevelopment have entered the scene of urban development in China, also becoming a research field. This paper reviews international peer reviewed scientific journals on brownfield redevelopment in China, with a focus on social science approaches. Utilizing a previous review of research on OECD countries, this paper indicates similarities and differences between China and Europe and North America in terms of brownfield redevelopment. The comparison shows that research on China is catching up with the international state-of-the-art literature, addressing topics related to pollution; land use and property development; land financing, property and economics; governance, state-market interactions and private–public partnerships; and decision-making systems. Especially, the focus on user rights versus property ownership appears important for international comparative research.

Outdoor air pollution in India is not only an urban problem

Urban outdoor air pollution in the developing world, mostly due to particulate matter with diameters smaller than 2.5 µm (PM2.5), has been highlighted in recent years. It leads to millions of premature deaths. Outdoor air pollution has also been viewed mostly as an urban problem. We use satellite-derived demarcations to parse India’s population into urban and nonurban regions, which agrees with the census data. We also use the satellite-derived surface PM2.5levels to calculate the health impacts in the urban and nonurban regions. We show that outdoor air pollution is just as severe in nonurban regions as in the urban regions of India, with implications to monitoring, regulations, health, and policy.

Development of a Partial Repair Process for Sewer Lines to Prevent Ground Subsidence in Urban Areas

Ground subsidence and pollutant runoff due to old sewer lines have been considered a major urban problem. Accordingly, the central and local governments are continuously making efforts to repair the sewage lines. In this study, an economical sewage line repair method based on glass fiber was developed, and its performance was evaluated. In the case of physical characteristics, it was found that the new method can secure more stability and strength compared to the existing sewer pipe repair method. In addition, it was found that economic efficiency was effectively improved by more than 10% in sewage pipes of 300 mm or more and 28%, which is the maximum value in 900 mm pipes, compared to the existing, similar process. In particular, since 70% of domestic sewer pipes are composed of pipes with a diameter of 300 mm or more, the partial repair method developed through this study is expected to be economically beneficial for sewer pipe repairs in the future.

Problems of Sanitation in India: Does Culture Matter?

Although sanitation is a core element of healthy family and community life and an important indicator of social development, it has not received the sociological attention it deserves. Based on an analysis of both rural and urban areas cutting across diverse social groups, this article shows that the sanitation in India is not only a rural but also an urban problem, particularly in the context of growing industrialisation, coupled with concomitant rapid urbanisation and expansion of cities. The article unveils the link between poor sanitation, especially preference for open defecation among rural folks with peoples’ practices and perceptions, which are deeply rooted in cultural norms. Ultimately, it is argued that it is not the resources but rather the beliefs, practices and customs of people related to health and environment that matter in improving the sanitary conditions in India

FUTURE CITY BASED ON SMART MOBILITY CONCEPT: CHARACTER AND BENCHMARKING

A city in overcoming its problem is defined as a smart product known as the smart city concept. Smart city has a conceptual definition as a city that is anticipatively able to manage resources in an innovative and competitive manner, with technological support in order to create a city that is comfortable and sustainable. One of the dimensions in smart city is smart mobility (transportation and infrastructure): Management of urban infrastructure that is developed in the future is an integrated and oriented management system to ensure alignments with the public interest. This study uses a critical review approach with a descriptive analysis method which is carried out by examining an urban problem in general and the theory of smart city through the search for ideas in the literature with the focus of this research is to define the character of smart mobility so that from defining the character, a solution is obtained about the indicator and expectations that are fulfilled to realize a city that has a smart mobility character. Through these methods, characters are generated from a smart city that is responsive, innovative and competitive. From these criteria produce a matrix to explain smart mobility consisting of aspects concerning aspects of less mobility, move freely, and less travel time. From the existence of the character and the matrix is finally cascaded to an indicator of the benchmarking toward smart mobility of a city.Keywords – Smart Mobility, less mobility, move freely, and less travel time