Understanding the Role of Urban Morphology and Green Areas Configuration During Heat Waves

This paper focuses on urban planning strategies to adapt cities to the increasing rising of temperatures during summer heat waves. The main target is to investigate which configuration and distribution pattern of green spaces could effectively improve natural cooling of urban environments. Although the benefit that green areas give to natural cooling is well known, this kind of studies has hardly been carried out, especially at an urban scale where it is crucial to define quantities and density of green areas to address open spaces design. To reach this goal, a methodology based on the interpretation of the statistical correlation among temperature, urban parameters and green areas configurational indicators was implemented and applied to the case study of the Municipality of Naples, performing all the analysis in a GIS. Results provide guidelines to improve natural cooling in urban areas adopting the most effective configuration and distribution of green areas within a densely-built context.

Statistical Analysis of Housing Situation in EU Member States

This chapter attempts to analyze the housing market. In particular, it attempts to modelling through a statistical analysis the housing market in member states of the European Union.

Land Use Policy and Urban Sprawl in Nigeria

Land use policy is central to the development of urban life and the emergence of cities. In many developed capitalist societies, both the planning and expansion of the cities are usually anchored on sustainable urban land policies such that the growth of urban sprawl is effectively controlled. In most developing countries, land use policies are not only disparate, they are usually not connected to the growth of cities because policy makers are after the money they could make from private investors. This chapter argues that though the coming of the Land Use Act 1978 ended the era of disparate land law regimes, it has, over the years, sealed the control of urban lands to state governors, a development that has created massive corruption and arbitrariness in the allocation and utilization of urban lands. This approach to land administration has also hindered effective and sustainable urban and regional planning in many Nigerian cities. This study suggests the review of the 1978 Land Use Act and effective utilization of modern technologies in the monitoring of urban sprawls.

Effect of Urban Computing on the Public's Perception of Place, Community, and Infrastructure

The work presented in this chapter delineates the longitudinal experience of deploying an urban computing system that enables citizens to share and interact with digital content about the urban environment and experiences of people with it. It is part of an emerging and novel aspect of urban computing that expands research beyond simple optimisations of city functions towards a social and cultural approach that seeks to orchestrate complex socio-technical ensembles. Offering Collective City Memory as a service to citizens and enabling them to interact with it via diverse novel interfaces has uncovered the implications for city life that the introduction of urban computing brings such as the redefinition of spatial and temporal proximity and the effects on the perception of city space, fostering of social interactions, contribution to shared resources and participation in collective efforts.

Functional Urban Regions and Larger Urban Zones in Europe and Greece

In the European Union, Functional Urban Regions are important to economic and spatial planning; so is the existence of statistical data at this spatial level, both for the European and the national policies. Still, most European countries, like Greece, have no official delimitations for these zones - and, consecutively, no socio-economic data produced at this level. “Larger Urban Zones”, created by Eurostat's Urban Audit represent the only proxy to FURs that could be used for comparable studies, but this would demand an effort for a better harmonization and for consequent statistical series.

Housing Submarkets and Future Demographic Developments

Europe is undergoing a profound demographic change. This change will affect significantly all aspects of modern economies including the demand and the prices of the housing stock. The relationship between prices of the housing market and associated demographic variables has been long established. However, in the current literature, the housing market is considered to be unitary and coherent, that is one price reflects the housing stock without taking into account the housing characteristics which in real economy are considered essential for price calculation. To this respect it must be noted that housing submarkets existence has been long established based on the current literature. However and in relation to housing submarkets, the actual goal of the studies currently exist was the definition process, the models and the techniques that should be employed in order to acquire best results. Housing submarkets are considered important in the understanding of different social phenomena. In this chapter an attempt is made to review the relationship of housing prices to demographic variables and then a review on the definition process of housing submarkets.

Economic Convergence and Real Dimensions

Economic convergence exists when two or more economies tend to reach a similar level of development and wealth. The idea of convergence in economics is the hypothesis that poorer economies' per capita incomes will tend to grow at faster rates than richer economies. Though income is considered to be an important indicator, it is now widely recognized that ‘real' dimensions like nutrition, health, shelter, education etc. assess the overall wellbeing of an individual/household. The objective of this chapter is to discuss and formulate a methodology by which one can measure shelter deprivation and its convergence in a region as a step forward to add on to overall well-being of an individual or household. This chapter not only shows a methodology to calculate such divergence and analyses the reasons for such divergence, but also prepares a list of possible combinations of policy prescriptions by which a policy maker, such as the government, can find the extent of rectification of shelter deprivation of a group given its allotment of budget.

Quality of Resilient Cities, the Issue of Urban Waste

This chapter focuses on the metabolic concept for the management and treatment of construction waste and organic fraction of municipal solid waste in urban areas. Analysis of related Dutch, German and Polish guidelines for environmental zoning of industrial plants, allows formulation of conditions for an optimal siting of waste infrastructure within urban unit. Protection zones are defined in accordance with specific requirements for waste facilities, which treat and recycle both municipal and construction waste. Distances from inhabited areas are related to environmental burdens generated by such facilities (incl. parameters such as odours, noise level, explosion impacts and emissions of other substances). Moreover, this chapter provides the analysis of a selected case studies of waste facilities processing. A comparison of European guidelines and implementation of practical solutions is described in the case study analysis, including the issues open for the discussion about sustainable siting for waste processing infrastructure within an urban unit.

Towards a Competitive Sustainable City

This chapter analyses the dynamic of the development of cycling in Italy situating it also in the European context from an economic and strategic perspective. With this aim, first there was a study of the challenge of rapidly growing urban populations in spatially very limited areas affects not only residential housing construction. It also relates to urban infrastructure and services. This led to identification of new mobility needs, met mainly by private means, with implications in terms of congestion and air pollution. Results are analysed in terms of total trips of non-motorized urban mobility and help at understanding how promoting cycling is important for individual health, environmental sustainability and transport demand management. The chapter brings the debate on sustainable transport policy into direct confrontation with the embodied practice of cycling in an urbanized environment.

Sustainability Evaluation of Green Urban Logistics Systems

This paper aims to propose a systemic vision of literature on sustainable urban logistics assessment and evaluation. Although non-extensive, this overview pretends lack of unification in the subject of assessing and evaluating the impacts of green urban logistics systems, and, through the proposal of a general assessment and evaluation framework, the steps done and being in course towards standards on this field. First, an overview of the research in urban logistics is provided, after what the main visions of sustainable development and their derived issues for urban logistics assessment and evaluation are presented. Then, a framework to assess and evaluate green urban logistics systems via scenario comparison is proposed. This framework aims to propose a methodological framework to use and combine existing methods to assess scenarios, and not a “black-box” model of software ready to use. This is done to make synergies between existing methods, and to show that, although they remain at an initial stage, steps on the way of defining standards are made. After that, the main applicability and application issues of the proposed methodological framework are addressed, showing those principles of standard from the literature. Finally, and to conclude, future developments on urban logistics research are proposed.