The Power of Place: A Case Study of Auckland’s Design Creative Industries

Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city which also has the largest concentration of creative sector employment and businesses in the country. This study examines the spatial logic of firms in the design creative subsector in inner Auckland to gain better understanding of the ways in which place, space, and built form determine location choices. Firms’ attributes are also analysed with the aim of ascertaining whether firms with shared characteristics have similar spatial behaviour. Despite a high degree of spatial clustering, the unequal distribution of firms across inner Auckland suggests that some areas, such as Parnell, are favoured more than others. Parnell’s unique heritage built environment was identified as a location factor that has appealed to architects, designers, and advertisers and has contributed to the formation of the area’s creative clusters. The quality of Parnell’s built environment was associated with place reputation and image branding which was an important part of creating firm’s identity. A central location and the attractiveness of an amenities-rich local environment also played a role in the decision-making process. Furthermore, the results also suggest that firms that possess common characteristics have similar spatial logic and make similar location choices.

Determinants of Growth in Multiunit Housing Demand since the Great Recession: An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis

Following the Great Recession (2007–2009), growth in multiunit housing starts has been exceptionally strong and sustained. In this study, we examine empirical evidence for three possible explanations, namely, the passage of Baby Boomers into senior years, the depressed economic conditions, and rising preference of recent birth cohorts for residing in urban cores. Applying Age-Period-Cohort analysis to census data on multiunit housing occupancy from 1970 to 2010, we find evidence to support the explanations that a sharp increase in demand from Millennials drawn to urban cores and retiring Baby Boomers are contributing to the growth in multiunit housing starts. The results provide weak evidence of a negative relationship between depressed economic conditions and demand for multiunit housing starts. Over the long term, demand for multiunit housing can be expected to moderate as a result of the projected aging of the population.

Nature-Related Experience during Childhood in Urban and Rural Areas: The Case of Peninsular Malaysians

Direct experiences with nature in childhood are essential for enhancing psychological and physical development in children. However, researches on childhood nature-related experiences and their effects are largely biased toward more developed Western countries. In this study, we created a questionnaire on childhood experiences with nature and surveyed 357 adults (>20 years old) around Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, to determine whether younger generations had fewer nature-based experiences than older generations and whether people who grew up in urban areas had fewer experiences than those who grew up in rural areas. We found that playing in rivers or waterfalls and collecting and eating tropical fruits were the most common nature-related activities experienced in childhood. There was a minimal decline in nature-related experiences among generations. However, people who grew up in rural areas had more nature-related experiences than those who grew up in urban areas. The loss of nature areas and increase in population density may accelerate the decline in nature-related experiences in urban areas. Therefore, efforts to create urban parks and other public spaces for reconnecting urban children to nature will become increasingly important for urban planning and environmental education in tropical developing countries such as Malaysia.

Understanding Youth Violence in Kumasi: Does Community Socialization Matter? A Cross-Sectional Study

Violence by young people is one of the most visible forms of social disorder in urban settlements. This study assesses the causes and consequences of youth violence in the Kumasi metropolis. The study design was a nonexperimental cross-sectional survey. A mixed method approach facilitated the random sampling of 71 young people in the Kumasi metropolis through a stratified procedure between December 2014 and November 2015. Ten (10) participants were purposively selected and enrolled in a focus group discussion. Descriptive statistics formed the basis for the analysis. This was supported with a matched discourse analysis of the emerging themes. More than half of the youth (39, 54.9%) demonstrated history of ever engaging in violence in the past one year of whom 24 (61.5%) were without formal education. The frequency of the violence perpetuation ranged from daily engagement (3, 4%) to weekly engagement in violence (12, 17%). Principally, the categories of youth violence were manifested in noise making, rape, murder, stealing, drug addiction, obscene gestures, robbery, sexual abuse, and embarrassment. Peer pressure and street survival coping approaches emerged as the pivotal factors that induced youth violence. Addressing youth violence requires an integrative framework that incorporates youth perspectives, government, chiefs, and nongovernmental organizations in Ghana, and religious bodies.

Ethnoreligious Urban Violence and Residential Mobility in Nigerian Cities: The Kaduna Experience

This paper seeks to examine the ethnoreligious urban violence and residential mobility in the city of Kaduna with a view to make recommendations towards ameliorating its effects by evaluating the causal factors fueling the crisis and examining the pattern and direction of the residential mobility in the city. The sources of data were both primary and secondary. The sampling technique used was purposive and random sampling from two residential districts from both the northern and southern parts of the city. A total of 1,000 questionnaires were administered within the study areas and 900 questionnaires were collected. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with major stakeholders from the two parts. The data obtained were analysed using thematic and content analysis for the qualitative data whilst the quantitative data were analysed using simple percentages. The results revealed that the factors causing the ethnoreligious urban violence and residential mobility are unemployment, social institutional breakdown, politics, and colonial impact and the pattern/direction of the residential mobility in the city of Kaduna show a clear polarization along religious lines based reactive residential mobility between the two parts of the city. Based on these results recommendations were made to assist the academia, practitioners, and policy makers.

Urban Biodiversity: Perception, Preference, General Awareness, and Threats in Two Cities (Niamey and Maradi) of Niger

This study was undertaken to obtain direct and useful data that support biodiversity awareness and management in two cities of Niger. 800 questionnaires were administrated to the populations of Niamey and Maradi. The results show that 99% of respondents are aware of the importance of biodiversity in urban areas. They assign multiple roles to it; however, climatic and managerial reasons explain why plants are most preferred to animals in these cities. Furthermore, shade and fruits are the criteria for plant species selection, and that explains the abundance of Azadirachta indica A. Juss. and Mangifera indica L. Even though plants are preferred to animals in houses, 47% of the respondents practice animal husbandry. Most of the animals are left wandering with risks of destruction of green areas, road unsafety, and zoonotic contamination. The results of this study also showed the ignorance of 55% of the respondents about the presence of wildlife in urban areas. The proliferation of cockroaches and rats could be an indication of insanitary conditions that are faced in some areas of the cities as mentioned by 81% of the respondents. This study shows the importance of local knowledge in the identification process of urban problems.

Shrinking Regions in a Shrinking Country: The Geography of Population Decline in Lithuania 2001–2011

Shrinking populations have been gaining increasing attention, especially in postsocialist Eastern and Central European countries. While most studies focus on specific cities and regions, much less is known about the spatial dimension of population decline on the national level and the local factors determining spatially uneven population change. This study uses Lithuanian census data from the years 2001 to 2011 to get insight into the geography of population change for the whole country. Lithuania has experienced one of the highest rates of population decline in the world in the last decades. The predictive models show that regional factors have a strong effect on the variation in population change throughout the country but also reveal that sociodemographic and economic area characteristics play a role in the process of decline. Our results give little hope to those who would like to reverse the ongoing trends of population change and emphasize the need for spatial planning to cope with the changes. This is an approach which currently does not exist in practice in Lithuania.

Analysis of Akure Urban Land Use Change Detection from Remote Imagery Perspective

This study presents the analysis of Akure urban land use change detection from remote imagery perspective. Efforts were made to examine the direction that the continuous expansion of the city tends towards since its inception as a state capital in 1976. Using Aerial Imagery Overlay (AIO), the pattern of land use changes in Akure and its environs were determined. This involves imageries interpolation and overlaying to determine the land use changes, direction, and extent of the expansion. Findings revealed unguided expansion in the growth of the city which affects the pattern of land uses within the city and, by extension, into the adjoining settlements. There were incompatible conversions in land uses and undue encroachment into green areas in the adjoining communities. The study suggests effective zoning strategy on unguided nature of urban development whose effects on land use are very prominent in the study area. Adequate monitoring by the Development Control Department and other stakeholders in urban planning is equally suggested to mitigate the incompatible land use changes in the area.

Social Isolation of the Stateless and the Destitute: A Study on the Refugee-Camp and the Sullied Slum of Dhaka City

The lower-class segment of the population of the developing nations often fails to form meaningful social relations and remain disengaged from essential social institutions. The research examines those people who live in refugee-camp and sullied slum of Dhaka city and inspect how much they are socially isolated. Certain characteristics, taken as indicators to test the level of social isolation, indicate that a large segment of camp and slum dwellers are feeling isolated. However, the evidence shows no differences in the predicted direction with respect to the objective demographic variables; nonetheless, a pattern of perceived social isolation was found from the survey data.

Potential for Application of Retroreflective Materials instead of Highly Reflective Materials for Urban Heat Island Mitigation

Research on urban heat island (UHI) mitigation has been carried out globally. Several strategies have been proposed or developed to mitigate UHI, including highly reflective (HR) envelopes of buildings, green roofs, urban vegetation, shading, heat sinks, and air-conditioning efficiency. Among these techniques, HR envelopes have been extensively studied as an effective method to mitigate the UHI effect by reducing energy consumption. However, because most of HR materials are diffusive, HR envelopes applied to vertical surfaces can reflect both onto roads and nearby buildings. Additionally, HR roofs cannot reflect all incoming solar radiation to the sky if there are high buildings around it. Thus, HR materials applied as building envelopes have a limited effect against the solar contribution to the UHI. In order to solve this problem, retroreflective (RR) materials, which reflect the solar radiation back towards the source, have been studied and developed to be applied as building envelopes instead of HR materials. This paper summarizes several previous researches on HR envelopes and cool roofs and summarizes several current researches on RR materials. The potential for application of RR envelopes in cities is proposed with consideration of economic and environmental factors.