You're using an outdated browser. Please upgrade to a modern browser for the best experience.
Subject:
All Disciplines Arts & Humanities Biology & Life Sciences Business & Economics Chemistry & Materials Science Computer Science & Mathematics Engineering Environmental & Earth Sciences Medicine & Pharmacology Physical Sciences Public Health & Healthcare Social Sciences
Sort by:
Most Viewed Latest Alphabetical (A-Z) Alphabetical (Z-A)
Filter:
All Topic Review Biography Peer Reviewed Entry Video Entry
Topic Review
Thin Asphalt Layers as a Traffic Noise Intervention
Low-noise thin asphalt layers (TALs) are a feasible solution to mitigate road traffic noise in urban environments. Nevertheless, the impacts of this type of noise intervention are reported mostly regarding noise levels, while non-acoustic aspects influencing the population perception are still little-known. This study investigates the implementation of TALs in two streets of Antwerp, Belgium. The effectiveness of the intervention was measured via noise modelling and acoustic measurements of road traffic noise. A reduction of 2.8 dB in noise exposure was observed in Lden and Lnight, while SPB measurements showed decreases up to 5.2 dB on the roadside. The subjective impacts of the TALs were evaluated via self-administered surveys and compared to results from control streets. The annoyance indicators were positively impacted by the TALs implementation, resulting in annoyance levels similar or lower than in the control streets. The TALs did not impact the reported physical complaints, sleep quality, and comfort level to perform activities. 
  • 1.1K
  • 23 Nov 2021
Topic Review
PPE in Designing Public Parks
Public participation exercise (PPE) is defined as citizen participation and implies the involvement of citizens in a wide range of policymaking activities. These include the determination of levels of service, budget priorities, and the acceptability of physical construction projects in order to orient government programmes toward community needs, build public support, and encourage a sense of cohesiveness within neighbourhoods.
  • 1.1K
  • 11 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Urban Compactivity Models
Urban Compactivity encompasses a whole range of new trends, concepts, and development models that seek to scale up sustainable and even post-sustainable transition solutions (see the e.g., of the regenerative paradigm). Therefore, this evolution and proliferation of terms associated with the conceptual universe of urban connectivity can perhaps translate a progressive permeability of mainstream urban planning to the incorporation of transitional solutions that emerge more or less spontaneously from society. For exploring the dimensions of this domain, and its relevance for future organizations of city spaces, the following models remain on the forefront of the literature, aiming at practically answering to global environmental issues through a sustainable transformation of cities: The compact city is a model that dates back to the 1980s, with its main objective to actively and efficiently work towards global sustainability in order to drastically decrease climatic changes caused by the irresponsible human interaction with our planet.
  • 1.1K
  • 02 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Spread of Viruses on Universities Campuses
Outdoor open spaces are important for sustainable universities because they accommodate outdoor activities and enhance the campus’s livability and vitality. The character of the outdoor space determines the quality of the campus.
  • 1.1K
  • 07 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Morphological Transformation of Urban Open Spaces
Ongoing urbanization has led to the continuous expansion of built-up areas; as a result, open space is under great threat. Despite the wealth of studies conducted on open spaces, there is still a further need to further investigate the morphology of open space, particularly in an effort to understand the trends and drivers of open space morphological transformation that remain under-researched.
  • 1.0K
  • 16 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Causalities of Upscaled Urban Aquaponics
Aquaponics, the water-reusing production of fish and crops, is taken as an example to investigate the consequences of upscaling a nature-based solution in a circular city. We developed an upscaled-aquaponic scenario for the German metropolis of Berlin, analysed the impacts, and studied the system dynamics. To meet the annual fish, tomato, and lettuce demand of Berlin’s 3.77 million residents would require approximately 370 aquaponic facilities covering a total area of 224 hectares and the use of different combinations of fish and crops: catfish/tomato (56%), catfish/lettuce (13%), and tilapia/tomato (31%). As a predominant effect, in terms of water, aquaponic production would save about 2.0 million m3 of water compared to the baseline. On the supply-side, we identified significant causal link chains concerning the Food-Water-Energy nexus at the aquaponic facility level as well as causal relations of a production relocation to Berlin. On the demand-side, a ‘freshwater pescatarian diet’ is discussed. The new and comprehensive findings at different system levels require further investigations on this topic. Upscaled aquaponics can produce a relevant contribution to Berlin’s sustainability and to implement it, research is needed to find suitable sites for local aquaponics in Berlin, possibly inside buildings, on urban roofscape, or in peri-urban areas. 
  • 1.0K
  • 10 Aug 2021
Topic Review
Sustainable Coastal Design
Mediterranean coastal cities are mostly urban environments with a long history, hence the idea that the different aspects that form the identity and perception of the cities can be interconnected in a framework that can be useful for further understanding and improvement. There is a need to consider multiple scales, national boundaries, the intersection of land and water and different stakeholders, policies and sectors. The coastal zone is an interface between land and sea, composed of a continuum of coastal land, intertidal areas, aquatic systems including the network of rivers and estuaries, islands, transitional and intertidal areas, salt marshes, wetlands and beaches. Natural coastal systems and areas where human activities involve the use of coastal resources may, therefore, extend well beyond the limit of territorial waters, and several kilometers inland.
  • 992
  • 29 Jun 2023
Topic Review
Urban Agriculture in Today’s Sustainable Cities
Urban agriculture (UA) has become a commonly discussed topic in recent years with respect to sustainable development. Therefore, the combination of urban fabric and local food production is crucial for ecological reasons. The key issues are the reduction of food miles and the demand for processed food, the production of which strains the natural environment.
  • 990
  • 02 Feb 2023
Topic Review
Urban Community Resilience Amidst the Spreading of COVID-19
Based on 90% of all reported COVID-19 in the world, urban areas become the pandemic’s epicenter due to population size and high-level global connectivity, rather than rural areas. Urban research related to pandemics focuses on marginal groups who have difficulty accessing health facilities, particularly in informal settlements. Amid a pandemic, insufficient isolation for COVID-19 patients may be related to the rapid increase of COVID-19 cases. Lockdown has worsened economic conditions for informal workers in urban areas, the lack of labor market opportunities, livelihood advancement, and occupational mobility for informal workers make it difficult to survive in the city. Loss of income due to the lockdown has made marginal communities in urban areas more vulnerable because they have to bear the changing needs of life during the pandemic.
  • 980
  • 16 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Urban Community Elderly Care Facility
How to deal with the aging population has become an essential issue for the whole world. With the development of the economy and technology, human beings are no longer satisfied with the increase in life expectancy; they are instead pursuing a high quality of life (QOL). Studies have shown that the elderly in centralized nursing facilities suffer from depression, high mortality rates, and low QOL. “Aging in place” is proposed to help the elderly age better. It refers to extending residence time and satisfying the preference of the elderly to age in a familiar environment, supported by the external environment of the community. As an essential link to ensure aging in place, community elderly care facilities (CECFs) have been studied in terms of facility functional setting and service supply, facility spatial distribution and accessibility, and facility service and financial security.
  • 978
  • 26 Aug 2022
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
The Lost Shantytowns of Barcelona
Shantytowns still existed in many of Southern Europe’s major cities in the second half of the 20th century, although many have now been demolished. The purpose of this article is to highlight the history and evolution of some of the main shantytowns that remained in Barcelona in the mid-1970s, track their subsequent demolition, and reflect on the fate of the shanty dwellers. This form of self-build housing, usually lacking in basic services, played a vital role in providing shelter for immigrant families and the urban poor. A strong neighbourhood identity existed in many of these shantytowns, and national and local policies that aimed at their demolition and the re-housing of residents, often in low-quality housing blocks, proved problematic. The shantytowns studied here are La Perona, the Tres Turons, Campo de la Bota, and Ramon Casellas, which together comprised over 2000 shanty dwellings in the 1970s. Drawing on photographs taken at the time and existing literature, and using recent images from Google Earth, the demise of these shantytowns is examined, and the policies and plans that determined their fate are discussed. This article finds that the shanty dwellers experienced mixed fortunes, some being forcibly removed and re-housed in tower blocks with associated social-economic problems, whilst others played an active part in the design of replacement housing, implemented in situ where the shanty dwellings once existed. This article contributes to existing studies on shantytowns in Barcelona, which received scant attention from academics at the time, and which only now are being recognised as an important aspect of Barcelona’s urban history.
  • 960
  • 08 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Walking Needs and COVID-19
More than 150 cities around the world have expanded emergency cycling and walking infrastructure to increase their resilience in the face of the COVID 19 pandemic. This tendency toward walking has led it to becoming the predominant daily mode of transport that also contributes to significant changes in the relationships between the hierarchy of walking needs and walking behaviour. These changes need to be addressed in order to increase the resilience of walking environments in the face of such a pandemic.
  • 950
  • 26 Jul 2021
Topic Review
Ground Beetle Communities and Urbanization
Urbanization involves the profound alteration of original habitats and causes habitat loss and biodiversity decline. Urban areas and roads in land use mainly have a negative influence on ground beetles. Paddies, fields, parks and green spaces, and open space were positively correlated with species richness of forest species and large-sized species, and open space was positively correlated with species richness and the density of open land species. However, ground beetle communities in different areas of varying sizes did not group separately. These results suggest that changes in paddies, fields, parks and green spaces, forests, and open space associated with the expanding urban area and road greatly influenced species composition, and the community structure remained similar. 
  • 947
  • 10 Jul 2021
Topic Review
Accessibility to Public Service Facilities on Housing Prices
High-value units of public service accessibility are concentrated in built-up areas, while low-value units are located at the urban fringe. Larger public services have more significant clustering effects than smaller ones. Recreational, medical, educational and financial facilities all have capitalisation effects on housing prices. Both the geographical detector model and the spatial association detector model could identify the drivers of housing prices, but the explanatory power of the latter is greater and could enhance the validity and reliability of the findings.
  • 938
  • 29 Jun 2023
Topic Review
Analysis of Perceived Safety, Urban Landscape Sense Perception
Numerous studies in the field of urban planning show that the perception of qualitative traits such as safety is influenced by the visual components of the urban environment. Studies have proposed methods to predict citizens’ subjective perceptions at the urban scale, which also includes the evaluation of the subjective safety perceptions of streets. 
  • 925
  • 19 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Expansion of the Research Scope of Spatial Mismatch
A growing number of studies have realized that spatial mismatch itself was from the beginning not only about how space interacts with the labor market, but about how space is related to race, transport, skills, social relations, occupational segmentation, and other elements that influence labor market outcomes, and that spatial mismatch needs to be understood and constructed in a broader context. With further suburbanization, changes in demographic characteristics, housing market reforms, and economic restructuring, and urban sprawl, scholars have begun to reassess the diametrically opposed findings on spatial mismatch by placing them in the new socio-economic context and working to expand the possibilities of spatial mismatch in terms of the group concerned, influencing factors, indicator methods, spatial relationships, and consequential effects.
  • 913
  • 28 Jul 2022
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Research Trends in Resilience and Vulnerability Studies
While the definition of resilience is disputed or even fuzzy, due in no small part to the diversity of its applications, the concept generally involves the ability to withstand and bounce back from shocks; vulnerability as a related concept involves the tendency to suffer from shocks, given existing characteristics that may prevent resilient responses. Vulnerabilities put individuals, groups, and societies at greater risk and disadvantage, suggesting a need not only for disaster response and recovery, but mitigation and preparedness. Resilience and vulnerability research has recently focused on the role of government, the COVID-19 pandemic, and flood hazards; topics of interest have also included resilience of rural and urban areas, development and sustainability, and displacement and migration.
  • 911
  • 19 Oct 2023
Topic Review
Social Sustainable Urban Air Mobility in Europe
The first step to steer passenger Urban Air Mobility (pUAM) towards the necessity of sustainability is to understand its impact on urban transportation systems. The introduction of pUAM will have a rather negative impact on the social sustainability assessment of European urban mobility systems. The short- to mid-term affordability of pUAM for broad parts of the population cannot be expected without public subsidies. For this engagement, however, local community must first demand clear prospects for added value. Similarly, the overall inclusivity evaluation of urban transportation systems must be expected to decline if planning authorities will not demand certain standards for mobility-impaired groups. Vertiport operation in already developed urban locations might not improve accessibility, however, cross-financed and open access mobility hubs in suburbs and rural areas might include pUAM and thus contribute positively to the access indicator. A high level of satisfaction with pUAM among the public is not expected due to target-group specific business modelling. Last but not least, an impairment of the overall quality of urban public spaces is likely but might be minimised through the allocation of legal competences for urban airspace planning and civil society participation on the local level.
  • 894
  • 05 Aug 2022
Topic Review
Housing Resources and Mismatched Housing Needs in China
In today's China, almost 90% of households own their own home. At the same time, more than 20% of Chinese households own several properties, which is higher than in many developed countries. Only fifty years ago, China was recognized for its communist welfare-oriented housing system, which distributed public rental homes to urban residents centred around their work unit, which was the mechanism through which citizens accessed not only housing, but also education, care for preschool children, and eldercare, thus giving women, in particular, the opportunity to engage more fully in waged work. In 1998, the government proclaimed the end of state involvement in allocating housing and, in the short period since, China has shifted from a society dominated by public renters to one of the countries with the greatest rate of homeownership.
  • 885
  • 01 Dec 2021
Topic Review
NEET Rural–Urban Ecosystems
The European Union (EU) typically supports young people aged between 15–24 years who are not in employment, education, or training (NEETs) via policies that target the following interconnected areas at the individual member state level: employment; education; social work; and youth engagement. In the context of employment, each country must develop an aligned European employment strategy coordinated with the other member states, which should contribute to the management of common policies and the involvement of local governments, trade unions, and employers’ organisations. 
  • 879
  • 29 Nov 2021
  • Page
  • of
  • 7
Featured Entry Collections
>>

Featured Books

>>
Encyclopedia of COVID-19
Encyclopedia of Engineering
Encyclopedia of Social Sciences
Encyclopedia of Digital Society, Industry 5.0 and Smart City
Academic Video Service
Feedback