Smart city communication via social media: Analysing residents' and visitors' engagement

This research applies a unique conceptual model and methodology incorporating popularity, commitment, and virality to measure the social media engagement with residents and visitors of smart cities and how they communicate ‘smart’ elements and their brands. Digital content analysis was applied to a sample of ten Spanish smart cities (including Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid, Seville and Valencia, among others), with measurable and quantifiable elements of engagement (e.g., likes, shares and comments). The smart cities analysed achieved acceptable, but rudimentary, levels of engagement via social media using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. However, they displayed weaknesses related to their image and branding as well as the effectiveness with which they communicated their smart characteristics. The main implication of this research is that these Spanish smart cities have considerable scope to improve their use of social media to enhance their communications and branding. Greater emphasis is required on delivering emotional (affective) messages and a higher priority needs to be given to business and business event travellers and those visiting friends and relatives.     

Labour mobility between cities and metropolitan integration: The role of high speed rail commuting in Spain

Although the link between transport accessibility and the regional and local scope of labour markets has been widely studied in the literature, high speed rail (HSR) commuting is a relatively new user behaviour and little research has been done to date on labour migration derived from inter-regional HSR commuting. This paper contributes to the limited existing literature by analysing the evolution of the impact of HSR on labour markets in commuting relations. The added value of this research is that it is the first assessment of a panel data regression analysis taking account of HSR as a variable and using labour inter-regional mobility data (2002–2014). The model has been validated using the HSR commuting areas that converge in the metropolitan areas of Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Malaga.Results have highlighted the complexity of the variables involved in the decision to commute by HSR. This complexity is linked to the causal relations between the most representative variables, namely unemployment rates and housing prices, which are more difficult to study during periods of economic crisis. The location of the HSR station has been revealed as a key indicator, and is even more significant (in the case of the Madrid functional area) than the actual availability of the HSR commuting services.     

Using Social Network Analysis to Visualize the Social-Media Networks of Community Groups: Two Case Studies from Sydney

Community participation in planning is generally considered crucial for the delivery of positive outcomes; however, the network structures that can be created by community groups that use social media and participate in the network are not widely understood. This paper explores the use of social media, specifically Twitter, by two community groups in Sydney. In the context of this study, community groups are self-created and organized groups of citizens that form to oppose a proposal to amend planning controls for a specific site. Employing the research technique of Social Network Analysis (SNA), this paper seeks to visualize community group social media networks, as well as understand who is connected and who is participating within the networks. For the two community groups investigated, it was found that they do not attract large numbers of friends and followers on Twitter and key stakeholders play a passive listening role in the networks.     

E-Capital and Economic Growth in European Metropolitan Areas: Applying Social Media Messaging in Technology-Based Urban Analysis

ABSTRACT

Innovation is an elemental part of regional economic growth. In the past years, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have enabled new means for data collection, and analysis for the study of regional innovation systems. This paper investigates innovation and technology messaging in Twitter, which has been described as the SMS of the Internet. The concept of electronic capital (e-capital) is applied in order to find out how technology messaging relates to the economic situation in metropolitan areas. The recently introduced concept of e-capital is cultivated from the conceptualizations of innovation acknowledging that different forms of capital, including human, social, and economic, circulate and have an effect on each other. The analysis indicates that clusters of e-capital and potential growth clusters are identifiable by using Twitter activity. In Europe, e-capital agglomerates to previously identified clusters of the “Blue Banana” and the “Golden Banana” (or the “Sun Belt”). Based on spatial statistics, we apply Categories of Metropolitan Areas (COMAs) in order to classify Twitter intensive locations across Europe. We defined four COMAs and estimated their e-capital potential. The most problematic COMA lies in Eastern Europe whereas the strongest concentration is found in Western Europe.     

Diffusion of Bike Sharing as an Innovation Vector in the City: The Case of BiciMAD (Madrid)

Bike sharing nowadays is a must-have element of the urban transport system that is changing mobility patterns in cities worldwide. BiciMAD, a fleet of bicycles with electric pedal-assistance (pedelecs)—introduced in the center of Madrid (Spain) in 2014—is an example of the latest generation. In this article, Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) is adapted and applied as a framework to study data from a series of surveys among BiciMAD subscribers to describe adopter profiles and analyze attributes that influence the time of adoption, including an additional one: cycling familiarity. Empirical results are presented to show how an innovation (in terms of technology and service configuration on the level of a city) is dispersed. Conclusions show that smart bike sharing is an innovation vector in urban mobility, an attractive new travel mode for the identified adopter categories, namely (1) lifestyle cyclists, the venturesome and technology enthusiast Earliest Adopters, (2) dedicated cyclists, the rational and deliberate Early Majority, (3) leisure cyclists, the skeptical and peer-dependent Late Majority, and (4) fair-weather cyclists, the prudent Laggards.     

Moving House,Creating Home: Exploring Residential Mobility

This paper begins with a review of the residential mobility literature that arose out of housing and planning policy aimed at decreasing the negative effects of urban transience. The literature identified the range of factors influencing residential mobility, but Rossi's (1955) claim that mobility was a 'natural' outcome of life stage changes became the basis for the majority of this work. Most of this literature arose out of quantitative research approaches but writers drew attention to the inability of these approaches to capture the increasing complexity of family life and residential mobility. Drawing on data from the Christchurch, New Zealand, house and home study, this study argues that the qualitative ethnographic method used provides a more holistic approach to, and understanding of, the events and issues which influence household mobility over time. Within this context, the paper presents excerpts from interview data framed as ontological narratives and related stories embedded in social and economic contexts. Some of the themes identified are those of identity, home and place attachment, change and social differentiation, and the impact of gender relations on mobility decisions and experiences. These findings, like those in previous literature, are relevant to housing and planning policy making given the increasing diversity of residential developments and issues of access to social, financial and environmental resources. Understanding how individuals and families establish relationships between themselves and the places in which they live is important given increasingly divided and differentiated experiences of contemporary urban life.     

Digital neighborhoods

With the advent of ‘big data’ there is an increased interest in using social media to describe city dynamics. This paper employs geo-located social media data to identify ‘digital neighborhoods’ – those areas in the city where social media is used more often. Starting with geo-located Twitter and Foursquare data for the New York City region in 2014, we applied spatial clustering techniques to detect significant groupings or ‘neighborhoods’ where social media use is high or low. The results show that beyond the business districts, digital neighborhoods occur in communities undergoing shifting socio-demographics. Neighborhoods that are not digitally oriented tend to have higher proportion of minorities and lower incomes, highlighting a social–economic divide in how social media is used in the city. Understanding the differences in these neighborhoods can help city planners interested in generating economic development proposals, civic engagement strategies, and urban design ideas that target these areas.     

Planning and Social Media: A Case Study of Public Transit and Stigma on Twitter

Problem, research strategy, and findings: How media portray public transit services can affect the way voters and stakeholders think about future transit investments. In this study, I examine social media content about public transit from a large sample of Twitter comments, finding that they reflect more negative sentiments about public transit than do the comments about most other public services, and include more negative material about transit patrons. However, transit agencies may be able to influence the tone of those comments through the way they engage with social media. Transit agencies that respond directly to questions, concerns, and comments of other social media users, as opposed to merely “blasting” announcements, have more positive statements about all aspects of services and fewer slurs directed at patrons, independent of actual service quality. The interaction does not have to be customer oriented. Agencies using Twitter to chat with users about their experiences or new service also have statistically significantly more positive sentiments expressed about them on social media. This study's limitations are that it covers only one social media outlet, does not cover all transit agencies, and cannot fully control for differences in transit agency service.

Takeaway for practice: Planners committed to a stronger role for public transit in developing sustainable and equitable cities have a stake in the social media strategy of public transit agencies; moreover, they should not let racial and sexist slurs about patrons dominate feeds. Planners should encourage interactive social media strategies. Even agencies that only tweet interactively a few times a day seem to have more civil discussions surrounding their agencies and announcements on Twitter than agencies that use their feed only to blast service announcements.     

Identifying opportunity places for urban regeneration through LBSNs

The use of location based social networks—LBSNs—for diagnosing phenomena in contemporary cities is evolving at a fast pace. However, methodological frameworks for informing urban regeneration at a fine-grain neighborhood scale through LBSNs is still by and large an unchartered territory, which this research seeks to address. This research bridges the knowledge gap by proposing a method to identify urban opportunity spaces for urban regeneration that involves pre-processing, analyzing and interpreting single and overlapped LBSN data. A two-fold perspective—people-based and place-based—is adopted. Data from four LBSNs—Foursquare, Twitter, Google Places and Airbnb—represent the people-based approach as it offers an insight into individual preferences, use and activities. The place-based approach is provided by an illustrative case study. Local unexpected nuances were gathered by the interlinking of data from different LBSNs, and opportunity places for urban regeneration have been recognized, as well as potential itineraries to boost urban liveliness and connectivity at both intra and inter- neighborhood scales. Findings show that overlapping data from various LBSNs enriches the analysis that would previously have relied on a single source.     

The immobility of social tenants: is it true? Does it matter?

The low level of residential mobility in England, particularly in the social sector, has been a continuing topic both in the literature and among policy makers. The period 1995–2007 was one of relatively rapid tenure change as well as sustained economic growth which could be expected to have increased mobility across tenures but also the costs of immobility in both the labour and housing markets. It was also a period where allocations to the social sector were increasingly concentrated among more vulnerable households. Given these trends does social housing continue to stand out as particularly immobile? If so is the relative immobility an outcome of who lives in social housing rather than how the sector is managed? And do low levels of mobility have significant negative impacts generating labour market inefficiencies and poor use of social housing? This paper uses Survey of English Housing data for the decade of growth from the mid 1990s to examine the drivers of mobility across tenures and how these have changed over the period, with particular emphasis on outcomes in the social sector. These drivers are described and modelled for the study period and suggest that social sector tenants with similar characteristics are much less mobile than households in other tenures but that the costs of this immobility, while difficult to quantify may well be quite limited.     

Lisbon

At the end of the first decade of the new millennium, in times of widespread uncertainty, Lisbon is facing some major challenges. On the one hand, it has to deal with a number of problems already visible at the end of the last century, such as the continuous reduction of resident population, increasing urban and social imbalances, low levels of mobility and accessibility, the steady and persistent degradation of the built environment, and an inadequate decision-making system. On the other hand, Lisbon has to deal with a number of structural infrastructure projects that were designed before the global financial crisis. Examples are the new international airport, the third bridge over the Tagus River, the high-speed-rail project linking the Portuguese capital with Oporto on the North and with Madrid (Spain) on the East, and the trunk road network at the metropolitan scale. In addition, there are demands for planning activity to provide more effective products, processes and results, both at the municipal and local scales.     

建筑劳务工人职业流动的影响因素:基于上海市数据的分析

目前我国建筑业劳务工人职业流动过于频繁,这一现象对建筑工程质量和安全、劳务工人利益保障及技术水平提升等方面均存在重大影响。针对这一问题,通过结构化的问卷实地调研建筑劳务工人的职业流动历史、对行业内流动行为的感知以及未来流动意愿的情况,分析了劳务工人职业流动频率及其影响因素。研究发现:建筑业职业流动率介于 30%~45%之间,职业流动过于频繁;薪酬水平和社会关系是影响劳务工人职业流动的最主要因素;不同的社会关系造成的信任程度会影响劳务工人职业流动的选择;劳务工人选择职业流动时薪酬变动的心理阈值为现有薪酬水平的 10%~15%之间。基于以上发现,提出了相应的对策建议。     

Shifting modern identities in Madrid’s recent urban planning, architecture and narrative

Compared to some major urban centers in Spain that have successfully participated in the fierce competition over cultural capital since the 1980s (such as Barcelona, Seville, or Bilbao), Madrid seems not so much to look outward to the international community to sell its image but to more reflectively construct and critique life, on the periphery of what was previously the center of an extremely centralized state. The power to build and shape Madrid during the 1980s and 1990s often found inspiration in the more disposable and ephemeral forms of culture circulating in its immediate environment, just as cultural forms and cultural content drew directly from the desire to represent human reactions to this urban setting. The conservative Partido Popular has taken credit for the positive urban reforms of the Socialists and criticized them for the failures, while giving Madrid over to the car and abandoning the progressive social housing policies of earlier years, which were based on rational Modernist planning and the political possibility of the Modernist project. Much recent literature and film about Madrid focuses on the resulting ideological, political and economic shifts.     

City dynamics through Twitter: Relationships between land use and spatiotemporal demographics

Social network data offer interesting opportunities in urban studies. In this study, we used Twitter data to analyse city dynamics over the course of the day. Users of this social network were grouped according to city zone and time slot in order to analyse the daily dynamics of the city and the relationship between this and land use. First, daytime activity in each zone was compared with activity at night in order to determine which zones showed increased activity in each of the time slots. Then, typical Twitter activity profiles were obtained based on the predominant land use in each zone, indicating how land uses linked to activities were activated during the day, but at different rates depending on the type of land use. Lastly, a multiple regression analysis was performed to determine the influence of the different land uses on each of the major time slots (morning, afternoon, evening and night) through their changing coefficients. Activity tended to decrease throughout the day for most land uses (e.g. offices, education, health and transport), but remained constant in parks and increased in retail and residential zones. Our results show that social network data can be used to improve our understanding of the link between land use and urban dynamics.     

Neighbourhood effects and social mobility: a longitudinal analysis

What impact do neighbourhoods have on social mobility? For years, this question has received widespread international attention in scholarly debates and within society at large. This paper seeks to contribute to this discussion by presenting the results of an investigation into the relationship between household social mobility and the composition of the residential environment. The analyses are based on an extensive empirical longitudinal study conducted in the Netherlands. The most remarkable conclusion is that, in the Dutch context, the environment has only a modest influence on the social mobility of households with a weak economic position. It was found that the chance of a household living purely on welfare benefits at the beginning of the study period to escape the ‘welfare trap’ was barely dependent on the number of similarly challenged households in the immediate vicinity. Interestingly, the environment proved to have a more powerful effect on the social mobility of households with a stronger economic position. The probability that households with at least one paid job at the beginning of the research would still have a job at the end clearly decreases as the share of benefit-dependent households in the neighbourhood rises. A possible explanation for this is that for the first category (weak starting position) the negative effect of their own welfare situation is far more determinative for their future prospects than the compo sition of their environment. Because these negative individualistic conditions are absent for the second category (stronger starting position), environmental factors may play a relatively larger role. Another interpretation is that area-based policies are not just targeting the areas with bigger problems more intensively, but especially the long-term unemployed in these areas, and not so much the short-term unemployed (those who had a job at the start of the research period and lost the job afterwards).     

Designing Madrid, 1985–1997

The [Plan General de Ordenación Urbana de Madrid, 1985] is a crucial watershed in the planning processes in Madrid. This essay is particularly interested in how the tension between spatial production and consumption played out during a period in which consumption-based strategies of urban growth and design began to supplant the last stand for a radical modernist-based use of urban planning. In Madrid a consumption-based urban boosterism approach to the planning process was inexorably hegemonic but vigorously resisted in certain sectors. Examining how graphic design figured into urban planning battles offers an interesting example of the synergies between capital, the production and consumption of space and cultural creation. Graphic design becomes a crucial element in the process of reshaping the image of Madrid, of re-presenting the city as a modern or post-modern European metropolis. The PGOUM was perhaps Spain’s last great attempt at rational modernist urban planning with an emphasis on social justice. The resistance to capital once played out on the center stage of planning was replaced with slick images, portraying a city of consumption and growth.     

Estimating post-disaster traffic conditions using real-time data streams

This article presents a technique to determine the effects of an earthquake on road traffic conditions by linking seismic hazard and bridge fragility models with a traffic model and traffic sensor data. Using the earthquake characteristics as an input to the traffic model, the traffic conditions are sequentially estimated given traffic sensor measurements using an ensemble Kalman filter. The proposed algorithm is tested on a numerical experiment on Interstate 155 West near the New Madrid Seismic Zone in New Madrid, Missouri. The results show that the proposed technique improves the post-disaster traffic estimate. The supporting source code and data are available for download at https://github.com/rotsuka/postDisaster_EnKF..     

Travel Demand Management (TDM) case study for social behavioral change towards sustainable urban transportation in Istanbul

In order to realize sustainable cities, it is vital to achieve and maintain social behavioral change for shifting our modes of mobility from inefficient, wasteful and motorized means to cleaner, greener, healthier and more economic means such as walking, cycling and public transportation in addition to smart use of land, intelligent transportation systems, and clean and green vehicles. This study is based on a critical review of literature in order to establish a framework of social behavioral change policies, particularly developed and tested for urban mobility and traffic congestion. First, various mega cities were compared on different sustainability indicators to better understand the case of Istanbul. Then, selected policy potentials, namely Travel Demand Management (TDM), were evaluated for Istanbul following a set of personal interview surveys aiming to reveal travel patterns of residents, their perceptions and attitudes on current transport system performance, and their opinions for possible TDM interventions in the future. We proposed a multiplicative model to process data from these surveys as inputs, which would then be used to determine travel demand. A simulation model was constructed using PTV-VISSIM tool and validated with current traffic congestion metrics obtained from field measurements in a selected district of Istanbul. Based on this validated simulation model, projections of traffic conditions in the future under different TDM scenarios were predicted with the help of determined TDM potentials obtained from the survey results. As a result of this study, it was revealed that the traffic congestion levels in Istanbul tend to become worse year by year under existing conditions, but it was also found that the TDM policies offer significant potential for reducing congestion, hence its consequent hazards, via increased use of sustainable mobility modes without the need for new infrastructure investments.     

Activity spaces of homeless men and women measured by GPS tracking data: A comparative analysis of Prague and Pilsen

The aim of this article is to investigate the factors that influence the size of activity spaces of homeless men and women in cities. Vulnerable population groups such as the homeless face the risk of mobility challenges that can exacerbate their social exclusion even more through mobility-driven spatial exclusion. The extent of an individual's activity space is a key precondition for the daily coping strategies and life opportunities of homeless people. This study is the first to combine GPS tracking of homeless people based on a week-long GPS measurement with mobility interviews. The article tests five hypotheses as to the influence of city size, age, gender, housing situation and education on the size of activity space. Data obtained for a large city (Prague) and for a small city (Pilsen) are analysed using three geospatial measurements of activity spaces. In line with mixed-method approaches, the results are further triangulated through mobility interviews. By mapping the objective activity spaces, we were able to evaluate the role of individual and contextual factors in shaping homeless life and discuss the theoretical and practical implications of activity space measurement for social policy and urban planning.