Land regulating economy as a policy instrument in urban China

The regulation of urban land in China has become more important as a policy instrument, suggesting that land supply may be a catalyst for urban economic growth. Based on official data on land use change for the period 2005 to 2014, an econometric model of urban GDP growth reveals lagged effects of land supply on economic growth. Land supply has a more significant effect on economic growth in prefecture-level cities than in county-level cities. City size and development stage also shape the effects of land on economic growth; in addition, land plays different roles in economic growth in eastern coastal cities and in cities in the central and western parts of China. Different land use allocations have been successfully used as a tool for fostering economic growth in urban China.     

Articulating a social-ecological resilience agenda for urban design

In an era of change and uncertainty, the need for resilience is high on urban agendas. To date, multiple resilience concepts have been adopted into urban design with minimal substantiation. Resilience theory can potentially improve practice by rebalancing contemporary discourses in order to better value procedural aspects of urban design. The paper establishes theoretical links between urban design and resilience, where the integration of social and ecological systems, and the ability to enable adaptability and transformability, are key. In pursuit of shared principles between the two fields, a literature review identifies cross-cutting themes of diversity, social capital, innovation and learning.     

构件恢复力特性曲线的对比试验研究

综述了目前各种构件的试验研究成果,并对钢筋混凝土构件、钢结构构件、结合型钢普通混凝土构件的恢复力特性曲线的试验研究进行了对比论述,并针对型钢高强高性能混凝土构件的恢复力特性曲线的研究指出了其急待解决的问题,从而为结构构件及其组合结构进行非线性地震反应分析提供了基础。     

地震灾害下城市生命线体系恢复力双维度综合评估

针对现有生命线恢复力研究中单一维度评估的缺陷,引入基础设施网络均衡理论,设计综合考虑生命线网络物理状态和输送能力的体系性能时程响应函数PRF,同时构建包含灾害概率、灾害后果、恢复速率三个主要因素在内的,贯穿技术和组织双维度的生命线体系恢复力评估框架,实现地震灾害下城市生命线体系恢复力双维度综合评估。在以江苏省连云港市区供水网络为例的案例研究中,依据评估框架构建体系恢复力仿真流程,采用场景地震,对环状和网状两种供水体系的震害恢复力进行对比分析,结果显示,尽管网状供水网络的性能水平高于环状网络,但对体系恢复力的提升作用并不明显。而且城市供水体系恢复力随着恢复资源投入量的变化曲线显示,恢复资源的投入量存在最优值,能够以高效费比实现体系恢复力最大化。     

Urban policy engagement with social sustainability in metro Vancouver

This article presents an analysis of social sustainability in comparative theoretical context and as a challenge to the post-political interpretation of sustainability in policy practice at the urban and regional scales. Metro Vancouver provides a case study for improving our understanding of the meaning of social sustainability as a framework for social policy in that it is among the handful of cities around the world currently working to define and enact social sustainability in governance terms. Results of this participant research provide evidence that some cities are politically engaging alternative development pathways using the concept of social sustainability. For sustainable development to retain its promise as an alternative policy framework for cities, social sustainability must be at the forefront.     

Utilisation of underground pedestrian systems for urban sustainability

Underground pedestrian systems (UPS) have emerged as an urban phenomenon in the city centres of mega-cities, providing alternative walkways that are safe, accessible, efficient and pleasant for pedestrians. Despite many successful UPS in operation around the world, the application and performance of UPS are not yet well understood by local authorities. While previous studies debated the impacts on cities and people that the development of UPS would bring, an understanding of how to develop UPS to contribute to sustainable urban development, including economic viability, environmental livability and social equity, should be improved. This paper presents a detailed discussion of potential contributions and challenges in developing UPS within the context of sustainable urban development. It contains a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between UPS and urban development with regard to urban planning concepts such as the compact city, city resilience, sustainable transport and urban renewal, within the context of contemporary challenges such as the need to achieve economic sustainability, managing a non-renewable and vulnerable underground resource, and humanisation and social sustainability. It demonstrates why UPS development presents opportunities for and challenges to achieving economic viability, environmental livability and social equity, how to develop UPS so that they make effective contributions to sustainable urban development, and how the challenge of each issue has been addressed in light of the experiences of cities with UPS developments globally.     

Factors affecting environmental sustainability of urban renewal projects

Urban renewal programmes offer an opportunity to improve the environmental sustainability of urban areas by creating well-designed and well-constructed built environments. In this study, the contributions of built environment design elements to environmental sustainability were evaluated through a questionnaire survey with the participation of 323 people who previously worked in urban renewal projects. Implementing factor analysis, interrelated elements have been gathered under five factors: ‘transportation and accessibility’, ‘conservation of natural resources’, ‘built environment quality’, ‘supporting social life’ and ‘high-density usage’. To identify the importance weights of these factors, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) analysis was carried out with 40 academics and practitioners. Based on the results, ‘conservation of natural resources’ was found as the most important factor affecting the environmental sustainability of urban renewal projects. It is expected that the results of this study shall guide a wide range of urban renewal stakeholders, extending from designers to citizens, along the path of creating environmentally sustainable cities.     

Towards a genealogy of urban shopping: types,adaptations and resilience

This typological account of the urban morphology of shopping presents a diagrammatic genealogy of urban retail types from traditional markets, streets and plazas through various adaptations and mutations into the contemporary shopping mall and power centre. This genealogy shows an increased car-dependency, privatized and centralized control, and disintegration from urban life. Many cities have been transformed by contemporary retail types that are less walkable, equitable, productive and resilient than those from which they were derived. The challenge lies in the invention of new retail types with potential for re-integration into more resilient forms of urban development.     

城市非正式经济——新政策举措

虽然难以定义和衡量，但在全世界许多发展中国家，非正式经济的规模和范围正在日益扩大，联合国人居署城市经济部门负责人弗雷德里科·内图（Frederico Neto）、联合国人居署工作人员河艺珍（Yejin Ha）和阿南达·韦利维塔（Ananda Weliwita）在本文中写道。本文饶有趣味地洞悉了非正式经济运作的方式和原因。[编者按]     

Spatial resilience and urban planning: Addressing the interdependence of urban retail areas

In this article we look at examples of three predominant kinds of Swedish retail places – the pedestrianised city centre, the neighbourhood centre and the regional shopping mall – all of which play important (winning or losing) roles in contemporary retail development. This investigation is based on an empirical study of the Malmö region (in southern Sweden) and the findings suggest that the different retail areas are developing independently following the logic of their own business. They have failed to relate their business to the retailscape of the urban region. We also develop spatial resilience as a concept that can be used to acknowledge the interdependence of different retail areas in discussions of urban and regional planning. We argue that more fluid or associative means of stabilisation seem to be overlooked in the present strategies for retail resilience, leaving more classical network stabilization as the only means of choice.     

济南市燃气汽车发展对策探讨

1前言近年来,济南市燃气汽车有了一定的发展,对治理汽车空气污染,净化空气,改善环境起到了明显的作用。在发展燃气汽车的过程中,济南市与国内外许多城市一样,社会各方面敏锐地看到了发展燃气汽车市场的前景,表现出了极高的热情,因此,城市燃气汽车如何发展这一问题,已是摆在我们     

Consumerscapes and the resilience assessment of urban retail systems

Despite the plethora of studies on the behavior and values of consumers, research in the social sciences tends to sideline the role of the cultural dimension of consumption in the assessment of vitality and resilience of urban retail systems. However, given the tendency for retailers to make consumers a key element in their strategies, the cultural approach seems to be a valuable alternative to firm-centric analysis. This paper seeks to face this challenge mobilizing the lens of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT). The aim is to show why consumerscapes matter in the assessment of urban retail resilience. According to Arnould (2005), CCT allows us to capture the motivating social and cultural contexts of retail patronage and purchasing behaviors and the myriad of motivating factors behind the retail purchase decision. People have a variety of projects that they tend to realize through shopping practices and consumption, and retailers offer the range of resources they need to accomplish such projects. Bearing these ideas in mind, we suggest that in order to assess the resilience of urban retailing we need to know the extent to which the different shopping districts provide consumers with the range of resources they want so as to fulfill their projects, and how retailers and public authorities can, in the long term, sustain or improve the levels of consumer satisfaction. These ideas are discussed both in a theoretical and empirical way supported by the data collected from consumer surveys carried out in three neighborhood shopping districts in Greater Lisbon.