这是一篇短评,作者就吉尔罗伊和汤曾德的《避免"平房腿"——积极老龄化与建成环境》(Avoiding'Bungalow Legs':Active Ageing and the Built Environment,by Rose Gilroy and Tim Townshend)一文中的观点予以回应."平房腿"指平房住久了会失去爬楼梯的能力,身体机能将逐渐退化.原文指出,当代城市环境在推动积极与健康老龄化时,普遍将老龄视为一种"残疾",这一认知没有充分尊重老龄化经历的多样性,过于简单地采取"自然/城市""健康/残疾"的二元论,普适性设计忽视了城市与自然空间在现实中的复杂交互,以及仍然能够适度运动的老龄群体需求的多样性.
This study investigates the intersection of urban security and climate resilience, emphasizing the urgent need to prioritize climate adaptation and mitigation in urban planning. Through a comprehensive global survey of 256 experts across various fields, we uncover a consensus on climate change as a major threat to urban areas, affecting water, ecosystem, health, economic, and food security. Despite this recognition, our findings reveal a significant lack of preparedness and confidence in governmental responses. We highlight the interconnectedness of climate and economic factors, underscoring the challenges in decoupling economic growth from fossil fuel dependency. Furthermore, we explore the potential of smart technologies, such as early warning systems, data analytics, and green infrastructure, to enhance urban resilience. Our study advocates for a proactive and comprehensive approach to climate resilience, emphasizing the need for urban planners to incorporate innovative technological solutions that address both climate adaptation and mitigation. By focusing on these distinct yet interconnected strategies, we aim to foster secure, sustainable, and livable urban environments that effectively respond to current and future climate challenges.
Economic geography data are typically reported using political units, such as counties, which often do not match economic units. Commuting zones (CZs) group counties into labor markets. However, CZs are not the most appropriate grouping for other economic activities. We introduce consumption zones (ConZs), groupings of counties appropriate for the analysis of consumption. We apply CZ methodology to payment card data, which report spending flows across US counties for fifteen industries. We find that different industries have different market sizes. Grocery stores have more than five times the number of ConZs as entertainment. We apply ConZs to measuring industry concentration.
We examine conformance and performance dimensions of demolition recommendations in seven "Neighborhood Action Plans" (NAPs) issued between 2015 and 2017 in the shrinking city of Youngstown, Ohio. We use geographic information systems (GIS) to compare plan-suggested and actual demolitions. We examine whether overall statistics are similar and who was responsible for demolition. We conduct interviews with informants to understand causality. We find that NAPs are better implemented from performance than from conformance perspectives, but that nongovernmental organization (Land Bank) demolitions conformed more closely than local government. Interviewees provided several causes: procedural differences, overlapping responsibilities, influence of political decision makers on plan implementation, and shifting NAP goals.
The contribution is a systematic literature review of empirical works on visions and vision-making. It provides a conceptual basis, meanings and interpretations assigned to the terms and highlights practical challenges involved in vision-based planning. Analyzing the state of knowledge on visioning produced in the last twenty years, the review not only outlines key conceptual elements but also the shortcomings and what more needs to be done for visioning to move beyond realpolitik and consensual vocabularies. In addition to presenting insights from empirical works, the review identifies areas of scholarly engagement to make visioning an effective planning technique.
