The majority of the world's population live in environments with artificially weakened wind as buildings in urban areas form wind-breaks and reduce wind speeds. Anthropogenic heat is also generated and during the summer dense urban areas suffer from the urban heat island effect, a known urban climate problem. This book discusses how to evaluate the urban wind environment, including ventilation performance and thermal comfort. This book is organized in two parts; Wind Environment and the Urban Environment and Criteria for Assessing Breeze Environments. It includes chapters on sea breeze in urban areas; thermal adaptation and the effect of wind on thermal comfort; health risk of exposures; pollutant transport in dense urban areas; legal regulations for urban ventilation and new criteria for assessing the local wind environment. Keywords: urban wind environments, urban heat island, urban climate, land use change, thermal comfort, risk assessment, urban air pollution, urban ventilation

This book provides a systematic assessment of the performance of electric and hybrid buses in urban areas on a daily basis and presents a complete set of technical scenarios to promote their efficient exploitation. It will also help readers understand how future buses will perform on specific roads and how the latest technologies can be integrated into existing fleets by proposing a methodology for evaluating the energy consumption for general and specific routes and scenarios. Covering all aspects relating to the daily use of electric and hybrid buses, including maintenance strategies, power train configuration, battery replacements, route evaluation, and charging speed, emphasis is placed on energy efficiency and effective implementation. Addressing key developments in intelligent vehicle technologies, the book presents innovative transportation technologies and a broad range of topics in transportation-related sustainability research, from vehicle systems and design, to mass transit systems.

This edited volume discuses urban transport issues, policies, and initiatives in twelve of the world's major emerging economies - Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and Vietnam - countries with large populations that have recently experienced large changes in urban structure, motorization and all the associated social, economic, and environmental impacts in positive and negative senses. Contributions on each of these twelve countries focus on one or more major cities per country. This book aims to fill a gap in the transport literature that is crucial to understanding the needs of a large portion of the world's urban population, especially in view of the southward shift in economic power. Readers will develop a better understanding of urban transport problems and policies in nations where development levels are below those of richer countries (mainly in the northern hemisphere) but where the rate of economic growth is often increasing at a faster rate than the wealthiest nations.

This book examines environmental security from the perspective of landscape sciences, identifying the forces that threaten environmental security at all levels. It stems from the last five years of the Pilot Study Project on Use of Landscape Sciences for Environmental Assessment sponsored by the NATO Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society. Readers explore concepts of environmental security from subjective and objective perspectives.

What rights does the state have over privately owned land? Why should some landowners be favoured over others? How can the practice of land-use planning be improved?

This book addresses these essential questions and shows that the interests people have in property rights over land and buildings are not just emotional but often financial too. It follows that the law, which affects who has property rights, what those rights are and how they may be used, can have great financial consequences for people and great economic consequences for society in general.

For those reasons, looking at land-use planning as it affects and is affected by property rights illuminates some core aspects of land-use planning, including the law, economics, ethics and ideology. In this book, Needham examines those aspects from the clear perspective of property rights.

This book demonstrates how housing systems are built from political struggles over the distribution of welfare and wealth. The contributors analyze varieties of residential capitalism through a range of international case studies, as well as investigating the links between housing finance and the current international financial crisis.

"Modeling the Dynamics and Consequences of Land System Change" introduces an innovative three-tier architecture approach for modeling the dynamics and consequences of land system change. It also describes the principle, modules and the applications of the three-tier architecture model in detail. The approach holds strong potential for accurate predictions of the land use structure at the regional level, simulating the land use pattern at pixel level and evaluating the consequences of land system change. The simulation results can be used for the planning of land use, urban development, regional development, environmental protection, and also serve as valuable information for decision making concerning land management and optimal utilization of land resources.

The book is intended for the researchers and professionals in land use or land systems, regional environmental change, ecological conservation, as well as the land resource administrative agencies and environmental protection agencies.

Professor Xiangzheng Deng is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

The book investigates how, and which, forgiving road environments (FOR) andself-explaining road measures (SER) will contribute to increasing road safety and also increase network efficiency on the road.

It presents both the general approach and the methodology for generating the possible FOR and SER measures. The book further discusses the prioritization and the testing methodologies, as well as the designing VMS methodology.

The next parts of the book present a few important examples: lane departure warning systems; intelligent speed adaptation systems and perception enhancement studies;designs of European pictorial signs, e.g. for VMS but also examples of designs of European road wordings; and finally how personalization can take place of VMS signs and wordings for the individual driver.

The last part shows the final evaluation of FOR and SER, anddetailed Multiple Criterion Analysis and Cost Benefit Analyses are performed on a number of FOR and SER measures. This results in the development of a set of guidelines, conclusions and recommendations for the future.

Hugh P. Possingham Landscape-scale conservation planning is coming of age. In the last couple of decades, conservation practitioners, working at all levels of governance and all spatial scales, have embraced the CARE principles of conservation planning - Comprehensiveness, Adequacy, Representativeness, and Efficiency. Hundreds of papers have been written on this theme, and several different kinds of software program have been developed and used around the world, making conservation planning based on these principles global in its reach and influence. Does this mean that all the science of conservation planning is over - that the discovery phase has been replaced by an engineering phase as we move from defining the rules to implementing them in the landscape? This book and the continuing growth in the literature suggest that the answer to this question is most definitely 'no. ' All of applied conservation can be wrapped up into a single sentence: what should be done (the action), in what place, at what time, using what mechanism, and for what outcome (the objective). It all seems pretty simple - what, where, when, how and why. However stating a problem does not mean it is easy to solve.

This volume focuses on frontiers in regional research and identifies trends and future developments in the areas of innovation, regional growth and migration. It also addresses topics such as mobility, regional forecasting, and regional policy, and includes expert contributions on disasters, resilience, and sustainability. Building on recent methodological and modelling advances, as well as on extensive policy-analysis experience, top international regional scientists identify and evaluate emerging new conceptual and methodological trends and directions in regional research. This book will appeal to a wide readership, from regional scientists and economists to geographers, quantitatively oriented regional planners and other related disciplines. It offers a source of relevant information for academic researchers and policy analysts in government, and is also suitable for advanced teaching courses on regional and spatial science, economics and political science.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the various aspects for the development of smart cities from a European perspective. It presents both theoretical concepts as well as empirical studies and cases of smart city programs and their capacity to create value for citizens. The contributions in this book are a result of an increasing interest for this topic, supported by both national governments and international institutions. The book offers a large panorama of the most important aspects of smart cities evolution and implementation. It compares European best practices and analyzes how smart projects and programs in cities could help to improve the quality of life in the urban space and to promote cultural and economic development.

Flood control in urban areas can be feasibly and cost-effectively enhanced by implementing flood proofing approaches to risk reduction in the context of environmental and land-use planning and management. Indeed, flood proofing makes it possible to improve, integrate and in some cases even replace traditional measures for flood control, reducing the vulnerability and increasing the resilience of buildings and infrastructures. This book begins by reviewing the physics of stability and instability of both human beings and buildings under flood conditions, together with criteria and models (both conventional and innovative) for assessing flood strains. In turn, it presents a range of flood proofing concepts and techniques, together with a complete and updated classification of related methods and devices. This provides a user-friendly tool to help identify appropriate solutions to real-world problems for each specific risk scenario. In particular, the book focuses on temporary flood proofing techniques, given their ability to deliver effective performance at low costs. Lastly, it features an overview of norms, guidelines and laboratory recommendations that are currently being adopted in various countries with regard to flood proofing devices and testing procedures. The purpose of this book is essentially to encourage authorities, stakeholders, technicians and end users to successfully develop flood proofing solutions that can reduce flood risk in a pragmatic manner. In addition, the authors hope to inspire researchers, manufacturers and designers (engineers, architects, urban planners and urban managers) to pursue further advances in this key sector of public and private safety in urban areas.

Technological innovation combined with scientific research has always constituted a driving force of transformation in our societies. At the same time, it is no longer simply possible to transfer technologies from the North to the South; it is also essential to consider technical innovations that are adapted to the social, environmental, cultural and economic conditions of receiving countries, and which can be appropriated by their potential users and as such prove to be real technologies for fostering development.

The first International Scientific Conference on the topic organized by the UNESCO Chair Technologies for Development at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in 2010 focused on its four priority sectors: Technologies for Sustainable Development of Habitat and Cities, ICTs for the Environment, Science and Technology for Disaster Risk Reduction, and Technologies for the Production of Sustainable Energy.

This volume reflects the main outcomes of the conference and provides some significant orientation and success criteria for the effective implementation and use of innovative technologies, their aims, their particular applications in the context of developing countries, their accessibility for users, and their appropriation by producers and stakeholders in the field of development both in the North and South, thus ensuring their sustainability. This kind of scientific cooperation also highlights the added values for northern researchers in sharing their knowledge and know-how, leading to a real win-win partnership.

The authors gathered within this book include representatives from academic and research institutions and other organizations from diverse countries and offer a significant synergy of competences, approaches and disciplines. "

Exploring the social implications of dense and compact cities, this enlightening book looks at micro-scale segregation through several lenses. These include the ways that the housing market constantly reconfigures social mix, how the structure of the housing stock shapes it, and the ways that policies are deployed to manage these effects. Taking a deep dive into micro-segregation in the socially mixed and dense centres of compact cities, the authors investigate the form and content of social and ethno-racial hierarchies at the micro-scale of different cities around the world and the ways these have evolved over time. Vertical Cities considers the ways the materiality of such hierarchies affects the reproduction of social inequalities in today's large cities. Academics and researchers of urban sociology, housing, urban regeneration, urban studies and urban geography will find the original approach taken to this under-researched topic to be a vital resource. Practitioners and policy makers will find the innovative use of a common theoretical frame to analyse micro-scale social mix in vertical/compact cities informative when dealing with the management of neighbourhoods in inner cities.

This book presents a compendium of the urban layout maps of 2-mile square downtown areas of more than one hundred cities in developed and developing countries-all drawn at the same scale using high-resolution satellite images of Google Maps. The book also presents analytic studies using metric geometrical, topological (or network), and fractal measures of these maps. These analytic studies identify ordinaries, extremes, similarities, and differences in these maps; investigate the scaling properties of these maps; and develop precise descriptive categories, types and indicators for multidimensional comparative studies of these maps. The findings of these studies indicate that many geometric relations of the urban layouts of downtown areas follow regular patterns; that despite social, economic, and cultural differences among cities, the geometric measures of downtown areas in cities of developed and developing countries do not show significant differences; and that the geometric possibilities of urban layouts are vastly greater than those that have been realized so far in our cities.

This historical study looks at how reformers have used urban planning and architecture to improve the health of urban residents of the United States. It begins in the nineteenth century, when problems in rapidly urbanizing cities threatened to overwhelm cities, and then traces the development and impact of reform movements up through the First World War, including discussions of model tenements, the 'city beautiful' movement, tenement laws, and zoning and building codes. Midcentury design movements, such as new efforts to plan suburbs and Modernism, along with outlines of the impacts of public housing, highway building, and urban renewal, are the focus of the middle chapters of the book. The final third examines the revival of cities and the reconnection of public health with urban planning that occurred as the twentieth century ended.

This book assembles and organizes a selected range of methods and techniques that every planning practitioner should know to be successful in the contemporary global urban landscape. The book is unique because it links different aspects of the planning/policy-making enterprise with the appropriate methods and approaches, thus contextualizing the use of specific methods and techniques within a sociopolitical and ethical framework. This volume familiarizes readers with the diverse range of methods, techniques, and skills that must be applied at different scales in dynamic workplace environments where planning policies and programs are developed and implemented. This book is an invaluable resource in helping new entrants to the planning discourse and profession set aside their own disciplinary biases and empowering them to use their expert knowledge to address societal concerns.

This broad-ranging new text applies economics analysis to the aims, instruments and outcomes of land use planning and housing policies. The core focus is on providing students with a substantive and sophisticated understanding of the relation of the state and market and such key current issues as sustainable development, urban renaissance, affordable housing and the relationships between planning, housebuilding and house prices. Drawing examples from Britain, the rest of Europe and the US, it emphasizes the role of economics in promoting a theoretically-informed and evidence-based approach to policy formation and implementation.

This book provides a holistic perspective on Digital Twin (DT) technologies, and presents cutting-edge research in the field. It assesses the opportunities that DT can offer for smart cities, and covers the requirements for ensuring secure, safe and sustainable smart cities. Further, the book demonstrates that DT and its benefits with regard to: data visualisation, real-time data analytics, and learning leading to improved confidence in decision making; reasoning, monitoring and warning to support accurate diagnostics and prognostics; acting using edge control and what-if analysis; and connection with back-end business applications hold significant potential for applications in smart cities, by employing a wide range of sensory and data-acquisition systems in various parts of the urban infrastructure. The contributing authors reveal how and why DT technologies that are used for monitoring, visualising, diagnosing and predicting in real-time are vital to cities' sustainability and efficiency. The concepts outlined in the book represents a city together with all of its infrastructure elements, which communicate with each other in a complex manner. Moreover, securing Internet of Things (IoT) which is one of the key enablers of DT's is discussed in details and from various perspectives. The book offers an outstanding reference guide for practitioners and researchers in manufacturing, operations research and communications, who are considering digitising some of their assets and related services. It is also a valuable asset for graduate students and academics who are looking to identify research gaps and develop their own proposals for further research.

"Remote Sensing of Urban and Suburban Areas" provides instructors with a text reference that has a logical and easy-to-follow flow of topics around which they can structure the syllabi of their urban remote sensing courses. Topics have been chosen to bridge the gap between remote sensing and urban studies through a better understanding of the science that underlies both fields. In so doing, the book includes 17 chapters written by leading international experts in respected fields to provide a balanced coverage of fundamental issues in both remote sensing and urban studies. Emphasis is placed on: theoretical and practical issues in contemporary urban studies and remote sensing; the spectral, spatial and temporal requirements of remotely sensed data in relation to various urban phenomena; methods and techniques for analyzing and integrating remotely sensed data and image processing with geographic information systems to address urban problems; and examples of applications in which applying remote sensing to tackle urban problems is deemed useful and important.

The day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, civic leaders began to organize four coalitions that aimed to give ordinary citizens a chance to meet, to heal, and to be heard in rebuilding decisions. This book tells the inside story of the civic renewal movement they founded.

This book brings forward the concept of the geology-environmental capacity of ground buildings. It quantifies the geology-environmental capacity of ground buildings by analyzing the main factors of land subsidence and setting up the evaluation system. The geological environmental capacity of ground buildings is mainly controlled by the land subsidence and the output is the floor area ratio. According to the different geology structures and the different requirements of subsidence control in the soft soil areas in Shanghai, the evaluation system of the floor area ratio is built up by the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and the floor area ratios of four typical regions (Lujiazui, Xujiahui, Zhongyuan and Changqiao) are obtained by the ANFIS to offer references for urban planning. By taking the typical soft soil areas in Shanghai as case studies, this book will provide valuable insights to professors and graduate students in the field of Geotechnical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering Geology and Environmental Geology.

Placing the practice of urban design in its political, economic and cultural context, this book sets out a clear and positive vision of the potential of urban design, and in particular its capacity to bring imagined futures into being for the benefit of the many. Urban Design, Space and Society shows how urban design is concerned not only with the aesthetics and practicalities of designing urban spaces, but also with the pursuit of social inclusiveness, participatory democracy, cultural meaning and ecological sustainability. It covers a broad range of interrelated themes and demostrates how social and political theories shed light on an understanding of urban design. Drawing on these theories, as well as the author's own research, the book guides the reader through the complex challenges that design practitioners must navigate in meeting the diverse needs of urban society in the twenty-first century. Providing a clear guide to the role and potential of urban design, this is an invaluable text for students and professionals for urban design as well as those from related disciplines such as planning, architecture and geography.

The housing market, like every market, is the product of thousands of interacting buyers and sellers driven by different interests. But unlike other markets, the housing market is able to profoundly transform the socioeconomic structure and the image of a city. Very often, changes in urban space are the result of the imperceptible operation of a multitude of micro-transformations which act with such great energy and decisiveness that they can transform the 'DNA' of entire urban neighborhoods. These qualitative novelties, unpredictable and non-deducible on the basis of the previous properties, are defined emergences. Namely emergence means a 'pattern formation' characterized by a self-organizing process driven by non-linear dynamics. This book explores housing market emergence in light of three different phenomena: search for housing, social polarization, and gentrification. The book is divided into two parts. The first part presents contributions on modelling emergence of different phenomena, formalised in multi-agent systems. The second part gathers empirical research and analyses aimed at supporting the findings of the models.

Hitler's autobahn was more than just the pet project of an infrastructure-friendly dictator. It was supposed to revolutionize the transportation sector in Germany, connect the metropoles with the countryside, and encourage motorization. The propaganda machinery of the Third Reich turned the autobahn into a hyped-up icon of the dictatorship. One of the claims was that the roads would reconcile nature and technology. Rather than destroying the environment, they would embellish the landscape. Many historians have taken this claim at face value and concluded that the Nazi regime harbored an inbred love of nature. In this book, the author argues that such conclusions are misleading. Based on rich archival research, the book provides the first scholarly account of the landscape of the autobahn.

Thomas Zeller is an associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he teaches the history of technology, environmental history, and science and technology studies. He is the author of Strasse, Bahn, Panorama (2002) and has co-edited the volumes How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (2005), Germany's Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History (2005), The World Beyond the Windshield: Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe (2008) and Rivers in History: Perspectives on Waterways in Europe and North America (2008). His current research project, consuming Landscapes, has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, and the Program in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks.