COVID-19 reaffirms the vital role of superspreaders in a pandemic. We propose to broaden the research on superspreaders through integrating human mobility data and geographical factors to identify ...superspreading environment. Six types of popular public facilities were selected: bars, shopping centres, karaoke/cinemas, mega shopping malls, public libraries, and sports centres. A historical dataset on mobility was used to calculate the generalized activity space and space-time prism of individuals during a pre-pandemic period. Analysis of geographic interconnections of public facilities yielded locations by different classes of potential spatial risk. These risk surfaces were weighed and integrated into a "risk map of superspreading environment" (SE-risk map) at the city level. Overall, the proposed method can estimate empirical hot spots of superspreading environment with statistical accuracy. The SE-risk map of Hong Kong can pre-identify areas that overlap with the actual disease clusters of bar-related transmission. Our study presents first-of-its-kind research that combines data on facility location and human mobility to identify superspreading environment. The resultant SE-risk map steers the investigation away from pure human focus to include geographic environment, thereby enabling more differentiated non-pharmaceutical interventions and exit strategies to target some places more than others when complete city lockdown is not practicable.
This paper traces the historical evolution and spatial disparity of CO2 emissions from passenger transport in China. The general trends of CO2 emissions from four passenger transport modes are ...estimated by both the distance-based and fuel-based methods. The results suggest that CO2 emissions from road transport represented the leading source of passenger transport CO2 emissions in China. Moreover, they have continued to grow rapidly. Air transport was the second largest contributor since 1998. Emissions from rail and water transport have remained relatively stable with lower emission intensity. At the provincial level, great regional disparity was noticeable, especially in road transport. Moreover, the decomposition analysis shows that income growth was the principal factor leading to the growth of passenger transport CO2 emissions in China for both the 1949–1979 and 1980–2009 periods. The second most important factor was increased transport intensity and modal shifts for the former and the latter period, respectively. The main factor contributed to emission reduction was the lower emission intensity supported by policies, although the effect was weak. In the future, more policies to encourage modal shifts toward sustainable transport modes and travel reduction should be encouraged.
► CO2 emissions from passenger transport in China were estimated. ► Road transport was the largest contributor to CO2 emission. Air transport followed. ► Factors influencing CO2 emissions growth are analyzed by decomposition analysis. ► Income growth, higher travel intensity and modal shift were driving CO2 emissions up. ► Policies to promote modal shifts and travel demand reduction should be encouraged.
Traffic congestion has been a persistent problem in cities globally. Theoretically, commuting-related congestion can be relieved by promoting working from home (WFH). Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, WFH ...arrangement has been encouraged or enforced to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Under these circumstances, it was reported that traffic congestion has been alleviated in many cities. However, changes in congestion patterns within a city have not been studied in-depth. In this study, we analysed the congestion index (CI) at peak hours, when commuting-related congestion is typically most serious, throughout different waves of the pandemic in Hong Kong. Results show that under WFH arrangement, peak-hour congestion has been alleviated. Within a day, morning peak congestion was more relieved. Spatially, significant drops in CI were found not only in the central business district and urban cores but also in some new town areas. This paper has significant implications for urban planners in creating more sustainable cities that duly consider the commuting needs of residents, and cautions against the optimism that WFH can relieve urban transport problems despite jobs-housing imbalance. While the WFH arrangement has potentials to ease commuting congestion, future e-working and transport measures need to take spatial and temporal dimensions into account.
•Spatio-temporal dynamics of urban traffic congestion under COVID-19 were captured.•In Hong Kong, work from home had a bigger impact on morning than evening peak.•Morning peak congestion relief was not only limited to the CBD.•The two commuting peaks were identifiable even during work from home periods.•About 25% of planning units had lower peak-hour congestion under the “new normal”.
A longstanding line of research in urban studies explores how cities can be understood through their appearance. However, what remains unclear is to what extent urban dwellers' everyday life can be ...explained by the visual clues of the urban environment. In this paper, we address this question by applying a computer vision model to 27 million street view images across 80 counties in the United States. Then, we use the spatial distribution of notable urban features identified through the street view images, such as street furniture, sidewalks, building façades, and vegetation, to predict the socioeconomic profiles of their immediate neighborhood. Our results show that these urban features alone can account for up to 83% of the variance in people's travel behavior, 62% in poverty status, 64% in crime, and 68% in health behaviors. The results outperform models based on points of interest (POI), population, and other demographic data alone. Moreover, incorporating urban features captured from street view images can improve the explanatory power of these other methods by 5% to 25%. We propose "urban visual intelligence" as a process to uncover hidden city profiles, infer, and synthesize urban information with computer vision and street view images. This study serves as a foundation for future urban research interested in this process and understanding the role of visual aspects of the city.
Aging in place enables seniors to live at home and in their familiar neighborhoods as long as their health conditions allow. To date, few efforts have been made to examine the linkage between the ...physical and social aspects of the neighborhood environment, the activity-travel patterns, and their overall effects on life satisfaction. Therefore, this study aims to contribute to the existing literature by examining the relationship between older people's person-environment fit, activity-travel patterns, sense of community, and life satisfaction. Seemingly unrelated regression was applied to analyze questionnaire survey data collected from six community centers for older people in Hong Kong. Using the geographical perspective, the sense of community is further divided into the people and place aspects, with the latter found to have a greater effect on overall life satisfaction. Subjective walkability both directly and indirectly influences life satisfaction. Satisfaction with public transport facilities, health care facilities, and greenery, parks, and promenades indirectly influences older people's life satisfaction through their sense of community. The percentage of out-of-home activity time spent in the common neighborhood has a strong positive relationship with the sense of community. The findings highlight the importance of high-quality pedestrian infrastructure and public transport facilities in planning for aging in place. After identifying the common neighborhoods, local governments can listen to older people's needs and make improvements on the infrastructure, services, and facilities in common neighborhoods, as well as the connectivity to these areas.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The widespread adoption of information and communication technology has facilitated frequent e-activities in people’s daily life. From the perspective of individual’s time use on e-working and ...e-shopping at home, this paper aims to enhance our understanding of the function of home beyond a living space for family life. Using a household survey of 608 full-time paid employees who conducted e-activities at home in Nanjing, China, we investigated the characteristics and patterns of home-based e-working and e-shopping. Only 7.9% of the respondents neither e-shopped nor e-worked at home. We find that the socio-demographic context, Internet use habits, attitudes towards e-working/e-shopping, and geographical accessibility have influenced the patterns of home-based e-working and e-shopping. The results indicate that the rich e-activities taking place at home have changed the time use at home and reinforced the function of home as a multifunctional hub.
Purpose Revealing the relationship between mobility impairment and life satisfaction can help to propose effective interventions to secure mobility and life satisfaction. However, the relationship ...remains unclear and lacks quantitative evidence in China. This study therefore assesses the association of mobility impairment, social engagement, and life satisfaction among the older population in China. Methods Based on the sample of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey database in 2013, a structural equation modeling is established. The sample size is 4245 with 55.9% with mobility impairment. Results The model shows that the length of suffering from disability is significantly related to mobility impairment (β= 0.058, P < 0.001). Mobility impairment is inversely related to social engagement (β = -0.300, P < 0.001) and life satisfaction (β = -0.311, P < 0.001). Social engagement is positively related to life satisfaction (β = 0.211, P < 0.001). Moreover, the relationships have some differences for the seniors with different sociodemographic characteristics and living in different residential areas. Conclusions As seniors get older, they tend to have more severe mobility impairment and participate less in social activities. Those with higher mobility impairment are more likely to report lower life satisfaction partly because they usually participate less in social activities. Different strategies are suggested to be adopted to improve the life satisfaction of the older population from the aspects of promoting mobility and social engagement, including improving the design of transport facilitates, providing assistive facilities for the seniors with severe mobility impairment, promoting the accessibility of community leisure and healthcare services, and constructing more community senior activity centers.
Applying a novel approach based on the fusion of social media data, land use data and other information, this paper examines the spatio-temporal patterns of public responses towards urban flooding in ...Nanjing city during July 1–21, 2016. Spatially, “pockets” of high public concern towards urban flooding were found in areas with low altitude, high percentage of water bodies, and rapid urban construction in recent years. Temporally, public responses tend to peak during the rainstorm period, rather than prior to that. Within a day, behavioural and emotional changes in relation to the rainstorm were most discernable during the morning peak hours. Variations in the response among people of different backgrounds, and the impact of urban flooding on different domains of people's daily life have been revealed. Based on the knowledge gained from this study, policy measures are proposed to increase urban flooding resilience, covering both physical infrastructure and human elements.
•Examine the spatio-temporal patterns of public responses towards urban flooding.•Integrate social media data with land use and other information in studying urban resilience towards urban flooding.•Propose policy measures on enhancing urban flooding resilience covering both hardware and software components.
The idea of using transit-oriented development (TOD) in reducing automobile dependency and improving the sustainability of transportation activities has gained wider support in recent years. Research ...findings have shown that residents living in TOD neighborhood used transit more frequently than people having similar socio-economic characteristics but living elsewhere. Most of the existing studies on TOD and transit ridership used recently developed sites or suburban neighborhoods as case studies. However, limited research studies have been conducted on TOD using city-wide station-level data. By using the heavy rail systems in New York City and Hong Kong as case studies, factors which are expected to contribute to higher rail transit ridership are analyzed by using multiple regressions. The results show that a combination of variables in different dimensions, including (i) land use, (ii) station characteristics, (iii) socio-economic and demographic characteristics and (iv) inter-modal competition were important in accounting for the variability of rail transit ridership. In particular, station characteristics appeared to be the most important dimension in affecting average weekday railway patronage. Future research on TOD may pay more attention on examining how various aspects of station characteristics can be modified to increase railway patronage. Besides, car ownership is both significant and positively associated with railway patronage. The result suggests that higher car ownership may be associated with more pick-ups, drop-offs and park-and-ride activities to the transit stations for the longer transit trip legs. Furthermore, this study shows that place-specific factors are important in influencing railway patronage.
Walking towards a happy city Loo, Becky P.Y.
Journal of transport geography,
05/2021, Letnik:
93
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This paper aims to pursue and to strengthen a paradigm shift in transport. It offers a fresh perspective on how the vehicle-oriented paradigm has been translated into specific biased practices and ...priorities in transport policy and research that jeopardized walkability. Then, it examines the transformational role of walking in the sustainable urban mobility transition. By considering walking as an experience, the paper shares a people-oriented and place-based framework for measuring and promoting walkable cities based on the local context of Hong Kong. On the way forward, it highlights the irreplaceable and leading role of governments in promoting walkability. Finally, it suggests two strategic directions of quantifying and fully integrating walking-related variables in transport design manuals, and ensuring a seamless transport experience for people using sustainable transport modes.
•The vehicle-oriented paradigm is not pedestrian-friendly.•An alternative paradigm that is people-oriented and place-based is emerging.•Promoting walking and ensuring a seamless transport experience are important.•Quantifying walkability is an essential step in the sustainable mobility transition.•Governments should take the lead in improving walkability.
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