We assess the theoretical capability of the upcoming France-UK MicroCarb satellite, which has a city-scan observing mode, to determine integrated urban emissions of carbon dioxide (CO.sub.2). To ...achieve this we report results from a series of closed-loop numerical experiments that use an atmospheric transport model with anthropogenic and biogenic fluxes to determine the corresponding changes in atmospheric CO.sub.2 column, accounting for changes in measurement coverage due to cloud loading. We use a maximum a posteriori inverse method to infer the CO.sub.2 fluxes based on the measurements and the a priori information. Using an urban CO.sub.2 inversion system, we explore the relative performance of alternative two-sweep and three-sweep city observing strategies to quantify CO.sub.2 emissions over the cities of Paris and London in different months when biospheric fluxes vary in magnitude. We find that both the two-sweep and three-sweep observing modes are able to reduce a priori flux errors by 20 %-40 % over Paris and London. The three-sweep observing strategy, which generally outperforms the two-sweep mode by virtue of its wider scan area that typically yields more cloud-free observations, can retrieve the total emissions of the truth within 7 % over Paris and 21 % over London. The performance of the limited-domain city-mode observing strategies is sensitive to cloud coverage and particularly sensitive to the prevailing wind direction. We also find that seasonal photosynthetic uptake of CO.sub.2 by the urban biosphere weakens atmospheric CO.sub.2 gradients across both cities, thereby reducing the sensitivity of urban CO.sub.2 enhancements and subsequently compromising the ability of MicroCarb to reduce bias in estimating urban CO.sub.2 emissions. This suggests that additional trace gases co-emitted with anthropogenic CO.sub.2 emissions, but unaffected by the land biosphere, are needed to quantify sub-city scale CO.sub.2 emissions during months when the urban biosphere is particularly active.
Why do autocrats build spectacular new capital cities? InThe Geopolitics of Spectacle, Natalie Koch considers how autocratic rulers use "spectacular" projects to shape state-society relations, but ...rather than focus on the standard approach-on the project itself-she considers the unspectacular "others." The contrasting views of those from the poorest regions toward these new national capitals help her develop a geographic approach to spectacle.
Koch uses Astana in Kazakhstan to exemplify her argument, comparing that spectacular city with others from resource-rich, nondemocratic nations in central Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Southeast Asia.The Geopolitics of Spectacledraws new political-geographic lessons and shows that these spectacles can be understood only from multiple viewpoints, sites, and temporalities. Koch explicitly theorizes spectacle geographically and in so doing extends the analysis of governmentality into new empirical and theoretical terrain.
With cases ranging from Azerbaijan to Qatar and Myanmar, and an intriguing account of reactions to the new capital of Astana from the poverty-stricken Aral Sea region of Kazakhstan, Koch's book provides food for thought for readers in human geography, anthropology, sociology, urban studies, political science, international affairs, and post-Soviet and central Asian studies.
Controversy has arisen in recent years over the creation of so-called "ghost cities" across China. The ghost city term tends to describe large-scale urban areas, sometimes planned as new towns, ...featuring an abundance of new built space and appearing to also have extremely low tenancy. This article examines key questions related to the ghost city phenomenon, such as: what is a ghost city? Are ghost cities driven by a tendency toward over-supply in housing? How are local-level political incentives aligned to foster the production of ghost cities? Are ghost cities temporary anomalies or structural features of China's urban-led economic growth model? We discuss recent scholarly research into ghost cities and present original findings to show how an excess of urban space may plague certain Chinese cities.
Newness, or building from scratch, has long been considered as the mantra of the New Towns. Most early New Towns were built on Ex-nihilo sites. That provides the state of mental and physical ...blankness - best known as tabula rasa - that modern planning favours. It is only after generations that relying on pre-existing nucleus is realised to be an alternative that helps to achieve place-making and promotes Genius Loci. The paper first presents a contribution to this alternative approach, encapsulates its philosophy and turns it into a working tool. It then discusses the process of its deployment. Bouinan New Town, (Algeria), provides a raw example of a New Town on which the approach was applied. It discusses the potentials and limits of the approach through its three parameters that are Man, Space, and Time, and resolving the dilemma between Genius Loci and Newness. Results and findings aim at fine-tuning the next New Towns generation that is envisaged in the 2030 Vision Plan and enrich the New Towns world literature in countries having similar conditions.
This article defines the key parameters of ‘state entrepreneurialism’ as a governance form that combines planning centrality and market instruments, and interprets how these two seemingly ...contradictory tendencies are made coherent in the political economic structures of post-reform China. Through examining urban regeneration programmes (in particular ‘three olds regeneration’, sanjiu gaizao), the development of suburban new towns and the reconstruction of the countryside, the article details institutional configurations that make the Chinese case different from a neoliberal growth machine. The contradiction of these tendencies gives room to urban residents and migrants to develop their agencies and their own spaces, and creates informalities in Chinese urban transformation.
本文定义了“政府企业家主义”作为一种将集中规划与市场手段相结合的治理形式有哪些关键参数，并诠释了这两种看起来相互矛盾的倾向在改革开放后中国的政治经济结构中是如何融汇的。通过考察城市再生计划（尤其是“三旧改造”）、郊区新城的开发和乡村重建，本文详细剖析了使中国的情况与新自由主义增长机器不同的制度格局。这两种倾向的矛盾性使城市居民和移民发展了能动性和自身空间，并造就了中国城市转型中的非正规性。
After some wartime planning, the British New Towns were launched in 1945-6 by the post-war Labour government. The New Towns were essentially statist, top-down initiatives to relieve the problems of ...congested urban areas and intended as self-contained and balanced communities for work and living. This paper critically examines the experience of Stevenage, the first New Town (designated November 1946), in light of changing political, economic and social circumstances at local and national levels. Its early years were very unsuccessful in fulfilling the foundational aims of the programme. This reflected a combination of strong local opposition, excessive government impatience and clumsy management so that, before 1951, it had a very poor record of housing completions. The 1950s and 1960s were highly successful for Stevenage’s growth and, to a large extent, in meeting the foundational aims of New Towns. It was outstandingly successful in becoming self-contained as regards employment. There were however limitations in the extent to which it was a socially balanced community that was truly relieving the problems of Greater London, whence most of its new arrivals had come. Because new residents gained house tenancies in Stevenage on the basis of the main breadwinner’s job, there was soon an upper working-class/lower middle-class predominance. The unskilled working class, ethnic minorities and older people were markedly underrepresented, present in much lower proportions than in congested inner London. There was also underrepresentation of managers, higher professional groups or the self-employed, reflecting both residential choices and the branch plant nature of its manufacturing economy. Several of these aspects became more problematic during the 1970s and 1980s, as the weaknesses of inner metropolitan areas grew. There were efforts henceforth to make housing tenancies less directly related to jobs. However, in 1980 the Stevenage Development Corporation was wound up and, during its final years, initiative had already been passing to other hands. Its rental housing stock was transferred to the local council while home ownership also grew markedly during the 1970s. The shift to private initiative went further when the Conservative Government after 1979 insisted that industrial and commercial assets soon be sold to help finance the remaining New Towns in the programme. These important and continuing changes, together with wider shifts such as manufacturing job decline, rise of service employment, growing car-based mobility and growing place of women in employment had further impacts for Stevenage. They raised further questions about how far it fulfilled the original New Town conception and whether that conception was even any longer relevant. The last section shows that Stevenage, although continuing to be an attractive location for employers, is now a much less self-contained and balanced community than in earlier decades.
Problem, research strategy, and findings: From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Hong Kong government developed several new towns to alleviate pressure on contemporary urban areas and provide housing for a ...rapidly growing population. Although self-containment is a key objective in building new towns, no research has assessed residents' behavioral outcomes, limiting the objective assessment of the spatial planning of new towns. In this study, we hypothesize that adequate job accessibility would offer residents shorter commutes and hence more time for noncommute travel and activities and better work-life balance. Drawing on census and household travel survey data, we assess the spatial planning of new towns by investigating the effects of job accessibility on commute and noncommute travel durations. We find that a) there is a disparity in self-containment and access to job opportunities between these towns and urban areas, b) job accessibility strongly influences commute duration, and c) prolonged commutes can reduce noncommute travel duration, particularly for public transportation users, suggesting that this may harm work-life balance for workers with long commutes.
Takeaway for practice: Building a self-contained new town requires strategic spatial planning and a concrete plan to develop the local economy. To cultivate local employment, planners should develop a regional plan that differentiates main industries in different new towns. A good starting point would be a thorough understanding of the history, spatial distribution of existing industries and firms, and skills of local workers in these towns. We recommend more proactive efforts to a) establish more self-contained new town communities, b) relocate jobs in certain sectors (e.g., government offices) to new towns, c) strengthen an integrated transit system, and d) adopt alternative work schedules (e.g., telecommuting, flexible work hours) in certain industries to relieve commute burdens, improving both commute experience and work-life balance.
In the past forty years, more than 3,800 new towns emerged and accommodated over 150 million urban inhabitants in China, which drew much attention since they were reported as “ghost cities” by media ...in the late 2000s. This literature review examines existing research and synthesizes current discussions through a meta-analysis. It concludes that existing literature, led by environmental scientists and designers, exhibits two polarized debates around the new towns’ uniqueness and the future of ghost cities. Gaps exist in national-scale surveys, criticism of planning methodology, and theories that can explain the current disputes.
The Beveridge Report listed ‘Squalor’ as one of the ‘five giants on the road to reconstruction’, with the use of the term pointing to a broader concern than individual houses ‘unfit for human ...habitation’. ‘Squalor’, said Beveridge, ‘arises mainly through haphazard distribution of industry and population’ indicated anxiety about pollution and the ‘mean’, dark streets in cities and industrial towns. Apart from these references, the Beveridge Report made no other mentions of ‘Squalor’ but in later publications, Beveridge advocated New Towns and the involvement of voluntary housing associations in housing supply as remedies to the problem. This article reviews the context and history of Beveridge's Giant of Squalor, considering how Beveridge dealt with the ‘problem of rent’ the attempts by governments to tackle the issue, examines the contributions made by New Towns and housing associations, records progress in improving minimum housing standards and investigates potential policies to overcome these challenges that might be included in a ‘New Beveridge’ Report.
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