A Study of User Activity Patterns and the Effect of Venue Types on City Dynamics Using Location-Based Social Network Data

The main purpose of this research is to study the effect of various types of venues on the density distribution of residents and model check-in data from a Location-Based Social Network for the city of Shanghai, China by using combination of multiple temporal, spatial and visualization techniques by classifying users’ check-ins into different venue categories. This article investigates the use of Weibo for big data analysis and its efficiency in various categories instead of manually collected datasets, by exploring the relation between time, frequency, place and category of check-in based on location characteristics and their contributions. The data used in this research was acquired from a famous Chinese microblogs called Weibo, which was preprocessed to get the most significant and relevant attributes for the current study and transformed into Geographical Information Systems format, analyzed and, finally, presented with the help of graphs, tables and heat maps. The Kernel Density Estimation was used for spatial analysis. The venue categorization was based on nature of the physical locations within the city by comparing the name of venue extracted from Weibo dataset with the function such as education for schools or shopping for malls and so on. The results of usage patterns from hours to days, venue categories and frequency distribution into these categories as well as the density of check-in within the Shanghai and contribution of each venue category in its diversity are thoroughly demonstrated, uncovering interesting spatio-temporal patterns including frequency and density of users from different venues at different time intervals, and significance of using geo-data from Weibo to study human behavior in variety of studies like education, tourism and city dynamics based on location-based social networks. Our findings uncover various aspects of activity patterns in human behavior, the significance of venue classes and its effects in Shanghai, which can be applied in pattern analysis, recommendation systems and other interactive applications for these classes.</jats:p

中国の都市型ウォーターフロント空間におけるパフォーマンスベースの都市再開発に関する研究

This study aims to fill such research gaps by understanding the social performance of urban waterfront spaces. Field observation and questionnaire survey were conducted in three urban waterfront spaces in China. The results indicate that the riverside walkway serves as a space for tourism, leisure and entertainment, the results indicate the phenomenon of stratification and agglomeration so that the similar aspects could be merged into the same cluster for consideration in the urban waterfront space planning and design. This study also generates some implications for the renovation of urban waterfront spaces. Overall, this study provides people with basic understanding of the social performance of existing urban waterfront spaces, which can further promote urban planners and designers to comprehensively build sustainable, resilient and healthy water-based living environments.北九州市立大

Towards a Sustainable Life: Smart and Green Design in Buildings and Community

This Special Issue includes contributions about occupants’ sustainable living in buildings and communities, highlighting issues surrounding the sustainable development of our environments and lives by emphasizing smart and green design perspectives. This Special Issue specifically focuses on research and case studies that develop promising methods for the sustainable development of our environment and identify factors critical to the application of a sustainable paradigm for quality of life from a user-oriented perspective. After a rigorous review of the submissions by experts, fourteen articles concerning sustainable living and development are published in this Special Issue, written by authors sharing their expertise and approaches to the concept and application of sustainability in their fields. The fourteen contributions to this special issue can be categorized into four groups, depending on the issues that they address. All the proposed methods, models, and applications in these studies contribute to the current understanding of the adoption of the sustainability paradigm and are likely to inspire further research addressing the challenges of constructing sustainable buildings and communities resulting in a sustainable life for all of society

中国瀋陽市の都市景観における画像分析を用いた視覚的印象評価に関する研究

This study constructed an urban landscape visual quality evaluation method based on Image analysis. Taking Shenyang, China, as an example, the visual quality of urban landscape was evaluated at three levels: macro, meso and micro. It explains the correlation between the visual quality of urban landscape and public visual perception characteristics from different perspectives. The study proposes effective strategies on optimizing the urban landscape environment, and provide reliable theoretical references for the urban landscape and planning.北九州市立大

2nd Edition of Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (Health-EDRM)

Disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones, floods, heat waves, nuclear accidents, and large-scale pollution incidents take lives and incur major health problems. The majority of large-scale disasters affect the most vulnerable populations, which often comprise extreme ages, remote living areas, and endemic poverty, as well as people with low literacy. Health emergency and disaster risk management (Health-EDRM) refers to the systematic analysis and management of health risks surrounding emergencies and disasters, and plays an important role in reducing the hazards and vulnerability along with extending preparedness, responses, and recovery measures. This concept encompasses risk analyses and interventions, such as accessible early warning systems, the timely deployment of relief workers, and the provision of suitable drugs and medical equipment to decrease the impact of disasters on people before, during, and after an event (or events). Currently, there is a major gap in the scientific literature regarding Health-EDRM to facilitate major global policies and initiatives for disaster risk reduction worldwide

Expanding Data Imaginaries in Urban Planning:Foregrounding lived experience and community voices in studies of cities with participatory and digital visual methods

“Expanding Data Imaginaries in Urban Planning” synthesizes more than three years of industrial research conducted within Gehl and the Techno–Anthropology Lab at Aalborg University. Through practical experiments with social media images, digital photovoice, and participatory mapmaking, the project explores how visual materials created by citizens can be used within a digital and participatory methodology to reconfigure the empirical ground of data-driven urbanism. Drawing on a data feminist framework, the project uses visual research to elevate community voices and situate urban issues in lived experiences. As a Science and Technology Studies project, the PhD also utilizes its industrial position as an opportunity to study Gehl’s practices up close, unpacking collectively held narratives and visions that form a particular “data imaginary” and contribute to the production and perpetuation of the role of data in urban planning. The dissertation identifies seven epistemological commitments that shape the data imaginary at Gehl and act as discursive closures within their practice. To illustrate how planners might expand on these, the dissertation uses its own data experiments as speculative demonstrations of how to make alternative modes of knowing cities possible through participatory and digital visual methods

HISTORY URBANISM RESILIENCE: Book of Abstracts

The 17th conference (2016, Delft) of the International Planning History Society (IPHS) and its proceedings place presentations from different continents and on varied topics side by side, providing insight into state-of-the art research in the field of planning history and offering a glimpse of new approaches, themes, papers and books to come. Book of Abstracts