Inclusion of gender views for the evaluation and mitigation of urban vulnerability: A case study in castellón

The inclusion of gender views in every field and, especially, in urbanism, has become crucial for urban planning. Considering both men’s and women’s interests in an integrated gender equality perspective provides better results that improve the quality of public spaces and engenders a more sustainable society. However, to realize such benefits, efforts are required not only to understand the needs and preferences of urban residents but also to shape policies and develop strategies to mitigate vulnerability with population involvement. In order to help decision makers at the urban level evaluate vulnerability with the inclusion of gender views, this study proposes a model that incorporates the specificities of urban fabric users that face adverse conditions. The model is based on a structured and standardized checklist of key topics that could be applied to any urban devel-opment. From this checklist, a list of categories, subcategories, and indicators were proposed and validated using the inter-judge agreement technique. To illustrate this model, this paper presents the case study of Castellón (Spain) in which deprived neighborhoods were analyzed, updating a previous model intended only to detect vulnerability. The results help link policy making to social vulnerability and indicate strategies to reach inclusive neighborhoods via a gender equality ap-proach

Inclusion of Gender Views for the Evaluation and Mitigation of Urban Vulnerability: A Case Study in Castellón

The inclusion of gender views in every field and, especially, in urbanism, has become crucial for urban planning. Considering both men’s and women’s interests in an integrated gender equality perspective provides better results that improve the quality of public spaces and engenders a more sustainable society. However, to realize such benefits, efforts are required not only to understand the needs and preferences of urban residents but also to shape policies and develop strategies to mitigate vulnerability with population involvement. In order to help decision makers at the urban level evaluate vulnerability with the inclusion of gender views, this study proposes a model that incorporates the specificities of urban fabric users that face adverse conditions. The model is based on a structured and standardized checklist of key topics that could be applied to any urban development. From this checklist, a list of categories, subcategories, and indicators were proposed and validated using the inter-judge agreement technique. To illustrate this model, this paper presents the case study of Castellón (Spain) in which deprived neighborhoods were analyzed, updating a previous model intended only to detect vulnerability. The results help link policy making to social vulnerability and indicate strategies to reach inclusive neighborhoods via a gender equality approach

Transforming our World through Universal Design for Human Development

An environment, or any building product or service in it, should ideally be designed to meet the needs of all those who wish to use it. Universal Design is the design and composition of environments, products, and services so that they can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people, regardless of their age, size, ability or disability. It creates products, services and environments that meet people’s needs. In short, Universal Design is good design. This book presents the proceedings of UD2022, the 6th International Conference on Universal Design, held from 7 - 9 September 2022 in Brescia, Italy.The conference is targeted at professionals and academics interested in the theme of universal design as related to the built environment and the wellbeing of users, but also covers mobility and urban environments, knowledge, and information transfer, bringing together research knowledge and best practice from all over the world. The book contains 72 papers from 13 countries, grouped into 8 sections and covering topics including the design of inclusive natural environments and urban spaces, communities, neighborhoods and cities; housing; healthcare; mobility and transport systems; and universally- designed learning environments, work places, cultural and recreational spaces. One section is devoted to universal design and cultural heritage, which had a particular focus at this edition of the conference. The book reflects the professional and disciplinary diversity represented in the UD movement, and will be of interest to all those whose work involves inclusive design

The dynamic interaction of land use and transport in a highly fragmented city: the case of Cape Town, South Africa

The need for more inclusive and integrated cities has resulted in a paradigm shift in the South African transport and land use policy environment where transport and land use planning are viewed as a continuum as opposed to isolated planning aspects. Issues such as residential segregation, social exclusion, spatial inefficiencies, inequality, residential informality, marginalisation of the low-income cohort continue to form part of the current planning discourse. While policy acknowledges the need to redress these issues, the urban spatial patterns in South African cities continue to trace the historical planning trajectory. Recently, congestion has become an issue in some of South Africa’s cities with Johannesburg and Cape Town appearing in the list of the top hundred most congested cities in the world. It is thus essential to understand how South African cities can address urban accessibility and mobility issues along with redressing apartheid spatial planning to attain sustainable cities that allow for inclusivity of all population groups. Like most South African cities, Cape Town is a relic of apartheid planning where the urban spatial patterns reinforce social exclusion among other issues. Urban and transport planning in Cape Town focuses on addressing issues of spatial inefficiencies, social exclusion, congestion due to rapid motorisation and the proliferation of informal settlements. It is against this backdrop that the central concern of this research is to understand urban dynamics linked to the spatiotemporal interaction of transport and land use in Cape Town to aid in the formulation of proactive urban policies. There is compelling evidence in the literature that dynamic integrated land use transport models provide an avenue through which the urban change process can be understood to aid in the development of adaptive land use and transport strategies. METRONAMICA, a dynamic land use transport model, is applied in this research to simulate and understand land use and transport change in Cape Town. A sequential stage-wise procedure was implemented to calibrate the model for the period 1995- 2005 and an independent validation was carried out from 2005 to 2010 to evaluate the model. Kappa statistic and its associated variants were applied to assess the ability of the land use model block to reproduce land use patterns while the EMME model and previous transport studies for Cape Town were used to evaluate the transport model. The results from the calibration and validation exercise show that the model can reproduce historical land use and transport patterns. The integration of the transport and land use model through accessibility improved the Kappa Simulation and Fuzzy Kappa Simulation. This showed that the model explained urban change better when land use and transport interacted compared to an independent land use model. This shows that accessibility can be employed in the Cape Town context to enhance the understanding of the urban change process. In addition to the Kappa statistics, the fractal dimension which measures the landscape complexity was used to assess the predictive accuracy of the model. The model performance revealed that the landscape patterns simulated by the model resemble observed land use patterns signifying a good calibration of the model. The calibrated land use transport model for the Cape Town Metropolitan region (CTMRLUT) was applied for policy scenarios. Three scenarios were simulated, specifically the business as usual (BAU), redressing social exclusion and the potential for in situ upgrading of informal settlements. The study found that intensive land use development along the Metro South East Integration Zone (MSEIZ) was linked to a reduction in commuting distances to economic activities which is in contrast to the BAU scenario. While these scenarios looked at the urban spatial patterns, the effect of land use patterns on congestion was also explored. The findings from the scenario simulations suggest that despite the reduction in distance to economic centres, the congestion condition in Cape Town will continue to deteriorate. Further, the findings indicate that interventions that only target land use developments are not sufficient to address congestion issues in Cape Town. Instead, to address the congestion problem in Cape Town, mixed land use and compact growth strategies need to be complemented with travel demand management strategies that target private car usage and intensive investment in transport infrastructure, especially rail, to facilitate the use of alternative modes. With regards to informal settlements, the study found that in situ upgrading could be a viable option to tackle some informal settlements. However, for proper inclusionary informal settlement policy, an approach that resonates with contextual realities would be more suitable to assess the viability of in situ upgrading based on the location of informal settlements relative to centres of economic activities. Additionally, the study revealed that instead of informal settlements locating as stand-alone settlements, some of them located adjacent to low-income housing which might be indicative of a growth in backyard shacks which is an existing housing trend in some lowincome suburbs in Cape Town. While this research has shown that integrating land use and transport in policy is potentially useful in solving urban issues, it has also revealed the value of urban modelling as a platform on which to assess the potential impacts of policies before their implementation. This is a strong case for the utilisation of decision support tools in land use and transport planning in contemporary South African cities

A Capabilitarian Account of the Potential of Mobile Money for Rural Poverty Reduction in Bauchi, Northern Nigeria

The concept of financial inclusion is partly about empowering underserved or unserved individuals with options to engage within a financial system. With the advent of mobile-money, many people living in rural and cash economies can use their mobile phones to access nontraditional means of banking. The ability to use mobile phones for payment and remittance purposes has changed the ways mobile phones and banking are used, because of the opportunity offered to underbanked and unbanked populations in many developing countries. Although there is an increasing amount of research in this area, studies relating mobile money to human development, and more specifically to rural poverty as ‘capability deprivation’ are limited. The capability approach has in recent decades emerged as a theoretical framework for understanding poverty, justice, inequality and human development. Although the approach has been extensively operationalised in varied contexts, there remains scarce overt interaction between the capability approach and the branch of research focused on assessing information and communications technology (ICT) for advancing human development. The capability approach is operationalised here to examine the transformative potential of ICTs in human development. In particular, the study assesses the effect of mobile-money on human capabilities of poor and rural individuals in Bauchi State, Northern Nigeria. Research insights are thus used to produce a capabilitarian account through which mobilemoney is evaluated in terms of its ability to expand or obstruct people’s valued human capabilities to achieve their ideas of ’the good’. Secondary evidence synthesised with empirical discoveries suggest that mobile-money is valuable if the range of financial services allow poor people to pursue their wellbeing goals by serving primarily as a savings platform and a facilitator of quick and dependable payments and transfers. While a proportion of rural populations are included (through capability expansion) in the mobile-money ecosystem, some remain inevitably excluded (through capability obstruction), and therefore still deprived in terms of their capabilities as a result of mobile-money. In conclusion, challenges relating to accessibility, affordability and awareness need to be adequately addressed in order for mobile-money to attain its transformative potential of reducing rural poverty. By exploring how mobile-money plays a role in enhancing or obstructing human capabilities, this study demonstrates that the capability approach lends itself to making a more robust analysis that allows a theorisation of the link between ICTs and human development

Geological resources: perception and impact for enhancing sustainability and resilience in urban settings

Unprecedented rates of urbanisation and city growth has created many challenges such as the ability to address the impacts of climate change, manage large-scale population increases and cope with resource insecurity. As a result, cities are becoming increasingly reliant on geo-resources to support their everyday services and development. Geo-resources - naturally occurring assets of the Earth that can be harnessed to create something functional for our consumption - include; geo-materials, sub-surface space, groundwater and geothermal energy. The enhanced utilisation of geo-resources can be seen to contribute to wider policy goals of building sustainable and resilient cities. Within this context, this study assesses the geo-resource potential of three UK case study sites by developing and implementing a novel geo-resources mapping tool. Alongside this, key stakeholder interviews were conducted, and a detailed examination of urban planning and design documentation undertaken to establish the enablers and barriers to geo-resource use in situ. The case studies revealed that the geo-resources-potential mapping tool provided an indication of the suitability of a site for utilising a specific geo-resource, which was supplemented by an urban design geo-resource (UDG) matrix to connect the mapping results with geo-resources infrastructure and site-specific urban design guidance and planning policy information. The interview series and document examinations further identified clear factors supporting and preventing the use of geo-resources in specific urban settings. In particular, the study revealed that: costs and finance mechanisms, risks and unknowns, communication, policy, and multiple benefits are the key factors impacting geo-resource uptake. In operationalising this research, this work provides a starting point to engage urban stakeholders with geological resource expertise and demonstrates how their utilisation can enhance the sustainability and resilience of urban settings as a whole

LIPIcs, Volume 277, GIScience 2023, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 277, GIScience 2023, Complete Volum

Social Innovation in Sustainable Urban Development

How can a city advance from social invention to social innovation, to attain sustainable urban development (SUD)? Many new ideas, initiatives, and showcases for social innovation have been introduced; however, project-based forms of experimentation are often just part of the ongoing urban politics (or governmentality), and consequently somewhat ephemeral, with traditional siloed city administrations remaining a central obstacle to SUD. Our Special Issue presents twelve papers that address the question of social innovation in sustainable urban development from very different angles. The contributions span issues concerning smart cities, innovation in the adaptive reuse of urban heritage, as well as policy options for regions in transition. In terms of social innovation for SUD purposes, the presented solutions range from transferable legal formalizations to the creation of urban ecosystems whose institutional structures ensure the inclusion of the civil society. Instead of a comprehensive, integrative SUD, robust sectoral solutions, or even phased solutions, are more likely to be sought

12th International Conference on Geographic Information Science: GIScience 2023, September 12–15, 2023, Leeds, UK

No abstract available

The right to have digital rights in smart cities

This book is a reprint of the Special Issue Social Innovation in Sustainable Urban Development that was published in Sustainabilit