“I won’t cycle on a route like this; I don’t think I fully understood what isolation meant”: A critical evaluation of the safety principles in Cycling Level of Service (CLoS) tools from a gender perspective

This paper contributes to debates on gender, mobility and planning through an analysis of Cycling Level of Service tools (CLoS). Whilst many UK cities have had some success increasing overall cycling numbers in recent years, women are still far less likely to cycle, often because of concerns with journey quality related to traffic safety and social safety. CLoS tools are used by planners and engineers to assess existing routes and ensure they are safe, direct and continuous. However, whilst CLoS tools are seen to provide objective measures of some principles, we argue that they fail to attribute enough importance to gendered differences in perceptions of social safety. Based upon qualitative go-along and interview data, we assess the Welsh CLoS tool, demonstrating that it allows routes considered to be unrideable by female cyclists to be designated as rideable because there is no requirement to take mandatory remedial action regarding what are shown to be critically low scores on indicators of social safety. Whilst larger studies are required to validate these findings, our data suggests that the safety component of the CLoS tool can only be considered objective from a male point of view and inadequately considers the perspectives and needs of women. Moreover, we argue that in mandating socially unsafe routes as safe, CLoS actively reproduces gendered ‘essences’ such as vulnerability. As a result we suggest that CLoS urgently needs to be incorporated into gender and equalities audits if it is to accurately reflect the needs of more diverse user groups

Planning and practices of Chinese Eco-development: a case study of Chongming Eco-Island

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, eco-developments as experimental solutions to create sustainable pathways for a harmonious relationship between humans and nature have begun to unfold in China. This research argues that there is a gap in the analysis of current eco-development in China in which insufficient attention is given to the shaping and reshaping dynamics of an eco-development project throughout time, and different stakeholders’ roles and perceptions in the planning and practices of an eco-development. Integrating both empirical and methodological insights from ecological modernization and political ecology, this research aims to critically evaluate Chinese eco-development as a whole from design, through delivery, and to local effects. An integrative approach allows a more fruitful understanding of the local dynamics and complexities of Chinese eco-development from both a top-down perspective that dissects the formation and implementation of strategic policies and planning initiatives, and a bottom-up view that explores local individual and community’s perceptions of and responses to eco-development. The research is founded on an intensive case study of Chongming Eco-Island in Shanghai, China. The analysis is built upon data collected through archival research, in-depth semi-structured interviews with both state and non-state actors, focus group meetings with local communities, and on-the-ground observation and documentation. The findings of this research show that despite a welcome transformation from the previous pro-growth ideology and practices to a more ecology-centric construction, eco-developments on Chongming have been driven by strategic entrepreneurial planning of the Shanghai municipal state and by quantitative targets that are designed to address primarily the city’s overall development needs. Privileging an ecological modernization thinking and largely excluding local knowledge and concern, eco-developments on Chongming instead of promoting local sustainable development, generates unintended and adverse results for the local environment and the community. This research contributes to debates on Chinese eco-development by formulating an integrative framework to allow a holistic examination of local eco-development planning, practices and effects, and to investigate the views and values of both state and non-state actors. This research also provides an attractive alternative strategy for those seeking to analyse a more nature-focused, locally-relevant means to promote urban sustainability planning and development

Finite- and Large- Sample Inference for Model and Coefficients in High-dimensional Linear Regression with Repro Samples

In this paper, we present a new and effective simulation-based approach to conduct both finite- and large-sample inference for high-dimensional linear regression models. This approach is developed under the so-called repro samples framework, in which we conduct statistical inference by creating and studying the behavior of artificial samples that are obtained by mimicking the sampling mechanism of the data. We obtain confidence sets for (a) the true model corresponding to the nonzero coefficients, (b) a single or any collection of regression coefficients, and (c) both the model and regression coefficients jointly. We also extend our approaches to drawing inferences on functions of the regression coefficients. The proposed approach fills in two major gaps in the high-dimensional regression literature: (1) lack of effective approaches to address model selection uncertainty and provide valid inference for the underlying true model; (2) lack of effective inference approaches that guarantee finite-sample performances. We provide both finite-sample and asymptotic results to theoretically guarantee the performances of the proposed methods. In addition, our numerical results demonstrate that the proposed methods are valid and achieve better coverage with smaller confidence sets than the existing state-of-art approaches, such as debiasing and bootstrap approaches

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)'s sustainable safeguard mechanism on energy projects

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was officially established by China in 2016 with one of the aims to develop energy infrastructure based on green and sustainable principles in Asia. To achieve that, AIIB has set forth safeguard policies, including the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) applied for funded projects and the AIIB Energy Sector Strategy, to guide its energy investments. However, the effects of the safeguard policies and further safeguard operations on the energy projects remain unknown. This study reviews AIIB's safeguard mechanism on energy projects, including the safeguard policies, assessment and management plans, and implementations of AIIB's energy projects. We find that AIIB's current safeguard mechanism on energy projects, in comparison with other established multilateral development banks (MDBs), is still at its beginning stage, which does not match its goal and promise on sustainable energy development in Asia

Water and land: environmental governance and Chinese eco-development

Eco-city development has emerged as a key urban form. As one of the active advocates as well as a vigorous promoter of eco-developments, China has initiated and implemented a vast number of eco-projects in a variety of geographical locations and with diverse scales. Despite claims to integrate economic with social and environmental objectives, research on eco-city practices suggest that mainstream eco-developments promote, first and foremost, economic growth, and largely ignore issues such as environmental well-being and social equity. There is a pressing need to better understand why the environment is being so marginalized in so-called eco-developments and what the implications of that might be for environmental quality. To investigate these issues, we adopt a political ecology perspective as this enables us to focus on local insights into resource use and access to resources. By doing so we can point to ways in which resource efficiency fluctuates over time. We select Chongming Island as our case study because of its central role in eco-development in China. Indeed, the Island is of global significance and gained global repute because it was the proposed site of the world's first dedicated eco-city. We draw upon detailed fieldwork, including reports, planning documents, key person interviews and discussions with residents to analyse how local people perceive proposals for eco-development on their Island and how ongoing state management of the Island may have unintended adverse consequences for environmental quality, especially for water and land

KinD-LCE Curve Estimation And Retinex Fusion On Low-Light Image

Low-light images often suffer from noise and color distortion. Object detection, semantic segmentation, instance segmentation, and other tasks are challenging when working with low-light images because of image noise and chromatic aberration. We also found that the conventional Retinex theory loses information in adjusting the image for low-light tasks. In response to the aforementioned problem, this paper proposes an algorithm for low illumination enhancement. The proposed method, KinD-LCE, uses a light curve estimation module to enhance the illumination map in the Retinex decomposed image, improving the overall image brightness. An illumination map and reflection map fusion module were also proposed to restore the image details and reduce detail loss. Additionally, a TV(total variation) loss function was applied to eliminate noise. Our method was trained on the GladNet dataset, known for its diverse collection of low-light images, tested against the Low-Light dataset, and evaluated using the ExDark dataset for downstream tasks, demonstrating competitive performance with a PSNR of 19.7216 and SSIM of 0.8213.Comment: Accepted by Signal, Image and Video Processin

The making and remaking of ecological space in China: the political ecology of Chongming Eco-Island

This paper contributes to debates on urban sustainable development through a critical examination of current state-led and Ecological Modernization-guided eco-developments in China. Using Chongming Eco-Island as a case study, we critically evaluate the practices and effects of current Chinese eco-development alongside ecological, economic, and social dimensions. Adopting an alternative analytical approach – political ecology, our analysis brings to the fore a host of stakeholders’ voices and knowledge (especially the often-marginalized grassroots), triangulated with archival research and on-site observation. Our findings show that the Eco-Island development with an Ecological Modernization bias generates unintended and adverse results for the local community and the environment. We argue that political ecology, as both a contesting perspective in sustainable development and as a critical analytical method in understanding society-environment relations, serves as an attractive alternative strategy for those seeking to analyze a more nature-focused, locally-relevant means to promote just planning for urban sustainability

Urban entrepreneurialism and sustainable development: a comparative analysis of Chinese eco-developments

Focusing upon the strategic entrepreneurial planning of local government, this paper presents a critical analysis of the variability of Chinese urban sustainable development projects. In recent years, state entrepreneurialism and notions of (urban) sustainability have become ever more closely intertwined. As a result, there has been a proliferation of eco-/low-carbon and other similar sustainability-themed urban initiatives that have helped local states to achieve a favorable position in city competitions. Nevertheless, existing studies are still far from answering why Chinese urban sustainable projects are planned and implemented with divergent emphases and different development trajectories. Through case studies of three flagship Chinese sustainable projects with distinct development modes, namely the real-estate-centric Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City (SSTEC), the environmental-construction-led Chongming Eco-Islands (CEIs), and the industrial development-focused Shenzhen International Low Carbon City (ILCC), we argue that the formulation and implementation of urban sustainable developments are subject to local particularities and different extra-local (mainly municipal and district-level) political-economic contexts. We highlight how both vertical administrative governance and horizontal coordination between territorial jurisdictions underlie the Chinese entrepreneurial planning system, which results in different types of urban entrepreneurships: 1) scalable startup urban entrepreneurship (SSTEC); 2) asset-replacement-urban entrepreneurship (CEIs); and 3) expansion urban entrepreneurship (ILCC). This study also reveals that all three cases experience a development paradox as they strive to reconcile mutually competing economic and environmental imperatives