The development of street patterns in Israeli cities

Street patterns of Israeli cities were investigated by comparing three time periods of urban development: (I) the late 19th century until the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948; (II) 1948 until the 1980s; and (III) the late 1980s until the present. These time periods are related respectively to the pre-modern, modern and late-modern urban planning approach. Representative urban street networks were examined in selected cities by means of morphological analysis of typical street pattern properties: curvature, fragmentation, connectivity, continuity and differentiation. The study results reveal significant differences between the street patterns of the three examined periods in the development of cities in Israel. The results show clearly the gradual trends in the intensification of curvature, fragmentation, complexity and hierarchical organization of street networks as well as the weakening of the network's internal and external connectivity. The implications of these changes on connectivity and spatial integration are discussed with respect to planning approaches

Designing a virtual model of a real city based on wayfinding strategies and difficulties of the users

Peer Reviewe

RESIDENTIAL DIFFERENTIATION AT TWO GEOGRAPHIC SCALES – THE METROPOLITAN AREA AND THE CITY: THE CASE OF TEL AVIV

The research of residential differentiation in cities is concentrated on one geographic scale such as metropolitan areas, cities, or counties. As a result, we have relatively little information regarding the extent of residential differentiation and its spatial pattern at different geographic scales. This paper examines the residential differentiation within the socio-spatial structure of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area as it was in 1995. The analysis is conducted at two geographic scales. The first analyzes the entire metropolitan area as one spatial entity; the second examines the 22 cities located within that area. We applied the method of classical factorial social ecology to investigate residential differentiation along the social dimensions of ethnicity, socio-economic status and family status (stage in the family life cycle) in their spatial expression at the metropolitan and city geographic scales. The findings indicated that residential differentiation in the metropolitan area and in cities tends to be dominated by the ethnic dimension, which is most closely associated with the socio-economic dimension. The relative independence of family status enables the formation of socially diverse residential areas which are often organized in nearly a sectoral-concentric pattern. In general, residential differentiation was more significant at the geographic scale of cities

Designing a virtual model of a real city based on wayfinding strategies and difficulties of the users

Peer Reviewe

The global spatial properties of neighbourhood parks and boulevards in the Tel-Aviv Metropolitan area (Israel)

This poster addresses the following preliminary goals: Determining the parks and boulevards size that should be included in the definition of “neighbourhood parks.”; Dividing the global spatial properties into categories from which a representative sample can be selected for further investigation

Use of the Auto-inflammatory Disease Activity Index to monitor disease activity in patients with colchicine-resistant Familial Mediterranean Fever, Mevalonate Kinase Deficiency, and TRAPS treated with canakinumab

To evaluate the feasibility of the autoinflammatory disease activity index (AIDAI) as a tool to assess disease activity in patients with hereditary recurrent fever syndromes (HRFs) treated with canakinumab

Racial differences in systemic sclerosis disease presentation: a European Scleroderma Trials and Research group study

Objectives. Racial factors play a significant role in SSc. We evaluated differences in SSc presentations between white patients (WP), Asian patients (AP) and black patients (BP) and analysed the effects of geographical locations.Methods. SSc characteristics of patients from the EUSTAR cohort were cross-sectionally compared across racial groups using survival and multiple logistic regression analyses.Results. The study included 9162 WP, 341 AP and 181 BP. AP developed the first non-RP feature faster than WP but slower than BP. AP were less frequently anti-centromere (ACA; odds ratio (OR) = 0.4, P < 0.001) and more frequently anti-topoisomerase-I autoantibodies (ATA) positive (OR = 1.2, P = 0.068), while BP were less likely to be ACA and ATA positive than were WP [OR(ACA) = 0.3, P < 0.001; OR(ATA) = 0.5, P = 0.020]. AP had less often (OR = 0.7, P = 0.06) and BP more often (OR = 2.7, P < 0.001) diffuse skin involvement than had WP.AP and BP were more likely to have pulmonary hypertension [OR(AP) = 2.6, P < 0.001; OR(BP) = 2.7, P = 0.03 vs WP] and a reduced forced vital capacity [OR(AP) = 2.5, P < 0.001; OR(BP) = 2.4, P < 0.004] than were WP. AP more often had an impaired diffusing capacity of the lung than had BP and WP [OR(AP vs BP) = 1.9, P = 0.038; OR(AP vs WP) = 2.4, P < 0.001]. After RP onset, AP and BP had a higher hazard to die than had WP [hazard ratio (HR) (AP) = 1.6, P = 0.011; HR(BP) = 2.1, P < 0.001].Conclusion. Compared with WP, and mostly independent of geographical location, AP have a faster and earlier disease onset with high prevalences of ATA, pulmonary hypertension and forced vital capacity impairment and higher mortality. BP had the fastest disease onset, a high prevalence of diffuse skin involvement and nominally the highest mortality

High-resolution census data: a simple way to make them useful

Recent population censuses have brought about arrays of high-resolution explicitly geo-referenced socio-economic data stored in the framework of Geographic Information Systems. Geography and social science are not prepared for these new urban databases, and this paper considers their potential for investigating residential distribution, based on the data of the 1995 Israeli Census of Population and Households. We focus on the methodological problems: understanding the phenomena, formal analysis, and statistical inference. The methods for mapping high-resolution data, establishing spatial relationships between them, analyzing neighborhood structure, and exploring the significance of the results are proposed and illustrated by examples of the cities of Tel-Aviv (pop. 350,000) and Ashdod (pop. 100,000)