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Urban growth strategy in Greater Sydney leads to unintended social and environmental challenges
Cities have advanced in terms of economic and social status over the past five decades, improving the living conditions of hundreds of millions of people. However, population growth and urban expansion have put pressure on social and environmental conditions. This study examines urban policymakers’ perceptions about causal relationships in the urban system as revealed in urban planning reports. Here we analyzed 500 pages from published urban plans of Greater Sydney between 1968 and 2018 and coded the text into causal maps. The findings show that policymakers adopted a dominant urban development strategy over the past 50 years to pursue economic and public infrastructure growth. Over time, this growth strategy resulted in a number of social and environmental challenges that negatively impacted societal well-being. Although policymakers eventually recognized the seriousness of social and environmental challenges, they never attempted to fundamentally change the dominant growth strategy. Instead, policymakers sought to address the challenges (that is, symptoms) by responding to each issue piecemeal.
The decreasing housing utilization efficiency in China’s cities
‘Ghost cities’ are a well-known phenomenon of (almost) complete vacancy of urban living space in China. Underutilization of urban living space, however, is far more common than complete vacancy. Here we propose the concept of housing utilization efficiency (HUE) and present the following findings: (1) the overall HUE in China’s highly urbanized areas decreased from 84% in 2010 to 78% in 2020, (2) the HUE in central, old urban areas was generally lower than that in the outer layers of urban areas and declined more from 2010 to 2020 and (3) four development types are found to represent different patterns of urban population movement, urban housing growth and HUE change at the intraurban level. These findings provide comprehensive insight into the discrepancies between urban housing supply and demand in China and highlight their connections to the country’s particular urbanization characteristics and policies, which are crucial for future housing development and planning.
Intercity personnel exchange is more effective than policy transplantation at reducing water pollution
Severe spatial disparities exist in water pollution and water governance. A popular solution is that lagging cities transplant policies from cities with successful experiences. However, environmental governance is more than policies. Merely copying policies from elsewhere may not generate intended effects. Here this research argues that intercity personnel exchange can be a more effective policy instrument than policy transplantation. We provide the first nationwide estimates in China of the effect of intercity exchange of city leaders on water pollution reduction. Using large-scale micro-level datasets on city leaders’ curriculum vitae, firm behaviors, patents and policy texts, we show that intercity exchange of city leaders leads to a 4.78–15.26% reduction in firm-level water pollution, which contributes to 39.45–57.98% of the national total water pollution reduction from 2006 to 2013. Exchanged city leaders facilitate the diffusion of governance experience across cities and the formulation of intercity cooperation. They are also more likely to initiate new policies to support industrial upgrading. Our findings highlight the importance and potential of intercity personnel exchange as a policy instrument for water governance in particular and green transition in general.
Noise causes cardiovascular disease: it’s time to act
Chronic transportation noise is an environmental stressor affecting a substantial portion of the population. The World Health Organization (WHO) and various studies have established associations between transportation noise and cardiovascular disease (CVD), such as myocardial infarction, stroke, heart failure, and arrhythmia. The WHO Environmental Noise Guidelines and recent reviews confirm a heightened risk of cardiovascular incidents with increasing transportation noise levels.
Parallel scaling of elite wealth in ancient Roman and modern cities with implications for understanding urban inequality
Rapid urbanization and rising inequality are pressing global concerns, yet inequality is an ancient trait of city life that may be intrinsically connected to urbanism itself. Here we investigate how elite wealth scales with urban population size across culture and time by analyzing ancient Roman and modern cities. Using Bayesian models to address archeological uncertainties, we uncovered a consistent correlation between population size and physical expressions of elite wealth in urban spaces. These patterns suggest the presence of an ancient, enduring mechanism underlying urban inequality. Supported by an agent-based network simulation and informed by the settlement scaling theory, we propose that the observed patterns arise from common preferential attachment in social networks—a simple, yet powerful, driver of unequal access to interaction potential. Our findings open up new directions in urban scaling research and underscore the importance of understanding long-term urban dynamics to chart a course toward a fairer urban future.
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