Grounding the virtual: The material effects of electronic grocery shopping

This paper addresses the materiality of computer-mediated retailing. The paper uncovers the “hidden geography” of e-commerce, considering how the seemingly simple act of doorstep food delivery is explicated in urban form, and in transportation and communication infrastructures. The paper categorises electronic grocery shopping (EGS) enterprises into three types: “bricks and clicks”, “pure-play” and the “infomediary”, and examines how each type of operation has been materialised in the urban landscape, and the infrastructure upon which each draws. The paper then considers the strategies EGS operations have used to offset the “killer costs” of logistics for electronic commerce. The paper concludes by considering how electronic grocery shopping is embedded within broader trends in consumer behaviour, and how these trends are manifested in the materiality of urban life. The paper argues that online grocers are in the vanguard of ventures habituating customers to the remote ordering and delayed delivery of products to the home. Through controlling this “last mile”, online retailers hope to extend the product offer to higher-margin and more problematic products, which are in themselves unprofitable to distribute direct to the customer, but which can be profitably combined with a grocery shop.     

The Impact of Urbanization on Groundwater Quantity,Quality,Hydrothermal Changes and Its Countermeasures

Groundwater, as a drinking water source for nearly one third of the world’s urban population, plays a strategic role in the development of urbanization. The object of this study is urban areas with the largest demand for water resources, the heaviest load of groundwater pollution and the most intense development of underground projects. This study sorted out the eco-hydrological problems such as the variation of the groundwater hydrological process, the groundwater pollution, and the urban heat island of groundwater in urban areas under the background of urbanization. Furthermore, the mechanism of changes in the quantity, quality and heat of groundwater was also systematically analyzed, and the intrinsic interaction among these three factors was revealed. The study showed that changes in land use and land cover caused by the urbanization are the main reasons for the variation of groundwater hydrological process. The pollution load of urbanization construction and domestic production waste has aggravated the deterioration of groundwater quality. The increase in vertical heat flux caused by urbanization gives rise to the warming of groundwater. By summarizing the eco-hydrological problems and causes of groundwater in urbanized areas, several suggestions were proposed: \mathrm{①} Establishing the evaluation method and system of urban groundwater resources; \mathrm{②} Speeding up the technological breakthroughs of groundwater pollution control; \mathrm{③} Improving the regional control strategies for groundwater pollution; \mathrm{④} Optimizing the allocation of groundwater resources. This study will provide the theoretical basis and technical support for ensuring urban water safety, building ecological civilized cities and further promoting the sustainable development of economy and society.     

Exploring the factors affecting urban ecological risk: A case from an Indian mega metropolitan region

Assessment of ecological risk (ER) is a key approach to adapting and mitigating ecological deterioration in cities of developing countries. In developing countries, the ecological landscapes such as vegetation cover, water bodies, and wetlands are highly vulnerable due to rapid urban expansion. Therefore, urban ER (UER) assessment and its drivers are crucial to guide ecological protection as well as restoration. This study aims to explore the spatiotemporal pattern of UER and the impact of urban spatial form on UER in the Kolkata Megacity Region (KMR), India. This study developed a UER index and used spatial regression models across the urban centres. The ER has been assessed at city scale as well as grid-scale (2 km × 2 km and 5 km × 5 km) from 2000 to 2020. The results showed that ER has substantially increased over the last 20 years. The urban centres with very high and high ER substantially increased, i.e. from 21.95% in 2000 to 31.70% in 2020. Kolkata and its surrounding urban centres were mostly characterized by very high and high ER. ER was influenced by spatial variables (such as land use and landscapes pattern). However, remote sensing parameters were weakly related to ER. The spatial lag model (SLM) (R² = 0.8686) was found to be better fit model than spatial error model (SEM) (R² = 0.8661) and ordinary linear regression model (OLS) (R² = 0.8641). Thus, the findings of the study can improve research and a comprehensive framework for urban ecological resources and provide a scientific basis for urban ecosystem planning and restoration. In addition to this, it will guarantee the sustainable utilization of urban ecosystems.     

城市环境与地质问题研究现状与发展

本文对本次会议的专题城市环境地质问题进行了综述,对城市地质环境研究进行了展望。     

Rights in places: An analytical extension of the right to the city

Following recent scholarship on place and place-making, we identify key challenges for contemporary empirical research using the “Right to the City” as an analytic. We seek to distinguish between the aspirational “right” articulated as a political and conceptual call to arms on one hand, and the “actually existing rights” that are carved out through both formal and informal mechanisms (including political protest) in the everyday city on the other. Actually existing rights are defined not through fiat or via momentary revolutionary acts, but through the durability of relationships between multiple actors, including residents, citizens, states, and corporate agents. We re-articulate urban rights as actually contingent and agonistic properties of the relationships that citizens have with places. This paper uses the historic conflict over community gardens in New York as an illustration of how thinking of rights regimes as multiple, overlapping, and placed helps better illuminate potential political interventions. Thinking of rights and places as plural, overlapping, and contingent is analytically productive because it highlights (rather than overwriting) conflicts between competing articulations of rights and privileges in cities.     

Exploring the attractions of city centre living: evidence and policy implications in British cities

The British city centre has been the focus of dynamic housing development and repopulation strategies as a key dimension of the government's urban renaissance programme. Through large scale interview surveys in the provincial city centres of Bristol and Swansea, this paper explores the positive and negative features of city centre living, and how these vary amongst a range of social and physical characteristics. The findings suggest that the practical and mundane attractions of city centre living are more important than the more widely publicised lifestyle and cultural attractions of the city centre commonly emphasised in the gentrification literature. Moreover, the research points to differences in attitudes between age groups, with younger adults placing greater value on the range of social and cultural activities in the city centre, whilst older people express high levels of satisfaction with the attractiveness of the environment. A number of policy implications emerge to encourage inclusive marketing strategies within the continued urban renaissance, particularly to challenge the negative perceptions and promote the varied attractions of city centre living to a mix of social groups.     

Farming the urban fringes of Barcelona: Competing visions of nature and the contestation of a partial sustainability fix

While the concept of urban agriculture investigates the way in which disused land within the consolidated city is returned to its citizens through a variety of farming practices, many pockets of rural land in peri-urban areas continue to be contested by institutions and communities – including informal farmers, formal farmers, municipal planners, metropolitan agencies, and investors – with contrasting interests. To date however, little scholarly attention has been paid to informal practices within the degraded areas of urban fringes and, more specifically, to the link between the expansion of peri-urban agriculture and the civic appropriation and negotiation of space in neglected peripheral areas. In this paper, we ask how a metropolitan sustainability fix is produced and contested both materially and discursively. We also explore how local residents involved in peri-urban agriculture claim the use of land for agricultural practices and in turn attempt to influence the urban agenda of the neoliberal city. Inquiring how competing visions of nature act as obstacles in this negotiation process, our analysis of the peri-urban Baix Llobregat Agricultural Park in Barcelona reveals that the imposition of official visions about how needs for food and agriculture should be fulfilled, which landscapes are esthetically acceptable, what nature is, and how land should be controlled and developed indicate why apparently “marginal” and informal urban agriculture in the periphery has come to be subordinated to the planning of the neoliberal city and of a metropolitan sustainability fix – a partial sustainability fix that is however progressively being questioned and renegotiated.     

不同地面覆盖层下土体温湿度场长期观测数据分析

本文通过建立一个不同地面覆盖层土体温湿度监测试验场,对沥青、水泥、多孔砖、草地和裸土5种覆盖层条件下的土体进行了为期2a的观测。观测结果表明：不同覆盖层介质对于下覆土体温湿度场的影响是不同的。在混凝土、沥青、多孔砖、草地和裸土5种地面覆盖层中,混凝土、沥青和多孔砖等硬质地面所对应的土体温度场明显高于裸土和草地,而在3种硬质地面覆盖层中,沥青地面的土体温度场最高,多孔砖最低。在湿度场观测中,多孔砖覆盖层下的土体湿度最大,其次是混凝土和沥青,草地和裸土的湿度最小。因此,多孔砖硬化地面具有很好的保湿性和降低地温场的效果,在城市建设中,应大力推广铺设这类多孔介质硬化地面,以提高城市的生态功能,减少城市热岛效应。     

Water and sanitation in the Buenos Aires metropolitan region: Fragmented markets, splintering effects?

This paper discusses the provision of water and sanitation services and the related urban impacts in Buenos Aires circa 2005. The first part of the paper focuses on the metropolitan region (BAMR) which is larger than the area served by the Aguas Argentinas S.A. (AASA) concession (i.e. the capital and its conurbano). It highlights a form of institutional fragmentation that is reflected in the diverse management practices of the numerous service providers and results in differentiated levels of and access to services. The paper discusses the technical, economic and regulatory factors that have historically resulted in this institutional fragmentation. The second part of the article focuses on AASA’s water concession agreement. It demonstrates that, although the agreement had an in-built splintering logic, its implementation led to a more “integrated approach” based on the “reality on the ground”. On the whole, the conclusion regarding the application of the splintering urbanism concept to Buenos Aires is a mixed one and depends on the scale of observation. Although at regional level (BAMR), a form of “institutional fragmentation” would appear to be obvious, it is the result of a long and complex historical process and, while recent neo-liberal reforms in service provisions have “cemented” this fragmentation, they did not actually cause it. If we take the AASA service area in isolation, the trend in the decade following the contracting out of the service has been one of improved service provision and access—although this was not achieved through increased integration of the supply system. Finally, in the case of the Buenos Aires metropolitan region, the splintering urbanism thesis defended by Marvin and Graham needs to be nuanced in several significant ways.     

Comparison of magnetic parameters with vehicular Br levels in urban roadside soils

Chemical methods are generally chosen to monitor soil pollution but magnetic measurements proved to yield additional information at low cost and less time consumption. In this investigation, the novel use of rapid and non-destructive magnetic measurements to characterize Br levels in Xuzhou (China) urban roadside soils was reported. X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) was used to quantify Br in the soil samples. Data from 21 roadside soil samples confirm Br contamination, with a mean level of 4.36 mg kg⁻¹ and a range of 2.4–8.7 mg kg⁻¹. These values are higher than that of unpolluted soils in Xuzhou that averages 1.1 mg kg⁻¹. Hierarchical clustering analysis shows Br in Xuzhou roadside soils is mainly from road traffic. Clear correlations between Br levels and simple magnetic parameters [mass specific susceptibility (χ _LF), susceptibility of anhysteretic remanent magnetization (χ _ARM), saturation isothermal remanence (SIRM)] are observed. The present study shows that these three magnetic parameters can be used as a proxy for Br levels in Xuzhou urban roadside soils.