The conversation of the Internet’s effects on urban spatial patterns is perennial. In their article, “Internet Plus, Industrial Transformation, and China’s Evolving Urban System,” Mingfeng Wang, Tingting Liu, and Wei Zhou examine how and if China’s Internet Plus initiative has affected China’s system of urban hierarchy and if so in what ways. Their study shows that although it seems that current urban systems and their spatial patterns in numerous countries are changing under the guidance of national strategies and industrial policies, there is a dearth of research in this area. Their article charts some of the effects of China’s new socioeconomic development model, “Internet Plus,” and their research concludes that “the development of Internet Plus in cities intensifies the spatial agglomeration of new economic resources, leading to industrial transformation and modernization led by only a few large cities.” However, their research does reveal that with the help of the Internet, “the local industrial base in some cities is rapidly advancing and that these advances have been helping to partially restructure China’s urban system even though the old spatial pattern continues to play an important role in the new system of cities.”
As researchers study ways to have cities become more sustainable, they look at all aspects of urban infrastructure. Urban rooftops have become a focus for these researchers, who see them as a resource for helping to supply the increasing amount of water, food, and energy cities will need as they continue to grow. Rooftops can be used for growing food (through greenhouses), collecting water (rainwater harvesting), and generating energy (through solar panels). In their article, “Mapping Roof Materials in Cities of Food, Water, and Energy Production: A Mediterranean Metropolitan Area Case Study,” Perla Zambrano-Prado, Alejandro Josa, Hoan Rieradevall, Ramon Alamús, Fernando Pérez, Juan Marchan, Santiago Gassó, and Xavier Gabarrell explain that when gauging a city’s percentage of rooftops that might be useful for these purposes, most studies look at slope, shadows, area, and solar radiation, while there are not many studies concentrating on rooftop materials. But rooftop materials are the focus of their research and what makes it unique is the use of hyperspectral imagery for data acquisition. While rooftop materials were central to this research, the authors understand that to get a complete picture of the potential of rooftops, more work must be done to account for urban laws, economic feasibility, building characteristics, and technical requirements.
In another city in Spain, Zaragoza, scholars developed and tested a visualization tool that made it possible to allow travelers to “see” how their travel decisions affect mobility in a city and thus to make decisions that promote sustainability. In their article, “Does Mobility Experience Matter? Insights from a Model-Oriented Practice in Zaragoza, Spain,” Ana Ruiz-Varona, Maris Blasco-Cubas, and Antonio Iglesias-Soria explain how the platform, MobilityExperience, can be used as a planning support system to “contribute to better informed decision-making in citizens’ commitment to climate neutrality and self-sufficient energy city policies.” The tool transforms data into knowledge and has an interactive geo-visual environment to transmit that knowledge and interact effectively with citizens. The user-experience test and the immersive exhibition workshop the authors conducted verified the functionality and usability of the platform they presented in this article.
In an interesting use of crowdsourcing, the authors David Candeia, Flavio Figueiredo, and Nazareno Andrade used web games to gather information about the way public spaces are responded to based on the design of the spaces and the socio-demographic characteristics of the observers. In their article, “Crowdsourcing Pleasantness and Safety Perceptions: An Analysis through Multiple Rankings and Socio-Demographic Groups,” the authors explained their research findings and how they developed their own crowdsourcing app to capture urban perceptions about safety and pleasantness. They also explain how they recruited their participants, a total of 304 participants, making a total of 31, 866 comparisons of urban scenes. Their research led them to see some differences in how participants evaluated the safety and pleasantness of those scenes based on their socio-demographic characteristics.
In the final article in this issue, J.F. Yan, B. Liu, J.B. Bai, F.Z. Su, and C.C. Miao discuss a too frequently overlooked aspect of cities’ need to plan the ways in which to integrate ports into the functional zones of a city. In their article, “Mining the Sequence Pattern of Functional Zones to Analyze the Spatial Layout of Port Cities in Coastal Zones,” the authors focus on three ports and explain the way those ports help—or don’t—their cities prosper and develop. Their study enabled them to chart the impact of port changes on the urban functional structure. They explain how each of the ports they examined differed in its development based on the characteristics of that development, the functional zone sequences, and the spatial structure of the ports and cities. For Qingdao Port, there has been much change due to the transformation of agricultural land near the port to industrial uses; Johor Port greatly expanded its industrial area and business and living service areas will also be expanded; while the Port of Manila has basically remained unchanged. This was so because the port is adjacent to an urban area, and the development level of the port is not consistent with its international status.