Urban Studies Commons^™

Cultural Districts Advocacy Guide, Su Fern Hoe

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Cultural districts strengthen our cities and communities and support the development of thriving places and people. Support for cultural districts is a high-return investment as their value is immense, multi-layered and far-reaching. However, while those benefits are embraced by many, not all believe it. Increasingly, cultural leaders are being challenged to demonstrate how supporting the arts and culture advances other agendas; from attracting investment to fostering liveable communities and enabling public safety.This advocacy guide makes a case for support of cultural districts as a necessity for building thriving places and people. Importantly, it provides a core set of ideas and …

Urban Governance And Electricity Losses: An Exploration Of Spatial Unevenness In Karachi, Pakistan, Ijlal Naqvi, Ate Poorthuis, Anirudh Govind

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The inadequate supply of electricity in Pakistan disrupts everyday life and hampers industry and business; in this it is an emblematic indicator of the poor quality of urban governance pervasive in much of the Global South. We focus on the governance of Karachi’s electricity distribution system, and its spatial unevenness across this sprawling metropolis of 15 million residents which encompasses huge informal settlements alongside upscale housing and commercial plazas. Using a dataset with granular, neighborhood-level electricity data, we apply spatial and statistical modeling techniques to understand how transmission and distribution losses, i.e., the utility’s ability to bill for the electricity …

Urban Perception: Sensing Cities Via A Deep Interactive Multi-Task Learning Framework, Weili Guan, Zhaozheng Chen, Fuli Feng, Weifeng Liu, Liqiang Nie

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Social scientists have shown evidence that visual perceptions of urban attributes, such as safe, wealthy, and beautiful perspectives of the given cities, are highly correlated to the residents' behaviors and quality of life. Despite their significance, measuring visual perceptions of urban attributes is challenging due to the following facts: (1) Visual perceptions are subjectively contradistinctive rather than absolute. (2) Perception comparisons between image pairs are usually conducted region by region, and highly related to the specific urban attributes. And (3) the urban attributes have both the shared and specific information. To address these problems, in this article, we present a …

Call For Papers—Special Issue Of Service Science: Innovation In Transportation-Enabled Urban Services, Niels Agatz, Soo-Haeng Cho, Hai Wang, Saif Benjaafar

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Today, around 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas or cities, and that figure is expected to rise to 70% over the coming decades. Rapid developments of city infrastructure and technologies—mobile location tracking and computing, autonomous and connected vehicles, wearable devices, robotics and robots, smart appliances, biometric authentication, various Internet-of-Things devices, and smart monitoring systems, to name a few—are creating numerous opportunities and inspiring innovative and emerging urban services

The Future Is Urban: The Progressive Renaissance Of The City In Eu Law, De Maartje Visser

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

For much of the European integration process, local authorities have been on the legal margins. Yet many amongst this group, and cities in particular, consider themselves as important players in realising the Union’s overarching policy objectives. This view is slowly but surely fi nding traction with the EU’s political institutions. This article suggests that the future architecture of the European Union’s (EU’s) operating system will evince a rapprochement between the socio-economic clout of local authorities, notably cities, and their legal-political recognition at Union level. It further suggests that there is room for greater conceptual clarity along two lines when interrogating …

From Third World To First World: Law And Policy In Singapore’S Urban Transformation And Integration, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The physical transformation of a colonial backwater city, Singapore, in one generation has been described as a feat of urban planning, renewal, and development. Less studied is the political will of the government to create a thriving city fit for purpose. Even less studied is the role of law that provides the powerful levers for the rapid and deep-seated changes to the urban landscape in Singapore. In this regard, the mindset shift that accompanied the massive urban transformation has facilitated a national psyche that embraces the material dimension of progress, for which urban renewal is not just a mere indicator …

Towards More Inclusive Smart Cities: Reconciling The Divergent Logics Of Data And Discourse At The Margins, Jane Yeonjae Lee, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In this article, we survey a growing body of literature within geography and other intersecting fields that trains attention on what inclusive smart cities are, or what they could be. In doing so, we build on debates around smart citizens, smart public participation, and grassroots and bottom-up smart cities that are concerned with making smart cities more inclusive. The growing critical scholarship on such dis- courses, however, alerts us to the knowledge politics that are involved in, and the urban inequalities that are deeply rooted within, the urban. Technological interventions con- tribute to these politics and inequalities in various ways. …

Using Open Source Data To Identify Transit Deserts In Four Major Chinese Cities, Junfeng Jiao, Mingming Cai

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The concept of transit deserts stems from the concept of food deserts. There is substantial research on transit deserts in developed countries. However, there is no known research that has studied this subject in Chinese cities. Using open-source data, this paper identified transit desert areas in four major Chinese cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Chengdu). The results show that: (1) In these four cities, the transit desert areas are mainly concentrated in city centers and hardly occur in any suburban areas, which is very different from the cases in the US. (2) Shanghai has the largest transit-dependent population living in transit …

Understanding The Shared E-Scooter Travels In Austin, Tx, Junfeng Jiao, Shunhua Bai

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper investigated the travel patterns of 1.7 million shared E-scooter trips from April 2018 to February 2019 in Austin, TX. There were more than 6000 active E-scooters in operation each month, generating over 150,000 trips and covered approximately 117,000 miles. During this period, the average travel distance and operation time of E-scooter trips were 0.77 miles and 7.55 min, respectively. We further identified two E-scooter usage hotspots in the city (Downtown Austin and the University of Texas campus). The spatial analysis showed that more trips originated from Downtown Austin than were completed, while the opposite was true for the …

Study Group Travel Behaviour Patterns From Large-Scale Smart Card Data, Xiancai Tian, Baihua Zheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we aim at studying the group travel behaviour (GTB) patterns from large-scale auto fare collection (AFC) data. GTB is defined as two or more commuters intentionally and regularly traveling together from an origin to a destination. We propose a method to identify GTB accurately and efficiently and apply our method to the Singapore AFC dataset to reveal the GTB patterns of Singapore commuters. The case study proves that our method is able to identify GTB patterns more accurately and efficiently than the state-of-the-art.

A Data-Driven Load Shape Profile Based Building Benchmarking: Comparing Doe Reference Buildings With A Large Metering Dataset, Young June Park, Clayton Miller, Zoltan Nagy

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

There are various sustainable policies or labeling programs in building energy benchmarking. However, they are often oriented for the static information of building performances. The installation of smart metering capabilities with building energy system generates unprecedented amount of data. By analyzing such data, buildings can be evaluated in a more comprehensive manner. We propose a data analytic framework to discover dominant load shape patterns and benchmark buildings with respect to these. We applied this method to a simulation dataset (256 DOE reference building models) and compared them to the results of an actual metering dataset (3,829 buildings). Using k-means clustering, …

Indigenous Perceptions Of Climate Anomalies In Malaysian Borneo, Terry Van Gevelt, H. Abok, M. M. Bennett, S. D. Fam, F. George, N. Kulathuramaiyer, C. T. Low, T. Zamane

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Local perceptions of climate anomalies influence adaptation behaviour. Specifically, perceptions that are more accurate and homogenous at the community-level are more likely to facilitate the collective action required to adapt to the local effects of climate anomalies experienced by many indigenous communities. We combine primary data on perceptions of climate anomalies from 200 individuals in six Penan villages in Sarawak, Malaysia with instrumental climate data. We find that perceptions of climate anomalies vary substantially in terms of occurrence and magnitude, and do not generally correlate with instrumental climate data. We operationalise the Penan forest sign language (Oroo’) as a measure …

Imagining An Old City In Nineteenth-Century France: Urban Renovation, Civil Society, And The Making Of Vieux Lyon, Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Urban histories of nineteenth-century France have tended to focus on Paris and emphasize state actions. This has obscured movements that were crucial in shaping modern cities, particularly segments of civil society that worked on preserving old neighborhoods. This article focuses on Lyon—a “second city”—and analyzes how state-driven urban renovations under the Second Empire fostered a fin-de-siècle localist reaction that sought to preserve what was seen as Lyonnais urban forms (in particular neighborhoods defined by their narrow and crooked streets). Through an antiquarian discourse, cultural elites argued that these urban forms were an essential part of Lyonnais identity—which they feared was …

Zoning Changes And Social Diversity In New York City, 1990–2015, Juan G. Yunda, Junfeng Jiao

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The writings of Jane Jacobs led urbanists to advocate for increased social diversity in neighborhoods as a method of promoting vitality in public spaces. Since then, New York City has become both a role model and a testing ground for zoning changes that support this objective. However, since the 2000s community activists and scholars have argued that these zoning changes have led to the dislocation of communities of color and incentivized gentrification. This project analyzed panel social and housing census data from 1990 and 2015 to assess the validity of these arguments. Results suggest that zoning changes have limited and …

Knowledge Circulation In Urban Geography/Urban Studies, 1990-2010: Testing The Discourse Of Anglo-American Hegemony Through Publication And Citation Patterns, Lily Kong, Junxi Qian

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article approaches the question of Anglo-American hegemony in urban studies by examining publication and citation patterns. The past one or two decades have witnessed critical arguments about how knowledge production in social sciences is characterised by centre–periphery relations, and risks universalising US–American and European knowledge and epistemology. While not much systematic analysis has been done to address the extent to which urban knowledge has been shaped by Anglo-American centrism, it is not difficult to tell that the field is dominated by the Anglophone world in terms of authorship, institutional affiliation, the cities under scrutiny, and the urban theories arising. …

Marginalized Migrants And Urbanization In Southeast Asia, George Wong, George Wong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Asia is now the region with the largest movements of migrants in the world. International migration within Asia accounts for a significant proportion of those mobilities, with Southeast Asia a highly popular destination region. Within this zone, Thailand, Brunei and Malaysia receive the highest levels of migrants. The city-state of Singapore, however, tops the list, with the highest total population of international migrant arrivals, and about 53 per cent of its foreign resident population coming from other parts of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region. Most migrants who move transnationally migrate to engage in low waged dirty, dangerous and …

The Effect Of Localized Density On Housing Prices In Singapore, Eric Fesselmeyer, Kiat Ying Sky Seah, Jonathan Ci Yi Kwok

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper measures how localized residential density impacts housing prices in Singapore. Using exogenous variation in residential density, we find that an increase in density causes non-trivial decreases in property values: a 10% increase in density decreases price per square foot by between 1.3% and 2%. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first paper to measure this effect.Further, we find that the negative effect of density is biggest in magnitude for low density apartment projects and the magnitude is decreasing in the density of the project, and that the negative effect of density is increasing in magnitude …

Smart Cities And Urban Management, Singapore Management University

Research Collection Office of Research

In this booklet, read about SMU’s research and initiatives related to smart cities and urban management, and how we strive to make meaningful impact on business, government and society for Singapore and beyond.

Contents:

Liveability and quality of life

• Community participation through mobile crowdsourcing
• Smarter, healthier eating with Food AI
• Data-driven community eldercare platform for sustainable ageing-in-place
• A date with AI
• Smart mobility accessibility for barrier-free access
• Food security

Optimisation and resource management

• Collaborative urban delivery optimisation
• Seat occupancy detection through capacitance sensing
• Large-scale crowd simulation based on real-world data
• Gaining insights through Wi-Fi technology
• Taxi driver guidance system
• Efficiency …

The Effect Of Localized Density On Housing Prices In Singapore, Eric Fesselmeyer, Kiat Ying Sky Seah, Jonathan Ci Yi Kwok

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper measures how localized residential density impacts housing prices in Singapore. Using exogenous variation in residential density, we find that an increase in density causes non-trivial decreases in property values: a 10% increase in density decreases price per square foot by between 1.3% and 2%. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first paper to measure this effect.Further, we find that the negative effect of density is biggest in magnitude for low density apartment projects and the magnitude is decreasing in the density of the project, and that the negative effect of density is increasing in magnitude …

Unsupervised Load Shape Clustering For Urban Building Performance Assessment, Jimeno A. Fonseca, Clayton Miller, Arno Schlueter

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper presents a method to automatically cluster typical days of energy consumption in one or several buildings. The method is based on an optimized version of the Symbolic Aggregate approXimation (SAX) method. SAX is a data mining technique for clustering time series with recent applications in building fault detection and building performance assessment. The number of clusters and accuracy of SAX highly depends on two highly sensitive input variables, i.e., the word size and the alphabet size. We propose the use of the genetic algorithm NSGA-II to optimize the number of words and alphabet size of SAX subjected to …

From An Emerging Market To A Multifaceted Urban Society: Urban China Studies, Shenjing He, Junxi Qian

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

China is undergoing an urban revolution. In 2011 more than half of the total population resided in cities and towns for the first time in history. Over the last two decades urban China scholars have actively engaged in dialogues with urbanists from different disciplines and different urban contexts. In consequence, urban China studies have embarked on a trail of rapid diversification and proliferation, moving beyond the topics of urbanisation and urban expansion to address a variety of issues echoing the latest developments in the Chinese city. Overall, urban China studies are witnessing a transition from a focus on economic development …

Mobile Cities, Modelling Policies: Importing/Exporting The Singapore ‘Model’ Of Development, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A recent focus of research has been the making, mobility and mutations of urban policy. The global circulation of urban models – or exemplars of best practices and values that are deemed to be desirable and achievable – has gained significant traction. Such models are those that are dislocated from their place of origin, and transplanted to an adopted site. This chapter draws on the case of Singapore: one of the most emblematic examples of an importable/exportable urban model – a prototype for growth-oriented urban development with its normative and technical plans for growth and management – to foreground problems …

Estimating And Decomposing Changes In The White-Black Homeownership Gap From 2005 To 2011, Kiat Ying Seah, Eric Fesselmeyer, Kien Le

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This study evaluates the effects of the recent US housing bust on the White-Black homeownership gap by estimating and decomposing the changes in the distribution of the gap between 2005 and 2011. Our analysis shows that the housing bust did not affect the homeownership gap uniformly. In fact, we find that the gap decreased for households that were the least likely to own and remained unchanged for households that were the most likely to own, and that Black households with around a 50% probability of homeownership were especially vulnerable to the crisis. We also find that the contribution of the …

No-Place, New Places: Death And Its Rituals In Urban Asia, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In many Asian cities, particularly those that confront increasing land scarcity, the conversion from burial to cremation has been encouraged by state agencies in the last several decades. From Hong Kong to Seoul to Singapore, planning agencies have sought to reduce the use of space for the dead, in order to release land for the use of the living. More secular guiding principles regarding efficient land use in these cities had originally come up against the symbolic values invested in burial spaces, resulting in conflicts between different value systems. In more recent years, however, the shift to cremation and columbaria …

Contesting Urban Citizenship: The Urban Poor’S Strategies Of State Engagement In Chennai, India, Subadevan Mahadevan, Ijlal Naqvi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Existing accounts of how the urban poor in the global south engage with the state fall short on two fronts. Firstly, the literature lacks an overarching framework articulating the urban poor’s strategies for engaging the state. Secondly, these accounts typically capture singular instances of state engagement pursued by the urban poor and theorise on that basis. Using Partha Chatterjee’s distinction between civil and political society as our theoretical point of departure, we draw on ethnographic evidence from Chennai’s informal settlements to demonstrate how and when the urban poor deploy different strategies of state engagement to advance their claims to urban …

Estimating And Decomposing Changes In The White-Black Homeownership Gap From 2005 To 2011, Kiat Ying Seah, Eric Fesselmeyer, Kien Le

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This study evaluates the effects of the recent US housing bust on the White-Black homeownership gap by estimating and decomposing the changes in the distribution of the gap between 2005 and 2011. Our analysis shows that the housing bust did not affect the homeownership gap uniformly. In fact, we find that the gap decreased for households that were the least likely to own and remained unchanged for households that were the most likely to own, and that Black households with around a 50% probability of homeownership were especially vulnerable to the crisis. We also find that the contribution of the …

Does Urban Form Influence Grocery Shopping Frequency? A Study From Seattle, Washington, Usa, Junfeng Jiao, Anne Vernez Moudon, Adam Drewnowski

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to ascertain how elements of the built environment may or may not influence the frequency of grocery shopping. Design/methodology/approach – Using data from the 2009 Seattle Obesity Study, the research investigated the effect of the urban built environment on grocery shopping travel frequency in the Seattle-King County area. Binary and ordered logit models served to estimate the impact of individual characteristics and built environments on grocery shopping travel frequency. Findings – The results showed that the respondents’ attitude towards food, travel mode, and the network distance between homes and stores exerted the …

Singapore: From Planned Chaos To A Distinctive City, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan highlighted that Singapore is a living laboratory by which its development and urban planning experience and expertise can be studied and harnessed by other cities in the urbanisation and human development journey. He noted that while Singapore's urban planning experience may not be directly relevant to other cities, its experience suggests that political will with public support, innovation, and boldness can make a vital difference in urban planning outcomes. He added that all these require thoughtful decisions on resource allocation and policy choices that deeply engage all stakeholders.

Interpreting China’S New Urban Spaces: State, Market, And Society In Action, Shenjing He, Lily Kong, George C. S. Lin

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Chinese urbanism has long historical roots and has profoundly influenced world civilizations. Yet, the Chinese city has not, until very recently, attracted sustained or intense global attention. In the post-reform era, especially after 1992, the scale and speed of China’s urbanization, and the intricacy of its dynamics and socio-spatial consequences have dwarfed those of other countries in the world. The latest reform era of urban China is characterized by a renewed and thriving urbanism, which manifests itself in the sheer scale of new urban space (re)production and the intricate interrelationships among the state, market, and society. The proliferation of new …

Getting To The Heart Of Great Public Spaces, Su Fern Hoe, Jacqueline Liu, Tan Tarn How

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) has flaggedthe start of car-free Sundays in the Civic District and Central BusinessDistrict this year.This move to make the area people-friendly is part of a $740 millionplan, announced in the 2015 Budget, to revitalise the Civic District andtransform it into "an integrated arts, culture and lifestyleprecinct". Highlights of the plan include the Jubilee Walk - an 8km trailthat wraps around landmarks from the National Museum to the Esplanade - and thenewly opened National Gallery Singapore