2019/10/08 by Kerry A. Nice, Nice, Kerry A., Gideon Aschwanden +9
Environmental Science · #Impact of Light on Environment and Health #Land Use and Ecosystem Services #Urban Green Space and Health
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1910.03219
In an impending urban age where the majority of the world's population will\nlive in cities, it is critical that we improve our understanding of the\nstrengths and limitations of existing city designs to ensure they are safe,\nclean, can deliver health co-benefits and importantly, are sustainable into the\nfuture. To enable this, a systematic and efficient means of performing inter-\nand intra-city comparisons based on urban form is required. Until now, methods\nfor comparing cities have been limited by scalability, often reliant upon\nnon-standardised local input data that can be costly and difficult to obtain.\nTo address this, we have developed a unique approach to determine the mix,\ndistribution, and composition of neighbourhood types in cities based on\ndimensions of block size and regularity, sorted by a self-organising map. We\nillustrate the utility of the method to provide an understanding of the\nunderlying city morphology by overlaying spatially standardised city metrics\nsuch as air pollution and transport activity across a set of 1667 global cities\nwith populations exceeding 300,000. The unique approach reports associations\nbetween specific mixes of neighbourhood typologies and quantities of moving\nvehicles (r=0.97), impervious surfaces (r=0.86), and air pollution levels\n(aerosol optical depth r=0.58 and NO2 r=0.57). What this illustrates, is\nthat this unique approach can identify the characteristics and neighbourhood\nmixes of well-performing urban areas while also producing unique `city\nfingerprints' that can be used to provide new metrics, insights, and drive\nimprovements in city design for the future.\n