Search results

Faced with the growing need to find new viable water supply models for urban areas, this article studies and maps the strategies and identifies the key criteria of sustainable development present in pioneering water supply systems in the medieval period. The main aim is to determine which of its innovative principles could be applied in present-day cities.

From a methodological perspective, two types of cases were established, such as water supply models for human consumption and pre-industrial hydraulic systems, all of which are located in Italy. For the first group, the cases of Venice and Siena were analysed, while for the second, in the context of the cities along the Aemilian Way, the case of Bologna was selected.

Five key criteria resulted from the analysis of the cases: exploitation, self-sufficiency, maintenance, rationalisation and reuse. The said concepts were defined and contextualised within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Middle Ages were a historic moment in technological reinvention, before the development of modern systems of sanitation. With very limited resources, these traditional systems focused on rational use and deep cultural and geographical knowledge. This is why its recognition is of great importance today, in a time full of instabilities, with a view to the work that needs to be done for the development of more sustainable communities.

This paper aims to address what it means to brand a city as “smart”. In other words, what ideas, understandings and actions are mobilized by the discourse of smart cities in a particular context.

Taking a brand interpretive approach, this paper uses deconstructive criticism to understand the performativity of smart cities within the Brazilian Charter for Smart Cities and to expose hegemonic power structures and the various colonizations that disenfranchise consumers and citizens of the Global South.

This paper finds that the branding of smart cities within the Brazilian Charter for Smart Cities is largely performative and rhetorical in nature. The authors identify those dimensions of the smart city that are materialized by this branding performance. For example, the authors identify how the Charter calls forth issues around technological solutionism, sustainability and social inclusion. At the same time, the analysis draws attention to the dimensions of smart cities that are disguised by such performances.

The implications of the work suggest that the authors need to understand the designation “smart city” as a branding performance. More research is required in context to determine in exactly what ways smart city projects are being implemented.

Rather than adhering only to the rhetoric of smartness, cities have to work hard to make smartness a reality – a smartness constructed not just on technical solutions but also on human solutions. That is, the complexity of urban issues that are apparently addressed in the move to smartness demand more than a technological fix.

The research offers a novel lens through which to view smart cities.

This study aims to empirically examine the effects of smart cities on sustainable development for the period 1990–2019 for Türkiye.

The relationship between smart cities and sustainable development was analyzed with the help of the ARDL Bounds Test. In addition, the consistency of the model was tested with the FMOLS estimator. The indicators of the smart city were selected following the literature to represent smart cities, and the author created the smart city index. The study used other variables thought to impact sustainable development as secondary data.

The results show that smart cities positively and significantly impact sustainable development in Turkiye in both models during the sampling period. In addition, while real GDP, population density, and financial development variables positively affect sustainable development, population density has a negative effect on sustainable development, according to the results obtained from FMOLS estimators.

The first novelty of this study is the creation of the smart city index. The second novelty is that there are almost no studies on the effects of smart cities on sustainable development, especially for Türkiye.

Drawing motivation from the greater exposure to uncertainty and condition changes that affect large projects due to their long lifecycle, this paper aims to investigate how the time factor affects the use of governance mechanisms to pursue the success of these projects.

To pursue its aim, the article applies the dichotomization between the hard and soft mechanisms of project governance to the analysis of a historical case study, whose findings are organized over the short, medium and long periods. The case selected is referred to the peculiar water system, made up of tunnels named “bottini,” that was in use in Siena (Italy) as the old aqueduct. Specifically, the study focuses on the project of expansion of this water system that was realized during the 14th century for the construction of the “Bottino maestro di Fontegaia.”

This article highlights the different relevance that, during the lifecycle of large projects, is assumed by hard and soft governance mechanisms, with the former having main relevance in a short and medium period, and the latter usually emerging in the medium period and, subsequently, playing a growing role for the project success in the long period.

The article contributes to the literature on large projects by providing novel insights about how the time factor impacts the governance of these projects. Furthermore, the case study, with its unique history, highlights the relevance of combining effectively the hard and the soft dimensions of project governance to pursue success.

With the help of a quasi-natural experiment on Chinese policies, this study aims to understand the actual contribution of Smart City (SC) policies to the development of information and communications technology (ICT) in different cities. It also discusses the social and digital differences that such policies may generate, with a particular focus on the potential for exacerbating urban inequalities.

To achieve this, the study employs a principal component analysis (PCA) to develop an ICT development indicator system. It then employs a difference-in-differences (DID) model to analyze panel data from 209 Chinese cities over the period from 2007 to 2019, examining the impact of SC policies on ICT development across various urban settings.

Our findings show that SC policies have significantly contributed to the enhancement of ICT development, especially in ICT usage. However, SC policies may inadvertently reinforce developmental disparities among cities. Compared to less developed areas, the benefits of SC policies are more pronounced in economically booming cities. This is likely due to the agglomeration of the ICT industry and the strong allure of developed urban centers for high-caliber talent.

This study contributes to the related literature by explaining the role of SC policies in driving ICT development and by focusing on the often-overlooked impact of SC policies on urban inequality. These findings can provide guidance to policymakers on the need to recognize and address existing urban inequalities.

This study aims to examine the effects of technology-, organisation- and environment-readiness, smart economic development, change valence, social cohesion and quality of life on citizenship in the context of smart cities.

The study employed a customized questionnaire which was completed by 280 residents of China’s first-tier cities. This study tested the framework using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique.

The results indicated that smart economy development, social cohesion, change valence, technological readiness, organizational readiness and environmental readiness have a significant impact on the quality of life. Quality of life has a positive impact on citizenship.

This study adds new insights to smart city academic discussions. The study addresses a critical gap identified in existing literature which urges the need for a balance between user-centric, organization-centric and technology-centric approaches. It offers a fresh perspective on how the smart economy, social cohesion and readiness factors are interlinked. These elements together shape urban living experiences. For policymakers and urban planners, our findings provide clear guidance. They highlight the complex dynamics that must be considered to build more unified, inclusive and sustainable smart cities.

The ancient town of Lijiang is a representative place of ethnic minorities in China’s southwest border area jointly built by many ethnic groups. Its rich and diversified history, culture and architecture as well as its artistic and spiritual values need to be better retained and explored.

The protection and inheritance of Lijiang’s cultural heritage will be improved through the construction of digital memory resources. To guide Lijiang’s digital memory construction, this study explores strategies of digital memory construction by analyzing four case studies of well-known memory projects from China and America.

From the case studies analysis, factors of digital memory construction were identified and compared. Factors led to the discussion of strategies for constructing the digital memory of Lijiang within its design, construction and service phases.

The ancient town of Lijiang is a famous historical and cultural city in China, and it is also a representative place of ethnic minorities in the border area jointly built by many ethnic groups. The rich culture should be preserved and digitalized to offer better use for the whole nation.

The aim of this research is to understand the relationship between cultural buildings, economic powers and social justice and equality in architecture and how this relationship has evolved over the last hundred years. This research seeks to identify architectural and urban elements that enhance social justice and equality to inform architectural and urban designs and public policies.

The author explores the relationship between case studies of museums, cultural centers and libraries, and economic powers between 1920 and 2020 in Stockholm, Sweden. The author conducts a historical analysis and combines it with statistical and geographically referenced information in a Geographic Information System, archival data and in situ observations of selected buildings in the city. The author leverages the median income of household data from Statistics Sweden, with the geographical location of main public buildings and the headquarters of main companies operating in Sweden.

This analysis presents a gradual commercialization of cultural buildings in terms of location, inner layout and management, and the parallel filtering and transforming of the role of users. The author assesses how these cultural buildings gradually conformed to a system in the city and engaged with the market from a more local and national level to global networks. Findings show a cluster of large public buildings in the center of Stockholm, the largest global companies' headquarters and high-income median households. Results show that large shares of the low-income population now live far away from these buildings and the increasing commercialization of cultural space and inequalities.

This research provides a novel image of urban inequalities in Stockholm focusing on cultural buildings and their relationship with economic powers over the last hundred years. Cultural buildings could be a tool to support equality and stronger democracy beyond their primary use. Public cultural buildings offer a compromise between generating revenue for the private sector while catering to the needs and interests of large numbers of people. Therefore, policymakers should consider emphasizing the construction of more engaging public cultural buildings in more distributed locations.

Against the background of the popularity of social media and heritage tourism, this study aims to focus on world heritage sites, proposing a method to examine and compare the digital spatial footprints left by tourists using geographic information systems.

By analyzing user-generated content from social media, this research explores how digital data shapes the destination image of WHS and the spatial relationships between the components of this destination image. Drawing on the cognitive-affective model (CAM), it investigates through an analysis of integrated data with more than 20,000 reviews and 2,000 photos.

The creativity of this research lies in the creation of a comprehensive method that combines text and image analytics with machine learning and GIS to examine spatial relationships within the CAM framework in a visual manner.

The results reveal tourists' perceptions, emotions, and attitudes towards George Town and Malacca in Malaysia, highlighting several key cognitive impressions, such as history, museums, churches, sea, and food, as well as the primary emotions expressed. Their distributions and relationships are also illustrated on maps.

Tourism practitioners, government officials, and residents can gain valuable insights from this study. The proposed methodology provides a valuable reference for future tourism studies and help to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage for other heritage destinations.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to propose a methodology to empirically investigate the longitudinal development of social media content concerning buildings characterized by iconic architecture and second, to report on the application of this methodology.

We collected and analyzed empirical data of social media content shared via Instagram between 2011 and 2019 on 16 buildings that can be considered iconic architecture projects. Using an automated pipeline, we collected and processed 264,000 posts and 140,000 images from Instagram for the selected case studies. By studying the posting activity of Instagram users through time series analysis and conducting content analysis of the social media posts by means of both image classification and topic modeling, we report on the development of users’ capturing and reception of the selected case studies on Instagram over time.

First, we identify two distinct time patterns of social media content: instantly popular buildings whose popularity fades over time and buildings that gradually gain popularity over time. Second, we distinguish differences in the content of social media posts: some buildings are primarily covered for their architectural features and others for their cultural function and facilities.

Using empirical investigation of Instagram data on iconic architectural projects, we have identified a correlation: buildings primarily posted for their architecture are generally also the ones to gain instant online popularity that subsequently faded over time. In contrast, buildings primarily posted for their function and facilities slowly gained popularity on the social media platform over time.