Many growing phenomena in both nature and society can be predicted with sigmoid function. The growth curve of the level of urbanization is a typical S-shaped one, and can be described by using logistic function. The logistic model implies a replacement process, and the logistic substitution suggests non-linear dynamical behaviors such as bifurcation and chaos. Using mathematical transform and n...

IN 1698 THE ENGLISH ANTIQUARIAN AND TOPOGRAPHICAL ARTIST Francis Place visited Ireland. Travelling along the east coast, sketching as he went, he arrived at Dublin in early 1699. From a hill to the south-west of the city, he drew a prospect of the cityscape using a camera obscura. In some ways the result was not unlike contemporary prospects of large English cities such as London, York or Norwi...

Background Urban renewal has become an important issue in Hong Kong, which is experiencing considerable population growth pressures and urban decay in various districts. Ho et al. [1] noted that urban renewal often creates not only environmental problems such as demolition waste, but also social problems such as destruction of existing social networks and the fabric of long-established communit...

The papers in this urban computing special issue cover a framework and components of crowdsourcing, and a range of issues related to volunteered geographic information, including user behavior, brand popularity, recommendation system, and social analytics in social networks. Moreover, the special issue is devoted to capture different patterns and dynamics that characterize the big cities in ord...

Brent D. Ryan first visited Detroit in 1993. Describing this experience, he says: ‘‘The sense of emptiness was overpowering. ... I felt as if I was walking into the ruin of America.’’ In his book ‘‘Design after decline—how America rebuilds shrinking cities,’’ Ryan tries to understand why so many American cities have been losing population, what was and is done to change the fortune of these cit...