Mounting research highlights the contribution of ecosystem services provided by urban forests to quality of life in cities, yet these services are rarely explicitly considered in environmental policy targets. We quantify regulating services provided by urban forests and evaluate their contribution to comply with policy targets of air quality and climate change mitigation in the municipality of ...

As mentioned in the European white paper of the OECD (OECD, 2003) the main policy objective to be tackled is the development of sustainable urban goods transport. Sustainable urban goods transport should facilitate a continuing economic growth and meanwhile protecting the environment and ensuring a better quality of life for future generations. In Netherlands various regulations have been imple...

Around the world, particularly in North America and Australia, urban sprawl combined with low density suburban development has caused serious accessibility and mobility problems, especially for those who do not own a motor vehicle or have access to public transportation services. Sustainable urban and transportation development is seen crucial in solving transportation disadvantage problems in ...

Zanzibar is one of the smallest participants in the United Nations Sustainable Cities Program. As Zanzibar is a relatively compact urban area with just over 200 000 residents and without substantial industrial pollutants, the task of making it “sustainable” would appear at first pass to be fairly uncomplicated. Zanzibar benefits from a significant government commitment to environmental policy a...

Many urban policies aim to improve areas and address socioeconomic deprivation. The resulting investment is often delivered through area-based programmes which incorporate initiatives to improve the physical, social and economic environment. Hypotheses that these investments can contribute to wider public health strategies are based on epidemiological data and used to support the concept of hea...

The majority of the world's population now lives in towns and cities, and urban areas are expanding faster than any other land-use type. In response to this phenomenon, two opposing arguments have emerged: whether cities should 'sprawl' into the wider countryside, or 'densify' through the development of existing urban greenspace. However, these greenspaces are increasingly recognized as being c...

In this paper we present a novel approach of simulating urban growth by utilising the computation power of modern GPUs. The simulation results can be used in urban policy modelling to reduce turnaround times in the policy cycle. We use a state-of-the-art agent-based simulation model that consists of rules to describe human behaviour. The simulation incorporates geospatial information such as la...

There is a growing body of research, which suggests that many contemporary urban environments do not support healthy lifestyle choices and are implicated in the obesity pandemic. This paper reviews the evidence from this field in relation to theory, policy and practice, from three different disciplinary perspectives: urban design, geography and public health nutrition. In the UK, our developmen...