Do scaling relations always provide the means to anticipate the relationships between the size of cities, costs of maintenance, and the socio-economic benefits resulting from their growth? Scaling laws are considered a universal principle that describes the development of complex systems such as cities. It seems that regardless of their location or history, the growth of cities is associated wi...

Cultural heritage can play a strategic role in developing sustainable built environment, contributing to the improvement of economic, social, and environmental productivity city. Human activities are constantly affecting quality environment altering ecosystems, which produce negative consequences also on human wellbeing. Within this context, it has been much discussed how cities counteract proc...

This article revisited past digital cities, and discussed smart cities and the future. If we understand digital cities as exploration of cyber space and smart cities as exploitation of physical space, the next stage is to evolve networked society based on cyber physical systems. The current movements suggest two different directions, socialization of commerce and commercialization of society. W...

I 1960, 33.0 percent of the world’s population lived in cities. In 2010, this share grew to 50.5 percent and will continue to rise as urbanization in the developing world takes place. Urbanization offers market opportunities that rural areas cannot match. The potential to learn, specialize and trade in cities raises per capita income (Glaeser 1998, 1999, 2011). Over the last thirty years, one q...

We study centrality in urban street patterns of different world cities represented as networks in geographical space. The results indicate that a spatial analysis based on a set of four centrality indices allows an extended visualization and characterization of the city structure. A hierarchical clustering analysis based on the distributions of centrality has a certain capacity to distinguish d...

Abstract Russian Arctic is a highly urbanized region, with most towns built in the Soviet era to facilitate extraction industries as well provide and maintain military facilities. Global environmental developmental changes, national political decisions open up Russia’s massive investment, industrial socioeconomic development. How do cities, towns, municipalities reflect on new opportunities ter...

If cities could become regenerative and adaptive urban ecosystems, in which resource loops were closed waste was obsolete, their ecological footprint would diminish. In addition, security increase, the health of populations improve greenhouse gas emissions be reduced. These are principle goals under-pinning circular city. Circular emerge through process development. development alters cities’ s...

This paper discusses the cities that have the resources which enable firms and markets to be global. It considers the new intensity and complexity of globally-connected systems of production, finance and management which may disperse production, yet need (relatively few) cities to provide their organizational and management architecture. This produces new geographies and hierarchies of centrali...

Smart cities link the city services, citizens, resource and infrastructures together and form the heart of the modern society. As a “smart” ecosystem, smart cities focus on sustainable growth, efficiency, productivity and environmentally friendly development. By comparing with the European Union, North America and other countries, smart cities in China are still in the preliminary stage. This s...

This paper considers the role of soft skills in cities and industry clusters. It begins by specifying a model of agglomeration economies where soft skills allow agents to interact more productively. The model exposes two conflicting forces: agglomeration allows opportunities to interact, but it also produces thick, specialized markets, and this specialization can be a substitute for interaction...