From the past to the present time, in all civilizations and countries, urbanization is considered the most striking evolution of human societies. With the advent of the industrial revolution and the rapid expansion of cities, societies were faced with numerous problems. One of the most significant problems is Extreme centralization in one city or more and fragmentation of urban hierarchical sys...

Globalization and market reforms have significantly facilitated urban transition and urbanization in the People’s Republic of China, greatly affecting the structural and spatial redistribution of Chinese cities since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. Prior to the 1978 economic reforms, the system of cities created by the Maoist regime was dominated by large and extra-large cities b...

We quantified the spatio-temporal patterns of land cover/land use (LCLU) change to document and evaluate the daytime surface urban heat island (SUHI) for five hot subtropical desert cities (Beer Sheva, Israel; Hotan, China; Jodhpur, India; Kharga, Egypt; and Las Vegas, NV, USA). Sequential Landsat images were acquired and classified into the USGS 24-category Land Use Categories using object-bas...

Though the Chinese government’s incorporation of a market economy quickly brought China out of its repression and liberated its confined farmers, the economy’s explosive growth has not come without consequence. Today’s world paradox of obesity and hunger becoming equal opponents is reflected in China by the issues surrounding their rural and urban nutritional disparities. China’s past malnutrit...

In the last half century former international adversaries have become cooperators through networking and knowledge sharing for decision making aimed at improving quality of life and sustainability; nowhere has this been more striking then at the urban level where such activity is seen as a key component in building "learning cities" through the development of social capital. Although mega-citie...

An urban heat island (UHI) is a climate phenomenon that results in an increased air temperature in cities when compared to their rural surroundings. In this Letter, the dependence of an UHI on urban geometry is studied. Multiyear urban-rural temperature differences and building footprints data combined with a heat radiation scaling model are used to demonstrate for more than 50 cities worldwide...

Nitrate is often seen as an agricultural pollutant of groundwater and so is expected to be at higher concentrations in the groundwaters surrounding a city than in those beneath it. However the difference between rural and urban nitrate concentrations is often small, due to the non-agricultural sources of nitrogen that are concentrated in cities. This paper illustrates the source and significanc...

Increasing urbanization in China threatens the sustainable rural development of villages and towns. The siphoning effect cities on surrounding areas is increasing, resulting more severe problem a “rural disease” widening gap between urban areas. Implementing China’s revitalization strategies for urban–rural integration to alleviate these problems crucial development. Based field research materi...