Sustainable Urban Restructuring of Khartoum： A Revolutionary Measure for Rapid Growth Absorption and Urban Changes

Rapidly developing cities are under continuous physical and social changes which make sustainable urban growth concept a matured line of thinking. They are therefore, in need of restructuring to contain these changes. Likewise, Khartoum is growing rapidly and is subjected to continual transformation. It started in Independence Day （1/1/1956） by 〈3% of Sudan population and reached 16.8% in 2010 while its physical block grew beyond imagination. The objective of this paper is to throw light on Khartoum rapid growth change effects which necessitated implementation of a revolutionary restructuring programme. At first, huge rural influxes were absorbed and later physical distortions were corrected. This included squatter settlements＇ treatment to strengthen urban fabric, reallocation of incompatible urban functions, revitalization of the CBD （central business district） and other urban renewal schemes. Transportation lines were extended to ease people mobility and higher population concentrations were diluted, particularly the filthy slums. Old neighbourhoods, traditional villages, etc. were re-planned and popular physical development was encouraged. The restructuring programme appropriated population distribution, administrative districts, new local markets＇ locations and urban activities＇ distribution. The programme attained social benefits, particularly availing shelter and essential social services. Difficulties from relocation processes were encountered but settlements＇ regularization achieved social justice and sustained urban growth.

Local Climate Change Induced by Urbanization on a South China Sea Island

The South China Sea is a hotspot for regional climate research.Over the past 40 years,considerable improvement has been made in the development and utilization of the islands in the South China Sea,leading to a substantial change in the land-use of the islands.However,research on the impact of human development on the local climate of these islands is lacking.This study analyzed the characteristics of local climate changes on the islands in the South China Sea based on data from the Yongxing Island Observation Station and ERA5 re-analysis.Furthermore,the influence of urbanization on the local climate of the South China Sea islands was explored in this study.The findings revealed that the 10-year average temperature in Yongxing Island increased by approximately 1.11℃from 1961 to 2020,and the contribution of island development and urbanization to the local warming rate over 60 years was approximately 36.2%.The linear increasing trend of the annual hot days from 1961–2020 was approximately 14.84 days per decade.The diurnal temperature range exhibited an increasing trend of 0.05℃per decade,whereas the number of cold days decreased by 1.06days per decade.The rapid increase in construction on Yongxing Island from 2005 to 2021 led to a decrease in observed surface wind speed by 0.32 m s^(-1)per decade.Consequently,the number of days with strong winds decreased,whereas the number of days with weak winds increased.Additionally,relative humidity exhibited a rapid decline from 2001 to 2016 and then rebounded.The study also found substantial differences between the ERA5 re-analysis and observation data,particularly in wind speed and relative humidity,indicating that the use of re-analysis data for climate resource assessment and climate change evaluation on island areas may not be feasible.

ON TEMPERATURE CHANGES OF SHANGHAI AND URBANIZATION IMPACTS

To understand how temperature varies in urban Shanghai under the background of global climate change and how it is affected by urbanization, the Shanghai temperature responses to global warming were analyzed, and then the temperature trends of urban and suburb stations under different climatic backgrounds were obtained. The urbanization effects on temperature were studied by comparing urban stations to suburb stations, the relationship between urbanization variables and temperature components were obtained, and observation data of surface and high level were combined to assess the contribution of urbanization effect. In the last part of the paper, the cause of urbanization effects on temperature was discussed. The results indicated: The long term change trend of Shanghai annual mean temperature is 1.31/100a from 1873 to 2004, the periods of 1921 – 1948 and 1979 – 2004 are warmer, and the 1979 – 2004 period is the warmest; compared to suburb stations, the representative urban station has slower decreases in the cool period and faster increases in the warm one; the urban and suburb temperatures have distinct differences resulting from urbanization and the differences are increasing by the year, with the difference of mean temperature and minimum temperature being the greatest in fall and that of maximum temperature being the largest in summer between the urban and suburban areas. The urbanization process accelerates the warming speed, with the minimum temperature being the most obvious; the urbanization effect contributes a 0.4°C increase in 1980s and 1.1°C in 1990s to the annual mean temperature.

Object-oriented Urban Dynamic Monitoring——A Case Study of Haidian District of Beijing

It is crucial to conduct the land use/cover research to obtain the global change information.Urban area is one of the most sensitive areas in land use/cover change.Therefore land use/cover change in urban areas is very im-portant in global change.It is vital to incorporate the information of urban land use/cover change into the process of decision-making about urban area development.In this paper,a new urban change detection approach,urban dynamic monitoring based on objects,is introduced.This approach includes four steps:1)producing multi-scale objects from multi-temporal remotely sensed images with spectrum,texture and context information;2)extracting possible changed objects adopting object-oriented classification;3)obtaining shared objects as the basic units for urban change detection;4)determining the threshold to segment the changed objects from the possible changed objects using Otsu method.In this paper,the object-based approach was applied to detecting the urban expansion in Haidian District,Beijing,China with two Landsat Thematic Mapper(TM)data in 1997 and 2004.The results indicated that the overall accuracy was about 84.83%,and Kappa about 0.785.Compared with other conventional approaches,the object-based approach was advantageous in reducing the error accumulation of image classification of each datum and in independence to the radiometric correction and image registration accuracy.

Effects of Forest Type and Urbanization on Carbon Storage of Urban Forests in Changchun, Northeast China

Rapid urbanization has led to dramatic changes in urban forest structures and functions, and consequently affects carbon(C) storage in cities. In this study, field surveys were combined with high resolution images to investigate the variability of C storage of urban forests in Changchun, Northeast China. The main objectives of this study were to quantify the C storage of urban forests in Changchun City, Northeast China and understand the effects of forest type and urbanization on C storage of urban forests. The results showed that the mean C density and the total C storage of urban forests in Changchun were 4.41 kg/m2 and 4.74 × 108 kg, respectively. There were significant differences in C density among urban forest types. Landscape and relaxation forest(LF) had the highest C density with 5.41 kg/m2, while production and management forest(PF) had the lowest C density with 1.46 kg/m2. These differences demonstrate that urban forest type is an important factor needed to be considered when the C storage is accurately estimated. Further findings revealed significant differences in different gradients of urbanization, and the mean C density decreased from the first ring(6.99 kg/m2) to the fourth ring(2.87 kg/m2). The total C storage increased from the first ring to the third ring. These results indicate that C storage by urban forests will be significantly changed during the process of urbanization. The results can provide insights for decision-makers and urban planners to better understand the effects of forest type and urbanization on C storage of urban forests in Changchun, and make better management plans for urban forests.

Assessment of Urban Morphology through Local Climate Zone Clas­sification and Detection of the Changing Building States of Siliguri Municipal Corporation and Its Surrounding Area, West Bengal

Progressive population concentration to the urban centres has fuelled urban expansion in both horizontal as well as vertical direction,consequences in the urban landscape change.This growth resulted in posing many complexities towards sustainable urban development which can be counted by observing the changing proportions of natural landscapes and built up areas.Local climate zones(LCZs),a systematic classification of natural lands and built up lands,are identified in Siliguri Municipal Corporation(SMC)and its surrounding region to explore the spatio temporal complexity of urban growth in recent years.Rapid urbanization and population growth of SMC have led to change the building states from low rise to mid and high rise which added an important feature to the urban landscape dynamics of the area.The work intends to provide the vision of spatial urban morphology of the area through investigation of its changing land use and changing urban built space using the LCZ classification.The study shows that the WUDAPT method can accurately generate LCZs,especially the built type LCZs.The results of the proposed LCZ classification scheme are tested using error matrix for the year 2001 and 2021 having coefficient values of 0.79 and 0.81 respectively.The study explores the changing pattern of building states of SMC using LCZ products,which is essential for proper urban planning implementations.

Quantifying driving forces of urban wetlands change in Beijing City

The decision tree and the threshold methods have been adopted to delineate boundaries and features of water bodies from LANDSAT images. After a spatial overlay analysis and using a remote sensing technique and the wetland inventory data in Beijing, the water bodies were visually classified into different types of urban wetlands, and data on the urban wetlands of Beijing in 1986, 1991, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2007 were obtained. Thirteen driving factors that affect wetland change were selected, and gray correlation analysis was employed to calculate the correlation between each driving factor and the total area of urban wetlands. Then, six major driving factors were selected based on the correlation coefficient, and the contribution rates of these six driving factors to the area change of various urban wetlands were calculated based on canonical correlation analysis. After that, this research analyzed the relationship and mechanism between the main driving factors and various types of wetlands. Five conclusions can be drawn. （1） The total area of surface water bodies in Beijing increased from 1986 to 1996, and gradually decreased from 1996 to 2007. （2） The areas of the river wetlands, water storage areas and pool and culture areas gradually decreased, and its variation tendency is consistent with that of the total area of wetlands. The area of the mining water areas and wastewater treatment plants slightly increased. （3） The six factors of driving forces are the annual rainfall, the evaporation, the quantity of inflow water, the volume of groundwater available, the urbanization rate and the daily average discharge of wastewater are the main factors affecting changes in the wetland areas, and they correlate well with the total area of wetlands. （4） The hydrologic indicators of water resources such as the quantity of inflow water and the volume of groundwater are the most important and direct driving forces that affect the change of the wetland area. These factors have a combined contribution rate of 43.94%. （5） Climate factors such as rainfall and evaporation are external factors that affect the changes in wetland area, and they have a contribution rate of 36.54%. （6） Human activities such as the urbanization rate and the daily average quantity of wastewater are major artificial driving factors. They have an influence rate of 19.52%.

Simulating urban land use change by incorporating an autologistic regression model into a CLUE-S model

The Conversion of Land Use and its Effects at Small regional extent （CLUE-S） model is a widely used method to simulate land use change. An ordinary logistic regression model was integrated into the CLUE-S model to identify explanatory variables without considering the spatial autocorrelation effect. Using image-derived maps of the Changsha- Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration, the CLUE-S model was integrated with the ordinary logistic regression and autologistic regression models in this paper to simulate land use change in 2000, 2005 and 2009 based on an observation map from 1995. Significant positive spatial autocorrelation was detected in residuals of ordinary logistic models. Some variables that were much more significant than they should be were selected. Autologistic regression models, which used autocovariate incorporation, were better able to identify driving factors. The Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve （ROC） values of autologistic regression models were larger than 0.8 and the pseudo R^2 values were improved, compared with results of logistic regression model. By overlapping the observation maps, the Kappa values of the ordinary logistic regression model （OL）-CLUE-S and autologistic regression model （AL）-CLUE-S models were larger than 0.75. The results showed that the simulation results were indeed accurate. The Kappa fuzzy （Kfuzzy） values of the AL-CLUE-S models （0.780, 0.773, 0.606） were larger than the values of the OL-CLUE-S models （0.759, 0.760, 0.599） during the three periods. The AL-CLUE-S models performed better than the OL-CLUE-S models in the simulation of land use change. The results showed that it is reasonable to integrate autocovariates into CLUE-S models. However, the Kfuzzy values decreased with prolonged duration of simulation and the maximum range of time was not discussed in this paper.

Satellite Image-based Monitoring of Urban Land Use Change and Assessing the Driving Factors in Pokhara and Bharatpur Metropolitan Cities, Gandaki Basin, Nepal

Urban growth is a key indicator of economic development.At the same time,haphazard urban growth creates serious socioeconomic,environmental and urban land management problems.In this context,understanding the process of urban landscape change is important for guiding the sustainable growth of urban areas.This study analyzes the urban land changes during 1990–2018 in two metropolitan cities of Gandaki basin:Pokhara and Bharatpur.Landsat satellite images were analyzed using supervised classification methods.The results revealed that the built-up area has increased significantly by 300%in Pokhara and by nearly 500%in the Bharatpur during the past 28 years.Population growth,migration from surrounding areas due to urban facilities and the easy lifestyle in cities were found to be major determinants of urban growth within the study area.In addition,the changing urban definition and expansion of municipal boundaries are key factors for rapid urban growth.Both cities are likely to grow in the future as they are both located in areas that encompass the high levels of commercial activity and modern service facilities.The haphazard urban growth should be minimized through planning and policies for sustainable urban development.

Impact of Urban Land-Use Change in Eastern China on the East Asian Subtropical Monsoon:A Numerical Study

The effect of urban land-use change in eastern China on the East Asian subtropical monsoon（EASTM） is investigated by using the Community Atmosphere Model version 5.1.Comparison of the results between the urban expansion and reference experiments shows that with the urban expansion,the land surface energy balance alters：surface net radiation and sensible heat fluxes enhance while the latent heat fluxes reduce.As a result,a significant increase in surface air temperature over eastern China is detected.The urban land-use change contributes to a change in the zonal land-sea temperature difference（LSTD）,leading to a delay in the time when LSTD changes from positive to negative,and vice versa.Additionally,the onset and retreat dates of the EASTM are also delayed.Meanwhile,the rise in surface air temperature leads to formation of abnormal northerly air flows,which may be the reason for the slower northward movement of the EASTM and a more southward location of its northern boundary.

Simulating multiple urban land use changes by integrating transportation accessibility and a vector-based cellular automata:a case study on city of Toronto

The accessibility provided by the transportation system plays an essential role in driving urban growth and urban functional land use changes.Conventional studies on land use simulation usually simplified the accessibility as proximities and adopted the grid-based simulation strategy,leading to the insufficiencies of characterizing spatial geometry of land parcels and simulating subtle land use changes among urban functional types.To overcome these limita-tions,an Accessibility-interacted Vector-based Cellular Automata(A-VCA)model was proposed for the better simulation of realistic land use change among different urban functional types.The accessibility at both local and zonal scales derived from actual travel time data was considered as a key driver of fine-scale urban land use changes and was integrated into the vector-based CA simulation process.The proposed A-VCA model was tested through the simulation of urban land use changes in the City of Toronto,Canada,during 2012-2016.A vector-based CA without considering the driving factor of accessibility(VCA)and a popular grid-based CA model(Future Land Use Simulation,FLUS)were also implemented for compar-isons.The simulation results reveal that the proposed A-VCA model is capable of simulating fine-scale urban land use changes with satisfactory accuracy and good morphological feature(kappa=0.907,figure of merit=0.283,and cumulative producer’s accuracy=72.83%±1.535%).The comparison also shows significant outperformance of the A-VCA model against the VCA and FLUS models,suggesting the effectiveness of the accessibility-interactive mechanism and vector-based simulation strategy.The proposed model provides new tools for a better simula-tion of fine-scale land use changes and can be used in assisting the formulation of urban and transportation planning.