Tourism and urban transport: holding demand pressure under supply constraints

Scholars and local planners are increasingly interested in tourism contribution to economic and social development. To this regard, several European cities lead the world rankings on tourist arrivals, and their governments have promoted tourism activity. Mobility is an essential service for tourists visiting large cities, since it is a crucial factor for their comfort. In addition, it facilitates the spread of benefits across the city. The aim of this study is to determine whether city planners respond to this additional urban transport demand pressure by extending supply services. We use an international database of European cities. Our results confirm that tourism intensity is a demand enhancing factor on urban transport. Contrarily, cities do not seem to address this pressure by increasing service supply. This suggests that tourism exerts a positive externality on public transport since it provides additional funding for these services, but it imposes as well external costs on resident users because of congestion given supply constraints.

Does urban sprawl increase the costs of providing local public services? Evidence from Spanish municipalities

This paper examines the impact of urban sprawl, a phenomenon of particular interest in Spain, which is currently experiencing this process of rapid, low-density urban expansion. Many adverse consequences are attributed to urban sprawl (e.g., traffic congestion, air pollution and social segregation), though here we are concerned primarily with the rising costs of providing local public services. Our initial aim is to develop an accurate measure of urban sprawl so that we might empirically test its impact on municipal budgets. Then, we undertake an empirical analysis using a cross-sectional data set of 2,500 Spanish municipalities for the year 2003 and a piecewise linear function to account for the potentially nonlinear relationship between sprawl and local costs. The estimations derived from the expenditure equations for both aggregate and six disaggregated spending categories indicate that low-density development patterns lead to greater provision costs of local public services.

Urban image classification with semisupervised multiscale cluster kernels

This paper presents a semisupervised support vector machine (SVM) that integrates the information of both labeled and unlabeled pixels efficiently. Method's performance is illustrated in the relevant problem of very high resolution image classification of urban areas. The SVM is trained with the linear combination of two kernels: a base kernel working only with labeled examples is deformed by a likelihood kernel encoding similarities between labeled and unlabeled examples. Results obtained on very high resolution (VHR) multispectral and hyperspectral images show the relevance of the method in the context of urban image classification. Also, its simplicity and the few parameters involved make the method versatile and workable by unexperienced users.

Urban bike

Treball de recerca realitzat per un grup d’alumnes d’ensenyament secundari i guardonat amb un Premi CIRIT per fomentar l'esperit científic del Jovent l’any 2008. Es presenta un pla d’empresa del sector turístic. L’activitat de l’empresa serà organitzar viatges amb rutes organitzades per diferents capitals europees i també algunes rutes dintre del territori espanyol amb bicicleta, oferint un servei complet.

A Soft Edge Target Zone Model: Theory And Application To Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s currency is pegged to the US dollar in a currency board arrangement. In autumn 2003, the Hong Kong dollar appreciated from close to 7.80 per US dollar to 7.70, as investors feared that the currency board would be abandoned. In the wake of this appreciation, the monetary authorities revamped the one-sided currency board mechanism into a symmetric two-sided system with a narrow exchange rate band. This paper reviews the characteristics of the new currency board arrangement and embeds a theoretical soft edge target zone model typifying many intermediate regimes, to explain the notable achievement of speculative peace and credibility since May 2005.

Exploring Determinants of Urban Motorcycle Accident Severity: The Case of Barcelona

Public authorities and road users alike are increasingly concerned by recent trends in road safety outcomes in Barcelona, which is the European city with the highest number of registered Powered Two-Wheel (PTW) vehicles per inhabitant,. In this study we explore the determinants of motorcycle and moped accident severity in a large urban area, drawing on Barcelona’s local police database (2002-2008). We apply non-parametric regression techniques to characterize PTW accidents and parametric methods to investigate the factors influencing their severity. Our results show that PTW accident victims are more vulnerable, showing greater degrees of accident severity, than other traffic victims. Speed violations and alcohol consumption provide the worst health outcomes. Demographic and environment-related risk factors, in addition to helmet use, play an important role in determining accident severity. Thus, this study furthers our understanding of the most vulnerable vehicle types, while our results have direct implications for local policy makers in their fight to reduce the severity of PTW accidents in large urban areas.

Spatial Interactions in Hedonic Pricing Models: The Urban Housing Market of Aveiro, Portugal

Spatial heterogeneity, spatial dependence and spatial scale constitute key features of spatial analysis of housing markets. However, the common practice of modelling spatial dependence as being generated by spatial interactions through a known spatial weights matrix is often not satisfactory. While existing estimators of spatial weights matrices are based on repeat sales or panel data, this paper takes this approach to a cross-section setting. Specifically, based on an a priori definition of housing submarkets and the assumption of a multifactor model, we develop maximum likelihood methodology to estimate hedonic models that facilitate understanding of both spatial heterogeneity and spatial interactions. The methodology, based on statistical orthogonal factor analysis, is applied to the urban housing market of Aveiro, Portugal at two different spatial scales.

What drives urban consumption in mainland china? The role of property price dynamics

This paper adds to the literature on wealth effects on consumption by disentangling house price effects on consumption for mainland China. In a stochastic modelling framework, the riskiness, rate of increase and persistence of house price movements have different implications for the consumption/housing ratio. We exploit the geographical variation in property prices by using a quarterly city-level panel dataset for the period 1998Q1 – 2009Q4 and rely on a panel error correction model. Overall, the results suggest a significant long run impact of property prices on consumption. They also broadly confirm the predictions from the theoretical model.

Synanthropic trends in urban andextraurban taxocenoses of Sarcophaginae (Diptera) in three central european cities

An attempt has been made to characterize the synanthropic trends in Sarcophaginae of three Central European cities, viz. Brno, Bratislava and Budapest. The polar ordination of both sarcophagine taxa and of their taxocenoses revealed clear-cut trends towards culturophily and synanthropy in the male preconnubial aggregations of Sarchophaginae evidencing that this group of high Diptera represent an excellent model for the study of this phenomenon.

Clúster creatius en entorns urbans: 22@Bcn i Shoreditch East London

La localització de les empreses de nova economia en zones urbanes, a pesar que el factor distància no sigui important, no deixa de ser considerable pels seus avantatges que els suposa estar situades conjuntament en relació amb les infraestructures, consum, beneficis socioculturals, i facilitat en les transaccions cara a cara. És inevitable que el primer quart del segle vint-i-un estigui lligat a l’economia creativa de forma similar amb que el començament del segle vint estava íntimament lligat a l’economia industrial i la invenció del sistema de producció en massa. La ciutat també va jugar un dels papers més importants per al desenvolupament de “la nova economia industrial” a les albors del segle vint, com ho és la ciutat del coneixement que acull “la nova economia creativa” al segle vint-i-un. És evident que els resultats morfològics, socials, econòmics i urbans són ben diferents en ambdós fenòmens, però l’impacte a les ciutats és molt gran. L’objectiu d’aquest estudi és analitzar els mecanismes d’aglomeració (clustering) d’activitats competitives basades en creació de coneixement i de serveis avançats que estan al darrera de desenvolupaments punters a ciutats com Barcelona, el projecte 22@bcn, i East London, el projecte Shoreditch. L’esforç que han posat les autoritats locals en crear l’entorn apropiat per atreure i crear empreses innovadores, com a motor de desenvolupament d’algunes ciutats modernes europees ha resultat en el sorgiment de nuclis o centres urbans molt dinàmics que suposadament estan preparats i acullen punts de creació de coneixement (“Urban Knowledge Hubs”), amb una demanda i llocs de treball altament qualificats. Aquest és el cas dels projectes de Barcelona (22@bcn) i East London (Shoreditch).

A Modulated Closed Form solution for Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping - A thorough evaluation and comparison to iterative methods based on edge prior knowledge.

The aim of this study is to perform a thorough comparison of quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) techniques and their dependence on the assumptions made. The compared methodologies were: two iterative single orientation methodologies minimizing the l2, l1TV norm of the prior knowledge of the edges of the object, one over-determined multiple orientation method (COSMOS) and anewly proposed modulated closed-form solution (MCF). The performance of these methods was compared using a numerical phantom and in-vivo high resolution (0.65mm isotropic) brain data acquired at 7T using a new coil combination method. For all QSM methods, the relevant regularization and prior-knowledge parameters were systematically changed in order to evaluate the optimal reconstruction in the presence and absence of a ground truth. Additionally, the QSM contrast was compared to conventional gradient recalled echo (GRE) magnitude and R2* maps obtained from the same dataset. The QSM reconstruction results of the single orientation methods show comparable performance. The MCF method has the highest correlation (corrMCF=0.95, r(2)MCF =0.97) with the state of the art method (COSMOS) with additional advantage of extreme fast computation time. The l-curve method gave the visually most satisfactory balance between reduction of streaking artifacts and over-regularization with the latter being overemphasized when the using the COSMOS susceptibility maps as ground-truth. R2* and susceptibility maps, when calculated from the same datasets, although based on distinct features of the data, have a comparable ability to distinguish deep gray matter structures.

Jeunes filles scoliotiques et orthopédie a la Belle Epoque: l'essor urbain de la mécanothérapie a Lausanne et Genève [Scoliotic young girls and orthopaedics in Belle Epoque: the urban surge of mecanotherapy in Lausanne and Geneva].

In Belle Epoque towns marked by the industrial and medical surge, a new technical therapy, called mechanotherapy, emerged, stemming from Swedish medical gymnastics and auxiliary to orthopaedics. Aiming mostly at treating scoliosis, this therapy by movement attracted a sizeable female clientele to these towns, because of the hygienic and social conceptions feeding collective imagination linked to the bodies of scoliotic young girls. Taking the French-speaking Swiss towns of Lausanne and Geneva as examples, the article first seeks to describe the emergence of mechanotherapy as a medical and urban phenomenon. It then addresses the role played by scoliosis in this orthopaedic practice, and examines the clientele attracted to the towns, among which well-born young girls seem to be predominant.