Cycling as a part of daily life: A review of health perspectives

Health aspects of day-to-day cycling have gained attention from the health sector aiming to increase levels of physical activity, and from the transport and planning sector, to justify investments in cycling. We review and discuss the main pathways between cycling and health under two perspectives — generalizable epidemiological evidence for health effects and specific impact modeling to quantify health impacts in concrete settings. Substantial benefits from physical activity dominate the public health impacts of cycling. Epidemiological evidence is strong and impact modeling is well advanced. Injuries amount to a smaller impact on the population level, but affect crash victims disproportionately and perceived risks deter potential cyclists. Basic data on crash risks are available, but evidence on determinants of risks is limited and impact models are highly dependent on local factors. Risks from air pollution can be assumed to be small, with limited evidence for cycling-specific mechanisms. Based on a large body of evidence, planners, health professionals, and decision-makers can rest assured that benefits from cycling-related physical activity are worth pursuing. Safety improvements should be part of the efforts to promote cycling, both to minimize negative impacts and to lower barriers to cycling for potential riders.

Review on the impact of urban geometry and pedestrian level greening on outdoor thermal comfort

The number of hot days is increasing in many parts of the world because of the heat island phenomenon and global climate change. High air temperature greatly affects human thermal comfort and public health, particularly in urban areas. Therefore, the challenging task of, urban designers and urban planners in accommodating the increasing population is to make cities with the least level of vulnerability to future climate change. Interest in transferring urban climatic knowledge into urban planning practices, and developing mitigation strategies to adapt to climate change, has been increased in recent years. The use of vegetation and appropriate urban geometry are shown very promising in mitigating the adverse effects of heat island and providing a better pedestrian thermal comfort. This article reviews studies on pedestrian level urban greening and geometry in improving thermal comfort in cities. Such strategies can be applied at the preliminary stages of urban planning and thus directly affect the microclimate. The analyzed data include simulation and field measurement studies. The discussion of this research clearly reflects how urban design guidelines can be applied to enhance outdoor thermal comfort and minimize the heat island effect. This study is helpful in controlling the consequences of city design from the early design stage.

Conceptualising and measuring spatial indicators of employment through a liveability lens

Employment is a well-known social determinant of health and wellbeing and important for the liveability of a region. Yet, spatial data are rarely used to understand barriers and facilitators of accessing employment within a city. Therefore it remains challenging to plan cities that provide equitable opportunities for urban job seekers. This paper sought to: (1) identify urban planning and neighbourhood spatial attributes that facilitate access to employment; (2) conceptualise how neighbourhood attributes that facilitate accessible urban employment may be related to health and wellbeing behaviours and outcomes; and (3) isolate potentially important neighbourhood-level spatial measures that policy-makers and planners could use to assess urban employment accessibility. A conceptual framework was developed through a social determinants of health lens, where more upstream (e.g., neighbourhood attributes) and more downstream (e.g., behaviours, intermediate outcomes) determinants of urban employment were identified in relation to long-term health and social outcomes of interest. Six potential neighbourhood spatial measures of employment were identified. These were classified into measures of: access to employment (n = 4), local employment (n = 1), and neighbourhood employment level (n = 1). The spatial measures proposed rely on routinely collected administrative datasets existing within Australia (i.e., census data); therefore can be replicated over time and data are available nationally. Together, this research identified a suite of potential (and readily available) spatial measures that can be used to assess selected neighbourhood attributes as they relate to urban employment access. Such spatial measures can be used to inform future planning decisions that integrate policies across multiple sectors, thereby improving employment accessibility in an urban context.

Actors and agency in academic language policy and planning

Nearly two decades have passed since Kaplan and Baldauf [1997. Language planning from practice to theory. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters] drew attention to the dearth of language policy and planning (LPP) in higher education. Despite the continuing inflow of English as an additional language students into Anglophone universities, and a boom in English-medium instruction policies in non-Anglophone tertiary institutions [Dearden, J. (2014). English as a medium of instruction: A growing global phenomenon. British Council], LPP research remains relatively underdeveloped in higher education. We suggest that current understandings of academic language policy and planning in higher education would benefit from contextualised analyses of actors and agency [Chua, C. S. K., & Baldauf, R. B. (2011). Micro language planning. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (pp. 936–951). New York, NY: Routledge; Zhao, S. H., 2011. Actors in language planning. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (Vol. II, pp. 905–923). New York, NY: Routledge; Zhao, S. H., & Baldauf, R. B. (2012). Individual agency in language planning: Chinese script reform as a case study. Language Problems & Language Planning, 36(1), 1–24]. In order to address this gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 academic language program planners at different universities across Australia. We examined how the micro-level processes of program development and implementation were both constrained and enabled by the participation of different actor groups, operating at different levels (micro, meso, macro) and each with their own capacity to influence change. We conclude by arguing that coherent university-wide language policies, formulated by decision-making bodies representative of a variety of stakeholder groups and sensitive to program implementation needs at the micro level, represent a step towards improving the current situation.

Quantifying changes in building footprint in the historic coastal town of Queenscliff

The sea change phenomenon has attracted new residents to Australian coastal towns and brought with it expectations of residential housing formed in metropolitan settings. Consequently, the traditional ‘identifying’ neighbourhood character of these towns is changing. Much larger houses are now being built and site coverage has increased. To date, changes in character have been measured using data based on the subjective judgement of residents through surveys and interviews. More objective information would be beneficial in understanding change. This paper describes a methodology that has been developed to quantify the change in the building footprint in the historic coastal town of Queenscliff in Victoria. Using selected aerial photographs, the building footprint of the town's residential buildings has been estimated at four intervals from 1957 until 2006. This footprint has been compared to the block size at each interval so that changes in house-to-block ratio may be compared. Over 20% of the residential homes were assessed. Building footprint has risen from 30% to over 38% in the documented 50 years. The method developed here is a low-cost method of tracking footprint change over an extended period and informing local planners and residents of when and where the changes have occurred.

Is client-centred care planning for chronic disease sustainable? Experience from rural South Australia

This qualitative evaluation of a chronic disease self-management project in rural South Australia considers the sustainability of client-centred care planning under current organisational and funding arrangements. The study involved consultation with a range of five stakeholder types over two stages (40 in the beginning stage and 39 in the middle stage) about their satisfaction with the care planning and self-management approach used in the project. All stakeholder types valued the client-centred approach because they perceived that clients were better able to accept and deal with the long-term management of their condition. However, this required that care planning should deal with a wider range of issues than just medical management, and so it took longer, which raised its sustainability in general practice under the current funding through the national health insurance programme (Medicare). The study concludes that sustainability may be addressed through further research into the role of and funding for peer-led self-management groups and the employment of care planners in organisational settings that are conducive to a client-centred approach.

Adolescents' ratings of features of parks that encourage park visitation and physical activity

BACKGROUND: The neighbourhood environment such as the availability of parks are a key, but under-researched, influence on adolescents' physical activity. In addition to overall physical activity levels, park-based physical activity and park visitation is low in this age group. Thus, it is critical to identify park features that may encourage or discourage adolescents from visiting parks. This study used a novel methodology to identify key physical characteristics of parks that are perceived to be important for park visitation and park-based physical activity among adolescents.

METHODS: Four secondary schools located in low, mid and high socio-economic status areas of Victoria, Australia were recruited. Using a purpose-built computer application, students in years 8-10 were presented with 44 original photographic images of park features. Participants rated each image (range 1-10) on how likely the feature would be to encourage them to visit a park and to engage in park-based physical activity, and placed symbols ('thumbs up'/'thumbs down') on aspects of the image that had a positive or negative influence on their ratings.

RESULTS: Participants (n = 99) had a mean age of 13.3 years (SD = 0.87) and 53% were female. Overall, the top three rated images prompting park visitation by adolescents were: a long steep slide, a flying fox and a table tennis table. These first two features were also reported as being likely to promote physical activity in the park. Differences in ratings were observed for boys and girls. The images that received the greatest number of "thumbs-up" symbols included large swings and slides, table tennis tables, no-smoking signs, flying foxes and BMX tracks. The images that received the greatest number of "thumbs-down" symbols included signage about rules, graffiti, toilets, concrete steps, and skate bowls.

CONCLUSION: Physically challenging play equipment is likely to encourage adolescents to visit and be active in parks. Rules, graffiti, toilets and skate bowls may discourage visitation. It is important for park designers, planners and policy makers to consider adolescents' views of what park design features are important so that parks are created that support and encourage visitation and optimise levels of physical activity when in the park.

Profiling pedestrian distribution and anomaly detection in a dynamic environment

Pedestrians movements have a major impact on the dynamics of cities and provide valuable guidance to city planners. In this paper we model the normal behaviours of pedestrian flows and detect anomalous events from pedestrian counting data of the City of Melbourne. Since the data spans an extended period, and pedestrian activities can change intermittently (e.g., activities in winter vs. summer), we applied an Ensemble Switching Model, which is a dynamic anomaly detection technique that can accommodate systems that switch between different states. The results are compared with those produced by a static clustering model (Hy-CARCE) and also cross-validated with known events. We found that the results from the Ensemble Switching Model are valid and more accurate than HyCARCE.

Managing reforestation to sequester carbon, increase biodiversity potential and minimize loss of agricultural land

Reforestation will have important consequences for the global challenges of mitigating climate change, arresting habitat decline and ensuring food security. We examined field-scale trade-offs between carbon sequestration of tree plantings and biodiversity potential and loss of agricultural land. Extensive surveys of reforestation across temperate and tropical Australia (N=1491 plantings) were used to determine how planting width and species mix affect carbon sequestration during early development (< 15 year). Carbon accumulation per area increased significantly with decreasing planting width and with increasing proportion of eucalypts (the predominant over-storey genus). Highest biodiversity potential was achieved through block plantings (width>40m) with about 25% of planted individuals being eucalypts. Carbon and biodiversity goals were balanced in mixed-species plantings by establishing narrow belts (width<20m) with a high proportion (>75%) of eucalypts, and in monocultures of mallee eucalypt plantings by using the widest belts (ca. 6-20m). Impacts on agriculture were minimized by planting narrow belts (ca. 4m) of mallee eucalypt monocultures, which had the highest carbon sequestering efficiency. A plausible scenario where only 5% of highly-cleared areas (<30% native vegetation cover remaining) of temperate Australia are reforested showed substantial mitigation potential. Total carbon sequestration after 15 years was up to 25Mt CO2-e year-1 when carbon and biodiversity goals were balanced and 13Mt CO2-e year-1 if block plantings of highest biodiversity potential were established. Even when reforestation was restricted to marginal agricultural land (<$2000ha-1 land value, 28% of the land under agriculture in Australia), total mitigation potential after 15 years was 17-26Mt CO2-e year-1 using narrow belts of mallee plantings. This work provides guidance on land use to governments and planners. We show that the multiple benefits of young tree plantings can be balanced by manipulating planting width and species choice at establishment. In highly-cleared areas, such plantings can sequester substantial biomass carbon while improving biodiversity and causing negligible loss of agricultural land.

The challenge of being heard : understanding Wadawurrung climate change vulnerability and adaptive capacity

For the original residents and 'landscape planners' of the Australian continent, the some 60,000 years of accumulated ecological knowledge of the patterns and transformations of this continent held the memories and ecological knowledge of its Australian Aboriginal custodians and Elders. Much of this extensive oral knowledge is little listened to, heard, respected, nor incorporated into the Western land use planning literature that seek to guide development and management pressures borne out of some 200 years of local knowledge appreciation and a plethora of northern hemisphere knowledge uniformed by ecological responsibility and self. While extensive planning schemes, development plans, and management plans have been prepared, gazetted and embodied in law, they lack the testament of time and the lore of knowledge longevity.

'Iconic development' : is there such a thing?

By way of definition, dictionaries such as the Oxford Dictionary note that the word ‘icon’ is a noun meaning ‘a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration’ (p. 654). More recently, the phrase ‘iconic development’ has crept into the town planning vernacular making reference to built or planned works that are intended to be an urban ‘benchmark’. However, in terms of planning practice in the State of Victoria, Australia, the meaning of ‘iconic development’ is unclear amongst property development professionals – one only needs to peruse the local newspaper, The Age on any given week and publications by key bodies such as the Planning Institute of Australia, the Victorian Planning and Environment Law Association, the Urban Development Institute of Australia and the Property Council of Australia on their websites and in professional newsletters, to appreciate the different ways the phrase is used in the property development context. This paper reports on key themes arising from interviews with 52 Victorian property development professionals, who were interviewed to determine their perceptions about what constitutes ‘iconic development’ in Victoria. Arising from the interviews, the study confirms that ‘iconic development’ is the new buzz phrase in property development circles, it is no longer just being used as a sales and marketing tool, but has been appropriated by technical professionals and introduced into different planning documents including certain local clauses in the Victorian Planning Provisions. Different professionals in the development industry, such as architects, planners and lawyers ascribe different meanings to this phrase, thereby presenting confusion in the property development industry. By understanding what these different professionals mean by the phrase ‘iconic development’ a more collaborative understanding of the phrase is arrived at to provide the practitioner and public with a more informed understanding to review realised and/or planned 'iconic development’.

Tokyo’s Dojunkai experiment: courtyard apartment blocks 1926–1932

Dojunkai apartments were constructed by the Japanese Government as a work of relief, after the Great Kanto Earthquake in Tokyo. These apartments were leading examples in concrete construction in Japan and were innovative in their exterior space design ideas and building organizational themes. Dojunkai apartments were designed not only as solutions to particular sites, but as possible models for the further development of well-planned, secure, and communal neighbourhood style residential developments. During 1920–1930, Japanese architects and designers were actively involved in experimenting with foreign concepts of urban remodelling and town planning. However while these town-planning concepts and theories were embraced by Japanese architects and town planners, the resultant apartment complexes suggest that they endeavoured to adapt and transform them to suit Japanese sensibilities and urban requirements. This paper examines the nature of these adaptations and transformations. The principles of exterior space design are deployed to examine and identify patterns in building arrangement and exterior space design for six selected Dojunkai apartments. This paper discusses the pre-existing models of urban planning in Japan to establish a relationship between the adopted foreign town-planning models and the pre-existing ideas of urban settlements in the Japanese society.

GIS-based dynamic modelling and analysis of flash floods considering land-use planning

Flood inundation is a common natural disaster and a growing development challenge for many cities and thousands of small towns around the world. Soil features have frequently altered with the rapid development of urbanised regions, which has led to more frequent and longer duration of flooding in urban flood-prone regions. Thus, this paper presents a geographic information system (GIS)-based methodology for measuring and visualising the effects on urban flash floods generated by land-use changes over time. The measurement is formulated with a time series in order to perform a dynamic analysis. A catchment mesh is introduced into a hydrological model for reflecting the spatial layouts of infrastructure and structures over different construction periods. The Geelong Waurn Ponds campus of Deakin University is then selected as a case study. Based on GIS simulation and mapping technologies, this research illustrates the evolutionary process of flash floods. The paper then describes flood inundation for different built environments and presents a comparison by quantifying the flooding extents for infrastructure and structures. The results reveal that the GIS-based estimation model can examine urban flash floods in different development phases and identify the change of flooding extents in terms of land-use planning. This study will bring benefits to urban planners in raising awareness of flood impact and the approach proposed here could be used for flood mitigation through future urban planning.

A pixel-based approach to estimation of solar energy potential on building roofs

Precise estimation of solar energy on building roofs plays a critical role in sustainable development and renewable energy consumption of high-density human habitats. Conventional solar radiation models based on costly Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data are only adequate for existing buildings, not for future construction areas. In this paper, a pixel-based methodology is constructed for estimating solar energy potential over roofs. Buildings with flat roofs in a newly planned construction area are chosen as a case study. The solar radiation at a certain cell is mathematically formulated in the pixel unit, and its yields over a certain time period are calculated by considering multiple instantaneous solar irradiances and are visually presented by image processing. Significant spatial and temporal variations in solar radiation are measured. Within the study area, the maximum and minimum annual radiation yields are estimated at 4717.72 MJ/m2/year and 342.58 MJ/m2/year respectively. Radiation contour lines are then mapped for outlining installation ranges of various solar devices. For each apartment building, around 20% of roof areas can obtain 4500 MJ/m2/year or more solar radiation yields. This study will benefit energy investors and urban planners in accurately predicting solar radiation potential and identifying regions with high radiation over building roofs. The results can be utilised in government policies and urban planning to raise awareness of the use of renewable energy sources.

Measuring eco-roof mitigation on flash floods via GIS simulation

Purpose: The rapid and ongoing expansion of urbanised impervious areas could lead to more frequent flood inundation in urban flood-prone regions. Nowadays, urban flood inundation induced by rainstorm is an expensive natural disaster in many countries. In order to reduce the flooding risk, eco-roof systems (or green roof systems) could be considered as an effective mechanism of mitigating flooding disasters through their rainwater retention capability. However, there is still a lack of examining the stormwater management tool. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects on flooding disaster from extensive green roofs. Design/methodology/approach: Based on geographical information system (GIS) simulation, this research presents a frame of assessing eco-roof impacts on urban flash floods. The approach addresses both urban rainfall-runoff and underground hydrologic models for traditional impervious and green roofs. Deakin University’s Geelong Waurn Ponds campus is chosen as a study case. GIS technologies are then utilised to visualise and analyse the effects on flood inundation from surface properties of building roofs. Findings: The results reveal that the eco-roof systems generate varying degrees of mitigation of urban flood inundation with different return period storms. Originality/value: Although the eco-roof technology is considered as an effective stormwater management tool, it is not commonly adopted and examined in urban floods. This study will bring benefits to urban planners for raising awareness of hazard impacts and to construction technicians for considering disaster mitigation via roof technologies. The approach proposed here could be used for the disaster mitigation in future urban planning.