Biodiversity and environmental stressors along urban walking routes

There is increasing focus on designing liveable cities that promote walking. However, urban walking routes can expose people to adverse environmental conditions that reduce health, well-being and biodiversity. Our primary objective is to assess how urban form is associated with environmental quality, including biodiversity, for people moving through urban spaces. We assess a range of environmental conditions that influence human health and biodiversity (temperature, noise and particulate pollution) and biodiversity of three taxa (trees, butterflies and birds) along 700 m public walking routes embedded in 500 m x 500 m grid cells across three UK towns. Cells are selected using random stratification across an urbanisation intensity gradient. Walking routes in more built-up areas were noisier and hotter; noise levels further increased in areas with more industrial land-use and large roads. There was no evidence of vegetation mitigating noise or temperature, but there was some evidence that increased vegetation cover mitigated small particulate pollution. Walking routes in more built-up environments had lower butterfly, bird and native tree species richness, and reduced butterfly abundance. Large roads were associated with reduced bird species richness and increased noise was associated with reduced bird abundance. Most specific measures of vegetation in the surrounding matrix (median patch size, structural complexity at 1.5 m resolution) were not detectably associated with biodiversity along walking routes, indicating minimal beneficial spill-over. Increased garden cover in the surrounding matrix was associated with less abundant and less species-rich butterfly communities. Our results highlight considerable heterogeneity in the environmental quality of urban walking routes and pedestrians’ potential to experience biodiversity along these routes, driven by reduced quality in areas with more built cover. A greater focus is needed on mitigating adverse effects of specific features of the built environment (roads, industrial areas, noise) surrounding walking routes to enhance the co-benefits of more biodiversity and healthier conditions for pedestrians.     

Inequalities in the quality and proximity of green space exposure are more pronounced than in quantity aspect: Evidence from a rapidly urbanizing Chinese city

Substantial studies have revealed that exposure to green spaces (GSs) yields a variety of health benefits. However, daily GS exposure scenarios are multidimensional, and relevant analyses require a comprehensive framework that assesses GS exposure from overhead- to eye-level perspectives, focusing on GS attributes from quantity and proximity to quality. Moreover, GSs are often unevenly distributed across cities, resulting in green distribution injustice. To this end, this study aimed to systematically evaluate multiple GS exposures considering two-dimensional (2D) spatial exposures (i.e., quantity-based availability, distance-based accessibility, and quality-based attractiveness) and three-dimensional (3D) visual exposures (quantity-based street GS visibility and quality-based street GS perceivability). It then examined the inequalities in GS exposure among socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. Housing prices were employed as proxies for socioeconomic status. Local indicators of spatial association(LISA) were employed to examine the existence of bivariate statistically significant spatial clusters of housing prices and multiple GS exposure. Furthermore, the spatial lag regression model was used to determine inequities in GS exposure among urban residents living in communities with different housing prices. The Nanjing metropolitan area, one of the most densely populated cities in China, was selected as the study case. Residential exposure to GS was comprehensively assessed using a 15-min walkable zone lens. The results suggest that: 1) the spatial cluster of ‘low GS exposure – low housing price’ occupied the largest proportion; 2) all five types of GS exposure were positively associated with housing prices, indicating that the affluent groups are more likely to have access to various GSs; and 3) GS exposure inequalities are more pronounced in measurements of quality(and proximity) than quantity in both spatial and visual exposure metrics. These findings can inform the development of environmental planning and policy strategies for more effective, efficient, and equitable GS provisions that address health issues and green injustice in rapidly urbanizing cities.     

Sites of infrastructure,apprenticeship and possibilities for self: Locating Indonesia's missing women in representative politics

Women are under-represented in Indonesian legislatures, and those women who are elected are disproportionately from ‘elite’ backgrounds. This research sought to understand the conditions for women to succeed in politics in conditions of patriarchy and clientelist politics. Research in North Sumatera, Indonesia, revealed that many women did not make the conscious decision not to enter politics, but rather found that they had not established the required preconditions earlier enough in life. Patriarchal social norms and a transactional political culture frustrate women's ability to acquire these conditions, yet they are also subject to change. Interviews with women elected representatives and women who had never contested an election revealed three sites that are critical to women either acquiring the preconditions to contest elections, or frustrating that pathway: the household, the ‘community’ and religious/ethnic associations. We demonstrate how women's actions in these sites transform the conditions to make them more conducive to women's political participation.     

Contributions of marine infrastructures to marine planning and protected area networking

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