We present a crowdsourcing study that investigates impressions of urban spaces by young inhabitants in a city in the developing world. Our goal is to obtain collective perceptions from the actual inhabitants of the city under study, and more specifically youth (16-18 year-old) about issues like danger, accessibility, and dirtiness. We collect over 9000 judgments for 102 photos of outdoor urban ...

We introduce the concept of City Service Ecosystem (CSE) as digital environment for the governance of urban services. We trace the research challenges and opportunities of adding semantics to improve the management of such ecosystems, especially in relation to description and retrieval of urban-related Web services. We explain the peculiarities and distinct characteristics of CSEs resulting fro...

Those who have been charmed by the ambience of life in an Asian city probably felt its evocative and at times palpable connection with past traditions and history and enjoyed the sociability of its street life. They might wonder how one could sustain and even replicate the sense of place and the quality of life one experiences in such a city. The Disappearing Asian City shows that such cities f...

The objective of this evaluation was to review the evolution and process of city health development planning (CHDP) in municipalities participating in the Healthy Cities Network organized by the European Region of the World Health Organization. The concept of CHDP combines elements from three theoretical domains: (a) health development, (b) city governance and (c) urban planning. The setting wa...

Though the service of shared virtual worlds is an active area of research, little effort has been made to optimize such systems for urban world spaces. Tracking the motion, action, and communication of thousands of users in a city requires a application of visibility for spatial and logical subdivision of updates. We propose herein the City-Level Optimizations for Virtual Environments (CLOVES) ...

This article discusses the issue of priorities in development in urban centers of developing countries. Urbanization is advancing rapidly in the developing world. There are needs for adequate infrastructure, environmental protection, and fiscal reform. Development can result in a reduction in poverty, if properly conducted. By the turn of the century, 8 of the world's 10 megacities will be ...

The word ‘Metropolis’ is a shorter version of the word ‘meterpolis’, itself derived from the Greek word ‘meter’ (mother) and polis (city, town). It is identified as the ‘center city’ which is more developed than other cities in terms of culture and economy (1). Hence, the metropolis is a depiction of hybridity and multi-layering; and while it is related to the city, it is not solely derived fro...

The San Francisco City Hall was open for all participants the whole evening. The building was fi rst open to public in 1915. Its dome, which owes much to Mansart‘s Baroque dome of Les Invalides, Paris, is the fi fth largest dome in the world. The City Hall was build by Arthur Brown Jr. who also designed San Francisco‘s War Memorial Opera House, Veterans Building, Temple Emanuel, Coit Tower and ...

The third epidemic, which began at the end of the 19th century in China and reached the rest of the world via Hong Kong, is still ongoing. This summer a man died from plague in the city of Yumen in northern China. 30,000 inhabitants were confined to isolation when parts of the city were locked down. There was a plague outbreak in November in Madagascar, both in the provinces and in the capital ...