In the early 1990s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) started a grant program to assist communities redevelop brownfields, which are abandoned or underutilized sites that have real or perceived contamination. In addition to determining if the communities receiving the grants were the most distressed cities in the United States, we also evaluate the U.S. EPA program in terms of...

There is much enthusiasm currently about the possibilities created by new and more extensive sources of data to better understand and manage cities. Here, I explore how big data can be useful in urban planning by formalizing the planning process as a general computational problem. I show that, under general conditions, new sources of data coordinated with urban policy can be applied following f...

Cities the world over are highly fragmented. The fragmentation of the built-up area cities by the open spaces interpenetrating them is a key attribute of urban-sprawl, and sprawl as fragmentation, as distinct from sprawl as lower-density development, is now a universal feature of cities. Using satellite images and census data for 1990 and 2000 for a global sample of 120 cities, we find that cit...

Medieval European urbanization presents a line of continuity between earlier cities and modern European urban systems. Yet, many of the spatial, political and economic features of medieval European cities were particular to the Middle Ages, and subsequently changed over the Early Modern Period and Industrial Revolution. There is a long tradition of demographic studies estimating the population ...

Can you imagine a city that feels, understands, and cares about your wellbeing? Future cities will reshape human behavior in countless ways. New strategies and models are required for future urban spaces to properly respond to human activity, environmental conditions, and market dynamics. Persuasive urban systems will play an important role in making cities more livable and resource-efficient b...

Objective—To determine the association between licensing and registration of firearm sales and an indicator of gun availability to criminals. Methods—Tracing data on all crime guns recovered in 25 cities in the United States were used to estimate the relationship between state gun law categories and the proportion of crime guns first sold by in-state gun dealers. Results—In cities located in st...

Progressive cities worldwide have demonstrated political leadership by initiating meaningful strategies and actions to tackle climate change. However, the lack of knowledge concerning embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of cities has hampered effective mitigation. We analyse trans-boundary GHG emission transfers between five Australian cities and their trading partners, with embodied emissi...

As increasing urbanization has become a national policy priority for economic growth in China, cities have become important players in efforts to reduce carbon emissions. However, their efforts have been hampered by the lack of specific and comparable carbon emission inventories. Comprehensive carbon emission inventories for twelve Chinese cities, which present both a relatively current snapsho...

Net product entry is procyclical, which amplifies fluctuations in consumer welfare over the cycle if consumers have love for variety. Using barcode-level data covering grocery expenditures in 26 major cities, I establish that differences in city-level product entry are largely uncorrelated with local economic conditions. I provide evidence that city-level changes in product variety over the bus...

With urban population increasing dramatically worldwide, cities are playing an increasingly critical role in human societies and the sustainability of the planet. An obstacle to effective policy is the lack of meaningful urban metrics based on a quantitative understanding of cities. Typically, linear per capita indicators are used to characterize and rank cities. However, these implicitly ignor...