The impact of cities on the environment increasingly dominates the debate on sustainability. Most global and regional environmental problems originate in cities. Cities concentrate increasing numbers of people and human activities; thus, they import increasing amounts of natural resources and export vast quantities of emissions and waste. Urbanization also entails major changes in the way peopl...

Improving the sustainability of traditional resource-based cities in China has been a core issue and policy-priority for Chinese government to establish long-term ecological civilization, particularly for northeastern China which is recognized as a typical agglomeration area of resources cities. In this study, we establish a three-layer index system consisting of a comprehensive layer, systemic...

Few studies empirically estimate the effects of metropolitan growth on nonmetropolitan communities at a national scale. This paper estimates the growth effects of 276 MSAs on population in 1,988 nonmetropolitan communities in the United States from 2000 to 2007. We estimate the distance for growth spillovers from MSAs to nonmetropolitan communities and test the assumption that a single MSA infl...

Demographically, cities throughout the world seem to be expanding rather than shrinking. However a closer look at recent urban population change among the world’s largest urban agglomerations of one million people or more reveals that between 2000 and 2005, 30 out of 414 cities experienced zero to negative average annual growth (U.N. 2005). Recently, this internationalized pattern of city contr...

URBAN computing is a process of acquisition, integration, and analysis of big and heterogeneous data generated by a diversity of sources in urban spaces, such as sensors, devices, vehicles, buildings, and human, to tackle the major issues that cities face, e.g., air pollution, increased energy consumption and traffic congestion. Urban computing connects unobtrusive and ubiquitous sensing techno...

I dedicate this paper to my thesis adviser Professor Olney. I am infinitely grateful for your guidance. Thank you for all the support you gave me this past year, your encouraging words and patience. It was an honor and privilege to work with such a great mentor. Thanks again. Introduction. Suburbanization has long been associated with upward social mobility. Suburbs generally have lower crime r...