BACKGROUND Hypertension has been recognized as a health concern for developing countries. However, there are no current nationwide surveys on the prevalence of hypertension in China (the latest nationwide survey was ten years ago). The goal of this study was to estimate the pooled prevalence of hypertension in Chinese cities. METHODS We systematically reviewed published epidemiologic studies ...

With the trend toward greater urbanization and the rapid emergence of mega-cities continuing unabated, many policy makers ask themselves whether some cities are becoming too large, and whether policies should be aimed at stimulating the growth of intermediate-sized cities. In this chapter we use a simple model of a system of cities, together with some basic urban and aggregate data, to answer s...

Do scaling relations always provide the means to anticipate the relationships between the size of cities, costs of maintenance, and the socio-economic benefits resulting from their growth? Scaling laws are considered a universal principle that describes the development of complex systems such as cities. It seems that regardless of their location or history, the growth of cities is associated wi...

This article revisited past digital cities, and discussed smart cities and the future. If we understand digital cities as exploration of cyber space and smart cities as exploitation of physical space, the next stage is to evolve networked society based on cyber physical systems. The current movements suggest two different directions, socialization of commerce and commercialization of society. W...

I 1960, 33.0 percent of the world’s population lived in cities. In 2010, this share grew to 50.5 percent and will continue to rise as urbanization in the developing world takes place. Urbanization offers market opportunities that rural areas cannot match. The potential to learn, specialize and trade in cities raises per capita income (Glaeser 1998, 1999, 2011). Over the last thirty years, one q...

We study centrality in urban street patterns of different world cities represented as networks in geographical space. The results indicate that a spatial analysis based on a set of four centrality indices allows an extended visualization and characterization of the city structure. A hierarchical clustering analysis based on the distributions of centrality has a certain capacity to distinguish d...

This paper discusses the cities that have the resources which enable firms and markets to be global. It considers the new intensity and complexity of globally-connected systems of production, finance and management which may disperse production, yet need (relatively few) cities to provide their organizational and management architecture. This produces new geographies and hierarchies of centrali...

Smart cities link the city services, citizens, resource and infrastructures together and form the heart of the modern society. As a “smart” ecosystem, smart cities focus on sustainable growth, efficiency, productivity and environmentally friendly development. By comparing with the European Union, North America and other countries, smart cities in China are still in the preliminary stage. This s...

This paper considers the role of soft skills in cities and industry clusters. It begins by specifying a model of agglomeration economies where soft skills allow agents to interact more productively. The model exposes two conflicting forces: agglomeration allows opportunities to interact, but it also produces thick, specialized markets, and this specialization can be a substitute for interaction...

Comparative studies of terrestrial vertebrates are one approach that can be used by researchers to build on the extensive work done by animal ecologists and applied ecologists in cities (Luniak, 1990; VanDruff et al., 1994; Nilon and Pais, 1997). Much of this work pre-dates the renewed interest in cities by mainstream ecologists. The new emphasis on the ecology of cities provides new tools and ...