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Urban agriculture is intuitively appealing, but its carbon footprint is unclear. This analysis of case studies in the United States and northern Europe finds that food from urban agriculture is much more carbon-intensive but that circularity, such as by recycling of food waste, on long-used city plots can help urban agriculture outperform conventional agriculture.
COVID reshaped our use of urban space, including parks and other green space. This systematic review finds that green space use increased in wealthier regions and in more-exclusive green areas, such as private gardens, among and within countries, yet decreased in less wealthy regions and in spaces open to all.
Waste production is a basic output of human society, and its scale and logistics challenge cities and our Earth system. This study identifies universal patterns by which wastewater, municipal solid waste, and greenhouse gas waste scale across urban systems worldwide.
This study uses online job search queries and job postings in China to understand shifts in the labor market that took place in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It found that job seekers migrated from large to small cities and from northern to southern regions. Furthermore, the supply of blue-collar jobs decreased substantially, while regional mismatch lessened.
Addressing interdependencies between urban buildings and the urban environment for urban heat mitigation and energy conservation, this study models eight heat mitigation scenarios for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. These heat mitigation scenarios use super-cool photonic materials combined with properly designed green infrastructure to lower peak temperatures by up to 4.5 °C, reduce cooling demand by up to 35%, and contribute to cooling energy conservation by up to 16%.
This study analyzes the influence of density on COVID-19 infection rates in cities across the United States and their relationship with socio-spatial inequalities. Its main finding is that density has a nonlinear relationship with infection rates and that socioeconomic factors influence mitigating behaviors in neighborhoods.
Workers’ skills shape their job opportunities and where they live, thus making skills a vital part of understanding cities and their economy. Modeling urban labor markets as occupation networks, this study finds that more-specific skill information better predicts career mobility and that workers tend toward jobs in cities where their skills are locally rare, thus raising their wages.
This Study identifies current population trends for US cities based on population projection data up to 2100, given various climate change scenarios. These population trends vary regionally and by degree of urbanization, income level, vehicle ownership and immigration.
Cities offer higher wages and more opportunities for adults but provide limited upward income mobility for children. This study finds that movement around cities varies more among US students of different income levels than among students and adults. Students from higher-income families spend more time outside the home and explore more unique locations, suggesting urban income mobility echoes physical mobility.
As the Earth’s climate warms, cities must balance how they adapt, by greening roofs and streets, and how they mitigate, by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. This study finds that, for US cities, these two strategies are synergistic but that the potential for offsetting heat exposure varies by region.
