Volume 1 Issue 3, March 2024

George Town, the historic capital of Malaysia’s Penang state, is a renowned UNESCO World Heritage Site. That status, argues Khoo, is as much about ‘who’ as it is about ‘what’.

An unfolding global polycrisis has accentuated the critique of contemporary urbanism, which has failed to be inclusive and developmental, especially in the Global South. A shift in trajectory will require a shift in our imaginaries, inclusionary processes and institutions.

From design-for-disassembly to urban mining, industrial ecology holds key insights for transitioning towards sustainable cities. Yet, its insights into the reuse of building materials remain largely underutilized in urban design and architectural practice.

This study unveils the driving forces behind changes in racial segregation in the USA from 1990–2020 by linking it to population shifts in specific racial groups. We developed a decomposition method to illuminate the specific contributions of residential mobility and other demographic dynamics of each population group to urban segregation.

This text defines vertical segregation and its importance for urban studies and for cities more generally. It brings some case studies from Athens and other cities in the world to illustrate how this type of segregation appears.

This paper investigates changes in racial residential segregation in US cities between 1990 and 2020 with a flexible decomposition method. It finds that almost all decreases in segregation were produced by the movement of Black, Hispanic and Asian people while changes in the distribution of the white population were mostly associated with increasing segregation. Hence, segregation has decreased despite the majority group’s efforts to resegregate themselves.

This study tracked, using remote sensing, the land used for homesteading in Wuhan, China. It found that about 5% of the total land in the city is used for this purpose and that homesteads are more likely to appear on land that has been urbanized recently.

Gun ownership and gun violence are both prevalent in the United States. Using urban scaling theory, this study finds proportionately more firearm violence in larger US cities and gun access and ownership in smaller cities. Exploring deviations from the scaling laws informs our understanding of the role of self-protection.

This study examines the influence of greenspace and air pollution on allostatic load, a measure of stress, in the United Kingdom. It found that people living in areas with more air pollutants were more likely to have a higher allostatic load, whereas greenness was associated with a lower allostatic load.

As climate warms, understanding the potential of green roofs to mitigate urban overheating and related energy consumption is increasingly important. Considering Seoul, this study finds that green-roof design should consider local meteorology and that adding them across the city could reduce energy use intensity by almost 8%.

We share our cities with more than just other people. Author and lawyer Min Lim reflects on how one urban ark has changed and might change to support her feathered travelers.