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Books in Urban studies

Models and Measures for Sustainable City Logistics
Behavioral Choice Processes
1st Edition
June 1, 2026
Francesco Russo + 1 more
English
Models and Measures for Sustainable City: Behavioral Choice Processes Logistics offers a thorough understanding of urban freight movements, focusing on behavioral aspects of consumers. It outlines the role of modelling the behavioral aspects of people determining urban freight movements, mapping the behavior of the end consumer and the retailer which generates freight movements in an urban context. It provides new methods of urban freight transport simulation, taking into account the challenges of sustainable development goals, and uses the most recent approaches in modelling for city logistics scenario design and planning. It also outlines the relationships between measures and main components (expressed by indicators) of sustainable development.This book guides readers in implementing the most effective city logistics measures and actions, addressing the choice of a set of measures and the definition of planning scenarios. Readers are introduced to simulation methods for estimating impacts and system performance, which can be used for comparing the future scenario outcomes according to the set of target indicators defined by Agenda 2030. The book first specifies end consumer behaviors in purchasing processes, analyzing the individual phases of the purchase. The retailer’s behaviors are then specified, and after specifying the patterns of the decision makers, the quantities of goods that constitute the references for the choices of the decision makers are analyzed. Finally, the book presents the problems whose solution makes it possible to identify the vehicles of the various types and then the flows on the network. The overall structure of the model system and the specification of each single model are then given. Some models calibrated in different real cases are presented, highlighting their applicability to other contexts. Finally, implementable measures are presented and the relationships between measures and main components (expressed by indicators) of sustainable development are examined.Transport technicians, post-graduate students, and academics alike will find this a valuable resource for understanding how to incorporate user behavior into transport planning and logistics modeling, ultimately helping them to optimize processes and promote sustainability.
Community Trees and Forests
Improving Environmental and Human Well-Being
1st Edition
May 1, 2026
David J. Nowak
English
Improving Environmental and Human Health with Community Trees and Forests provides the latest and most comprehensive information on community forests globally, how these trees improve human health and well-being, the value of community trees, and what local land managers, from the lot to regional scale, could do to improve the benefits provided by community trees. It offers a complete understanding of the benefits and costs associated with trees in cities and how these benefits occur. This book facilitates the creation of sustainable community forests that provide optimal benefits to individuals and society.It takes a systems approach, focusing on the forest population rather than the individual tree, and providing information on the best tree species and designs to produce optimal effects. The book is divided into three major sections: The Basics, Urban Forest Benefits, and Improving the Urban Environment with Trees. It covers how cities affect our local environment, the monetary value of trees, and specific steps that land managers should follow to manage and improve their local tree and forest population. This comprehensive resource is valuable for city forest and park managers, policy makers, regional managers, and non-profit groups.
Smart Cities and Artificial Intelligence
Convergent Systems for Planning, Design, and Operations
2nd Edition
December 2, 2025
Christopher Grant Kirwan + 1 more
English
Smart Cities and Artificial Intelligence: Convergent Systems for Planning, Design, and Operations, Second Edition presents an integrated perspective on how cities are evolving as intelligent ecosystems shaped by the convergence of human, technological, and environmental systems. Drawing on developments in machine learning, neural networks, geospatial intelligence, data analytics and visualization, sensors, and smart connected objects, the book explains how these elements combine to form a new urban collective intelligence. By framing cities as real-time, adaptive, living systems, and by introducing tools such as generative design and living lab models, the book equips readers with the conceptual and practical foundation needed to plan, design, and operate next-generation smart cities. Adopting a multidisciplinary and systems-based approach, it provides a holistic understanding of smart cities through interconnected theory, planning and design methodologies, system architecture, and applied smart city functions, all aimed at enabling more liveable, sustainable, and self-regulating urban environments.The second edition introduces a new section in each chapter framed as reflections and projections, offering insights across the ten-year window from 2020, when the first edition was published, through 2030. These additions align the book with recent developments in AI and urban technologies and include an expanded comparison of global smart cities in the City DNA section, examining how different cities evolve, adopt technology, and shape distinctive global identities and competitive positions. Additional updates include new material on Digital Twins and the Metaverse as emerging extensions of the smart city operating system, select new use cases, refreshed references, and an expanded glossary to improve clarity and accessibility. Together, these enhancements ensure that the book remains current and useful for practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and educators shaping the future of urban intelligence.
Meeting SDGs in Smart City Infrastructures
Federation, Interoperability, and Discoverability
1st Edition
September 3, 2025
Manas Pradhan
English
Meeting SDGs in Smart City Infrastructures: Federation, Interoperability, and Discoverability explores the current state-of-the-art practices in smart city digitization and governance processes, aligning with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It discusses the pros and cons of various methods, standards, and initiatives involved in the digital transformation of cities from policy-maker, implementer, and end-user perspectives. Utilizing real-world use cases from cities worldwide, the book highlights their goals, adopted measures, and their outcomes. It provides guidelines for achieving long-term service federation, interoperability, and discoverability while keeping the UN SDGs in perspective.This resource is invaluable for practitioners and researchers in the smart city domain and will help them better understand existing and evolving technologies and formulate their processes to provide sustainable models for urban development.
Digital Twins for Smart Metabolic Circular Cities
Innovations in Planning and Climate Resilience
1st Edition
May 29, 2025
Simon Elias Bibri + 2 more
English
Digital Twins for Smart Metabolic Circular Cities: Innovations in Planning and Climate Resilience explores the advanced convergence of smart city technologies, digital twin applications, smart urban metabolism, and circular economy principles. This comprehensive resource offers insights into sustainable urban practices and innovative approaches to address the multifaceted challenges posed by rapid urbanization, environmental degradation, and climate change. In a rapidly changing world, this book provides a detailed understanding of how digital twin technologies and smart urban metabolism frameworks can be applied to foster sustainable urban development. This holistic perspective bridges urban planning, environmental sustainability, and the transformative potential of digital twins.The book equips readers with practical insights and solutions to navigate contemporary urban development complexities. It is an invaluable resource for urban planners, environmental scientists, policymakers, and technology experts interested in sustainable practices. Through real-world applications, foundational theory, and forward-thinking strategies, it empowers readers with the knowledge to address pressing environmental and infrastructural challenges associated with the future of smart cities.
Smart Cities and Sustainable Manufacturing
Innovations for a Greener Future
1st Edition
November 27, 2024
Roshan Raman + 2 more
English
Smart Cities and Sustainable Manufacturing: Innovations for a Greener Future explores the intersection of these two essential disciplines, underscoring the transformative potential of their integration in sculpting sustainable urban landscapes. By providing cutting-edge research, case studies, success stories, and practical guidance, this book facilitates knowledge sharing and collaboration and inspires stakeholders to implement sustainable and innovative solutions. Further, it illustrates how integrating smart cities and sustainable manufacturing can contribute to a greener future by investigating the role of emergent technologies, policy frameworks, business models, and more.This essential resource covers a range of topics related to smart cities and sustainable manufacturing, including technologies for smart cities, such as IoT, AI, big data analytics, and sensor networks; sustainable infrastructure design, such as green buildings, energy-efficient transportation systems, and renewable energy integration; circular economy and waste management strategies; sustainable transportation initiatives such as intelligent transportation systems, electric mobility solutions, and shared mobility services, and much more.
Digital Twins for Smart Cities and Villages
1st Edition
October 17, 2024
Sailesh Iyer + 3 more
English
Digital Twins for Smart Cities and Villages provides a holistic view of digital twin technology and how it can be deployed to develop smart cities and smart villages. Smart manufacturing, smart healthcare, smart education, smart agriculture, smart rural solutions, and related methodologies using digital twins are discussed, including challenges in deployment, their solutions and future roadmaps. This knowledge, enriched by a variety of case studies presented in the book, may empower readers with new capabilities for new research as well as new tasks and strategies for practical implementation and real-world problem solving.The book is thoughtfully structured, starting from the background of digital twin concepts and basic know-how to serve the needs of those new to the subject. It continues with implementation to facilitate and improve management in several urban contexts, infrastructures, and more. Global case study assessments further provide a deep characterization of the state-of-the-art in digital twin in urban and rural contexts.
Smart City Assessment
A Novel Framework for Development and Evaluation of Smart Cities
1st Edition
August 13, 2024
Azzam Abu-Rayash
English
Smart City Assessment: A Novel Framework for Development and Evaluation of Smart Cities outlines a new assessment model for smart cities, including energy, environmental, and economic factors. It introduces a new paradigm to the understanding of smart cities by defining it using eight main domains, each domain using four specific performance indicators. This book defines a smart city as one with a smart environment, smart economy, smart society, smart culture, smart governance, smart energy, smart infrastructure, smart transportation, and one that is resilient to pandemics and global emergencies.This book begins by outlining these basic elements of a smart city, from sustainability to transportation networks. It then proposes a framework for evaluation, before analyzing both technological and socioeconomic factors in more detail. Central to the reader’s understanding are the wide range of detailed case studies based on real-world cities, analyzing their smart-ness and demonstrating the application of a Smart City Index ranking based on the assessment criteria. The application of this novel and comprehensive methodology is applied on 20 cities worldwide and trends, relationships between indicators and domains are assessed to better understand the dynamic connections in this composite network of indicators. Providing the theoretical background as well as the practical assessment tools necessary, this book offers a timely discussion of the criteria and development for smart, sustainable urban living.
Scaling the Smart City
The Design and Ethics of Urban Technology
1st Edition
July 3, 2024
Nicole Gardner
English
Scaling the Smart City engages with the smart city as a problem of scale. It disentangles the smart city from its corporate and technocratic stronghold by presenting an accessible design framework that productively aligns philosophical thinking on technology with foundational technical understandings of urban technology and smart system design.The knowledge and know-how to design and create urban technologies and smart cities are steadily moving from a niche field to a core industry competency. This book outlines a cross-scalar design framework, developed to teach smart city design to designers and engineers. It unpacks smart city initiatives and demystifies physical computing system design concepts, while complementing and mediating between critical social theory perspectives of the smart city and technically comprehensive case studies. The book’s analysis of real-world case examples and design prototypes demonstrates how design thinking and practice can better engage with the ethical implications of creating urban technologies and smart systems for society. It uses a clear, accessible, and instructive style of writing that synthesizes relevant scholarship and concepts to develop the reader’s foundational understanding of the contemporary smart city paradigm.This book is an invaluable resource for readers in the established fields and professions of design, architecture, urban design, and city planning, as well as the emerging fields of urban technology and urban interaction design.
The Metaverse and Smart Cities
Urban Environments in the Age of Digital Connectivity
1st Edition
February 28, 2024
Zaheer Allam + 1 more
English
The Metaverse and Smart Cities: Urban Environments in the Age of Digital Connectivity explores the intersection between the rapidly growing metaverse and the future of cities. The metaverse is a virtual world that is increasingly gaining attention as a new frontier for human interaction and commerce. At the same time, cities are undergoing significant transformation as they face challenges such as population growth, urbanization, and environmental degradation. Urban planners and city administrators will find valuable insights on how the metaverse can be integrated into the planning and development of smart, sustainable, and future cities.The book begins with an introduction to the concepts and technology of the metaverse as well as its history. It then sheds light on the current and future challenges and opportunities that the metaverse presents to cities and the quality of life of urban dwellers. It delves into the ways in which the metaverse can change cities, both in terms of their physical and virtual environments, and the impact it can have on the lives of those who live in them. It brings together the latest research and perspectives from experts in the fields of virtual reality, urban planning, and sustainability, to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of this rapidly evolving field.