Urban Currents

Domain-adapted pre-trained language models for implicit information extraction in crash narratives

Researchers fine-tuned open-source pre-trained language models using Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) to extract structured information from free-text crash narratives in the Crash Investigation Sampling System (CISS) dataset. The method achieved 96.1% accuracy in identifying the Manner of Collision and outperformed the strongest baseline by 16.9% to 28.7% on the more complex task of extracting Crash Type.

Why it matters — It provides a highly accurate, privacy-preserving pipeline that can be deployed locally on sensitive crash data without relying on external commercial APIs, while also serving as a quality assurance tool to detect human labeling inconsistencies.

Transportation Research Part C Emerging Technologies · doi · code

Semi-on-demand off-peak transit services with shared autonomous vehicles — service planning, simulation, and analysis in Munich, Germany

This study models and simulates semi-on-demand hybrid-route transit services using Shared Autonomous Vehicles (SAVs) across ten bus routes in Munich, Germany during off-peak hours. The proposed service model requires SAVs to visit all scheduled fixed-route stops before deviating to pick up and drop off passengers in designated flexible-route zones. Using a combination of analytical modeling and agent-based simulation, the research evaluates optimal fleet sizes, vehicle capacities, and operational performance during a gradual transition from human drivers to autonomous fleets.

Why it matters — It demonstrates that SAVs can satisfy up to 80% more passenger requests and cut generalized travel costs by up to 50% compared to traditional fixed-route services, proving that autonomous operations can make hybrid-route transit economically viable.

Caveat: The operational benefits, particularly headway improvements, are severely constrained during the transition phase when agencies must operate a mixed fleet of human-driven and autonomous vehicles.

Transportation Research Part C Emerging Technologies · doi

The implications of a land value tax on urban agglomeration dynamics: Efficiency and equity

This study synthesizes agglomeration theory and Land Value Taxation (LVT) through a systematic literature review and expert interviews. It establishes a conceptual framework showing how taxing unimproved land values can internalize spatial externalities and realign incentives within rigid urban environments.

Why it matters — It bridges a gap between urban economics and tax policy, demonstrating theoretically that LVT can simultaneously enhance urban productivity and mitigate wealth disparities by targeting the spatial and temporal domains of agglomeration.

Caveat: The findings are purely theoretical and conceptual, relying on literature synthesis and qualitative expert interviews rather than empirical modeling or quantitative evaluation of a specific tax implementation.

Cities · pdf · doi

Urban planning, the built environment, and subjective well-being: A review of recent research advances

This narrative review synthesizes research published since 2021 on the relationship between the built environment and subjective well-being, organizing the literature into five thematic categories: urban disruptions, mobility and accessibility, social and experiential dimensions, planning paradigms, and urban artificial intelligence. It maps how specific physical attributes—such as walkability, green spaces, housing quality, public transit investments, and traditional architectural styles—affect emotional and social well-being across different population groups.

Why it matters — It provides a consolidated framework that links modern planning paradigms like the 15-minute city and digital developments like urban AI directly to human happiness and social inclusion, helping planners justify well-being-focused interventions.

Cities · pdf · doi

Should I stay or should I go: How urban heat gradients affect the local distribution of birds and bats

This study analyzed how urban heat islands, serving as a proxy for intense urbanization, affect the taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity of birds and bats in Poitiers, France. The researchers measured community composition, species turnover, and nestedness to determine how these flying vertebrates respond to urban heat gradients.

Why it matters — The findings reveal that bats and birds respond differently to urban heat, with bats experiencing a broad decline across all diversity metrics driven by nestedness, while birds show only taxonomic declines driven by species turnover. This distinction demonstrates that urban conservation strategies cannot treat all flying vertebrates as a single ecological group and must account for taxon-specific vulnerabilities to heat.

Caveat: The study's findings are based on data from a single French city, which may limit their generalizability to different bioclimatic zones or highly dissimilar urban structures.

Landscape and Urban Planning · pdf · doi

Blackbird movements and habitat selection inform restoration of functional connectivity across cities

The study tracked 13 adult common blackbirds (Turdus merula) using telemetry in Gij3n, Spain, to model home ranges, movement distances, and habitat selection. These empirical movement data parameterized resistance surfaces and circuit-theory-based connectivity models to simulate three urban restoration scenarios of varying intensity. The baseline analysis revealed that while 10% of the city was suitable breeding habitat, only one-third of that habitat was functionally connected.

Why it matters — It demonstrates that small-scale linear street connectors can significantly improve habitat connectivity without requiring new large green spaces, and shows that strategically targeting specific public green areas yields higher ecological efficiency than a blanket restoration of all public green infrastructure.

Caveat: The empirical movement and habitat selection parameters are derived from a very small sample size of 13 tracked adult birds in a single city.

Landscape and Urban Planning · doi

Reimagining transport decarbonisation through Daoism: Governance, modelling, and attunement

The paper presents a conceptual and epistemological analysis of transport decarbonisation, applying Daoist philosophy to critique dominant optimization and prediction paradigms. It uses three core concepts—wu-wei (non-coercive action), qi (vital circulation), and yin-yang (dynamic balance)—to reframe mobility as circulation and modeling as an interpretive practice. The theoretical framework is illustrated using the 15-minute city as a primary example, alongside cases from electric vehicles, road freight, aviation, and maritime governance.

Why it matters — It introduces a non-Western, process-oriented theoretical framework that challenges the assumption that transport systems are determinable objects yielding to top-down control. This offers planners a conceptual vocabulary to navigate persistent policy failures like rebound effects, implementation gaps, and social backlash by shifting from rigid prediction to adaptive, relational governance.

Caveat: The paper is entirely conceptual and qualitative, offering a theoretical framework and metaphorical heuristics rather than empirical testing or quantitative modeling tools.

Transportation Research Part A Policy and Practice · pdf · doi

Modelling the shipping transition: Forecasting merchant fleet emissions to 2050

A bottom-up model of 35,000 merchant vessels was developed to forecast fleet composition and CO2 emissions up to the year 2050, using technical, operational, and historical trade demand data. The model shows that under a 'no-action' scenario, even low-growth traffic will fail to meet carbon neutrality goals, requiring fleet renewal rates of up to 2,000 vessels annually starting in 2040. Alternatively, retrofitting existing ships could address up to 40% of total shipping tonnage to bridge the gap.

Why it matters — It quantifies the specific scale of shipyard capacity and fleet renewal rates required for maritime decarbonization, demonstrating that retrofitting is a structural necessity rather than an optional measure if early planning targets are missed.

Caveat: The emissions forecasts rely on a 'no-action' baseline and trade demand projections, which may not capture sudden shifts in international maritime regulations or global trade patterns.

Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives · doi

Exploring children’s contact with nature and pro-environmental behaviours in Beijing, China

This study analyzed the relationship between nature exposure and environmental actions using interviews and quantitative scales with 81 children aged 8 to 12 in four central districts of Beijing. Regression analysis showed that contact with nature directly influences pro-environmental behaviors and also acts indirectly through environmental attitudes, whereas environmental knowledge had no statistically significant effect. Qualitative interviews revealed that most participants hold anthropocentric views on conservation, prioritizing nature's utilitarian value and collective human interests.

Why it matters — The findings demonstrate that direct physical contact with nature, rather than classroom-based environmental knowledge, is the primary driver of pro-environmental behaviors in urban children. This shifts the focus for urban educators and planners from merely delivering environmental facts to actively designing physical spaces that facilitate direct nature interactions.

Caveat: The study relies on a small sample of 81 children from a single city, which may limit the generalizability of the behavioral and attitudinal findings to other urban contexts.

Urban forestry & urban greening · doi

Exploring the potential of red-leafed trees to counter excess light stress and drought in urban plazas: A case study with Acer platanoides

This study compared the physiological responses of red-leafed ('Crimson King') and green-leafed ('Summershade') cultivars of Acer platanoides under chronic light stress, simulated using light-coloured concrete slabs, and a one-month drought period. The red-leafed cultivar maintained a higher photosynthetic light saturation point and higher net photosynthesis during peak daylight hours under both light and drought stress compared to its green-leafed counterpart.

Why it matters — It demonstrates that anthocyanin-rich, red-leafed trees are physiologically better adapted to the high-reflectance and drought-prone environments of paved urban plazas, though they face carbon gain limitations under natural, unreflected irradiance.

Caveat: The findings are based on a controlled comparison of two specific cultivars of a single tree species, which may not represent all red-leafed urban tree varieties.

Urban forestry & urban greening · pdf · doi

A multimodal human-centered framework for assessing pedestrian well-being in the wild

The study introduces a multimodal framework that combines continuous physiological sensing, GPS tracking, and momentary self-reports to evaluate pedestrian well-being. It demonstrates this approach through a naturalistic case study in the Greater Philadelphia region, where participants wore research-grade sensors to track heart rate variability and electrodermal activity alongside spatial trajectories and in-situ surveys of stress and perceived infrastructure.

Why it matters — It establishes a method to capture the dynamic, subjective, and physiological dimensions of walking in real time, revealing that standard walkability indices fail to capture key experiential dimensions of pedestrian well-being.

Caveat: The framework's utility is demonstrated through a localized case study with a small, unspecified sample size, meaning the specific environmental correlations may not generalize without broader testing.

Journal of Urban Mobility · pdf · doi

How Smart Cities Reshape the Mobility of Technical Talent: New Evidence Based on the Push–Pull Mechanism

Using data from prefecture-level cities in China spanning 2010 to 2022, this study constructed a gravity model and applied a double machine learning approach to evaluate how smart city pilot policies affect technical talent mobility. The analysis reveals that smart city designation increases technical talent mobility by an average of 1.910% overall, with more pronounced increases of 5.489% in provincial capitals and 4.856% in eastern region cities.

Why it matters — It quantifies how smart city policies redistribute technical labor, demonstrating that while digital growth and internationalization act as pull factors, they simultaneously trigger push factors like digital-technology-related unemployment and heightened market competition.

Caveat: The study relies on prefecture-level macro data to model individual talent mobility decisions, which may obscure finer-grained individual or industry-specific dynamics.

Journal of Urban Planning and Development · doi

The politics of postmortem privacy

This paper maps the conceptual tensions surrounding postmortem privacy by synthesizing legal scholarship alongside cultural, social, and historical observations. It analyzes how the protection of deceased individuals' digital data is governed across three distinct contexts: the transatlantic divide between US and European legal frameworks, internal regulatory friction within European data protection, and postcolonial or post-authoritarian settings in the Global South.

Why it matters — It establishes that postmortem privacy is not a uniform legal standard but a politically contested register used by different societies to negotiate memory and dignity, demonstrating that Global South contexts require much greater integration into digital legacy debates.

Caveat: The study is a conceptual and legal synthesis rather than an empirical analysis of specific data governance systems or user behaviors.

arXiv · pdf