Urban Currents

Reliability-constrained dynamic assignment and slot pricing for urban construction logistics: a game-theoretic bilevel model

This study develops a game-theoretic bilevel framework that co-optimizes work-zone staging, priced delivery slots, and fleet sizing under travel-time reliability constraints. Tested on a 1,240-link metropolitan network during a six-week paving program with strict delivery windows for perishable materials, the model embeds reliability as a risk-adjusted generalized cost within a dynamic traffic assignment. The reliability-aware equilibrium increased on-time deliveries from 78% to 90% and cut late-arrival penalties by 31%, while adding slot pricing and staged closures further raised on-time performance to 93% and reduced the required ready-mix truck fleet by 14%.

Why it matters — It shifts work-zone planning from a passive traffic mitigation problem to an active logistics capacity control strategy, demonstrating that coordinating construction schedules with network pricing can simultaneously protect general traffic flow and lower project costs.

Caveat: The framework's performance gains were evaluated on a simulated metropolitan testbed rather than a real-world deployment.

Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives · doi

Beyond monuments: Edmond Pauty's vision for Historic Cairo in early twentieth century Egypt

This study analyzes Edmond Pauty's unimplemented 1920s-1930s proposal for Historic Cairo, tracing how he adapted urban conservation concepts from his prior work in colonial Morocco. Using Pauty's published writings and archival documents, the research details how his plan shifted focus from isolated monuments to the preservation of entire historic urban fabrics, and documents the resistance he faced from Egyptian committee members amid rising nationalist sentiment.

Why it matters — The research pushes back the origins of urban-scale conservation in Egypt by fifty years, demonstrating that holistic historic district planning was conceptualized in the region long before its formalization by UNESCO in 1979.

Caveat: The analysis is historical and qualitative, focusing on a single, largely unimplemented planning proposal and its associated archival records.

Planning Perspectives · doi

Analysis of factors and heterogeneity affecting injury severity in low-speed electric vehicle crashes involving older drivers

This study analyzed 1,346 low-speed electric vehicle (LSEV) crashes involving older drivers in Zibo, China, from 2022 to 2023 to identify factors influencing injury severity. Researchers combined XGBoost and SHAP for variable selection, then applied a random parameter logit model that accounts for mean and variance heterogeneity. The analysis revealed that airbags, cardiovascular diseases, vehicle type, licensing status, and driver age significantly impact the severity of crash injuries.

Why it matters — It establishes the specific vehicle, health, and demographic factors that dictate crash severity for older LSEV drivers, providing a empirical foundation for targeted safety policies and vehicle regulations for a rapidly growing but understudied transport mode.

Caveat: The findings are based on crash data from a single Chinese city, which may limit their direct applicability to regions with different LSEV usage patterns or road infrastructure.

Transportation Letters · doi

Feminist post-foundational geographies of the urban: Care, embodiment, and the everyday political

This theoretical paper reconstructs the core post-foundational concepts of contingency, dissensus, and political subjectification by integrating them with feminist geographies of care, embodiment, and interdependence. It shifts the analytical focus of post-foundational urban geography away from spectacular political ruptures and toward the everyday, affective, and material labor of social reproduction that sustains collective life.

Why it matters — It expands post-foundational political theory by demonstrating that social reproduction and daily care work are not apolitical, but are the very processes through which urban political life is constituted and transformed.

Progress in Human Geography · doi

A Framework for Map Agnostic Conflation: Challenges, Application, and Suitability in the Context of Mobility-Based Performance Measures

The study presents a map-agnostic conflation algorithm that matches proprietary third-party roadway datasets with the South Carolina Department of Transportation's linear referencing system. Testing across 73,899 and 74,706 segments spanning 30,787 directional miles achieved a 99.23% spatial accuracy at a precision of 0.001 miles. The method yielded highly consistent mobility metrics for the year 2022, with statewide delay differing by less than one vehicle-hour and travel time reliability mismatches limited to 0.5%.

Why it matters — By removing semantic attributes from the conflation process, this approach provides a highly accurate and computationally efficient way to merge disparate roadway networks using only segment topology and travel direction.

Caveat: The algorithm's performance was demonstrated on a single state-level network pair, and its applicability depends on networks having a clearly defined relationship between segment topology and travel direction.

Transportation Research Record Journal of the Transportation Research Board · doi

INTRA-URBAN DISTANCE VARIATIONS IN PERCEIVED 20-MINUTE NEIGHBOURHOOD FEATURES: A KRUSKAL-WALLIS ANALYSIS WITHIN AN 800m WALKABLE CATCHMENT IN BAYAN BARU, PENANG, MALAYSIA

This study evaluated how residents perceive the performance of six 20-Minute Neighbourhood domains within an 800-meter walkable catchment in Bayan Baru, Penang, Malaysia. Using questionnaire data and Kruskal-Wallis tests, the analysis compared perceptions across different age groups and distance bands from the neighborhood center. The statistical tests revealed significant differences in perceived neighborhood features across different distance bands, whereas variations across age groups were minimal.

Why it matters — It demonstrates that spatial proximity to services is a stronger determinant of how residents perceive neighborhood quality than their age, challenging the planning assumption that a uniform walkable catchment performs equally for all residents within its boundary.

Caveat: The findings are based on subjective questionnaire data from a single neighborhood in Penang, which may limit generalizability to other compact tropical urban environments.

PLANNING MALAYSIA · pdf · doi

ANALYSIS OF THE LEVEL OF USER AWARENESS OF SAFETY IN USING PUBLIC BUS TRANSPORTATION IN BATAM CITY

This study evaluates safety awareness among city bus passengers in Batam City using a mixed-methods approach that combines a questionnaire survey, exploratory factor analysis, ordinal logistic regression, and qualitative interviews. The analysis reveals that most passengers possess a moderate level of safety awareness, which is structured across three distinct domains: boarding safety, on-board behavior, and alighting practices. Regression modeling shows that older and female passengers exhibit significantly higher safety awareness, while prior safety incidents, information exposure, and usage frequency do not have statistically significant effects.

Why it matters — It provides empirical, passenger-centered evidence on safety behaviors in a developing, medium-sized city context, demonstrating that basic safety knowledge is not automatically translated into consistent behavior without structured institutional reinforcement.

Caveat: The study relies on self-reported survey data and qualitative interviews from a single city, which may introduce social desirability bias regarding safety behaviors.

PLANNING MALAYSIA · pdf · doi

SUSTAINABLE CONSERVATION OF THE SILOKEK GEOPARK AREA TO BECOME A LEAD TOURISM DESTINATION IN WEST SUMATERA, INDONESIA

This study analyzes the conservation, community involvement, and governance of the Silokek Geopark in West Sumatra, Indonesia, using the Xu and Wu sustainable geopark management framework. Researchers conducted qualitative field observations, document analysis, and in-depth interviews to evaluate how local conservation practices align with formal spatial planning.

Why it matters — It demonstrates that while community-led conservation is strong, the geopark's management remains purely operational and lacks integration into formal spatial planning instruments, which restricts its ability to regulate land use and guide tourism development.

Caveat: The study relies on a qualitative, single-case analysis of one geopark, which may limit the direct applicability of its governance findings to regions with different institutional structures.

PLANNING MALAYSIA · pdf · doi

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION DEMAND TO TOURISM DESTINATIONS IN ACEH PROVINCE, INDONESIA

This study surveyed 306 tourists across six beach destinations in the Lhoknga Beach Recreation Area of Aceh, Indonesia, using factor analysis to evaluate their willingness to transition from private vehicles to public transit. The analysis identified three primary drivers of potential transit demand: traffic and cost pressures, service quality attributes like punctuality and cleanliness, and personal perceptions regarding flexibility and privacy.

Why it matters — It establishes the specific service and economic conditions required to shift coastal tourists away from private vehicle reliance, providing empirical targets for transit planning in developing island-region tourism corridors.

Caveat: The findings are based on self-reported survey data regarding potential demand and willingness to shift, rather than observed ridership behavior.

PLANNING MALAYSIA · pdf · doi

A QUBO-Inspired Computational Framework for Airport Landside Bottleneck Diagnosis and Dynamic Dispatch Optimization

This study develops a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO)-inspired simulated annealing framework and a finite-action model predictive control scheme to diagnose bottlenecks and optimize vehicle dispatching at airport landsides. Using a five-minute state model, the framework was tested on peak-demand scenarios at Shanghai Pudong and Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airports. The QUBO-inspired method reduced final passenger queues from 3,445 to 2,477 at Shanghai Pudong and from 2,053 to 1,482 at Hangzhou Xiaoshan, maintaining these queue-reduction benefits across various demand, supply, and capacity perturbations.

Why it matters — It provides a scalable optimization method capable of resolving coupled congestion across passenger queues, vehicle storage, and access roads simultaneously, while identifying whether road saturation or pickup berth capacity is the primary local bottleneck.

Caveat: The performance of the dispatch optimization is demonstrated through simulation modeling under perturbed scenarios rather than real-world deployment.

arXiv · pdf

Multi-Relational Knowledge Graph Enhanced Embedding for Trajectory-User Linking

The researchers developed MakeTUL, a trajectory-user linking framework that represents visit times, POI categories, and transfer speeds as typed relations within a multi-relational mobility knowledge graph. The model enriches POI representations with high-order co-occurrence patterns from trajectory data and uses a dual-branch classification layer to combine global structural and sequential mobility patterns.

Why it matters — It introduces knowledge graph representation learning to trajectory-user linking for the first time, allowing heterogeneous mobility semantics to jointly constrain embeddings and improving identification accuracy for sparse or overlapping trajectories.

arXiv · pdf