Dujuan D Yang

Three Tales about Limits to Smart Cities Solutions

This editorial is the introduction to a special issue on smart cities. The concept of a smart city is not well-defined, yet expectations among urban planners and decision-makers are high. This special issue contains three papers that discuss three different manifestations of smart cities and the success—or lack of it—of the solutions discussed. The papers highlight some limitations of the concept of smart cities, but at the same time also pinpoint some potentially beneficial solutions.

Data Governance in the Sustainable Smart City

The wisdom of ‘smart’ development increasingly shapes urban sustainability in Europe and beyond. Yet, the ‘smart city’ paradigm has been critiqued for favouring technological solutions and business interests over social inclusion and urban innovation. Despite the rhetoric of ‘citizen-centred approaches’ and ‘user-generated data’, the level of stakeholder engagement and public empowerment is still in question. It is unclear how smart city initiatives are developing common visions according to the principles of sustainable urban development. This paper examines how data governance in particular is framed in the new smart city agenda that is focused on sustainability. The challenges and opportunities of data governance in sustainability-driven smart city initiatives are articulated within a conceptual Framework on Sustainable Smart City Data Governance. Drawing on three cases from European countries and a stakeholder survey, the paper shows how governance of data can underpin urban smart and sustainable development solutions. The paper presents insights and lessons from this multi-case study, and discusses risks, challenges, and future research.

Ageing populations and travel

The effectiveness of sustainable transport policies ultimately depends on the response of different lifecycle groups to these policies. This chapter is concerned with one such lifecycle group: the elderly. They are also known in the literature as ‘solitary survivors’ or ‘mature’ groups (Wells and Gubar, 1966; Lawson, 1991; Fodness, 1992). It is an interesting group for a variety of reasons. First, the elderly need to adjust to changing needs and a shifting institutional context. After retirement they may have more discretionary time, they may be empty-nesters, although their household caring tasks may perhaps be substituted by grandparenting tasks. The new generation of elderly is said to have accumulated more wealth and resources (e.g., Spinney et al., 2009). Moreover, in general, their health is better than that of previous generations of elderly, giving them more opportunities to stay active and travel (Ziegler and Schwanen, 2011). On the other hand, they are less flexible in adjusting to changes, i.e., diminishing public urban facilities and transportation resources (e.g., Rosenbloom, 2001; Collia et al., 2003; Hildebrand, 2003). These considerations suggest they are more likely to continue travelling, with detrimental effects on sustainable transport policy ambitions. Little empirical evidence is, however, known about the travel behaviour of the elderly. This chapter summarises results of our previous analyses and activity-travel behaviour of this lifecycle group and adds the results of some new analyses that were specifically conducted for this chapter.

Effects of Fuel Price on Individual Dynamic Travel Decisions: Binary Probit Selection Model That Uses GPS Panel Data

The goal of this study is to explore the impact of fuel price changes on individual activity travel behavior. Previous studies in transportation research have examined both short- and long-term fuel price elasticities on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and vehicle stock through aggregated data at the country or subnational level. This study is one of the few to use individual-level panel data. Furthermore, studies that consider context effects such as weather conditions, accessibility, and travel companion are rare. Noninclusion of these context-variable effects may produce spurious results on the influence of fuel price changes on activity travel patterns. On the basis of a unique set of GPS panel data of 122 respondents living in the Eindhoven area of the Netherlands, the authors collected corresponding weather conditions data and daily fuel price data. A two-step estimation approach was applied to estimate (a) individuals’ decisions of making car-based trips and (b) the influence of fluctuations in real fuel price on car travel distance. The results show that fuel price has significant negative effects both on an individuals decision to use a car and on travel distance by car if a person uses it. In addition, results indicate that days of the week, weather conditions, and 3-week lagged and 1-week expected fuel prices have significant negative effects on individuals’ car use decisions. However, once people decide to travel by car, weather conditions do not have any significant effects on VMT. The 2-week lagged fuel price has a significant negative effect on only VMT.

Mixture–amount experiments for measuring consumer preferences of energy-saving adaptation strategies: principles and illustration: Market Structure, Sustainability and Decision Making

Transport is debated by many, and liberalization processes, transport policy, transport and climate change and increased competition between transport modes are the subject of heated discussion. Smart Transport Networks illustrates that whether concerning road, water, rail or air, knowledge on the structure of transport markets is crucial in order to tackle transport issues. The book therefore explores key factors concerning the structure of transport markets, their environmental impact, and questions why decision makers often fail to tackle transport-related problems.