Departmental Research Output Prize 2021

This study proposes an innovative approach to construct 3D spatial hedonic models for high-rise housing markets where the potential impacts of urban green-blue spaces on apartment prices along the vertical dimension cannot be ignored. This application of this modelling approach can facilitate a comprehensive and adequate assessment of the impacts of urban green-blue spaces on housing prices. The empirical findings make original arguments about the interactive effects between homebuyers’ utilities and various attributes of urban rivers and riparian greening. In particularly, it redefines the research agenda in urban hedonic modelling from the conventional 2D regime to a 3D regime, leading new ways for 3D geostatistical assessment of urban green-blue spaces.

This nationwide study for the first time examines two key dimensions of urban greening in Chinese cities: recreational potential and ecological functionality to unveil synergy and tradeoff. It generates new thinking about hoe synergistic effects can be fostered via urban landscape planning. This study contributes novel arguments and empirical evidence to the scholarships of urban political ecology.

Drawing on longstanding ethnographic research in Mexico City, this article works to develop a robust theorization of the spatial nature and political utility of humor in everyday urban geographies, and to contribute to shaping an emergent research agenda on this topic in the field of human geography. Extending previous work on humor by emphasizing “the complex, mutable, and multifarious nature of humor effects in practice”, I argue that “humor’s subversive potential allows for simultaneous or co-constituitive aesthetic effects, such as the simultaneous disruption of political norms and the genesis of a more inclusive spatial imaginary of urban citizenship”, using a lens I develop at the intersection of recent geopolitical scholarship and the politics of aesthetics as theorized by the likes of Jacques Rancière, Bolívar Echeverría, and Carlos Monsiváis. This article anchors a forum on this topic, with several prominent scholars invited to publish commentaries in response.

In this article, I argue that scholarship interested in the politics of environmental change must pay greater attention to both “the political economies of geological events and processes and the prescriptive powers of geology as a field of knowledge production and political power”, given increasing evidence that a variety of Anthropocene processes and practices may increase the potential for seismic activity across an urbanizing planet. To make this argument, I draw on evidence gathered from an ongoing, longitudinal research project utilizing archival and ethnographic methods to examine the intersection of natural hazards, political economy, and urbanization in the massive 1985 and 2017 earthquakes in Mexico City.

The novel contribution of the paper is the insight into the backpacker experience revealing backpacking to be a unique form of tourism. We provided a meta-perspective of backpacking in which the search for experiences enabling existential authenticity and freedom remained consistent despite significant demographic, social, cultural and behavioural variation among backpackers. The theoretical significance emerges from the use of Heidegger’s “spielraum” (“playspace”) to explain the backpacker experience. Spielraum grounds the philosophical notions of existentialism, authenticity and freedom in the tangible choices and actions of backpackers. It explained the ability of backpackers to experience authenticity and to engage with the “other” including other backpackers in a safe manner. The methods involved a seven-step integrative review of the backpacker literature repeated three times throughout 2018-2020. As backpacker researchers have started questioning if the label “backpacker” remains an accurate descriptor, it was a timely moment to review the backpacker literature given the changes to the backpacker phenomenon since the last formal review was published in 2004.

This is the first study ever to evaluate the data openness of the air quality webpage for the smart city initiative. A mathematical model called Data Openness in Air Quality framework (DOAQ) was developed to map the quantitative elements from an air quality webpage into a systematic and quantitive framework. Global ranking of data openness for air quality information was established for the top-50 smart cities. Good practices and future outlooks of delivering air quality information were also suggested.

This is one of the pioneer studies to evaluate the carbon emission reduction potential from Vietnam’s power section using renewable alternatives. The life-cycle analysis approach was adopted to assess the effectiveness of carbon emission reduction from municipal solid waste and solar power technologies. It provides valuable and timely information for the Vietnam government to execute the best practice to fulfil the COP21 (Paris) agreement.

This paper examines the experiences of transport decarbonisation in 16 countries over nearly three decades. Resting upon the concept of socio-ecological resilience, collaborative planning and policy-implementation gap, it identifies clear sectoral objectives in action plans and holistic policy packages to reinforce sustainable transport as pivotal.

This paper challenges the vehicle-oriented paradigm in transportation. Evidence and alternatives are presented to promote a people-oriented and place-based paradigm through promoting walkability in cities.

This paper, for the first time, proposes two theoretical scopes to shed light on the multifaceted relationships between everyday life and capitalist urbanisation, with particular focus on the research of internal migrants in reform-era urban China. Pointing out the lack of theorisation of everyday life in existing literature on migrants in China, this paper innovatively introduces Lefebvre’s theory on everyday life and the rationalisation of urban spaces to reveal the resistance to the colonising logics of capitalism, and theories on everyday life as a transversal logic to the formal economy or the provisional intersections of heterogeneous conditions. This article signposts everyday urbanism as a new frontier and approach to enrich our understandings of migrant lives, spaces and communities.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) evasion from inland waters is an important component of the global carbon cycle. However, it remains unknown how global change affects CO2 emissions over longer time scales. This study examines seasonal and annual fluxes of CO2 emissions from Chinese inland waters by using spatially resolved measurements across China and quantifies their changes over the past three decades (1980s2010s). We found that the CO2 emissions from Chinese inland waters have declined from 138 ± 31 Tg C yr−1 in the 1980s to 98 ± 19 Tg C yr−1 in the 2010s. The unexpected decrease in CO2 emission flux was driven by a combination of environmental alterations, including massive conversion of free-flowing rivers to reservoirs and widespread implementation of reforestation programs. This study represents the first comprehensive approach to evaluating changes in aquatic CO2 emissions through time. Also, this study provides insights into more accurate assessments of global carbon budget and a better understanding of human-climate interactions on decadal timescales.

Rivers are major sources of greenhouse gases (GHG) and play an important role in the global carbon cycle. However, simultaneous CO2 and CH4 emissions from semiarid river catchments remain poorly studied. In this study, we investigate dissolved CO2 and CH4 emissions and examine their potential sources and drivers in a mesoscale semiarid catchment on the Chinese Loess Plateau by means of spatially and temporally resolved in-situ measurements. This study of both CO2 and CH4 emissions is arguably the first for assessing greenhouse gas emissions in semiarid regions. Particularly, impacts of prevailing human activity, such as dam operation and urban wastewater discharge, are investigated. Considering the unprecedented dam construction and urbanization worldwide, we conclude that these highly localized emission hotspots will be of global importance in estimating GHG emissions from inland waters. Our study contributes to a better understanding of GHG dynamics in arid/semiarid river systems which show comparable CO2 and CH4 effluxes to those observed in tropical and boreal regions.

Can Chinese cities compete globally on the basis of the quality of the technologies and knowledge they produce? In this paper I use novel methodologies and datasets to systematically measure this for Chinese and global cities. While Chinese cities have increased the quantity of knowledge and technology output, I find that only Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen compete globally. Evaluating development trends over time, I find that competitive Chinese cities increased the quality of their knowledge first, before improving the quality of their technology. Together, these findings have important policy implications as they suggest rising divergence in economic development among Chinese cities, triggering migration into these competitive cities. Solid regional development policies are needed to support regions that are seem to be left behind and proper institutions are required to guide labor mobility from and to those regions.

This study provides the first high-resolution map of China’s sustainability. A spatial assessment model was developed by integrating the social, economic, and environmental dimensions. The sustainability maps reveal over 1.23 billion Chinese have been free from low sustainability area. There are large variations in sustainability across China with only 2.3% of the country in high sustainability zone and over 140 million, mostly in the northern and northeastern regions, inhabiting under low sustainability conditions. This research could provide valuable insights into the spatial distribution of sustainability in the country and could help policymakers identify regions to implement targeted interventions.

This study developed a novel food-energy-water-carbon (FEWC) composite sustainability index to assess the sustainability of global aquaculture. The footprint methods were employed to quantify various environmental impacts for each sector. Results show that global aquaculture production accounted for approximately 1765.2 × 103 TJ energy use, 122.6 km3 water consumption, and 261.3 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. China led all countries by contributing to more than half of global aquaculture water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, followed by India and Indonesia. This study provides insight information of the environmental performance of global aquaculture, highlighting the significance of cross-sectoral management and policymaking to achieve global aquaculture sustainability.