Welsh Government policy establishes town centres as central places of community activity and local prosperity, recognising the positive impact towns have on the local economy and the well-being and cohesion felt amongst local communities. In light of this, recent declines in the usage of town centres are a major cause for concern. These have not been experienced uniformly across all towns, with some towns out-performing others. This paper applies principles outlined in Welsh Government’s Planning Policy Wales to develop a tool which classifies a sample of 71 towns and cities in Wales based on their centre and catchment characteristics. Catchment areas have been delineated using a Spatial Interaction Model to account for complex consumer behaviours and competition between centres. The tool identifies six distinct types of towns alongside key socio-economic catchment area characteristics. Once developed, we demonstrate our tool’s application by exploring variations in town centre performance between and within each town type. Case study examples exemplify how policymakers may use this tool to benchmark between towns, evaluating the suitability of a town’s retail offering based on its performance relative to the benchmark, guiding decisions relating to the types of businesses and uses a town should pursue to improve its appeal to its catchment community. In conclusion, several recommendations to policymakers are suggested.

Social systems are inherently complex and can be represented using agent-based modelling (ABM) methods. Based on the innovative work of Thomas Schelling, ABMs are used to represent, analyze, and forecast emergent spatial-temporal dynamics of residential segregation. Segregation is modelled by representing the complex dynamics between individual agents with various socio-demographic profiles who self-organize into spatial clusters of alike individuals. Agents are typically classified into broad panethnic categories such as “Asian” or “Hispanic”, however these categories group together individuals from a very large number of countries that are ethnically and economically distinct and thus have diverse settlement patterns. Therefore, the objective of this study is to implement an ABM that simulates the spatio-temporal dynamics of segregation that emerge from interactions between incoming immigrants who are classified at two different levels of aggregation. At the aggregate level, ethnic groups are defined based on typical broad panethnic categories. At the disaggregate level, the “Asian” category is further disaggregated. The ABM is implemented to simulate processes leading to segregation in the City of Toronto and Metro Vancouver using actual geospatial and census data. The simulated spatial patterns of segregation are compared with actual census data that records the real settlement patterns of immigrants of various ethnicities. In addition, the degree of segregation is quantified and compared with the degree of segregation measured from the actual census data. Results show that both the spatial patterns of segregation and the measure of segregation are significantly influenced by the level of aggregation of the various ethnicities. The presented research has the potential to contribute to policy-planning and decision-making by assisting city planners and policymakers in mitigating persistent residential segregation.

This research focuses on the intermediate city, composed of urban areas located right outside the city center typically maintaining an in-between urban/suburban character. It aims to explore the degree to which this segment of the city exhibits urban activity and social life through the identification of activity areas in the so-called Third Places. Four intermediate city neighborhoods in Gothenburg, Sweden are adopted as case areas and are analyzed using a twofold approach. First, socio-economic statistics provide a quantitative understanding of the case areas and, second, geolocated Social Media Data (SMD) from Foursquare, Google Places and Twitter makes it possible to identify the intermediate city’s urban activity areas and socially preferred urban spaces. The findings suggest that a) the four analyzed intermediate city areas of Gothenburg all have a degree of social activity, especially where economic activities are clustered together; b) Third Places in more affluent areas tend to be linked to commodified consumption of urban space while neighborhoods with lower income levels and higher ethnic diversity seem to emphasize open public space as Third Places; and c) nowadays the typology of Third Places has evolved from the types identified in previous decades to include additional types of places, such as those you pass on the way to something else (e.g. gas and bus stations). The study has verified the value of SMD for studies of urban social life but also identified a number of topics for further research. Additional sources of SMD should be identified to secure a just representation of Third Places across diverse social groups. Furthermore, new methods for effective cross validation of SMD with other types of data are crucial, including e.g. statistics, on-site observations and surveys/interviews, not least to identify Third Places that are not frequently present (or are misrepresented) in SMD.

There is growing need for reliable survey-based small area estimates of crime and confidence in police work to design and evaluate place-based policing strategies. Crime and confidence in policing are geographically aggregated and police resources can be targeted to areas with the most problems. High levels of spatial autocorrelation in these variables allow for using spatial random effects to improve small area estimation models and estimates’ reliability. This article introduces the Spatial Empirical Best Linear Unbiased Predictor (SEBLUP), which borrows strength from neighboring areas, to place-based policing. It assesses the SEBLUP under different scenarios of number of areas and levels of spatial autocorrelation and provides an application to confidence in policing in London. The SEBLUP should be applied for place-based policing strategies when the variable’s spatial autocorrelation is medium/high, and the number of areas is large. Confidence in policing is higher in Central and West London and lower in Eastern neighborhoods.

This article presents a study of the Third National Agricultural and Livestock Census data to examine the characteristics of family and industrial farming in Colombia using together, statistical and spatial analysis techniques. From the available anonymized census microdata, which was added up to a level of rural relevance called vereda, a selection of variables was made according to properties found out in the state of art as related to both agriculture types and to the established theoretical framework. From there on, a Principal Component Analysis allowed distinguishing association between the attributes of family and industrial agriculture, while an Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis lets identifying polarized geographical distributions of these two phenomena in the country. In this way, this study seeks to become a starting point and a benchmark for analyzing the Colombian agricultural sector, as well as demonstrating the importance of census information, data reduction and statistical and spatial exploration methods.

A growing literature is pointing towards the prevalence of healthy lifestyles, such as adequate walking, in the Central Business District (CBD) of many cities. However, only one study has investigated the presence of walking hotpsots. Using coarsely geocoded, routinely collected survey data from the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), and a unique ‘overlap of spatial clusters’ approach, we investigated if a) There were patterns of clustering in walking behaviours, b) If these clusters were co-located and therefore associated with various built environment characteristics and c) What the demographic and active transport use profiles of the residents of these clusters were. A hotspot of walking was found in the CBD of the ACT, co-located with hotspots or spatial clusters of dwelling density, public transport frequency and destination accessibility. Residents of the hotspot walked approximately an hour more than the average ACT resident and had significantly higher odds of using active transport to workplaces relative to driving. Odds ratios of walking relative to driving to work were 9.20 (5.97, 14.18) and bicycling were 3.54 (1.87, 6.69) in the walking hotspot compared to non-hotspots. Policies directed towards creating a ‘CBD like’ built environment in various locations of cities or refurbishing and redesigning existing CBDs to make them more liveable helps encourage walking behaviors. In addition coarsely geocoded, freely available routinely collected survey data can be used to investigate relationships that may help drive policy.

There has been an extensive tradition of geographical studies7 conducted to analyse the access to urban parks or green spaces. Several studies deploy approaches to measure the potential spatial accessibility and congestion of children’s playgrounds in urban areas. Identifying inequalities in terms of spatial access to children’s playgrounds is an important issue that could be useful for urban planners. The main objective of this paper is to measure the potential spatial accessibility and congestion of playgrounds in Barcelona City. A second objective is to analyse the factors that may explain differences between neighbourhoods in spatial access to playgrounds. Several analyses were carried out. First, two indicators of spatial potential accessibility are computed at the census tract level. Next, a mapping technique is used based on a cross tabulation of the quintiles of two indicators. A typology of census tracts can then be developed according to the various possible combinations between playground accessibility and congestion. Third, two spatial models—spatial lag and spatial error—are estimated in order to introduce socioeconomic factors into the explanation of accessibility and congestion. Finally, a multinomial logistic model is estimated to explain the typology of Barcelona census tracts based on potential playground congestion and accessibility. The results show that in Barcelona City, there are no important spatial disparities in terms of access to children’s playgrounds.

The original article unfortunately contains an incorrect statement in the Acknowledgments section.

The article Demography, Migration and the Economy at a Regional Level: Recent Evidence from Catalonia, written by Corrado Bonifazi and Massimiliano Crisci, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal (currently SpringerLink) on 14 November 2012 without open access.