Prosperous City Research Articles

The image of China in Giovanni Botero

AbstractChina was a focal point among early modern European intellectuals, with some attempting to reflect on Europe's own problems through the process of understanding this country. Among them was Giovanni Botero, whose view of China has not garnered much attention. This state occupies an irreplaceable position in Botero's works, yet his attitude towards it is nuanced: On the one hand, he praises its large population, prosperous cities, and social stability, considering it the best‐governed country in history; on the other hand, he acknowledges that it is an example of oriental despotism. However, this characterization of an oriental despotic state has not diminished Botero's admiration for this state. The main reason is that China's voluntary renunciation of external expansion and its commitment to internal peace, justice and prosperity align with his political model of the ‘conservative’ state. Botero believes that its restraint and prudence in foreign policy, its effectiveness in social organization and governance and its promotion of the art of peace are lessons worth learning for European countries. This study of Botero's view of China will help us to better understand its place in his political thought and its image in early modern Europe.

STRATEGI PARENTING DALAM MEMBENTUK KESEJAHTERAAN PSIKOLOGI ANAK MENUJU KOTA SURABAYA SEHAT SEJAHTERA

The purpose of the study is to analyze the effectiveness of the parenting program strategy implemented by the Surabaya City Government in improving children's psychological well-being. This strategy seeks to create a healthy and prosperous city of Surabaya through good parenting, nutritional fulfilment, and adequate health facilities for children. The research method uses a mixed method combining qualitative and quantitative methods with data collection through interviews and questionnaires. The results of the study show that the Great Parents School (SOTH) Program provides an ideal platform for parents, especially mothers, to learn and seek knowledge about good parenting. The SOTH program provides significant benefits to mothers by providing effective parenting education, helping them cope with emotional challenges, teaching children to socialize, and practising language skills. The program is expected to be implemented in various regions to support child development and better parenting.

City and Countryside in Byzantine Anatolia: Amorium

Amorium is a key site for the period AD 700-900 owing to its historical importance as the capital of the Anatolic Theme. The well preserved remains provide an exceptional opportunity to study the layout and function of the Byzantine city and its excavation sheds light on the transition, modification, and continuity of the settlement between the Late Roman and Byzantine periods. The evidence from twenty years of excavation points to the existence of a large and prosperous city during Early and Middle Byzantine times, where various trades and crafts were practised and which served as the centre of a vibrant rural community engaged in agriculture as well as animal husbandry. The destruction layers from the capture of Amorium by the Arabs in 838 create a fixed horizon and reference point for the entire archaeology and material culture of early to mid-ninth century Anatolia. Pottery and coin finds in particular provide good indicators of the level and nature of economic activity. In this study some conclusions are drawn from that material, and discussion of it is set in the context of other sites and the interpretation of finds there. The evidence from Amorium presents new insights that appear at odds with accepted views of the Byzantine world in the Early Middle Ages.

Full-Spectrum Surveillance of Pre-Treatment HIV Drug Resistance in Southeastern China.

HIV drug resistance compromises the ability of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) to suppress viral replication, resulting in treatment failure. This study investigates the prevalence of pre-treatment drug resistance (PDR) in newly diagnosed individuals in a prosperous city (Wenzhou) in Southeastern China. A cross-sectional investigation was carried out among 473 newly diagnosed ART-naive HIV-1-infected individuals between January and December 2022. The protease-reverse transcriptase (PR-RT) region and integrase (IN) region of HIV-1 were amplified by two separately nested PCRs, followed by sequencing. Drug resistance mutations (DRMs) and drug resistance to nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs), protease inhibitors (PIs) and integrase strand transfer inhibitors (INSTIs) were analyzed. The PDR prevalence was 6.5% [95% CI: 4.4-9.1] for any anti-retroviral drug, 0.9% [95% CI: 0.3-2.3] for NRTIs, 4.1% [95% CI: 2.5-6.5] for NNRTIs, 1.8% [95% CI: 0.8-3.6] for PIs and 0.5% [95% CI: 0.1-1.8] for INSTIs. According to the subtyping results of the PR-RT region, 11 different subtypes and 31 unique recombinant forms (URFs) were found. CRF07_BC was the dominant subtype (53.7%, 233/434), followed by CRF01_AE (25.3%, 110/434). V179D (1.6%) and K103N (1.4%) were the most predominant types of NNRTI DRMs. Q58E (1.2%) and M184V (0.7%) were the most frequent PI DRMs and NRTI DRMs, respectively. The INSTI-related DRMs Y143S (causes high-level resistance to RAL) and G163K (causes low-level resistance to EVG and RAL) were found in one patient each. Given the relatively high PDR prevalence of NNRTI (4.1%), non-NNRTI-based ART may be preferred in the future. It is recommended to include genotypic resistance testing before starting ART in regions where feasible.

From City to Lake: Flood Legends, Place-Making and Changing Landscapes

As displayed by several myths and legends, water is a powerful means of destruction and reconfiguration of natural and human landscapes. This is especially evident when a flood is sent by god(s) or supernatural beings to punish sinful people and corrupt cities. Generally, this kind of catastrophe brings about the disappearance of a whole human community and the resulting transformation of a certain place. However, it may also happen that one or few persons, because of their piety or righteousness, are spared by the divine anger, sometimes along with their houses or something else. The present work starts from a discovery on the field of a local legend concerning Lake Varano, a coastal body of water in the Gargano peninsula (Apulia, Italy). According to this legend, Lake Varano would be the outcome of an ancient flood, sent by God to punish a prosperous and corrupt city, Uria, once flourishing in the place of the lake. Just like other more famous floods, this local flood is meant to mark a transition between an evil past, embodied by the sunken Uria, and a good present, embodied by a little church, formerly the house of the only survivor, Nunzia, a pious woman. As part of the broader corpus of flood narratives, this legend and the other ones here considered distinguish themselves as featuring a lake, which physically and symbolically shapes and connotes the religious, historical and geographical identity of a local community. Starting from Lake Varano’s origin legend, a structural and thematic analysis is conducted on a number of similar legends, in order to identify, classify and understand a particular category of narrative folklore, characterized by a significant interplay between water (flood- and lake-lore), history (ancient cities vanished), religious beliefs (retributive gods) and moral principles (evil and good). Eventually, such a comparative work will lead back to Lake Varano’s legend, because of the peculiarity of its heroine; unlike all the other survivors, who are passively rescued from a flood, Nunzia plays indeed an active part in the drama, thus resulting a co-author, with the flood, of a local place-making, that is the main concern of these legends.

Revitalizing Ukrainian Cities: The Role of Public-Private Partnerships in Smart Urban Development

Purpose: The article examines the role of public-private partnership (PPP) as a key tool for urban infrastructure restoration and the development of Ukrainian cities within the framework of the Smart City concept. It underscoresthe urgent need for effective mechanisms to restore urban infrastructure, especially in light of the challenges associated with the Russian military aggression and the resulting destruction in Ukrainian cities. The study explores key aspects of smart cities development, including the integration of digital technologies, the use of data, and innovative business models aimed at optimizing city functions.Design/Methodology/Approach: The research employs a multi-stage methodological approach, encompassing elements such as gauging urban population satisfaction with municipal services, graphical analysis using CIMI, assessing the relevance of revitalizing Ukrainian cities and the need for mobilizing business resources, sociological surveys, developing a Smart City model based on PPP project outcomes, and formulating key elements of the national Smart City development strategy.Findings: Emphasizing the importance of strategic planning and cooperation between public and private sectors, the study demonstrates the advantages offered by PPP-based projects. The obtained results highlight the pivotal role of PPPs in promoting urban development initiatives basedon the Smart City concept. The study emphasises the potential of PPPs in shaping stable and prosperous smart cities in Ukraine. Through effective PPP utilisation, local governments can restore urban infrastructure,improve service quality, and enhance the quality of life for their citizens.Practical Implications: The research results can serve as the basis for strategic planning and investment in infrastructure projects necessary for the creation of a smart city. The envisioned strategy will allow for the improvement of legislative acts covering a wide range of aspects of smart cities development while promoting collaboration between public and private entities. This includes bolstering the transportation system, deploying digital technologies, modernizing social institutions, and enhancing the efficiency of urban resource management.Originality/Value: The originality and value of the study lie in its multifaceted approach to assessing and promoting the Smart City concept in Ukrainian urban development. It combines various research methods, including satisfaction assessments, CIMI-based graphical analyses, sociological surveys, and the development of a Smart City model based on PPP project results. This approach not only provides a comprehensive understanding of the state of urban infrastructure and citizen satisfaction but also offers a strategic framework for smart cities development.

Citizen participation through different mechanisms: does social media impact adoption and design of local sustainability plans?

ABSTRACT Sustainability plans are essential for fostering prosperous cities for present and future generations. The degree of citizen agency, control, and power in shaping plans varies across different participatory mechanisms. Despite its popularity and ubiquity, how social media, as a new form of participatory mechanism, shapes government sustainability plans remains relatively unclear. Therefore, by using a 2015 nationwide survey of U.S. local government administrators, this study examines social media’s influences on plan adoption and design, particularly in comparison to conventional participatory mechanisms. The findings provide insights for public managers on how to leverage different participatory mechanisms in advancing a sustainability plan.

Evaluating plans for sustainable development in Arctic cities

Cities located in the Arctic often have extreme geographic and environmental contexts and unique sociopolitical and economic trajectories that, when combined with amplified effects of climate change in the region, impact future sustainable development. Well-recognized and standardized sustainable development indicator (SDI) frameworks such as ISO 37120 or UN-Habitat City Prosperity Index are often used to compare data across cities globally using comprehensive sets of indicators. While such indexes help characterize progress toward development and guide short- and long-term decision-making, they often lack relevance to specific contexts or characterize future visions of urban growth. To evaluate the extent of these deficiencies and to provide a comparative analysis of approaches to sustainable urban growth in the Arctic, this paper analyzes city planning documents for five northern cities - Anchorage (USA), Utqiagvik (USA), Reyjavik (ISL), Iqaluit, (CAN), Whitehorse, (CAN) - for goals, targets, and indicators and compare these to thematic areas and indicators defined by ISO 37120:2018 Sustainable Cities and Communities. The results confirm that although international SDI frameworks may be useful for comparative analysis of cities across diverse regions, they exclude important local factors that influence goal-oriented urban sustainability planning strategies employed in the Arctic region.

Tang Chang’an poetry automatic classification: a practical application of deep learning methods

Abstract As the capital of Tang Dynasty, Chang’an was one of the most prosperous cities in the world at that time and had a profound influence on Tang poetry. Poets described Chang’an to illustrate the cultural features of the Tang Dynasty while also invoking emotions in readers. The study of Tang Chang’an poetry has important literary and historical value. In order to understand the interpretation and emotional expression of Tang Chang’an poetry more conveniently and clearly, we conducted a study using deep learning to classify Chang’an poetry into four classes: imperially assigned poetry (应制), emotional poetry (感怀), parting poetry (离别), and other poetry (其他). We suggested a comprehensive framework of text classification based on deep learning, including a text input module, feature encoder module, and classification module. We applied several mainstream deep neural network structures to extract features in different ways, which comprised convolutional neural network (CNN), Fasttext, bi-direction long-short-term memory network, and Attention mechanism. Based on our experimental findings, the CNN-based method achieved the best performance for the task. Our inference was that, in Chinese ancient poetry, the analysis of semantic content is more facilitated by local textual features rather than contextual features. We combined this inference with the theory of image in Chinese ancient poetry to analyze the suitability of the deep learning techniques for the study of Chinese ancient poetry.

REVALUATION OF THE CITY AND ITS RESOURCES: AN ACADEMIC METHODOLOGY FOR ADAPTATION TO CHANGES IN URBAN LAND

The architectural project is at the center of the design studios at Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador's School of Architecture. This teaching methodology integrates transversal tools that strengthen the concepts of social and technical sustainability. Therefore, the architectural project can be a way to learn, investigate and analyze potential solutions to problems found at various scales of the territory, from the neighborhood to the city. The current development of cities is focused on finding, through the architectural project, tools that can adapt to changes on urban land due to present and future development. This article presents a teaching methodology based on Project-Based Learning, which reflects on Quito’s public space, seeks to contribute to the knowledge of the city, to explore leading ways to good practices for teachers and future professionals and to contribute to that city’s urban renewal. The methodology presented here is divided into four moments (conceptual, analytical, strategic, and proactive) and three territorial scales (large, which entails a zonal analysis; medium, that leads to the analysis of the neighborhood; and small, which includes the analysis of the project’s site). This methodology allows for flexibility during the design process and triggers conversations around a more prosperous city which revalues its resources.

DESIGN OF INVENTORY MONITORING INFORMATION SYSTEM OF OFFICE EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES AT BAZNAS CITY OF BANDUNG BASED ON MACRO EXCEL (VBA)

BAZNAS, the National Amil Zakat Agency, is the official institution overseeing zakat management at the national level. In Bandung City, BAZNAS runs programs such as Healthy Bandung, Smart Bandung, Taqwa Bandung, and Caring Bandung, contributing to the city's prosperity. To streamline office operations, related institutions must conduct inventory activities for office equipment and supplies. However, BAZNAS Bandung City currently employs a manual inventory management system, involving paper-based recording, recapitulation, and individual input into Excel sheets, leading to inefficiency, security concerns, and data loss risks. Recognizing the need for improvement, a new information system has been designed using Microsoft Excel, Macros, and Visual Basic Applications. The design includes Data Flow Diagrams and Entity Relationship Data to enhance the management and monitoring of inventory data, ensuring data integrity and structured inventory activities. Project evaluations, following the End User Computing Satisfaction (EUCS) principle, show that the system meets institutional needs and is user-friendly. Users are provided with a manual book during testing to enhance system understanding. While the trial results are positive, constructive feedback suggests the need for further feature enhancement to ensure smoother system operation and greater overall benefits. This information system aims to speed up and simplify inventory data management, bringing efficiency to BAZNAS Bandung City's operations.

Urban Adaptability Evaluation and the ADI Framework: Pioneering Sustainable, Resilient, and Prosperous Cities

Urban Adaptability Evaluation and the ADI Framework: Pioneering Sustainable, Resilient, and Prosperous Cities

Detailed analysis of Sustainable Infrastructure Design and Benefits for urban Cities

Addressing the issues of urbanization, climate change, and resource scarcity now centers on the junction of infrastructure development and sustainability. This review study looks at how new ideas and technologies are developing sustainable infrastructure solutions. It assesses research and development in important domains including smart cities, green infrastructure, renewable energy, circular economy, resilience, and social equality critically. The notion of green infrastructure is covered at the outset of the article, along with how it can be used to manage environmental issues including stormwater runoff, air quality, and urban heat islands. It examines the most recent developments in renewable energy infrastructure, evaluating the scalability, efficiency, and integration of solar, wind, hydropower, and geothermal systems into the current energy infrastructures. The analysis also looks at how smart cities and infrastructure have developed, with an emphasis on how IoT, AI, and data analytics are used to improve quality of life, mobility, and sustainability. It goes over case studies of prosperous smart city projects and how they've improved public services, strengthened urban infrastructure resilience, and decreased greenhouse gas emissions. The study concludes with a discussion of new developments and technologies, including digital twins, self-driving cars, decentralized energy systems, and green building materials, that will influence sustainable infrastructure in the future. It highlights the compensations and difficulties of numerous technologies and suggests directions for further study and advancement in the area.

How to promote telemedicine in underdeveloped cities in central China? Qualitative interviews with medical personnel in tertiary A-level hospital of Xinyang City.

Telemedicine has emerged as a novel healthcare service model that plays a vital role in addressing the unequal distribution of medical resources. Telemedicine has recently gained significant traction in economically prosperous cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in China. However, Xinyang City in Henan Province is an economically less developed city, and telemedicine is still in its early stages. By exploring the views of medical staff and administrators at Xinyang City's tertiary A-level hospital on telemedicine, this study aims to determine the development status of telemedicine services in Xinyang City. The objective was to identify the challenges in the construction process and formulate corresponding strategies for advancing telemedicine in Xinyang City. Face-to-face personal interviews were conducted with 16 medical staff and administrators from a tertiary A-level hospital in Xinyang City, Henan Province, and the data were collected and analyzed using grounded theory. In the process of data analysis, NVivo12 software was used to encode and organize the data line by line. The development of telemedicine in Xinyang City has the potential to benefit residents, hospitals, and healthcare personnel despite several challenges, including the absence of laws and regulations, inadequate policy support, limited hospital cooperation, and low resident awareness, which must be addressed to unlock the full potential of telemedicine. The telemedicine system in Xinyang City is currently in a coordinated developmental phase, and several areas require further improvement. The development of standardized telemedicine in Xinyang City requires government support, better training for general practitioners, public awareness campaigns, and improved technology while ensuring reasonable work schedules and motivating medical personnel.

Olympic Public Transportation Investments, Legacy, and City Prosperity: An Empirical Look at the 2000-2016 Summer Games

The complexity of hosting the Olympic Games has grown throughout its history. The financial risks to cities vying for the hosting rights are often viewed as excessive and consequently, fewer bids are being submitted in modern times. Critics suggest that public funds would be better spent supporting other social programs. However, history has demonstrated that host cities can use the Games to expand and modernize public transport systems to efficiently move people, increase accessibility, reduce personal travel and garner environmental benefits like improved air quality and less noise pollution. The authors examined the five Summer Olympic Games host cities between 2000-2016 using the City Prosperity Index (CPI) to measure city performance across six indexes to determine the accrued public transit benefits of hosting the Games. The authors hope this paper can provide a clear path forward for future Olympic bidders and city officials. Keywords: Olympic Games, City Prosperity Index, public transportation, investments

“Alexandria Trilogy”: A Mirror of Variations in Group Relations in Egypt’s Modern Society

Abstract Egyptian writer Ibrahim Abdel Meguid’s best-known works form the “Alexandria Trilogy”: No One Sleeps in Alexandria (1996), Birds of Amber (2000), and Clouds Over Alexandria (2011). The Trilogy is set in three important historical periods: the Second World War, the Suez Crisis in 1956, and the 1970s. It focuses on describing the rise and fall of Alexandria, an ancient and modern city, from its heyday to its decline, from diversity to extremes, thus reflecting the writer’s deep concern about the Islamic radical thoughts flooding the city. The city of Alexandria is the main place and clue that runs through the three novels from beginning to end. The writer compares the landscape of the same city in different periods in the Trilogy, giving the space the ability to speak for itself, and it fluctuates in the whirlpool of the times. Whether it is telling the fate of characters, recording the history of the city, or describing spatial changes, the core idea conveyed by the Trilogy is that the city has gradually evolved from an open and prosperous modern international city in the past into a depressing place of gloom, and its contemporary history holds a mirror up to the changing nature of ethnic relations in Egypt.

Juridical Analysis of Levy Collection as Regional Original Income (Batam City Transportation Department Regional Research Study)

The large number of parking points in Batam City will really help increase regional Original Income, optimal management is very necessary as a source of additional Regional Original Income for Batam City through Parking Levy. Management is carried out by the Batam City Transportation Service Parking Service UPT as regional technical implementer. The aim of this research is to analyze how the management of parking fees carried out by the Batam City Transportation Service Parking Service UPT can increase effectively and become easier. This research uses a qualitative approach, with a data collection process through interviews, documentation and observation. Data presentation techniques are carried out by means of data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The results of this research show that the collection management carried out by the Parking Services UPT is still not optimal with the actual amount of parking levy revenue still below the predetermined target. This is because there is still a lack of field coordinators available by the Parking Services UPT to collect parking fees at existing parking point locations. In fact, as a source of revenue from parking fees in increasing Regional Original Income, it really helps the regional revenue of Batam City. In increasing the regional budget which can be used to build a more prosperous and prosperous city of Batam.

UTILIZING WASTE GOODS AS A MEDIUM IMPROVING ENTREPRENEURIAL ENTHUSIASM AT SRENGSENG-JAKARTA

Academics have developed frameworks to describe this fundamental entrepreneurial mindset, drawing on deep experience in teaching entrepreneurship to students. An entrepreneurial mindset is a set of skills that enables people to identify and make the most of opportunities, overcome and learn from setbacks, and succeed in a variety of situations. Improving human quality as a development resource is the main requirement for improving the level of people's welfare. The main goal of millennium development or millennium development goals (MDGs) in Indonesia, with the priority of poverty alleviation, is to reduce the proportion of poor people to half or 8.2% of the total population by 2015. One way to alleviate poverty is that the government suggests that entrepreneurial activities in Indonesian society be developed by considering the potential of local communities. The type of business that is currently developing is the used goods business sector. West Jakarta has a vision for the West Jakarta Administrative City to become a comfortable and prosperous service city. The mission is to build good governance to create cultural tourism, service, and historical cities. Improving the quality of the urban environment sustainably and empowering the community by developing values, norms, and social institutions, to improve the quality of community services.

USED GOODS CREATION FOR SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS AT SRENGSENG-JAKARTA

Family companies can generally run well and are strengthened by family members who are very loyal and highly loyal to the family-owned company. However, problems often occur in managing family companies, especially regarding changing leadership. Conflicts often arise between family interests and company interests. Therefore, even though family companies are simpler than general companies, determining a company that the family will run must still be done through a clear and concrete process, namely by carrying out a Business Planning process, which starts with a Feasibility Study. Business. The main goal of millennium development or millennium development goals (MDGs) in Indonesia, with the priority of poverty alleviation, is to reduce the proportion of poor people to half or 8.2% of the total population by 2015. One way to alleviate poverty is that the government suggests that entrepreneurial activities in Indonesian society be developed by considering the potential of local communities. The type of business that is currently developing is the used goods business sector. West Jakarta has a vision for the West Jakarta Administrative City to become a comfortable and prosperous service city. The mission is to build good governance to create cultural tourism, service, and historical cities. Moreover, the quality of the urban environment is sustainably and empowering the community by developing values, norms, and social institutions to improve the quality of community services.

City Prosperity Index as A Tool for Urban Regeneration: A Case Study of Ibadan, Nigeria

The need to establish the social, economic, and environmental sustainability aspect of cities cannot be overemphasized. However, urban regeneration projects are not new to urban centers, several studies have revealed the shortcomings associated with the study of the methods to ensure urban regeneration practices and their planning processes are sustainable. This study examined some well-developed strategies for sustainable urban growth within Ibadan city. The method of data collection for this study was qualitatively structured to acquire pertinent data for the assessment of the current state of Ibadan city prosperity. Findings established that Ibadan city lacked community cohesion, poor civic identity, varying degree of security threats, poor mobility and connectivity consequent upon poor standard of living of the populace. Urban growth has no properly managed in the city as shown by the study. The needs for planning process that can curtail, manage, and ultimately create satisfaction for its citizenry is recommended for Ibadan city.