Mining activities and associated actions cause land-use/land-cover (LULC) changes across the world. The objective of this study were to evaluate the historical impacts of mining activities on surface biophysical characteristics, and for the first time, to predict the future changes in pattern of vegetation cover and land surface temperature (LST). In terms of the utilized data, satellite images of Landsat, and meteorological data of Sungun mine in Iran, Athabasca oil sands in Canada, Singrauli coalfield in India and Hambach mine in Germany, were used over the period of 1989-2019. In the first step, the spectral bands of Landsat images were employed to extract historical LULC changes in the study areas based on the homogeneity distance classification algorithm (HDCA). Thereafter, a CA-Markov model was used to predict the future of LULC changes based on the historical changes. In addition, LST and vegetation cover maps were calculated using the single channel algorithm, and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), respectively. In the second step, the trends of LST and NDVI variations in different LULC change types and over different time periods were investigated. Finally, a CA-Markov model was used to predict the LST and NDVI maps and the trend of their variations in future. The results indicated that the forest and green space cover was reduced from 9.95 in 1989 to 5.9 Km(2) in 2019 for Sungun mine, from 42.14 in 1999 to 33.09 Km(2) in 2019 for Athabasca oil sands, from 231.46 in 1996 to 263.95 Km(2) in 2016 for Singrauli coalfield, and from 180.38 in 1989 to 133.99 Km(2) in 2017 for Hambach mine, as a result of expansion and development of of mineral activities. Our findings about Sungun revealed that the areal coverage of forest and green space will decrease to 15% of the total study area by 2039, resulting in reduction of the mean NDVI by almost 0.06 and increase of mean standardized LST from 0.52 in 2019 to 0.61 in 2039. our results further indicate that for Athabasca oil sands (Singrauli coalfield, Hambach mine), the mean values of standardized LST and NDVI will change from 0.5 (0.44 and 0.4) and 0.38 (0.38, 0.35) in 2019 (2016, 2017) to 0.57 (0.5, 0.47) and 0.33 (0.32, 0.28), in 2039 (2036, 2035), respectively. This can be mainly attributed to the increasing mining activities in the past as well as future years. The discussion and conclusions presented in this study can be of interest to local planners, policy makers, and environmentalists in order to observe the damages brought to the environment and the society in a larger picture.

Urban strategies, representing stories of possible futures, often intervene in already established local communities and therefore call for a considerate urban intervention. This article utilises the ideas of Henri Lefebvre's socially produced space and of literature on stories involved in planning. Our empirical example tells a story of urban densification aspirations for an inner-city neighbourhood in Tampere, Finland. By combining the interviews of local people and planners with policy documents, we argue that planners' stories pay too little attention to the place and to local stories. Planners' abstract visions of the future and local stories building on lived experiences both draw meanings from the same place but have very different intentions. In our case, the consultation of the project started out wrong because the planners neglected a neighbourhood thick in symbolic meanings and the local stories' power in resistance. By understanding the place as polyphonic in its foundation, planners could learn about the symbolic elements and reasons for people's place attachment, and thus end up re-writing the place together. Urban interventions such as urban densification should connect to the place as part of its polyphonic historical continuum and acknowledge the residents' place attachments.

In this article, I analyze the politics of urbanization and competitiveness-led state spatial transformations through political narratives. By analyzing empirical material, I search for ways of reasoning and rationalities that disclose the dynamics of the depoliticization and politicization of different spatial transformations of urbanization. Based on extensive interviews, I argue that a general understanding of urbanization as an external, global inevitability and as a force prevails among political elites. This key rationality and other sedimented knowledge duly opens up new political debates on the proper political management of urbanization and national adaptation. The order of reasoning is clear: the political elites argue that the perceived inevitability, common good and state of crisis necessitate national spatial transformations in order to secure the competitiveness of the state. As a result, new spatial hierarchies are forming as an adaptive strategy.

Good knowledge on how increasing urbanization affects biodiversity is essential in order to preserve biodiversity in urban green spaces. We examined how urban development affects species richness and total abundance of butterflies as well as the occurrence and abundance of individual species within the Helsinki metropolitan area in Northern Europe. Repeated butterfly counts in 167 separate 1-km-long transects within Helsinki covered the entire urbanization gradient, quantified by human population density and the proportion of built-up area (within a 50-m buffer surrounding each butterfly transect). We found consistently negative effects of both human population density and built-up area on all studied butterfly variables, though butterflies responded markedly more negatively to increasing human population density than to built-up area. Responses in butterfly species richness and total abundance showed higher variability in relation to proportion of built-up area than to human density, especially in areas of high human density. Increasing human density negatively affected both the abundance and the occurrence of 47% of the 19 most abundant species, whereas, for the proportion of built-up area, the corresponding percentages were 32% and 32%, respectively. Species with high habitat specificity and low mobility showed higher sensitivity to urbanization (especially high human population density) than habitat generalists and mobile species that dominated the urban butterfly communities. Our results suggest that human population density provides a better indicator of urbanization effects on butterflies compared to the proportion of built-up area. The generality of this finding should be verified in other contexts and taxonomic groups.

Cities in different parts of the world are going through intensive transformations based on institutional efforts to govern urban spaces and populations in the face of global environmental change and neoliberalization of governance. This essay examines inequalities and interconnectivities in urban governance and justice, drawing on a case-study of three, socially-differentiated sectors of the city of Villahermosa, Mexico, between 2011 and 2016. My analysis contributes to a multi-dimensional approach toward justice, and the cognate fields of right to the city, and segregation and inequality, that encompasses: (1) (re)distribution of residents’ exposure to risks and access to services; (2) recognition of the causes and consequences of risks and vulnerabilities; (3) fields of representation available for different residents; and (4) residents’ capabilities to recover from disasters and achieve everyday well-being within the existing urban governance and service provision structures. Instead of conceptualizing segregated cities as composed of isolated worlds, I argue that it is only possible to understand how the prevailing forms of governance produce multifaceted inequalities through a relational analysis of how residents from different parts of the city interact with the authorities and with each other. The study shows how residents’ tactics to accommodate, reconfigure and contest institutional endeavors to place them in hierarchical positions link to their differentiated ways of constructing urban space.

Municipalities across Finland are promoting wooden multistorey construction as a low-carbon alternative for building construction. However, do attitudes towards implementing these alternatives stem from the opportunity to reduce carbon emissions or because these alternatives are perceived to improve local economies? This research employs a survey to collects the attitudes of Finnish municipal civil servants towards implementing wooden multistorey buildings in their municipalities. The respondents represent a mix of administrative professionals such as planners, real estate managers, building inspectors and other strategic managerial professionals (n = 273, 8% response rate). Their responses reflect views from approximately 8% of all municipal civil servants working on municipal land use and planning issues during 2019. The findings reveal attitudes towards implementing wooden multistorey buildings are engendered by fulfilling ecological development, economic development, technical quality and output efficiency goals. Furthermore, comparing municipal planners to other municipal administrators reveals dissimilar planning logics. Municipal planners holistically prioritize the project's ecological and economic development outcomes. Other administrators chiefly prioritize economic development outcomes. Hence, some municipal administrators may value wooden multistorey construction primarily as an activity to improve municipal vitality rather than as a holistic spatial planning solution. Future research should identify whether these divergences lead to planning tensions within municipal administrations.

In the last two decades, there has been an exponential increase in application of public participation GIS (PPGIS) methods to urban green and blue space (UGBS) planning. However, integrating different elements of environ-mental justice in PPGIS research is still in its infancy, especially in regards to the deep and less visible issues related to recognition and participation of different groups in local green space planning and management. Here we present a new method for assessing perceived recognition and procedural justice with respect to UGBS in the Amager island of Copenhagen, Denmark. We collected survey data together with 2187 place-based values and preferences from 298 local residents. Using Exploratory Factor Analysis, we classified respondents in four clusters representing low to high perceived recognition and procedural justice. We then examined how these clusters relate to socio-demographics and the spatial distribution of mapped values and preferences. Results indicated no significant differences in terms of income and age between clusters. However, there was clear variation in the spatial distribution and type of values and preferences respondents from different clusters assigned, particularly for those who feel unrecognized and do not participate in local environmental decision -making compared to all other groups. In addition, gender had a significant effect on the perceptions of recog-nition and procedure. Female respondents scored lower on procedural justice than male and mapped landscape values and preferences closer to home than males, thus suggesting that gender inequalities can be deeply embedded in everyday public spaces and practices. Planning inclusive and environmentally just UGBS requires not only incorporating such gender perspectives, but a more flexible, intersectional and relational understanding of space that reflects the everyday needs of different and marginalized groups.

Objective To estimate resource use and the costs of eye injuries in 2011-2012 in the Helsinki University Eye Hospital (HUEH), which covers 1.6 million people in Southern Finland. Methods This population-based study consisted of all new patients (1,151) with eye injuries in one year. The data were from hospital records, internal HUEH accountancy, and prospectively from questionnaires. The costs of direct health care, transportation, and lost productivity were obtained and estimated for the follow-up period of three months. The estimated future costs were discussed. Results During the follow-up, the total cost was 2,899,000 Euros (EUR) (= EUR 1,870,300/one million population), including lost productivity (EUR 1,415,000), direct health care (EUR 1,244,000), and transportation (EUR 240,000). The resources used included 6,902 days of lost productivity, 2,436 admissions and transportations, 314 minor procedures, 313 inpatient days, 248 major surgeries, and 86 radiological images. One open globe injury was the costliest (EUR 13,420/patient), but contusions had the highest overall cost (EUR 1,019,500), due to their high occurrence and number of follow-ups. Conclusions Eye injuries cause a major burden through high costs of direct health care and lost productivity: the imminent costs were EUR 1,870,000/one million population, and the future costs were estimated to EUR 3,741,400/one million population. Prevention remains the main factor to consider for better cost-efficiency.

There is a growing need to simulate the effect of urban planning on both local climate and greenhouse gas emissions. Here, a new urban surface carbon dioxide (CO2) flux module for the Surface Urban Energy and Water Balance Scheme is described and evaluated using eddy covariance observations at two sites in Helsinki in 2012. The spatial variability and magnitude of local-scale anthropogenic and biogenic CO2 flux components at high spatial (250 m x 250 m) and temporal (hourly) resolution are examined by combining high-resolution (down to 2 m) airborne lidar-derived land use data and mobility data to account for people's movement. Urban effects are included in the biogenic components parameterized using urban eddy covariance and chamber observations. Surface Urban Energy and Water Balance Scheme reproduces the seasonal and diurnal variability of the CO2 flux well. Annual totals deviate 3% from observations in the city center and 2% in a suburban location. In the latter, traffic is the dominant CO2 source but summertime vegetation partly offsets traffic-related emissions. In the city center, emissions from traffic and human metabolism dominate and the vegetation effect is minor due to the low proportion of vegetation surface cover (22%). Within central Helsinki, human metabolism accounts for 39% of the net local-scale emissions and together with road traffic is to a large extent responsible for the spatial variability of the emissions. Annually, the biogenic emissions and sinks are in near balance and thus the effect of vegetation on the carbon balance is small in this high-latitude city.