World tourism dynamics are in constant change, as well as they are deeply shaping the trajectories of cities. The “call effect” for having the World Heritage status has boosted tourism in many cities. The large number of visitors and the side effects, such as the overcrowding of central spaces, are arousing the need to develop and protect heritage assets. Hence, the analysis of tourist spatial behaviour is critical for tackling the needs of touristified cities correctly. In this article, individual visitor spatiotemporal trajectories are reconstructed along with the urban network using thousands of geotagged Flickr photos taken by visitors in the historic centre of the World Heritage City of Toledo (Spain). A process of trajectory reconstruction using advanced GIS techniques has been implemented. The spatial behaviour has been used to classify the tourist sites offered on the city’s official tourist map, as well as to identify the association with the land uses. Results bring new knowledge to understand visitor spatial behaviour and new visions about the influence of the urban environment and its uses on the visitor spatial behaviour. Our findings illustrate how tourist attractions and the location of mixed commercial and recreational uses shape the visitor spatial behaviour. Overflowed streets and shadow areas underexplored by visitors are pinpointed.

The present study aimed to investigate different socioeconomic factors as well as the perceptions and travel behaviors associated with urban sprawl in two cities of different sizes in Iran, as a developing country in the Middle East. Four Weighted Least Squares (WLS) regression models were developed for Hamedan and Nowshahr, as examples of large and small cities in Iran, respectively. The findings showed different correlations related to urban sprawl between Iranian cities and high-income countries in terms of socioeconomic and travel behavior determinants. Urban sprawl around home in Hamedan was positively correlated with the number of cars and driving licenses in households, the use of a private car for trips, and less use of public transport. Urban sprawl around homes in Nowshahr was related to an increased number of cars, the use of private cars for non-commuting trips, less sense of belonging to the neighborhood, and lower income. Additionally, urban sprawl around workplaces was correlated with main daily activity, number of non-commuting trips, mode of choice for non-commuting, and residential location choice in Hamedan a swell as monthly income, daily shopping area, frequency of public transport use, quality of recreational facilities, length of time for living in the current home, and commuting distance in Nowshahr.

The original goal of high-speed rail (HSR) was to link large metropolitan regions 400–600 km apart. Recently, however, intermediate ‘ex-metropolitan’ HSR stations have also been created in suburban areas/cities within metropolitan regions (up to 100 km from the metropolitan centre). This study takes a close look at nine such ‘ex-metropolitan’ stations around Madrid (Guadalajara, Segovia, and Toledo), London (Stratford, Ebbsfleet, and Ashford), and Paris (Charles-de-Gaulle, Marne-la-Vallée — Chessy, and Massy), to understand their territorial and local impacts and draw possible lessons for the California High Speed Rail project.

The case of Madrid is used as empirical focus to propose a new classification of the metropolitan region urban medium-sized or secondary city system. Based on a methodology that integrates the morphological (size, location and socioeconomic history) and the functional dimensions (centrality index, advanced producer services (APS) concentration and commuting), the article compares new employment centres—cities with metropolitan origin—and historical cities—previously free standing cities, progressively integrated in metropolitan processes. The results show a distinction between (1) metropolitan cities, with a traditional intermediation role, and (2) metropolitan intermediary cities, that include an additional quality to their traditional intermediation role, that of concentrating APS. The article confirms that some medium-sized cities—metropolitan intermediary cities—linked to different origins and up to 100 km away from the metropolis are more visible in the global scene and are establishing an emerging global multicore-network at a metropolitan-regional scale.