Urban Science

Historic metropolises face the dual challenge of accommodating contemporary urban development while conserving cultural heritage and managing land consumption. This study compares land use transitions in Xi’an, China, and Rome, Italy, from 2000 to 2020 using the 30 m GLC_FCS30D land cover dataset. By integrating land use composition analysis, transition matrices, intensity analysis, and source contribution analysis, this study examines the magnitude, temporal intensity, and dominant pathways of land conversion and provides comparative insights into differentiated transition patterns under contrasting urban development contexts. Both cities experienced built expansion and crop loss, with crop serving as the dominant source of newly developed built. Net built area gain was approximately 915 km² in Xi’an and 235 km² in Rome, while crop supplied approximately 99% and more than 95% of newly developed built, respectively, across individual intervals. Xi’an exhibited a rapid, temporally fluctuating expansion pattern, with particularly active built area gains during 2000–2005 and 2015–2020, whereas Rome showed a gradual adjustment pattern characterized by lower and generally declining change intensity. These findings indicate that comparable historical significance does not necessarily lead to uniform land use transition pathways and highlight the importance of context-specific land governance strategies for historic metropolitan cities.

Gender-based restrictions in sacred heritage spaces challenge inclusive urban tourism planning. This study examines digital access at the Silver Ubosot in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where women cannot enter the sacred interior. An on-site quasi-experiment with 135 first-time female visitors compared VR360, immersive virtual reality (iVR), and AI-driven iVR. Compared with VR360, both immersive approaches were associated with significantly higher presence, engagement, and perceived substitution, but AI-iVR did not significantly outperform iVR. Substitution scores remained below the scale midpoint across conditions, indicating limited acceptance of virtual experiences as replacements for physical visitation. Visit intention did not differ significantly between groups. Parallel mediation analysis identified significant direct effects of both immersive approaches on substitution, but no significant indirect effects through presence or engagement. Greater immersion therefore does not necessarily make virtual access an adequate substitute for physical visitation. Digital access should be selected according to visitor needs, cultural protocols, interpretive goals, and operational capacity rather than technological sophistication alone. Less resource-intensive approaches may offer a practical option for providing digital access, while the additional benefits of AI-supported systems require further evaluation. Overall, digital access offers a complementary approach to experiencing restricted sacred heritage rather than a replacement for physical visitation.

Logistics infrastructure plays a strategic role in urban-regional connectivity, territorial development, supply chain integration, and the spatial organization of freight flows in emerging economies. However, the socioeconomic and territorial performance associated with logistics complexes is not automatic or homogeneous, since it depends on institutional capacity, linkages with local business networks, public investment, logistics services, and the development conditions of each territory. This study develops, applies, and examines a potentially transferable composite-index framework to assess the relative territorial and socioeconomic performance of nine logistics complexes in Colombia as part of broader urban and regional systems. The methodology compares a 2019 baseline with a 2024 follow-up observation, using independently compiled raw data from official and institutional sources. Economic, business, fiscal, social, labor, and distributive variables are transformed to a base of 100 and aggregated using an equal-weight benchmark specification, while PCA, Shannon entropy, Spearman correlation, Winsorization, and leave-one-indicator-out checks are used only as exploratory robustness and sensitivity exercises. Monetary variables are reported in nominal Colombian pesos and are therefore interpreted as changes in observed economic or fiscal scale, not as real welfare gains. The results show heterogeneous relative performance across the cases: the Bogotá Free Trade Zone and the Caribbean Logistics Complex record the highest values, while the Coffee Region shows no aggregate improvement after reviewing fiscal and health information. The main contribution of this study is to provide an adaptable decision-support tool for urban-regional planning, territorial performance assessment, infrastructure monitoring, and policy discussion in emerging economies, without claiming experimental causality.