Search Results (18,455)

The Old City of Sana’a, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, remains morphologically unclassified at the urban block scale, with understanding still grounded in descriptive narrative rather than quantitative data—leaving conservation decisions without a measurable, reproducible spatial evidence base. This study introduces a numerical taxonomy of 115 historic urban blocks built from four standardized morphometric indicators—area, compactness, elongation, and rectangularity—together with axially encoded orientation, reduced through Principal Component Analysis (74.7% variance, three components) and partitioned by K-means into five morphologically distinct block types ($n=36,29,19,16,15$). Kruskal–Wallis tests confirmed significant differentiation across all types for every rankable indicator (all $p<0.001$; Dunn’s post-hoc: 28 of 50 pairwise contrasts significant). Qibla deviation—a culturally specific measure of angular proximity to Mecca, deliberately withheld from clustering—emerged as the strongest discriminator between types (${\eta }_H^2=0.714$), showing that shape and orientation alone recover a coherent pattern in which one type’s mean orientation axis falls within $4.5^{\circ }$ of the Qibla axis. However, this statistical discriminator reflects the distinctiveness of a single type rather than a universal cultural organizing principle across the fabric. Types are distributed across all three historic zones rather than clustering spatially, and shape regularity shows no association with distance from the Great Mosque. Building on these signatures, a percentile-based screening instrument offers a reproducible, block-level morphometric baseline to help prioritize this UNESCO-listed site’s conservation under active conflict-related threat. Full article

Urban informality in amphibious territories represents a critical yet understudied dimension of contemporary urbanisation in the Global South. This article analyses the interrelations between spatial transformation, social equity, and environmental change in Las Flores, an informal settlement located between the Mallorquín Lagoon and the Magdalena River in Barranquilla, Colombia. Drawing on a mixed-methods approach combining GIS interpretation, participatory mapping, and in-depth interviews, the study examines how processes of informal territorialisation have reshaped both the physical landscape and the social fabric of this amphibious environment. Results indicate that the settlement has expanded progressively over the past two decades, occupying areas of the wetland previously covered by mangroves and natural vegetation. This expansion has been accompanied by environmental degradation, soil infilling, and declining water quality. Residents face persistent infrastructural deficits, limited access to education and healthcare, and increasing social fragmentation between the formal and informal sectors. Yet, the community also exhibits strong organisational capacity, adaptive livelihoods, and a deep sense of place that sustains local identity and resilience. These dynamics exemplify the paradox of amphibious life: coexistence with water as both a resource and a source of vulnerability. Building on these findings, the study develops an urban socio-ecological conceptualisation of Amphibious Justice, a framework for interpreting equity, recognition, and governance in hybrid territories where urbanisation and land–water dynamics intersect. The article proposes a framework of equitable amphibious urbanism that integrates environmental restoration, social inclusion, and participatory governance. The findings suggest that sustainability in such territories cannot be achieved through technocratic restoration or forced resettlement, but through co-produced strategies that recognise local knowledge, tenure security, and ecological stewardship. Ultimately, the case of Las Flores offers insights into how cities in the Global South can pursue just and adaptive coexistence with water amid growing climate and urban pressures. Full article

Amid the global energy transition, whether city-level energy policies can improve firm-level sustainability remains insufficiently understood. Using panel data on Chinese A-share listed firms from 2009 to 2023, this study examines the relationship between China’s New Energy Demonstration City (NEDC) Pilot Policy and corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance within a difference-in-differences framework. The results show that firms registered in pilot cities experienced greater post-designation improvements in ESG performance than firms in non-pilot cities, and this finding remains robust across a range of identification and sensitivity analyses. Channel analyses provide evidence consistent with green technological innovation and improved external financing conditions as two potential firm-level channels associated with the NEDC–ESG relationship. The estimated relationship is more pronounced among firms with greater analyst coverage, non-state-owned enterprises, and high-tech firms, as well as among firms located in the eastern and central regions and in areas with stronger pre-existing environmental regulation. Dimension-specific analyses yield positive and statistically significant estimates for environmental and governance performance, but not for social performance. Distance-band estimates further suggest localized spillovers to nearby non-pilot firms. These findings extend the evidence on the firm-level consequences of city-level energy-transition policies and highlight the roles of firm characteristics, local institutional conditions, and external information environments in shaping corporate sustainability responses. Full article

Urban well-being in China emerges from spatially uneven configurations of development intensity, environmental pressure, governance input, public-service capacity, land-use transformation, and urban–rural conditions. Using a balanced panel of 294 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2004 to 2023 (5880 city–year observations), this study combines spatial mapping, Local Moran’s I, Getis–Ord Gi*, and two-way fixed-effects (TWFE) models to examine how governance-related conditions and ecological and environmental pressure are associated with resident well-being. Prefecture-level cities are treated as urban–rural territorial governance units encompassing urban cores, peri-urban areas, and surrounding county-level jurisdictions. Spatial diagnostics reveal non-identical clustering of resource and environmental intensity (REI), government regulation and investment (GRI), ecological and environmental pressure (EEP), and resident well-being (RWB). REI is positively associated with EEP, and this association remains positive after excluding observations containing ordinary statistical completion. EEP is negatively associated with RWB in the full-sample TWFE and one-year-lagged specifications, but the association weakens in the 2014–2023 and restricted samples, indicating temporal and sample boundaries rather than a stable mediating mechanism. GRI shows contrasting cross-city and within-city patterns, consistent with a distinction between governance capacity and pressure-responsive adjustment. Dimension-level results further show that EEP is negatively associated with rural disposable income, whereas medical service capacity is positively associated with rural disposable income. Overall, the study provides a spatially grounded account of heterogeneous governance–environment–welfare relationships across Chinese prefecture-level territories. Full article

Land-use change directly and indirectly affects regional carbon storage by reshaping the composition and function of terrestrial ecosystems, and understanding this process is important for guiding land-use strategies toward carbon neutrality. This study used wilderness mapping to assess wilderness quality in Pu’er City and integrated the FLUS–InVEST model to analyze spatiotemporal changes in land use and carbon storage from 2000 to 2020 and to simulate land-use and carbon-storage outcomes for 2030. Based on the wilderness-mapping results, the study area was divided into four wilderness-quality classes, and four scenarios were established: No Protection, Limited Protection, Moderate Protection, and Strict Protection. From 2000 to 2020, cropland and forestland decreased, whereas grassland, water bodies, and built-up land increased. Carbon storage first increased slightly and then declined, with an overall decrease of approximately 1.87 × 10⁶ Mg C. Relative to the harmonized five-class 2020 FLUS baseline, the 2030 simulations showed a decline of approximately 1.46 × 10⁶ Mg C under the No Protection scenario, whereas the Moderate Protection scenario produced an increase of approximately 0.21 × 10⁶ Mg C. Under the baseline carbon-density parameters, the Moderate Protection scenario yielded the highest estimated total carbon storage among the four scenarios and resulted in a larger simulated built-up land area than the Strict Protection scenario. However, the relatively small difference in estimated total carbon storage between the Moderate and Strict Protection scenarios should be interpreted with consideration of carbon-density uncertainty. Full article

Rapid urban expansion reshapes urban morphology and the spatial organization of regional city systems. However, provincial-scale studies rarely integrate expansion dynamics, morphological change, and the evolution of morphological polycentricity, while stage-specific shifts in associated factors remain insufficiently understood. This study examines 16 prefecture-level cities in Shandong, China, from 2000 to 2020 to quantify urban expansion and morphological change, assess morphological polycentricity and the city-size hierarchy, and evaluate stage-specific factors associated with newly added built-up land. Built-up land was extracted from the Prolonged Artificial nighttime-light Dataset of China (PANDA-China) using a statistics-constrained bisection threshold method and evaluated against independent land-cover products, followed by complementary spatial, morphological, rank–size, and GeoDetector analyses. The results show that the built-up area increased from 1912.10 to 5646.04 km² in Shandong, while the annualized expansion rate declined from 7.09%/yr to 4.14%/yr despite persistently high absolute expansion after 2010. The dominant northeast–southwest axis remained stable, while urban forms became less compact and more complex. Secondary built-up nodes strengthened, whereas Jinan and Qingdao retained their dominant positions, indicating strengthening morphological polycentricity within a persistent dual-core structure. GeoDetector revealed a temporal shift from greater GDP prominence in 2000–2010 toward stronger population and road associations in 2010–2020. Initial built-up density remained the strongest explanatory factor, and factor interactions consistently exceeded individual explanatory power. These findings clarify the stage-dependent evolution of urban expansion and support differentiated land management and coordinated regional development. Full article

Currently, heating supply in rural areas of China still predominantly relies on conventional coal-fired heating, which suffers from poor thermal insulation performance and severe environmental pollution. To address the issues of energy waste and environmental pollution associated with traditional heating methods in rural China, this study selects a detached rural residential building in Jilin City as the research object. A building thermal load calculation model incorporating phase-change material (PCM) walls and dynamic simulation models for five clean heating coupling systems are developed using TRNSYS software, so as to analyze the influence of PCM placement at different positions within the wall assembly on the building’s thermal load, as well as the technical and economic performance of the five heating systems. The results show that, when PCM is placed on the inner side of the building envelope, the peak heating load is reduced from 15,234.2 W to 11,266.5 W, and the cumulative heating load drops from 33,744.3 kWh to 25,688.9 kWh. Compared with the conventional PV (photovoltaic) system, the PVT (photovoltaic–thermal) system achieves an 11% improvement in power generation efficiency. Among the five clean heating systems, the PVT–ground-source heat pump system exhibits the lowest energy consumption, while the PVT–biomass boiler system records the highest energy consumption. Based on life-cycle cost analysis, the PVT–biomass boiler system delivers the optimal economic performance, with a levelized annual cost of 9285.48 CNY. Full article

Walking plays an important role in improving public health and creating more livable cities. Participatory planning incorporates the local knowledge and preferences of residents, community organizations, and other stakeholders into the identification of walking routes. However, whether these routes are actually used after implementation remains insufficiently understood. Using Fukuoka, Japan, where community walking maps and routes have been developed through local participation for over two decades, this study combines these participatory walking routes with crowdsourced walking data, built environment indicators, and spatial analysis to substantiate their actual use and inform route improvement. The results show that these routes generally have higher walking usage than the citywide average, although substantial spatial differences remain. Hotspot routes were concentrated around waterfront areas, commercial districts, and public transport hubs, whereas coldspot routes were more common in suburban, mountainous, and island areas. Route usage was positively associated with street visibility, land-use diversity, population density, and public transport accessibility. Significant spatial dependence and heterogeneity further indicate that these associations vary across urban contexts. These findings highlight the value of local knowledge in identifying walking routes and the value of crowdsourced walking data in evaluating their actual use. Communities can build on this approach by involving local people in identifying walking routes and then using crowdsourced behavioral data to evaluate and refine them, supporting better walking environments. Full article

India is the most populous country in the world, with a rising urban population and witnessing a surge in noncommunicable diseases such as cancer that impose significant pressure on healthcare professionals, hospitals, and city planners. Over the last decade, India has pursued a vision to transform urban areas into smart cities and roll out digital infrastructure. Rapid urbanization coupled with an ageing population has accelerated demand for precision cancer care (PCC) solutions using advanced technologies such as digital twins (DT), leveraging the developing digital infrastructure in urban India. The fast evolution of e-health technologies and digital infrastructure outstrips healthcare professional readiness, creating challenges for DT adoption for PCC. Past studies on DT adoption primarily focused on organizational adoption and technical implementation challenges. This study addresses this research gap by leveraging the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) framework to investigate the factors that influence the adoption intention of DT for PCC in urban India. The article reports actionable insights and implications for researchers, healthcare professionals, top management of hospitals, smart city planners, government agencies, and urban policymakers. The study will assist stakeholders such as cancer care organizations, technology service providers, and city planners in planning, designing, and implementing DT for PCC. Full article

In an era prioritizing high-quality development and ecological civilization, optimal land resource allocation is vital for overcoming resource constraints and fostering new quality productive forces, with green technology innovation (GTI) serving as a key driver. Using data from 41 Yangtze River Delta cities (2003–2022), this study measures urban land resource misallocation (ULM) via the factor relative distortion coefficient and employs fixed effect, mediating effect, and spatial Durbin models to explore GTI’s impact and spatial spillovers on ULM. Results show a fluctuating yet rising ULM trend with significant spatial disparities. Land allocation efficiency is higher in central and southeastern coastal cities, while western and northern areas exhibit high-misallocation agglomeration. GTI significantly reduces ULM, particularly in non-resource-based cities, mainly through industrial structure optimization and agglomeration. Spatial spillover analysis reveals that GTI not only improves local land allocation but also positively influences neighboring regions via technology spillovers and industrial synergy. These findings suggest that incentive policies should strengthen GTI to enhance region-wide land utilization efficiency. Full article

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) deployment requires simultaneous coordination of spatially distributed biomass supply chains and nonlinear conversion technologies. This study develops an integrated multiscale optimization framework for SAF production in Mexico using second-generation sugarcane bagasse as the lignocellulosic resource for alcohol-intermediate production, followed by an intensified Alcohol-to-Jet (ATJ) upgrading stage targeting Mexico City Airport. A multi-period mixed-integer linear programming model optimizes harvest-area selection, biorefinery location, biomass allocation, inventory, production, and distribution, while an Aspen Plus model of an intensified Alcohol-to-Jet (ATJ) process with reactive distillation is optimized using Differential Evolution with Tabu List. In this framework, the ATJ block is not modeled as direct biomass-to-jet conversion. In the base case, ethanol is used as the representative alcohol intermediate. Therefore, the upstream biomass-to-alcohol section is represented through an effective bagasse-to-ethanol coefficient, whereas the Aspen Plus–DETL model explicitly describes the downstream ethanol-to-ATJ-range hydrocarbon blendstock upgrading section through dehydration, ethylene oligomerization, hydrogenation, and fractionation. Process yield, production cost, environmental impact, and feasible capacity are fed back into the supply chain model, making process performance endogenous rather than fixed. Results show that the decoupled supply chain baseline favors large production capacities, reducing TAC from approximately 1010 to 340 USD/tSAF and system-level EI99 from 1.110 to 1.059 kPt EI99/tSAF as capacity increases from 80,000 to 490,000 tSAF/year. This corresponds to an environmental reduction of approximately 5.2%. In contrast, isolated ATJ optimization exhibits nonlinear scale-dependent behavior, with process-only EI99 decreasing from approximately 1.70 to 0.55 kPt EI99/tSAF. The integrated framework identifies an intermediate capacity region of 120,000–300,000 tSAF/year, with TAC values of approximately 3400–6800 USD/tSAF and total EI99 values of approximately 0.78–1.31 kPt EI99/tSAF. The integrated base case at 200,000 tSAF/year has an EI99 value of approximately 1.063 kPt EI99/tSAF. Full article

Land subsidence in coastal reclamation areas has emerged as one of the critical hidden hazards for coastal cities. This paper presents an integrated InSAR and coastline-change framework for land subsidence monitoring and driving-factor analysis in coastal reclamation cities. Taking the Fangchenggang City, China, as the study area, we utilized 266 scenes of Sentinel-1A SAR images (2016–2025) from the European Space Agency (ESA) and applied time-series SBAS-InSAR to obtain a 10-year time-series monitoring result of land subsidence, with cross-validation against PS-InSAR showing an RMSE below 4 mm at four checkpoints. Furthermore, influencing factors were analyzed by integrating data on coastline changes, precipitation, and groundwater indicators. The conclusions of this paper are as follows: (1) Seven distinct land subsidence funnels in Fangchenggang City from 2016 to 2025 were identified for the first time. Spatially, land subsidence exhibits significant heterogeneity, primarily concentrated in the coastal reclamation areas of the Qisha Peninsula and the Yuwan Peninsula, the maximum subsidence rate reached as high as −163.53 ± 4.90 mm/yr. Temporally, the subsidence rate in the study area shows a gradual deceleration trend over time. (2) The coastline change results from 1964 to 2025 reveal a three-stage temporal characteristic: the land area increased by 2.23 ± 4.51 km², 14.28 ± 6.19 km², and 23.31 ± 4.51 km² during the periods of 1964–1995, 1995–2008, and 2008–2025, respectively. The time-series InSAR results and coastline change results demonstrate that coastal reclamation is the primary factor contributing to land subsidence in this study area. (3) Apart from land reclamation, driving factors such as precipitation and groundwater indicators also show a slight correlation with land subsidence. Full article

Urban parks can act as refuges for biodiversity, but their ecological value depends on the structure and composition of the vegetation they contain. This study evaluated the relationship between vegetation attributes and bird diversity in urban parks of metropolitan Arequipa, Peru, while considering daily variation across three time periods. Vegetation and bird communities were jointly characterized in 12 urban parks using point counts, alpha-diversity metrics, mixed models, multivariate ordinations, taxonomic beta diversity, and functional diversity metrics. We recorded 21 bird species and 17,591 individuals in 291 surveys. Bird richness responded mainly to integrated gradients of park size, tree-shrub structure, and shrub-herbaceous vegetation cover, whereas Shannon diversity increased with the total number of plant families and declined toward the afternoon. Bird composition was associated with vegetation gradients, and taxonomic beta diversity was high and dominated by species turnover. Floristically dissimilar parks also supported more differentiated bird communities. Abundance-weighted functional indices responded to the shrub-herbaceous gradient. These findings indicate that vegetation structure and floristic quality are key to enhancing the ecological value of urban parks in arid cities. Full article

Urban public spaces matter for young people, yet how youth visually engage with the spatial elements of Indian cities remains largely unstudied. This exploratory study uses screen-based eye tracking to examine how 43 design-discipline students (aged 18–29) allocate visual attention across urban public space scenes in Jaipur, India. Thirty photographic stimuli sampling five Lynch-derived spatial elements—edge, landmark, path, plaza, and transit node—across six public spaces were each analyzed through four semantic areas of interest (built form, human and vehicular activity, natural elements, and circulation), using fixation count, total fixation duration, time to first fixation, and visit count. Attention was allocated unevenly: built form and human activity dominated the youth gaze, while natural elements consistently drew less focal attention—interpreted as restorative background rather than low importance. Landmarks anchored attention most strongly and transit nodes least. Notably, socially active and visually complex elements did not capture the gaze earliest but held it longest, suggesting that what sustains youth attention is dissociable from what initially attracts it. Inferential tests are treated as exploratory given the repeated-measures design. As the first AOI-based account of youth visual attention in Indian heritage public space, this study offers a transferable protocol and preliminary, exploratory directions for youth-responsive design—including visual anchoring at neglected transit nodes and the use of greenery for ambient comfort rather than focal emphasis. Full article

With urban rail transit networks gradually entering a mature stage of development, whether newly added lines and stations can still improve local labour market outcomes remains an important question in transport planning and urban regeneration research. This paper examines light rail transit expansion in three mature UK cities: Manchester, Sheffield, and Nottingham. Using MSOA-level panel data from 2013 to 2024, this study applies a Difference-in-Differences (DID) approach to evaluate the impact of light rail transit expansion on local labour market vulnerability. MSOAs intersecting with the 500-m buffer zones of newly opened light rail stations are defined as the treatment group, while MSOAs not directly affected by light rail expansion are used as the control group. The Claimant Count is used as a proxy for welfare dependency and labour-market vulnerability. The results show that light rail transit expansion significantly reduces the Claimant Count in treated areas, with an estimated decline of approximately 7.52–7.56%. This finding remains robust after adding demographic, socio-economic, and built environment controls, applying MSOA-level clustered standard errors, implementing PSM-DID, and conducting placebo tests. Mechanism analysis further shows that light rail expansion is associated with changes in the functional structure of station areas, including increases in overall POI density and service-oriented facilities, while manufacturing and production-related facilities decline. These findings suggest that light rail expansion may reduce local unemployment-related welfare dependency by improving employment accessibility, alleviating spatial mismatch, and promoting service-sector agglomeration. This study provides new empirical evidence on the socio-economic effects of light rail expansion in mature UK cities. Full article