Search Results (1,612)

Urban surface water networks are closely associated with the urban land surface thermal environment, but the spatial non-stationarity of their relationships with land surface temperature (LST) remains insufficiently understood. This study examined relationships between water network indicators and LST in Fuzhou. Following scale-sensitivity analysis to select the analytical grid scale, this study used global correlation and regression analyses to identify key indicators and applied multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) to examine spatial non-stationarity in their relationships with LST. Based on the selected 150 m grid scale, the results showed the following: (1) Water coverage ratio (WCR), water body shape index (SI), and water network density (D) were retained as key explanatory variables, with WCR showing the strongest negative association with LST. (2) The relationships between water network indicators and LST showed spatial non-stationarity. WCR showed the most stable negative local association with LST, especially in built-up areas with higher background heat loads, whereas the local associations of SI and D were more context-dependent. These findings suggest that thermal-environment-oriented planning for urban surface water networks should prioritize water coverage while considering water network structure, water body morphology, the surrounding built environment and land cover conditions. These associations can inform spatially differentiated planning of urban surface water networks in comparable subtropical coastal cities. Full article

Urban flood resilience depends not only on the scale of infrastructure investment, but also on whether such investment can be translated into observable flood-mitigation outcomes. Focusing on the transformation from infrastructure response to flood outcomes, this study uses panel data for 21 prefecture-level cities in Guangdong Province from 2016 to 2022. Annual maximum monthly precipitation is used to represent rainfall pressure, stormwater pipe density to represent infrastructure scale, and the number of reported flood events to represent the outcome variable. A two-way fixed-effects Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) model is employed. The results show that, in the full sample, rainfall pressure is positively, but not significantly, associated with reported flood occurrence, while stormwater pipe density does not exhibit a stable negative moderating effect. The main conclusion remains broadly unchanged when alternative outcome and precipitation indicators are used, when pipe density is lagged by one period, and when a conservative sample is adopted. Extended analysis provides only limited weak negative evidence for Pearl River Delta cities, and this evidence is not robust across alternative specifications. The findings indicate that pipe length per unit of built-up area primarily reflects the scale of infrastructure provision and cannot be directly equated with the operational performance of the drainage system. By separating response inputs from outcome performance, this study reveals the conditional nature of the transformation from infrastructure scale to operational performance in urban flood resilience research and provides empirical support for a shift from infrastructure expansion toward performance-oriented and integrated governance in high-density coastal cities. Full article

Rapid urbanization has generated substantial economic growth but has also intensified pressure on the environment. China’s New-Type Urbanization Policy (NTU) was designed to promote people-centered, smart governance, and green development. However, whether the NTU policy has improved the coordination between urbanization and environmental quality remains insufficiently examined. Using panel data in China from 2010 to 2021, this study constructs an urbanization–environment coupling coordination degree index based on satellite-derived China’s High-resolution Eco-Environmental Quality dataset and applies a continuous difference-in-differences model to evaluate the impact of NTU policy intensity. The results show that greater NTU policy intensity is associated with significant improvements in urbanization–environment coordination after controlling for pre-existing socioeconomic, ecological, and geographical differences across cities. This finding is consistent with a corrective effect: rather than simply expanding urban scale, NTU appears to help offset the misalignment between urban development and environmental quality. Conditional analyses further suggest that the estimated policy effect is more readily observed where industrial structures are more advanced and local attention to ecological governance is stronger, indicating that these conditions shape the extent to which NTU can be translated into coordination gains. Heterogeneity analyses show that the estimates are statistically more robust in eastern, coastal, and non-resource-based cities, while the comparison across green-coverage groups remains inconclusive because the low-coverage group has a larger but less precisely estimated coefficient. Overall, the findings suggest that NTU has corrective potential, but that its effect is conditional rather than uniform across cities and depends on local governance, industrial, and ecological circumstances. Full article

Coastal cities protected by artificial structures are vulnerable to wave overtopping during typhoons, where flooding can occur even when the still water level stays below the structure crest. This study develops EurOtop-based wave overtopping modules within the cross-scale SCHISM-WWM modelling framework and applies the coupled model to Marine City, Busan, South Korea. At each time step, the module extracts the local water level and wave conditions at a coastal-structure pair-node, computes the overtopping or overflow discharge from the EurOtop formulae while accounting for wave direction, roughness reduction, and crest-width transfer losses, and injects it as a landward source term for inland flood propagation. The framework is evaluated against two typhoon events. For Typhoon Hinnamnor in 2022, comparison with the CCTV-based overtopping record reproduces the timing and intensity of overtopping. For Typhoon Chaba in 2016, validation against field-surveyed inundation marks shows that the modelled maximum inundation depth matches the observed spatial pattern and the survey-point observations to within a mean absolute difference of about 12 cm. These results demonstrate the framework’s applicability to overtopping-induced compound flooding in urbanised coastal cities and, since it is fully coupled within the SCHISM-WWM codebase, its capacity to incorporate further drivers such as pluvial and fluvial flooding. Full article

The use of Satellite-Derived Bathymetry (SDB) constitutes an efficient, cost-effective, time-saving, and scalable approach for generating high-resolution shallow-water bathymetry. In this context, SDB can be proven to be a valuable method for supporting bathymetric surveys of submerged archaeological sites. This paper focuses on the ancient city of Asopos, located on the coast of the modern village of Plytra in Laconia, SE Peloponnese, Greece. The site occupies an extensive coastal area characterised by numerous ancient remains and geomorphological features distributed along the shoreline and within the nearshore zone. To achieve the objective of producing a very-high-resolution SDB map, one empirical and four machine learning approaches were evaluated: (a) the quadratic Stumpf band-ratio model; (b) Categorical Boosting; (c) Random Forest; (d) Extreme Gradient Boosting, with all models trained using the same three optimal spectral band ratios; and (e) the CatBoost model trained using principal components derived from a Principal Component Analysis of the multispectral dataset. These approaches were developed using multispectral WorldView-2 imagery and 208 in situ depth measurements as ground truth, collected across a different range of depths and distances from the coastline. Pan-sharpened imagery was used for visual interpretation. Model accuracy was assessed using an additional validation dataset of 57 depth measurements. This combined approach demonstrates that VHR SDB mapping of the nearshore zone is highly effective when employing three band ratios involving the blue, green, and yellow bands, achieving a root mean squared error of less than 1 m, and can therefore serve as a reliable method for shallow-water geoarchaeological investigations. Full article

Rapid urbanisation and climate change intensify heat, drought, wind exposure, and salinity risks in arid coastal cities, while simultaneously increasing dependence on trees for microclimate regulation and public-space quality. However, integrated evidence linking taxonomic concentration, spatial structure, tree dimensions, and current vitality remains scarce for Central Asian cities on the Caspian coast. This study characterised 13,951 trees across 10 green spaces in Aktau, Kazakhstan, belonging to 10 species, 10 genera, and 7 families, using a comprehensive inventory and an integrated taxonomic, spatial, and vitality framework. Stand density ranged from 27.1 to 510.3 trees ha⁻¹. Ailanthus altissima and Platycladus orientalis accounted for 42.74% and 23.13% of all trees, respectively, and together formed 65.87% of the inventory. Two species, two genera, and one family exceeded the indicative 10/20/30 diversification thresholds. The Shannon index ranged from 1.19 to 2.00, Pielou evenness from 0.52 to 0.87, and the share of the dominant species from 24.2% to 63.2%. Of all trees, 12,205 (87.48%) were classified as in good condition, but three sites accounted for 83.0% of all satisfactory or unsatisfactory trees. Maclura pomifera and Gleditsia triacanthos had the highest proportions of trees in good condition (96.3% and 94.2%), whereas Catalpa speciosa had the lowest (66.0%). The inventory, therefore, reveals a favourable current condition, but limited taxonomic redundancy and localised management hotspots. The findings provide a baseline for climate-resilient urban landscape planning based on gradual diversification, site-specific irrigation and soil management, control of invasive recruitment, and repeated monitoring of condition, growth, and mortality. Full article

High-density commercial areas in northern monsoon coastal cities face dual microclimate challenges: hot summers and harsh winters. This study aims to optimize year-round outdoor thermal comfort (Physiological Equivalent Temperature, PET) by exploring morphological optimization strategies in Qingdao. Combining field observations with ENVI-met simulations, we evaluated the impact of building density, street aspect ratio (H/W), and orientation. The results reveal a fundamental “seasonal mechanism conflict.” In summer, a 45% density point-tower configuration with a deep canyon profile (H/W ≈ 2.5) maximizes shade and sea-breeze ventilation. Conversely, in winter, a 35% density enclosed topology with an open profile (H/W ≈ 1.6) optimally blocks cold northwesterly monsoons and increases solar gain. To resolve these conflicting seasonal requirements, we propose a dynamic morphological equilibrium. We recommend adjusting the H/W ratio dynamically between 1.6 and 2.5 and adopting a southeast block orientation of 15–30° to synergistically guide summer breezes while blocking winter winds. Ultimately, this study shifts the design paradigm from static parameters to dynamic seasonal trade-offs, offering actionable morphological guidelines for climate-resilient built environments. Full article

Rapid urbanization presents a fundamental challenge to global sustainable development, as urban expansion increasingly conflicts with resource constraints, ecological carrying capacity, and carbon emission mandates. Serving as a highly spatially heterogeneous laboratory, China offers a critical context for embedding green development into urban efficiency assessments. This study reconceptualizes new urbanization efficiency (NUE) through a multidimensional framework encompassing resource inputs, coordinated development processes, and sustainable outcomes. Using a panel of 281 prefecture-level cities, we evaluated NUE via a remote-sensing-constrained Super-SBM model, utilizing LISA time paths and an interpretable spatial machine learning framework (GWR-XGBoost-SHAP) to unpack its spatiotemporal dynamics. Key findings indicate: (1) China’s NUE exhibited a fluctuating upward trajectory, transitioning from an east-high/west-low to a south-high/north-low spatial pattern. (2) Spatiotemporal analysis revealed strong spatial inertia and profound path dependency in North China, characterizing it as a persistent low-value basin, whereas southeastern coastal cities demonstrated dynamic, path-breaking trajectories. (3) While green development intensity, industrial upgrading, and technological innovation emerged as primary drivers, they operate through complex nonlinear mechanisms. Specifically, green development and innovation exhibit threshold-triggered synergies, population agglomeration acts as a nonlinear amplifier, and external openness presents context-dependent negative interactions. These findings refine NUE measurement methodologies and provide a transferable analytical framework to inform differentiated, place-based urbanization policies for regions navigating the friction between urban growth and ecological limits. Full article

The paper addresses the intersection between modern built heritage preservation and Climate-Aided Design (CADe) processes in fragile coastal Mediterranean contexts. The study focuses on the city of Beirut in Lebanon, part of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME) region and considered a climate change hotspot facing extreme challenges. Rapid urbanization and socio-political instability, especially during the twentieth century, have undermined the city’s ability to mitigate and adapt to future climate change scenarios. Moreover, Beirut’s modern built heritage faces a constant threat of demolition due to the absence of protective legislation, compounded by aggressive real-estate development ambitions. The hypothesis is that the integration of climatic data and regenerative design with modern cultural heritage classification frameworks can aid the preservation process, drive a more adaptive and inclusive approach to urban regeneration, and inform legislative integration of climate adaptation in conservation frameworks. To test this hypothesis, a multi-scalar case-study-based methodology is adopted using a combination of digital tools to assess and analyze the current and future impacts of climate change on two main case studies. First, the St. George Hotel & Bay, one of the first reinforced concrete recreational buildings in the city, was built during the French Mandate (1920–1946) and is vulnerable to sea-level rise, flooding, and demolition. Second, the Beirut City Center “The Egg”, a Brutalist structure built during Beirut’s modernist “golden era”, which is prone to structural deterioration and demolition. The main objective is to highlight 20th-century built heritage as part of Beirut’s spatial narrative worthy of conservation and rehabilitation by analyzing their capability to adapt to, mitigate, or benefit from future environmental risk. Ultimately, the study explores their potential to catalyze climate-resilient urban regeneration practices in the city. Results show that the integration of current and future forecast environmental analyses informed early preservation and intervention decision-making stages to position 20th-century modern built heritage as an asset to climate action in addition to being a socio-cultural and economic asset. Full article

Amid rising global economic uncertainty and frequent external shocks, strengthening marine economic resilience has become a core priority for coastal nations to stabilize industrial supply chains and achieve sustainable marine development. China’s traditional resource-driven marine economy faces persistent structural bottlenecks, including homogeneous industrial structure, low value addition and weak risk resistance. As a landmark national policy for sustainable marine economic growth, the Marine Economic Innovation and Development Policy (MEIDP) has been piloted in 15 coastal cities across two batches, yet its causal impact on marine economic resilience remains under systematic evaluation. Using panel data of 51 Chinese coastal cities from 2008 to 2023, this study employs a multi-period difference-in-differences approach with supporting analyses to systematically evaluate the MEIDP’s impact on marine economic resilience, as well as its moderating mechanisms and heterogeneous patterns. The key findings are threefold. First, the MEIDP significantly improves coastal cities’ marine economic resilience, and this positive effect remains stable after multiple robustness tests. Second, public health emergencies exert a significant positive moderating effect, where the industrial support capacity and risk-resilience foundations established through policy implementation function more effectively under shock conditions, thereby amplifying the enhancement of resilience. Third, the policy effect shows prominent heterogeneity, being more pronounced in high-tourism cities and the Northern Marine Economic Circle, while statistically insignificant in low-tourism cities and the Southern Marine Economic Circle. This study enriches the theoretical framework of marine economic policy evaluation and provides empirical evidence from a major developing country for global marine governance, confirming that marine policies that promote innovation are an effective path to strengthen economic risk resistance. In light of these findings, we propose targeted policy recommendations to steadily enhance overall marine economic resilience. Coastal regions should deepen marine policies that promote innovation to bolster industrial upgrading and technological empowerment, adopt differentiated schemes aligned with local industrial foundations and resource endowments, promote marine industrial diversification and chain extension to reduce structural vulnerability, and improve public risk response mechanisms to strengthen the counter-cyclical buffering capacity of the marine economy. Full article

This study examines whether higher education development (HED) in China remains geographically locked in a core–periphery structure over 2002–2021 despite long-standing policies promoting balanced development. Using a composite assessment of HED and multiple spatial-inequality diagnostics, we identify strong persistence in the national spatial hierarchy and limited restructuring over time. Results indicate: (1) a stable top tier concentrated in a small set of leading cities, with the top-ranked cities exhibiting a stability index above 0.90, alongside a persistent lagging group; (2) an education-quality “center of gravity” anchored along the North China–East China axis, with a reduced migration distance from 76.58 km to 16.63 km, indicating only modest cross-regional movement; (3) pronounced clustering in major eastern coastal urban agglomerations, contrasted with a broader and weaker distribution in the west; and (4) regionally differentiated constraints—HED in eastern China is jointly driven by economic scale, market demand, and innovation investment, while the central region exhibits no stable dominant driver, the western region remains primarily constrained by economic scale and consumption conditions, and the northeastern region is increasingly shaped by demographic structure and consumption dynamics. These findings indicate that the spatial differentiation of HED is jointly shaped by economic, demographic, industrial, and innovation-related factors. For sustainability-oriented governance, the findings suggest that narrowing gaps requires moving beyond scale expansion toward targeted capability building, cross-regional collaboration, and institutional reforms that improve peripheral regions’ capacity to convert inputs into sustained quality and outcomes. Data granularity remains a limitation; future research should integrate micro-level data and comparative evidence. Full article

As a complex heritage site embodying maritime defense civilization, the Ming Dynasty Coastal Defense Garrisons face a profound contradiction between protection and development. Current research has failed to effectively explain the spatial mechanism of the transformation of coastal defense garrisons from military fortresses to modern towns. This study selects three coastal defense garrisons in southern Zhejiang—Jinxiang Garrison, Puzhuang Fort, and Hai’an Fort—and, based on long-term spatial data from 1969 to 2025, uses GIS, spatial syntax, and fractal index methods to construct a morphological analysis framework from four dimensions: architecture, land parcels, streets and alleys, and boundaries, revealing their evolutionary patterns and functional transformation mechanisms. The results show that (1) morphological evolution follows an asynchronous and coordinated rhythm of “buildings filling in first, road network updating lagging behind, and boundaries continuously constraining.” (2) Differences in urbanization pressure, industrial implantation intensity, and cultural heritage management drive the three garrisons to differentiate into three transformation paths: gradual preservation, radical reconstruction, and balanced regularization. The intensity of street and alley renovation is the core indicator for judging whether the historical fabric is preserved. (3) The boundaries of the garrison exhibit a “macroscopically regular but microscopically fragmented” characteristic, with a simple outer boundary and a complex inner boundary. Even after the city walls disintegrated, the moat still served as a morphological inertial line, maintaining the stability of the macroscopic outline. This research can provide quantitative evidence and empirical reference for the differentiated protection of coastal defensive heritage. Full article

Achieving coordinated development between higher education and regional economies is central to sustainable urban growth. This study examines the spatiotemporal coupling coordination between higher education and economic development across 90 cities within seven major coastal urban agglomerations in China over the period 2008–2021. An evaluation index system was constructed across seven dimensions, and three analytical methods were integrated: the entropy weight method for composite index calculation, the coupling coordination degree model for assessing synergistic development, and the panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model for dynamic interaction analysis. A fixed-effects regression model was further applied to identify key driving factors. The results indicate that: (1) higher education levels showed a steady upward trend across all agglomerations, while widening absolute disparities persisted among cities; (2) although a bidirectional Granger-causal relationship exists between higher education and economic development, the interaction is asymmetric along two distinct dimensions: higher education exerts a more statistically robust predictive influence on the economy, while unforecast economic shocks transmit more strongly to higher education than the reverse; this asymmetry manifests in specific urban agglomerations—most notably the Pearl River Delta—as a structural mismatch between economic strength and higher education development; (3) economic development level, government fiscal support, urbanization, and higher education scale are significantly associated with the coupling coordination between the two systems. These findings highlight the structural misalignment between higher education supply and regional economic demand and underscore the need for differentiated, spatially targeted policy interventions to promote sustainable regional development. Policy recommendations are proposed for optimizing higher-education resource allocation, reforming talent cultivation, and strengthening intra-agglomeration coordination mechanisms. Full article

Forest ecological product value realization depends on ecological resource endowment, human demand, and value-conversion capacity. This study developed a dual-scale framework to assess supply–demand mismatch and value realization of forest ecological products in Guangdong Province, China, from 2012 to 2022. At the 1-km grid scale, ecological supply was represented by forest cover and forest NPP intensity, while human demand was characterized by impervious surface, summer land surface temperature, and nighttime lights. At the prefecture-level city scale, grid-based indicators were linked with forestry industry output value to evaluate realized economic value, relative value-realization efficiency, supply–realization mismatch, and city typology. OLS regression and random forest models were used to identify driving factors. Results showed that ecological supply was concentrated in mountainous areas of northern, eastern, and western Guangdong, whereas demand and value-conversion capacity were clustered in the Pearl River Delta and coastal urbanized areas. Impervious surface ratio, forest NPP intensity, GDP, and population were key predictors. These findings reveal the spatial decoupling between ecological resource spaces and value realization spaces and support differentiated forest ecological product governance. Full article

Coastal cities are highly sensitive and vulnerable to climate change risks. A scientifically grounded assessment of urban climate change risk and its driving mechanisms is essential for strengthening urban climate adaptation capacity and supporting sustainable development. Taking Ningbo as the study area, this paper constructs a risk assessment system comprising five categories of extreme climate indicators, namely heat, rainstorm, drought, humidity, and strong wind, based on the China Surface Climate Normals Dataset for 1981–2010 and meteorological observations from the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) for 2015–2024. Using 30 m resolution land-use data for 2023, three land-use sensitivity indicators are extracted: the proportion of built-up land, the proportion of green space and forest land, and the proportion of water area. The CRITIC objective weighting method is then applied to construct an integrated climate change risk index and identify the spatial pattern of climate change risk in Ningbo. On this basis, the high-risk area identification performance of Logistic Regression, Random Forest, and XGBoost is compared. The optimal XGBoost model is selected and combined with the SHAP method to systematically reveal the direction, relative importance, and nonlinear threshold relationships through which land-use characteristics affect the formation of high-risk areas. The results show that urban climate change risk in Ningbo exhibits a pronounced spatial differentiation pattern, with higher risk in the northeastern coastal and central–eastern areas and lower risk in the western and southwestern areas. Insufficient green space and forest land buffering is the most important factor affecting the formation of high-risk areas. All three land-use variables have clear nonlinear thresholds. The critical turning points for identifying high-risk areas are 20.0% built-up land, 2.0% green space and forest land, and whether there is a water body or not. Significant interaction effects are observed among land-use variables, among which the interaction between built-up land and green space/forest land is the most prominent. These findings provide methodological support and empirical evidence for climate change risk assessment and climate-adaptive spatial planning regulation in coastal cities. Full article