Search Results (157)

Urban parks are essential components of green infrastructure that support residents’ physical health and well-being. However, less attention has been paid to how women can secure such benefits under equitable, safe, and sustainable park-use conditions. Using Xi’an Expo Park as a case study, this study examined the associations among Inclusive Urban Park Design (IUPD), Place Attachment (PA), Environmental Experience (EE), and Women’s Well-Being (WWB), with a focus on whether PA showed an indirect association between IUPD and WWB. This study adopted a quantitative-dominant mixed-methods design, combining 220 valid questionnaires (115 female and 105 male participants) with field observations and semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed using correlation analysis, gender-comparison tests, mediation models, and robustness checks. Among female participants, the baseline model showed a statistically significant indirect association between IUPD and WWB through PA; however, this association was not retained after controlling for EE, nor in the fully adjusted model including EE, age, and visit frequency. The gender-comparison and qualitative findings suggested that similar levels of PA and WWB did not necessarily reflect equal conditions of park use. Qualitative evidence further indicated that some women’s park use was shaped by childcare, family activities, and other task-oriented responsibilities, which may involve hidden time, physical, and psychological costs. The subdimension-level findings suggested that perceived safety, accessibility and spatial legibility, and facility support and maintenance should be understood as interrelated use conditions rather than distinct independent effects. This study extends urban park equity research beyond spatial provision by emphasizing actual conditions of use and the equitable realization of well-being benefits. The findings provide implications for gender-responsive park design and social sustainability, while their relevance to everyday resilience should be understood as a conceptual extension rather than as direct evidence of community resilience. Full article

Urban soils are central to ecological functioning and urban resilience and have value not only for the services they provide to people but also for their intrinsic ecological worth. However, this ecocentric dimension remains underrepresented in urban sustainability research and practice. This study examines how urban soil management can be transformed to incorporate ecocentric values of nature by analysing both the practices through which this transformation can be achieved and the barriers that stand in the way. Based on a survey of 80 urban practitioners conducted in 2023, the study explores stakeholder roles, value orientations, soil indicators, regenerative practices, and perceived barriers to implementation. The results show that nearly all respondents recognised at least one explicit value of urban soil (95%), and a majority (60%) attributed several values at once, with future and intrinsic values each recognised by a substantial share of practitioners (65% and 50%, respectively), suggesting that ecocentric framings are present among a substantial share of practitioners. Whether this recognition translates into practice is more limited: about half of the respondents (51%) consider soil properties in their professional practices. Soil assessment is predominantly based on physical and chemical indicators, with biological indicators receiving comparatively little attention. The central empirical finding of this study is a pronounced awareness–action gap specific to soil regeneration: 96% of respondents recognise the importance of soil regeneration, yet only 40% report implementing regenerative practices. Regeneration, understood here as the restoration of biological activity and natural soil processes, is conceptually located towards the ecocentric pole of an anthropocentric–ecocentric continuum, since it engages with soil as a living system with intrinsic value rather than as a substrate for human use. Respondents identify knowledge gaps, fragmented governance, and financial constraints as key barriers to wider adoption, which indicates that the principal barriers are structural and institutional in nature; a lack of practitioner commitment does not appear to be the issue. Embedding ecocentric values in everyday practice will require integrating biological indicators into standard soil assessments, strengthening knowledge exchange through living labs and practitioner-oriented tools, and extending soil health targets across the policy, procurement, and funding mechanisms that govern urban development. Full article

High-density central business districts (CBDs) often appear highly walkable because they combine transit accessibility, functional density and active frontages. Yet their pedestrian environments may lose usability under routine disturbances such as crowding, e-bike encroachment, blind-path obstruction and effective-width erosion. This study reframes walkability as baseline pedestrian capacity and everyday resilience as the ability of that capacity to remain safe, continuous, inclusive and comfortable under ordinary urban stressors. Taking Beijing Guomao as a case, we integrated a field street audit, sidewalk-width measurement, route timing, traffic-interference observation, POI-based vitality assessment and 145 valid questionnaires. The objective indicator table produced a capacity-oriented score of 0.868 on a 0–1 scale, while the perception index was 3.17/5. The gap was explained by weak disturbance-sensitive indicators: non-motorized vehicle intrusion (0.46), blind-path continuity (0.60), motor-vehicle encroachment (0.67) and acoustic comfort (0.72). Field measurements showed mean physical and effective sidewalk widths of 3.62 m and 2.36 m, respectively. The mean section-level width loss was 30.9%, while the maximum loss of 88.2% occurred at one severely obstructed section, where the effective width was 0.50 m. The findings suggest that CBD pedestrian improvement should shift from facility provision to operational resilience through width recovery, micromobility governance, barrier-free continuity and last-mile route integration. Full article

Al-Wehdat open market, originating in a mid-20th-century Palestinian refugee camp in Amman, Jordan, has evolved into a vital urban common and a paradigmatic case of Everyday Architecture of Compromise. It demonstrates significant economic, social, political, and cultural dynamism, leveraging the relational and solidary capacities of a disenfranchised migrant community to build resilience and assert their Right to the (negated) City. This paper examines how the market’s mode of production responds to intersecting geopolitical, economic, and democratic crises. Employing a constructivist, conjunctural urbanism approach and scene-based analysis, we situate Al-Wehdat market within discourses on urban commons and relationality. Our theoretical framework draws on Hannah Arendt, Gilbert Simondon, and Ash Amin to reconceptualise the Right to the City as the Right to the Open Urban Market. We foreground customary territorial communing as a counterforce to corporative commodification, as essential in the struggle for urban justice, differential individuation, and immanent re-enchantment. Findings, presented through vivid market scenes, show how everyday interactions, creative material arrangements, and rich collaborative imagination sustain these commons. Thematic analysis identifies patterns in community relations, materiality, infrastructure, and acts of repair that sustain the regenerative capacity of key everyday relational, political, techno-material and convivial practices. We conclude by advocating for community empowerment policies that recognise the centrality of everyday relational individuation in shaping inclusive cities amidst polycrisis in the Global South. Full article

Contemporary regional shocks are no longer experienced primarily as isolated supply interruptions. They are increasingly lived as disruptions to essential services: cooling during heatwaves, mobility during fuel or transit disruptions, digital connectivity during infrastructure failures, and affordable warmth in volatile energy markets. This paper develops the concept of territorial service security, defined as the capacity of places to maintain affordable, reliable, and equitable access to essential services under compound shocks, including cascading disruptions. The framework complements conventional resilience indicators such as employment, output, income, and productivity by examining how economic capacity is translated into effective service access across places. Drawing on research on regional resilience, provisioning systems, services of general interest, and spatial justice, the paper highlights how housing, transport, digital networks, public services, institutions, and spatial inequality mediate the effects of disruption. It then presents an integrative conceptual framework, outlines a comparative research agenda, and identifies place-based policy implications for resilient regional development. The paper argues that the next frontier for regional science is not only to secure inputs, but to redesign territories so that everyday services remain affordable, accessible, flexible, and just under stress. Full article

Mental health concerns are increasingly encountered in primary care, yet clinical approaches often focus on symptom management rather than underlying psychological processes. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) proposes that psychological well-being depends on the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—while their chronic frustration contributes to psychological distress. Despite extensive evidence linking these needs to mental health outcomes, their relevance in primary care remains underexplored. This single-center cross-sectional study examined associations between psychological need satisfaction and frustration and indicators of well-being and ill-being among adult primary care patients. A total of 380 patients (M_age = 47.81, SD_age = 15.42) completed validated measures of need satisfaction and frustration, resilience, vitality, coping strategies, anxiety, and depression. A dual-process model was examined, with hypotheses informed by SDT: higher need satisfaction associated with greater resilience, vitality, and adaptive coping (well-being), and higher need frustration associated with greater anxiety, depression, and maladaptive coping (ill-being). Although results revealed several significant cross-paths, need satisfaction was most strongly associated with positive outcomes and need frustration was most strongly associated with negative outcomes. The dual-process model did appear clear for coping outcomes, with need satisfaction uniquely predicting adaptive coping and need frustration uniquely predicting maladaptive coping. Findings highlight the potential value of incorporating psychological need-based perspectives into primary care mental health approaches. By recognizing autonomy, competence, and relatedness as foundational psychological resources, healthcare systems may develop more scalable strategies to promote mental well-being and prevent psychological distress in everyday clinical practice. Full article

This study investigates the mechanism of “reverse spatial production” in contemporary urban China by examining the transformation of the Hangou Dawang Temple in Yangzhou. Utilizing a multidimensional framework that integrates Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad with Michel de Certeau’s theory of everyday practice, the research explores how a state-constructed, secular “cultural landscape” was reclaimed as a living field of popular belief. Data were collected through intensive fieldwork (2025–2026), including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and digital ethnography. The findings reveal that following the temple’s entrustment to the Taoist Association in 2017, grassroots actors—centered around a Taoist cleric and the local congregation—successfully resacralized the site through the introduction of material media, ritual performances, and social networking. This process dissolved the official spatial discipline of the “landscape island,” transforming it into a substantive religious hub. The study identifies a “Non-Antagonistic Symbiotic Model” of spatial production, characterized by a cycle of top-down construction, bottom-up reconstruction, and mutual negotiation. It argues that the state’s heritagization strategy inadvertently provides a legitimate vessel for religious resilience, while grassroots tactical appropriations allow for the survival of popular religion within modern urban landscapes. This research offers a prototypical case for understanding the resilience of popular belief and the reconstruction of heritage authenticity in the post-secular urban context of China. Full article

Urban marketplaces are increasingly recognised in European policy debates as multifunctional public spaces that extend beyond their traditional economic role. Across the European Union, emerging trends point to a shift towards market models that integrate social interaction, cultural activities, tourism, sustainable food production and place-based urban development, thereby contributing to more inclusive and liveable cities. However, the extent to which such transformations align with local actors’ perspectives and existing governance arrangements remains underexplored, particularly in Central European contexts. This paper evaluates the transformative potential of urban marketplaces as multifunctional public spaces from the perspective of key stakeholders in the City of Zagreb. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining a desk analysis of European policy and practice trends with empirical research conducted at the local level. Data were collected through surveys of marketplace users (citizens) and vendors (tenants), complemented by focus groups with other relevant local actors. This approach provides insights into everyday practices, perceived barriers, governance challenges, and future expectations related to marketplace development. The findings reveal a strong alignment between stakeholder perspectives and European policy trends promoting people-centred and multifunctional marketplaces, while also identifying tensions with existing management and governance frameworks. Citizens emphasise the cultural, social, and tourism value of marketplace interactions, whereas vendors and governance actors highlight infrastructure needs and the importance of more participatory governance arrangements. The paper argues that stakeholder-based evaluation of transformative potential is essential for advancing inclusive, resilient, and sustainable urban regeneration through urban marketplaces. Full article

Religion is increasingly recognized as important for coping and resilience in contexts of forced migration, yet broad categories such as “religious coping” do not fully explain how specific Islamic concepts become experientially available and action-guiding in everyday life. This article examines sabr among Syrian refugee women living in Turkey as a situated moral–religious concept rather than a simple equivalent of “patience.” The analysis draws on 24 semi-structured interviews conducted in Hatay, Turkey, between 2017 and 2023 and uses reflexive thematic analysis informed by research on situated abstract concepts and cultural model theory. Across the interviews, sabr emerged as a core Islamic idiom through which women made hardship intelligible and organized accounts of endurance, restraint, dignity, and action under prolonged uncertainty. Sabr was described as learned through religious practice and prior adversity, enacted through emotional, bodily, and verbal restraint, sustained through Qur’anic language and exemplary narratives, and closely linked to motherhood, social responsibility, trust in God, and expectations of eventual relief or divine reward. Rather than presenting sabr as a discrete coping strategy or psychological mechanism, the findings show how it organized women’s accounts of endurance, responsibility, and action within a broader religious–moral framework. An emic understanding of resilience among Muslim refugees therefore requires attention to lived concepts through which suffering becomes meaningful, morally framed, and practically bearable. Full article

Closed-loop habitats in space-analogue and other extreme environments must sustain life and performance within tightly bounded constraints on water, energy, food, air revitalisation, waste processing, space, and crew time. Existing assessments emphasise engineering reliability, resource throughput, and human factors, but less often address everyday practices—meals, hygiene, privacy, social rituals, sensory comfort, and care work—as variables relevant to sustainability. This conceptual paper develops closed-loop hospitality as an integrated sustainability assessment framework for analysing how such practices mediate between resource constraints and environmental, social, and operational outcomes. Drawing on sustainability assessment, circular resource use, resilience, socio-technical systems, habitability, and hospitality theory, the framework links constraint variables—including resupply interval, closure ratio, bottlenecks, redundancy, volumetric capacity, crew time scarcity, intercultural crew composition, and health-support capacity—to hospitality design choices and measurable indicators. It identifies outcomes such as resource intensity, recycling and waste burden, system reliability, labour distribution, equity and legitimacy of access, psychosocial wellbeing, compliance, and adaptive resilience. The paper supports threshold setting, scorecards, and protocol design in analogue habitats, arguing that sustainable habitation requires balancing resource stewardship with minimum viable hospitality: preserving dignity, care, privacy, cohesion, and operational continuity within closed-loop limits. Full article

The 15 min city offers a framework for sustainable urban environments. However, its application in historic centres faces challenges such as tourist pressure and heritage fragility. This paper explores cultural heritage as a strategic resource for urban resilience within the European ENACT-15 mC project. The methodology applies four lines of research—socio-economic diagnosis, educational innovation, participatory action research, and digital tool implementation—to the historic centre of Valencia. The study involved 42 students from architecture, commerce and tourism programmes in documenting a selected sample of historic commercial establishments protected by the Special Protection Plan of Ciutat Vella (PEP 2020), while community workshops recruited 30 stakeholders representing local associations, businesses and heritage-related actors to analyse urban conflicts and functional transformation. Results show that integrating educational and participatory approaches facilitates the generation of situated knowledge and social co-responsibility. The technical documentation and diagnostic reports produced serve as empirical evidence of how heritage can be monitored and protected in urban settings under tension. The study concludes that cultural heritage provides a vital social infrastructure for building resilient communities. By bridging the gap between academic research and local agency through digital and participatory mapping, this integrated model provides adaptive intervention strategies that balance tourism demands with the preservation of everyday local life and the proximity economy in heritage-rich environments. Full article

Public space vitality is increasingly regarded as a central issue in the conservation and renewal of traditional villages, yet existing studies rarely combine spatial pattern analysis with residents’ perceptual evaluation within a single framework. Taking Yutu Village in southeastern Hubei, China, as a case, this study develops a Space–Event analytical framework integrating GIS-based spatial statistics with Importance–Performance Analysis (IPA). Semi-structured interviews, participatory mapping, and questionnaire surveys identified 58 public event units, 34 physical public spaces, and 241 event–space coordinate points. Kernel density estimation (KDE) and Ripley’s K-function analysis indicate a composite structure of one core, multiple centers, four axes, and five clusters. Historical and cultural events cluster around heritage buildings, daily life and production events extend along everyday movement corridors up to 155 m, and ritual and folk cultural events remain concentrated at small-scale ceremonial nodes. Based on 112 valid questionnaires, IPA-based evaluation shows negative gaps between importance and satisfaction across all 23 indicators (p < 0.001 for all items), with spatial narrative showing the largest gap (Δ = −1.66), while ritual-related indicators achieve the highest satisfaction scores, suggesting a degree of cultural resilience in ceremonial spaces. By cross-referencing spatial clustering types with IPA quadrants, the study proposes differentiated strategies, including narrative-oriented design for heritage spaces, connectivity enhancement for everyday networks, and protective maintenance for ritual nodes, offering an evidence-based framework transferable to comparable traditional village contexts. Full article

Despite heightened physical risks during the COVID-19 pandemic, older adults often reported better mental health than younger adults, suggesting significant resilience. We used longitudinal qualitative data to examine how difficulties and positive experiences contributed to this resilience. Weekly COVID-related difficulties and positive experiences were collected using internet surveys over eight weeks from 247 respondents aged 51–95 (M = 71.1, SD = 7.3). Nearly all identified at least one difficulty, and 76% had problems three or more times. Longitudinal thematic analysis (LTA) revealed that most were consistent in how they described they difficulties, including problems with everyday protective activities, psychological distress, social isolation, and cultural divide (disagreements over public health policy). Although 78% identified at least one positive, less than half (42%) did so at three or more time points. Positive experiences were more diverse across time, but some reported greater interpersonal connection by utilizing technology to increase social contacts. LTA revealed three stances towards positive experiences: active efforts, appreciative efforts (observation), and mixed efforts. While trait resilience was unrelated to the themes, the mixed approach towards positive experiences was associated with lower anxiety at the last assessment, emphasizing the importance of positive experiences during stress. Full article

In the context of China’s stock-based urban renewal, public space regeneration in old urban areas increasingly requires attention to everyday use, inclusive access, local memory, and collaborative governance alongside physical upgrading. Drawing on catalyst theory, this study builds an analytical framework linking catalyst classification, potential element identification, effectiveness evaluation, actor collaboration, and renewal strategy transformation. The Guibeicheng area of Wuxi, China, is examined using semi-structured interviews, cognitive maps, qualitative coding, space syntax, the analytic hierarchy process, and actor collaboration analysis. The analysis indicates that behavioral and narrative catalysts are closely associated with residents’ everyday use and place identity. Event catalysts may generate phased amplification effects under specific conditions, while organizational and rule-based governance catalysts mainly provide support conditions for sustaining catalytic effects. Comparing space syntax results with cognitive-map and interview evidence further points to mismatches between configurational potential and perceived everyday activation. These include high-integration spaces with limited evidence of repeated everyday use, high-choice nodes mainly associated with pass-through use, weak everyday connections to historical resources, and limited independent organizational support for high-priority catalysts. On this basis, the study proposes a renewal pathway that combines everyday behavior guidance, event transformation, local narrative embedding, and organizational governance coordination. The findings provide a case-based reference for catalyst-oriented public space regeneration in historic urban areas and suggest potential implications for social sustainability, cultural continuity, and community resilience through spatial activation and long-term collaborative governance. Full article

Hatay experienced severe spatial, economic, and social losses following the earthquakes on 6 and 20 February 2023. Beyond the scale of physical destruction, the post-disaster period has brought deep transformations in everyday life, access to services, and the governance of space. This study examines the reconstruction process in Hatay from a perspective of just recovery and evaluates how the discourses of justice highlighted in policy documents are reflected in planning practice. Furthermore, the study offers empirical contributions on how justice is produced through spatial planning tools such as reserve area decisions, rubble management, expropriations, and access to services. Within the scope of the research, post-disaster policy documents, municipal reports, and media content were examined using qualitative content analysis, and the findings were supported by field-based spatial observations. The analyses show that, although the discourse of participation is frequently emphasized, it remains limited in decision-making processes; and issues related to the needs of vulnerable groups and equal access to services are more weakly represented. Spatial examples highlight the gap between normative discourses and practice through reserve area decisions, debris dumping management, and environmental risks. Overall, the study reveals that the principles of just recovery have been only partially implemented in the reconstruction process in Hatay, and that, for long-term resilience, participation, spatial equality, and the recognition of diverse lifestyles need to be strengthened at the institutional level. Full article