Search Results (286)

Coupled grey and green infrastructure (CGGI) offers a promising pathway toward sustainable stormwater management in historic urban environments. This study compares CGGI and conventional grey infrastructure (GREI)-only strategies across four degrees of layout centralization (0%, 33.3%, 66.7%, and 100%) in the Quanzhou West Street Historic Reserve, China. Using a multi-objective optimization framework integrating SWMM simulations, life-cycle cost (LCC) modeling, and resilience metrics, we found that the decentralized CGGI layouts reduced the total LCC by up to 29.6% and required 60.7% less green infrastructure (GI) area than centralized schemes. Under nine extreme rainfall scenarios, the GREI-only systems showed slightly higher technical resilience (Tech-R: max 99.6%) than CGGI (Tech-R: max 99.1%). However, the CGGI systems outperformed GREI in operational resilience (Oper-R), reducing overflow volume by up to 22.6% under 50% network failure. These findings demonstrate that decentralized CGGI provides a more resilient and cost-effective drainage solution, well-suited for heritage districts with spatial and cultural constraints. Full article

During the transition of culture-featured district planning from static conservation to innovation-driven models, existing research remains constrained by mechanistic paradigms, reducing districts to functional containers and neglecting human perceptual interactions and meaning-production mechanisms. This study explores and quantifies the generative mechanisms of spatial communicability and cultural dissemination efficacy within human-centered frameworks. Grounded in humanistic urbanism, we analyze Harbin Central Street as a case study integrating historical heritage with contemporary vitality, developing a tripartite communicability assessment framework comprising perceptual experience, infrastructure utility, and behavioral dynamics. Machine learning-based threshold analysis reveals that spatial encoding elements govern communicability through significant nonlinear mechanisms. The conclusion shows synergies between street view-quantified greenery visibility and pedestrian accessibility establish critical human-centered design thresholds. Spatial data analysis integrating physiologically sensed emotional experiences and topologically analyzed spatial morphology resolves metric fragmentation while examining spatial encoding’s impact on interaction efficacy. This research provides data-driven decision support for sustainable urban renewal and enhanced cultural dissemination, advancing heritage sustainability. Full article

Existing research predominantly focuses on the preservation or renewal models of the physical forms of historic cultural districts, with limited exploration of their roles in stimulating tourists’ cognitive, affective resonance, and behavioral interactions. This study addresses historic cultural districts by evaluating the space quality and its impact on tourist experiences through the “cognition-affect-behavior” framework, integrating GIS, street view semantic segmentation, VR eye-tracking, and web crawling technologies. The findings reveal significant multidimensional differences in how space quality influences tourist experiences: the impact intensities of functional diversity, sky visibility, road network accessibility, green visibility, interface openness, and public facility convenience decrease sequentially, with path coefficients of 0.261, 0.206, 0.205, 0.204, 0.201, and 0.155, respectively. Additionally, space quality exerts an indirect effect on tourist experiences through the mediating roles of cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions, with a path coefficient of 0.143. This research provides theoretical support and practical insights for empowering cultural heritage space governance with digital technologies in the context of cultural and tourism integration. Full article

This article traces the historical evolution of mural painting as a medium of cultural expression from prehistoric cave art to contemporary street interventions. Adopting a diachronic and interdisciplinary approach, it investigates how muralism has developed across civilizations in relation to techniques, symbolic systems, social function, and its embeddedness in architectural and urban contexts. The analysis is structured around key historical periods using emblematic case studies to examine the interplay between materiality, iconography, and socio-political meaning. From sacred enclosures and civic monuments to post-industrial walls and digital projections, murals reflect shifting cultural paradigms and spatial dynamics. This study emphasizes how mural painting, once integrated into sacred and imperial architecture, has become a tool for public participation, protests, and urban storytelling. Particular attention is paid to the evolving relationship between wall painting and the spaces it inhabits, highlighting the transition from permanence to ephemerality and from monumentality to immediacy. This article contributes to mural studies by offering a comprehensive framework for understanding the technical and symbolic transformations of the medium while proposing new directions for research in the context of digital urbanism and cultural memory. Full article

The integration of shared autonomous vehicles into historic urban areas presents both opportunities and challenges. In heritage-rich environments like very old Asian (such as Suzhou old town, which serves as a use case example) or European (especially Mediterranean coastal cities) areas—characterized by narrow alleys, dense development, and sensitive cultural landscapes—shared autonomous vehicle adoption raises critical spatial and social questions. This study employs a qualitative, user-centered approach based on the ripple model to examine residents’ perceptions across four dimensions: residential patterns, parking land use, regional accessibility, and street-level infrastructure. Semi-structured interviews with 27 participants reveal five key findings: (1) public trust depends on transparent decision-making and safety guarantees; (2) shared autonomous vehicles may reshape generational residential clustering; (3) the short-term parking demand remains stable, but the long-term reuse of space is feasible; (4) shared autonomous vehicles could enhance accessibility in historic cores; (5) transport systems may evolve toward intelligent, human-centered designs. Based on these insights, the study proposes three strategies: (1) transparent risk assessment using explainable artificial intelligence and digital twins; (2) polycentric development to diversify land use; (3) hierarchical street retrofitting to balance mobility and preservation. While this study is limited by its qualitative scope and absence of simulation, it offers a framework for culturally sensitive, small-scale interventions supporting sustainable mobility transitions in historic urban contexts. Full article

Urban outdoor thermal comfort (OTC) has become an increasingly critical issue under the pressures of urbanization and climate change. Comparative analyses of urban blocks with distinct spatial morphologies are essential for identifying OTC issues and proposing targeted optimization strategies. However, existing studies predominantly rely on microclimate numerical simulations, while comparative assessments of OTC from the human thermal perception perspective remain limited. This study employs the thermal walk method, integrating microclimatic measurements with thermal perception questionnaires, to conduct on-site OTC investigations across three urban blocks with contrasting spatial morphologies—a business district (BD), a residential area (RA), and a historical neighborhood (HN)—in Beijing, a hot summer and cold winter climate city. The results reveal substantial OTC differences among the blocks. However, these differences demonstrated great seasonal and temporal variations. In summer, BD exhibited the best OTC (mTSV = 1.21), while HN performed the worst (mTSV = 1.72). In contrast, BD showed the poorest OTC in winter (mTSV = −1.57), significantly lower than HN (−1.11) and RA (−1.05). This discrepancy was caused by the unique morphology of different blocks. The sky view factor emerged as a more influential factor affecting OTC over building coverage ratio and building height, particularly in RA (r = 0.689, p < 0.01), but its impact varied by block, season, and sunlight conditions. North–South streets generally perform better OTC than East–West streets, being 0.26 units cooler in summer and 0.20 units warmer in winter on the TSV scale. The study highlights the importance of incorporating more applicable physical parameters to optimize OTC in complex urban contexts and offering theoretical support for designing climate adaptive urban spaces. Full article

The challenges of globalization and urbanization increasingly impact the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), yet fine-grained and quantitative methods for evaluating HUL remain limited. Adopting a human-centered perspective, this study introduces a novel framework to quantitatively evaluate HUL through the lens of Historical Appearance Integrity (HAI). An evaluation system comprising four key dimensions (building materials, building colors, decorative details, and streetscape morphology) was constructed using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). An Elo rating system was subsequently applied to quantify the scores of the indicators. A prediction model was developed based on transfer learning and feature fusion to estimate the scores of the indicators. The model achieved accuracies above 93% and loss values below 0.2 for all four indicators. The framework was applied to the Inner Qinhuai Historical Character Area in Nanjing for validation. Results show that the spatial distribution of HAI in the area exhibits significant spatial heterogeneity. On a 0–100 scale, the average HAI scores were 23.17 for primary roads, 27.73 for secondary roads, and 46.93 for branch roads. This study offers a fine-grained, automated approach to evaluate HAI along urban streets and provides a quantitative reference for heritage conservation and urban renewal strategies. Full article

In the context of cultural tourism integration, tourists’ spatial perception intention is an important carrier of spatial evaluation. In historic cultural districts represented by Jinan Mingfu City, tourists’ perceptual depth remains underexplored, leading to a misalignment between cultural tourism development and spatial quality needs. Taking Jinan Mingfu City as a representative case of a historic cultural district, while the living heritage model has revitalized local economies, the absence of a tourist perspective has resulted in misalignment between cultural tourism development and spatial quality requirements. This study establishes a technical framework encompassing “data crawling-factor aggregation-human-machine collaborative optimization”. It integrates Python web crawlers, SnowNLP sentiment analysis, and TF-IDF text mining technologies to extract physical elements; constructs a three-dimensional evaluation framework of “visual perception-spatial comfort-cultural experience” through SPSS principal component analysis; and quantifies physical element indicators such as green vision rate and signboard clutter index through street view semantic segmentation (OneFormer framework). A synergistic mechanism of machine scoring and manual double-blind scoring is adopted for correlation analysis to determine the impact degree of indicators and optimization strategies. This study identified that indicators such as green vision rate, shading facility coverage, and street enclosure ratio significantly influence tourist evaluations, with a severe deficiency in cultural spaces. Accordingly, it proposes targeted strategies, including visual landscape optimization, facility layout adjustment, and cultural scenario implementation. By breaking away from traditional qualitative evaluation paradigms, this study provides data-based support for the spatial quality enhancement of historic districts, thereby enabling the transformation of these areas from experience-oriented protection to data-driven intelligent renewal and promoting the sustainable development of cultural tourism. Full article

The article analyzes the meanings embedded in street art in Florence that portrays women, likely created by female artists. Between 18 May and 27 May 2024, during the Communities and Artistic Participation in Hybrid Environment (CAPHE) project, we observed a significant number of feminist street art pieces in Florence’s historic center. Using qualitative content analysis based on Gillian Rose’s methodology (2016), we interpreted the collected visual materials through semiotic and socio-cultural lenses. The findings revealed the deliberately interventionist nature of the analyzed works, addressing themes such as gender inequality, human rights, violence against women, and cultural stereotypes. This street art serves as a social manifesto and a means of activating both the local community and tourists, aligning with global feminist discourse while addressing Florence’s local issues. We conclude that Florence’s street art provides a space for visual resistance, education, and the promotion of gender equality and women’s emancipation in the context of contemporary social challenges. Full article

Territorial tourism has brought new development opportunities for historic and cultural neighborhoods. However, an insufficient understanding of the spatial distribution and influencing mechanisms of neighborhood vitality continues to constrain effective revitalization strategies. This study takes the Shuitingmen Historical and Cultural Neighborhood in Quzhou, China, as a case study and develops a multi-dimensional vitality evaluation framework incorporating point-of-interest (POI) data, location-based service (LBS) heatmaps, street network data, historical resources, and environmental perception indicators. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is applied to assign indicator weights and calculate composite vitality scores across 19 streets. The results reveal that (1) comprehensive evaluation corrects the bias of single indicators and highlights the value of integrated assessment; (2) vitality is higher on rest days than on weekdays, with clear temporal patterns and two types of daily fluctuation trends—similar and differential; and (3) vitality levels are spatially uneven, with higher vitality in central and western areas and lower performance in the southeast, often related to low accessibility and functional monotony. This study confirms a strong positive correlation between street vitality and objective spatial factors, offering strategic insights for the micro-scale renewal and sustainable revitalization of historic neighborhoods. Full article

This study examines culture-led urban regeneration as a strategy for revitalizing Meezan Chowk, a historically significant yet deteriorating public space in Quetta, Pakistan. Once a central site of social and commercial exchange, the area suffered from infrastructural decline, overcrowding, and the erosion of its architectural identity. The research proposes a design intervention to restore the site’s heritage value while enhancing its functional and social relevance. A qualitative approach is adopted, incorporating surveys, focus group discussions, and site observations to assess user needs and spatial dynamics. A SWOT analysis serves as the analytical framework to identify the site’s internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities and threats. By utilizing the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and OpenStreetMap data, further information can enhance understanding of the site’s urban morphology. The proposed design integrates vernacular elements, such as arched facades, shaded corridors, and communal courtyards, with contemporary features, including cafes, local artisan shops, and accessible public amenities. Full article

The increase in temperature in the built environment impedes the utilization of outdoor amenities and non-motorized transportation by residents of Arabian Gulf cities throughout the prolonged hot season. The urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon, denoted by the substantial temperature difference between the city and its periphery, is associated with multiple parameters. Building heights, setbacks, and configurations influence the temperature within street canyons. Nowadays, it is vital for urban designers to understand the role of these parameters in UHI effect, and translate those insights into design guidelines and urban forms they propose. This study delves into the relationship between building geometry and urban heat island effects in the context of Doha City, using residential building areas as the basis for comparison. Using dual-pronged methodology, the study entails simulating the dry bulb temperature and the sky view factor, alongside field measurements for land surface temperature (LST), across two residential zones within the city. This analytical approach integrates both prescribed building regulations and the physical characteristics of the extant urban fabric and configuration. Climate data were collected from the weather station in the format of EnergyPlus weather data, and LST historical data were collected from satellite imagery datasets. The results show a correlation between building geometry and UHI-related metrics, particularly evident during nocturnal periods. Notably, a negative correlation was found between the sky view factor and temperature increments. The study concludes with a strong correlation between building geometry and UHI, underscoring the imperative of integrating the building geometry and configuration considerations within the broader context of urban environmental assessments. While similar studies have been undertaken in different regions, there is a research gap in UHI within the GCC region. This study aims to contribute valuable insights to understanding urban heat island dynamics in Gulf cities. Full article

Islands represent distinctive geographical landscapes where cultural heritage, history, and ecological systems converge, offering critical insights into human–environment interactions. This study investigates how visual storytelling through digital tools such as the Historical Environment Map Viewer, Environment Digimap, Google Maps and Google Street View, and ArcGIS Field Maps can be employed to capture, interpret, and communicate islands’ landscape changes. By integrating historical environmental mapping, landscape change mapping, street map views, and field observations, this study creates a layered visual narrative that reveals shifts in land use, settlement patterns, and ecological features over time. Rathlin Island represents a distinctive island landscape, and this study uses visual storytelling as a tool to foster a broader public understanding of environmental conservation and engagement with the island’s ecologial challenges. The study demonstrates that multi-perspective, interdisciplinary methods provide valuable insights into the complex dynamics of landscape change, while also offering a comprehensive vision of sustainable future landscape on small islands. Full article

This study investigates the Roman land division system, centuriation, using LIDAR data and historical data to understand the landscape during the Roman period, in this case between Roman cities such as Siscia and Andautonia. LIDAR data analysis provided evidence of the preservation of the Roman centuriation system in the present day Turopoljski Lug forest. The azimuth suggests that centuriation aligned with Siscia’s ager, while the precise territorial limits between the two agers remain unclear. Additionally, the orientation of Siscia’s streets and the alignment of modern roads like Zagrebačka street suggest continuity of the Roman road system. The research also sheds light on the agricultural nature of the region in the Roman period, challenging traditional views of Turopolje as a marshy, forested area from prehistoric periods. The presence of Roman-era drainage systems and the re-evaluation of the historical landscape indicate that the region was actively cultivated. The study also discusses the abandonment of the centuriation system after the Roman period and its subsequent transformation into forested land. Future research should focus on the exact borders between the agers of Siscia and Andautonia and the ongoing influence of Roman land division on later historical landscapes. Full article

As a World Cultural Heritage site, the Beijing–Hangzhou Grand Canal is lined with historic and cultural cities that bear abundant historical and cultural connotations. It is of vital importance to address the issues of landscape homogenization, the disconnect between conservation measures and public needs, and other related challenges in the development of these cities. This study adopts a mixed-methods approach combining qualitative and quantitative research. By integrating subjective landscape evaluation with eye tracking analysis, the ancient city of Taierzhuang along the Beijing–Hangzhou Grand Canal was selected as the research subject to conduct an in-depth investigation into the visual experience and preferences for different types of landscapes in this area. The study yielded the following findings: There are significant differences in visual experiences among various types of landscapes in Taierzhuang Ancient City. Among them, participants exhibited the highest level of attention toward canal landscapes and the lowest toward heritage site landscapes. In terms of visual distribution differences, eye tracking heatmaps revealed that attention was primarily concentrated on architectural structures and water surface reflections. In the subjective evaluation analysis, canal cultural landscapes received the highest comprehensive score (4.39 points), followed by historical architectural landscapes (4.02 points), historical street landscapes (3.93 points), modern commemorative landscapes (3.72 points), and heritage site landscapes (3.69 points). Additionally, a significant correlation was found between eye tracking data and subjective evaluation results, validating the scientifically effective relationship between subjective assessments of historical cultural landscapes and eye tracking analysis. The findings of this study not only provide a scientific basis for landscape improvement and optimization in other canal-related historical and cultural cities but also offer new research methods and perspectives for the protection and development of other heritage landscapes. Full article