Search Results (8)

Background: Contemporary older adults, especially the baby boomer generation, expect to actively shape their communities rather than passively receive services. Supporting ageing in place is a key issue for social sustainability, as communities need to remain inclusive, accessible, and liveable for ageing populations. While participatory approaches are increasingly promoted, implementation remains top–down and expert-driven. Older adults often express their experiences of the built environment through everyday language rich in emotion, memory, and sensory details, yet these forms of knowledge are typically dismissed as informal or subjective. As a result, their lived spatial experiences remain institutionally invisible in age-friendly planning and design. Methods: This exploratory case study analysed textual comments submitted by older adults in a coastal suburb in Queensland through a participatory Citizen Science initiative. An integrative framework combining GIS mapping, content analysis (CA), sentiment analysis (SA), and critical discourse analysis (CDA) was used to examine how older adults describe, evaluate, and negotiate their built environments. Results: GIS mapping showed that older adults chose to document familiar, accessible public spaces, such as parks, civic precincts, and transport corridors, reflecting routine-based patterns of use. Content analysis revealed a focus on modest but essential built environment features, including shaded seating, footpaths, signage, and pedestrian crossings, which supported comfort, safety, and social engagement. Sentiment analysis found that 67% of comments were positive and 18% neutral, indicating broad satisfaction but also strategic emotional framing. CDA identified three exploratory interpretive patterns, Affective Evaluation, Narrative Anchoring, and Modal Negotiation, through which older adults expressed emotion, belonging, and concern within this limited corpus. Conclusions: Ageing in place depends not only on physical infrastructure but also on discursive inclusion, that is, whether older adults’ everyday ways of speaking are heard and recognised in participatory planning. This study shows that older adults actively shape spatial meaning through emotion, memory, and caution, and that their language carries both experiential insight and civic intention. Recognising these discursive signals may help inform more responsive, age-inclusive, and socially sustainable participatory planning. Full article

Girsu, the modern site of Tello (southern Iraq), represents one of the earliest known urban centres of the ancient world, along with Uruk, Eridu, and Ur. During the 3rd millennium BCE (3000–2000 BCE), Girsu was revered as the sanctuary of the Sumerian heroic deity Ningirsu, who fought with supernatural beasts and made possible the introduction of irrigation and agriculture in Sumer. While much is known about the gods, their roles, and rituals inside the temples, there is little textual or archaeological evidence concerning the rituals that took place in the large open-air plazas adjacent to the temples. These areas within the sacred precinct were where the general population would gather to participate in festivals and ceremonies to honour the gods. To better understand the ancient cultic realm in southern Mesopotamia, an in-depth investigation of a favissa (ritual pit) discovered within the sacred precinct at Girsu was undertaken. The excavations recovered a large quantity of ceramics and animal remains that had been used for ritual purposes. Through the study of archaeological remains of cultic spaces at Girsu, information on ritual behaviour such as sacrificial animal slaughtering and consumption for the purpose of feasting, the types of libations provided to quench the thirst of the gods, and the distance travelled to take part in the annual festivals to pay homage to the patron god of their sacred city were explored. Analysis of the associated ceramics, cuneiform texts, and zooarchaeological remains (including stable isotope data), allowed a multi-faceted and integrative approach to better understand ceremonial behaviour and ritual feasting in this sacred city. New insights into communal and performative participation in ceremonies, especially by non-elite individuals, are generated. These data increase our knowledge not only of how Girsu’s citizens organised their sacred spaces and religious festivals, but also of how they behaved in order to satisfy the ever-demanding needs of their gods. Full article

Innovation districts are widely known as an effective land use type for fostering and sustaining knowledge and innovation economy growth in cities. Knowledge workers and the public are among the main stakeholders and key drivers for the growth of innovation districts. However, these groups’ needs are often not well considered in the top-down implementation of innovation districts. This paper aims to explore the user preferences and decision makers’ perspectives in innovation district planning, design, and development. The study tackles the question of which characteristics fulfil the responsibility of innovation districts toward both societies (reflecting user preferences) and cities (reflecting decision makers’ perspectives). As for the methodology, a case study approach was employed to collect the required data from three innovation districts in Brisbane, Australia. The data are qualitatively and quantitatively analysed. The analysis findings highlighted the similarities between user preferences and decision makers’ perspectives—e.g., usefulness of decentralisation, urbanism, mixed-use development, street life, and social interactions in innovation districts—and the differences that need to be carefully factored into the planning, design, and development of innovation districts with a user-centric approach. Full article

The Arxan–Chaihe volcanic field (ACVF) is a Pliocene to recent intracontinental monogenetic volcanic field. Within the ACVF, at least 47 vents are preserved in a ~2000 km² area, forming two major NE-SW trending structural elements. The youngest eruptions took place about 2000 B.P., forming two distinct complex scoriaceous and lava spatter cone systems emitting low-viscosity lava that invaded the paleo-Halaha River tributary, forming pahoehoe flow fields. This lava field forms the backbone of the geoheritage values of the Arxan UNESCO Global Geopark. The lava flow fields were believed to be almost exclusively sourced from a single vent complex around the Yanshan–Gaoshan region. However, a recent study revealed that the flow field is a result of complex eruptions with an early phase from the nearby Dahei Gou vent complex. Here, we provide evidence, based on Sentinel satellite imagery, ALOS-PALSAR-derived digital terrain model analysis, and direct field observations, that an even earlier fissure-fed eruption created another complex. This can be seen as a smaller lava flow field on the western side of the main flow field. The Dichi Lake is an iconic geosite of the geopark. It is a maar crater formed by a single explosion through an earlier lava field that erupted from a network of fissures ~2.5 km long following an NE-SW trend. The Dichi Lake geosite provides an ideal example demonstrating the effect of fissures opening in water-saturated lowlands resulting in phreatomagmatic eruptions. Moreover, our findings suggest that the youngest eruption in this region had at least three phases, probably not more than a few decades apart, along a 15 km long fissure network propagated from the SW to NE. We propose Dichi Lake as the centre of a geoheritage precinct, providing a hub of knowledge dissemination, highlighting fissure eruptions as a key type of volcanic hazard to be taken seriously in the management of the geopark. Full article

The goal of education for sustainable development is to prepare future citizens to make informed decisions and take responsible action to solve problems. The purpose of mathematical literacy is to ensure that all learners develop an understanding of mathematics, and how to relate mathematics to the world and use mathematical knowledge to make valuable decisions in their lives, work, and society. It can be seen that the purpose of mathematical literacy coincides with the goal of education for sustainable development. In addition, math literacy is closely related to self-regulated learning (SRL), which is the key to meaningful learning and sustainable development. In educational research, it is an essential task to cultivate learners’ mathematical literacy and promote their sustainable development. With the rapid growth of emerging technologies, the emergence of big data has brought numerous challenges to various research fields. In the age of big data, educational research that can identify research perspectives and hotspots and summarize research evolution rules from a large body of literature can assist us in deepening subsequent analysis. As a result, in this study, we used CiteSpace and HistCite knowledge map visualization and exploration technology to examine mathematical literacy research trends, major research countries and regions, major research institutions, significant researchers, highly cited papers, research hotspots, and evolution trends on a global scale. Through this study, we found that the earliest literature on mathematical literacy appeared in 1957, and the research on mathematical literacy can be divided into three germination stages (1957–2001), a slow development stage (2001–2011), and a prosperous development stage (2011–2022). Most studies come from developed countries such as the US, the UK, Germany, and Australia. The Universities of Utrecht and Purdue University were the most published institutions, and scholars at Purpura published the most articles. The research object of highly cited literature is mainly children, and the research is primarily carried out through the measurement of students’ mathematical ability and achievement and the analysis of related influencing factors, which provides a direction for how to improve students’ mathematical literacy. The research on mathematical literacy mainly includes four research hotspots: working memory and mathematical literacy; brain science and mathematical literacy; mathematical achievement and mathematical literacy; and the generation strategy of mathematical literacy. The research field of mathematics literacy mainly includes working memory, parietal cortex, math performance, mathematics education, early childhood, parental belief, fractions, cognitive development, and student learning. There are 10 clusters. Different clusters have different evolutionary trends. With the evolution of time, working memory, mathematical education, fractions, and precinct beliefs clustered, gradually expanding from the concentrated research direction to the subdivision field. The clusters of parietal cortex, math performance, early childhood, cognitive development, and students do not show large keyword nodes during the research period. With time, it has gradually expanded from the centralized research direction to the subdivision field. The parietal cortex, math performance, early childhood, cognitive development, and students clusters did not show large keyword nodes during the whole study period. Full article

While academic research has established the need and importance of community participation in decision-making for cultural heritage tourism (CHT), there is still a lacuna in our knowledge when it comes to understanding what are the perspectives and motivations of people to participate in collaborative governance; thus, policymaking suffers from a lack of knowledge on how to effectively motivate and engage communities in heritage tourism management. Participatory approaches often focus on the management of various stakeholders without emphasising enough the understanding of practical and ideological factors that affect their participation. This study seeks to fill this gap in knowledge by attempting to understand residents’ attitudes and motivation towards participating in collaborative decision-making for cultural heritage tourism in their area. The objective of the study is twofold: (1) to identify residents’ attitudes towards CHT in their area and (2) to understand residents’ motivation for participating in participatory governance of CHT. The attitudes and motivations of the residents are looked at from a Weberian lens of formal and substantive rationality and it is established that residents are affected by both economic and non-economic factors in their support for tourism activities in the areas as well as to participate in collaborative decision-making. The study adopts a qualitative approach to study two heritage precincts of New Delhi, India. While the findings are based on the case study areas, they can be used to understand communities of other developing nations as well. Full article

In recent times, there has been a worldwide trend towards creating smart cities with a focus on the knowledge economy and on information and communication technologies. These technologies have potential applications in managing the built and natural environments more efficiently, promoting economic development, and actively engaging the public, thus helping build more sustainable cities. Whilst the interest in smart cities has been widespread predominantly amongst metropolitan cities, several regional cities such as the Gold Coast in Australia have also recently endeavoured to become smart cities. In response to this emerging trend, this study aimed to investigate key opportunities and challenges associated with developing regional cities into smart cities using the Gold Coast as a case study. It identified key factors critical to the planning and development of smart cities. These factors fall under five broad themes: cultural and natural amenities, technology, knowledge and innovation precincts, people and skills, and governance. The factors were applied to the Gold Coast to analyse the key opportunities and challenges for its development into a smart city. Finally, key lessons, which are potentially applicable to other regional cities seeking to develop into smart cities, are drawn from the case study. Full article

The water distribution castellum at the terminal end of the Pont du Gard aqueduct serving the Roman city of Nemausus in southern France is analyzed for its water engineering design and operation. By the use of modern hydraulic engineering analysis methods applied to analyze the castellum, new aspects of Roman water engineering technology are discovered not previously reported in the archaeological literature. Analysis of the castellum’s 10 basin wall flow distribution pipelines reveals that when a Roman version of modern critical flow theory is utilized in their design, the 10 pipelines optimally transfer water to city precincts at the maximum flow rate possible with a total flow rate closely approximating the input flow rate from the aqueduct. The castellum’s three drainage floor ports serve as additional fine-tuning to precisely match the input aqueduct flow rate to the optimized 10 pipeline output flow rate. The castellum’s many hydraulic engineering features provide a combination of advanced water engineering technology to optimize the performance of the water distribution system while at the same time enhancing the castellum’s aesthetic water display features typical of Roman values. While extensive descriptive archaeological literature exists on Roman achievements related to their water systems both in Rome and its provinces, what is missing is the preliminary engineering knowledge base that underlies many of their water system’s designs. The present paper is designed to provide this missing link by utilizing modern hydraulic engineering methodologies to uncover the basis of Roman civil engineering practice—albeit in Roman formats yet to be discovered. Full article