Search Results (181)

Waste accumulation and land carrying pressure are common sustainability challenges in urbanization, making the improvement of urban land green use efficiency (ULGUE) a key issue. Using panel data from 278 Chinese cities over 2008–2023, this study treats zero-waste city pilots as a quasi-natural experiment and constructs a difference-in-differences model, measuring ULGUE via a super-efficiency slacks-based measure–Global Malmquist–Luenberger (Super-SBM-GML) model under variable returns to scale. The results show that zero-waste city construction significantly and robustly improves ULGUE. Mechanism analysis shows that zero-waste city construction improves ULGUE mainly by optimizing the waste treatment structure, promoting green technological innovation, and facilitating the development of green industries. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the promoting effect is stronger in eastern regions, key environmental protection cities, old industrial base cities, and resource-based cities. Moderating effect analysis indicates that rising public environmental attention and internet development strengthen this effect. Spatial econometric analysis further shows that zero-waste city construction generates significant positive spatial spillovers on neighboring regions in addition to improving local ULGUE. This study reveals the underlying logic and micro-level transmission paths of zero-waste city policy, situates China’s experience within global circular economy governance, and offers policy evidence for emerging economies advancing green land use. Full article

Inter-provincial administrative boundary areas are particularly vulnerable to ineffective regional pollution governance because they are simultaneously affected by transboundary pollution diffusion and administrative fragmentation. Existing governance practices, however, continue to rely heavily on territorially based regulation and administrative coordination, while the potential of cross-regional green-technology collaboration to address boundary pollution has received insufficient attention. Using panel data for Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2011 to 2023, this study systematically examines the impact of green innovation collaboration (GIC) on pollution control in areas along interprovincial administrative boundaries through two-way fixed-effects, instrumental-variable, Heckman two-step, and spatial Durbin models. The results show that, first, GIC significantly reduces pollution in these areas, and this finding remains robust across a range of robustness checks. GIC also generates significant spatial spillovers: while reducing local boundary pollution, it improves air quality in neighboring cities. Second, the heterogeneity analysis indicates that this effect is more pronounced in cities facing greater pollution-control pressure, lower fiscal pressure, and higher levels of openness. The regional results also reveal certain differences. Third, the mechanism analysis shows that cross-regional collaborative governance and industrial upgrading constitute two relatively independent parallel transmission pathways rather than a sequential chain, and their relative contributions vary with city conditions. These findings provide empirical evidence for improving interprovincial collaborative governance, facilitating the cross-regional diffusion of green technologies, and implementing differentiated environmental policies. Full article

Tourism is a complex economic activity all over the world shaped by distinct local resources: culture, nature, industrial heritage, urban ambiance, place-based uniqueness, and geographical accessibility. The simultaneous governance and management of economic growth motives, preservation of the cultural heritage base, and respect for nature and ecological quality calls for an evidence-based and multi-faceted policy analysis that seeks to achieve sustainable development among conflicting policy objectives in tourist areas. The present paper seeks to explore the feasibility of a sustainable balance for various heterogeneous cultural heritage areas in Europe (‘urban pilot regions’), with particular attention to sustainable local development characterized by circular economic objectives and an ecological balance strategy based on the principle of stakeholders’ co-creation. The paper addresses the knowledge gap between generic policy aims and site-specific views of actors or visitors. To that end, an extensive survey experiment was administered in the urban regions concerned, in which a wide range of relevant management issues/questions related to environmental preferences and perceptions were posed to stakeholders and visitors. The data were analyzed by means of a novel respondent-oriented multivariate statistical tool, viz. Generalized Q-Analysis, which is suitable for handling big databases with many respondents. The paper shows that the application of Generalized Q-Analysis to common survey data enriches the results from the application of a conventional Q-Analysis. Furthermore, the study also highlights that, based on the views expressed by the surveyed visitors, the tourist areas concerned are quite different from each other in attracting specific classes of visitors. Therefore, functional specialization in the tourist sector seems to be an important anchor point for effective governance of urban tourism, not only in Europe, but also elsewhere in the world. Full article

Zero-waste city (ZWC) construction serves as a vital approach to regional sustainable development amid tightening resource constraints and the dual carbon goals. Examining its impact on urban green development efficiency (UGDE) and the underlying transmission mechanisms bears important theoretical significance and practical value. Drawing on panel data covering 281 Chinese cities from 2008 to 2024, this study adopts the difference-in-differences model to examine how the zero-waste city pilot (ZWCP) policy affects UGDE. The main findings are summarized as follows. (1) ZWCP policy significantly improves UGDE, and this core conclusion remains robust after multiple robustness tests and endogeneity corrections. (2) Mechanism tests confirm that ZWCP elevates the green development efficiency of pilot cities through two intermediate channels: green industrial agglomeration and public environmental awareness. (3) The ZWCP policy exerts positive spatial spillover effects on UGDE improvement. However, the two transmission mechanisms show heterogeneous spatial linkage effects. Green industrial agglomeration acts as the core channel for policy spatial radiation, with inter-city agglomeration diffusion driving UGDE growth in neighboring cities. In contrast, public environmental awareness only exerts a local mediating effect, with no significant spatial spillover on UGDE. (4) The moderation analysis reveals that government environmental attention (GEA) strengthens both transmission paths, exerting a positive moderating effect on the UGDE promotion of ZWCP. (5) Heterogeneous results indicate that the policy’s boosting effect is more pronounced in eastern regions, resource-based cities and highly urbanized cities. These findings provide empirical evidence and targeted policy references for advancing urban green development efficiency via the differentiated implementation of zero-waste city initiatives across China. They also offer practical Chinese insights for other developing economies pursuing green urban transition. Full article

Despite nationwide transparency mandates and expanding digital infrastructure, Chinese local governments adopted online budget disclosure at markedly different times. This study explains this staggered diffusion by integrating the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework with policy diffusion theory and analyzing 290 prefecture-level governments in China from 2002 to 2023 using discrete-time event history models. The results show that government website development, central government mandates, and peer-city adoption are positively and robustly associated with the likelihood of adoption. By contrast, provincial government disclosure, regional economic development, fiscal pressure, and internet penetration show no stable independent effects in the full models. Interaction analyses reveal, however, that economic development and internet penetration strengthen the association between website development and adoption, while fiscal pressure does not. These findings indicate that local environmental conditions function primarily as enabling conditions that amplify technological capacity rather than as autonomous drivers. The study advances research on fiscal transparency and public-sector innovation by shifting attention from whether governments disclose to when adoption occurs, offering a conditional interpretation of the TOE framework, and demonstrating how vertical authority, horizontal peer dynamics, and digital readiness jointly shape policy diffusion in a unitary governance system. Full article

Green finance can support sustainable urban transition, but its effectiveness depends on local institutions and cross-city interactions. Using balanced panel data for 260 Chinese cities from 2010 to 2022, this study examines the effects of green finance on total carbon emissions and carbon emission intensity using two-way fixed-effects, moderation, and spatial Durbin models. The results show that green finance significantly reduces total emissions and carbon intensity, with coefficients of −0.0954 and −0.1797, respectively. The effects are heterogeneous: green credit and green bonds reduce both outcomes, green funds mainly reduce carbon intensity, and green insurance has no significant effect; eastern cities mainly exhibit total emission reduction, central and western cities mainly exhibit intensity reduction, and northeastern cities benefit in both dimensions. Environmental regulation strengthens both effects, whereas financial governance and public participation mainly strengthen total emission control. The investment environment weakens intensity reduction, while government environmental attention weakens total emission control but strengthens intensity reduction. Spatial analysis finds significant local reductions, but the indirect effect on neighboring cities’ total emissions is positive (0.465), consistent with a cross-city pollution transfer effect. These findings show that green finance can advance sustainable urban development when instrument design, institutional governance, and regional coordination prevent the transfer of carbon burden between cities. Full article

Public-sector sustainability and climate reporting increasingly address environmental exposure, governance, and financial effects, yet existing frameworks do not adequately disclose preparedness for low-probability, high-impact systemic risks whose probabilities, timing, thresholds, and transmission channels remain deeply uncertain. This article develops a Public-Sector Resilience Reporting Standard (PSRRS) as a pre-standard architecture for government preparedness disclosure. The design has three bounded objectives: diagnose cross-framework disclosure gaps, translate these gaps into a theoretically grounded capability-to-disclosure architecture, and demonstrate its analytical use through an illustrative Florida application and two hazard-neutral stress tests. The documentary corpus includes international sustainability and public-sector reporting standards, ISO and UNDRR resilience and continuity instruments, three Florida resilience documents, and peer-reviewed literature on resilience governance, decision-making under deep uncertainty, critical infrastructure interdependency, catastrophic uncertainty, climate-risk disclosure, public finance, climate-risk pricing, local-government credit risk, investor attention, and ransomware service disruption. A structured interpretive coding protocol classifies each framework as explicit, partial, or not explicit across nine disclosure dimensions; a codebook appendix identifies the assessment criteria, the a priori and inductively refined dimensions, and the validation boundaries. Florida is not treated as a basis for statistical or jurisdictional generalization. Instead, it illustrates how a comparatively developed resilience architecture may disclose statutory continuity, critical-asset data, project ranking, and output metrics while leaving systemic dependencies, adaptive triggers, long-horizon fiscal exposure, residual service risk, distributional effects, and assurance mechanisms insufficiently visible in the reviewed reporting corpus. AMOC and case-grounded cyber-fiscal stress tests show how the PSRRS shifts reporting from hazard inventories and funded projects toward auditable evidence of institutional capacity, adaptive readiness, and public-value protection. The article specifies mandatory, recommended, and optional clauses, evidence requirements, indicator examples, a disclosure index, a sample report structure, and a three-tier pilot conformity model. The contribution is conceptual and operational, but not yet a validated formal standard; cross-jurisdictional piloting, inter-rater coding, cost testing, assurance testing, and stakeholder consultation are identified as the next stage of standardization. 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

Nanobiochar has attracted increasing attention as a redox-active carbon nanomaterial with potential applications beyond its traditional roles in environmental remediation and adsorption technologies. When integrated into hydrogel matrices, nanobiochar may provide a unique combination of physicochemical and biological functionalities, including reactive oxygen species (ROS) modulation, antimicrobial activity, high adsorption capacity, and localized therapeutic delivery. Such properties are particularly relevant to emerging wound-healing and regenerative medicine applications; however, the biological mechanisms governing the performance of nanobiochar–hydrogel systems remain poorly understood. Because direct studies on nanobiochar–hydrogel therapeutic systems remain scarce, this review integrates evidence from the limited nanobiochar literature together with evidence from studies on conventional biochar, hydrogel biomaterials, and related carbon nanomaterial to critically evaluate emerging biological mechanisms and identify future research priorities. This review combines bibliometric analysis with mechanistic evaluation to assess the potential of nanobiochar–hydrogel systems as therapeutic biomaterials while highlighting critical knowledge gaps limiting their development. Bibliometric findings reveal that research on biochar–hydrogel composites is dominated by environmental remediation, adsorption processes, and material characterization, whereas investigations addressing biological responses and therapeutic functionality remain limited. Building upon these observations, this review examines nanobiochar surface chemistry, electron transfer behavior, and redox-active properties that may influence ROS regulation at biological interfaces. Particular emphasis is placed on biointerface interactions, including protein adsorption, protein corona formation, cellular uptake pathways, and the influence of hydrogel-mediated exposure on biological responses. The review further evaluates potential antimicrobial mechanisms, redox-sensitive signaling pathways, cytocompatibility assessment strategies, and the behavior of nanobiochar-containing systems under physiologically relevant conditions. Current evidence indicates a strong reliance on chemical antioxidant assays and short-term viability measurements, while mechanistic investigations involving intracellular ROS regulation, inflammatory signaling, mitochondrial function, and gene expression responses remain scarce. Collectively, the literature discussed in this article highlights the substantial gap between material development and biological validation and provides a framework for future studies aimed at evaluating the suitability of nanobiochar–hydrogel systems for wound-healing and regenerative applications. Full article

Although the Mediterranean diet (MD) is widely recognized as a healthy dietary pattern, its potential role as a framework for sustainable urban gastronomy has received limited attention. This narrative review synthesizes evidence from nutrition, environmental studies, gastronomy, tourism, and urban food systems. The review explores MD’s sustainability dimensions, food waste and urban food systems, cultural heritage, and trends in urban gastronomy. The findings suggest that the MD is a strong model for sustainable urban food futures, combining nutritional adequacy, relatively low environmental impact, and socio-cultural legitimacy. Evidence indicates that Mediterranean-style dietary patterns are associated with lower greenhouse gas emissions, land use, energy use, and water consumption than Western diets, while also remaining comparatively affordable when based on staple plant foods. However, important challenges remain, including affordability, especially across vulnerable social groups; dependence on local supply systems; authenticity under tourism pressure; and the need for effective governance. Overall, the evidence suggests that the MD provides a useful framework for integrating health, sustainability, and cultural heritage objectives within urban food systems. Future research should focus on city-level implementation strategies, food service and restaurant sector practices, and hotel meal planning within urban MD frameworks. Full article

Long-standing studies of historical cultural spaces have primarily focused on the preservation of heritage objects and landscapes, while insufficient attention has been paid to the structural relationships, land-use transformations, and cultural–ecological processes that sustain their long-term continuity. Taking the World Heritage site of Lijiang as a case, this study develops a three-dimensional structural decoding framework composed of spatial base, spatial network, and spatial entity, together with an analytical pathway of “Identification–Interpretation–Evaluation–Synthesis–Practice.” By integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches with multi-source data, the study establishes an evidence chain linking historical processes and contemporary conditions to examine the formation mechanisms, continuity, and contemporary deviations of Lijiang’s historical cultural space. The results show that terrain–habitat adaptability, water system coupling, and environmental risk avoidance shaped environmental adaptation; historical corridors, landscape perception, and core node associations organized spatial networks; and functional diversity, cultural capital agglomeration, and spatial-scale compatibility supported entity-based spatial practices. Although tourism development, urban expansion, and land-use transformation have not completely dismantled these historical relationships, they have caused localized deviations in ecological boundaries, path continuity, visual connections, functional vitality, and spatial scale. This study argues that the governance of historical cultural spaces should shift from preserving isolated heritage objects to sustaining cultural–ecological relationships that support memory, identity, spatial practice, and adaptive land governance. Full article

Aquavoltaics, which integrates solar photovoltaic infrastructure with aquaculture production, has increasingly been promoted as a possible pathway for supporting low-carbon energy transition and multifunctional land use in coastal regions. In Taiwan, aquavoltaics has been framed as a policy approach that may contribute to renewable energy development, aquaculture continuity, and rural revitalisation. However, its implementation has also raised governance concerns related to land use, environmental uncertainty, and local participation in coastal aquaculture communities. This study examines the governance trade-offs and institutional development of aquavoltaics policy in southern Taiwan through an analytical framework that combines political ecology and the extended explanatory chain model (EECM). Drawing on policy document analysis, field observations, administrative records, and in-depth interviews with 24 stakeholders, the study traces aquavoltaics governance across five interrelated stages: policy discourse, institutional design, local implementation and community response, policy feedback, and institutional diffusion. The findings indicate that Taiwan’s aquavoltaics governance has been shaped by tensions between centralised energy-policy objectives and diverse local aquaculture conditions. Technical requirements, including the 40% shading threshold and the 70% production maintenance requirement, provide administrative clarity but may not fully reflect species-specific practices, pond-management needs, or existing land-tenure arrangements. In the cases examined, aquavoltaics development was associated with changes in land-use relations, spatial competition, and concerns over environmental uncertainty and governance legitimacy. The study also suggests that local stakeholders were not only recipients of top–down policy implementation but also participated in governance adjustment through review procedures, administrative negotiation, adaptive practices, and the mobilisation of local ecological knowledge. By integrating political ecology with the EECM, this study offers a process-oriented perspective for examining aquavoltaics as a socioecological governance issue rather than only a technical energy arrangement. The findings suggest that future aquavoltaics governance may benefit from more context-sensitive assessment, clearer institutional coordination, and greater attention to local knowledge and long-term monitoring. Full article

Digital infrastructure is increasingly regarded as a key enabler of economic modernization and urban sustainability, but its sustainability implications depend on whether digitalization guides innovation activities toward greener technological directions. Against the backdrop of China’s “dual carbon” goals and the deepening of low-carbon transformation, this study examines the relationship between digital infrastructure development and the green orientation of urban innovation from the perspective of innovation structure. Using panel data for 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2023, we measure the share of green innovation by the proportion of green invention patents in total granted patents, and use broadband Internet access users per 100 residents, denoted as InternetRate, as a proxy for digital infrastructure development. A two-way fixed effects model is employed to investigate the empirical relationship between the two. The results show that digital infrastructure development is significantly negatively associated with the relative share of green innovation within total innovation. This finding remains robust to alternative functional-form specifications, extreme-value treatment, alternative measures of digital infrastructure, and alternative measures of green innovation structure, and remains directionally consistent in a supplementary instrumental-variable test. Decomposition of scale effects indicates that this negative association reflects the relatively faster expansion of non-green innovation rather than an absolute contraction in green innovation, suggesting a structural reallocation pattern within urban innovation activities. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the negative association is mainly concentrated in cities with lower levels of economic development and higher text-based environmental governance attention, and is more pronounced in cities with a lower degree of industrial servitization. Moderation analysis further shows that this negative association becomes weaker in cities with stronger local green fiscal support. Spatial analysis indicates that the share of green innovation exhibits significant spatial dependence; however, the association between digital infrastructure development and innovation structure is mainly localized, with no significant spatial spillover detected. These findings contribute to sustainability research by showing that digital infrastructure does not automatically improve the green composition of innovation and that sustainable digital transformation requires complementary green fiscal support, environmental governance, and industrial upgrading policies. Full article

Streets are major public spaces in high-density cities, and their visual environments are closely related to shaping emotional experience and wellbeing. However, existing studies often examine macro-scale urban form and pedestrian-level streetscape perception separately, while paying limited attention to nonlinear relationships and spatial heterogeneity. This limits the evidence available for fine-grained urban renewal in high-density contexts. Focusing on the area within Shanghai’s Outer Ring, this study develops a large-scale street-view dataset of 512,764 Baidu Street View images. Six perceptual dimensions—safety, lively, beautiful, wealthy, boring, and depressing—are estimated using a perception model trained on Place Pulse 2.0 and integrated into a composite Psychological and Emotional Index (PEI). XGBoost–SHAP is used to examine nonlinear relationships and threshold effects between perceptions and environmental indicators, while MGWR is employed to capture spatial nonstationarity and scale-dependent effects. The results show significant spatial heterogeneity and positive spatial autocorrelation across the six perceptual dimensions and the PEI. Compared with traditional morphological indicators, visual features showed stronger explanatory power and clearer threshold effects. Population density acts as a globally stable negative factor, whereas visual entropy and mixture show strong local sensitivity. These findings provide a data-driven basis for identifying context-specific priorities in urban renewal and spatial governance in high-density cities. Full article

Household rainwater tanks (HRWTs) have re-emerged globally as a decentralised strategy to address water scarcity, climate variability, and increasing urban water demand. In several jurisdictions, including New South Wales, Australia, rainwater tanks have been chosen to meet the mandatory potable water reduction target in new residential developments for nearly two decades; however, growing evidence indicates persistent underutilisation and variable performance in practice. Despite their recognised benefits in reducing potable water demand, mitigating stormwater runoff, and enhancing urban resilience, the global HRWT research landscape remains fragmented across disciplinary and thematic boundaries. This paper presents a multifaceted review, defined here as an approach that synthesises multiple perspectives on the topic. It integrates systematic mapping of peer-reviewed literature with a critical thematic analysis across four dominant research domains: technological and design innovation, policy and governance frameworks, environmental performance, and social–behavioural dimensions. The findings reveal a strong research focus on technical optimisation, while policy effectiveness, environmental trade-offs, and household-level behavioural factors receive comparatively uneven attention. Regulatory and incentive-based instruments are shown to produce inconsistent outcomes, shaped by local institutional capacity to design, implement, enforce, and sustain programs, as well as by climatic context and household acceptance. Environmental assessments identify both benefits and burdens, including energy use, treatment requirements, and operational complexity. Social and behavioural studies indicate growing acceptance of household rainwater tank (HRWT) systems. However, financial constraints, local conditions, and ongoing maintenance demands continue to influence adoption and performance. A key insight from this review is the limited attention given to households’ lived experiences, particularly how users adopt, adapt, operate, and maintain HRWT systems over time. This gap constrains progress across technical, policy, environmental, and social dimensions and risks cycles of early policy uptake followed by stagnation. The review highlights the need to integrate household perspectives into future research, policy design, and industry practice to improve system performance, user experience, and the long-term contribution of HRWTs to sustainable urban water management. Full article