Search Results (73)

Historic urban districts are increasingly exposed to rapid urban transformation, resulting in the deterioration of heritage fabric, weakening of spatial identity, and disruption of everyday patterns of use. Although participatory approaches are increasingly recognised in heritage-led regeneration, many applications remain limited by the lack of analytical mechanisms capable of connecting community perspectives with spatial and behavioural evidence in a structured and practical manner. This study develops and applies a participatory decision-support approach based on the People–Place–Behaviour (PPB) framework within the historic district of El-Mokhtalat in Mansoura, Egypt. The study combines spatial documentation, behavioural observation, and stakeholder consultation to examine how everyday urban practices, adaptive reuse, informal interventions, and local perceptions collectively influence regeneration priorities within the historic environment. The findings indicate that regeneration priorities emerge through the interaction between spatial conditions, community perceptions, and behavioural patterns rather than through isolated physical conditions alone. Based on stakeholder consultations (n = 30), the analysis identifies a prioritisation gradient in which architectural conservation and environmental enhancement represent the most immediate intervention priorities, while adaptive reuse and public-space improvements remain dependent on contextual compatibility and local acceptance. The study also demonstrates the analytical value of behavioural evidence in revealing recurring spatial pressures, identity-related transformations, and everyday interaction patterns affecting the continuity of the historic urban fabric. By integrating participatory, spatial, and behavioural evidence within a unified evaluation process, the study proposes a context-sensitive analytical approach capable of supporting more informed and locally responsive heritage-led regeneration strategies. Full article

The article illustrates the digital documentation workflow adopted to effectively use digital survey outcomes in supporting the knowledge and conservation of built heritage. This study was developed as part of the Project of Significant National Interest (PRIN), titled “KNOW.it Transition in Digital Age: KNOWing our background to refine our future”. The research focuses on the cities of Jaú and São Carlos, applying a rigorous methodology that combines archival research, photogrammetry, laser scanning, and 3D modelling. This approach is used to identify, analyse, and digitally reconstruct Italian-influenced eclectic architecture from the late 19th to early 20th century. The initiative supports both scholarly research and public dissemination through a digital platform that will host interactive maps, historical documents, 2D drawings and 3D models. By linking academic research with diasporic memory, KNOW.it highlights how digital tools can preserve and reactivate cultural legacies, fostering transnational heritage dialogue. The project’s use of social media further engages local communities in a participatory process, enriching its digital archive with crowdsourced memories and documents. The project opens up new possibilities for international cooperation, digital heritage practices, and the study of architectural migrations, showing how critically informed digital tools can recontextualise and enhance dispersed historical knowledge. Full article

Rapid urbanization has intensified congestion, environmental pressures, and transport inequities, thereby increasing interest in Smart Urban Mobility (SUM) as an approach that combines digital technologies, sustainable transport strategies, and data-informed decision-making to respond to these challenges. However, the evaluation of SUM remains fragmented due to the absence of harmonized assessment frameworks and the diversity of methodologies applied across smart city contexts. This study presents a systematic literature review of evaluation approaches and indicator architectures for SUM in smart city contexts. Using a PRISMA-guided screening process, 33 eligible studies were selected from 412 retrieved records. Three main methodological groups were identified: quantitative approaches, multi-criteria decision-making methods, and qualitative or participatory frameworks. A total of 273 indicators were organized into eight factor categories, confirming the multidimensional nature of smart mobility assessment while also revealing limited consistency in indicator selection and application across studies. Across the selected studies, current evaluation practices are increasingly linked to project prioritization, planning, and decision support; however, their effectiveness remains constrained by data inconsistencies, governance fragmentation, and insufficient user inclusion. These findings highlight the need for assessment frameworks that are sufficiently comparable to enable cross-city learning, yet flexible enough to reflect local contexts and institutional realities. Full article

In the renewal of rural self-built houses, dispersed construction patterns, insufficient design guidance, and resource constraints often lead to tensions between individual building needs and the overall settlement landscape. Grounded in the theory of spatial self-organization, this study proposes a roof interface renewal framework of “Clustering–Collaboration–self-organization,” and takes Dianju Village in Anning City, Yunnan Province, as a case study to explore how limited architectural interventions can address the fragmentation of roof landscapes in rural settlements. This research adopts a mixed-method approach combining ethnographic fieldwork, resident design observation, and post-occupancy evaluation (POE). The POE was conducted with 16 participating households, focusing on residents’ perceptions of roof usability, visual order, material acceptance, opportunities for neighborhood interaction, and maintenance issues. The findings indicate that residents generally perceive that continuous roof treatment, the application of bamboo–timber materials, and adjustable structural units have improved the usability of roof spaces, while enhancing their recognition of the overall village image and the expression of local materials. At the same time, residents’ feedback suggests that the long-term performance of bamboo–timber materials still depends on continuous maintenance and appropriate structural protection. The contribution of this study lies in translating spatial self-organization theory into a participatory and locally adaptive process of rural landscape renewal. Rather than providing a directly replicable roof typology, this case offers exploratory insights into key interface identification, resident negotiation, and localized construction strategies for the renewal of rural self-built houses in developing and transitional contexts. Full article

Anticipating the socio-environmental impacts of spatial planning strategies is a prerequisite for sustainable development pathways. Land change models are increasingly employed to evaluate the impacts of spatial planning on land use and land cover, and their subsequent effects on ecosystem services and environmental resources. Nevertheless, modelling land use and land cover changes, and their interactions, at a fine scale to preserve future landscape patterns has been identified as a key challenge in the land change science community. This paper presents an innovative process-based model—the FORecasting landscapE SCEnarios Model (FORESCEM)—designed to spatially simulate fine-scale future land use and land cover changes (LUCC) based on narratives developed through participatory or expert-driven approaches. By clearly distinguishing land covers and land uses as two different but related inputs, its conception and architecture enable the assessment of interactions among LUCC within human-managed landscapes. It relies on conventional functions and properties of LUCC models, and aims at completing the existing land change models. Applied on a French case study, the validation results demonstrate the model’s capability to replicate LUCC dynamics, effectively simulating trend-based and trend-breaking LUCC trajectories under contrasting scenarios. More broadly, this paper questions and discusses the validation of land change models used for simulating future LUCC. Full article

Translating diverse stakeholders’ needs for tourism into precise technical requirements for mobile resilience applications is a significant challenge, especially for at-risk coastal communities. Therefore, we developed a structured decision-support framework that uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) combined with Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to systematically identify and prioritize functional features for a disaster-resilient tourism application called AuTour. The framework was validated through a case study in Aurora Province, Philippines, involving 152 diverse stakeholders, including government officials, tourism operators, and technology students. The AHP analysis results revealed that safety infrastructure (a mean weight of 0.5256) was the dominant design criterion, far outweighing environmental sustainability (0.2480) and community preparedness (0.1241). The MCDA ranked key functional modules using these criteria to determine an optimal system architecture. The highest-priority features identified were a real-time Disaster Preparedness Alert module, a geospatial Smart Tourism Guide, and a participatory Health Surveillance module. The analysis results confirmed high utility for features incorporating AI-powered chatbots (a mean score of 4.1921) and multi-dialect communication capabilities (4.1513). The developed scalable, data-driven framework can be used for user-centered design in the critical domain of disaster-resilient technology. By translating stakeholder priorities into a ranked set of technical specifications, the framework contributes to the development of resilient mobile systems, supporting the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals for innovation (SDG 9) and resilient infrastructure (SDG 11). Full article

Urban mobility is a central challenge for sustainable and inclusive cities, as climate change, congestion, and spatial inequality increasingly reveal mobility patterns as expressions of deeper social and spatial structures. Inclusive urban mobility examines whether transport systems equitably support the everyday movements and accessibility needs of historically marginalized and underserved populations. The integration of artificial intelligence with geographic information science, combined with multimodal geospatial data fusion, provides powerful tools to diagnose and address these disparities by integrating heterogeneous data sources such as satellite imagery, GPS trajectories, transit records, volunteered geographic information, and social sensing data into scalable, high-resolution urban mobility analytics. This paper presents a systematic survey of recent GeoAI studies that fuse multiple geospatial data modalities for key urban mobility tasks, including accessibility mapping, demand forecasting, and origin–destination flow prediction, with particular emphasis on inclusive and equity-oriented applications. The review examines 18 multimodal GeoAI studies identified through a PRISMA-ScR screening process from 57 candidate publications between 2019 and 2025. The survey synthesizes methodological trends across data-, feature-, and decision-level fusion strategies, highlights the growing use of deep learning architectures, and examines emerging techniques such as knowledge graphs, federated learning, and explainable AI that support equity-relevant insights across diverse urban contexts. Building on this synthesis, the review identifies persistent gaps in population coverage, multimodal integration, equity optimization, explainability, validation, and governance, which currently constrain the inclusiveness and robustness of GeoAI applications in urban mobility research. To address these challenges, the paper proposes a structured research roadmap linking these gaps to concrete methodological and governance directions including equity-aware loss functions, adaptive multimodal fusion pipelines, participatory and human-in-the-loop workflows, and urban data trusts to better align multimodal GeoAI with the goals of inclusive, just, and sustainable urban mobility systems. Full article

Adaptive reuse has emerged to become a tool for implementing the understanding of sustainability in the domain of architectural conservation, as it encourages the continued usage of old buildings as means of reducing environmental impact, as well as preserving socio-cultural capital while generating economic income. However, in its practice, the decisions regarding granting meanings, interpretation, and preserving memories within adaptation processes are dominated by expert-driven approaches that inadequately incorporate stakeholder values or intangible heritage dimensions. To this end, this study aims to contribute to the current debate by adopting a participatory co-evaluation framework that integrates both authenticity perspectives and sustainability dimensions using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) for evaluating adaptive reuse alternatives for an abandoned prefabricated wooden heritage building. Stakeholder priorities were drawn through a workshop and transformed into normalized weights using the Simos technique. Four design alternative typologies—namely, Continuity, Cultivation, Differential, and Optimization—were assessed and compared against 20 performance indicators across heritage, social, ecological, and economic criteria using the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). Indicator-level analyses and sensitivity tests (±10% and ±20% weight variations) were applied to confirm the robustness of rankings. The results from the best-performing alternative demonstrated the trade-offs between heritage authenticity and sustainability objectives, as well as demonstrating how combining participatory methods with quantitative evaluation can support evidence-based decision-making for adaptive reuse. The applied integrated framework helps bridge the gap between heritage theory and practice by combining authenticity, participation, and sustainability in one analytical approach, supporting evidence-based decisions for adaptive reuse. Full article

The rapid urbanization process is forcing cities to rethink their development models by adopting circular economy strategies that promote resource efficiency, regeneration, and waste reduction. This systematic literature review investigates how circular strategies are being developed and implemented to support the transition toward circular cities. Following the PRISMA guidelines, 77 studies were selected to provide a comprehensive overview of the approaches currently adopted across different urban contexts. This review identifies a four-macro-level framework encompassing urban circularity strategies, architecture and circular constructions, waste management and recycling, and food sustainability, highlighting both their interconnections and specific challenges. Results show that successful circular transitions depend on the integration of digital innovation, participatory governance, and context-sensitive policy frameworks. However, infrastructural gaps, fragmented regulations, and limited citizen engagement continue to hinder progress. Overall, this review highlights the need for integrated strategies that connect environmental, institutional, and social dimensions to foster more circular, resilient, and inclusive urban systems. These findings contribute to the growing understanding of how cities can operationalize circular economy principles to address sustainability challenges and accelerate the transition toward regenerative urban development. Full article

The degradation of urban streams is a critical challenge for cities worldwide, often exacerbated by climate change. In Niterói, Brazil, the Itaipu Lagoon and its tributaries, such as Colibris Stream, face siltation, pollution, and riparian forest loss. This article presents and analyzes a six-year (2019–2025) community-led initiative for urban stream restoration, demonstrating a viable socio-technical model. The intervention, carried out by the organized civil society collective ‘Córregos da Tiririca,’ employed an adapted syntropic agriculture protocol to restore a narrow, degraded riparian strip. The core innovation, however, extends beyond the agroforestry technique to the social architecture that sustained it. The Collective evolved into a permanent community of practice, ensuring long-term stewardship. The experience was systematized into a four-phase replicability framework (Social Foundation; Participatory Diagnosis and Planning; Pilot Implementation and Adaptive Learning; Scaling and Institutionalizing Care). This study argues that the most significant outcome is this integrated model itself, where ecological technique and social process are mutually reinforcing. The results show significant ecological recovery along a 900-m stretch, with the establishment of a stratified forest (>70% canopy cover) and a documented return of biodiversity (194 species recorded via citizen science), all driven by collective action. Therefore, this article serves as a practical replication guide for organized civil society groups, offering a scalable strategy for urban watershed regeneration that reconciles ecological restoration with social mobilization and resilience. Full article

This article examines how everyday architecture can advance spatial justice in post-active conflict cities through ethnographic and participatory design. Drawing on a decade of work by the StreetSpace studio in Belfast (2015–2025), the paper explores how architecture students and community participants co-design spatial strategies that enhance mixed-use mid-density living, inclusive mobility, and street-level accessibility. In a context where car dominance, segregation, and privatisation of public space continue to fragment urban life, the everyday street becomes a testbed for envisioning an equitable and community-centred city. The studio’s methodology is grounded in ethnographic engagement, informed by an embedded anthropologist, and includes stakeholder mapping, walking workshops, and collaborative drawing. These practices reveal lived experiences and shape community-driven briefs for housing, schools, public spaces, and multifunctional infrastructure. Anchored in spatial justice discourse and feminist theory (Jane Jacobs, David Harvey, Roberto Rocco, Phil Hubbard, Leslie Kern, and Caroline Criado Perez), the work positions the everyday as a site of architectural agency and proposes a contemporary vernacular that is socially embedded and climate-resilient. This work unfolds through complex and often contested processes that require sustained, iterative engagement with people and places. Meaningful collaboration is neither linear nor inherently caring; it frequently involves conflict, disagreement, and competing priorities that must be navigated over time. Through long-term relationships with government departments, local authorities, and NGOs, StreetSpace demonstrates how architectural pedagogy can nonetheless contribute to policy formation and more inclusive urban redevelopment by engaging in compromise, critical negotiation, and moments of care alongside friction and resistance. Through a series of collaborations and public events the project has contributed to the transformation of Botanic Avenue, informed studies of the East Belfast Greenways through contributions to Groundswell and participated in embedded public processes in collaboration with PPR, culminating in an exhibition at the MAC in Belfast in 2025. Full article

This article presents a case study from a Social and Health Care School in Denmark, where a rooftop garden was designed to promote student health and support nature-based teaching across subject areas. A novel aspect of the project is the formal integration of the garden into teaching, implying that its long-term impact may extend beyond the students to the end-users they will later encounter in nursing homes and hospitals nationwide. This study applies the Evidence-Based Health Design in Landscape Architecture (EBHDL) process model, encompassing evidence collection, programming, and concept design, with the University of Copenhagen acting in a consultancy role. A co-design process with students and teachers was included as a novel source of case-specific evidence. Methodologically, this is a participatory practice-based case study focusing on the full design and construction processes, combining continuous documentation with reflective analysis of ‘process insights,’ generating lessons learned from the application of the EBHDL process model. This study identifies two categories of lessons learned. First, general insights emerged concerning governance, stakeholder roles, and the critical importance of site selection, procurement, and continuity of design responsibility. Second, specific insights were gained regarding the application of the EBHDL model, including its alignment with Danish and international standardised construction phases. These insights are particularly relevant for project managers in nature-based initiatives. The results also show how the EBHDL model aligns with Danish and international standardised construction phases, offering a bridge between health design methods and established building practice. The case focuses on the EBHDL process rather than verified outcomes and demonstrates how evidence-based and participatory approaches can help structure complex design processes, facilitate stakeholder engagement, and support decision-making in institutional projects. Full article

This study proposes a methodological approach to reinterpret the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the built heritage of the Island of Mozambique, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1991 under criteria IV and VI. In view of emerging challenges that threaten the heritage-making process—namely, progressive interventions in the built fabric—a methodology of interrelated reading is presented, grounded in a critical and participatory perspective centered on the local community. This methodological structure is operationalized through an interrelated reading model that combines architectural, constructive and intangible layers within a multi-scalar analytical matrix. This approach is based on three interdependent dimensions: (i) material and immaterial; (ii) symbolic and identity-related; and (iii) functional and sustainable. The theoretical model developed, supported by the participation of multiple stakeholders, demonstrates that small adaptations—compatible with cultural values and local actors’ interpretations—can strengthen the recognition of the value of built heritage and foster sustainable human development. Given the existing typological diversity, the study concludes that it is essential to adapt the model of OUV reinterpretation to each specific context, acknowledging the plurality of possible solutions and promoting a balanced integration of material and immaterial values without compromising existing cultural significance. Full article

This article examines the Participatory Fiscal Control System (SCFP) of the Colombian Comptroller General’s Office as an institutional innovation in democratic oversight. While participatory audit mechanisms have expanded globally, the literature still lacks empirical analyses of how Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) operationalize citizen engagement within formal oversight cycles. This study addresses this gap by analyzing the SCFP’s conceptual foundations, regulatory architecture, and implementation mechanisms. Using a qualitative methodological approach based on document analysis, process tracing, and two in-depth case studies, the article evaluates how citizen participation contributes to fiscal accountability and governance outcomes. Findings show that the SCFP enables early risk detection, accelerates problem-solving installed public works, and strengthens accountability in large-scale social programs. The study contributes to theories of participatory and collaborative governance by proposing a conceptual model of “co-produced fiscal oversight,” and identifies policy implications for SAIs seeking to institutionalize citizen engagement as part of their accountability mandate. Full article

Social sustainability in urban and architectural design depends on inclusive, participatory processes that empower communities to actively engage in shaping their environments. This study investigates how emerging digital platforms, specifically Augmented Reality (AR) and decentralized platforms built on blockchain technology (Web3), can function as instruments for broadening public participation and enhancing perceptual access to urban art proposals. An original algorithm generated nine digital abstract sculptures, each with descriptive attributes forming the basis for qualitative analysis across different visualization modes: traditional renderings, Augmented Reality environments, and NFT-based Web3 representations. Through participant voting, each digital sculpture accumulated a measurable level of preference that served to identify which sculpture was perceived as most successful within each visualization context. Comparative analysis revealed how distinct digital interactions shape perception, engagement, and inclusivity of feedback processes. Regression models further predicted voting outcomes, showing that different sculptural attributes played a dominant role depending on the type of visualization. Findings indicate that platform-specific technological affordances substantially shape participatory outcomes. Consequently, the study argues that careful analysis and selection of the digital platform must precede any participatory process, as platform-specific affordances fundamentally condition the inclusivity, accessibility, and overall effectiveness of public engagement in socially sustainable design. Full article