Search Results (33)

The rapid urbanization of the world has brought significant environmental, social, and economic challenges to human society. To build a sustainable county, there are many limiting factors, such as the environment, financial resources, and population. Based on this, the purpose of this study is to investigate how countries can empower their development through a sustainable design path for parks with the participation of all. The core of public participation in co-construction lies in the interactive relationship between the government, society, citizens, and many other groups. That is, “co-construction, co-governance, and sharing” is the basic content of the new pattern of social governance from the perspective of the park city; at its core is joint participation, division of labor, and cooperation. Using qualitative research methods, Kaiyuan, a county in Yunnan Province, was selected as a case study, focusing on the Phoenix Ecological Park and Happiness Lawn; citizens and managers were interviewed to explore paths for sustainable design in the counties. The contribution of this study is a research model of sustainable design for county parks with the participation of all the people. The study found that public participation should consider multiple co-constructions and formulate a sound sustainable design path from three dimensions: counties, managers, and citizens. Combined with the local characteristics of counties, the government has called on enterprises, organizations, and citizens to participate together in improving the quality of life and happiness of county residents. The results can be further verified in other counties. Full article

With the acceleration in urbanization, surface hardening has increased, urban flooding and soil erosion problems are frequent, and urban water resource management faces great challenges. Sponge city construction can effectively alleviate these problems by simulating the natural water cycle and constructing blue–green infrastructure. In this study, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the ArcGIS weighted overlay tool were used to construct a framework for assessing the suitability of sponge city construction in Suzhou from the three dimensions of Geo-Smart spatial productive forces, Eco-Dynamic green productive forces, and Resilio-Tech responsive productive forces. A zoning strategy based on new quality productive forces is also proposed. The results show that Suzhou can be divided into three types of construction zones according to the suitability level: key construction zones, secondary key construction zones, and general construction zones. The key construction zones account for about 28.01% of the total land area, mainly covering the built-up areas of Suzhou, covering the developed urban areas such as Gusu District, Xiangcheng, Suzhou Industrial Park, and other key zones such as Northern Kunshan. The secondary key construction area and general construction area, on the other hand, account for 61.94% and 10.05% of the total area, respectively. From the new quality productive forces, this study proposes the following construction guidelines for sponge city zones: (1) enhance the coordinated development of urban planning and sponge city construction; (2) promote blue–green infrastructure development, strengthen inter-departmental cooperation, and ensure ecological and economic co-development; and (3) encourage public participation in governance. This research offers theoretical and practical guidance for sponge city construction in Suzhou and other cities from the perspective of new quality productive forces. Full article

This article, Queering Militarism in Israeli Photography, examines Adi Nes’s Soldiers series, a body of work that interrogates the intersections of queerness, militarism, and nationalism within Israeli society. By employing a distinctive “military circus” aesthetic, Nes challenges the rigid heteronormative and hyper-masculine archetypes embedded in Israeli military identity. His staged photographs depict soldiers in circus-inspired performative poses, blending military discipline with elements of the carnivalesque to subvert conventional representations of military masculinity. This approach creates spaces where queerness, vulnerability, and fluid identity defy the rigid confines of nationalist narratives. Using queer studies frameworks, performance theory, and postcolonial critique, this article analyzes Nes’s depiction of soldiers as both military subjects and circus performers, examining how these representations disrupt the “naturalness” of gender, power, and identity within the Israeli national ethos. Through a close reading of key images—such as the fire-breathing soldier, the acrobat on a tightrope, and the strongman figure—this article argues that Nes critiques homonationalism and exposes the co-optation of LGBTQ+ identities into militaristic frameworks. His images juxtapose exaggerated masculinity with homoerotic and introspective vulnerability, positioning the queer body as both a participant in and a subverter of the national narrative. Drawing on contemporary queer theory—including José Esteban Muñoz’s concept of “disidentification”, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s theories of queer shame and performativity, and perspectives on temporality, failure, and counterpublics following Elizabeth Freeman, Jack Halberstam, Michael Warner, and Sara Ahmed—this article frames queerness as an active site of resistance and creative transformation within the Israeli military complex. The analysis reveals how Nes’s work disrupts Zionist masculinities and traditional militaristic structures through a hybrid aesthetic of military and circus life. By reimagining Israeli identity as an inclusive, multi-dimensional construct, Nes expands queer possibilities beyond heteronormative confines and homonationalist alignments. This merging of critical queer perspectives—from the destabilizing of discipline and shame to the public visibility of non-normative bodies—posits that queer identities can permeate and reshape state power itself, challenging not only the norms of militaristic nationalism but also the boundaries of Israeli selfhood. Full article

The Belt and Road Initiative holds significant importance for achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goals 9 and 17. Drawing on data from the Web of Science database, the BRI database, and the World Bank database, this study explores the potential carbon emission reduction effects that cooperative innovations may bring to participating countries under the Belt and Road Initiative. The study constructs variable endogenous spatio-temporal weight matrices based on initial spatial weight matrices and, drawing on trends in co-authored publications, innovatively establishes time dummy variables and event dummy variables in a difference-in-differences (DID) model. This approach fully considers the interconnected, shared model of the Belt and Road Initiative and the spatial effects of policy implementation. A spatial DID model was established for 106 BRI participating countries and regions from 2005 to 2021. The results reveal the following: first, cooperative innovation under the BRI significantly reduces carbon emission intensity in participating countries. Second, the BRI primarily achieves carbon reduction through investment, innovation, and trade mechanisms. Third, the results of the global SDID model indicate that cooperative innovation with China negatively impacts carbon emission intensity. Also, this effect exhibits spatial spillover, suggesting that there is a policy spillover effect. Fourth, the decomposition of local policy shock effects indicates that the influences of cooperative innovation exhibit spatial heterogeneity, with varying degrees of direct and indirect effects on carbon emission intensity across different countries. Full article

In 2019, the Chinese government put forward the concept of social co-governance in the field of emergency management. This paper discusses whether the adjustment in the governance concept promotes public participation in emergency management practices and what the mechanisms are to achieve successful public participation in a wildfire emergency. Taking the Beibei wildfire in Chongqing in 2022 as a study case, this paper establishes the public participation mechanisms for wildfire rescue and management with a qualitative case study method. The result shows that adjustments to emergency management concepts and the pressure of wildfire governance make local governments and commanders seek help from the public; key persons and informal networks play an important role in public participation in a wildfire emergency; and constructing social memory in social networks, whether government-led or public-organized, is an important way to enhance public participation in wildfire governance. Our findings, grounded in the reality of the growing complexity of wildfires, provide useful lessons for future wildfire governance in other provinces in China, as well as valuable references for other countries or regions. Full article

The utilization of resources plays a crucial role in mitigating the environmental pollution issue that improper disposal of construction and demolition waste (CDW) causes. However, the slow growth of the recycled building materials market limits the development of CDW resource utilization. Green value co-creation among remanufacturers, construction enterprises, and the public in CDW resource utilization projects is an effective way to address the issue. This study, based on the theory of value co-creation, uses the evolutionary game method to construct an evolutionary game model for CDW resource utilization projects. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) When the degree of green value co-creation is 0.1 or 0.5, the remanufacturer, the construction enterprise, and the public cannot maintain a state of green value co-creation; when the degree of green value co-creation is 0.9, the remanufacturer, the construction enterprise, and the public in the CDW resource utilization project finally reach a stable state of green value co-creation. (2) When the degree of green value co-creation is 0.5, enhancing the green value co-creation willingness of the remanufacturer or the public can lead other CDW resource utilization project stakeholders to participate in green value co-creation. This study contributes to the promotion of stakeholder cooperation in CDW resource utilization projects, thus providing implications for the promotion of CDW resources. Full article

Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services’ underutilization by men remains a global public health challenge. SRH problems constitute major health challenges in that they form almost one-seventh of the disease burden and contribute to higher and earlier morbidity among men. We, therefore, invited subject matter experts to collaborate in co-creating intervention strategies to enhance men’s utilization of SRH services. We employed the nominal group technique (NGT) for data collection. The NGT is a structured method that involves gathering a group of people to discuss a problem for the purpose of achieving a group consensus and planning actions for the selected problem. The participants who were purposively sampled included researchers, scientists, academics, clinicians, and policymakers. The participants suggested the need to improve men’s knowledge, provide healthcare resources such as equipment, medical supplies, and SRH-trained male healthcare workers, deal with healthcare workers’ negative attitudes through training and capacitation, and destigmatize socially constructed gender norms that deter men from seeking medical help. These important intervention strategies can be implemented to encourage men’s use of SRH services. Men’s current underutilization of SRH services requires the urgent implementation of evidence-based interventions. Collaborating with SRH experts in identifying appropriate intervention strategies can assist program managers and policymakers in designing SRH services tailored to men’s sexual health needs. Full article

Under integrated ecological and green development in the Yangtze River Delta, the regional ecology is adversely affected by ineffective synergistic governance. Regional environmental governance is a collaborative process involving multiple stakeholders and mutual engagement, with each participant pursuing their interests and common goals simultaneously. This study employed stakeholder theory. A tripartite evolutionary game model of the public, enterprises, and local governments was constructed to analyze the behavioral strategies and influencing factors for the parties involved, and the impacts of key factors on the stability of the evolutionary game system were evaluated. The results indicate that ecological environmental governance in the Yangtze River Delta region is a complex and evolving system involving multiple stakeholders, within which system stability is influenced by stakeholders’ behavioral strategies. The interests of each party are affected by the cost of public involvement in ecological environment governance and the benefits and subsidies that enterprises receive for active environmental governance. The costs and penalties paid by local governments for lax regulations impact their behavioral strategies. This study provides policy recommendations for ecological governance in the study region, including the government–enterprise co-construction of liquid regulatory funds, government–enterprise–public partnerships in low-cost regulatory models, and the sharing of high-quality regulatory outcomes. Full article

We used an interbehavioral model of teacher–student didactic performance with six pairs of criteria, as follows. Exploration of competencies and precurrent for learning, explicitness of teacher criteria and identification of student criteria, teacher illustration and illustration—student participation, supervision of the practice by the teacher and pertinent student practice, teacher feedback and feedback—student improvement, and teacher evaluation and evaluation—student application. The objective was to determine the level of covariation, divergence and convergence between the constructs of teacher didactic performance and student didactic performance in virtual classes as a result of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, in November 2020. Three hundred-thirty undergraduate students of biological sciences from a public university in Peru completed two self-report scales in virtual modality through Google forms, one on the performance of their teachers and the other on their own performance. By means of confirmatory factor analysis and an analysis of the covariance of teacher–student performance constructs, three models were obtained with good fits for the convergent and divergent validities of six constructs of the two teaching performance scales. Adequate models of functional correspondence in each pair of the six teacher–student didactic performance criteria were obtained. Likewise, didactic performances related to the identification of teaching–learning criteria and to the evaluation—application criteria were the most frequent during teaching–learning, according to the students’ self-report. Full article

The new situations, problems, and challenges facing urban fire safety work are gradually increasing in China, so innovating urban fire safety governance modes is an urgent task. In the fire management practice of the Chinese government, the establishment of an urban fire safety co-management system is an important measure for aggregating fire safety management resources and improving the level of urban fire safety prevention, as well as control. In order to reveal and clarify the interacting relationships and influencing mechanisms among multiple subjects in an urban fire safety co-management system, we constructed an urban fire safety co-management game model comprising fire supervision departments, production management units, and the public based on evolutionary game theory. The stability of the urban fire safety co-management game system is explored from the perspective of game subjects. The influencing factors of strategy selection between game subjects in the game system were investigated using numerical simulation analysis. The research results show that elevating the informatization level of co-management, the risk perception level of the public, and the disclosure level of fire safety information are conducive to stimulating the public’s positivity to participate in co-management. Strengthening the accountability of the superior government is conducive to ensuring the supervision level of fire supervision departments. The above measures have positive value for optimizing China’s urban fire safety co-management systems, establishing urban fire safety management synergy, and ensuring the stability of social fire safety situations. Full article

An important force for participation in urban and rural infrastructure transformation (URIT) is private capital (PC), which helps to emphasize the importance of government departments in effectively implementing quality urban development strategies when driving PC in order to participate in URIT in a compliant and efficient manner. This article constructs a system of factors that influence the participation of PC in URIT, which uses the analytical hierarchy process–criteria importance through inter-criteria correlation (AHP-CRITIC) combination method to quantify the comprehensive assignment of influencing factors, in order to analyze the poor effectiveness of PC participation in URIT. On this basis, combined with a logical mechanism analysis of PC participation in URIT, the evolutionary system dynamics model was constructed, and it concerned the correlation between PC’s willingness to participate in URIT and PC’s willingness to participate in each of the influencing factors. The results of the study show that (1) factors such as “return on project investment”, “tax breaks”, “level of government finance”, “project construction cost”, “mechanism for public selection of PC”, and “establishment of a special coordinating department” are the most influential factors concerning the willingness of PC to participate in URIT; (2) the “open selection of PC” and the “establishment of a coordinating department” at the level of government behavior, and “tax relief” at the level of the policy system, directly affect the willingness of PC to participate in URIT; and (3) the analysis is based on the model simulation results, combined with stakeholder theory and incentive theory. After analyzing the simulation results, it was observed that increasing the degree of implementation, regarding the “public selection of PC” and “establishment of coordination departments” among the influencing factors related to the government’s behavior, significantly enhanced the willingness of PC to participate during the final stage of the simulation. The willingness increased from 2.81 to 3.24 and 3.22, respectively. Furthermore, after doubling the “tax relief” within the policy system, the willingness of PC to participate increased from 2.81 to 3.05 during the final simulation. Finally, this article gives strategic recommendations as to how governments can incentivize PC participation in URIT, which mainly include strengthening the profitability of URIT projects, innovating the PC participation model, improving the completeness of the supporting policies, and strengthening the co-ordination of local policies. The theoretical models and research results presented in this article can provide a reference for government policy makers to encourage PC participation in URIT and provide new ideas for transformation methods concerning PC participation in URIT. Full article

In agricultural landscape management, the conventional top-down approaches that primarily focus on market-led responses struggle to preserve the landscape elements essential for environmental sustainability. To address this deficiency, land use and land cover change (LUCC) scenarios promote an integrated understanding of landscape dynamics and highlight the inconsistency between the compartmentalisation of the public sector (“siloisation”) and the necessity for management that reflects the interdependencies of socio-ecological systems. This study investigates the extent to which the creation and dissemination of LUCC scenarios lead to modifications in the values, attitudes, and behaviours of local actors engaged in land management, giving particular emphasis to the role of these scenarios in encouraging integrated management. To accomplish this objective, we interviewed local actors who actively participated in the co-construction of the scenario narratives or learned about the scenarios during dissemination workshops. We then analysed the data via a thematic and lexicometric analysis. The findings highlighted the dual function of these scenarios as a catalyst for pre-existing political will to promote integrated management and as a tool for raising awareness about major environmental challenges. At the group level, the outcomes encompassed aspects such as basing political decisions on the results of scenarios and fostering collaboration between institutions. These outcomes were observed among the actors involved in co-constructing scenarios or those with pre-existing motivations to pursue integrated management initiatives. Additional personal outcomes included an increased awareness of environmental challenges and the consolidation of non-formalised knowledge. We argue that combining co-construction and dissemination enhances the outcomes of scenarios considerably. Full article

The rapid expansion of the cultural industry and the escalating demand for innovation have led to a growing attention on the sustainable development of cultural and creative parks. This study aims to provide a comprehensive review and prospectus of the literature on the sustainable development of these parks using CiteSpace knowledge mapping. We analyzed 662 publications from 2012 to 2023 in the Web of Science database using bibliometric methods, such as descriptive statistical analysis, network analysis, and co-citation analysis. Our findings indicate that research hotspots in the sustainable development of cultural and creative parks focus on cultural ecosystems, environmental conservation, cultural landscapes, creative tourism, park management, and urban renewal. Three primary research themes emerged: ecological service systems, assessment models, and multidimensional value. We propose five future prospects: (1) diversifying sustainable development strategies; (2) coordinating development with urban, regional, and global sustainable development goals; (3) enhancing interdisciplinary research; (4) deepening stakeholder participation; and (5) improving the evaluation index system for sustainable development. This study offers a systematic guiding framework for constructing multidimensional value for the sustainable development of cultural and creative parks, providing valuable insights for future theoretical and practical research. Full article

Construction and demolition (C&D) waste is steadily increasing as both urbanization and the construction industry advance. Therefore, numerous studies on C&D waste have been conducted. In this paper, the literature published in the field of C&D waste and sustainable development from 2002 to 2022 was utilized to examine the current state of research and potential future research hotspots via the bibliometric method. Herein, 3550 studies found in the literature were analyzed using Citespace and VOSviewer, two efficient visual analysis programs, for the annual quantitative distribution, contribution and cooperation of authors, influential and productive countries/regions and institutions, keyword co-occurrence analysis, literature co-citation analysis and identification of research frontiers. The findings show an exponential rise in publications on construction waste and sustainable resource development, while the research focus has clearly shifted from recycling and reduction of C&D waste to harmless and resourceful treatment in the last five years. The keywords “optimization”, “implementation” and “strategy” also indicate that more emphasis is being placed on the research of management method realization mechanisms, technological optimization schemes and policy strategies. The research results of this paper will help participants in the construction industry to grasp the current research hotspots and development trend in the field of C&D waste and the sustainable development of resources. It also plays a positive role in formulating relevant regulations and policies, reducing resource waste and construction project costs. Full article

In recent years, the adoption of Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems (HRESs) is rapidly increasing globally due to their economic and environmental benefits. In order to ensure the smooth implementation of HRESs, it is important to systematically capture societal preferences. However, few studies focus on the effective integration of public opinion into energy planning decisions. In this study, a decision-making approach for public participation in HRES planning is proposed to optimize the configuration of off-grid HRESs. First, an HRES evaluation index system considering public participation was constructed; to address the situation where the public from different backgrounds may have limited and inconsistent understanding of indicators, the basic uncertain linguistic information (BULI) is introduced to express evaluations and associated reliability levels. The indicator weights were then determined through the evaluation of both the public and the expert opinions. Second, the BULI-EDAS decision approach was developed by extending the EDAS method to the BULI environment to optimize HRES planning. Finally, the proposed model was applied to identify the optimal configuration in rural China. The comparative analysis results show that the proposed method can avoid misunderstandings and facilitate realistic public judgments. The selected optimal plan has a standardized energy price of 0.126 USD/kWh and generates 45,305 kg CO₂/year, resulting in the best overall performance. The proposed HRES planning method provides a practical approach for decision makers to conduct HRES planning in a public participation environment to promote clean energy transitions. Full article