Search Results (173)

In the context of China’s stock-based urban renewal, public space regeneration in old urban areas increasingly requires attention to everyday use, inclusive access, local memory, and collaborative governance alongside physical upgrading. Drawing on catalyst theory, this study builds an analytical framework linking catalyst classification, potential element identification, effectiveness evaluation, actor collaboration, and renewal strategy transformation. The Guibeicheng area of Wuxi, China, is examined using semi-structured interviews, cognitive maps, qualitative coding, space syntax, the analytic hierarchy process, and actor collaboration analysis. The analysis indicates that behavioral and narrative catalysts are closely associated with residents’ everyday use and place identity. Event catalysts may generate phased amplification effects under specific conditions, while organizational and rule-based governance catalysts mainly provide support conditions for sustaining catalytic effects. Comparing space syntax results with cognitive-map and interview evidence further points to mismatches between configurational potential and perceived everyday activation. These include high-integration spaces with limited evidence of repeated everyday use, high-choice nodes mainly associated with pass-through use, weak everyday connections to historical resources, and limited independent organizational support for high-priority catalysts. On this basis, the study proposes a renewal pathway that combines everyday behavior guidance, event transformation, local narrative embedding, and organizational governance coordination. The findings provide a case-based reference for catalyst-oriented public space regeneration in historic urban areas and suggest potential implications for social sustainability, cultural continuity, and community resilience through spatial activation and long-term collaborative governance. Full article

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

Historic districts are complex built heritage environments where conservation, commercial activities, and public use continuously interact. A key challenge is maintaining cultural meaning and spatial authenticity while meeting contemporary demands for leisure and accessibility. Taking the Fuzimiao–Qinhuai Scenic Belt in Nanjing, China, as a representative case, this study develops a computational mixed-methods framework to evaluate visitor perception and diagnose experiential imbalances in the built heritage environment. A total of 2940 online reviews (2020–2025) were analysed using TF-IDF, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), StructBERT sentiment analysis, and Importance–Performance Analysis (IPA). Six experiential dimensions were identified, covering cultural inheritance, nightscape and leisure, rituals and museum visits, architectural space, value evaluation, and practical services. Results reveal a clear disparity: nightscape and value-related dimensions received the highest attention and positive sentiment, whereas rituals and museum interpretation underperformed despite their central heritage significance. Based on the IPA diagnosis, the study proposes three strategies: reallocating resources from over-supplied services to underperforming cultural cores, integrating immersive digital technologies (VR/AR) to revitalise heritage interpretation, and embedding cultural narratives into nightscape experiences. These strategies support a paradigm shift from visual attraction to cultural resonance in the conservation-oriented regeneration of historic districts. Full article

Urban industrial heritage is increasingly embedded in urban regeneration, public space provision, and community governance, yet existing studies have insufficiently examined how heterogeneous publics perceive its value through everyday digital discourse. Taking the Guangzhou Iron and Steel Plant industrial heritage site (hereafter, the Guanggang industrial heritage site) as a case study, this study used user-generated content from Rednote posts and local WeChat public-account comments to identify platform-mediated expressions of public value perception. A corpus of 745 valid samples comprising 51,459 Chinese characters was constructed after data collection, screening, and text preprocessing. Word-frequency analysis, semantic network analysis, and sentiment analysis were conducted using ROST CM 6.0. The results show that the two retrieved platform-contextual corpora foregrounded different concerns. Rednote discourse foregrounded ruin landscapes, industrial aesthetics, photography-based check-ins, and exploratory experiences, whereas WeChat comments emphasized park construction, public facilities, governance responsiveness, safety, and the residential environment. At the corpus level, lexicon-based sentiment classification indicated that Rednote texts were dominated by positive and neutral categories, while WeChat comments contained a higher proportion of texts classified as negative. This study conceptualizes dual foregrounding as a bounded selection process through which platform affordances, user self-selection, and users’ relationships with the site influence which concerns become visible in each corpus; it does not treat the observed differences as a causal platform effect. It argues that industrial heritage regeneration must translate historical, technological, and aesthetic values into public values that are interpretable, accessible, usable, and trusted by local communities. Full article

Underground heritage represents a hidden urban resource for cultural regeneration and sustainable tourism, preserving historical layers, wartime memory, and local identity. Positioning the shelters as a form of Underground Built Heritage (UBH), this study examines how concealed civil-defense spaces can be reinterpreted as local cultural heritage resources before systematic reuse. However, enclosed and unfamiliar spaces are often perceived as risky, making adaptive reuse socially sensitive. This study investigates Jingdezhen’s underground air-raid shelters through a scenario-based survey and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Using an extended Value-Attitude-Behavior (VAB) framework incorporating perceived authenticity, anticipated affective identification, safety assurance, and perceived risk, this study identifies factors influencing pre-development public acceptance. Results show that public acceptance is shaped by cognitive evaluation of value and anticipated affective identification, while perceived risk constrains behavioral intentions. Perceived authenticity enhances value perception and anticipated affective identification; perceived value strengthens attitudes; safety assurance shows a small but statistically significant negative association with perceived risk, although most variance in perceived risk remains unexplained; and an exploratory moderation analysis further suggested that perceived risk may weaken the attitude–visit intention relationship. Although the estimated model showed a relatively high SRMR, the results are interpreted as prediction-oriented ex ante evidence rather than as a covariance-based model with strong global fit. These findings provide prediction-oriented ex ante evidence for the sustainable reuse of underground heritage, supporting heritage interpretation, risk management, and urban regeneration aligned with SDG 11. Full article

Urban regeneration projects offer critical insights into contemporary urban land-use planning, particularly through high-profile interventions that reflect distinct planning visions and strategic approaches. This study examines two major regeneration initiatives in Athens: the redevelopment of Faliro Bay along the southern waterfront and the regeneration of Akademia Platonos in the northwest. Faliro Bay, designated as a metropolitan hub in the revised Athens Master Plan, is currently the focus of a regeneration project aiming to transform a predominantly state-owned area—including former Olympic facilities and a degraded waterfront—into a major cultural and recreational destination, combining extensive green public spaces with landmark developments through public–private collaboration. In contrast, the Akademia Platonos project is a public-led intervention within a dense urban setting, encompassing an archaeological site, former industrial premises, and mixed-use neighborhoods. Its objective is to reorganize land uses, reduce building intensity, and enhance open space and public amenities. These cases are comparatively assessed in terms of strategic orientation, governance structure, planning practices, and outcomes; this analysis highlights divergent planning trajectories and underscores the institutional, spatial, and governance challenges shaping the implementation of urban regeneration policies in contemporary Athens. Full article

Medium-sized cities play an important role in regional settlement systems as intermediary centres linking metropolitan areas with smaller towns and rural regions. Due to their relatively compact spatial structure, such cities are often associated with the principles of the 15-min city concept, which promotes accessibility to key services and public spaces within walking distance. Urban regeneration is an important instrument supporting sustainable development and improving quality of life in these cities. This study examines the relationship between legal regulations, spatial delimitation patterns, and the spatial distribution of degraded and revitalised areas in medium-sized cities. The research is based on a comparative analysis of qualitative and quantitative criteria, GIS-based spatial analyses, and accessibility modelling conducted for five cities in the Pomeranian Voivodeship using planning documents and statistical data, verified through field surveys. The results indicate a high degree of spatial continuity of revitalisation areas despite changes in legal frameworks and delimitation methodologies. Revitalisation areas remained concentrated mainly within historic city centres and their multifunctional surroundings, while degraded areas gradually expanded toward residential districts. The findings also demonstrate a strong spatial relationship between revitalisation areas and 15 min walking accessibility zones. The study provides useful comparative insights for countries developing formal urban regeneration systems. Full article

High-density commercial interchange hubs are important components of transit-oriented urban regeneration. However, high passenger flow does not necessarily generate sustained underground-space vitality. This study examines the Licun high-density commercial interchange hub in Qingdao, China. It explores how amenity supply influences sustainable underground-space vitality through user behavioral responses. Based on 426 valid questionnaire responses, an amenity evaluation system was developed across five dimensions. These dimensions include natural-environment, facility-and-service, consumption-experience, socio-cultural, and transport-connection amenities. The entropy weight method was used to identify the perceptual differentiation of amenity indicators. PLS-SEM was then applied to examine the pathway of “amenity supply–user behavioral response–underground-space vitality.” The results show that natural-environment amenities present the strongest perceptual differentiation, while facility-and-service amenities play a fundamental role in supporting user behavioral responses. Consumption-experience amenities promote visit choice, stay duration, and satisfaction, but may weaken interaction and participation, indicating a potential tension between commercial vitality and public interaction. Transport-connection amenities mainly affect visit choice rather than sustained use. Among user behaviors, stay duration, interaction and participation, and satisfaction feedback are positively associated with underground-space vitality, whereas simple visit choice is not. These findings suggest that sustainable vitality in a high-density commercial interchange hub should not be understood as passenger volume alone. It should be understood as the transformation of transit flow into voluntary stay, interaction, satisfaction, and repeated use. This study contextualizes amenity theory in a high-density commercial interchange hub. It also offers planning implications for underground-space regeneration. Full article

Urban green spaces (UGSs) are increasingly recognised as critical infrastructure for mitigating climate extremes and promoting public health; indeed, the microclimatic mechanisms through which vegetation structure translates into measurable improvements in human comfort at the neighbourhood scale are of significant interest, particularly in the context of new urban developments. This study examines the cooling effects of an urban redevelopment project in the Marconi district of Imola, Italy, using ENVI-met (Version 6.0.0, ENVI-met GmbH, Essen, Germany) simulations to compare ex ante (current) and ex post (planned) scenarios under extreme heat conditions. Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) was computed at the pedestrian level for both standard adult and elderly models to assess spatial patterns of thermal comfort. The results demonstrate that tree canopies are the primary determinant of local cooling, with newly planted trees reducing PET by up to 3.5 °C at the core of the regenerated block and by 1–2 °C along adjacent pavements, while grass and low vegetation provided negligible mitigation. However, new buildings generated localised warming bands of 0.5–2 °C along façades, revealing a trade-off between densification and outdoor liveability. Elderly populations experienced slightly stronger thermal stress near buildings, highlighting spatial concentrations of vulnerability. These findings reinforce the need to prioritise tree planting and canopy management as core climate adaptation strategies, while simultaneously addressing near-building heat accumulation through integrated design approaches such as façade greening and ventilation preservation. The study demonstrates the value of spatially explicit microclimate simulation for evidence-based urban planning, contributing to the development of sustainable and liveable urban environments. Full article

Aiming for a just transition towards climate neutrality requires urban regeneration strategies that address ecological and social vulnerabilities. This study examines the strategies and experiences of developing nature-based solutions (NBS) for the regeneration of public space in neighbourhoods of seven European cities participating in the URBiNAT project. The aim is to move beyond the discussions on material solutions and focus on the sociopolitical components that shape the impact of NBS towards adaptation of urban communities and public spaces to climate change. Drawing on a qualitative sociological approach, the research enquires into the drivers and impact of participatory processes in the ecological and social dimensions of urban regeneration. More specifically, the study addresses the following research questions: (1) What are the individual, collective and institutional motivations that instigate different typologies of actors to engage in these processes? (2) What is the relevance of balancing material and immaterial solutions? (3) What are the lessons learned from the multiple actors, considering their experiences, expectations, and priorities? Findings confirm that the aim to produce socially and ecologically robust climate solutions for urban regeneration can be achieved through collaborative governance strategies emerging from, and tailored to, the typology of actors’ specific sensitivities, expectations, and priorities. Full article

Urban regeneration processes are increasingly intertwined with participatory practices aimed at integrating local knowledge and civic engagement into design and planning decisions. However, public participation often fails to influence decision-making meaningfully or to anticipate the unintended consequences of proposed interventions. This paper presents a methodological framework developed during a participatory process for the restoration of Piazza Umberto I, a historic urban square in Bari, Southern Italy. The process was structured around seven online workshops held between March and May 2021, involving 45 registered participants and an average attendance of about 30 participants per session, including residents, civic associations, students, professionals, economic actors, and municipal representatives. Through a sequential funnel—problems, opportunities, visions, solutions, methodological principles, validation, and proposal—the process elicited and organized participants’ knowledge across five analytical domains and eight long-term vision categories: History, Nature, Education, Culture, Economy, Society, Experience, and Democracy. The validated workshop outputs were then translated into a fuzzy cognitive map and explored through cross-impact analysis to identify intended impacts, unintended effects, leverage points, and trade-offs among proposed solutions. Link weights were assigned through a semi-quantitative scale representing the direction and relative strength of influence, and a ±20% sensitivity analysis was conducted to test the robustness of the main ranking patterns. The results show that some proposals, such as ecological restoration, public art programming, and cultural or educational activation, operate as broad-spectrum leverage points, while others generate more selective effects or latent tensions, particularly between ecological preservation, economic activation, accessibility, and civic use. This paper does not propose a predictive or statistically inferential model; rather, it demonstrates how participatory knowledge can be operationalized into a transparent, exploratory, and semi-quantitative decision-support framework. By linking deliberation with systems-oriented reasoning, the study contributes to urban planning debates on participatory governance, anticipatory decision-making, and the management of unintended consequences in public-space regeneration. Full article

In the context of the global urban transition towards stock-based regeneration (a shift from outward urban expansion to the redevelopment of existing built environments), the provision of public service facilities is facing a paradigm shift from mere physical spatial implementation to sustainable long-term operation. Traditional planning pathways heavily rely on static spatial allocation policies and upfront indicator compliance, yet systematically neglect the dynamic adaptability of facilities throughout their entire life cycles. Taking the megacity of Guangzhou, China, as a longitudinal case study, this paper reveals a typical compliance versus failure paradox—a situation where facilities strictly meet technical planning standards on paper but fail to deliver intended social welfare outcomes in practice. Using early comprehensive redevelopment projects like Liede Village as examples, the public service facilities strictly met the statutory allocation standard (5.7%) during the construction phase. However, after more than a decade of operation, these facilities have exhibited severe structural supply–demand mismatches and long-term operational dilemmas. To address this issue, this study proposes a four-dimensional governance framework—Value, Actor, Space, Institution (VASI)—that transcends traditional spatial perspectives. Through an in-depth analysis of the Guangzhou case using this framework, the research confirms that the root causes of the compliance failure lie in the absence of life-cycle costing (a method of assessing the total financial cost of facility ownership over its entire lifespan), the severe structural misalignment of rights and responsibilities between construction and operation actors, and the long-term void in post-occupancy evaluation feedback mechanisms. This paper argues that the planning of public service facilities in high-density megacities must achieve a theoretical leap from rigid upfront technical allocation to adaptive whole-life-cycle systemic governance, providing theoretical references and a practical guide for global cities facing similar stock-based regeneration challenges as they move towards equitable and socio-economically sustainable urban regeneration. Full article

Revisit intention is increasingly recognized as a key indicator of sustainable heritage tourism, as it reflects long-term visitor engagement rather than one-time consumption. However, limited attention has been paid to how tourism preferences shape perceived heritage quality and subsequently influence revisit intention, particularly in industrial heritage contexts undergoing urban regeneration. This study develops a structural model linking tourism preferences, perceived quality, and revisit intention, using Shanghai’s waterfront industrial heritage as an empirical case. Based on 335 valid questionnaires, structural equation modeling (SEM) is employed to examine the relationships among environmental preference, cultural and social sustainability preferences, situational perception, and behavioral intention. The results indicate that preference for a sustainable public space environment significantly enhances both physical and atmospheric perception, which in turn positively affects revisit intention. In contrast, social sustainability shows limited influence, suggesting that visitors’ behavioral responses are more strongly driven by environmental quality and experiential engagement in regenerated industrial heritage settings. This study contributes to sustainable heritage tourism research by integrating preference-based perception mechanisms into revisit intention analysis. It also provides practical implications for enhancing long-term attractiveness through experience-oriented adaptive reuse strategies. Full article

Micro-public space (MPS) regeneration is typically evaluated at the point of delivery, yet long-term performance depends on whether everyday stewardship can be sustained thereafter. This study reframes neighbourhood social capital as a governance–environment signal reflecting coordination capacity and examines whether residents’ willingness to participate in post-regeneration co-management is primarily appraisal-driven (perceived value, attitude, and perceived behavioural control) or coordination-driven via a residual direct channel consistent with routine governance. A cross-sectional survey of adults residing within walkable catchments of five regenerated MPS sites in Nan’an District, Chongqing, China ($N=477$), was conducted. An integrated Stimulus–Organism–Response × TPB model was estimated using WLSMV with ordered categorical indicators; indirect effects were assessed via bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals. Coordination capacity was strongly associated with perceived value, participation attitude, and perceived behavioural control. In the joint model, only perceived value retained a statistically reliable positive association with stewardship willingness, whereas the incremental contributions of attitude and perceived behavioural control were negligible once the stimulus was included. A residual direct association from coordination capacity to willingness persisted beyond the appraisal block, supporting a direct-dominant interpretation; bootstrap analyses yielded no robust evidence for mediation (BCa 95% CIs crossed zero). These findings suggest that sustaining regenerated micro-spaces requires low-friction governance designs that minimise coordination costs, reinforce soft accountability, and render institutional responsiveness visible to residents. Full article

This article addresses the regeneration of extractive landscapes through the case study of the abandoned quarry system of Cutrofiano in the Salento region of Southern Italy, positioning the quarry as a critical interface between geology, architecture, and contemporary environmental challenges. The study aims to redefine the quarry landscape not as a residual void, but as a potential ecological and cultural infrastructure. The research adopts an interdisciplinary methodology combining geomorphological and geotechnical surveys, historical and cartographic analysis, spatial interpretation, and a multi-criteria assessment framework to identify vulnerabilities and transformation potentials. The results include a strategic masterplan articulated into three integrated interventions: the conversion of the open-pit quarry into a flood-control basin for hydrogeological risk mitigation and sustainable water management; the transformation of the quarry floor into an energy park; and the design of cultural spaces for public use and territorial enhancement. These strategies demonstrate the feasibility of reconciling environmental safety, renewable energy production, and heritage valorization within a single morphological logic. The study concludes that the quarry can be reinterpreted as a regenerative landscape model, offering transferable tools for Mediterranean contexts characterized by similar geological and socio-economic conditions. Full article