Search Results (27)

This paper demonstrates the application of cognitive modeling methods to study problems relating to the functioning and advancement of a strategy for the development of rural areas. Rural areas play a vital role in human life; they have enormous economic, natural, demographic, historical, and cultural potential, and their revival ensures the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in the field of SDG 2: “End hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”. The relevance of the study lies in the need to develop approaches in order to improve the efficiency of agriculture and to ensure the sustainable development of rural areas. The goal was to use cognitive modeling tools to understand the cause-and-effect mechanism of ensuring sustainable development of rural areas and analyze their possible development under the influence of internal and external factors to select the best strategy for sustainable development. Based on 24 selected quantitative and qualitative indicators, a cognitive map “Sustainable Development of Rural Areas” was constructed, and an analysis of 351 cycles of the cognitive model was carried out, among which 286 positive and 65 negative cycles were observed, indicating the structural stability of the model. Computational experiments were carried out using pulse and scenario modeling; the results are presented and visualized in the form of five scenarios for complex systems development. The results of this study can be used as decision support tools for substantiating strategies and developing policies for the balanced development of rural areas. Full article

Background/Objectives: The increased availability of naloxone underscores the urgent need for scalable, effective training interventions. While current training modalities show promise, critical challenges persist, particularly regarding the development of interactive, self-efficacious platforms that mitigate anxiety in real-world overdose response, especially among laypersons. Therefore, this study aimed to develop and evaluate the usability and acceptability of a novel, self-paced mixed reality-based training tool (ReviveXR). Methods: ReviveXR was designed using the Apple Vision Pro spatial computing headset and Unity platform, employing mixed reality technology to facilitate interaction with virtual overdose scenarios while maintaining awareness of the physical environment. The intervention included a simulated tutorial and interactive modules on overdose response, rescue breathing, and chest compressions. Field testing was conducted in two rounds across various settings with a heterogeneous sample (N = 25), including individuals who use drugs, bystanders, first responders, and technology specialists. Data collection involved pre- and post-intervention surveys and qualitative interviews. Results: Participants demonstrated significant improvements in knowledge related to overdose recognition, naloxone administration, rescue breathing, and chest compressions. ReviveXR increased participants’ confidence and intent to help overdose victims while reducing uncertainty during overdose reversal. Participants were predominantly from rural areas and primarily identified as White and male. Qualitative feedback emphasized the platform’s heightened engagement, realism, patient responsiveness, and capacity to enhance knowledge acquisition and behavioral preparedness compared with conventional training approaches. Conclusions: ReviveXR offers a scalable, cost-effective, engaging alternative to traditional naloxone training programs, demonstrating strong feasibility across diverse environments and participants. ReviveXR holds considerable promise for expanding and enhancing community overdose response capacities and training healthcare professionals and first responders. Full article

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the perspective of the “socio-spatial” relationship, to construct a theoretical analysis framework for the reconstruction of rural cultural space, and to explore effective strategies for the reconstruction of cultural space in the context of rural revitalization. Taking Zhuma Town as a case study, this study applies qualitative research methods, combining inductive synthesis, interpretive analysis, and literature review to analyze in depth the phenomenon of the revival of its camellia culture and the reconstruction of cultural space. It is found that the transformation of vernacular culture is the fundamental motive for the reconstruction of rural cultural space, which is embodied in Zhuma Town, as the camellia culture has gone through different stages of development, which promotes the transformation of cultural space from traditional to modern, and from single-function to composite function. On this basis, the design strategies of “landscape inheritance and functional regeneration”, “connotation remodeling and cultural value-added”, and “role transformation and coordination and cooperation” are proposed. The research results provide theoretical references and practical guidance for the reconstruction of contemporary rural cultural space, help promote the construction of high-quality rural habitat, enrich the knowledge system of rural cultural space research in interdisciplinary background, and are of great significance in awakening the cultural self-consciousness of the vernacular society and promoting the reconstruction of rural cultural values. Full article

The study analyzed the cultural landscape of Dobre Miasto municipality, which is situated in north-eastern Poland, in the heart of the Warmia region. Cultural traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation and are presently being revived constitute the backbone of Warmia’s cultural heritage. The Warmian landscape comprises several distinctive components, including traditional settlement patterns dating back to the 13th and 14th centuries, as well as cultural values (historical and architectural values, and the level of their preservation) that are being increasingly recognized and contribute to the region’s tourism potential. The growing awareness that the cultural landscape must be preserved for the future generations implies that landscape protection is no longer regarded as a niche problem that is of interest only to experts in the field, and that activities should also be initiated at the local level. The study aimed to specify measures that should be undertaken to protect the components of the cultural landscape and to propose strategies that will not only contribute to the appreciation of cultural values, but will also facilitate the promotion and preservation of cultural landscape components that are gradually disappearing from the rural fabric. This complex approach to the rational management of environmental resources can set an example for other lake regions with clearly defined historical roots and well-preserved cultural values. The resulting guidelines and conclusions can be useful for developing new planning documents and updating and validating the existing legal regulations on planning, development, land use, and protection of the cultural landscape. Full article

This study investigates the elements that influence the quality of cultural and tourism services in the Huizhou region, seeking to improve the region’s tourism competitiveness and revive the growth of the local rural tourism industry based on the background of cultural and tourism integration. This article builds an evaluation index system for the influencing variables of culture and tourism service quality by choosing 20 indicators from three categories: public service quality, cultural service quality, and tourism industry performance. The entropy weight Topsis method is employed to assess the service quality of three districts and five counties in the Huizhou area, which serves as the research object. Research has shown that (1) the number of five-star hotels, the number of A-level scenic spots, and the number of overseas tourists received have a significant weight, and these have become important factors affecting the effective supply of high-quality rural tourism; (2) there is a significant difference in the quality of cultural and tourism services in different areas across the Huizhou region, with Tunxi District and Yi County having the highest level of service quality, while Qimen County and Jixi County have the lowest level; (3) The overall quality of cultural and tourism services in Huizhou region is relatively high, with six districts and counties rated medium or above, accounting for about 75% of the total. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the infrastructure construction, improve the quality of public services, maintain the local and regional culture, accelerate the integration of culture and tourism, and enhance the high-quality development of regional tourism in Huizhou. Full article

Inland areas have been affected by demographic and economic decline over the past decades. New economic models, which are more focused on a humane quality of life, encourage a revival of these territories as newer, healthier places for living. This paper focuses on minor centers, rethought as energy communities and how these can sustain themselves and become new places of living. The first part of the research critically analyzes current strategies of SECAPs (Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans) in smaller historic urban centers. The second part of the paper starts with the typological, morphological, and technological interscalar analysis of two case studies, testing a repeatable expeditious knowledge collection and an intervention method on them. For urban environments, the hypothesized interventions include the management of energy production from renewable sources that are compatible with the presence and value of urban and built heritage; concerning rural territories, an agro-energy park is proposed. The document aims to provide a repeatable method for planning strategic actions within SECAPs in smaller urban centers with a high historical connotation. The case studies show that energy self-sufficiency can be an opportunity to valorize the urban center while favoring environmental sustainability and local development. Full article

Studies on rural transformation in the context of urbanization have always analyzed it from a single linear perspective, either top-down or bottom-up. This leads to simplistic generalizations of rural transformation models and the standardization of policy implementation. Based on the TPSN analytical framework, this study adds the temporality dimension to form a more comprehensive TPSNT framework. This paper explores the complex construction of rural space in rural transformation from the five dimensions of “territory, place, scale, network and temporality“ and takes the urban village, Hongren, in Kunming City, China, as a case study to analyze the specific transformation process of a village. The research revealed the following: First, in the face of land loss caused by government land acquisition, traditional rural autonomous organizations that have been hidden under the modern governance system have been revived under the influence of traditional elites and completed bottom-up territorialization by using some “maneuver spaces “to form a spatial base for negotiation with the government. Second, the cohesion of traditional rural autonomous organizations has increased during this process, and with the help of mobile capital such as media and personal connections, they have developed social networks that transcend the spatial boundaries of villages. Third, these newly constructed social networks are used to carry out various political strategies at various scales and finally negotiated with the government to rewrite the planning plan so that the village can continue to develop and integrate into the city. Finally, the analysis of the temporal dimensions of Hongren village revealed that even within the same village, changes in the other four dimensions develop dynamically, and rural transformation is an ongoing process. Therefore, when the government deals with rural issues in the process of urbanization, it should avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. Unified policy implementation standards will have an irreversible negative impact on rural autonomous organizations. Full article

Wellness tourism is a growing segment that destinations can rely on to increase tourism flows and revive underdeveloped rural areas. This study elicits tourists’ preferences for wellness tourism products and the redevelopment of a wellness destination in a depopulated rural area. The research included 595 participants in Central Greece using on-site, face-to-face surveys. The survey data were analyzed using a two-step process. First, conjoint analysis was applied to determine the combination of wellness tourism product attributes that maximize visitors’ utility. In the second step, we elicited visitors’ willingness to pay (WTP) for improvements in tourism product attributes using the contingent valuation method. The findings indicate that the combination of attributes that maximizes the preference structure of respondents includes time of visit from September to October, duration of visit from 1 to 7 days, wellness tourism as the primary purpose of the visit, and wellness activities that contain both physical activities and training as well as spiritual and emotional enhancement. Using binary logistic regression, the analysis indicates that respondents are willing to pay EUR 47.33 per visit on average further to develop wellness tourism products in the study area. Empirical results confirmed that sustainability issues, quality, and entrepreneurship factors positively impact visitors’ WTP for revitalizing wellness products. In contrast, a longer duration of stay in the area and respondents’ age negatively impact their WTP. These findings suggest that structuring a customer-driven tourism product will enhance the rural destination’s efforts to attract high-yield visitors and advance the rural economy. Furthermore, practical implications reveal that Destination Management Organizations will benefit from research results to foster targeted management plans. Full article

Until recent decades, labour-intensive subsistence farming was a way of life and livelihood in the hill communities of Uttarakhand, India. However, the nature of agriculture falls far short of the expectations of the main labour force, the rural youth, leading to their mass migration to non-agricultural occupations. The large-scale youth migration has left many hill farming landscapes depopulated and farmlands abandoned. As youth have special stakes in food systems, they must be included in the sustainable transformation of food systems. By doing so, the migration-prone hill region may be transformed into a place where rural youth have more options for work and income. Therefore, the agriculture sector needs to change and develop into a more engaging and youthful workplace. There are opportunities to explore and barriers to be removed. Besides identifying priority research areas on local food systems, in this exploratory research, we investigate opportunities to involve rural young people in the transformation of the food system. We document information by conducting focus group discussion (FGD) meetings in about 100 villages in the Uttarakhand hills, representing all major farming landscapes. This study mainly focuses on improving the production and consumption aspects of local food, which not only benefits the health and wellbeing of local communities but also has many positive economic, social, and environmental effects. In addition, we explore opportunities for reviving mountain agriculture through agri-ecotourism, which is a symbiotic relationship between tourism and agriculture. Making home- or farm stays in agri-ecotourism a subsistence strategy for local youth will contribute to a more prosperous rural economy. Recognising Uttarakhand’s rich culture and heritage while exploring the culinary travel opportunities in homestays will provide opportunities to focus more on traditional food systems, exposing various tangible and intangible aspects of the host region’s food culture to tourists. The findings of this study will aid in identifying specific policy issues for consideration by planners and policymakers at the local and state levels. Additionally, this exploratory study will assist young, motivated researchers in conducting follow-up, in-depth investigations and producing empirical data in their specialised fields. Full article

Print newspapers tend to form part of the conversation on sustainable development goals in terms of the ability to communicate goals to the public, but to what degree are print newspapers part of the solution to sustainable rural and regional communities in particular? The COVID-19 pandemic coincided with a global crisis in print journalism. This article takes Australia as an extreme case study of the collapse of print news, tracing both the immediate causes as well as the scale of the decline, and the impacts in terms of community conversation, building social capital, and improving governance, particularly in sub-populations such as the aged, and in digitally disadvantaged regional and remote communities. This paper uses a range of secondary and primary data sources to build a paradoxical picture of a revival of rural and regional journalism, a revival that is focused on survival rather than revisiting the activist origins of early independent rural and regional media in the country. The new papers include part of the traditional mission of print news—building social capital—but are less engaged in creating political and financial transparency. It is concluded that the new wave of rural and regional titles may be simply at an early stage of evolution, but with the digital divide in Australia reducing, they may have little time to evolve. Full article

Counties are the basic unit for addressing unbalanced development in a region, revitalizing rural areas, and promoting the integrated development of urban and rural areas. Despite the importance of county-level research, few studies have been conducted research at such a small scale. To address this gap in knowledge, this study constructs an evaluation system to measure the county sustainable development capacity (CSDC) of counties in China, identify constraints to development, and provide policy suggestions to promote the counties’ long-term stable development. Specifically, the CSDC indicator system was based on the regional theory of sustainable development and included economic aggregation capacity, social development capacity, and environmental carrying capacity. This framework was applied to 103 key counties to receive assistance in pursuing rural revitalization in 10 provinces in western China. The AHP–Entropy Weighting Method and TOPSIS model were employed to inform the scores of CSDC and its secondary indicators, and ArcGIS 10.8 was used to portray the spatial distribution of CSDC and to classify these key counties into categories that guided specific policy recommendations. The results demonstrate a high degree of unbalanced and inadequate development in these counties and that rural revitalization efforts can be targeted to increase the speed of development. It is crucial to follow the recommendations that conclude this paper to promote sustainable development in areas that have been lifted out of poverty and to revive rural areas. Full article

Geographic analysis in rural areas has been dominated in recent decades by socio-economic and socio-political perspectives. The new materialism can constitute a way of progress in rural geographical studies that involve the material and the human in the form of hybrid experiences. Materiality can be expressed in three ways: (1) the surface matter that corresponds to the traditional elements of the material rural space, (2) the materiality that would be associated with a joint and undifferentiated vision of human artefacts in a village, mainly the set of rural houses and (3) the experimental materiality that has an individual dimension, the result of the multiple processes of destruction, revival and reconstruction that simultaneously happen in one place. The experimental materiality is of the most interest for geographic analysis since it is where the materiality of the rural house and the individual are hybridized in the process of recovery of the traditional rural house. In the process of recovery of materialities, binary oppositions built in the rigid framework of modernity can be dissolved and established fluid postmodern alternatives co-produced between people and materiality. The new materialism in rural geography can be an alternative path that allows analyzing heterogeneous realities in a hybrid way and contributing in a practical context to the development of new rural policies. Full article

Rural communities have long been overlooked since globalization and urbanization struck traditional rural values. Building a sustainable rural community has become a contested issue in academia, especially after implementing the Rural Revival Strategy. This research attempted to establish a participatory planning approach, which considers rural planners as the external impetus and local villagers as an internal driving force, to promote the sustainability of rural communities. Carrying on the theoretical framework of public participation, the researchers carried out a pilot practice in Hongtang Village, Yunan Province, China, where planners tried to reestablish the social relationship in a village by designing and building a rural yard. We do not solely finish the design, but also advocate, communicate, and work with villagers to activate the vitality of the village. The research argues that the focus of rural planning and construction in China is to develop a participatory planning approach, which is human-oriented and place-based. Planners, acting as an external impetus, advocate public participation in the whole planning process, including mapping, designing, constructing, and managing. We try to empower villagers themselves rather than impose. During this participatory planning process, villagers improve the quality of their settlements through continuous dialogue and cooperation, and the social relationships among them become enhanced. Thus, rural communities are restructuring in both environmental and social dimensions to promote rural sustainability. Additionally, participatory planning in rural areas is constantly correcting itself to be more local, scientific, and rational and become a more powerful protector and promoter of public interests in this process. Full article

Many developing countries are challenged with the revival of rural vitality against increasing urbanization. Rural tourism is effective in enhancing the countryside’s vitality. Previous studies used qualitative methods to explore the spatial organization of resources, but it was difficult to quantify the effective organization of tourism resources. Taking the example of Jilin Province, China, this study quantitatively measured the use of tourism resources in rural areas at the initial stage and created a developmental model to organize tourism resources more effectively. The organization mechanism has specific reference significance for the optimization model of upgrading rural tourism in developing countries. Spatial performance measurement was used to evaluate the spatial performance of rural tourism resources in the case area. The specific research included analyzing the coupling mechanism of rural tourism resources, constructing an evaluation system, analyzing a resource regulation mechanism, and establishing a rural tourism network model through a complex network analysis method and dynamic simulation. According to the spatial performance analysis, the allocation and linkage of various tourism-related elements are not yet mature. The structural restructuring mode in Jilin Province is mainly divided into internal and external dual-drive guidance, secondary integration, and a characteristic linkage mode. An organizational mechanism for optimizing tourism resources was proposed, which could be referred to for evaluating and optimally organizing the tourism resources in the rural areas of developing countries. Full article

Industrialization and urbanization have affected Indonesia’s rural communities and farming culture, which were once integral parts of its ecological system. This paper presents a participatory co-design approach based on the local and traditional learning philosophy of niteni to support sustainable development. The participatory co-design approach encouraged collaboration between marginalized communities, government bodies, and a multidisciplinary academic team. Through this lens, interviews, forums, and an ethnographic study were undertaken in order to acquire data and information for idea generation and planning. Firstly, eight niteni themes were identified, including the environment and ecosystems, traditional values and farming culture, crafting skills, manufacturing, and the local economy. Building on an understanding of the challenges associated with each of these themes, we identified future development priorities. A key action identified was the reintroduction of traditional farming, in particular the planting of local rice varieties and the local tradition of Pranatamangsa, which promote human–nature connections such as farming activities and rituals following natural seasonal cycles. Finally, design approaches were used to revive the local rice farming tradition (Rojolele Delanggu), including product branding and packaging designs to support regional identity. The paper concludes that the inclusion of design thinking in a sustainable development strategy based on cultural specificity can increase participation and support traditional indigenous practices and community resiliency. Full article