Search Results (133)

Peri-urban rural regeneration is often assessed through completed projects or administrative indicators, while the governance mechanisms that sustain rural sustainability receive less attention. This article examines how project-based participation can be translated into governance capacity in Hsinchu City, northwestern Taiwan. Adopting an evidence-bound reflective documentary case-study design, it analyzes policy, spatial planning, training, community project, and rural regeneration records from the 2025 Hsinchu City Community Rural Regeneration Guidance Program. The findings show that regeneration operates through municipal coordination, functional clusters, community participation, and site-based interventions. Six intermediate capacities are identified: proposal-making, coordination, maintenance, interpretive, sustainability-translation, and resilience capacities. The study contributes a transferable framework linking rural sustainability, SDG localization, ESG-oriented governance, and peri-urban regeneration through explicit evidence-use boundaries. It does not claim verified long-term impacts on income, carbon reduction, biodiversity, demographic change, or resident satisfaction; rather, it clarifies how governance capacity may be generated and where future independent verification is required. Full article

Urban grey infrastructure, including transport corridors, flood-control systems, drainage facilities, railway margins, and industrial brownfields, is often treated in conventional planning as functionally vacant or ecologically marginal space. In this study, grey infrastructure is defined as engineered or infrastructure-dominated urban spaces and their residual or edge landscapes, rather than as green infrastructure. Yet such spaces may still contain spontaneous vegetation, water edges, soil patches, and sheltered microhabitats that can support birds, insects, small mammals, and other urban species in highly urbanized environments. From a multispecies justice perspective, this study examines spatial mismatches between PPGIS-derived public recognition and habitat quality modeled using the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model in urban grey infrastructure. Using Zhanggong District, Ganzhou, China, as a case study, we developed an integrated framework that combines public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS), grid-based public recognition mapping, and the InVEST Habitat Quality model. Based on 260 valid questionnaires, participants identified locations associated with aesthetic preference and perceived habitat potential. These mapped perception points were converted into a grid-based public recognition indicator and compared with modeled habitat quality. The results indicate a marked perception-habitat mismatch. High public recognition was frequently associated with visually ordered, accessible, and highly managed urban spaces, whereas high modeled habitat quality was more strongly related to vegetated, riverine, peripheral, and semi-natural spaces. The spatial classification shows that aesthetic mismatch areas, where public recognition was high but modeled habitat quality was low, covered 43.20 km², accounting for 7.16% of the study area, whereas hidden ecological value areas, where modeled habitat quality was high but public recognition was low, covered 118.21 km², accounting for 19.59%. This study provides a replicable framework for identifying perception–habitat mismatches and supports more ecologically informed and inclusive strategies for regenerating urban grey infrastructure. More specifically, the study extends an established perception-ecology debate to grey infrastructure and residual urban spaces and demonstrates how PPGIS-derived public recognition and InVEST-modeled habitat quality can be compared within the same grid framework to locate spatially explicit alignment and mismatch. Full article

This paper develops a scenario-based population modelling framework for the 847 mahalle (smallest administrative unit) of Istanbul, Türkiye, extending an empirical baseline for 2007–2025 into prospective scenarios to 2035. The baseline combines rank-size (Zipf) analysis, density quintile trajectories, trajectory classification, and phase-diagram analysis of early versus late-period growth. It reveals a persistent U-shaped deviation from the Zipf benchmark: both the most and least populous mahalle grew strongly through suburban mega-development and peri-urban expansion, respectively, while the established inner-city middle tier remained essentially unchanged. Density followed an inverted gradient, rising sharply on the low-density suburban fringe and contracting in the hyper-dense core. Building on this baseline, the paper defines a baseline continuation (S0) and four alternative scenarios: moderate economic stress (S1), a major North Anatolian Fault earthquake (S2), a combined shock (S3), and policy-led urban renewal (S4). The baseline trajectory amplifies existing inequalities; seismic and economic shocks compress upper-tail growth while generating displacement demand in outer-ring mahalle; and only S4 partially reverses the density-gradient inversion, by stimulating inner-city regeneration under Türkiye’s risky-area programme. The findings link intra-urban population redistribution to seismic-risk exposure and inform spatially targeted planning. Full article

In the context of urban regeneration and the redevelopment of existing urban land and built assets, industrial heritage has become a cross-sectoral policy issue involving heritage conservation, spatial reuse, land governance and public cultural uses. Existing studies have primarily examined individual adaptive reuse projects and spatial strategies, whereas the long-term evolution of policy texts has received less systematic attention. Taking Shanghai as a case study, this paper constructs a clause-level corpus of industrial heritage-related policies issued between 2006 and 2025. The corpus comprises 524 clauses extracted from 86 policy documents covering heritage conservation, historic building conservation, cultural and creative industries, land use, planning, urban renewal and industrial tourism. Overall and stage-based Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) models are combined with cross-period topic alignment to identify the structure and evolution of policy themes. The results show that Shanghai’s industrial heritage policies have been shaped not only by heritage conservation concerns, but also by industrial land governance, the transformation of underused industrial land, the regeneration of existing industrial spaces (EIS), industrial culture, tourism and public service provision. Four stages are identified: initial exploration, regulatory consolidation, revitalisation and renewal, and integrated consolidation. Across these stages, four major evolutionary pathways can be observed: industrial land supply and governance, renewal of EIS and old industrial areas (OIA), industrial heritage conservation and value recognition and the expansion of industrial culture, tourism and public services. The paper provides clause-level evidence for understanding industrial heritage governance in China’s urban regeneration context and highlights the need for stronger coordination between heritage, land, planning, industry, culture and tourism policies. Full article

Brownfield greening (BG) has become an important approach to addressing urban land scarcity, environmental remediation, and sustainable urban development. This scoping review analysed 116 English-language publications from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The review identified five major research themes: pollution and remediation, regeneration design, brownfield characteristics and greening benefits, planning and decision-making, and stakeholder perceptions. Findings indicate a transition from contamination-focused studies towards integrated approaches emphasising ecological restoration, social values, and multifunctional green infrastructure. Research methods have evolved from qualitative case studies to interdisciplinary approaches involving spatial analysis, ecological modelling, scenario simulation, and participatory methods. Existing studies mainly focus on regenerated sites and site-scale analyses, while contamination and remediation processes are often insufficiently incorporated into planning, design, and ecosystem-service assessments. The review highlights the diverse ecological, social, economic, and cultural benefits generated by BG and identifies key research gaps, including the need to better integrate remediation into regeneration processes, to conduct long-term monitoring, to conduct comparative international studies, and to include evidence from underrepresented regions. Overall, BG is increasingly recognised as a multifunctional strategy for sustainable urban regeneration. 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

Understanding the complex relationship between the built environment and urban vitality is essential for evidence-based urban renewal. However, most existing studies rely on linear regression models that fail to capture the non-linear threshold effects inherent in urban systems and depend on costly proprietary datasets that limit reproducibility. This study proposes a scalable, open-data-driven framework to decode the non-linear mechanisms governing population-based urban vitality in Zhengzhou, a rapidly regenerating metropolis in Central China. Using Areas of Interest (AOIs) as functional spatial units to mitigate the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP), we construct a multidimensional built environment indicator system (5D+S: Density, Diversity, Design, Distance to Transit, Destination Accessibility, and Surroundings) from multi-source open data, including 100 m WorldPop population grids, OpenStreetMap building vectors, Points of Interest (POIs), and transit station data. An explainable machine learning approach combining XGBoost with SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) is employed to identify the relative importance of built environment factors and quantify their non-linear threshold effects on population-based urban vitality (operationally defined as residential population density derived from WorldPop 100 m grids). Across 3920 AOIs, XGBoost (R² = 0.846, RMSE = 0.104) substantially outperforms Ordinary Least Squares regression (R² = 0.634), confirming pervasive non-linear relationships, with stable 5-fold cross-validated R² = 0.713 ± 0.115. SHAP analysis reveals four dominant drivers: Distance to Commercial Core (DistCBD), Bus Station Density within 500 m (BusDen500), Green Coverage Ratio (GreenRatio), and Building Density (BD). Critical thresholds are identified: vitality contributions decay sharply beyond approximately 4.3 km from the CBD; at least 4 bus stations within 500 m are required for meaningful transit benefit; building density delivers positive returns within a 2–30% range; and excessive green coverage above 8.5% within 500 m is associated with declining population-based vitality, a finding that reflects spatial competition between ecological land use and residential density rather than a negative effect of greenery per se. These findings provide quantitative design guidelines for precision urban renewal, moving beyond “the more, the better” planning assumptions to identify optimal intervention ranges. 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

Urban areas are increasingly vulnerable to climate-related stresses such as heatwaves, flooding, and resource inefficiencies, requiring integrated, data-driven strategies to enhance resilience and sustainability. This study presents a modular assessment and planning framework that combines Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Building Information Modeling (BIM), City Information Modeling (CIM), microclimate simulations (ENVI-met, SWMM), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and remote sensing within a unified decision support interface (DSI). The framework operates across multiple spatial scales—from individual buildings to entire cities—to assess climate vulnerability, support evidence-based urban regeneration, and inform sustainable renovation strategies. It enables the identification of multifunctional interventions that reduce climate risks while improving energy efficiency, resource management, and environmental quality. Urban areas are classified based on their exposure and sensitivity to climate stressors, providing a systematic basis for prioritizing adaptation and mitigation measures. The approach is validated through a case study in Daegu, Republic of Korea, a city facing an aging building stock and increasing climatic pressures. The framework is presented as a conceptual design operating at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 3–4, indicating that it has passed its proof-of-concept, with key components including ENVI-met microclimate simulations and Sentinel-2/Landsat remote sensing processing demonstrably operational for the Daegu context. Illustrative performance benchmarks drawn from the peer-reviewed literature demonstrate that framework-guided interventions can achieve urban heat island reductions of 1.5–4.0 °C via green roof and reflective surface combinations; stormwater runoff reductions of 30–60% through sustainable urban drainage systems; and building energy savings of 25–45 kWh/m²/yr from deep façade renovation. Its modular and transferable design ensures applicability across diverse urban contexts with similar climatic and infrastructural challenges. Full article

Industrial areas, which represent a specific type of urbanised area with an extremely high concentration of material reserves, can be considered key anthropogenic raw material reservoirs in the context of urban mining. Industrial areas, characterised by a high material density and a specific composition of structural systems, show extraordinary potential for providing secondary raw materials with high material and energy value. This increases the need for their systematic evaluation. The aim of the present study was to define the role of the selected industrial area as a strategic node for secondary raw material extraction, to identify the structure and quality of “urban deposits” in the selected location of the Ostrava–Karviná region (CZ), and to provide an analytical framework for its integration into circular planning processes. The methodological approach is based on a combination of pre-demolition audit, material flow mapping, spatial analysis, and structural element characterisation. It is becoming apparent that industrial areas have a high material density and contain significant amounts of recyclable metals, reinforced concrete elements, etc. These stocks are often concentrated in structural systems with predictable geometries, such as serial assembly prefabricated and steel frames, allowing for more accurate estimates of recoverable volumes. The results show that the incorporation of industrial areas into the process of urban mining can significantly reduce the consumption of primary raw materials, mitigate the environmental impacts associated with the extraction of raw materials, and, at the same time, promote the regeneration of industrial areas (or brownfields) through the planned decomposition of structures. The inclusion of urban mining in urban development strategies and the regeneration of industrial sites leads to the prediction that urban mining is one of the key elements for achieving a material-efficient and low-carbon urban environment. Full article

Depopulation and urban–rural population redistribution are challenges that reshape settlement patterns, landscapes, and local economies in many regions, from Europe to China and from Japan to North America. This study examines spatial and demographic transformations in the Baltic States (Europe), using Lithuania as a detailed case study. The analysis is based on high-resolution GIS population data derived from official population registers and linked to georeferenced settlement polygons for the years 2011 and 2021, combined with a linear projection of population change to 2026 (five-year period). The results reveal that population decline, which appears modest at the aggregated statistical level (approximately −1.1% to −1.5% per year), is territorially concentrated and reaches 45–48% in the most affected areas, which can only be identified through fine-scale spatial analysis. The most pronounced decline (−46%) is observed in the population of detached rural dwellings between 2011 and 2021, with trend-based estimation indicating that vacant rural houses may exceed 50% by 2026. At the same time, peri-urban zones surrounding the largest cities show clear population growth, largely driven by internal migration from ageing urban districts, smaller towns, and peripheral rural areas, compensating aggregated values and masking underlying processes. The findings reveal a dual process of rural shrinkage and suburban expansion, increasing pressures on territorial cohesion, service provision, infrastructure planning, and the preservation of cultural landscapes. The application of high-resolution spatial data allows the detection of localized demographic processes that remain insufficiently captured in conventional municipality-level statistics and that have rarely been analyzed at this level of spatial detail. Based on these results, this study emphasizes policy approaches such as adaptive rural regeneration and managed shrinkage. Although the empirical analysis is focused on Lithuania, the identified trends are relevant to many shrinking regions worldwide and may be reproduced using local population register data in other countries to support evidence-based regional planning. Full article

As a form of living heritage, Historic Urban Landscapes (HULs) have long been limited by the static perspectives and reductionist tendencies of conventional conservation and research approaches. Although the geological and archaeological concept of “stratification” offers a methodological basis for understanding the diachronic evolution of heritage, its unidimensional temporal lens fails to capture the inherent complexity and systemic nature of historic urban landscapes. To address this gap, this study proposes a “multidimensional stratification” theoretical framework through theoretical critique and paradigm reconstruction. The framework introduces innovations at the ontological, epistemological, and methodological levels, positing that the evolution of historic urban landscapes emerges from the nonlinear interaction and dynamic interweaving of four core dimensions: time, space, society, and value. It further systematizes five intrinsic attributes of such landscapes: authenticity, integrity, continuity, adaptability, and dynamism. Building on this foundation, the paper constructs a systematic analytical pathway—elements–processes–patterns–modes–drivers–characteristics—that enables dynamic analysis from micro-level identification to macro-level generalization, offering a scalable tool for HUL conservation and regeneration. To demonstrate the framework’s applicability, the historic urban area of Shenyang—a nationally designated historical and cultural city—is selected as a case study. Its urban landscape comprises four core districts: the Shengjing City District, the South Manchuria Railway Concession District, the Commercial Port District, and the Tiexi Industrial District, representing historical strata from the Qing dynasty capital, modern colonial planning, commercial opening, to industrial heritage. Using the multidimensional stratification approach, this study elucidates the spatial complexity, temporal nonlinearity, social dynamism, and value pluralism embedded in Shenyang’s historic urban area. Corresponding conservation strategies grounded in holism, dynamism, and differentiation are proposed. The research not only advances the theoretical understanding of HUL but also provides a novel paradigm—integrating holistic, dynamic, and operational perspectives—for the conservation, renewal, and regenerative practice of historic urban landscapes worldwide. 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

Optical remote sensing imagery plays a crucial role in a wide range of applications, including environmental monitoring, disaster assessment, and urban planning. However, the widespread presence of clouds severely degrades image quality and limits the reliability of downstream analysis. Therefore, accurately recovering cloud-contaminated regions has become a critical problem in remote sensing. Despite recent progress, remote sensing cloud removal methods still face two practical difficulties in complex real-world scenarios: preserving large-scale structural consistency and recovering high-frequency details that are uncertain. To address this problem, we propose SCReD (Structure-Consistent Residual Distribution), a two-stage, structure-guided residual refinement framework for single-image remote sensing cloud removal. Specifically, the first stage introduces a structure-enhanced coarse reconstruction module to improve spatial consistency and provide a more reliable structural condition. The second stage performs conditional latent diffusion in the residual space, where probabilistic modeling is restricted to high-frequency residual refinement rather than full-image regeneration. In this way, SCReD explicitly separates coarse structural recovery from uncertain detail refinement, thereby helping to balance structural stability and texture restoration under severe cloud occlusion. Extensive experiments on representative cloud removal datasets show that SCReD achieves competitive quantitative and visual performance. This is especially true in more challenging real-world scenarios. Additional analyses further show that the two stages play complementary roles within the proposed task-specific framework. Full article