Search Results (4,515)

Traditional Miao villages in southwest China are being reshaped by rural modernization, tourism development, and changing everyday practices, creating a need for architectural interventions that accommodate contemporary functions without reducing local culture to decorative motifs. This study examines Jiubai Village in Guizhou Province through the lens of vernacular reinterpretation and develops a design-driven pathway linking the identification of vernacular spatial elements, interpretation of socio-spatial meanings, refinement of design principles, and translation into contemporary architecture. The research combines documentary study, repeated field surveys, morphological and typological analysis, oral-history interviews, informal discussions, and architectural design experimentation. The results reveal a multi-scalar socio-spatial system linking topographic and material adaptation with village-scale collective spaces, ritual practices, and household-scale gathering around the huotang. They also show uneven modernization and the persistence of cultural and spatial values despite functional change. The proposed design intervention translates these relationships through an open collective ground floor, a reinterpreted huotang, terrain-responsive form, timber expression, and layered contemporary functions. This study suggests that relational reinterpretation, rather than formal imitation, may support cultural continuity and spatial sustainability in rural revitalization, while broader environmental, economic, and long-term social sustainability remains beyond the scope of this assessment. Full article

Sustainability is increasingly recognised as a key priority in tourism development. Based on stakeholder theory, sustainable tourism implicates the involvement of diverse destination stakeholders. However, the roles of local residents and tourism providers as stakeholders who play an important role in achieving sustainability have largely been examined separately. This study addressed the dual role of local resident tourism providers operating in rural areas by exploring their perceptions, implementation, and recommendations related to sustainable tourism practices (STPs). By integrating stakeholder theory with systems theory, the study considered local resident tourism providers as embedded within a complex destination system. Data were collected through an online and offline survey of local resident tourism providers in the rural area of Istria County, Croatia, with 82 valid responses obtained. A qualitative approach based on an interpretive research paradigm was applied, and reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) was used to analyse the data. The findings indicate that respondents have an understanding of the concept of STPs and implement them, mainly in an environmental context, in their tourism activities. A focus on the quality of tourism services, presentation of local identity and heritage, and relationships and communication with guests emerged as important to respondents, while stakeholder cooperation between providers was limited in their responses. These findings suggest that resident tourism providers may be unaware of the importance of stakeholder collaboration, including their own role, in achieving sustainable tourism development. However, the findings also highlight the importance of adopting a systems approach: respondents’ identification of STPs and recommendations for improving their implementation point to the need for appropriate enabling conditions at destination system level. The findings are intended to be of interest to researchers, destination management organisations, local authorities, and tourism policymakers working in the field of sustainable tourism. Full article

Rural low-carbon planning requires evaluation tools that connect carbon-related performance with the ecological, socioeconomic, and infrastructure conditions of rural settlements, yet carbon inventories and conventional human-settlement assessments do not fully integrate these dimensions. This study developed an exploratory carbon-benefit-oriented sustainability diagnostic and applied it to Qingge Village, Fujian Province. Fuzzy Delphi screening retained 27 indicators across ecological, social, production, and engineering subsystems; Delphi consultation generated expert-based weights; a dimensionless ratio transformation standardized the indicator values; threshold, standardization, and weighting sensitivity analyses evaluated the stability of results across analytical specifications. The primary composite score was 0.413 compared with 0.590 under the target-achievement transformation, and both expert-weighted transformations ranked subsystem contributions as production, ecological, social, and engineering. The ecological and production subsystems performed more strongly against the selected references than the social and engineering subsystems, whereas fully equal global weights placed ecology ahead of production. The principal diagnostic priorities were household energy emissions, green agricultural upgrading, public-transport access, and recorded energy-efficient building coverage. These findings indicate that the diagnostic can organize village-scale low-carbon planning priorities and translate multidimensional performance evidence into a sequenced set of spatial improvement options. This study therefore provides a transparent and practically applicable approach for linking carbon-related indicators with rural human-settlement planning and supporting evidence-informed low-carbon revitalization. Full article

Rural maternity care in the United States faces an unprecedented crisis. As of 2022, more than half of rural hospitals lacked obstetric services, leaving many rural communities without local maternity care. This descriptive case study documents the implementation of maternity services at a 25-bed rural critical access hospital in North Carolina. We reviewed and coded data derived from the following sources from 2020–2025: institutional planning documents, clinical protocols, standard workflows, operational procedures, administrative records, meeting minutes, presentations and summaries, and published commentaries, manuscripts and articles related to the new maternity unit. We identified six critical domains for sustainability: (1) hospital and community engagement, (2) stable multidisciplinary staffing models, (3) emergency preparedness, (4) anesthesia service delivery, (5) financial sustainability, and (6) risk-appropriate scope of care. Successful implementation required integrated approaches across organizational dimensions facilitated by committed institutional leadership; community advocacy; innovative staffing models with family physicians, certified nurse-midwives, and certified registered nurse anesthetists; competency-based emergency training; Medicaid-based financial sustainability; and explicit risk stratification with clear interfacility communication protocols. Workforce sustainability emerged as the most significant ongoing challenge. Rural maternity service sustainability requires multifaceted, evidence-based approaches integrating workforce development, organizational infrastructure, financial mechanisms, and clear scope definitions. This case study demonstrates a model of perinatal regionalized and risk-appropriate care with replicable strategies that can inform efforts to address maternal health equity and strengthen rural health care systems. Full article

In Latin America, road planning and prioritization have focused on selecting roads based on traffic flow demand and population growth. Under this paradigm, rural roads are often underprioritized, despite having an impact on connectivity, access to services, territorial development, and spatial equity. This has led public programs to seek alternative funding sources to offset the road deficit in rural areas. However, road improvement programs lack support tools for the early formulation of efficient projects aimed at territorial sustainability. Thus, this research proposes an early planning tool for rural road improvement projects that contribute to territorial sustainability through a categorization method. To this end, a multi-criteria multi-objective evaluation model, the intelligent optimization algorithm Harmony Search, and discriminant analysis were used to categorize the sustainable contribution of rural roads within a territory. This study was applied to a case study of 101 rural road projects in the Araucanía region of Chile. The proposed categorization method identified four key criteria that influence the overall sustainability of the territory, as well as four differentiating categories by area. The proposed tool serves as an early planning guide for the design and location of rural roads, promoting a sustainable planning approach. Full article

Rural cultural revitalization is the soul and endogenous driving force of comprehensive rural revitalization. The continuous optimization and effective implementation of the policy system serve as the core guarantee for promoting the sustainable development of rural cultural construction. Existing studies mostly conceptualize policy operation as a linear process, overlooking the dynamic closed-loop relationship among attention allocation, policy change, and effect evaluation, which results in fragmented policy implementation and insufficient sustainability. Accordingly, this study constructs an integrated analytical framework of “Attention–Change–Evaluation” for policy, incorporating policy attention (A), policy change (B), policy implementation (C), policy evaluation (D), and policy feedback (E) into a unified closed-loop system. It proposes H1–H14 hypothetical paths to reveal the multiple mechanisms through which attention influences effect evaluation via policy change, policy implementation, and their chained combinations. The findings indicate that the operation of rural cultural construction policies is not a unidirectional causal chain, but rather a periodic closed loop formed by the end-to-end connection of the main transmission chain (A→B→C→D) and the reverse feedback path (D→E→A). Policy attention jointly affects policy evaluation through both direct effects and indirect chained effects, driving the policy shift from one-off task fulfillment to continuous dynamic adjustment. The study suggests that establishing an effective linkage mechanism between policy feedback and attention reconfiguration is the key pathway to achieving sustainable development of rural cultural construction policies. Full article

Higher Education Institutions are increasingly expected to connect teacher education with professional knowledge, institutional collaboration, and territorially situated educational challenges. However, less attention has been paid to the processes through which teacher professional knowledge is articulated, interpreted, represented, and communicated across institutional boundaries within Initial Teacher Education (ITE). This study examined an instrumental qualitative case developed by the University of Valladolid in collaboration with five educational institutions in rural and urban settings, educational authorities, and the Institute for Women. Sixty-nine first-year pre-service teachers participated in a structured knowledge mobilization process involving nine collective teacher interview-dialogue sessions with nine professional participants, collaborative analysis, the production of multimodal communication outputs, and a final public seminar. The qualitative corpus comprised records generated through the nine interview-dialogue sessions, including 69 individual field-note records and partial audio recordings, together with 12 analytical summaries, 12 infographics, 12 oral presentations, seminar records, institutional documentation, and a whole-cohort plenary discussion used as supplementary contextual evidence. Data were examined through reflexive thematic analysis supported by NVivo 15. Four interrelated themes were constructed: teacher professional knowledge as situated expertise; its transformation from individual experience into a shared professional resource; students’ representations of teaching and their interpretive and communication practices; and the interinstitutional coordination supporting knowledge mobilization. The findings document a bounded process through which situated professional knowledge moved from teacher articulation to student interpretation, multimodal representation, and institutional communication. They support claims concerning coordination, complementary institutional responsibilities, and knowledge communication, while providing more limited evidence concerning shared governance, long-term knowledge reuse, institutionalization, or territorial effects. Collaborative governance and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) are therefore used as interpretive perspectives rather than as demonstrated outcomes of the partnership. The study contributes a relational conceptualization of university–school partnerships as infrastructures through which situated teacher professional knowledge can be made available for interpretation and communication within ITE. Full article

Agricultural new quality productive forces (ANQP) provide an important foundation for high-quality agricultural development and sustainable rural transformation. Using panel data for 30 Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2022, this study examines the effect of digital financial inclusion (DFI) on ANQP and the channels through which that effect operates. The results show that DFI is significantly and positively associated with ANQP. A one-standard-deviation increase in DFI is associated with an increase in ANQP equivalent to approximately 64.35% of its sample mean. Green technological innovation serves as a statistically significant transmission channel, although its indirect effect accounts for only 3.31% of the total effect. The relationship between DFI and ANQP exhibits a double-threshold pattern with respect to the level of DFI and a single-threshold pattern with respect to regional economic development, with the estimated coefficients increasing gradually across regimes. Decomposing DFI shows that coverage breadth, usage depth, and digitization all contribute positively to ANQP. Further analysis of the outcome dimensions indicates that DFI is positively associated with agricultural laborers, agricultural labor objects, and agricultural labor resources. The estimated association is also larger in regions with more developed traditional financial systems. These results provide a multidimensional and stage-based understanding of the relationship between digital finance and agricultural productive-capability upgrading. Full article

Against the backdrop of high-quality development in rural tourism, issues such as landscape homogenization and insufficient coordination among diverse stakeholders have become increasingly prominent, creating a marked disparity with the requirements for distinctive and differentiated development in rural revitalization. This paper aims to investigate how actor-networks drive the dynamic evolution of rural tourism landscapes through translation mechanisms, and to illuminate the agentic role of non-human elements in this process, thereby addressing the core question of why the same set of local resources generates distinct landscape forms across different developmental stages. To this end, this study takes the Mayangxi Ecotourism Area in Fujian as a case study and, drawing on actor-network theory, employs qualitative research methods including in-depth interviews, participant observation, and grounded theory to systematically analyze the phased evolutionary characteristics, actor-network translation logic, and underlying operational mechanisms of rural tourism landscape creation. The findings reveal that: (1) the creation of the Mayangxi rural tourism landscape has successively undergone three major developmental stages—landscape construction, landscape integration, and landscape optimization—during which human and non-human actors, through a complete translation mechanism, drive the continuous iteration of the actor-network, with non-human elements playing a significant agentic role throughout the landscape’s evolution; (2) the local landscape creation has formed a closed-loop operational mechanism of “base activation → network construction → network iteration → sustainable operation,” which effectively supports the sustainable development of rural tourism landscapes. This study addresses the analytical limitations of existing rural landscape research, which tends to focus on human-centered interactions while overlooking the value of non-human elements, expands the application boundaries of actor-network theory in the field of rural tourism, and provides practical guidance for differentiated landscape creation in China’s rural tourism development. Full article

This paper provides a comprehensive end-to-end evaluation of the energy efficiency of three key fifth-generation mobile (5G) Radio Access Network (RAN) architectures: Distributed RAN (D-RAN), Centralized RAN (C-RAN), and Cloud C-RAN. Two complementary energy efficiency metrics are employed: the data energy efficiency metric EE_TH (Mbit/J) and the coverage energy efficiency metric EE_CO (m²/MJ). Analyses are conducted for dense urban and rural environments over a standardized 1 km² area. Results demonstrate that 5G Cloud C-RAN consistently offers superior energy performance under both metrics. In dense urban conditions, Cloud C-RAN achieves a maximum EE_TH of 149.96 Mbit/J, representing gains of approximately 186% and 166% over D-RAN and C-RAN, respectively, and a peak EE_CO of 1,784,599 m²/MJ, outperforming the other architectures by up to 178%. In rural environments, Cloud C-RAN similarly leads with a maximum EE_TH of 3.98 Mbit/J and an EE_CO of 40,205,471 m²/MJ. The findings reaffirm the energy efficiency benefits of virtualization-enabled mobile network architectures. A Monte Carlo simulation framework, based on 1000 independent random spatial trials, confirms these results remain accurate to within 1% under realistic base station and user placement, validating a total network power reduction of approximately 65% for Cloud C-RAN over D-RAN in dense urban conditions and 21% in rural conditions. By confirming these gains hold reliably under realistic deployment conditions, this validated evidence base could be a game changer for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), as they strive to develop unprecedented user experience for 5G use cases whilst adhering to long-term global sustainability goals. Full article

Social inclusion has become a widely shared normative commitment across research on education, health and development, yet its enactment often remains uneven and difficult to sustain. This concept paper develops the idea of “Lost in Inclusion” to examine how inclusion is translated, unsettled and partially lost as it moves across theory, method and territory. Drawing on practice vignettes from four years of a transdisciplinary community-based research project in rural Bolivia, the article explores three sites of tension: the encounter between epistemic openness and academic demands for certainty; the translation of participation into intervention-oriented action; and the recognition of children and young people as knowledge producers. Rather than treating barriers as pre-existing obstacles, the article argues that barriers may emerge through the very practices intended to enact inclusion. It distinguishes between where inclusion gets lost, as inclusive commitments become legible within institutional and methodological logics, and how researchers and partners may become lost in the pursuit of inclusion itself when its normative force makes tensions difficult to question. The article proposes a relational and ethically reflexive approach to inclusion-oriented research, in which success depends less on eliminating tension than on protecting the conditions that keep participation and recognition open to negotiation. Full article

Rural entrepreneurship is increasingly recognised as a critical driver of economic resilience and regional development, particularly in developing regions such as the Eastern Cape, South Africa. This exploratory study examines how entrepreneurial activities stimulate local economic growth, job creation, innovation, and community empowerment in Mnquma Local Municipality, where persistent unemployment and poverty remain significant challenges. Adopting an exploratory research design underpinned by a positivist philosophy, this study synthesises existing literature on the relationships among employment generation, economic contribution, innovation promotion, economic diversification, community engagement, and local supply chain development. Data were collected from 349 respondents drawn from a population of 3750 formally registered rural entrepreneurs. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics, reliability and validity tests, correlation analysis, and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) in SPSS and SmartPLS, to examine the relationships among employment generation, economic contribution, innovation promotion, economic diversification, community engagement, supply chain development, and economic resilience. The findings suggest that strong rural entrepreneurship enhances local adaptability and supports sustainable economic performance in the face of external shocks. The study emphasises the importance of inclusive, evidence-based policies that promote rural enterprise development through improved financial mechanisms, infrastructure investment, and strengthened stakeholder networks; thereby providing localised insights to inform policy and sustainable development in South Africa. Full article

Rural cultural tourism has become an important pathway for rural revitalization in underdeveloped regions, yet its spatial organization and driving mechanisms remain insufficiently understood. This study investigates the spatial patterns, functional typology, and driving mechanisms—understood as statistically significant spatial associations—of 300 policy-designated rural cultural tourism villages in Gansu Province, China, using an integrated geospatial analytical framework incorporating the Average Nearest Neighbor Index, Kernel Density Estimation (KDE), the Lorenz Curve, Global Moran’s I, and the Geo-detector model. The results reveal a significant clustered distribution characterized by a pronounced “high-density southeast–low-density northwest” pattern. Five functional village types exhibit distinct spatial concentration characteristics associated with differences in resource endowments and development orientations. Geo-detector analysis identifies transportation accessibility, economic development, and topographic conditions as the factors most strongly associated with spatial heterogeneity. Interaction effects among natural, socioeconomic, and policy variables are also detectable. These findings advance the understanding of the spatial organization of rural cultural tourism and demonstrate the value of GIS-based spatial analysis for supporting evidence-based rural revitalization planning and sustainable territorial development in ecologically fragile regions. Full article

Sustainable livelihoods for farmers are crucial to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In particular, the sustainability of farmers’ livelihoods in plain agricultural areas is strategically important for poverty alleviation, food security, and the reduction in urban–rural disparities. Drawing on data from a sample survey of farmers and field interviews conducted in the Jianghan Plain, this study evaluates farmers’ sustainable livelihoods in plain agricultural areas. The results indicate the following: (1) In 2022, the sustainable livelihood level of farmers in the Jianghan Plain was relatively low; the average Sustainable Livelihood Index (SLI) of the sampled farmers was 0.3462, with livelihood capital and livelihood outcomes accounting for 50.58% and 49.42% of the SLI, respectively. (2) A significant bidirectional positive interaction existed between farmers’ livelihood capital and livelihood outcomes. Specifically, the coefficient of the promotion effect of livelihood capital on livelihood outcomes was 0.1312, whereas that of the feedback effect of livelihood outcomes on livelihood capital was 1.0128. (3) The coupling coordination degree between farmers’ livelihood capital and livelihood outcomes was moderately unbalanced, with livelihood capital identified as the primary obstacle to farmers’ sustainable livelihood development. The average obstacle degree of livelihood capital was 0.7305, indicating a high degree of constraint. The cumulative obstacle degree of social capital (0.2707), human capital (0.1876), and natural capital (0.1460) reached 60.43%, indicating that these three factors collectively constituted the key obstacles. These findings provide valuable insights into promoting farmers’ livelihood sustainability and rural revitalization in plain agricultural areas. Full article

Heritage education has undergone substantial conceptual, pedagogical, and technological transformations over the last decade, driven by the expansion of digital technologies, participatory pedagogies, and arts-based approaches to learning. Although research in this field has grown considerably, existing studies remain fragmented across educational contexts, disciplinary traditions, and methodological perspectives. This systematic review aims to synthesise international research published between 2015 and 2026 on the relationships among heritage education, arts-based learning, museum education, digital transformation, sustainability, and teacher education. The review followed the PRISMA 2020 Statement and the PRISMA-S reporting recommendations. Searches conducted in the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus identified 525 records, of which 53 studies met the predefined eligibility criteria and were included in the qualitative synthesis. The findings reveal a marked expansion of museum-based and digitally mediated heritage learning, the growing adoption of arts-based pedagogies, and an increasing emphasis on teacher education and community participation. While digital technologies have become firmly established within heritage education, artificial intelligence remains an emerging area of inquiry with limited empirical evidence. The review also identifies persistent challenges, including the underrepresentation of rural and non-Western perspectives, limited longitudinal research, and the need for more robust methodological designs. Building on the synthesis of the reviewed literature, the article proposes the Arts-Based Heritage Learning Ecosystem as an integrative framework for understanding the interplay among cultural memory, artistic mediation, museum participation, digital innovation, sustainability, and teacher education. The study contributes to current debates by providing an updated synthesis of international research and by offering a conceptual basis to inform future research, curriculum development, and educational practice. Full article