Search Results (50,586)

In this study, which is the result of a thesis defended in 2020, we evaluate how the market and the state have allied themselves in promoting popular and social interest housing in the city of São Paulo through a set of municipal regulatory frameworks and financing programs from Caixa Econômica Federal, “Caixa”, respectively. The market and the state have adapted and integrated; this association is both politically and economically valuable for the state—despite it having given up on greater urban regulation—and opportune and profitable for the market. This thesis yielded an important result: in 2018, most of the developments launched in the municipality were financed through “Caixa’s” Minha Casa, Minha Vida Program. In other words, the market and the state are allied to address the housing deficit in the municipality, with quantitatively expressed results. We highlight that this formal establishment of private housing, focused on the popular market, was facilitated by not only current municipal laws but also the participation of the state in the federal sphere through funding mechanisms like “Caixa” that have a monopoly on financing this segment. Studying this real estate production, as well as municipal regulatory changes and economics in national terms, enables the creation of an urban space generated through intervention by the state—which acts simultaneously as a regulating and financing agent—and the development of the market as an encouraging and productive agent. Full article

Although fire service accessibility has been extensively studied for urban public facilities such as hospitals and parks, it remains largely unexplored for high-risk industrial facilities such as fireworks manufacturers. In this study, fire risk and transportation network conditions are jointly considered, and a dynamic risk-weighted fire service accessibility evaluation framework is developed. An empirical study was conducted using 35 fire stations and 410 fireworks manufacturers in Liuyang City, China. Fire truck travel times were simulated via online map application programming interfaces (APIs) at 10–30 min intervals over a continuous three-day period, generating 193 evaluation scenarios and 158,260 data samples. The results indicate that the total average travel time of different types of fire trucks to demand points with varying risk levels was found to range from 570.33 to 1362.18 s, and risk-weighted fire service accessibility ranges from 16.84 to 57.26, reflecting a generally poor level of fire service accessibility within the current transport network. To resolve these constraints, it is recommended to optimize the spatial configuration of micro fire stations, promote the collaborative planning of shared enterprise-based fire units, and cross-integrate accessibility metrics into regional industrial land-use planning. These spatial measures are expected to significantly enhance the spatial resilience of transportation systems serving peripheral high-risk industrial clusters. Full article

Smart lighting is becoming a strategic component of intelligent and low-carbon urban infrastructure because it combines efficient illumination with connectivity, remote management, and continuous operational monitoring. This study proposes a reproducible unit-level methodological framework that transforms field records from a functional smart-lighting installation into traceable indicators of electrical performance, energy efficiency, avoided emissions, preliminary economic benefit, sensitivity, and conditional scalability. The approach treats the luminaire not only as an electrical load, but as a monitored urban energy node whose operation can be validated, characterized, and compared under planning-oriented control scenarios. The methodology integrates data preprocessing, electrical consistency assessment, representative baseline definition, scenario-based energy modeling, explicit environmental conversion, and conditional scaling to homogeneous lighting assets. The results reveal a stable electrical operating regime and show that managed operating conditions can generate sustained reductions in energy use and associated environmental impacts while preserving analytical transparency between measured variables and scenario-derived indicators. Sensitivity and multivariable analyses further support the robustness of the unit-level interpretation and highlight the value of monitored lighting data for comparative decision-making. The framework therefore provides a technically grounded reference for smart-city lighting management, energy planning, and scalable infrastructure assessment, with relevance to the objectives of SDG 7, SDG 11, and SDG 13. Overall, the study contributes an original data-driven perspective for integrating IoT-enabled lighting, remote supervision, and sustainability-oriented urban management within a common analytical structure. Full article

City information systems are steadily relying on various stakeholders, heterogeneous resources, and interrelated digital services. Nevertheless, many initiatives still face difficulties in aligning actors, business processes, data, and technological resources within a unified information systems architecture. Accordingly, this study presents and evaluates a federated enterprise architecture-based model for value co-creation in city information systems. The studied model investigates how strategy and capture, relationship management, and community context contribute to federated enterprise architecture, and how the architecture structuring supports service value co-creation, continuous improvement, and global impact. To validate the research model, data were gathered using a structured questionnaire that was administered to actors involved in information system initiatives. The studied hypotheses were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The main findings demonstrate that community context has a positive influence on enterprise architecture structuring, which, in turn, supports service value co-creation through the alignment of stakeholders, processes, data, and digital services. Service value co-creation then contributes to continuous improvement and ecosystem global impact, acting as a mediating mechanism between information system to city service findings. Thus, the research contributes to the information systems literature by highlighting how federated architecture contributes positively to digital service in a multi-actor ecosystem and supports value co-creation in the city information system. Full article

Inter-provincial administrative boundary areas are particularly vulnerable to ineffective regional pollution governance because they are simultaneously affected by transboundary pollution diffusion and administrative fragmentation. Existing governance practices, however, continue to rely heavily on territorially based regulation and administrative coordination, while the potential of cross-regional green-technology collaboration to address boundary pollution has received insufficient attention. Using panel data for Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2011 to 2023, this study systematically examines the impact of green innovation collaboration (GIC) on pollution control in areas along interprovincial administrative boundaries through two-way fixed-effects, instrumental-variable, Heckman two-step, and spatial Durbin models. The results show that, first, GIC significantly reduces pollution in these areas, and this finding remains robust across a range of robustness checks. GIC also generates significant spatial spillovers: while reducing local boundary pollution, it improves air quality in neighboring cities. Second, the heterogeneity analysis indicates that this effect is more pronounced in cities facing greater pollution-control pressure, lower fiscal pressure, and higher levels of openness. The regional results also reveal certain differences. Third, the mechanism analysis shows that cross-regional collaborative governance and industrial upgrading constitute two relatively independent parallel transmission pathways rather than a sequential chain, and their relative contributions vary with city conditions. These findings provide empirical evidence for improving interprovincial collaborative governance, facilitating the cross-regional diffusion of green technologies, and implementing differentiated environmental policies. Full article

Assessing the soil quality of coastal reclamation areas is fundamental to alleviating land resource scarcity in coastal cities and ensuring food security. However, it remains unclear how to evaluate soil quality in reclaimed areas and identify factors driving its variation. In this study, paddy soils from four typical reclaimed coastal areas in China (Yueqing, YQ; Longgang, LG; Rui’an, RA; Longwan, LW) were investigated to construct a minimum data set via principal component analysis and to calculate soil quality indices (SQIs). YQ had higher contents of soil organic carbon (SOC: 22.82 g kg⁻¹), total nitrogen (TN: 0.14 g kg⁻¹), total water-soluble salts (TWS: 3.09 g kg⁻¹), cation exchange capacity (CEC: 21.77 cmol(+) kg⁻¹), and available Fe (44.23 mg kg⁻¹), Mn (36.63 mg kg⁻¹), Cu (30.31 mg kg⁻¹), and Zn (8.79 mg kg⁻¹) than the other sites. RA exhibited significantly higher activities of β-glucosidase (BG: 32.79 nmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹), xylanase (XYL: 5.88 nmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹), N-acetyl-β-D-glucosaminidase (NAG: 18.00 nmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹), leucine aminopeptidase (LAP: 27.01 nmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹), and acid phosphatase (PHOS: 54.50 nmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹) than the other sites (p < 0.05). LW had the greatest bacterial and fungal abundances, whereas LW displayed the highest fungal diversity. RA showed the highest SQI (SQIw: 0.49; SQIa: 0.48), followed by LW (SQIw: 0.47; SQIa: 0.47), LG (SQIw: 0.43; SQIa: 0.41), and YQ (SQIw: 0.38; SQIa: 0.41). Random forest analysis indicated that soil enzyme activities (XYL, NAG, BG, CB, PHOS), nutrients (TN, SOC, AN), fungal abundance and diversity, and TWS were key SQI predictors (Welch ANOVA p = 0.016), with XYL being the strongest predictor (p < 0.05). Collectively, soil quality in coastal reclamation areas is co-regulated by microbial metabolic activity, nutrients, and salinity, with soil enzyme activity serving as an important indicator for its assessment, thereby deepening the understanding of soil quality dynamics within these areas and enabling their sustainable management. However, the microbial mechanisms underlying these patterns across broader environmental gradients remain to be explored. Full article

From the perspective of coordinating development and security for high-quality development in border regions, this paper focuses on the adaptation relationship between development and security functions in the Yunnan–Guangxi border region. The study aims to characterize the spatiotemporal evolution and spatial differentiation of these two functions and identify distinct types of functional adaptation and their spatial characteristics. Based on the development–security linkage perspective, a regional functional evaluation system incorporating specialized indicators, such as border trade development and national territorial security, is constructed. The CRITIC method, a functional adaptation model, and spatial statistical methods are then employed to examine the spatiotemporal evolution of the development and security functions and their adaptation in the Yunnan–Guangxi border region from 2002 to 2022, followed by a classification of regional functional adaptation types. By integrating development and security functions into a unified analytical framework, this study extends the research perspective on regional functions and the development–security relationship in border areas and provides a reference for coordinating development and security and implementing differentiated spatial governance. The results indicate the following: ① The overall regional functional level of the Yunnan–Guangxi border region increased steadily, although the growth was characterized by distinct stages, with rapid growth in the early period followed by stabilization in the later period. Regional disparities first narrowed and then widened. Both the development and security functions increased from low to medium or high levels. Specifically, high-value areas of the development function were concentrated in inland hub cities, whereas those of the security function were distributed along the border. ② The overall adaptation between the development and security functions was favorable, with the adaptation index increasing slightly. The adaptation level in the Guangxi border region was higher than that in Yunnan, while the spatial distribution of adaptation types shifted from relative clustering to dispersion. ③ The county-level administrative units in the Yunnan–Guangxi border region were classified into five functional adaptation types. During the study period, the transitional upgrading type accounted for the largest proportion, and the overall spatial pattern was characterized by “advancement along the border while maintaining stability in the hinterland.” Therefore, differentiated guidance and governance strategies should be implemented according to the characteristics of each functional adaptation type to promote the dynamic coordination between development and security functions, thereby supporting spatial governance and functional improvement in border regions. Full article

Urban public spaces in cold-climate cities commonly face the challenge of seasonal vitality attenuation. Taking the central urban area of Shenyang as a case study, this paper constructs a HEVA four-dimensional framework based on “spatial diagnosis, mechanism analysis, and design response.” By integrating Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) with GIS spatial analysis, the study reveals the spatial heterogeneity and driving mechanisms of winter vitality attenuation in linear green spaces. The findings are threefold: (1) Winter wind fields induce significant local wind-chill effects that severely suppress winter stay vitality in green spaces; (2) MGWR results show that greenery coverage exhibits a predominantly positive effect (approximately 81% of sample points have positive coefficients), bus stop density exhibits a “bifurcated spatial pattern”, with positive coefficients at approximately 53% of sample points and negative at the remaining 47%, indicating a highly localized effect., commercial service density is positive across the entire study area (100% positive), building density is predominantly negative (approximately 87%), and road network density has a relatively weak effect; (3) Based on the above mechanisms, a three-pronged elastic design strategy system is proposed, encompassing “climate-adaptive regulation, functional composite implantation, and regional cultural response.” This study explores a data-driven, mechanism-guided geospatial design pathway for the renewal of underperforming spaces in cold-climate cities. The generalizability of the methodological framework warrants further validation through multi-city and multi-seasonal data. Full article

This study investigates the impact of the “Broadband China” pilot policy on agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) from a new structural economics (NSE) perspective. Using panel data from 297 Chinese cities (2000–2024), we employ a spatial difference-in-differences (SDiD) approach. We find that the policy significantly enhances agricultural TFP by approximately 25.8 percentage points in treated cities. We identify international internet users as a novel partial mediator, explaining why domestic broadband gains depend on international connectivity. We also provide evidence of positive spatial spillovers: a 1% increase in neighboring cities’ digital economy is associated with a 0.292% increase in local agricultural TFP. Heterogeneity analysis reveals stronger policy effects in less-developed regions (Northwest China, low-GDP areas) and areas with higher scientific expenditure. By integrating institutional and spatial structures into the NSE framework, this study contributes a nuanced, endowment-contingent understanding of how state-led digital infrastructure investment reshapes agricultural efficiency. Full article

Medium-resolution building-footprint mapping is limited by two coupled problems: 10 m optical pixels mix roofs with roads and bare surfaces, and SAR observations are degraded by speckle and viewing geometry. We present ACBDT, a Sentinel-1/2 framework that encodes each modality separately, learns a diffusion-inspired time-step-conditioned fused teacher representation, transforms it through a Cross-Modal Distillation Bridge (CMDB), and refines the output with a Student Refinement Decoder. The time-step variable is used only as a stochastic conditioning index; ACBDT does not implement a forward noising schedule, reverse diffusion, or iterative diffusion sampling. Training and evaluation used 2680 paired 256 × 256 patches over eight Yangtze River Delta cities with a spatially disjoint block partition. In three independent runs on the held-out test partition, ACBDT achieved 85.61 ± 0.32% building IoU, 92.24 ± 0.19% F1, and 83.74 ± 0.34% dataset-level boundary F1, compared with 83.21 ± 0.24% IoU for the strongest baseline, FTransUNet. Repeated-seed ablation showed 79.01 ± 0.42% IoU without CMDB and 84.53 ± 0.20% IoU without time-step conditioning. The separate density diagnostic retained a positive full-minus-optical IoU difference across all five building-density strata. Conclusions are limited to this Yangtze River Delta evaluation; city-held-out and cross-season transfer were not tested. Full article

The 1960s to early 1990s marked a pivotal era in Kazakhstan’s mass housing history, particularly in Almaty, which was driven by a sector-wide policy shift toward apartment-based occupancy, regulated space standards, full utility provision, and organised residential courtyards. Large-panel buildings from this period still comprise over one-third of Almaty’s housing stock, yet their alignment with modern comfort standards remains understudied. This study establishes a historical periodisation of Almaty’s large-panel housing and assesses its comfort levels at apartment and built-environment scales. The two-part methodology combined a theoretical strand (comfort-level theory, literature review, historical retrospective, and periodisation) with an analytical strand (comparative graphical-analytical assessment of series 1Kz-464-AS, 1Kz-464-DS, 69, E-147 and 158), converging in a Basic–Supplementary–Advanced comfort classification. The results of the current study showed that three sub-periods emerged. Series 1Kz-464-AS and 1Kz-464-DS used a narrow-bay (2.6–3.2 m), economy-driven two-bay system with minimal zoning. Series 69 widened bays to 3.6–5.4 m, improving spatial comfort and utility provision. Series E-147 and 158 introduced a three-bay scheme with an added 2.1 m bay and raised ceilings (3.0 m), yielding the most flexible layouts. At the urban scale, microdistrict planning enlarged planning units by 7–10 times, preserved green connectivity through mid-rise buildings, and shielded courtyards using perimeter high-rises, supporting walkable, infrastructure-rich neighbourhoods. Apartment-scale comfort improved incrementally through bay widening rather than layout diversification, leaving persistent redevelopment constraints from panel structures. Built-environment comfort, however, reached a comparatively advanced, durable standard. Adaptive reuse should prioritise structural refurbishment, reduced occupancy density, courtyard–microdistrict continuity, and diversified public-space functions. This study’s results can inform renovation strategies for Soviet-era housing across post-Soviet cities. Full article

Achieving sustainable transport requires not only reducing aggregate emissions but also avoiding the concentration of emission burdens and transition costs in less-developed regions. Transport carbon-emission inequality therefore captures a distributional dimension of environmental and social sustainability. Using city-level transport emissions and population data for 31 mainland Chinese provincial-level regions from 2005 to 2024, this study develops an integrated framework for measuring and monitoring this inequality. Population-weighted within-province Gini coefficients and Theil T indices are combined with a modified-gravity interprovincial network, annual network analysis, CONCOR and core–periphery analysis, two-way fixed effects, and leakage-safe machine learning. The mean provincial Gini declined from 0.311 in 2005 to 0.287 in 2024, but inequality remained higher in the northwest and southwest and lower along the eastern coast. Full-network weight increased from 61.275 to 3336.040, retained directed edges increased from 174 to 217, and reciprocity rose from 0.471 to 0.571, indicating stronger interprovincial embeddedness and a greater need for coordinated governance. Population density was negatively associated with inequality across several specifications, although wild-cluster bootstrap inference did not confirm uniform significance. Under zero province-pair overlap, LightGBM achieved R² = 0.241 with distance and 0.121 without distance; residual machine learning added no stable predictive information beyond the gravity benchmark. These findings contribute to sustainability research by quantifying the distributional fairness of transport decarbonization, providing a reproducible monitoring tool for identifying regional sustainability risks, and supporting differentiated mitigation responsibilities, sustainable transport infrastructure, and cross-provincial coordination. Full article

Urban regeneration is an important policy tool for restructuring urban space, but its implications for operational transport-related carbon emissions remain unclear. Using the City Smart Planning System (CitySPS), this study simulates emissions in Shenzhen from 2020 to 2035 under a baseline and five policy scenarios representing temporal modification, land-use type modification and spatial replacement. The analysis uses legally designated regeneration parcels and multi-source spatial data. The accounting boundary covers CitySPS-represented operational transport-related carbon emissions from urban travel and excludes demolition, construction, building operation, embodied emissions, and other life-cycle sources. The baseline emissions rose from 1.840 × 10⁷ t CO₂ in 2020 to 2.269 × 10⁷ t CO₂ in 2035 (approximately 23%). Relative to the same-year baseline, all the policy scenarios produce higher simulated emissions in 2030 (+0.11% to +1.26%) but lower simulated emissions in 2035 (−0.34% to −1.97%). Under the evaluated configurations and the shared CitySPS assumptions, spatial replacement produces the largest simulated reduction in 2035 (−1.97%) despite an increase in 2030 (+0.41%). The results indicate time-dependent and heterogeneous outcomes across the scenario configurations. Full article

As cities accelerate climate adaptation and decarbonisation, municipally owned companies (MOCs) play an important role in delivering sustainable urban infrastructure, accessing transition finance, and supporting Positive Energy Districts (PEDs). However, the expansion of sustainability reporting requirements under the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) raises questions about the preparedness of public infrastructure providers to meet evolving sustainability-information demands. This study examines ESG reporting readiness among Polish MOCs, focusing on current reporting activity, reporting intentions, regulatory awareness, indirect ESG information pressures, sustainable-finance and investment plans, and potential transition-risk exposure. The analysis is based on a Computer-Assisted Web Interviewing survey of 226 municipal enterprises conducted in August 2025. The results indicate substantial reporting gaps. Only 8% of surveyed MOCs had already prepared or planned to prepare a non-financial report. When companies planning EU Taxonomy reporting only were also included, 14% of the sample had some form of current or planned reporting, while the remaining 86% had neither current nor planned non-financial or EU Taxonomy reporting. Reporting readiness was lower among smaller companies, while indirect ESG information pressures arising from business relationships, stakeholder requests, and financing plans were also evident across the surveyed sample. The findings suggest that limited reporting preparedness, when combined with external sustainability-information demands, may contribute to potential transition-risk exposure relevant to municipal investment and financing processes. More broadly, ESG reporting readiness represents an organisational capability relevant to sustainable finance, municipal climate investment, and the development of PEDs and smart cities. Full article

Taxi fleets operate intensively, accumulate high annual mileage, and contribute disproportionately to urban greenhouse gas emissions, making them attractive candidates for transport electrification. Despite growing interest in electric mobility, integrated evaluations of the environmental, energy, and economic implications of taxi fleet electrification remain limited, particularly for medium-sized cities in Türkiye. This research examines the replacement of the commercial taxi fleet operating in the central districts of Denizli with battery electric vehicles (BEVs) through a framework that integrates operational emission estimation, electricity demand, charging infrastructure, and life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA). Operational emissions were quantified using the IPCC Tier 1 fuel-based approach together with a distance-based consistency check. Under the adopted assumptions, electrification reduced annual operational CO₂ emissions by 4217.48 tCO₂ (57.9%). The electrified fleet required 18.36 MWh of electricity per day (6.70 GWh annually), while estimated peak charging demand varied between 1.22 MW and 5.57 MW, depending on the charging strategy. Economic evaluation showed a positive net present value (NPV) of 1.32 million TL per vehicle, an internal rate of return (IRR) of 80.86%, and a discounted payback period (DPP) of 1.37 years. Although profitability varied with energy prices, vehicle costs, and annual mileage, fleet electrification remained economically feasible across all scenarios considered. These results suggest that electrifying commercial taxi fleets can support urban decarbonization while remaining financially attractive when accompanied by appropriate charging infrastructure and coordinated transport planning. Full article