Search Results (556)

Urbanization’s environmental challenges have increased interest in urban biodiversity, traditionally focused on public green spaces, which are shrinking as urban growth escapes government control. This study examines the understudied role of private actors—specifically Concessions held by Catholic Religious Groups (CRGs)—in biodiversity conservation across three DRC cities (Bukavu, Kisangani, Lubumbashi). CRGs were selected due to Catholicism’s dominance and socio-economic influence in the DRC. A systematic flora inventory of 70 randomly sampled CRGs identified 220 species from 76 families and 185 genera. Although the CRG area was smaller in Lubumbashi (1.1 ha) than Bukavu (3.7 ha) and Kisangani (5.2 ha), the area did not correlate with species richness. Plant composition varied significantly within and between cities, dominated by phanerophytes and exotic species. These findings underscore the importance of including private stakeholders in urban biodiversity conservation. Full article

Low-altitude drones, which are unimpeded by traffic congestion or urban terrain, have become a critical asset in emergency rescue missions. To address the current lack of emergency rescue data, UAV aerial videos were collected to create an experimental dataset for action classification and localization annotation. A total of 5082 keyframes were labeled with 1–5 targets each, and 14,412 instances of data were prepared (including flight altitude and camera angles) for action classification and position annotation. To mitigate the challenges posed by high-resolution drone footage with excessive redundant information, we propose the SlowFast-Traffic (SF-T) framework, a spatio-temporal sequence-based algorithm for recognizing traffic accident rescue actions. For more efficient extraction of target–background correlation features, we introduce the Actor-Centric Relation Network (ACRN) module, which employs temporal max pooling to enhance the time-dimensional features of static backgrounds, significantly reducing redundancy-induced interference. Additionally, smaller ROI feature map outputs are adopted to boost computational speed. To tackle class imbalance in incident samples, we integrate a Class-Balanced Focal Loss (CB-Focal Loss) function, effectively resolving rare-action recognition in specific rescue scenarios. We replace the original Faster R-CNN with YOLOX-s to improve the target detection rate. On our proposed dataset, the SF-T model achieves a mean average precision (mAP) of 83.9%, which is 8.5% higher than that of the standard SlowFast architecture while maintaining a processing speed of 34.9 tasks/s. Both accuracy-related metrics and computational efficiency are substantially improved. The proposed method demonstrates strong robustness and real-time analysis capabilities for modern traffic rescue action recognition. Full article

Religious freedom, the management of religious diversity, and interreligious dialogue are emerging and closely interconnected phenomena. In the context of increasing religious pluralism, policymakers, religious institutions, and other civil society actors and organizations face challenges, particularly as they strive to legitimize their religious, social, and legal positions in contemporary societies. Drawing on 47 interviews with policymakers (N° 10), privileged informants (N° 15), and religious (N° 18) and interreligious leaders (N° 4), conducted as part of the Project Urban Governance of Religious Diversity (2023–2025), this article examines interreligious dialogue, as a social practice shaped by national legal frameworks on religious freedom and local governance mechanisms regulating religious diversity. More specifically, we analyze the three most relevant themes that emerged from the interview material: first, the limitations and opportunities within the current legislative framework, particularly in relation to local administrations’ efforts to complement national regulations and support religious communities in innovative ways; second, critiques of top-down initiatives on interreligious dialogue, wherein institutional priorities sometimes overshadow the voices and needs of religious groups; and finally, the impact of global events, such as the ongoing genocide in Palestine, on interreligious dialogue and established relationships among different faith communities. The article concludes by summarizing the main findings and outlining potential avenues for future research. Full article

Urban development through property development in central parts of cities rather than through sprawl is key to achieving sustainable future cities. However, realising desired projects in complex city centre environments is challenging and risky due to the involvement of numerous actors. This paper offers novel insights into developers’ perspectives on how the conduct of public authorities influences city centre zoning plan processes. Based on interviews with 11 employees of property development firms, working on mixed-use city centre projects ranging from 1100 to 112,000 m² Gross Floor Area in small and medium-sized Norwegian cities, the study identifies key challenges developers experience in their interactions with public authorities across sectors and administrative levels during planning processes and analyses how these challenges relate to goals, knowledge and power among key actors. The study finds that public authorities can improve the efficiency of zoning plan processes and enhance city centre project delivery by altering their conduct. First, by more explicitly clarifying that the realisation of desired city centre property developments is a primary policy objective, maintaining this focus throughout the processes and taking responsibility for reconciling conflicts in ways that enable feasible projects. Second, by improving their knowledge of the fundamental need for projects to be profitable in order to be realised, and the impact of authorities’ requirements on project viability. Third, by exercising their agenda-setting power more constructively and flexibly throughout the zoning plan process. The paper examines underexplored perspectives in planning research and yields actionable recommendations for planning practice. Full article

This article examines how religious freedom is enacted and redefined through everyday practices in pluralistic urban settings. Moving beyond the classical notion of negative liberty as non-interference, it explores the social conditions that enable or constrain the practical expression of religious life. Drawing on forty-three qualitative interviews with religious leaders and civic actors in Florence, Italy, the study analyses how religious freedom is experienced across institutional contexts such as hospitals, schools, prisons, workplaces, and sport facilities. The findings reveal a persistent tension between formal legal rights and their uneven implementation in daily life. While legal guarantees are generally upheld, structural barriers and discretionary practices often hinder access to religious expression. At the same time, informal interactions, local networks, and dialogical engagement play a key role in supporting the concrete exercise of religious freedom. The article argues that freedom is not simply a legal status but a social process, realized through relational and institutional arrangements. By foregrounding the role of everyday interaction in shaping the conditions of freedom, this study contributes to broader sociological debates on pluralism, normativity, and the social foundations of institutional life. Full article

Unbalanced population growth, especially in developing countries, has exacerbated the waste problem. This issue is alleviated by waste pickers who play a vital role in recycling, the city’s circular economy, and sustainability strategies. The article aims to create an alternative form of communication by analyzing the daily lives and work patterns of waste pickers through various instruments, contributing to urban sustainability policies. Most studies on waste pickers have focused on broader trends and have not explored the lives of waste pickers in-depth. As a result, effective communication has not been established, and practical solutions have not been developed. This study directly addresses this gap and examines the daily lives and work practices of waste pickers in the metropolis of Istanbul, using ethnographic and grounded theory methodologies. It analyzes these findings with the MAXQDA program and proposes alternative solutions. The methodology generated verbal and spatial data from waste pickers, which were organized using an extensive coding system and, as a result, categorized under four selective codes. Through diagrams created from the theoretical codes used in the coding process, the narratives of waste pickers and their spatial production and usage were correlated, enabling a thorough analysis of waste pickers. This code model presents a challenging reevaluation of the traditional approach to urban sustainability in local systems by recognizing waste pickers as often overlooked yet essential actors and agents of sustainability in the city. Full article

This study explores the evolution of China’s intangible cultural heritage (ICH) governance through the lens of discursive institutionalism, with a specific focus on how institutional discourse and arrangements shape the spatial configuration and symbolic meaning of ICH-related landscapes. By analyzing policy discourse, governance actors, resource mobilization, and regulatory mechanisms, the study traces the transition from community-led practices to increasingly formalized and spatialized systems under the influence of the 2003 UNESCO Convention. Drawing on a combination of historical policy analysis and place-specific institutional insights, the research finds that while institutional reforms have enhanced administrative coherence and international alignment, they have also at times disrupted vernacular meanings and weakened residents’ place-based cultural attachments. Conversely, localized revitalization initiatives can foster community resilience and landscape justice. These findings are derived from an interpretive synthesis of institutional trajectories and spatial governance practices. Overall, the study contributes to the theoretical integration of discursive institutionalism and cultural geography, offering new insights into heritage governance and sustainable cultural planning in rapidly urbanizing contexts. Full article

This research analyzes the discourses and narratives surrounding the platform tourism economy in a highly touristified city, using Madrid as a case study. Rather than focusing on the socio-economic or spatial transformations themselves, the study examines how these processes are discussed, identifying the discursive strategies employed by different actors and ideologies, along with the power relations embedded in these narratives. A corpus of literature was compiled from twelve newspapers with varying ideological orientations and categorized according to political stance, access mode, and ideological radicalism. Using the LancsBox concordancer, a quantitative analysis was conducted to identify key discursive categories and preferred lexical items across ideological positions. These findings informed a subsequent in-depth qualitative analysis aimed at uncovering the rationalities behind each discourse: who speaks, how, and with what intent. The results reveal a dominant left-wing narrative that emphasizes institutional and economic mechanisms underlying platform tourism, highlighting associated social and urban harms. In contrast, conservative and liberal narratives are divided into two strands: a ‘heretic’ discourse that promotes and defends this new economic model, but also its urban results (e.g., gentrification), and a more institutional narrative framing platform tourism as inevitable and benign, thereby concealing the underlying structures of power. Full article

This research is focused on housing stock rehabilitation and construction in Urban Rehabilitation Areas located in diverse contexts in the Portuguese territory. The main objective of this research is to show how the local actors have managed the ARUs’ opportunities to restore and develop the housing in these areas in the Portuguese territory. An analytical national legal framework is made to show that the diffuse criteria at national and regional levels are reflected in the limited effectiveness of the ARUs’ flexible criteria in local implementation. A national legislative and regulatory framework in Portugal, focusing on urban rehabilitation and housing promotion themes, is discussed to emphasize the potential role of Urban Rehabilitation Area (ARU) particularities and housing provision and preservation in diverse contexts in Portugal. A comparative analysis is conducted of five ARUs—Belmonte, Soure, Penacova, Vila Real, and Devesas—located in Portugal, in the North and Center regions, to highlight the particularities/diversity of urban contexts, including towns, small to medium-sized cities, and historic centres. The analysis assesses the effectiveness of ARU urban rehabilitation strategy implementation over time. The analysis of five ARUs will discuss the following: (i) ARU physical characteristics; (ii) ARU population profile; (iii) ARU urban rehabilitation strategies progress (initial, intermediate, and final); and (iv) ARU alignment with PDM priorities in urban rehabilitation. The findings underscore the pivotal role that ARUs and their actors can have in housing rehabilitation provision and preservation on different scales and contexts within the territory. The outcomes show different strategies that each ARU has used to prioritize building rehabilitation. Full article

This study evaluates the potential of IoT-enabled adaptive traffic management systems for mitigating urban congestion, enhancing mobility, and reducing environmental impacts in densely populated cities. Using London as a case study, the research develops a multiagent simulation framework to assess the effectiveness of advanced traffic management strategies—including adaptive signal control and dynamic rerouting—under varied traffic scenarios. Unlike conventional models that rely on static or reactive approaches, this framework integrates real-time data from IoT-enabled sensors with predictive analytics to enable proactive adjustments to traffic flows. Distinctively, the study couples this integration with a multiagent simulation environment that models the traffic actors—private vehicles, buses, cyclists, and emergency services—as autonomous, behaviourally dynamic agents responding to real-time conditions. This enables a more nuanced, realistic, and scalable evaluation of urban mobility strategies. The simulation results indicate substantial performance gains, including a 30% reduction in average travel times, a 50% decrease in congestion at major intersections, and a 28% decline in CO₂ emissions. These findings underscore the transformative potential of sensor-driven adaptive systems for advancing sustainable urban mobility. The study addresses critical gaps in the existing literature by focusing on scalability, equity, and multimodal inclusivity, particularly through the prioritisation of high-occupancy and essential traffic. Furthermore, it highlights the pivotal role of IoT sensor networks in real-time traffic monitoring, control, and optimisation. By demonstrating a novel and practical application of sensor technologies to traffic systems, the proposed framework makes a significant and timely contribution to the field and offers actionable insights for smart city planning and transportation policy. Full article

This article stems from the PRIN GOV_REL (Urban Governance of Interreligious Dialogue) research project carried out in four Italian cities in 2023–2025 and reports on some preliminary results of the empirical enquiry held in the city of Brescia. The Brescia area is characterised by high rates of residents with an immigrant background and a consolidated presence of religious minorities (Muslim, Orthodox, Sikh, Hindu and Protestant groups), many recognised centres (mosques, temples and Christian non-Catholic churches) and a significant commitment of ethnic–religious communities to local public life. This paper examines the creation of grassroots-level interreligious dialogue, seen as a communicative process. The empirical evidence is based on material collected by participant observations and semi-structured interviews regarding four initiatives that occurred in 2024. A sociocultural analysis outlines the communicative frame: text; context; aims; acts; interlocutors and their power/freedom of expression; interactions; results. The article examines the communicative pattern of each initiative, considering an intercultural orientation and a pluralistic model of interfaith dialogue. It seeks to answer the following questions: what was the fundamental message that the promoters wanted to convey? How do the single actors communicate their perspective of religious “others”, and what results did they achieve or not achieve? The analysis leads to identifying the patterns that facilitate and/or hamper dialogue, taking into account misunderstandings and “cul-de-sac” aspects. Final recommendations highlight the recurrent breaking points that should be prevented and some premises to guarantee successful communication between members of different religions in multicultural urban spaces. Full article

In recent years, the concept of the commons has gained relevance across academic, legal and civic spheres as an alternative framework for managing shared resources. Rooted in Elinor Ostrom’s seminal work on collective governance, contemporary debates on the commons increasingly challenge the traditional binary of private versus public ownership by foregrounding the social function of these resources and the role of their communities in their administration. Urban commons, in particular, have emerged as dynamic spaces of experimentation, where local actors reclaim underutilised or abandoned assets and activate them through bottom-up processes of care, cultural production, and civic innovation. While international literature provides a robust conceptual foundation for understanding commoning practices, their practical implementation mostly depends on local specificities, such as legal and social contexts. Despite the important milestone of the Rodotà Commission’s proposal (2007) and Law 168/2017 on collective domains, the Italian regulatory framework remains highly fragmented, with regional and municipal regulations pioneering policies and practices frequently driven by community-led efforts to redefine the use and governance of public assets. This paper contributes to the growing debate on urban commons by investigating how, since 2011, experiences of collaborative care of the commons in Southern Italy have rekindled interest in the issue raised in 2007, highlighting a strong connection between the regulatory and social dimensions of these processes. The study develops a methodological framework—the COMmons Places ASSessment (COMPASS)—to evaluate the enabling conditions and governance dynamics of these processes. The research specifically focuses on five case studies in the Campania region, where diverse actors have mobilised to reclaim and transform public heritage through cultural, social, and creative activities. From the results, insights on collective management practices emerge potentials and criticalities of the analysed governance, as well as of the designed decision-making process and their effectiveness for the open, participatory, and sustainable management of urban commons. Full article

Achieving a climate neutral economy by 2050 in Europe in line with the European Green Deal places specific responsibility on the transportation sector, which contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. For the transportation domain to reduce its GHG emissions, there is need to advance urban mobility solutions in local communities via the use of data in all modes of transportation. Accordingly, to intelligently improve mobility solutions, huge amounts of data are needed from citizens in local communities to improve mobility services. However, the access, usage, and ownership of data in the transportation sector continue to be hindered due to issues including privacy, security, and trust concerns, among others. However, to improve smarter mobility solutions, there is a need for clarification of digital sovereignty, which today hinders data flow among different actors in the transportation sector. Therefore, research is needed to provide an approach that enables digital sovereignty while providing innovative mobility services and applications to citizens. Accordingly, this article carried out a systematic review to explore how to maintain digital sovereignty to improve urban mobility services in local communities. Based on grounded theory and a literature review, this study explores the factors that influence digital sovereignty from local communities’ point of view. More importantly, a policy framework is proposed to improve sovereign data usage control for citizens. Additionally, recommendations for achieving digital sovereignty are presented to foster data ecosystem business opportunities for mobility service providers and to increase data autonomy, trust, and transparency for citizens. Full article

The vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure and other disruptive events expose urban communities to severe risks. Public–private partnership (PPP) is an intensive cooperation between public and private actors with enhanced and more innovative services and policy outputs that can be achieved in building urban community resilience. Considering the potential of building urban community resilience through PPP, there is a need to assess the performance of using PPP in urban community resilience building. This study aims to develop a model for assessing the performance outcome for building urban community resilience through PPP. A questionnaire survey was conducted with experienced practitioners globally. The fuzzy synthetic evaluation method was used to develop an evaluation tool that could be used to objectively assess performance outcomes of PPP in urban community resilience building. The tool consists of five critical assessment indicators with defined coefficients: “Resilient urban community physical capital (0.270)”, “Well-developed community stakeholder engagement and training policies” (0.215), “Strong urban community disaster resilience PPP policy” (0.202), “Restriction and preservation” (0.197), “Existence of effective urban disaster risks database and PPP communication plan” (0.116). This performance assessment model can be used as a baseline for measuring the performance of PPP in urban community resilience building. Full article

Real-world laboratories have become important institutions of the energy transition in Germany and the EU. They represent innovation networks that integrate public and private actors in energy transition projects. In the past, they focused on urban districts, but, more recently, the real-world laboratories have been expanded to include large-scale, capital-intensive projects for the development of a hydrogen economy. This has increased the complexity of such projects and poses new challenges in contextualising the new form of real-world laboratories. This article analyses the response of one of the first of these new projects and how it dealt with this new organisational form at the project communication level. It shows that the co-creation of a common story shared by all project partners—or the lack of it—may be an early indicator of whether the necessary legitimacy from business, politics, and society can be gained. Full article