Search Results (442)

This article presents a scoping review of the literature on digital twins (DTs) for sustainable groundwater resources management, which constitutes a very recent and rapidly expanding research field, with literature moving quickly from conceptual frameworks to application-oriented systems. The literature, selected through the PRISMA 2020 methodology, is organized into seven sub-topics: AI and ML foundations, digital twin architectures and frameworks, aquifer-scale DT applications, agricultural and water–energy–food (WEF) nexus DTs, basin and urban water DTs, sensing, monitoring and IoT infrastructures, and governance, resilience and socio-hydrology. This structure shows how the field is shifting from monitoring and prediction toward integrated decision support, where process-based models, machine learning surrogates, real-time sensing and optimization are combined to support drought mitigation, saltwater intrusion control, irrigation management, climate adaptation and basin-scale planning. Across the reviewed studies, the most recurrent contributions are the construction of hybrid model architectures, the use of DTs to close the loop between observation and control, and the growing recognition that groundwater management must incorporate governance, stakeholder decision-making and socio-hydrological feedbacks. At the same time, the literature still faces key limitations, especially uncertainty quantification, interoperability between models and data streams, transferability to data-scarce settings and limited validation under real operational conditions. Future research should therefore focus on physics-informed and explainable AI, federated and scalable DT architectures, stronger coupling with socio-hydrological and governance frameworks, and more field-tested implementations that can demonstrate robust performance across diverse hydrogeological and institutional contexts. Full article

Balcony gardening has become increasingly relevant in dense urban environments, providing residents with a way to address limited access to green spaces and reduced everyday contact with nature. Despite the growing importance of urban green infrastructure (GI), there is a significant lack of understanding of balcony gardening as a decentralized, distributed, and resident-driven component of urban greening, as it is often viewed as an isolated hobby. This study conceptualises balcony gardening as a micro-scale, resident-driven component of urban GI. Data were collected in Sweden via a semi-structured online survey. The results show that among the surveyed group, balcony gardening is mainly motivated by food self-provision (77%) and aesthetic enjoyment (67%), while also providing intangible benefits such as improved mood (65%) and reduced stress (36%). Knowledge is primarily acquired through self-learning (90%) and digital communities, compensating for the lack of formal support. Respondents perceived balcony gardening as falling outside formal governance structures, with limited interaction with local authorities. Respondents face structural barriers, including limited space (51%) and insufficient lighting (41%). The findings highlight the governance gaps of a practice that respondents associate with multiple urban sustainability functions, pointing to the need for more inclusive planning approaches. Full article

Obesity is currently recognized as a global epidemic and contributes to numerous health complications. It is strongly associated with poor dietary habits, including the widespread availability and consumption of high-calorie foods. We conducted a narrative review of publications from major biomedical databases addressing obesity treatment and public-health interventions. One of the strategies for managing obesity is lifestyle modification—balanced diet and regular physical activity—supported by pharmacological and psychological treatment, and, in selected patients, metabolic and bariatric surgery. Beyond patient-level care, public-health-oriented measures should be considered, including taxation of sugar-sweetened beverages, restriction on advertising of unhealthy foods, regulation of the school food environment, front-of-pack nutrition labelling, mandatory food reformulation, subsidies and incentives for healthy foods, urban-planning policies that promote physical activity, and policies that expand access to bariatric surgery. A comprehensive approach integrating clinical care with public-health policy is likely to yield more effective outcomes than either alone. Full article

The United Nations, in developing the Sustainable Development Goals, pays particular attention to cities, as they are crucial to achieving established benchmarks. Globally, many cities have high levels of food insecurity, and food access is a major component of the problem. Cities have increasingly complex and interdependent food environments. Yet, urban food systems are not well understood with respect to the impacts of redlining, residential segregation, and food store closures on food outlet distribution. Limited work is also being done on the relationship between urban sustainability efforts and food access. Here, we analyze 2229 open and closed food outlets in the Greater Grand Rapids area of southwest Michigan to examine their distribution and whether disparities are evident. We examined the impact of historic redlining on the distribution of food outlets. We also described sustainability efforts in the study area and the way county and city plans connect food access with sustainability. Roughly half of the food outlets are restaurants, 13.3% are small grocery and convenience stores, and 6.3% are pharmacies, dollar stores, and variety stores. Supermarkets and large grocery stores, which are the subject of most food access studies, account for 5% of food outlets. The most reliable predictors of food outlet distribution in the fully adjusted regression models are HOLC classification grade, median household income, educational attainment, and population density. The racial composition of the census tract was significant in only one model. The study leads us to urge more researchers to compare cities and adjacent municipalities, as income dynamics, neighborhood characteristics, population density, and educational attainment vary across urban, suburban, and rural areas. Full article

Urban wetlands and agricultural lands are among the most important socio-ecological systems in urban areas. They support food production, biodiversity conservation, water regulation, climate resilience, and human well-being. However, rapid urbanization negatively affects wetland–agricultural coexistence (WAC) by destroying habitats, fragmenting landscapes, and intensifying land-use conflicts. Our study proposed a Wetland–Agriculture Coexistence Index (WACI) to assess the spatial pattern of WAC in Colombo, Sri Lanka. We considered four components for the WACI framework: wetland condition (WC), agricultural condition (AC), urban pressure (UP), and hydrological connectivity (HC). The WACI was developed using Landsat 8/9, Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), and Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) data, along with road network, population, and hydrological network data. Variables used in this study include land surface temperature (LST), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), Modified Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (MSAVI), Bare Soil Index (BSI), soil moisture, elevation, slope, population density, distance to roads, hydrological connectivity, and built-up %, which were normalized and integrated into four dimensions using an equal-weighted approach to develop the WACI. The results showed substantial spatial heterogeneity in WAC across Colombo. The average WACI was 0.51, indicating a moderate WAC. This study further identified that favorable environmental conditions, rich hydrological connectivity, and low urban pressure increased coexistence potentials. The spatial pattern of WACI identified priority areas for conservation, restoration, and sustainable urban planning implications in Colombo. Our WACI framework provides a practical and transferable method for assessing WAC in urban areas. The findings of this study support balanced urban wetland–agricultural management, conservation, food security, and long-term sustainability of rapidly urbanizing cities. Full article

Countries face interconnected policy challenges: population aging, fertility change, migration, urbanization, labor transitions, food and water security, climate risk, health-system demand, school planning, housing pressure, consumption planning, and spatial inequality. Yet planning evidence is often fragmented across ministries, statistical offices, surveys, administrative systems, research projects, and dashboards. This paper proposes the Population-Based Systems Model, or PopSyM, as a country-owned analytical infrastructure that places population dynamics at the center of integrated policy planning. PopSyM begins with a demographic spine by age, sex, location, year, and scenario, then links that spine to modules for health, education, food, labor, housing, social protection, environment, and local infrastructure. Its purpose is not projection for its own sake, but the measurement and improvement of population well-being: longer and healthier lives, adequate material conditions, skills, meaningful work, security, dignity, and country-specific dimensions of a good life. Nepal is used as a motivating example, but the proposed architecture is general. The paper argues that the population should be treated not only as a denominator for indicators but also as the organizing framework through which countries understand future demand, vulnerability, consumption needs, policy trade-offs, and feedback between people and systems. Full article

Proximity-based planning frameworks such as the 15 min city and community life circle (CLC) are widely promoted to improve age-friendly access to essential resources, based on the assumption that enlarging spatial scale improves access. This assumption remains largely untested in high-density aging cities, where neighborhood-level deprivation may persist even as aggregate access improves. Using 3737 residential communities in central Tianjin, China, this study jointly evaluates food and physical activity environments across 5, 10, and 15 min walking thresholds. We apply a three-dimensional demand–matching–spatial association framework that combines health-weighted accessibility, location quotient matching, and bivariate spatial autocorrelation. Food access shows a continuous core–periphery gradient, whereas physical activity access is fragmented and facility-dependent. Supply–demand matching shows divergent scale responses across resource domains. Aggregate accessibility increased as the CLC scale expanded. However, 45.88% of communities classified as LL at the 10 min scale remained LL at 15 min, substantially exceeding the overall LL proportion of 18.70% at the 15 min scale. Only 5.42% of communities classified as HL or LH transitioned to HH. This divergence between aggregate accessibility improvement and persistent local disadvantage is defined as ineffective expansion. Eight diagnostic types reveal a clear divide between deprived peripheries and advantage-maintenance conditions in the urban core. These findings suggest that age-friendly CLC planning should move beyond uniform service-area expansion toward type-specific, place-based interventions. Full article

This study aimed at developing a procedural approach to introduce agroforestry in urban planning and to provide governance orientation. The proposed approach focused on understanding: (i) the key stakeholders that can promote agroforestry; (ii) their orientations towards the integration of agroforestry in urban planning documents; and (iii) the most suitable urban planning documents in which agroforestry-sound norms can be incorporated. The approach was tested in the town of Sesto Fiorentino, in Central Italy. A total of 170 stakeholders among municipal officials, schoolteachers, farmers, gardeners, citizens frequenting city parks, associations, and researchers were identified and involved in a questionnaire-based survey. The results showed that respondents opted for gradually introducing agroforestry in the green infrastructure. Educational food forests and alley cropping were preferred as the most suitable agroforestry elements in urban and peri-urban contexts. The municipality was considered a pivotal actor for introducing agroforestry, also involving associations and citizens in a multistakeholder perspective. Decision makers introduced agroforestry in city technical implementation standards, equating it to urban forestry. However, no mention was made in the city development plan as urban planners were reluctant to incorporate agroforestry at the strategic level. Associations may facilitate municipalities in this sense and assist in implementing agroforestry-sound norms. Full article

Although the Mediterranean diet (MD) is widely recognized as a healthy dietary pattern, its potential role as a framework for sustainable urban gastronomy has received limited attention. This narrative review synthesizes evidence from nutrition, environmental studies, gastronomy, tourism, and urban food systems. The review explores MD’s sustainability dimensions, food waste and urban food systems, cultural heritage, and trends in urban gastronomy. The findings suggest that the MD is a strong model for sustainable urban food futures, combining nutritional adequacy, relatively low environmental impact, and socio-cultural legitimacy. Evidence indicates that Mediterranean-style dietary patterns are associated with lower greenhouse gas emissions, land use, energy use, and water consumption than Western diets, while also remaining comparatively affordable when based on staple plant foods. However, important challenges remain, including affordability, especially across vulnerable social groups; dependence on local supply systems; authenticity under tourism pressure; and the need for effective governance. Overall, the evidence suggests that the MD provides a useful framework for integrating health, sustainability, and cultural heritage objectives within urban food systems. Future research should focus on city-level implementation strategies, food service and restaurant sector practices, and hotel meal planning within urban MD frameworks. Full article

The rapid expansion of Online Food Delivery Services (OFDS) is associated with changes in urban food environments long structured by the central place hierarchy. Does OFDS narrow the spatial inequalities embedded in traditional food access, or reproduce them in a new form? To address the limited multi-dimensional evidence on this question, this study develops an integrated online–offline framework comparing the walkable food environment (W-FE) and the OFDS food environment (OFDS-FE) across three dimensions: accessibility, availability, and affordability. Taking Hangzhou, China as a case, we match multi-source restaurant data via the Hungarian algorithm, model OFDS service ranges with a three-stage Gaussian distance-decay function, and assess spatial equity using the Gini coefficient. Results show that the OFDS-FE is associated with extended potential accessibility beyond walkable catchments and with higher relative affordability of mid- and high-end dining options. At the citywide scale, inequality indicators are lower in the OFDS-FE than in the W-FE, yet disparities persist and, in some suburban areas, widen. All findings are based on modeled, supply-side potential access derived from a single-platform (Meituan), single-month (December 2024) cross-section, rather than on observed consumer behavior. Rather than dissolving the central place hierarchy, OFDS extends the reach of established food centers, forming a broader “digital central service zone.” These findings inform the integration of digital delivery ranges into community life-circle planning. Full article

Food delivery riders face a structural shortage of informal street rest spaces in urban public environments, yet existing facilities often fail to match their highly mobile labor processes. Taking the Hexi University Town commercial district in Changsha as a case study, this research examines how rest-space conditions are associated with riders’ occupational dignity and work environment satisfaction. Based on 365 valid questionnaires, field observations, and informal interviews, structural equation modeling, bootstrap mediation analysis, and grouped regression analysis were conducted within a spatial justice framework. The results show that spatial justice perceptions are associated with satisfaction through differentiated pathways. Spatial embeddedness is associated with work environment satisfaction, while facility suitability operates partly through occupational dignity and has the highest mediation proportion. Procedural justice is insignificant in formal spaces but has a strong effect in informal spaces, revealing a mismatch between institutional provision and practical accessibility. The findings indicate that riders’ rest-space dilemma stems not only from insufficient facilities but also from the disembedding of spatial rights from mobile labor processes. This study extends spatial justice research from resource distribution to labor-process embeddedness and proposes micro-renewal strategies that shift from facility provision to process embeddedness, offering implications for inclusive public-space planning, sustainable urban design, and urban governance. Full article

Over the past fifty years, urban and rural spaces have been reshaped by global sustainability policies, digital innovation, and emerging socio-ecological needs. This article investigates the convergence of agro-urban planning strategies, Smart City infrastructures, and adaptive governance models, proposing an integrated agro-urban paradigm for sustainable territorial transformation. Drawing on a literature review and comparative analysis of international case studies—including Toronto, Milan, and Woven City—the research develops a triadic interpretative framework based on worldview, program, and faith. The study identifies AgroCities as systems centered on food sovereignty and ecological resilience, Smart Cities as efficiency-driven digital ecosystems, and Adaptive Cities as flexible, human-centered responses to complexity. Findings suggest that integrating food systems, technological innovation, and participatory governance enhances urban resilience and sustainability across scales. The article concludes by advocating for multi-scalar planning tools, cross-sectoral policies, and civic engagement to support the transition toward inclusive and regenerative cities. This framework offers a theoretical and operational contribution to reimagining urban planning in line with the principles of Smart Land and adaptive urbanism. Full article

Generation Z consumers are reshaping food consumption patterns in urban digital environments, particularly in restaurant contexts characterized by high choice complexity and uncertainty. In Mexico, the evolution of the restaurant industry has intensified the need to understand how digital cues shape consumer food choices. Addressing this gap, this study examines how Social Media Marketing (SMM), Social Media electronic Word of Mouth (Social Media eWOM), and Social Media Influencers (SMIs) shape food consumption intention among Generation Z in Mexico City. Grounded in the Stimulus–Organism–Response (SOR) model and integrating the attitudinal foundations of the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this study analyzes how these digital factors impact food consumption intention (operationalized as restaurant purchase intention) through the mediating psychological mechanism of Consumer Brand Engagement (CBE). A quantitative, non-experimental design was employed using a sample of 406 respondents, and data were analyzed through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results indicate that the model explains 73.6% of the variance in food consumption intention. SMM emerged as the strongest direct predictor, followed by Social Media eWOM and SMIs. Crucially, CBE mediates only the relationship between influencers and consumption intention. Conversely, both SMM and Social Media eWOM exert direct effects that bypass affective engagement. These findings highlight the role of digital ecosystems as cognitive proxies in restaurant selection, providing actionable insights for restaurant SMEs to optimize digital strategies and enhance economic resilience. They also suggest potential implications for healthier and more sustainable urban food environments. Full article

Peri-urban regions around Southeast Asian megacities connect agriculture, markets, food-service facilities, households, and municipal waste systems, yet comparable data for individual waste streams are often unavailable. This study presents a screening framework for selecting the first organic waste streams and node types to measure in Tangerang Raya, Indonesia, before treatment performance data are available. The framework complements, rather than replaces, city scale circularity monitoring, life cycle assessment, and technology selection tools. Public and institutional data were screened by evidence class and temporal and spatial compatibility. The core Peri-Urban Organic Waste Circularity Readiness Index (PU-OCRI) evaluates five intrinsic criteria: feedstock concentration, source separation readiness, treatment pre-screening compatibility, institutional readiness, and the safety/quality gate. Scores represent collective author judgments linked to a criterion level evidence trail; they have not been independently rated by local stakeholders or empirically calibrated. Korea linked support is assessed separately and cannot affect the index. Available evidence included 3248.1 t of large chili production in Kabupaten Tangerang in 2024, 798,406 t yr⁻¹ of reported potential municipal-waste generation in Kota Tangerang in 2024, and a planning-based estimate that 52.89% of non-residential waste in Kota Tangerang Selatan was biogenic organic material. Under equal weights, market-linked organics scored 76/100 and garden and landscape organics 72; production-side residues and household food waste each scored 56, and mixed residual waste scored 32. In 100,000 weight only simulations, market linked organics ranked first in 65.9% of runs and garden and landscape organics in 31.2%. When each score was allowed to vary by one point and sampled together with the weights, the corresponding first-rank frequencies were 50.7% and 40.7%. These results define a provisional paired audit hypothesis, not evidence of superior circular-economy performance. A required 8–12-week comparison of market/food-service and garden/landscape nodes will apply predefined criteria for mass stability, contamination, safety, treatment feasibility, cost, and operator and stakeholder participation before scores are updated or any treatment or scale-up decision is made. Korea-linked cooperation is limited to digital logging, training, QA/QC, and pilot-operation protocols. Data provenance is explicit: the 798,406 t yr⁻¹ value is the issuing agency’s population × per-capita estimate, whereas 52.89% is an author calculated category sum (kitchen + garden + wood) used only as a screening proxy, not as a direct stream level measurement or the plan’s official aggregate organic fraction. Full article

Egon Steinmann’s industrial architecture represents a significant yet insufficiently researched contribution to the development of post-war industrial architecture in Croatia. This paper examines his industrial projects designed between 1947 and 1965 within the context of post-war industrialization and modernization in socialist Yugoslavia. Based on archival documents, historical photographs, field observations, and comparative analysis, the paper first identifies Steinmann’s broader industrial work and then examines six selected industrial complexes in Zagreb. The case studies are compared in terms of their urban context, spatial organization, structural systems, production logistics, daylighting strategies, and architectural expression, highlighting differences between heavy industrial facilities and food-processing plants. A comparison of historical and contemporary orthophotos is further used to evaluate the long-term spatial transformation and adaptability of these industrial sites. The findings demonstrate that Steinmann’s designs were characterized by rational planning, large-span and flexible structures, integration of technological and transport requirements, and the capacity for phased expansion. The continued industrial use and preservation of many of these complexes confirm the lasting value of his architectural and planning concepts, contributing to a broader understanding of Croatian industrial architecture and socialist industrial modernism of the 1950s and 1960s. Full article