Search Results (6,493)

Conventional static approaches to cultivated land quality (CLQ) assessment often fail to capture the rapid spatial restructuring of cultivated land in urbanizing regions. This study takes Chengdu, China, as the study area and employs multi-source and multi-indicator datasets from 2010, 2017, and 2023 to assess CLQ using an integrated AHP-CRITIC weighting approach, combined with obstacle degree and constraint factor analyses. The results show that the mean CLQ score increased from 0.520 in 2010 to 0.695 in 2023, reflecting the continuous improvement in stable cultivated land quality. Constraint factors also shifted from natural endowment limitations to engineering- and management-related disturbances: converted land was mainly constrained by climatic and topographic conditions, newly added land by soil moisture and fertility after land-use conversion, and stable land by compound soil-water and terrain constraints. These findings provide scientific evidence and practical references for high-standard farmland construction and refined cultivated land governance in rapidly urbanizing grain-producing regions. Full article

Urban ecological resilience (UER) has become a central concern in rapidly urbanizing regions where development pressures increasingly interact with ecological constraints. Focusing on the Guanzhong Plain Urban Agglomeration (GPUA), a semi-arid urban agglomeration in western China, this study examines the non-static and locally heterogeneous drivers of UER across 11 prefecture-level cities from 2000 to 2023. UER is measured through resistance, adaptability, and recovery. An extended STIRPAT model, Elastic Net with stability selection, two-way fixed-effects period interactions, and Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression (GTWR) are integrated to identify robust drivers, test post-2011 shifts, and estimate city-year local associations. Residual Moran’s I diagnostics and Spatial Lag GTWR (SLM-GTWR) are used as supplementary checks. The results show that UER remains relatively stable at the aggregate regional level but becomes increasingly divergent across cities. Ten robust drivers are retained, with fiscal investment intensity, human capital, medical and health level, and total energy consumption emerging as key variables. Period heterogeneity results indicate that fiscal investment becomes more favorably associated with UER after 2011, while the marginal association of energy consumption weakens. GTWR reveals clear local heterogeneity: human capital shows the most stable positive association, medical and health level remains generally negative, fiscal investment is positive but context-dependent, and energy consumption is predominantly negative but locally differentiated. Supplementary spatial diagnostics suggest that the GTWR specification captures the main spatiotemporal structure of UER, while spatial-lag checks broadly support the robustness of the local coefficient patterns, although estimates of spatial interaction remain sensitive to how inter-city linkages are defined. These findings indicate that UER drivers are dynamic rather than fixed, with resilience formation shaped mainly by governance-regime shifts and localized heterogeneity. The study contributes a sequential screening–heterogeneity framework for identifying non-static resilience drivers and suggests that resilience governance should combine stage-sensitive policy adjustment, place-based intervention, and regional coordination where ecological functions and environmental risks cross administrative boundaries. Full article

Rapid electric-vehicle adoption is reshaping urban energy and mobility systems, especially in multi-unit dwellings (MUDs), where concentrated charging in shared parking areas simultaneously stresses distribution transformers and amplifies the consequences of charger faults, battery thermal events, smoke spread, and emergency-access constraints. The central argument of this paper is that grid stress, resident-facing service quality, lifecycle cost, and fire-risk exposure in enclosed residential parking should be governed jointly rather than as four separate problems. To make that argument concrete, we develop an integrated framework that couples stochastic EV adoption, residential charging-behavior simulation, XGBoost demand forecasting, and linear-programming-based optimization for coordinated control, and we evaluate it through 1000 Monte Carlo trials on representative Turkish MUDs. Unmanaged charging triggers transformer overload at about 30% EV penetration, whereas coordinated control reduces peak demand by 44.7% (405 kW to 224 kW) and raises load factor from 0.40 to 0.68. Strict capacity protection exposes a sharp service–quality trade-off, with only 8.9% of users reaching 80% state of charge (SOC) by departure. Smart charging lowers upfront cost by about 55% ($200 vs. $439 per dwelling unit) and yields roughly $306 net present value per unit over ten years. Building on these results, we propose a five-pillar fire-risk-aware governance architecture—coordinated control, interoperability standards, time-of-use pricing, building–utility coordination, and monitoring—that turns coordinated charging into a preventive governance layer for reducing hazardous congestion in enclosed residential charging environments. Full article

This exploratory study examines the heterogeneous spatial evolution of cities in a fragmented non-metropolitan region of Southern Brazil and develops an original functional-symbolic typological framework that integrates functional performance and symbolic production in the classification of cities. Grounded in the theoretical contributions of Lefebvre, Santos, and Corrêa, the framework was designed by the authors to simultaneously incorporate economic, territorial, cultural, and identity-related dimensions that are typically analysed separately in conventional urban typologies. The research adopts a qualitative and inductive approach to analyse secondary data from municipalities in the state of Santa Catarina. Rather than treating urbanisation as a homogeneous process, the study conceptualises urban typologies as analytical devices capable of revealing differentiated urban trajectories, uneven capacities of territorial articulation, and distinct modes of governance in non-metropolitan contexts. The findings show that cities with similar demographic scales perform diverse social, cultural, and economic roles shaped by historically and symbolically produced spatial relations. Five urban typologies were identified: Multifunctional Metropolises, Industrial Regional Capitals, Agroindustrial Cities, Cultural Tourist Cities, and Local Centres of Basic Function. The results demonstrate that urban centrality in non-metropolitan regions is not determined solely by economic performance or demographic scale, but also by symbolic attributes such as cultural heritage, territorial identities, festivals, and religious functions. By integrating material and symbolic dimensions within a single analytical structure, the proposed framework advances the understanding of fragmented urban systems, contributes to contemporary debates on non-metropolitan urbanisation and territorial governance, and offers a transferable approach for the analysis of urban diversity beyond the Brazilian context. The findings also provide practical implications for regional planning and public policy by highlighting the role of symbolic production in shaping territorial organisation and regional influence. Full article

Existing studies of China’s overarching ideological framework for national development, “Ecological Civilization”, have focused narrowly on environmental governance; how it reshapes sustainable rural development remains underexplored. This paper pursues two analytically distinct tasks. First, it reconstructs the policy history of how President Xi Jinping’s “Two Mountains” theory was incorporated into the Eco-civilization framework and how Zhejiang Province’s “Green Rural Revival” (GRR) program, as a lived example of Eco-civilization, was elevated as the national template for rural development in 2024. Second, drawing on three cases from a sample of 21 villages in Zhejiang, it identifies three core practices of GRR and conceptualizes it as a post-productivist project: withdrawal from extractivist production, restoration of ecological resources, and development of facilities catering to urban consumption. We argue that GRR has directed rural development in Zhejiang toward a post-productivist transition and question the model’s replicability and sustainability as the central government promotes it nationwide. Full article

Urban parks, as essential urban green infrastructure, contribute significantly to public health, psychological restoration, and socially sustainable urban living. However, existing research has primarily emphasized landscape aesthetics while paying comparatively limited attention to routine landscape maintenance as an important component of sustainable urban park governance. Drawing on Stress Recovery Theory (SRT), this study examines how landscape maintenance quality influences perceived well-being through perceived safety and restorative experience. Survey data were collected from 278 urban park users in Wangjianglou Park, Chengdu, China, and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that maintenance quality positively affects perceived well-being both directly and indirectly through perceived safety and restorative experience, which serve as significant mediators. Multi-group analysis further reveals demographic differences, with female users demonstrating stronger safety-related responses and older users exhibiting stronger restorative and perceived well-being benefits associated with maintenance conditions. The findings highlight the importance of routine park maintenance in supporting perceived safety, psychological restoration, inclusiveness, and the long-term usability of urban public spaces. The study advances understanding of how maintenance practices shape psychological restoration and urban perceived well-being while providing empirical support for sustainable urban green space management and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 11. Full article

Digital agriculture employs a wide range of sensing, actuation, and analytics technologies to optimize productivity, sustainability, and decision-making in farming operations. However, rural and remote regions face persistent barriers, including limited network coverage and insufficient support for both low- and high-throughput applications, which hinder the deployment of conventional and broadband-intensive Internet of Things solutions. A central challenge is the lack of adequate field-level network infrastructure, with connectivity often unavailable or unreliable. This article presents a comprehensive survey of Broadband-based IoT (B-IoT) as a solution for supporting both low- and high-data-rate digital agriculture applications, including UAVs, computer vision, and extended reality, even in settings without continuous internet connectivity. Using a structured narrative-review approach, this survey synthesizes relevant peer-reviewed and technical literature on B-IoT-enabled digital agriculture and organizes the evidence around communication key performance indicators (KPIs), deployment constraints, and four technology domains: sensing, connectivity, intelligence/compute, and control/application. It examines how technologies such as 5G/6G, dynamic spectrum access, non-terrestrial networks, and edge computing can help address connectivity and infrastructure gaps in underserved agricultural areas. Furthermore, we introduce and analyze the concept of Evolved-Variety Technologies, which combines modified state-of-the-art modules with next-generation networks to create flexible, modular, and scalable system designs adaptable to diverse topographical and operational conditions. Beyond technical evaluations, the article examines economic feasibility, environmental sustainability, and policy implications, emphasizing the need for coordinated roles among governments, telecom providers, and agribusiness stakeholders. Our findings advocate for hybrid telecom architectures that integrate terrestrial and non-terrestrial components, leveraging emerging technologies to reduce the rural–urban digital divide and enable scalable, data-driven agriculture in underserved regions. Full article

Public lighting can account for nearly 40% of municipal energy consumption in some European cities and plays a vital role in road safety, mobility, and the quality of public spaces. Despite notable efficiency gains from the widespread adoption of light-emitting diode (LED) technologies, the technical outputs of standards-based and installation-level assessment methods are not usually simple and communicable energy-performance labels for municipal decision-making. This study addresses this issue by introducing an algorithm-based framework for classifying energy performance in public lighting at the road-segment level. This approach translates existing lighting standards and efficiency indicators into a straightforward and understandable energy label, adapting the energy labelling concept, commonly used for buildings and appliances, to public space infrastructure. This framework is implemented through a national digital platform for public lighting classification, which has already attracted formal interest from more than 100 municipalities, indicating strong institutional uptake. The results indicate that road-segment-level energy classification is feasible and scalable as a voluntary tool to enhance municipal accountability and support informed decision-making. This study concludes that algorithmic energy labels for public lighting can support sustainable urban governance transparency, comparability and decision-making capacity, with future research aimed at building capacity for large-scale implementation and incorporating environmental, human health, and ecological impact considerations into the classification system. 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

Contemporary zoning-driven planning has been associated with traffic hazards, pollution and noise, loss of human scale and public space, socio-spatial separation, and rigid development patterns that impede incremental renewal. In response, the New Urbanism movement promotes traditional urbanism, with Form-Based Codes (FBCs) that regulate urban form and spatial structure, as a central tool. However, FBC practice remains concentrated in North America, and evidence from other contexts is limited. This study examines whether and how FBCs can be implemented within a hierarchical, centralized planning system. Using an exploratory case study approach, we analyzed an approved urban renewal plan for Ramat Verber in Petah Tikva, Israel. The study combines plan analysis, a conceptual FBC simulation, and expert consultations, with findings derived through an inductive analysis of implementation barriers. The FBC simulation showed that goals could be translated into more effective actionable provisions, whereas the statutory plan diluted objectives between vision and implementation. Identified barriers clustered into (1) legal and institutional constraints, (2) social and professional norms, and (3) management and coordination needs. We conclude that FBCs can be advanced without legislative change through municipal policy-level codes that standardize subsequent statutory local plans, supported by clear conversion protocols and existing urban renewal governance mechanisms. Full article

Climate action is an alarming issue, and the world is concerned about sustainable solutions. Governance quality, financial technology and advanced-resource endowments have a pivotal role in climate action, yet the literature lacks evidence on their linkages with carbon emissions. The present study covers this gap in the literature for the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, as they offer an ideal study setting given their extreme vulnerability to climate change, their reliance on fossil fuels, the strong efforts to address climate change issues, and their prioritization of transforming the financial sector through financial technology as a means of resolving climate issues. Results show that governance quality and financial technology curb carbon emissions. Specifically, financial technology reduces CO₂ emissions by approximately 36.4% in the FMOLS estimation, while governance quality contributes negatively and significantly to CO₂ emissions across most specifications. Further, the interaction term of financial technology and advanced-resource endowments is statistically significant with a negative coefficient, hereby providing a supportive role in reducing CO₂ emissions. Hence, advanced-resource endowments play a moderating role, transforming the effectiveness of financial technology in reducing carbon emissions. The findings are robust for quantile regressions and alternative measures of environmental degradation and have strong policy implications for the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Full article

Urban waste-governance programs rely on household source segregation, yet often assume that discards can be classified through stable technical categories. In culturally governed settings, post-use materials may also be classified through ritual status, propriety, edibility, and social obligation. This focused ethnography examined why source-based management of post-ritual offering materials, locally referred to as sisa upakara, remains difficult to sustain in urban Denpasar, Bali. Data were collected between January and March 2026 through 18 semi-structured interviews, four focus group discussions with 30 participants, six directed observation episodes totalling approximately 21 h, and document review across four anonymized urban sites. A hybrid deductive–inductive thematic analysis produced 2183 selectively coded segments. Five interdependent mechanisms explained practice formation and breakdown: post-ritual classification and legitimacy, domestic routinization, material-infrastructure fit, local-to-downstream verification, and system absorptive capacity. Management weakened when households could not distinguish edible remnants, ritually sensitive materials, and ordinary discards; when ceremonial peaks overloaded domestic routines; when fibrous, wet, bulky, or contaminated materials exceeded available infrastructure; and when downstream systems failed to preserve separated materials. The findings show that sisa upakara constitutes a hidden ritual-urban material sub-stream embedded within household waste. Culturally responsive waste governance requires alignment between classification guidance, household routines, material design, collection reliability, downstream verification, and decentralized processing capacity. Full article

This article examines how Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) applied to public and shared urban transport contribute to sustainable urban mobility by synthesizing a decade of peer-reviewed research on intelligent, technology-driven public transport solutions. Using a PRISMA-based systematic literature search in Scopus for 2014–2024, followed by bibliometric analysis with VOSviewer version 1.6.21 and manual thematic content analysis of 186 selected studies, the review maps intellectual structures, implementation areas, and sustainability dimensions of ITS-enhanced public transport systems research. The results show that priority ITS applications in public transport implementation areas cluster around smart infrastructure and frameworks, AI- and data-driven mobility systems, smart public transportation, and IoT-enabled connected mobility, with a strong focus on real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and adaptive operations. Sustainability analysis indicates that ITS applications in public transport primarily advances technology-driven sustainability, smart and sustainable urban mobility, environmental sustainability, and economic efficiency, while social sustainability and governance aspects—such as equity, accessibility, safety, and institutional capacity—are less consistently addressed. The review also highlights a highly interdisciplinary, yet thematically fragmented field with geographically concentrated evidence and limited longitudinal, real-world impact evaluations. Quantitatively, the review finds that over 90% of studies address technology-driven, smart urban mobility, environmental, or economic sustainability themes, whereas only 56.99% explicitly engage social sustainability dimensions. Overall, the study concludes that ITS applications in public transport already function as key enablers of more efficient, low-carbon, and intelligent transport systems, but calls for more integrated, context-sensitive, and human-centered frameworks that explicitly align ITS applications in public transport design, implementation, and evaluation with multidimensional sustainability goals and global sustainable mobility agendas. Full article

Urban green infrastructure (GI) is widely promoted for cooling, stormwater regulation, biodiversity support, and human health benefits; however, these benefits remain unevenly distributed across communities with different socio-economic status. Machine learning (ML) is increasingly used in GI planning and design through high-resolution mapping and demand and exposure modelling, enabling planners and landscape architects to explore scenarios and assess alternative solutions based on the benefits generated. However, ML risks generating or perpetuating spatial injustice through biassed training, opaque optimisation priorities, and epistemic exclusion of Indigenous and local knowledge when models are not developed and applied transparently and collaboratively. This perspective discusses recent GI and ML trends and debates to: (i) clarify how ML can support equity-oriented GI planning; (ii) identify technical and socio-economic risks; and (iii) outline ethical and governance pathways supportive of legitimate and accountable GI planning. We argue that ML should be treated as a component of socio-technical governance rather than a neutral technical tool and therefore should be applied through collaborative design and periodic re-evaluations. Full article

With rapid urbanization, the generation of municipal solid waste is growing, placing ever-increasing pressure on cities to close, remediate and repurpose landfill sites in environmentally sustainable and climate-adaptive ways. Traditional landfill final covers such as compacted clay and geosynthetic systems are intended to limit infiltration; yet their conceptual designs often fail in performance longevity due to effects such as desiccation, settlement, root intrusion, freeze–thaw cycling and extreme rainfall. Phytocapping, or evapotranspiration/store-and-release cover technology is the use of vegetated soil profiles to provide storage for percolating rainfall, return water to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration and support biologically mediated oxidation of methane. Phytocapping is a green-inclusive nature-based climate adaptation strategy for urban landfill closure. This study explores hydrological performance, methane mitigation, ecological co-benefits, economic feasibility, climate sensitivity, monitoring requirements and regulatory barriers linked to phytocapping systems. Field evidence is strongest in Australia and the United States, especially through ACAP- and A-ACAP-style programs, while evidence from humid tropical, monsoon, freeze–thaw and low-resource urban contexts is comparatively lacking. As reported in published studies, well-designed phytocaps can result in reduced percolation compared to traditional clay caps. Reported publications also mention considerable construction-cost savings, depending on site conditions and design assumptions. Methane-related outcomes vary by measurement method and site context, with studies reporting surface flux reductions, methane oxidation and landfill gas attenuation as distinct performance indicators. These advantages are counter-balanced by design uncertainties that vary from site to site, limited long-term monitoring data, climate transferability concerns, and regulatory systems still firmly anchored in prescriptive low-permeability barriers. This review proposes a policy-oriented analytical framework that bridges the gap between technical performance evidence, urban co-benefits, staged monitoring and performance-based landfill closure regulation. As such, phytocapping should be considered not as a general-purpose substitute for engineered covers, but as a climate-responsive nature-based solution that can complement urban waste servicing infrastructure, ecological restoration and adaptive governance of landfills when properly designed, monitored and regulated. Full article