Search Results (537)

This paper examines the growing field of AI-assisted urban planning within the context of sustainable urban development, with a particular focus on spatial optimization of urban green spaces under conditions of scarcity, density, and economic pressure. While the economic, ecological, and social values of UGS are widely acknowledged, urban planners lack a cohesive, data-driven framework to quantify and spatially optimize these often-conflicting values for effective land-use optimization. To address this gap, we propose a methodology that combines Geographic Information Systems (GISs), the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and an Artificial Intelligence-Based Genetic Algorithm (AI-GA). Vračar was chosen as the case study area. Our approach evaluates (1) the economic value of UGS through housing prices; (2) the ecological value through UGS density; and (3) the social value by measuring access to urban green pockets. The integrated method simulates environmental scenarios and optimizes UGS placement for resilient urban areas. Results demonstrate that properties in mixed-use green areas proximate to urban parks have the highest economic and social value. Additionally, higher densities of UGS correlate with higher housing prices, highlighting the economic impact of green space distribution. The methodology enables planners to make decisions based on evidence that integrates statistical modeling, expert judgment, and artificial intelligence into one cohesive platform. Full article

In the context of urban stock renewal, coordinating spatial fairness with low-carbon goals remains a critical challenge. Existing planning often leads to spaces that are “nominally compliant but functionally ineffective,” failing to support low-carbon behaviors. To address this, this study adopts a spatial justice framework coupled with space syntax technology to empirically analyze the structural defects of the Beijing Baiwanzhuang Community and their constraints on low-carbon behaviors. We utilized a “Moving Snapshot Observation” method to collect behavioral data and constructed a quantitative regression model to identify the key drivers of elderly gathering (a proxy for low-carbon behavior). The results reveal “significant spatial differentiation and accessibility fractures” within the physical space, where structural imbalances lead to systematic spatial deprivation. Specifically, the multivariate regression analysis (R² = 0.50) indicates that low-carbon behaviors are significantly associated with a “dual-core mechanism”: community-scale spatial integration (NAIN 3600 m) and the density of seating within a short radius (100–200 m). A key finding indicates that the driving role of spatial network accessibility is significantly stronger than facility abundance alone. Based on this, a “Space-Facility-Governance” collaborative reconstruction paradigm is proposed, including using green infrastructure to stitch spatial fractures, precisely configuring low-carbon facilities at high-integration nodes, and establishing inclusive governance mechanisms. This research breaks through the limitation of traditional spatial justice studies that focus on qualitative critique, constructing a “physical spatial structure–low-carbon behavior” quantitative attribution model. It empirically validates that “accessibility justice” is a prerequisite for achieving community low-carbon transitions, providing a quantitative renewal paradigm that balances equity and efficiency for existing communities. Full article

The scientific literature has explored the relationship between environmental justice and inequalities in the distribution and access to green spaces. This article analyses the neighbourhood of La Verneda (Barcelona) as one of the most successful cases of ecological urban transformation in Spain. Based on a Communicative Methodology approach that includes five in-depth dialogic interviews with residents and documentation from local institutions, the analysis identifies four core mechanisms driving the transformation: dialogic capacity building (through an adult education school), grassroots coalition-building (VERN and local associations), intergenerational design choices (spaces intentionally designed for mixed-age use), and symbolic place-claims (defense of the name La Verneda). These mechanisms contributed to measurable environmental and social outcomes reported by residents and illustrate how bottom-up processes can reconfigure urban planning trajectories. These findings contribute relevant lessons for contemporary ecological transitions in other urban peripheries. Full article

Public open spaces play a vital role in supporting social connection and leisure among residents, enhancing quality of life while contributing to both economic growth and environmental health. The rapid global urbanization underscores the critical link between urban environments and human health, which demands focusing on sustainable, health-conscious urban planning. Accordingly, Public and green spaces are vital in this context, as recognized by global agendas like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 11.7. This research aims to objectively evaluate the availability of public open spaces (POS) in Alexandria, Egypt. This study will utilize Geographic Information System (GIS) to formulate a methodology that incorporates spatial data analysis for quantifying public open spaces and assessing the proportion of the population with convenient access to these areas, evaluating their coverage, service area isochrones, spatial distribution, and proximity to residential areas. The study will benchmark its findings against global standards to expose critical spatial inequalities within cities of the Global South. The primary aim is to present evidence-based recommendations for sustainable urban public space design, tackling availability and accessibility issues to improve the well-being of Alexandria’s expanding urban population. This research offers a scientific foundation to inform policy and decision-making focused on creating more equitable, healthier, and resilient urban environments. Full article

Amid accelerating global high-density urbanization, two pressing challenges have emerged: shrinking green space supplies in built-up areas and growing demand for residents’ emotional well-being. Notably, green spaces’ recreational function plays a pivotal role in alleviating emotional distress. This study aims to systematically assess Green Space Recreation Service Performance (GRSP) and unravel its non-linear impact on residents’ emotional states. Using Shijiazhuang—a representative high-density city in China—as a case study, we developed a GRSP evaluation framework integrating supply–demand balance and utilization efficiency. Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques parsed social media texts, with continuous emotional scores quantifying residents’ emotional states. Finally, a Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT) model empirically explored the links between GRSP indicators and emotional states. Results show significant spatial differentiation and supply–demand mismatch in Shijiazhuang’s central urban GRSP: peripheral new districts have abundant green space supply but low utilization efficiency, while central built-up areas face insufficient supply paired with high usage intensity. Residents’ self-reported emotional health correlates with green space accessibility and crowding levels, with park distribution equity as the dominant driver. GRSP’s impact on emotional states exhibits non-linearities, threshold effects, and distinct interactions among core indicators. This study identifies key GRSP indicators influencing emotional states, clarifies their non-linear interaction mechanisms and critical thresholds, and provides empirical evidence for advancing emotional health theories in high-density urban contexts. Full article

Green roofs have emerged as a key nature-based solution for improving environmental quality, strengthening urban resilience, and enhancing human wellbeing. In the hospitality sector—where sustainable design and guest experience increasingly intersect—the incorporation of green roof gardens is particularly significant. Urban hotels face heightened challenges related to elevated temperatures, reduced green space, and the growing need for restorative environments within dense urban settings. This study aims to examine how green roof gardens function as integrated ecological, social, and psychological infrastructures in hotel environments. It evaluates the extent to which rooftop green spaces contribute to environmental sustainability, enhance guest experience, and foster community connections. The research adopts a qualitative design combining a comprehensive literature review conducted at selected five-star hotels in Greece. Data from secondary sources and field-based assessments were thematically analyzed to identify recurring patterns in environmental performance, social use, and psychological benefits. Findings indicate that hotel green roof gardens act as multifunctional systems that deliver significant ecological benefits—such as improved microclimate regulation, stormwater retention, and biodiversity support—while simultaneously enriching social interaction and guest experience through accessible, esthetically appealing spaces. Observations further highlight their contribution to psychological wellbeing by offering restorative environments characterized by greenery, natural light, and panoramic views. The study concludes that green roof gardens represent an effective design strategy that integrates sustainability, hospitality experience, and urban wellbeing. Their application in hotels provides both conceptual insight and practical guidance for the development of more resilient, livable, and guest-centered urban environments. These findings underscore the importance of incorporating green roofs into contemporary tourism and urban planning practices. Full article

With the acceleration of urbanization, the impact of built community environments on residents’ health has emerged as a research focus in urban geography and public health. This study examines 25 representative communities in Wuhan, China, employing a combination of questionnaire surveys and multi-source geospatial data. It systematically analyzes the influence patterns of built environment characteristics on residents’ self-rated health from dual perspectives: subjective perception and objective measurement. The XGBoost model was employed to achieve nonlinear fitting and prediction of residents’ self-rated health, while the SHAP method was introduced to interpret model outputs, identifying key environmental factors and their complex effect patterns. The results show that the built environment and health exhibit significant nonlinear relationships, with XGBoost outperforming other models. Residents’ health perception is jointly influenced by subjective and objective factors, with satisfaction with commercial services contributing most. Key environmental elements display threshold effects, indicating that excessive mixing may not further improve health. Furthermore, complex local interactions exist, where good transport accessibility enhances the health benefits of medical facilities and green spaces. This study demonstrates the applicability of interpretable machine learning in health geography, thus providing scientific guidance for health-oriented community planning. Full article

Urban Green Space Per Capita (UGSPC) is one of the oldest and most widely applied indicators in urban planning, providing a measure of green areas in relation to the population size. Despite its century-long application and decades of research, no global systematic review has previously synthesized how UGSPC has been applied, interpreted, and evolved across different contexts. This study aims to fill that gap by conducting the first comprehensive systematic review, following PRISMA guidelines, examining the usage, trends, and effectiveness of UGSPC in both developed and developing countries. Thematic analysis revealed that most studies were published in journals focused on sustainability and environmental science. The results show a surge in publications following the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting a growing recognition of the importance of urban green spaces for public health and livability. Moreover, 67% of the studies were conducted in developing countries, while 30% of the publications were in developed countries. Higher UGSPC values are generally found in developed cities; however, this was not a rule. Time series studies showed a decline in UGSPC in some developed and developing countries, influenced by factors such as population density, urbanization stage, climate, and economic conditions. Although UGSPC is widely used, most municipalities typically develop their plans based on this measurement. In total, 95% of the included research incorporated additional measurements, including accessibility, social equity, spatial patterns, ecological services, ecosystem benefits, and human health. This study suggests that UGSPC is still used as an indicator in urban planning and policy and integrating it with other indicators can serve as contemporary indicators to capture better equity, functionality, and sustainability in urban environments. Full article

Cultural ecosystem services (CESs) play a critical role in urban residents’ well-being, yet conventional evaluations rely heavily on green-space area and overlook how facility quality and basic services influence the delivery of actual cultural benefits. To address this methodological gap, this study develops a three-tier evaluation framework—service potential, actual supply capacity, and actual service utility—to quantify multistage attenuation in CES provision across 95 parks in seven central districts of Shenyang, China. The framework integrates 114 quantitative and qualitative indicators from field surveys, national facility standards, and perception-based assessments, enabling a scientifically robust and replicable assessment of how cultural benefits are transformed from ecological structure to human experience. Results reveal that single-index, area-based assessments substantially overestimate CES supply: district-level supply–demand ratios drop from 66 to 195% to only 11–55% once quality and basic services are incorporated. Comprehensive and special parks retain the highest CES potential, whereas community and linear parks undergo significant losses due to aging facilities, insufficient maintenance, and inadequate infrastructure. Education and cultural services exhibit the most severe shortages, with deficits reaching 59–84%, underscoring structural limitations in learning-oriented spaces. By distinguishing structural (quantity), functional (quality), and experiential (basic service) constraints, the framework provides clear diagnostic guidance for targeted planning and management. Its multistage structure also reflects broader principles of sustainable urban development: improving CES requires not only expanding ecological elements but also enhancing service quality, strengthening infrastructure, and promoting equitable access to cultural benefits. The framework’s generalizability makes it applicable to high-density cities worldwide facing land scarcity and green-space inequality, supporting efforts aligned with SDG 11 to build inclusive, resilient, and culturally vibrant urban environments. Full article

Amidst the paradigm shift in park city development from quantitative metrics to spatial performance, urban complex parks—a novel green space type developed privately yet fulfilling public functions—present an innovative approach to park provision in high-density urban areas. However, systematic empirical evidence on their social value remains scarce. This study characterizes urban complex parks as a new form of green public space that provides key ecosystem services and proposes a three-dimensional evaluation framework integrating “usage vitality, place attractiveness, and user satisfaction.” Analyzing 19 park-equipped complexes among 75 cases in Shanghai using LBS data and online reviews through controlled linear regression and comparative analysis, our results indicate complexes with parks were associated with significantly outperforming others in place attractiveness and user satisfaction. Key findings include associations with a 413.7 m increase in average OD distance, a 3.4–4.0% higher city-level visitor share, and 5.24 percentage points greater median positive review rate. Crucially, spatial location outweighs green ratio and size in determining social value. Ground-level parks, through superior spatial integration, function as effective “social-ecological interfaces,” significantly outperforming rooftop parks in attracting long-distance visitors, stabilizing foot traffic (≈3% lower fluctuation), and enhancing per-store visitation. This demonstrates that green space quality (experiential quality and spatial configuration) matters more than quantity. Our findings suggest that urban complex parks can create social value through perceivable naturalness and restorative environments, providing an empirical basis for optimizing park city implementation in high-density contexts and highlighting the need to reconcile broad attractiveness with equitable local access. Full article

Environmental assessment in high-density urban areas faces significant challenges due to complex building morphology and the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP). This study proposes a morphology-adaptive computational framework that integrates the Homogeneous Unit of Building Morphology (HUBM) with geospatial modeling to enhance environmental assessment processes. Using Macao as a case study, the framework quantifies local and accessibility-based ecosystem service flows and evaluates ecological resilience via ecological security patterns and spatial elasticity indices. The results demonstrate that HUBM substantially reduces MAUP-induced biases compared to traditional grid-based approaches, maintaining statistical significance in spatial clustering analyses across all scales. Functionally, ecosystem service value (ESV) analysis reveals that natural green spaces provide more than three times the total ESV, predominantly offering regulating services, while artificial green spaces primarily deliver localized services. Accessibility analysis highlights considerable spatial inequities, with natural green spaces exhibiting a significantly higher recreational accessibility index. In terms of ecological security patterns (ESPs), natural green spaces function as core ecological patches, while artificial green spaces dominate connectivity, accounting for 75% of corridor length and 86% of node density. Natural green spaces exhibit significantly greater ecological resilience. These findings highlight the complementary roles of natural and artificial green spaces in dense urban environments and underscore the need for adaptive spatial analysis in urban planning. Full article

Green infrastructure and nature-based solutions (NBSs) are, especially in urban areas, one of the key elements in building a friendly living environment that contributes to healthy longevity. This paper presents a novel method for assessing the accessibility of recreational urban green space (RUGS) at the level of individual residential buildings. We designed and piloted a new total accessible recreational urban green space area (TARUGS) index, based on real pedestrian network distances, considering spatial accessibility weighted by the total area of green space available within an approximate 15-min walk. Calculations were carried out individually for each residential building and each individual RUGS, using GIS technologies, including network analysis. The developed methodology allows for the detection of local inequalities in access to all city RUGSs. It enables the inclusion of additional socioeconomic variables in an in-depth spatial equity analysis. The RUGS accessibility ranking of buildings provides a practical tool to support urban intervention planning, as well as the design of solutions that respond to the real needs of residents and environmental challenges. Availability analyses were performed for 108,618 buildings and 146 RUGS. Areas with the highest and clearly insufficient access to RUGS in Warsaw were identified. Over 40,400 buildings were classified as having no access to RUGS (class 0), which accounts for 37% of all residential buildings, while 21,700 buildings were classified as having the best access (class 4), which accounts for 20% of all residential buildings. The districts of Wilanów and Włochy have the worst accessibility, while Wawer and Mokotów have the best. The proposed building-level methodology quantitatively reveals spatial inequalities in access to RUGS, enabling data-driven, equitable planning decisions while highlighting the need to integrate broader accessibility modes, subjective user experiences, and data improvements for a comprehensive assessment of spatial justice. The framework demonstrates how advanced geospatial data analysis, integrating GIS technologies, open data, and network-based innovative solutions, could enhance urban policy-making, improve the design of equitable public spaces, and support resilient land management strategies. Full article

Increasing the level of livability in cities is a topical area both in EU policies and in local urban development, as well as in scientific studies. The aim of this article is to assess the degree if livability of the large housing estates (LHEs) built during the socialist period in the main regional cities of Romania and how adequately they meet the requirements of current urban life. The research focused on assessing the accessibility of these neighborhoods to green spaces and other types of public facilities and services of interest, also taking into account the typology of LHEs. For this, we used mixed research methods, namely GIS remote sensing, fieldwork, and questionnaire surveys, with the results being digitally processed and mapped. This comparative research allowed us to see to what extent each type of neighborhood lends itself to the application of the European Green Deal principles (EGD). In this sense, we mapped the transformations undergone by urban green spaces, as a major dimension of sustainability, and we created an LHE accessibility index, using eight groups of indicators. Based on this index, we assessed the degree of livability and the compatibility of LHEs with some of the EGD principles. We believe that this study can be applied in other regions with similar characteristics, for the analysis of territorial accessibility of public services, in the creation of quality of life registers, or for the planning of spatial components of green cities. Full article

As urban architecture continues to emphasize integration with natural environments, the concept of waterfront buildings and blue–green spaces has been widely applied in the site selection of large urban structures. While existing research has extensively explored architectural types such as waterfront landscapes and sports venues, systematic studies on waterfront concert halls, as an important category of cultural architecture, remain limited. Specifically, the interaction mechanisms between such halls and their aquatic environments, as well as their impact on users’ psychological satisfaction, have not been thoroughly investigated. This study takes waterfront concert halls as representative cultural buildings and examines 1267 users from 12 typical waterfront concert halls across eight cities in China. A theoretical model was constructed with water visibility, water accessibility, water interactivity, and water integration as independent variables, biophilia and a sense of nature’s presence as parallel mediators, and user satisfaction as the dependent variable. Data were analyzed using covariance based structural equation modeling CB-SEM. The findings reveal that (1) water visibility, water accessibility, and water integration positively influence user satisfaction; (2) biophilia mediates the relationship between water visibility, water accessibility, water interactivity, water integration, and user satisfaction; (3) a sense of nature’s presence also mediates the relationship between these water-related variables and user satisfaction. This study empirically demonstrates the dual pathway psychological mechanism through which water elements influence user satisfaction, providing a new perspective for the design of waterfront cultural architecture. The research suggests that architects can enhance users’ biophilic instincts and sense of nature’s presence through specific design strategies, such as strengthening water visibility, optimizing waterfront circulation, and enriching water interaction experiences. These findings offer theoretical support for shifting contemporary architectural practice from physical space creation to environmental well-being promotion, while also establishing a practical foundation for developing human-centered evaluation systems for built environments. Full article

Urban Green Spaces (UGSs) are essential for ecological sustainability and public health, offering benefits such as air pollution reduction, urban cooling, and recreational opportunities. However, existing evaluation tools remain inconsistent, often assessing isolated dimensions like accessibility or aesthetics without fully integrating health considerations. A systematic approach is needed to understand how these tools measure UGS quality and their relevance to health outcomes. This study employs a literature review (PRISMA framework) to analyze UGS evaluation tools with a focus on quality and health implications. A search in Scopus and Web of Science identified 14 relevant studies. Data extraction examined tool structure, assessed dimensions, data collection methods, geographic applications, and integration of health indicators. The review identified 13 distinct tools varying in complexity and methodology, from standardized checklists to GIS-based analyses. While key dimensions included accessibility, safety, aesthetics, and biodiversity, health-related factors were inconsistently integrated. Few tools explicitly assessed physical, mental, or social health outcomes. Technological innovations, such as Google Street View and AI-based analysis, emerged as enhancements for UGS evaluation. Despite methodological advances, gaps remain in linking UGS quality assessments to health outcomes. The lack of standardized health metrics limits applicability in urban planning. Future research should focus on interdisciplinary frameworks integrating environmental and health indicators to support the creation of sustainable and health-promoting UGS. Full article