Search Results (2,997)

With climate change and urbanization accelerating, cities face increasing disaster risks. As critical facilities for safeguarding residents’ safety, emergency shelters have attracted growing attention due to spatial supply–demand mismatches. From the perspective of the 15-min community life circle, this study aims to develop a fine-scale analytical framework for assessing emergency shelter accessibility and inequality, using Pidu District, Chengdu, China, as a case study. The three-step floating catchment area (3SFCA) method is applied to assess emergency shelter accessibility, while the Gini coefficient and Kolm–Pollak equally distributed equivalent (EDE) are introduced to evaluate accessibility inequality across subdistricts and communities. The results show that: (1) compared with the traditional Gaussian two-step floating catchment area (G2SFCA) method, 3SFCA captures clearer accessibility differentiation and stronger local sensitivity; (2) emergency shelter accessibility shows marked spatial differentiation, with pronounced local clustering in the walking mode and a polycentric pattern in the cycling mode; (3) the Gini coefficient reveals distributional imbalance in emergency shelter accessibility, showing a clear “center–periphery” pattern in which urban areas generally exhibit lower inequality than suburban and rural areas; and (4) the Kolm–Pollak EDE emphasizes lower-tail welfare and helps distinguish “low but even” areas from “high but polarized” areas. These findings support equity-oriented strategies for emergency shelter planning and resource allocation. The study provides methodological and practical implications for fine-scale emergency shelter planning and resilient urban governance, contributing to more equitable, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable urban environments. Full article

Climate change adaptation requires governance approaches that actively engage citizens in developing resilient urban environments. However, public participation in adaptation planning often remains limited to consultation, with little influence on decision-making. This paper examines how participatory processes can evolve into genuine co-creation and identifies which participatory methods are most effective for urban resilience co-creation. The study aims to identify the key success factors for effective citizen engagement in climate change adaptation based on the results of implementing ecosystem- and community-based adaptation concept. A qualitative case study in Sosnowiec, helping city authorities design effective climate change policies, was conducted in the framework of Urban Living Lab established within the CICADA4CE project. The participatory process involved different stakeholder groups from the quadruple helix, with a particular focus on contributions from young and senior citizens. The paper proposes a citizen co-creation framework that conceptualises participation as a continuous, competence-driven process, emphasising sustained capacity-building as a prerequisite for meaningful civic engagement. Drawing on empirical evidence from Sosnowiec as a post-industrial city in Central and Eastern Europe, the paper contributes to the literature on participatory climate governance by demonstrating the potential of citizen co-creation to strengthen locally grounded climate adaptation in medium-sized cities. Full article

Standardized urban indicators are essential for assessing smart and sustainable cities, yet their application in developing countries remains limited. This study addresses the critical gap regarding the availability of ISO 3712x standard indicators among local governments in Brazil—a nation marked by territorial and socioeconomic heterogeneity. Urban indicators based on open government data across all 5570 Brazilian municipalities were analyzed in this study using the ISO 37120, 37122, 37123, and 37125 standards. A synthetic smart and sustainable cities index was drawn up, supported by Factor Analysis and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Considering the Local Indicator of Spatial Association (LISA), clustering patterns of municipal sustainability and smartness performance were identified: LISA analysis identified pronounced spatial clusters, with high-performance municipalities concentrated in the Southeast and South-Central regions, while low-performance clusters spread across the North and Northeast of Brazil. Despite the diversity of characteristics among Brazilian cities, 22 of the 302 ISO 3712x indicators (7.3%) could be collected with complete national data for all 5570 Brazilian municipalities; data for 59 indicators were available from open sources, though with gaps. Since the ISO 3712x standards offer a voluntary portfolio of indicators rather than a mandatory set, partial data coverage does not make the framework inapplicable; rather, they delimit the scope of the synthetic index presented here and highlight where open-data infrastructure must be strengthened. Municipal smartness and sustainability result from the multidimensional integration of technological innovation, human capital, social protection, and responsible environmental management. Despite the availability of ISO indicators, observations based on the authors’ institutional experience as members of ABNT/CEE-268—Brazilian mirror committee of ISO/TC 268—“Sustainable cities and communities”—reveal that local governments face challenges in systematically integrating them into strategic planning, presenting a significant opportunity for capacity building and evidence-based governance. In addition to the innovative aspect of this research—which involves using ISO-standardized indicators and collecting numerical data from official open data sources—this article presents a comprehensive index calculation for sustainable and smart cities based on these indicators, followed by the identification of its spatial clusters. Full article

Despite the importance of adaptive reuse for urban renewal, municipal records of changes in property destinations remain an untapped resource for understanding regulatory barriers. This study develops an interpretable machine learning (ML) framework to screen historical administrative non-approval using 42,350 municipal records from a mid-sized city in southern Chile spanning 2010 to 2025. Historical memory features were constructed exclusively from outcomes available before each application, thereby preventing temporal leakage. Records from 2010–2022 were used for training, 2023 was reserved for validation, and 2024–2025 constituted a locked test set. A logistic regression model combining auditable risk flags derived from GIRO (declared economic or functional activity) with historical property, address, and activity category information was selected by maximizing the F1-score (the harmonic mean of precision and recall) subject to a recall ≥ 0.85. At the validation-selected threshold of 0.285, the model achieved a receiver operating characteristic area under the curve (ROC-AUC) of 0.778, a precision–recall area under the curve (PR-AUC) of 0.720, an F1-score of 0.719, recall of 0.887, and precision of 0.604. The model flagged 66.8% of applications for prioritized review. The proposed framework supports human-in-the-loop screening and institutional learning; it neither determines regulatory compliance nor automates municipal decisions. Full article

Against the background of the global green transition, digitalization has become an important driver of energy-efficiency improvement and carbon mitigation, making its overall environmental effects worthy of further investigation. This study constructs a pollution and carbon mitigation pressure (PCMP) index covering emission load, governance support, and ecological carrying capacity to examine the effect of the digital economy on PCMP, its transmission mechanism, boundary conditions, and regional heterogeneity. Using panel data for 30 Chinese provinces from 2013 to 2024, we apply a two-way fixed-effects model, mechanism analysis, a moderation model, instrumental-variable estimation, and a spatial Durbin model. The results show that digital-economy development significantly reduces PCMP, and this conclusion remains stable across multiple robustness checks. The digital economy alleviates PCMP by promoting industrial structure upgrading, while urbanization significantly strengthens this effect. The effect is more pronounced in Northern China, with a statistically significant north–south difference. Spatial analysis further shows that higher digital-economy development in neighboring regions is significantly associated with lower local PCMP. These findings extend research on the environmental effects of the digital economy by showing how industrial upgrading, urban conditions, and cross-regional linkages shape its contribution to pollution control, low-carbon transition, and regional sustainable development, with implications for the broader goals of the 2030 Agenda. Given the limitations of provincial data and the identification strategy, future research could use city-level data to further examine the underlying mechanisms and causal effects. Full article

Coastal areas are complex territorial systems where natural processes and anthropogenic pressures interact, generating vulnerable yet culturally significant landscapes. While remaining attractive for tourism and urban development, they are among the areas most exposed to the impacts of climate change, requires resilient and adaptive planning approaches. This study assesses vegetation-related environmental changes associated with the regeneration of the Portici Maritime Park, Italy, through a comparison of Sentinel-2 Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data acquired before and after the intervention. Mean NDVI decreased from approximately 0.245 in 2018 to 0.167 in 2026, indicating a reduction in vegetation-related conditions associated with the conversion of previously vegetated or partially vegetated surfaces into paved areas. Based on this empirical evidence and on the environmental characteristics of the site, the study proposes the integration of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), including permeable surfaces, Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SuDS), multifunctional Mediterranean and halophytic green strips, and ecological nourishment. These measures are framed within the proposed Waterfront 4.0 concept, which integrates ecological regeneration, digital environmental monitoring, participatory governance, and adaptive management. By linking ex-post remote-sensing assessment with NBS-oriented planning, the study provides a conceptual and case-study-based approach for improving the climate resilience and ecological performance of highly urbanized Mediterranean waterfronts. Full article

Rapid urban population expansion in semi-arid environments poses considerable challenges for sustainable planning, particularly where demographic growth occurs under environmental constraints. This study examines the statistical association between climatic variability and population change in the Soran district center, Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and develops an exploratory framework for forecasting future demographic trends. It uses the official annual population series compiled by the Statistics Directorate of the Soran Independent Administration for 2010–2024 (15 observations) together with monthly meteorological records for 2015–2024 from the Soran agro-meteorological station. Two properties of the demographic record govern what can be inferred from it. The 2010–2023 values are inter-censal estimates reproduced to within 0.10% by a single declining-growth rule, so goodness-of-fit statistics obtained on that segment measure agreement with an interpolation rule rather than forecasting skill; and the 2024 value derives from the 2024 census round, representing a level shift of +18.4% against a 2.0% per year trend—178 residual standard deviations—rather than a year of growth. Detrended, lagged Spearman correlations across twelve climate–lag combinations yielded no association surviving Holm–Bonferroni correction; because the pre-2024 values are administratively smoothed, this is reported as an inability of the available data to resolve a climate–demography association rather than as evidence of independence. Eight specifications—naïve, drift and linear-trend benchmarks, a second-order polynomial, a log-linear trend, an AIC-selected ARIMA, and two multilayer perceptrons—were compared under identical rolling-origin cross-validation, producing seven one-step-ahead forecasts each. On the inter-censal segment a random walk with drift attained a mean absolute percentage error of 0.087%, better than every fitted specification; on the census fold every specification erred by at least 11,663 persons. The reported 2025–2030 projection is therefore anchored on the 2024 census level with growth extrapolated from its 2011–2023 trend, giving 93,342 residents in 2025 and 101,691 in 2030 (scenario range 100,395–104,064), reproduced to within 488 persons by an ARIMA(0,2,2) with a 2024 step term. Polynomial and log-linear trends fitted across the discontinuity project 2025 values are below the observed 2024 population and are reported as specification failures. The study demonstrates both the potential and the limitations of demographic forecasting in data-scarce semi-arid urban settings and shows that the provenance of an administrative population series materially constrains the claims such a study can make. Full article

Contemporary cities face increasingly interconnected environmental, social, health, and geopolitical crises, requiring closer integration between long-term urban development and emergency preparedness. This study examines how spatial planning can support civil protection and strengthen urban and community resilience, using Poland as a case of a planning system undergoing substantial legislative change. The research combines a review of international resilience frameworks with comparative and critical analyses of Polish spatial planning, crisis management, and civil protection regulations, complemented by a research-by-design case study. The findings reveal persistent institutional and spatial fragmentation: crisis preparedness remains weakly embedded in planning instruments, while crisis management and civil protection regulations insufficiently address the spatial conditions necessary for effective implementation. Key gaps concern risk-sensitive land use, protective infrastructure, evacuation systems, multifunctional public spaces, and cross-sectoral coordination. The research-by-design component demonstrates how these requirements can be translated into adaptive and multifunctional urban environments. Based on the findings, an integrated planning framework is proposed that links risk assessment, protective infrastructure, adaptive spatial design, and coordinated governance. Embedding civil protection within spatial planning can reduce vulnerability, support continuity of essential urban functions, and strengthen community resilience while contributing to safer and more sustainable urban development. Full article

Population ageing challenges the social sustainability of high-density cities, where equitable eldercare access underpins SDG 3, SDG 10 and SDG 11. In China, rapid expansion of community-based eldercare facilities (CEFs) under the “90-7-3” framework has produced a tripartite system of government, operating enterprises and older adult users whose spatial priorities conflict, threatening both distributive equity and long-term operational viability. Existing single-dimensional evaluations inadequately capture this complexity. This study develops an integrated four-dimensional spatial evaluation framework—supply–demand accessibility, spatial equity, functional diversity and market competition—applying the Gaussian two-step floating catchment area method, isochrone-based service-area analysis and a preference-weighted Shannon index to 697 CEFs across 130 sub-districts in Beijing’s central urban area. Results reveal a pronounced core–periphery divide. For service-type CEFs, 90.17% of communities (87.95% of older adults) lie within a 15-min walking catchment, yet service-area overlap reaches 199.32%, indicating redundant resource deployment and intense localised competition in core districts. For residential-type CEFs, only 53.91% of communities are within walkable reach and total coverage drops to 15.84%, exposing care blind spots and spatial inequity in outer districts. Functional diversity, by contrast, is evenly distributed and micro-environmentally shaped. The framework offers replicable diagnostics for sustainable ageing-in-place provision in rapidly ageing high-density cities. Full article

As urban mining plays an increasingly important role in resource security and sustainable development, insufficient coordination among reverse supply chain participants has become a major constraint on the efficient recovery of urban mineral resources. From the perspective of interfirm cooperative innovation, this study takes waste mobile phones as an application context and develops a four-party evolutionary game model involving the government, recyclers, remanufacturers, and consumers. The model incorporates opportunistic behavior in cooperative innovation, government subsidy intensity, and product pricing into a unified analytical framework. Replicator dynamics, Jacobian-based stability analysis, and numerical simulations are employed to examine the evolutionary mechanisms and stability conditions of multi-actor collaborative governance. The results identify four stable equilibrium configurations and show that: (1) excessive innovation spillovers and asymmetric interdependence between recyclers and remanufacturers may weaken incentive compatibility and induce opportunistic behavior; (2) the effects of government subsidies vary across evolutionary stages and depend on the strategic responses of other actors; and (3) interfirm transfer prices and final market prices promote stable cooperation only within specific ranges. These findings provide a theoretical basis and policy implications for improving collaborative governance in reverse supply chains for urban mineral resource recovery and supporting sustainable urban mining. Full article

Beautiful City construction is a core initiative to realize the Beautiful China vision and advance China’s progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study develops a unified evaluation framework aligned with official Chinese assessment guidelines and global sustainability objectives. Based on a 2015–2022 dataset of 126 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), we adopt Dagum’s Gini coefficient decomposition, kernel density estimation (KDE), and Moran’s I to investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics of beautiful city construction. The results indicate that the regional Beautiful City Construction Index (BI) increased steadily at both the regional and subregional levels, with all sample cities achieving continuous improvement. A consistent development gradient of lower reach > middle reach > upper reach was identified, with gradually narrowing inter-regional gaps. Importantly, the primary source of regional disparity shifted from inter-subregional differences to intra-subregional differences around 2021. Statistically significant positive spatial clustering was observed, with high-value clusters concentrated in downstream areas and low-value clusters in upstream areas, while the overall clustering effect gradually weakened. This study provides empirical evidence for targeted urban governance and regional coordinated development, offering a typical Chinese practice for global SDG research. Full article

Amid China’s pursuit of ecological civilization and high-quality development, a central policy challenge lies in designing environmental governance instruments that can simultaneously deliver ecological improvement and socially inclusive outcomes. Using the National Forest City (NFC) program as a representative urban ecological governance initiative, this study examines the relationship between place-based environmental certification and urban inclusive green growth (IGG) in China. Drawing on panel data from 290 prefecture-level cities over the 2000–2023 period, this study exploits the staggered rollout of the NFC program and estimates its relationship with urban inclusive green growth using a multi-period difference-in-differences framework. The results show that NFC designation is associated with a statistically significant increase in cities’ IGG performance, and this relationship remains robust across a series of alternative specifications and placebo tests. Dimension-specific estimates further show significant positive associations with economic performance, social equity, and environmental quality. Further analyses reveal pronounced heterogeneity in the estimated relationship. The positive association between NFC designation and inclusive green growth is stronger in non-resource-based cities, cities located in southern China, and core urban areas, suggesting that local development conditions and structural constraints play an important role in shaping the observed relationship. Employment-related analysis provides evidence consistent with broader city-level employment expansion as one potential pathway associated with the NFC–IGG relationship. Moreover, the positive association between NFC designation and IGG is stronger in cities with greater population mobility and where local governments place greater emphasis on innovation, underscoring the importance of complementary institutional and demographic conditions. By explicitly linking ecological governance, labor-market outcomes, and inclusive growth, this study contributes to the policy-oriented literature on urban sustainability. The findings suggest that environmental certification programs such as the NFC may provide a governance framework for connecting ecological objectives with inclusive development goals. Beyond the Chinese context, the results offer transferable insights for cities seeking to design environmental governance strategies that move beyond symbolic greening toward more integrated and socially inclusive sustainability transitions. Full article

Public participation plays a crucial role in modernizing urban renewal and advancing social sustainability; however, micro-renewal practices often navigate complex institutional coordination and varying levels of community engagement. To better understand these operational dynamics, this study adopts an institutional–behavioral analytical framework to examine how institutional mechanisms shape public participation, grounded in an empirical investigation of pocket parks in Shenyang, China. Integrating policy text analysis with 20 in-depth interviews framed within a citywide baseline of 3198 pocket parks, qualitative content analysis reveals that coercive, mimetic, and normative institutional pressures foster three distinct implementation pathways: Mandate-Driven, Exemplar-Driven, and Collaborative Co-governance. These pathways generate differentiated behavioral responses across four key stakeholder cohorts, while highlighting specific alignment opportunities regarding governance timing, feedback channels, and inter-departmental roles. To resolve these operational friction points and secure long-term social and institutional sustainability, we propose a full-lifecycle governance strategy offering group-tailored policy recommendations. This research bridges neoinstitutional theory with participatory spatial governance, providing actionable insights for advancing sustainable urban micro-renewal and stock space management. Full article

Sustainability transitions depend on public willingness to carry the costs they impose, yet recognition of climate risk does not necessarily extend to support for measures that place those costs directly on households. This exploratory cross-sectional study examines that distinction among urban respondents in Adana, Mersin, and Osmaniye in Türkiye’s Mediterranean Region. The analytic dataset comprised 214 adult urban respondents. Because no sampling frame or respondent-level inclusion probabilities are available, the achieved sample is treated as an unweighted non-probability sample and no claim of population representativeness is made. Principal-axis exploratory factor analysis with oblimin rotation and parallel analysis identified three dimensions: personal climate–environmental risk, support for cost-bearing environmental action, and an exploratory environmental concern. An in-sample three-factor confirmatory sensitivity model showed acceptable fit (comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.970, Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) = 0.958, root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.057, standardized root-mean-square residual (SRMR) = 0.057). Personal risk (mean (M) = 8.70) and environmental concern (M = 8.62) were much higher than cost-bearing support (M = 4.27). The within-person risk–cost support gap was 4.43 points (95% confidence interval (CI) 3.99–4.87; d_z = 1.36). Risk and concern were not significantly correlated with cost-bearing support, and their addition to a heteroskedasticity-robust (HC3) adjusted model increased explained variance by only 1.2% (p = 0.210). Provincial differences were substantial: Mersin had the widest gap, whereas Osmaniye had the highest cost-bearing support. The results do not estimate public opinion for the provinces; rather, they show that climate-policy legitimacy cannot be inferred from high risk perception alone. Policy-specific research should test fairness, effectiveness, trust, revenue use, and distributive safeguards in representative samples. For sustainability governance the implication is direct: the social pillar of sustainability—perceived fairness, affordability, and distributive protection—has to be designed into climate and environmental measures rather than assumed to follow from environmental awareness. Full article

Marine pollution in the Philippine archipelago poses increasing threats to biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human health due to rapid urbanization, population growth, and inadequate waste management. As a core region of the Coral Triangle, the Philippines is particularly vulnerable to pollutants transported across interconnected marine ecosystems. This review synthesizes current knowledge on the occurrence, sources, analytical approaches, risk assessment, and knowledge gaps associated with conventional and emerging major marine pollutants, including oil, heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, persistent organic pollutants, pharmaceuticals and personal care products, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, plastics, and additional stressors such as nutrients, pathogens, and shipping-related contaminants. Available evidence indicates widespread contamination of coastal waters, sediments, and marine biota, with pollution hotspots commonly associated with urbanized coastlines, river systems, industrial zones, shipping routes, aquaculture areas, and tourism centers. Emerging pollutants such as plastics and microplastics are increasingly detected even in remote environments, highlighting limitations in current monitoring and management frameworks. However, significant gaps remain in long-term monitoring, standardized methodologies, human health risk assessment, and interdisciplinary integration. This review emphasizes the need for harmonized monitoring programs, improved waste management infrastructure, strengthened regulatory enforcement, expanded analytical capacity, and integrated science-based policies to support sustainable marine management and ocean governance in the Philippines. Full article