Social Sciences

Abstract: This article examines social vulnerability (SV) as a necessary component of landslide risk assessment in the urban area of Quito, Ecuador. Landslide susceptibility identifies where slope instability is more likely, but it does not explain which populations have fewer resources to anticipate, cope with, or recover from such events. Using 2010 census-tract data, principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to derive interpretable factors of SV. The most robust factor—structural socioeconomic precariousness—combines precarious occupational conditions, lack of access to social security or private insurance, and limited access to new technologies. This factor was combined with a previously developed landslide susceptibility map (LSM) based on events recorded between 2005 and 2017 and aggregated to census tracts. The Comparative Environmental Risk Index (CERI) was then used to interpret whether socially vulnerable groups are disproportionately located in areas of higher landslide susceptibility. Results reveal a comparatively safer and socially advantaged populations axis from the center-north toward the eastern valleys, while high-risk and socially vulnerable areas concentrate in the south and selected peripheral zones. The study provides a historical and methodological baseline and contributes a quantitative, spatial, urban approach to landslide risk inequity in an Andean city.

Abstract: Urban lighting systems are a key component of urban infrastructure, influencing energy consumption, environmental quality, and the functioning of public spaces. Despite growing interest in artificial light at night (ALAN) and the widespread adoption of LED technologies, existing studies often analyze environmental and energy-related aspects separately, limiting the possibility of comprehensive assessment. This article aims to develop and preliminarily assess the Sustainable Lighting System Index (SLSI), enabling an integrated assessment of street lighting systems from environmental and energy perspectives. The index consists of two components: environmental (En) and energy (Ee), capturing both technical parameters of lighting infrastructure and its impact on ecosystems and public space users. The empirical analysis was conducted in two Polish cities, Rzgów and Zgierz, using field inventories, photographic documentation, and data obtained from municipal offices. The collected data were used to assign sub-index values and calculate the SLSI. The results indicate a similar sustainability level in both cities (SLSI = 2.69 for Rzgów and 2.67 for Zgierz), corresponding to a low or moderate level. However, significant differences were identified in the structure of the index components. The findings suggest that improving energy efficiency alone is insufficient to achieve sustainable urban lighting systems. The SLSI may support integrated local decision-making and lighting assessment processes.

Abstract: This paper makes two contributions. First, it bridges the land use analysis gap by replacing manual methods with a scalable, open-source engine implementing a transparent 'policy-as-code' approach. We applied the Compatibility Audit Tool (CAT) to Qazvin, Iran, analyzing over 65,000 land parcels and revealing that a critical 2.04% of the urban fabric—concentrated at residential-industrial interfaces—was in direct policy conflict. The framework provides planners with a robust instrument for a systematic 'policy audit' to identify contradictions between policy and reality. Second, it proposes a normative framework for urban AI, shifting from optimization-focused models toward forensic instruments that enforce accountability by quantifying the divergence between stated policy and spatial reality. It transforms the planning audit from a bureaucratic formality into a mechanism for liability discovery.

Abstract: The article introduces FOREST, a participatory interface prototype for communicating and negotiating urban heat risk at the scale of the shared courtyard. Instead of treating heat as a one-way disaster message or a purely technical indicator, FOREST translates residents’ images, short texts, sounds, and walking traces into evidence cards that record time windows, location anchors, trigger conditions, and lived consequences. The prototype is framed as a hazard-governance method. It asks how everyday exposure, microclimate difference, and care labor can be made comparable and publicly discussable without scrubbing out uncertainty. What the article adds is a public evidence structure that links heat exposure, vulnerability, and response in a form that can support screening, review, and feedback in community-scale adaptation.

Abstract: As cities assume increasing responsibility for climate mitigation, an important question is whether subnational carbon markets can function as effective instruments of urban decarbonization. This article examines the institutional effectiveness and governance implications of city-level emissions trading systems, using Tokyo’s Cap-and-Trade System (TCTS)—launched in 2010 as the world’s first mandatory urban carbon market—as an empirical case. Drawing on government data, policy documents, academic studies, and media sources, the analysis investigates how emissions trading was adapted to the metropolitan scale through processes of policy mobility and institutional rescaling. Tokyo’s system illustrates how a global policy instrument can be localized within an urban governance framework by incorporating indirect electricity emissions and building-level efficiency standards into a distinctive regulatory design. Over fifteen years, the TCTS produced significant emissions reductions among large commercial and industrial facilities while contributing to the diffusion of corporate environmental norms. At the same time, its experience reveals structural tensions common to market-based climate instruments at the subnational level, including surplus credits and limited trading activity. The article identifies three broader insights: the capacity of cities to generate policy innovation, the importance of institutional learning in stabilizing new regulatory markets, and the limits of technocratic carbon pricing as a pathway toward transformative urban decarbonisation.

Abstract: Due to the rapid rate of urbanisation in African cities, there is a high demand for land in the urban peripheries of cities in the developing world. In the case of Eswatini, many of the peri-urban areas are situated on land predominantly governed by traditional authorities according to customary land management systems. From 1992 to 2005, a leasehold tenure system was implemented through a Swaziland Urban Development Project (SUDP) funded by the World Bank. This paper explores the economic, socio-cultural and spatial impacts of the 99-year leasehold on peri-urban areas under chieftaincy using Mbabane, Eswatini as a case study, using a qualitative study involving field interviews of 45 people and critical analysis. The central argument of the paper is that the establishment of the leasehold tenure system has facilitated the integration of Swazi Nation Land into global economic dynamics of urban change through the hybridisation of statutory and customary practices, with some adverse effects.

Abstract: Urban mobility planning in smart cities requires sophisticated simulation tools, yet their complexity often creates a technical barrier for non-expert stakeholders. This paper presents a novel architecture that integrates generative artificial intelligence with digital twin technology to create an accessible and robust decision-support system. The framework employs a conversational AI agent based on Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite to interpret natural language intentions and translate them into validated simulation parameters. A critical safety layer, built using Pydantic, ensures that the agent’s stochastic outputs adhere to strict technical schemas and urban logic before execution. The underlying digital twin, developed with SimPy, NetworkX, and OSMnx, features a multi-source data integration strategy that includes demographic density (INE), tourism activity (ISTAC), and high-resolution traffic statistics (TomTom) to calibrate vehicle behavior. The architecture was validated through a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 proof-of-concept in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, simulating multimodal scenarios including buses, the future MetroGuagua (BRT), and pedestrian flows. Results demonstrate a 95.99% success rate in intent recognition and configuration mapping, with end-to-end execution times under 20 minutes for a 19-hour simulated day. This study demonstrates that LLM-driven orchestration, coupled with automated data pipelines and a decoupled microservice architecture, can democratize access to urban simulation, fostering more inclusive, agile, and evidence-based smart city governance.

Abstract: This study challenges the static treatment of the "green premium" in commercial real estate. We introduce and empirically test the Sustainability Value Decomposition Framework, which disaggregates sustainability-related valuation effects into signalling, performance, and market-access components: Signalling (the value of the label), Performance (the value of operational efficiency), and Market Access (the value of regulatory compliance). Using a mixed-methods approach that combines econometric analysis of 111 institutional office transactions in London with an instrumental-variable strategy, we strengthen identification of the certification effect while recognising the remaining assumptions required for causal interpretation. Our 2SLS model estimates an IV-based premium of 9.5% for top-tier BREEAM certification, conditional on the validity of the local planning-authority instrument. Mediation analysis suggests that EPC ratings, interpreted as market-perceived energy-performance and compliance proxies, statistically account for approximately 65.2% of the observed BREEAM-value association. We also provide a sizeable "brown discount" in a major European market, documenting a 24.7% valuation penalty for assets non-compliant with minimum energy standards, consistent with a Market Access effect. These findings suggest that sustainability-related pricing in mature office markets increasingly reflects market-perceived performance and regulatory risk, rather than certification labels alone.

Abstract: As indicated by its title, this study challenges the common view that as complex systems cities emerge from the bottom-up. It suggests, firstly, that that this common view is a consequence of applying the various complexity theories to the dynamics of cities by means of analogy to material media namely to complex systems such as Benard cells or laser. Secondly, that when examining cities from first principles of human media that concern cognition, behavior and brain dynamics, cities emerge in a top-down manner. Thirdly, that the dynamics of cities is characterized by the simultaneous coexistence of bottom-up and top-down processes so that the question is not bottom-up or top-down, but rather how these apparent negating processes co-exist.

Abstract: This study investigates the role of cultural development as a driver of sustainable ur-ban development in Kalamata, a medium-sized city in southern Greece (population ~70,000). Drawing on the UNESCO CDIS framework, SDG 11, the Faro Convention (2005), and the Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation (UNESCO 2011), the re-search employs an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design integrating a strati-fied resident survey (n = 517), 49 stakeholder interviews, and systematic cultural car-tography (Cultural Map v7, 2026). Quantitative findings reveal moderate cultural sat-isfaction (M = 3.21/5) with significant geographic disparities (Centre M = 3.1 vs. East-ern zones M = 2.2, p < 0.001). Regression analysis identifies cultural infrastructure sat-isfaction (β = 0.41), digital cultural information access (β = 0.306), voluntary participa-tion (β = 0.19), and residential zone (β = 0.168) as independent predictors (R² = 0.58). A strong culture–urban development satisfaction correlation (Spearman ρ = 0.62, p < 0.001) empirically validates the culture-sustainability nexus. The qualitative strand documents Institutional Resilience through Cultural Civil Society (IRCC): a co-evolutionary dynamic between austerity-era institutional contraction (2010–2018) and compensatory voluntary cultural expansion. CDIS triangulation reveals systemic weaknesses in cultural governance and spatial equity alongside strengths in education and civil-society participation. Archival data (GSA-Messenia, 2008) trace spatial ine-qualities to post-1922 refugee settlement geography. Seven evidence-based policy recommendations are proposed. The study advances replicable mixed-methods model for medium-sized Mediterranean cities.

Abstract: This article examines territorial injustice and the challenges of the post-extractive transition facing Poza Rica, Mexico, a city that has historically been central to the country’s oil production. Drawing on models of restorative justice and perspectives on urban metabolism, we analyse how seven decades of intensive oil extraction (1930–2000) have left a legacy of abandoned infrastructure, contaminated soil and deep socio-spatial inequalities. The case study reveals that 49.5% of wells in the Tampico-Misantla basin remain in operational limbo, exposing 2,955 inhabitants per km² to toxic emissions, whilst 98% of the city’s urban expansion (1997–2016) has encroached upon former extraction sites. We argue that restorative justice, in this context, requires not only financial compensation, but the effective restitution of a safe and healthy territory through the systematic remediation of abandoned industrial sites and community-led governance. By analysing remediation opportunities, including the case of Bicentennial Park, the geothermal reuse of abandoned wells and proposals for metropolitan planning, we demonstrate how post-extractive transitions can transform ‘sacrifice zones’ into assets for urban resilience. Community mobilisation in neighbourhoods such as Chapultepec and Cazones emerges as the key driver of empowerment and restoration, challenging historical neglect by state and corporate actors.

Abstract: Sustainable urban transportation is fundamentally linked to public health outcomes, specifically the mitigation of fatal traffic risks under environmental stress. While stressors like adverse weather affect entire cities, traditional road safety models often assume uniform risk, thereby masking the spatial inequalities inherent in the urban fabric. This study addresses this gap by investigating the geographically heterogeneous impact of environmental stressors—including rainfall, surface moisture, and lighting conditions—on the conditional probability of fatal crash outcomes in Melbourne, Australia. Analyzing 43,075 severe crashes through a multi-stage geospatial framework (Getis-Ord Gi* and Geographically Weighted Logistic Regression), this research diagnoses how varying urban development patterns mediate the lethality of these stressors. The findings unmask a critical “threshold-crossing” effect for wet surfaces, where risk transitions from protective to hazardous based on local infrastructure form and street geometry. Significant spatial inequalities are identified: high-density inner-urban cores and adjacent coastal corridors exhibit a heightened sensitivity to visibility failures and moisture, whereas newer industrial peripheries show stronger protective “risk compensation” effects. These results reveal a systemic mismatch between historical urban form and contemporary climate-driven public health risks. By identifying localized “lethality thresholds”, this study provides a robust evidence base for integrated planning and equitable resource allocation. It enables urban planners to move beyond generalized safety warnings toward targeted structural interventions, ensuring that sustainable transportation networks prioritize safety equity for all citizens regardless of their location within the urban environment.

Abstract: This article compares urban planning dealing with historic buildings in Berlin and Stockholm. It examines some cases of preservation, demolition and reconstruction of historic buildings. Different historic approaches in urban planning are subsumed under the slogans “architecture as wellbeing” and “the automotive city”. The policy cycle serves as a framework for a qualitative content analysis of debates on urban planning in both city councils. It results in the application of the slogan” architecture as wellbeing” could both result in demolition of historic buildings and their replacement with modern ones (the Hansa Quarter in Berlin and the demolitions in Nedre Norrmalm/Klara in Stockholm), and in restorations and reconstructions (from the 1970s on). The intention to build a modern city in the 1950s and 1960s could both result in a loosened city, as realized in the Hansa Quarter, in Vällingby and in most of the argumentation in Stockholm’s City Council in favour of hygienic housing and underground traffic, and in a densened automotive city, as it actually was implemented in Stockholm’s center. Today, while Berlin has opted for reconstruction in several cases, Stockholm is preserving the status quo achieved by the large-scale demolitions of the 1950s and 1960s.

Abstract: Active mobility in peri-urban areas is influenced by sprawl, limited public transportation, and reliance on private vehicles. This study redefines active mobility in peri-urban and low-density contexts from a territorial perspective informed by the Veneto Region and reframes micro-hubs as socially oriented, network-integrated elements rather than scaled-down urban hubs. This study adopts a qualitative, theory-driven methodology combining a multidisciplinary review of the active mobility concept with thematic analysis to identify mobility hub characteristics, followed by analytical synthesis, the classification of mobility hub types, and a set of social indicators for analyzing their performance. These methods are used to develop a framework for understanding mi-cro-hubs as socio-spatial components of active mobility networks. Results indicate that a network of minor roads and micro-hubs can support shifts toward active mobility when aligned with daily mobility patterns and supported by multi-level governance. The study outlines the socio-spatial roles of micro-hubs and defines them as nodes that link local networks and everyday mobility systems, distinguishing three roles: network, welfare, and civic. Socio-spatially integrated micro-hubs can be effective in reducing car dependence while providing transferable policy-oriented actions for similar peri-urban and low-density areas.

Abstract: Urban models circulate toward African cities with claims to universal applicability, yet they consistently produce outcomes that diverge from their initial promises. This article argues that the explanation lies not in local implementation failures but in the very mechanics of circulation. Building on the critical trajectory from policy transfer theory through policy mobilities to assemblage thinking, the article constructs an original analytical framework organised around the fragmentation matrix. This matrix identifies five families of fragments composing any urban model in circulation: conceptual, metric, iconographic, institutional, and narrative. Each family exhibits differential mobility, travelling through distinct channels and producing different consequences for the receiving context. Three types of legitimation arenas selectively structure this diffusion, generating what the article theorises as asymmetric fragmentation: the selective, hierarchised, and unequally operational circulation of heterogeneous components. Applied to the African continent, the framework reveals that model dysfunction is not a contingent failure but a structural feature of the circulation mechanism itself. The article concludes that overcoming this structural inadequacy requires reconfiguring the epistemic conditions under which urban knowledge is produced and legitimised.

Abstract: Urban regeneration has become a central focus in global urban studies, increasingly linked to the dual imperatives of sustainability and urban resilience. Chinese urban villages (Chengzhongcun) and Spanish Suelo Urbano no Consolidado (SUNC, Unconsolidated Urban Land) areas represent two contrasting forms of urban socio-spatial systems engulfed by urban expansion—both characterized by dense, historically rooted morphologies and incomplete infrastructure. While Chinese urban villages retain collective land ownership and self-built structures, SUNC areas preserve working-class housing typologies and community social structures within a sophisticated legal framework. As China shifts from a demolition–reconstruction model toward more sustainable regeneration approaches, this study compares Beijing's Cuigezhuang with Málaga's El Perchel through spatial analysis and stakeholder surveys. The research evaluates how differing planning systems foster or constrain sustainable development alongside social, spatial, and institutional resilience in regeneration processes. Findings demonstrate that Spain's incremental, participatory approach—anchored in Planes Especiales de Reforma Interior (PERI, Special Plans for Inner Urban Renewal) and land readjustment (equidistribution) mechanisms—significantly outperforms China's state-led demolition-based model in supporting long-term sustainability, heritage integrity, community cohesion, and spatial continuity. Spain's legally embedded participation and in situ rehabilitation strategies offer transferable lessons for China's evolving sustainable and resilience-oriented regeneration paradigm.

Abstract: In the face of economic disparities, housing as a fundamental right highlights differences and social stratification. From the perspective of complexity, factors such as location, distance from development hubs, and designs that standardize needs accentuate weaknesses in its conception. The new realities of living in housing after the pandemic lead us to rethink new design approaches where housing and work can be combined. This research analyzes the case of the Ciudad Alegría Social Housing Program, located in the city of Loja, Ecuador. The diagnostic method determined that 24% of the homes have commercial projections as a survival strategy. While these spatial patterns reduce the levels of habitability in the homes, they also produce benefits such as proximity between home and work, savings in transportation costs, interaction with neighbors, and mixed uses. These facts reflect gaps in the architectural design process, which fails to consider both service providers and users in decision-making in the design of VIS programs, as well as the need for this phenomenon to be elevated to public policy.

Abstract: Agentic artificial intelligence—systems capable of reasoning, anticipating, and acting autonomously on behalf of citizens and institutions—is converging with electric and autonomous mobility and urban robotics to reshape how cities govern, move, and maintain their physical environments. This paper examines three interconnected vectors of AI-driven urban transformation: (1) the evolution of public-sector conversational AI from informational chatbots toward cognitive, agentic government; (2) the emergence of autonomous electric mobility—robotaxis, on-demand transit, and autonomous logistics—that is fundamentally altering urban spatial structure, cost, and connectivity; and (3) the deployment of intelligent robotics and city brain platforms that automate the physical management of urban space. We extend the mirroring hypothesis (Conway, Colfer and Baldwin) in two directions: dynamically, arguing that organizations and ecosystems converge toward the best strategic configurations that new technologies make possible; and ontologically, arguing that agentic AI introduces non-human agents as first-class participants in organizational architectures, requiring hybrid human-AI coordination structures. We further propose the concept of cumulative recursive hybridization—a dynamic in which the three vectors interact through data, regulatory, infrastructure, and talent feedback loops within specific urban ecosystems, generating compounding returns analogous to those observed during the Industrial Revolution. Drawing on comparative international evidence from over twenty governance chatbot deployments, the rapidly scaling autonomous mobility ecosystems of the United States and China, and emerging urban robotics landscapes, we find that advanced deployments concentrate in cities—not nations—that combine regulatory agility, talent ecosystem density, institutional willingness to redesign, and tolerance for experimental iteration. The paper concludes that the cities which will lead the next era of urban transformation are those that pursue simultaneous deployment across all three vectors, redesign their institutional architectures to mirror the possibilities of the agentic era, and actively orchestrate the cross-domain ecosystems in which cumulative innovation takes hold.

Abstract: Unused, underutilized, abandoned, and residual urban spaces are increasingly recognized as potential resources for adaptive reuse, ecological improvement, and urban resilience. In this study, such areas are approached through the overarching concept of waste space, a term used to capture both their condition of underutilization and their transformation potential. While existing research has largely focused on the definition, classification, and emergence of such spaces, their transformation potential under varying spatial and institutional contexts has received comparatively limited attention. Addressing this gap, the study operationalizes selected Social–Ecological Systems (SES) dynamics through spatial analysis in the metropolitan area of İzmir, Türkiye. Using district-level analysis across ten metropolitan districts, the research combines typological and morphological classification of waste spaces with four spatial indicators: Density Index, Location Quotient, Shannon Diversity Index, and Typology Dominance Index. The results show that waste spaces are unevenly distributed across İzmir and form distinct district-level configurations shaped by infrastructure expansion, post-industrial transformation, speculative vacancy, and fragmented urban growth. The study concludes that waste spaces cannot be addressed through a uniform regeneration logic. By linking SES dynamics with measurable spatial indicators, the proposed framework offers a context-sensitive basis for transforming waste spaces and supporting district-specific planning and policy decisions.

Abstract: Population ageing intensifies the need for built environments that support healthy and independent living while reducing preventable risks. This review examines how archi-tectural design, safety measures, and corporate security can function as an integrated, layered system for creating age friendly environments across public spaces, housing, and intergenerational community settings. Drawing on an integrative synthesis of re-cent research, international standards, and guidelines, the review analyses how uni-versal design principles, injury prevention strategies, and governance routines inter-sect to sustain mobility, reduce harm, and protect data, devices, and operational con-tinuity. The findings indicate that gaps in any layer, such as inaccessible layouts, poor-ly maintained safety systems, or weak cybersecurity, can undermine overall effective-ness, compromise trust, and affect older adults’ autonomy. Conversely, when accessi-bility, safety, and corporate security are coordinated from design through to operation and maintenance, environments are more likely to remain reliable, equitable, and re-sponsive over time. This review concludes that age friendly environments require not only barrier free architecture and proportionate safety measures, but also robust gov-ernance structures that ensure accountability, lifecycle maintenance, and responsible data practices. Integrating these domains provides a foundation for resilient, trust-worthy, and health promoting environments that enable older adults to remain active, socially connected, and secure.