Social Sciences

Abstract: Shopping mall decline and resilience research exhibits uneven regional coverage and framing. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, searches of Scopus and Web of Science (2000–2026) identified 2,144 records, reduced to 1,490 after deduplication and 143 studies after screening, full-text assessment, and citation searching. Studies were coded by region, framing, resilience layer, and market-cycle position. Recurring emphases include North American decline, Western European requalification, Chinese adaptation and oversupply, Gulf behavioral loyalty, and heterogeneous concerns elsewhere. We term this pattern framing asymmetry and identify three inferential risks: universalizing the North American template, interpreting non-measurement as resilience, and conflating demand-side triggers with supply-side vulnerabilities. These patterns characterize the corpus without establishing uniform regional trajectories. We propose a layered resilience model, conditioned by market-cycle position, and testable propositions. Our sustainability agenda prioritizes harmonized indicators, non-user sampling, longitudinal adaptive-reuse evaluation, and environmental and social consequences of obsolescence.

Abstract: Urban science has learned to measure cities through the flows that cross them: capital, labour, information, and air traffic. It has paid far less attention to what the name of a city does when a person speaks it about themselves. "I live in London", "I am flying in from Milan", and "I am going to Burlington" are not neutral statements of location; each converts a place into a public claim about the speaker's wealth, mobility, taste, and future. This study theorizes that conversion as toponymic capital: the convertible symbolic value that accrues to a person through the city names attached to their residence, origin, destination, and transit. Drawing on Bourdieusian field theory, Peircean and post-Silversteinian semiotics, mobilities research, and the postcolonial critique of world-city hierarchies, the study conducts a comparative interpretive semiotic analysis of 24 publicly documented instances spanning Africa, Europe, North America, Latin America, the Gulf, South Asia, and East Asia, sourced from vernacular lexicons, platform practices, popular culture, and institutional instruments. Four findings follow. City names operate through a positional grammar in which destination and transit outrank residence; their value is fixed by the audience's reference frame rather than by the city alone; their polarity reverses under identifiable conditions that enable toponymic arbitrage; and their value converts into marriage prospects, credit, employment, and visa access. The study presents a toponymic status grammar as a measurable construct and sets out its implications for city branding, urban rankings, and the study of spatial inequality.

Abstract: Housing insecurity is a critical aspect of understanding public health. To date, most work concerning housing insecurity focuses on urban environments with little research on rural conditions and the potential differences that exist between these environment. This leads to a fundamental question: how does housing insecurity change as we progress across the rural-urban continuum? To tackle this question, we considered several measures derived from the 2020-2024 5-year American Community Estimates and performed cluster analysis and association rules mining on a set of seven risk factors. We then further broke the analysis down based on the RUCA codes established by the US Department of Agriculture at the census tract geometry level. The results show that various housing insecurity factors predict others to varying degrees, based on rural/suburban/urban characteristics, with flow destinations (more urban settings) having different interaction profiles than flow providers (more suburban settings) and the most rural locales. The RUCA code provides a consistent pattern based on flow-rate to a central location. Connections to the extant literature about predictive mechanisms between subfacets are made. These differences and patterns have implications for policy and remediation, suggesting a typological approach to housing insecurity services based on aspects of the rural-urban continuum (a geospatial concept) and critical demographic data (a socioeconomic concept).

Abstract: Motorcyclists account for ~83.8% of Thailand’s road-traffic deaths, yet fatalities per crash—the metric most relevant to intervention—have rarely been modelled for motorcycles using frameworks that handle both underdispersion and zero-fatality inflation. Building on prior aggregate-level zero-inflated Conway–Maxwell–Poisson (ZICMP) research on Thai road deaths, we compared Poisson, CMP, Zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP), and ZICMP models, each incorporating location-by-collision-type interactions, using seven years of motorcycle crash data (2019-2025; n = 23,335)—to our knowledge the first interaction-based ZICMP analysis of this outcome. The ZICMP-interaction model fit best (AIC = 32,940.71; BIC = 33,367.76; ν ̂ = 2.54, confirming underdispersion). Head-on and fixed-object collisions raised expected fatalities (IRR = 2.77 and 1.69; p < 0.001). Nighttime crashes proved far more lethal than daytime ones (39.6% vs. 25.3% fatal; OR = 0.23, p < 0.001), while April (Songkran) showed the highest non-fatal odds (OR = 1.36, p = 0.002), suggesting its toll stems from crash volume, not severity. Interactions also cut lethality at intersections (head-on, ~37%; IRR = 0.49) and access points (fixed-object, ~70%; IRR = 0.21)—patterns additive models miss. Nighttime open roads, not festivals, emerge as the priority target for motorcycle-safety interventions.

Abstract: Pocket parks can provide important recreational and environmental benefits in dense urban areas, but their effectiveness depends on whether residents can reach them safely and comfortably. This study examines pedestrian accessibility to Hayy Al Ain Park in Al Mabela, Muscat, Oman, focusing on three dimensions: street connectivity, physical infrastructural barriers, and microclimatic constraints. A bilingual questionnaire using a five-point Likert scale was administered to 43 respondents, and the relationships among the study constructs were assessed using SmartPLS with bootstrapping. Although 69.8% of respondents lived within a 5–10-minute walk of the park, 34.9% reported visiting it rarely and 25.6% never visited. Respondents also reported limited sidewalk continuity, indirect or inconvenient routes, inadequate shade, and heat exposure as important barriers to walking. The structural model explained 32.7% of the variance in pocket park accessibility. Microclimatic Constraints showed the strongest relationship with accessibility and were the only statistically significant predictor, whereas Street Connectivity and Physical Infrastructural Barriers were not statistically significant. The findings suggest that proximity alone is insufficient for evaluating pocket park accessibility and highlight the importance of integrating pedestrian infrastructure and climate-responsive street design with neighborhood green-space planning.

Abstract: This study examines the relationship between AI-enabled digital connectivity and agricultural productivity in Saudi Arabia, with particular relevance to remote rural settings. Using annual time-series data covering 2000–2025, the study employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Nonlinear ARDL (NARDL) approaches to investigate long-run relationships, short-run dynamics, and asymmetries in the productivity response to changes in digital connectivity. Because direct and consistent national-level measures of agricultural AI adoption are unavailable, mobile cellular subscriptions are used as a proxy for AI-enabling digital connectivity and the underlying digital infrastructure that facilitates technology-enabled agricultural applications. The ARDL bounds test confirms a stable long-run relationship between digital connectivity and agricultural productivity, with the long-run estimate indicating a positive and statistically significant, but moderate, association between connectivity and cereal yield. The short-run results reveal dynamic and delayed responses, consistent with adjustment processes associated with technological adoption and integration. The NARDL estimates further demonstrate statistically significant asymmetry, with the Wald tests rejecting symmetry in both the long run and short run. In particular, negative changes in digital connectivity generate a delayed adverse productivity response, highlighting potential vulnerability to disruptions in digital access. Overall, the findings indicate that digital connectivity functions as a complementary long-run productivity factor and that its benefits depend not only on expanding access but also on reliable infrastructure, technological capabilities, and supportive institutional conditions. The results underscore the importance of resilient and inclusive digitalization strategies for agricultural development in resource-constrained and remote rural environments.

Abstract: Mixed-use redevelopment of obsolete urban land is widely prescribed across Europe, yet delivery frequently stalls under fragmented planning systems. This paper investigates the governance mechanism, rather than the design quality, that distinguishes successful delivery from stall. Four mixed-use districts built on former rail and port land in Barcelona, London, Hamburg and Paris are compared against a stalled contrast case in Madrid, drawing on transaction cost economics, institutional collective action theory and network-governance theory to argue that a single-purpose delivery vehicle resolves coordination problems that a fragmented, multi-actor planning process cannot. This claim is tested using a twenty-three-indicator multi-criteria rubric, within which a four-part governance sub-index captures timeline certainty, use flexibility, structured collaboration and legal security. Every delivered district is governed through a dedicated vehicle that holds land and accountability together, applies planning rules with bounded flexibility, and reinvests land-value uplift in the public realm. On the governance sub-index, the four delivered cases score between 7.0 and 8.6 out of 10, compared with 2.25 for the stalled case; governance-related indicators, though only a quarter of the full rubric, account for nearly half (47.9%) of the total performance gap between delivery and stall, a result that holds across 125 sensitivity tests on the model’s weighting. Governance design, not market context, is concluded to be the decisive variable in mixed-use delivery, translated here into a transferable specification for public administrators; the concern that such vehicles can concentrate value is also addressed, with a delivery vehicle judged necessary for successful delivery but not, on its own, sufficient to ensure a fair distribution of its benefits.

Abstract: Urban observatories support evidence-based planning yet less attention has been paid to whose values their indicators reflect and who decides what should be measured. This paper examines how decision-making authority is distributed within observatories and how plural values can be incorporated without sacrificing comparability. A six-dimensional coding matrix is applied to public documentation from 24 urban observatories while 8 community-led monitoring initiatives are examined as institutional precedents. The analysis reveals a consistent gap between stated commitments to inclusion and the forms of participation built into observatory governance. Decisions about indicator ownership, knowledge selection and review remain controlled by host institutions. However, community-led initiatives show that values can be elicited, translated into indicators and used accountably. These findings inform a Plural-Values Framework organized around three stages: eliciting diverse and potentially conflicting values, co-producing candidate indicators through transdisciplinary deliberation, and integrating them through multi-criteria and mixed-method evaluation. Governance and periodic review operate across all three stages. The framework retains the comparable indicators required by the Urban Monitoring Framework and SDG 11 while allowing communities to develop locally governed measures. It offers observatories an institutional design for combining comparability with community authority and locally grounded knowledge.

Abstract: Metropolitan regions have become the dominant spatial form of urbanisation in the twenty-first century, yet their governance structures remain poorly aligned with the functional dynamics that sustain them. Among these dynamics, mobility plays a central but paradoxical role: while it structures daily life, economic integration and territorial cohesion, it is still predominantly treated as a sectoral transport policy rather than as a core public function of metropolitan governance. This article reframes mobility as a Public Function of Common Interest (FPIC) and examines how its institutional recognition, or absence, shapes metropolitan governance and sustainability outcomes. Drawing on a comparative mixed-methods analysis of Greater London and two Brazilian metropolitan regions (Porto Alegre and Serra Gaúcha), the study develops an analytical framework linking mobility, governance capacity and metropolitan sustainability. The findings demonstrate that differences in mobility outcomes are less a function of economic development or technological capacity than of institutional design, coordination mechanisms and governance continuity. By positioning mobility as an organising principle of metropolitan governance, the article advances international debates on sustainable urban regions and offers a transferable analytical framework for metropolitan policy and planning.

Abstract: Research on urban heat adaptation remains concentrated on metropolitan contexts, addressing only marginally the other settlement forms that characterise an intermediate Italy, whose extent reaches 69.4% of the national territory. For these settlements, still scarcely investigated by urban climate research, developing a survey methodology able to correlate temperature and morphology in detail takes on a specific scientific value: the possibility of reading a limited number of morphologically representative situations in depth and, by typological analogy, referring the results to portions of the city not directly surveyed but morphologically similar. This study proposes and tests such an approach in Crema (Lombardy, Italy), through five UAV-based thermal transects (approximately 400×50 m each) surveyed on 26 June 2025, sampling as many representative morphological conditions of the city: historic fabric, commercial strip, residential settlement along the Serio river, and production areas. The results show that apparent surface temperature follows the morphological and material configuration of the fabric more than its functional land use. An exploratory comparison with Landsat 8 satellite data, conducted to empirically test the logic of typological-analogy extension, shows a weak direct correspondence between the two sources, attributable to the well-known distinction between surface and canopy-layer urban heat island; typological classification instead proves internally consistent when tested on satellite data alone extended to multiple points across the city, a finding that makes plausible, without demonstrating it, the extension of the method to the scale of UAV survey. The study therefore proposes the thermal transect as a diagnostic tool proportionate to the scale of intermediate cities, and identifies systematic multiscale verification as the research direction needed to consolidate these preliminary results.

Abstract: The quality of life (QoL) in social housing can be affected by many spatial and urban design features. Nevertheless, those are included in assessment models without a common quantitative model for their implementation. Therefore, a mathematical model for assessment of the contribution of spatial and urban design to QoL in Iraqi social housing was proposed. The developed model included five main indicators concerning accessibility, social sustainability and density, road network efficiency, safety and security and urban identity and social interaction. Indicator weights were estimated based on assessments by experts and residents, with indicator values normalized to a 0–1 scale. The proposed model was implemented for evaluation of three residential complexes in Mosul, Iraq. The weighting procedure involved 220 households and a multidisciplinary panel of 20 experts. The indicator with the highest integrated weight was social sustainability and urban density. Accessibility to basic facilities followed with the next highest weight. QoL estimated by the model was equal to 0.32 for Al-Khadraa, 0.42 for Al-Hadbaa and 0.50 for Al-Shurooq. The developed model produced the same ranking as the independent OPQoL assessments. The sensitivity analysis showed that ranking did not change under 50:50, 60:40 and 40:60 expert-resident weighting scenarios.

Abstract: The transition to occupancy-responsive building energy management is one of the most consequential and least-understood energy transitions in the commercial built environment. This systematic review traces how Occupancy Planning Management (OPM) technologies have co-evolved with organisational practices and regulatory regimes over four decades, from 1980s CAD platforms through IoT sensor networks to AI-enabled autonomous control, and examines why technical capability has repeatedly failed to translate into measurable energy performance gains. A PRISMA 2020-aligned search across six databases yielded 103 sources (72 peer-reviewed; 31 AACODS-appraised grey literature). Bibliometric analysis identifies three citation clusters: building energy performance, facility management strategy, and AI-driven occupancy prediction. Drawing on IEA EBC Annexes 53, 66, 79, and 95, the review demonstrates that occupancy-responsive HVAC control can reduce energy use substantially, but that the accuracy ceiling of demand-responsive building management is determined as much by behavioural model quality as by sensor hardware, a finding with direct implications for decarbonisation investment. An original Socio-Technical Co-Evolution Framework explains why energy transitions in OPM succeed only when technological capability, organisational paradigm, and socio-regulatory context align simultaneously, accounting for patterns that technology-centred adoption models cannot. A governance quadrant for privacy-preserving occupancy sensing, a standardised four-level occupancy lexicon, and a prioritised ten-gap research agenda complete the practical contribution.

Abstract: Urban regeneration increasingly uses tourism scenario activation to renew heritage, public space and local economies. Yet the production of urban attractiveness can intensify tourism gentrification, commercial reorientation and the erosion of ordinary urban life. This integrative review synthesises research across urban regeneration, touristification, tourism gentrification, place branding, speculative and platform urbanism, liveability, publicness and collaborative governance. Through a problem-driven comparison of these literatures, it formalises touristic desirability as the relational and institutionally organised value logic through which anticipated visitor-oriented attention, experience and value shape what becomes visible, investable, programmable and materially actionable. It develops urban cohabitation as an evaluative criterion for whether tourism-led regeneration sustains heterogeneous forms of residence, use, livelihood, memory and collective agency. The review identifies four operations of desirability and eight interdependent conditions of cohabitation, then translates their relationship into governance principles centred on anticipation, shared urban capacities, alignment of value, voice and responsibility, and sustained public and collective direction. It concludes that regeneration becomes inclusive when becoming more visitor-oriented strengthens, rather than narrows, the conditions through which cities remain inhabitable, plural and collectively governable.

Abstract: Urban sustainability is often studied through separate lenses of mobility, public space, climate resilience, heritage, and smart-city technology, leaving limited understanding of how residents prioritize these dimensions when they must make explicit trade-offs. This study develops a discrete choice experiment to identify the urban future people would choose when alternative transformation pathways are presented simultaneously. The design comprises six attributes—urban form and public space, mobility and access, street safety, green and climate infrastructure, heritage and local identity, and smart urban services—together with a monthly household cost. Using face-to-face survey data from 400 respondents comprising 3,200 choice situations and 9,600 alternative observations, preferences were estimated with a panel mixed logit model, followed by relative-importance, willingness-to-pay, and scenario-simulation analyses. Street safety emerged as the strongest driver of choice, accounting for 27.9% of total preference importance, followed by mobility and access (17.8%) and green/climate infrastructure (15.9%). Monthly willingness to pay was highest for a one-level improvement in street safety (PKR 1,158), while smart urban services received the lowest valuation (PKR 489). Scenario simulation showed that the Integrated City captured 53.9% of predicted choices, substantially exceeding the Mobility City, Green City, Smart City, and Status Quo alternatives. The study contributes an integrated, resident-centred framework for evaluating urban transformation across place, movement, and transition, demonstrating that desirable urban futures are shaped less by technological sophistication alone than by the combined provision of safety, accessibility, environmental quality, and everyday urban value.

Abstract: Analytical categories traditionally used to describe urban complexity—boundaries, fragmentation, segregation, enclaves—tend to portray spatial divisions as stable entities, privileging discontinuity over the relational processes through which it is produced. This limitation is particularly evident in cities marked by prolonged political instability, overlapping governance, or accelerated transformation. This article proposes the socio-spatial interface as a relational analytical framework that reframes rather than replaces the notion of boundary, understood as a configuration through which spatial forms, everyday practices, institutional arrangements, power relations, and historical conditions interact. Drawing on Lefebvre, Massey, de Certeau, and Bourdieu, and adopting a situated epistemology informed by Wittgenstein and Rancière, the article develops a four-dimensional methodological framework—institutional arrangements, material configurations, everyday practices and mobilities, and representations/memories/affects—derived from a doctoral fieldwork combining institutional documents, observation, a mobility questionnaire, in-depth interviews, and mental mapping. The framework is applied to three emblematic interfaces in Beirut—Chiyah–Aïn el-Remmaneh, Furn el-Chebbak, and Ghobeiry—showing how the same relational structure produces markedly different configurations of separation, hybridity, and negotiated proximity. The article contributes a situated approach to territorial analysis capable of informing architectural and urban design without reducing urban complexity to fixed spatial classifications.

Abstract: This research aims to help design artifacts that better fit their users, to promote their well-being. In urban spaces, well-being is affected by physical factors (such as the air quality) and by mental factors (the feeling the space affords its users). Focusing on mental well-being, a growing body of research focuses on the visual experience of urban spaces, and specifically on the aspect of visual impression. Studies of visual impression seek to link visual features of spaces to linguistic descriptions used by their users (e.g., referring to a space as “inviting”). Such works can be used to identify relations between visual features and our experience of space that are potentially generalizable, and thus useful for designing. However, as an emerging subfield, the study of visual impression of urban spaces is currently fragmented and would benefit from syntheses of the work done to date. Here, we systematically review studies of visual impression in urban settings, and or-ganize these across three dimensions: (1) purpose, (2) method and (3) findings. We identify research gaps in the field, challenges, and potential paths for moving forward.

Abstract: Urban regeneration has become a central focus in global urban studies, increasingly linked to the dual imperatives of sustainability and urban resilience. According to Christopher Alexander's theories of living structure and pattern language, traditional built environments emerge through progressive adaptation rather than top-down design. Moreover, historic urban fabrics evolve through continuous refinement of spatial solutions that simultaneously respond to environmental, functional, and social needs. Therefore, this study situates urban regeneration within a theoretical framework that recognizes traditional settlements as complex adaptive systems rather than static heritage.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. Whereas Chinese urban villages transition from a demolition–reconstruction model, which Alexander would critique as disrupting the evolutionary processes that generate coherent urban fabrics, to 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 and 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 (equitable distribution of costs and benefits) 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: The physical environment of a neighborhood and its ambient population density appears to be closely related, but this relationship is difficult to measure quantitatively. A previous study addressed this challenge by developing a baseline machine learning model capable of estimating Average Hourly Ambient Population Density (AHAPD) from neighborhood physical environment features, achieving 75.9% accuracy. This study compares the performance of the baseline model with collective human intuition and AI models in estimating AHAPD at the neighborhood level. A 29-section questionnaire was used to evaluate the performance of the three respondent types across three metrics: accuracy, reasoning, and confidence. In total, 100 response sets were analysed, comprising 94 human responses, five responses from vision-capable AI models, and one output from the previously trained XGBoost baseline model. The results show that the ML baseline model, trained on a relatively small dataset using 16 input features, outperformed the average human score and the average score of five selected commercially available AI models, while achieving accuracy comparable to the average human with domain expertise. The study concludes with case studies and discussion of differences in reasoning behavior, confidence levels, and the strengths and weaknesses of each respondent type.

Abstract: The large-scale withdrawal of military forces from urban areas represents one of the most significant drivers of land-use change in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. Based on a national database of former military sites in Hungary, this study investigates the changes in the residential population and social environment of these sites as an outcome of brownfield regeneration. The research combines statistical data analysis of occupational status for the census years 2001, 2011, and 2022 with qualitative methods, including semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted across four case study locations in three Hungarian second-tier cities. The findings reveal three active governance configurations producing distinct social trajectories: social exclusion under market dominance, social mix under sustained municipal involvement, and gentrification in a transitional model where the state eventually withdraws. Ultimately, the study concludes that the social outcomes of military brownfield regeneration are primarily determined by the governance dynamic between municipal authorities and private market actors rather than site attributes alone. Consequently, early and sustained municipal engagement remains the key factor for achieving socially balanced regeneration outcomes.

Abstract: Dense urban settlements often depend on streets, thresholds, and residual spaces to support mobility, livelihoods, social interaction, and environmental adaptation. This study examines how street morphology, everyday public-space use, and climatic conditions interact within a compact urban settlement. An integrated single-case research design combined urban-context mapping, land-use analysis, historical building-footprint comparison, hourly activity mapping, social-interaction mapping, architectural sections, field observation, photographic documentation, and seasonal environmental interpretation. The findings show that the settlement benefits from proximity to major transport routes and urban services, but internal accessibility is constrained by narrow lanes, limited outward connections, fragmented pedestrian conditions, and uneven building–street interfaces. Incremental consolidation between 2000 and 2022 reduced open space and increased reliance on streets, thresholds, courtyards, and rooftops for movement, domestic activities, livelihood practices, and social interaction. Activity concentrations were strongest near mixed-use frontages, intersections, public facilities, and visible thresholds. Dense building arrangements provided useful shade but also restricted ventilation and intensified moisture retention. Standing water, inadequate drainage, exposed utilities, and waste accumulation further reduced environmental quality. The study concludes that context-sensitive upgrading should prioritize pedestrian continuity, drainage improvement, safer utilities, shaded social nodes, and protection of mixed-use livelihoods while retaining the settlement’s established socio-spatial structure.