Lucy Jiang, Amy Seunghyun Lee, Jon E. Froehlich
et al.
Public art can hold cultural, social, political, and aesthetic significance, enriching urban environments and promoting well-being. However, a majority of urban art is inaccessible to blind and low vision (BLV) people. Most art access research has focused on private and curated settings (e.g., museums, galleries) and most urban access work has centered on outdoor navigation, leaving urban and public art accessibility largely understudied. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 BLV participants, using design probes featuring AI-generated descriptions and real-time AI interactions to investigate preferences for both discovering and engaging with urban art. We found that BLV people valued spontaneous art exploration, multisensory (e.g., tactile, auditory, olfactory) engagement, and detailed descriptions of culturally significant artwork. Participants also highlighted challenges distinct to urban art contexts: safety took precedence over art exploration, multisensory access measures could be disruptive to others in the public space, and inaccurate AI descriptions could lead to cultural erasure. Our contributions include empirical insights on BLV preferences for urban art discovery and engagement, seven design dimensions for public art access solutions, and implications for expanding HCI urban accessibility research beyond navigation.
Abstract A compact city is one of the leading solutions to counteract the negative impact of climate change. It is also considered a node in the Transit-Oriented Development network. However, while a higher urban density can, on the one hand, positively influence public infrastructure, transport and economics, on the other hand, as we learn from the analysis of Berghauser Pont et al., it can have negative environmental, social and health impacts. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to look for the trade-offs, including density and provision of open green areas that will serve climate change adaptation. While climate change adaptation has been explored through extensive literature, there is still much to research, especially when dealing with small towns as an element of the region. Therefore, this paper focuses on a small town—Zgierz (less than 60.000 inhabitants) post-industrial town in central Poland near Lodz. The study presents the quantitative analyses of the urban form of Zgierz town centre, prepared using GIS using open-source data. First, we estimated the current residential densities and calculated population densities by applying the morphological types’ framework. Then we examined the provision and the actual distances to green areas. Moreover, the results were compared with local urban development documents. In conclusion, this paper presents the recommendations for balancing the density and amount of open green areas for the town centre of Zgierz and the scenarios for densifying urban lots in the heritage part of the town.
Dhruv Tapadia, Tithi Soladhara, Shelly Kulsheshtra
et al.
India’s In-Situ Slum Redevelopment (ISSR) vertical of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban was terminated in September 2024 after delivering barely one-quarter of its sanctioned dwellings. This study interrogates that discontinuation through Frank Fischer’s four-tier public-policy framework, integrating secondary data, national audits and 109 household surveys across four ISSR sites in Ahmedabad. Contextual analysis confirms that ISSR targeted a genuine housing deficit in agglomerated labour markets, yet technical verification reveals only 23 % completion and persistent infrastructure gaps. Situational validation highlights post-occupancy cost spirals, dysfunctional resident-welfare associations and a statistically significant link (χ² = 53.4, p < 0.001) between governance quality and maintenance-fee compliance. Societal vindication exposes vertical “poverty traps”: 62 % of households face higher living expenses and 41 % report lost informal livelihoods. Ideological review finds the developer-led model over-estimated land-value capture and under-valued community stewardship, echoing global evidence from Jakarta and Cairo. The study concludes that ISSR’s failure stems from misaligned economic incentives, weak institutional capacity and neglect of behavioural adaptation. Re-imagined supply-side programmes must pair incremental upgrading and portable subsidies with enforceable post-occupancy governance to preserve agglomeration benefits while ensuring social equity. Findings offer transferable lessons for secondary Indian cities planning future slum-housing interventions.
Abdullh Banger, Mark Brussel, Anna Grigolon
et al.
Today, walkability is a priority in urban planning worldwide due to its positive impact on promoting sustainable cities. Although numerous studies have assessed walkability using various indices, they do not capture pedestrian needs, nor account for spatial variations, nor integrate key methodological considerations from the field of walkability. The novelty of this study is the development of the Contextualized Spatial Network – Based Walkability (CSNW) index to objectively measure walkability at multiple levels (area, route, and location) using a geographic information system – based. It follows a structured methodology, starting with the identification of relevant walkability factors through literature review and expert surveys. To operationalise the CSNW index, the analytic hierarchy process is used to assign weights. Results indicate that accessibility and traffic safety are the most influential factors determining walkability, and pleasurability is the least. Further, the index’s thematic maps reveal significant disparities in walkability levels for different urban segments.
Eszter Tóth, Anna Szilágyi-Nagy, Zsófia Földi
et al.
The increasing disconnect between children and their natural environment has profound implications for their development and well-being. This study examines strategies to foster reconnection by employing a Living Lab approach in Vác, Hungary, grounded in social constructivist landscape theory. Through a mixed-method framework—including drawings, narrative interviews, questionnaires, observations, and spatial mappings—the research explores how children, parents, and landscape architecture students perceive and engage with nature. The findings reveal significant discrepancies in these perspectives, particularly regarding the value of unstructured natural interactions versus structured urban green spaces. By highlighting these divergences, the study underscores the need for participatory planning approaches that integrate children’s voices to design urban environments with both formal and informal greenspaces that support spontaneous exploration.
Urban segregation refers to the physical and social division of people, often driving inequalities within cities and exacerbating socioeconomic and racial tensions. While most studies focus on residential spaces, they often neglect segregation across "activity spaces" where people work, socialize, and engage in leisure. Human mobility data offers new opportunities to analyze broader segregation patterns, encompassing both residential and activity spaces, but challenges existing methods in capturing the complexity and local nuances of urban segregation. This work introduces InclusiViz, a novel visual analytics system for multi-level analysis of urban segregation, facilitating the development of targeted, data-driven interventions. Specifically, we developed a deep learning model to predict mobility patterns across social groups using environmental features, augmented with explainable AI to reveal how these features influence segregation. The system integrates innovative visualizations that allow users to explore segregation patterns from broad overviews to fine-grained detail and evaluate urban planning interventions with real-time feedback. We conducted a quantitative evaluation to validate the model's accuracy and efficiency. Two case studies and expert interviews with social scientists and urban analysts demonstrated the system's effectiveness, highlighting its potential to guide urban planning toward more inclusive cities.
Urban rural common prosperity is the ultimate goal of narrowing the gap between urban and rural areas and promoting urban rural integration development, and it is an indispensable and important element in the common wealth goal of Chinese style modernization.
Streetscapes are an essential component of urban space. Their assessment is presently either limited to morphometric properties of their mass skeleton or requires labor-intensive qualitative evaluations of visually perceived qualities. This paper introduces SAGAI: Streetscape Analysis with Generative Artificial Intelligence, a modular workflow for scoring street-level urban scenes using open-access data and vision-language models. SAGAI integrates OpenStreetMap geometries, Google Street View imagery, and a lightweight version of the LLaVA model to generate structured spatial indicators from images via customizable natural language prompts. The pipeline includes an automated mapping module that aggregates visual scores at both the point and street levels, enabling direct cartographic interpretation. It operates without task-specific training or proprietary software dependencies, supporting scalable and interpretable analysis of urban environments. Two exploratory case studies in Nice and Vienna illustrate SAGAI's capacity to produce geospatial outputs from vision-language inference. The initial results show strong performance for binary urban-rural scene classification, moderate precision in commercial feature detection, and lower estimates, but still informative, of sidewalk width. Fully deployable by any user, SAGAI can be easily adapted to a wide range of urban research themes, such as walkability, safety, or urban design, through prompt modification alone.
Understanding and predicting pedestrian dynamics has become essential for shaping safer, more responsive, and human-centered urban environments. This study conducts a comprehensive scientometric analysis of research on data-driven pedestrian trajectory prediction and crowd simulation, mapping its intellectual evolution and interdisciplinary structure. Using bibliometric data from the Web of Science Core Collection, we employ SciExplorer and Bibliometrix to identify major trends, influential contributors, and emerging frontiers. Results reveal a strong convergence between artificial intelligence, urban informatics, and crowd behavior modeling--driven by graph neural networks, transformers, and generative models. Beyond technical advances, the field increasingly informs urban mobility design, public safety planning, and digital twin development for smart cities. However, challenges remain in ensuring interpretability, inclusivity, and cross-domain transferability. By connecting methodological trajectories with urban applications, this work highlights how data-driven approaches can enrich urban governance and pave the way for adaptive, socially responsible mobility intelligence in future cities.
Urban crises reveal the true essence of cities: their ability to either withstand disorder or collapse under its pressure. This article explores how antifragility principles can transforms urban disruption into levers for reinforcement and innovation. While resilience seeks to restore a lost balance, antifragility goes further: it pushes cities to improve through shocks. Across a critical analysis of post-crisis strategies and the identification of fifteen fundamental theoretical principles, this work proposes a new framework, structuring a proactive and evolutionary approach to urban development. Medellín, Singapore and Fukushima already illustrate this dynamic, showing that adversity can catalyse profound transformations. By integrating institutional flexibility, strategic diversity and self-organization, antifragility poses itself as an alternative to the limits of resilience. Can this model really redefine the way cities adapt to crises? This article paves the way for a decisive reflection to rethink urban planning in an uncertain world.
نگار خیابان چیان, معصومه خامه, حسن سجادزاده
et al.
توجه به تابآوری فضایی میادین شهری بهعنوان یکی از مهمترین عناصر شهر، نقش غیرقابلانکاری در حفظ حیات ذهنی و عینی شهرها دارد. این پژوهش برای پاسخ به این سؤال که ارتباط عوامل اجتماعی و کالبدی در تابآوری فضایی میدان شهری چگونه است؟ و باهدف یافتن نسبت این عوامل، انجام گرفته است. مقاله حاضر توسعهای و کاربردی بوده و روش تحقیق ترکیبی از کیفی و کمی میباشد. جهت گردآوری اطلاعات با بهرهگیری از منابع اسنادی مدل مفهومی تدوین گردید. در بخش کیفی، از ابزار مشاهده، مصاحبه و پرسشنامه در تبیین و تحلیل عوامل، همچنین به جهت تحلیل ارزش هم پیوندی در بخش کمی از نرمافزار (City engine) استفاده شده است. یافتهها تأثیرگذاری بعد فرهنگی بناهای مرکزی میادین شهری بهعنوان جزئی از کالبد، در ارتقاء تابآوری فضایی از منظر عوامل اجتماعی را نشان میدهد. نتایج حاکی از آن است که با بالاتر رفتن ارزش هم پیوندی در بعد کالبدی، شاخصهای بعد اجتماعی نیز ارتقا مییابند. همچنین عوامل اجتماعی و کالبدی در ایجاد تابآوری فضایی دارای ارتباط بوده و بر یکدیگر مؤثرند و حتی در برخی شاخصها، میتوانند مکمل کمبودهای یکدیگر باشند.
Unlike the linear model of economic development, which is based on taking resources from nature, turning them into a finished product and using that product as the final stage of the life cycle of resources, without taking into account the degree of pollution they cause, there is a so-called circular model. The circular model of the economy is an alternative to the linear model. This means that with the circular model, the use of the finished product does not represent the last phase of the life cycle of the resource, but that used product, through the application of various processes, serves as a resource in further production. The main goal of the circular economic model is to reduce waste and pollution, but also to increase the productivity of resources. Longer use of products, machines, and other fixed assets results in higher productivity of the resources that make up their basic input. One of the main goals of the circular economy is the elimination or at least reduction of pollution, and one of the biggest pollutants is the excessive emission of carbon dioxide, whose chemical formula is 〖CO〗2. For this reason, the authors of this research recognized this area as crucial for further economic development. By applying various processes and procedures in developed countries, there was a decrease in the amount of 〖CO〗2emissions, while at the same time there was no decrease in economic activities and production in the economies of those countries, but quite the opposite, at the same time there was an increase in the gross national product (GDP). Serbia should use these countries as an example and, using the good practice of developed countries, start as soon as possible with a more extensive transition from a linear to a circular model of economic development, i.e. bring a series of measures, procedures, laws as soon as possible in order to reduce the emission of 〖CO〗2. In accordance with this, the logical conclusion would be that the scientific goal of this research work is to identify the role of reducing 〖CO〗2 emissions as an important potential for the transition from a linear to a circular model of economic development, without jeopardizing the level of real GDP.
The cultural tradition of tie cloth is a typical Indonesian tradition which is the origin of the cultural ecosystem of a region. Ikat cloth has even become an integral part of traditional ceremonial ceremonies, traditional marriage ceremonies, and religious ceremonies. Tie fabrics have different motifs in each region according to the peculiarities of the region itself. Lewokluok Village is a village in East Flores Regency, which has a variety of ikat motifs. The diversity of the ikat motifs is a symbol of unifying the culture of Lewokluok village from the many tribes that inhabit Lewokluok village. The provision of an tie craft center is an effort to overcome the problems faced by tie weaving craftsmen in preserving the tie culture, promoting tie weaving, and marketing the existing tie weaving works. The craft center is a place that is used as a center for production, promotion, tourism, and cultivation activities as well as the cultural development of an area. The design of the Lewokluok tie craft center uses the application of fractals. Fractal is a geometric shape that is irregular in shape, contorted but has similarities with itself. This fractal formation uses the principle of self-similarity from the basic pattern, namely the Lewokluok tie motif which is transformed into the form of building mass. This study uses a descriptive analysis method, starting from data collection consisting of primary data and secondary data. This data is obtained from the results of observations, interviews, and documentation as well as from literature studies and comparative studies of similar objects and themes. This data is then analyzed with various alternatives to produce the final design concept. In the end, it can produce a design center for Lewokluok tie weaving according to its function and purpose and increase the potential for cultural tourism in Lewokluok by applying fractals to the shape of the building that shows the characteristics of Lewokluok tie motifs.
Details in building design and construction. Including walls, roofs, Urban renewal. Urban redevelopment
Revitalization is an important process in action area planning, especially in the heritage sites located within urban area contexts. Varied techniques and tools of revitalization are applied at various spatial levels, some are suitable for the urban scope, and others suit the architectural building scope. Urban DNA is a term used academically to reflect social, economic, and urban characteristics but has a different interpretation that depends on the spatial scale and context. In action areas, urban DNA refers to the essential visual, social, economic, and physical characteristics that preserve the vital structure of an urban area. Heritage areas are vital in a city structure, in the journey of maximizing the urban DNA chrematistics of heritage sites, sometimes the urban DNA is lost in the process. This paper identifies and encapsulates the importance of Urban DNA in heritage site considerations in the revitalization process within heritage urban context to maximize the socio-economic and visual impacts, especially in declined cities such as Foah City the case study in the Nile Delta region in Egypt. The results pinpoint the most effective urban DNA structure for the declined Foah Heritage Center, despite the city's importance as a ranked third of heritage cities in the country.
Characterizing urban environments with broad coverages and high precision is more important than ever for achieving the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as half of the world's populations are living in cities. Urban building height as a fundamental 3D urban structural feature has far-reaching applications. However, so far, producing readily available datasets of recent urban building heights with fine spatial resolutions and global coverages remains a challenging task. Here, we provide an up-to-date global product of urban building heights based on a fine grid size of 150 m around 2020 by combining the spaceborne lidar instrument of GEDI and multi-sourced data including remotely sensed images (i.e., Landsat-8, Sentinel-2, and Sentinel-1) and topographic data. Our results revealed that the estimated method of building height samples based on the GEDI data was effective with 0.78 of Pearson's r and 3.67 m of RMSE in comparison to the reference data. The mapping product also demonstrated good performance as indicated by its strong correlation with the reference data (i.e., Pearson's r = 0.71, RMSE = 4.60 m). Compared with the currently existing products, our global urban building height map holds the ability to provide a higher spatial resolution (i.e., 150 m) with a great level of inherent details about the spatial heterogeneity and flexibility of updating using the GEDI samples as inputs. This work will boost future urban studies across many fields including climate, environmental, ecological, and social sciences.
Simon Schrodi, Ferdinand Briegel, Max Argus
et al.
Climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of many extreme weather events, including heatwaves, which results in increased thermal discomfort and mortality rates. While global mitigation action is undoubtedly necessary, so is climate adaptation, e.g., through climate-sensitive urban planning. Among the most promising strategies is harnessing the benefits of urban trees in shading and cooling pedestrian-level environments. Our work investigates the challenge of optimal placement of such trees. Physical simulations can estimate the radiative and thermal impact of trees on human thermal comfort but induce high computational costs. This rules out optimization of tree placements over large areas and considering effects over longer time scales. Hence, we employ neural networks to simulate the point-wise mean radiant temperatures--a driving factor of outdoor human thermal comfort--across various time scales, spanning from daily variations to extended time scales of heatwave events and even decades. To optimize tree placements, we harness the innate local effect of trees within the iterated local search framework with tailored adaptations. We show the efficacy of our approach across a wide spectrum of study areas and time scales. We believe that our approach is a step towards empowering decision-makers, urban designers and planners to proactively and effectively assess the potential of urban trees to mitigate heat stress.
Takahiro Yabe, Bernardo Garcia Bulle Bueno, Xiaowen Dong
et al.
Diversity of physical encounters and social interactions in urban environments are known to spur economic productivity and innovation in cities, while also to foster social capital and resilience of communities. However, mobility restrictions during the pandemic have forced people to substantially reduce urban physical encounters, raising questions on the social implications of such behavioral changes. In this paper, we study how the income diversity of urban encounters have changed during different periods throughout the pandemic, using a large-scale, privacy-enhanced mobility dataset of more than one million anonymized mobile phone users in four large US cities, collected across three years spanning before and during the pandemic. We find that the diversity of urban encounters have substantially decreased (by 15% to 30%) during the pandemic and has persisted through late 2021, even though aggregated mobility metrics have recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Counterfactual analyses show that while the reduction of outside activities (higher rates of staying at home) was a major factor that contributed to decreased diversity in the early stages of the pandemic, behavioral changes including lower willingness to explore new places and changes in visitation preferences further worsened the long-term diversity of encounters. Our findings suggest that the pandemic could have long-lasting negative effects on urban income diversity, and provide implications for managing the trade-off between the stringency of COVID-19 policies and the diversity of urban encounters as we move beyond the pandemic.
Urban density, in the form of residents' and visitors' concentration, is long considered to foster diverse exchanges of interpersonal knowledge and skills, which are intrinsic to sustainable human settlements. However, with current urban studies primarily devoted to city and district-level analysis, we cannot unveil the elemental connection between urban density and diversity. Here we use an anonymized and privacy-enhanced mobile data set of 0.5 million opted-in users from three metropolitan areas in the U.S to show that at the scale of urban streets, density is not the only path to diversity. We represent the diversity of each street with the Experienced Social Mixing (ESM), which describes the chances of people meeting diverse income groups throughout their daily experience. We conduct multiple experiments and show that the concentration of visitors only explains 26% of street-level ESM. However, adjacent amenities, residential diversity, and income level account for 44% of the ESM. Moreover, using longitudinal business data, we show that streets with an increased number of food businesses have seen an increased ESM from 2016 to 2018. Lastly, although streets with more visitors are more likely to have crime, diverse streets tend to have fewer crimes. These findings suggest that cities can leverage many tools beyond density to curate a diverse and safe street experience for people.