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In the realm of architectural evolution, the paradigm of static built environments has progressively shifted towards adaptive, responsive, and intelligent spaces. This paper presents a pioneering government-funded applied research project, the 'Spatially Intelligent Arts Centre', which exemplifies the convergence of multiple disciplines in the pursuit of redefining the traditional notion of a static arts centre. This endeavour sought to transform an existing arts centre building into a dynamic and intelligent space, thereby redefining its agency to foster novel user experiences and optimize operational efficiency. The project transcended conventional boundaries by merging the expertise of architects, computer scientists, user experience designers, spatial computing specialists, technology developers, and interface designers. Through transdisciplinary collaboration and adopting a design-thinking methodology, the project not only challenges the conventional limitations of architectural design but also offers a tangible illustration of the burgeoning field of human-building interaction research and practice. This paper details the conceptual underpinnings, technical implementations, and experiential outcomes of the Spatially Intelligent Arts Centre project, underscoring its significance as a model for implementation of human-building interaction in the context of a cultural building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spotlighting a "green building" project in Chicago (East Garfield Park), this paper explores the various cultural, geographical, and topological factors that serve to pluralize land commodification pathways. Building on the scholarship on rent capture, I re-assemble the politics of green gentrification in East Garfield Park in order to lay bare the dynamic interactions between structure (e.g. financialization of urban space), agency (e.g. expression of needs, purposes, interests), and spatial materiality (e.g. landscapes of built environment). My approach draws on Polanyian geographies, focusing in particular on plural social agencies, the impact of spatial infrastructural configurations on local politics, and the role of narrative/script-making in land development. The resulting conversation entails thicker criticism of municipal planning practices that fail to challenge the foundational assumptions of land market and property economy. Moreover, a number of implications arise from the performative political possibilities of spatial infrastructure: while broader economic structures may constrain the agency of diverse actants, spatial landscapes can nevertheless prove enabling for transformative value politics, with competing narratives on "what is the best use for the land" defying a singular ontology of land as "real-estate-land." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to show the potential value of using the constructivist grounded theory (CGT) methodology in the Urban and Regional Planning discipline. This is done by reflecting on the application of the CGT fundamentals defined by Kathy Charmaz, applied in a doctoral thesis in Urban and Regional Planning. The substantive area of research in which the thesis took place was the practical training experience of planners in becoming professionally registered. The thesis collected primary data through interviews with 14 planners who have undergone the process of practical training to record, document, and analyse their experiences as a prerequisite and requirement of professional registration. The use of the CGT methodology provides valuable insight into the registration process of planners in South Africa and encourages doctoral candidates to use CGT methodology with the aim of generating new knowledge and theory in the built environment. This paper recommends that CGT methodology should be encouraged, particularly when contributing to fields that are under-researched, limited, or non-existent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a computational design-support tool created in response to safe-distancing measures enforced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The tool was developed for a specific use case: understanding congestion in crowded migrant worker dormitories that experienced high rates of COVID-19 transmission in 2020. Building from agent-based and network-based computational simulations, the tool presents a hybrid method for simulating building resident movements based on known or pre-determined schedules and likely itineraries. This hybrid method affords the design tool a novel approach to simultaneous exploration of spatial and temporal design scenarios. The paper demonstrates the use of the tool on an anonymised case study of a high-density migrant worker dormitory, comparing results from a baseline configuration against design variations that modify dormitory physical configuration and schedule. Comparisons between the design scenarios provide evidence for reflections on pandemic-resilient design and operation strategies for dormitories. A conclusions section considers the extent to which the model and case study results are applicable to other dense institutional buildings and describes the paper's contributions to general understanding of configurational and operational aspects of resilience in the built environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale language-image (LLI) models have the potential to open new forms of critical practice through architectural research. Their success enables designers to research within discourses that are profoundly connected to the built environment but did not previously have the resources to engage in spatial research. Although LLI models do not generate coherent building ensembles, they offer an esthetic experience of an AI infused design practice. This paper contextualizes diffusion models architecturally. Through a comparison of approaches to diffusion models in architecture, this paper outlines data-centric methods that allow architects to design critically using computation. The design of text-driven latent spaces extends the histories of typological design to synthetic environments including non-building data into an architectural space. More than synthesizing quantic ratios in various arrangements, the architect contributes by assessing new categorical differences into generated work. The architects' creativity can elevate LLI models with a synthetic architecture, nonexistent in the data sets the models learned from. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores potentials for increasing residents' wellbeing in multi-family social housing (MSH) undergoing energy renovation. The renovation measures needed to reach national and global climate goals are often not financially feasible when viewed in isolation. Therefore, it is relevant to identify potentials for added value, which can justify more extensive measures. This paper is based on the hypothesis that every renovation project holds potentials for added value in terms of increased resident wellbeing. Further, that it is crucial to extend current understandings of wellbeing beyond single, quantitative wellbeing parameters in order to promote more holistic, long-term sustainable renovation solutions. The paper sheds light on potentials for increased resident wellbeing based on an analysis of residents' experience and satisfaction with gestures in the existing built environment and comparing these findings to their perceived health. The analysis is based on data collected through a mixed-methods approach in three MSH areas facing extensive renovation. The findings demonstrate and exemplify that energy renovation measures may influence a number of interrelated physiological, mental and social wellbeing aspects across scales. As such, the paper contributes with new insights, which can help promote previously neglected aspects of resident wellbeing in future energy renovation design processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research reveals the interrelations between gentrification and policing, yet this paper introduces the unheard perspective of the of police on their role in gentrification. The study focuses on South Tel Aviv, which houses immigrants, drug addicts, prostitution and houselessness. It is undergoing massive urban renewal and has become the most policed area in the city. Methodology includes interviews with police officers (N-15), ethnography with urban police and spatial analysis of urban renewal. The paper argues that: 1. Gentrifying a high-crime neighborhood triggers a collision of urban forces and spatial negotiations amid users, institutions, and areas in the city. 2. Police play a significant role in this process and must operate intensive borderwork on various scales, with technology becoming a tool for internal, microgeographical social borderwork. 3. Policing gentrification raises reflexivity among officers regarding their profession, social obligation and position in urban politics. The paper concludes with the concept of policing temporality to describe the role of police in gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To reclaim their seat in the rapidly growing market of virtual space, designers of the built environment can benefit from reevaluating theories that see the virtual as a mere extension/reflection of the physical. By claiming ontological autonomy from external worlds, the virtual is liberated from the hegemonic control of the physical. To explore the opportunities that such disruption in the physical/virtual continuum offers, I reflect on a series of pedagogical experiments that challenge the "myth of total virtuality"—the idea that the ultimate virtual experience is total immersion. The persistent obsession to fully immerse the user in a supposedly unmediated interiority of the virtual is evident in the minimization of the virtual reality apparatus to a state of almost nothingness. In this paper, I introduce a series of alienation/defamiliarization strategies, through which designers can invoke awareness about the mediation involved in a virtual experience—a condition that I refer to as "metavirtual." One strategy emphasizes the pixelated ontology of the virtual space by techniques of glitching, low-resolution, low-fidelity, and low-color bitmap renders. Another involves manipulating the phenomenological expectations that our perception often experiences in non-virtual environments. This includes, not only a reconceptualization of the spatial object but also revisiting the agency of the subject in the virtual world. Different modes of spatial experience through portals, flying, and teleportation, affect the subject's perception of space, and thereby alter their measurement of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neighbourhood-level economic inequality is thought to have important implications for social, political, and economic attitudes and behaviours. However, due to a lack of available data, to date it has been impossible to investigate how inequality varies across neighbourhoods in the UK. In this paper, I develop a novel measure of within-neighbourhood inequality in the UK by exploiting data on housing values for over 26.6 million addresses – nearly the universe of residential properties in the UK. Across two surveys, I demonstrate that housing value inequality is perceptually-salient – what people see around them in terms of housing discrepancies is associated with their beliefs about inequality. This new measure of local, salient inequality represents a powerful tool with which to investigate both the anatomy of local inequality in the UK, as well as its attitudinal and behavioural consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The seeking of potential rents directs flows of investment into built and natural environments, suffusing volatility into urban and rural landscapes, generating gentrification and other forms of land use change, and displacing lives and livelihoods to make space for 'improvement', 'highest and best use', 'revitalization', or the like. In this paper we argue that potential rents are captured at the cost of potential lives, and that rent gap theory, long central (and limited) to gentrification theory, is more widely applicable to the dynamics of land use change and uneven geographical development in capitalist societies. By reading David Harvey's analyses of rent and accumulation by dispossession as a sophisticated formulation of rent gap theory, we relate the seeking and capturing of potential rents to the power of landed developer interests and a broadened conceptualization of rentiership. We furthermore relate the seeking of potential rents to an ideology of limitless accumulation, and the striving to rein in potential rents to ideas of degrowth and the need for a culture and a politics of limits. Brief vignettes from the 'primary sector' (fisheries in the Baltic Sea, dairy farming in Europe, and small-scale farming in Sweden) suggestively illustrate our central argument that the seeking and capturing of potential rents stand in stark opposition to potentials for wellbeing and flourishing of human and non-human lives. We conclude that constraining potential rents – founded as they are on faith in limitless growth – requires a culture of self-limitation and politically imposed limitations commensurable with post-capitalist societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discretionary planning supports the provision of public benefits when changes in zoning create additional value on private development sites. This paper draws on two case studies in Toronto, exploring how discretion shapes the broader political and planning policy context in which public benefits are secured from private development. The cases show that even within the same city planning department, variations exist in the application of discretion in planning decisions, which lead to different approaches to securing public benefits. Discretionary planning tools, such as density bonuses, are of consequence for political conflicts over local priorities, democratic accountability, and the built environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban building energy modelling (UBEM) is a prevalent research method to examine the multi-scale building to urban renovation in mitigating global energy-related carbon emissions. However, only a few studies delineate a complete workflow from generation to application using UBEM. In particular, to facilitate the designing of sustainable built environments, existing research needs to emphasize the integration of multi-scale energy performance evaluation within the design development process for architects and urban planners. The key challenges lie in the need for integrated datasets and incompatibility between software tools required for designing, modelling, and evaluation. This paper presents a comprehensive methodological framework to investigate applicable urban decarbonization strategies. A case study of Sheffield in the UK demonstrates the development of an automated and standardized computational workflow. This data-driven workflow aims to evaluate energy demand and supply scenarios at an urban scale to access the potential of decarbonizing built environments. The workflow is designed to be adaptable to various scales of urban regions, given a suitable geographic information system (GIS) dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent article, in Issue 2 or 2022, Horvath[1] analysed the words and expressions that we use in the field of Computational Design research, and how the expressions have changed in popularity and application over the decades. Numerous models representing different instantiations may show changes over time, but aren't they still physical models rather than analogue if a direct digital-computational connection is a key aspect of an analogue instantiation? I wonder if it isn't actually the CNC machine that is the analogue element in this process - it is a device emulating a conventional manually controlled milling/CNC machine but with a computational-digital controlling mechanism rather than a human-mechanical one?. [Extracted from the article]

Globally, the construction, renovation, and demolition sectors are increasingly responsible for growing resource demand and structural waste, even given progress in energy efficient technologies, 'green' building design, and local planning regulations. In response, the Circular Economy has become a popular agenda in the construction, renovation, and demolition sector as it offers a new model that not only maximizes materials reuse and recovery but also reframes urban systems and the built environment in a closed-loop (cradle-to-cradle) paradigm. In particular, popular visions of the Circular Economy promote, among other actions, 'optimizing' the end-of-the-life of buildings and their materials. Deconstruction (i.e. piece-by-piece demolition) is one key optimization strategy that has received increasing, yet limited, attention by researchers. This paper traces the development of an incipient deconstruction sector in Vancouver, focusing on the possibilities and challenges of deconstruction and material recovery practices as viable strategies for a transformative Circular Economy. I investigate two related aspects: first, the emerging policy landscape surrounding green demolition, and second, the development of 'unbuilding' practices and more formal 'Deconstruction Hubs'. Overall, the paper finds that while these developments represent fundamental steps towards a more sustainable built environment, there remain a number of significant social, political and economic limitations that must be confronted if we are to meet the growing demands for more radical sustainability and 'circularity' not only in Canadian construction, renovation, and demolition sectors, but across Canadian cities and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thermal comfort standards are required for overall indoor satisfaction and energy conservation. Even though the lower Himalayan region of Darjeeling has seen rapid growth in population due to its temperate type of climate, and thus resulting in manifold construction of concrete buildings, very few research on the built environment are reported from the region. In this paper, the author has discussed the yearlong thermal comfort study conducted in a naturally ventilated 3-storey un-insulated concrete building located at lower Himalayan region of Darjeeling, India. The mean indoor operative temperature were 16.7°C, 19.0°C and 22.3°C, the clothing insulation were 0.94 clo, 0.78 clo and 0.57 clo and the mean Griffiths' comfort temperature were 18.1°C, 19.6°C and 22.4°C during the cool, moderate and warm seasons, respectively. Seasonal and gender-wise differences are reported in the paper. A logistic regression is presented to show the variation of single and multiple layers of clothing used by subjects to adapt with the plummeting temperature. A modification in the comfort standards for the region with lower and upper limits as 16.2°C and 23.3°C is also proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of creating age-friendly communities, this paper examines the effects of neighborhood walkability and third places on older adults' social connectedness. The subject was older adult homeowners aged sixty-five years and above in the context of American college towns. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used, controlling personal abilities and sociodemographic factors. Third places positively influenced older adults' social support network, but it was not associated with loneliness. Objective and perceived neighborhood accessibility had no association with either social support network or loneliness in later life. Findings suggest that planners and developers should prioritize third places in designing for active living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the development and legacy of nineteenth-century "animal suburbs," focusing on Boston and Brighton, Massachusetts. As domesticated animals were pushed from downtowns—and as large-scale animal industries emerged in the 1800s—urban areas grappled with what to do with livestock populations for urban consumers and markets. Animal suburbs like Brighton marked important developmental forms—marking key changes in human-animal relationships, and also in urban development, law, politics, and environmental change. These animal suburbs had distinctive built environments, ecologies, economies, and social landscapes that shaped development in the nineteenth century and in the many decades that followed. This paper explores the life and death of one animal suburb—Brighton—and shows the centrality of these marginal spaces in explaining why parts of American cities look the way they do today, while also providing insight into developments of nineteenth-century law, political development, and capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban renewal and the built environment have become two of the hottest topics in urban planning studies. Although existing literature has started to examine both of them from different perspectives, a comprehensive review with a bibliometric analysis is necessary to fully reveal the association between them. To overcome these gaps, this paper critically reviews the literature on urban renewal and the built environment and proposes a novel research framework to systematically understand the relationship between them. Based on 155 articles which were published between 2001 and 2020 collected from the Web of Science Core Collection Database, a bibliometric analysis offers the overall development and trajectory of the existing research, and a critical review fully analyzes the relationship between the two topics from three perspectives: main categories of urban renewal, multiple stakeholders, and economic, social and environmental development needs. To better clarify the interaction mechanism between urban renewal and the built environment and guide further research in this area, a future research agenda is also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces modular and context-aware evaporative cooling for the outdoor urban environment as a physical structure that could be implemented at various scales and physical contexts. We propose a technique for collecting occupancy and climatic data to create a computational context and optimise its operation. We then outline a concept for developing a predictive algorithm that would further enhance its performance. The research focuses on the interaction between the proposed system and the environment and establishes an evidence-based technique to balance the temperature drop and the humidity it generates. The study combines architectural design, mechanical engineering and computer science to enable the upscaled application of evaporative cooling to help reduce local heat accumulation in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nature conservation turns violent when it leads to enclosure, dispossession and militarisation, causing suffering among people living in the environment that is to be protected. Resettlement projects are meant to facilitate the process of repossession for dispossessed people as the proponents promise improved housing and physical infrastructure outside the protected area. While scholarly attention has been paid to the violence of dispossession, little is known about the ways in which the post-resettlement built environment turns violent for displaced people as well as people remaining in the protected area. Drawing on field research on water infrastructure in two resettlement villages in Mozambique's Limpopo National Park (LNP), this paper analyses how the violence of resettlement is entrenched in the material, ecological and political framework that shapes the resettlement project. It pays particular attention to the process by which the resettled citizens struggle with the everyday sufferings in their new built environment in order to expose how physical infrastructure and the lack thereof led to new social infrastructure, which have enabled the remaining park residents' resistance against resettlement. The emerging resistance indicates the urgent need to pay attention to the built environment expanding outside the conservation area in order to address the violence of resettlement as well as to pursue nature conservation itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fire safety is always an important issue in the indoor and built environment. There might be hidden conflicts among different systems such as suppression and smoke control. The effect of water spray on smoke movement in halls with natural venting system is reported in this paper. A series of scale modelling experiments were carried out to study the temperature variation under water spray. A small vent on the opposite side of fire source would intensify smoke stratification and result in a higher smoke temperature. Water spray would weaken the smoke stratification due to the cooling effect on the smoke and the downward drag on the smoke layer. The temperature development of smoke was the result of competition of these two effects on the smoke layer. When the effect of water spray was stronger, the average smoke temperature tended to be lower, and the temperature difference of the ceiling to the smoke layer interface was smaller. When the effect of the opening dominated, the results were reversed. These results would be useful for providing fire safety in indoor and built environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is architecture relevant for political theory? That is the key question that structures this excellent collection Political Theory and Architecture, although a number of essays fit a broader formulated theme better, namely, concerning the political relevance of the organization and design of our built environment more generally, including architecture but also spatial planning and urban design. The collection demonstrates that our build environment is not merely a passive backdrop to a political community, but actively shapes aspects of our common political life. This constitutive nature of our built environment figures in many different guises throughout this volume. In this review article, I discuss some of these and conclude that concerns about the 'common good' and hence about the discipline of political theory should take reflections on urban design, planning, and architecture into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this 2022 Janet E. Helms Award for Mentoring and Scholarship keynote, I discuss the importance of understanding how our built-environment and our physical spaces and structures are intertwined with my conceptualization of systemic racism. I describe the problems with how we study racism, systemic racism, and context, and the limitations of how we have adapted traditional psychotherapy theories. In this paper, I propose an examination of structural racism and the ways in which white spaces, white property, and white time work to displace, dispossess, and dislocate Black and other non-Black people of Color. This constant racism within white spaces allows us to understand what may be creating the psychological and physiological stresses many people of Color experience. In better understanding systemic racism, I hope we can focus our critical scholarship on centralizing the humanity of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and other people of Color. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does it mean for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) building to be designed through modernist architecture principles on land acquired through settler colonialism? In 1947, construction began on the United Nations Headquarters (UNHQ) in Manhattan, a name derived from Manna-hata, a site within Lenapehoking, the homeland of Indigenous Lenape peoples violently displaced by waves of Dutch, British, and American settlers starting in the 17th century. This paper analyzes the structural dynamics that is in the literal foundations of the United Nations Headquarters, the post-World War II (WWII) worldmaking project intended to safeguard international order. By marshaling the history of Lenapehoking and analyzing the design principles informing the UNGA building, this paper narrows the claim that the post-WWII worldmaking project was contingent upon settler colonialism. Through a capacious reading of settler colonial theory, architectural history, and International Relations (IR), this paper aims to open up conversations on the ongoing structural and spatial dynamics embedded in the foundations of the UNGA building that are constitutive of the post-WWII international order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop built environment (BE) design knowledge to support resilient healthcare by systematically reviewing the evidence-based design (EBD) literature. Background: Although the EBD literature is vast, it has not made explicit its contribution to resilient healthcare, which is a key component of the highly complex health service. Method: This review followed the steps recommended by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses method. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 43 journal papers were selected. The papers were analyzed in light of five guidelines for coping with complexity, allowing for the development of BE design knowledge that supports resilient healthcare. Results: The design knowledge compiled by the review was structured according to four levels of abstraction: five design-meta principles, corresponding to the five complexity guidelines, seven design principles, 21 design prescriptions, and 58 practical examples. The design knowledge emphasizes the interactions between the BE as physical infrastructure and the functions that it supports. Conclusions: The design knowledge is expected to be useful not only to architects but also to those involved in the functional design of health services as they interact with the BE. Furthermore, our proposal provides a knowledge template that can be continuously updated based on the experience of practitioners and academic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The built environment characteristics associated with walkability range from neighborhood-level urban form factors to street-level urban design factors. However, many existing walkability indices are based on neighborhoodlevel factors and lack consideration for street-level factors. Arguably, this omission is due to the lack of a scalable way to measure them. This paper uses computer vision to quantify street-level factors from street view images in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Correlation analysis shows that some streetscape factors are highly correlated with neighborhood-level factors. Binary logistic regressions indicate that the streetscape factors can significantly contribute to explaining walking mode choice and that streetscape factors can have a greater association with walking mode choice than neighborhood-level factors. A potential explanation for the result is that the image-based streetscape factors may perform as proxies for some macroscale factors while representing the pedestrian experience as seen from eye-level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes an embodied approach to the lived experiences and everyday politics of liminal neighborhoods and infrastructures in Delhi's unauthorized colonies, which lack official entitlements to networked infrastructures such as water and sewerage. Bringing a feminist political ecology lens to critical infrastructure studies, I show how gendered social relations, subjectivities, and the unequal experience of urban liminality are tied to accessing water and its fragmented infrastructures beyond the network. In particular, liminal infrastructural space is produced in unauthorized colonies through not only these neighborhoods' quasi-legal status and unequal access to urban water, but also through gendered discourses and the socially differentiated ways water infrastructures are co-produced, managed, and made livable by residents. As water is primarily accessed beyond the network via tubewells and tankers, I demonstrate how these fractured modalities ultimately constitute gendered infrastructural assemblages that enable water's circulation across neighborhoods but also serve to deepen forms of gendered marginality and differentiation. Here, gendered infrastructural practices and labor to negotiate and supplement fragmented components of water infrastructure shape subjectivities and possibilities for social relations and urban claims-making. These infrastructural assemblages expose both the situated experience of urban liminality, as well as its transcendent possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For affordance-based design, which is especially lacking in the architecture field, this study investigates the relationships between affordances and interior elements in the built environment by understanding intrinsic affordances by users. The ethnographic case study was conducted by unobtrusively observing participant behaviours during given tasks using video recordings, voice recordings and photographs. The 32 affordances were identified in a public space containing 22 observed affordances and 10 issue affordances. The paper defines the hierarchical nature of the interior elements, including area-level, set-level, object-level and detailed attribute-level elements. An awareness of human-based affordances, where humans can create specific affordances using their bodies and belongings, was significant in the current research. The affordance-interior design element map can be used to support the identification of interior elements that are relevant to certain affordances and to distinguish which affordances are demanded by occupants in the built environment. Overall, designers could embed the affordance concept in the early stages of the design process by choosing more critical affordances and interior elements. The affordance-interior design element matrix and the map may be developed as an initial data repository for affordance-based interior design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Social participation activities, an important area of occupation, have been effective in reducing social isolation and loneliness. However, most attendees are women, warranting the need to explore older men's social participation needs. Methods: Qualitative methods, including interviews and a collaborative workshop, were used to explore the research aim. Public involvement included establishing partnerships with six staff from four community organisations and twelve older men. The project was informed by a steering committee. The steering group offered insight into all aspects of the research except analysis, which was performed thematically. Findings: Intergenerational engagements and the appropriate environment to establish connections with their communities were highlighted as beneficial to men. However, there is a lack of appropriate local spaces to connect communities through social participation. This suggests the need for occupational therapists to diversify their roles, moving beyond the individual and into community development. Conclusions: Occupational therapists' unique and varied skill set, including the understanding of the profound impact of the environment on occupational engagement and, thus, well-being would offer valuable contributions to community development roles, including the built environment to ensure all communities have places for connection where individuals of all ages can thrive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transportation systems shape the built environment of cities and the lived experiences of their residents, but equitable public participation in municipal transportation decision-making is limited. Furthermore, municipal transportation decision-making—and thus public participation within it—exists in a complicated field of transportation provision, while intersecting with a myriad of policy issues. This research article draws on Chicago as a case study and existing research in transportation and planning to argue for equity-oriented capacity building by transportation agencies. Such capacity building should more explicitly clarify official and informal decision-making processes and their politicized nature to enhance equitable, meaningful impact on transportation decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 exacerbated food system vulnerabilities globally. This study assesses the impact of shock events on food accessibility in New York City (NYC) by examining its association with neighborhood characteristics between 2019 and 2020. We model food accessibility using socioeconomic and built environment factors, adjusting for spatial effects with spatial econometric models and geographically weighted regression (GWR). Our spatial modeling methods reveal diverging relationships between minority racial/ethnic groups and food accessibility, as well as a negative change in the effect of income. Overall, our results indicate that food accessibility worsened or polarized during the pandemic, suggesting the need for improved network connectivity and smaller-scale food stores to achieve equitable and resilient food systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bacteria in built environments are profoundly affected by indoor thermal conditions. In China, continuous and intermittent heating modes give rise to distinct thermal environments in winter. However, the quantitative relationships between bacterial concentration and thermal conditions in the context of heating modes remain unclear. To this end, we recorded the temperature and relative humidity (RH) in 15 intermittently and 15 continuously heated residences in 27 cities across China and obtained the bacterial concentrations via the quantitative polymerase chain reaction technology. For the intermittently heated residences whose temperatures were lower than 18°C, the bacterial concentration negatively correlated with RH while the correlation was positive for those with T > 18°C. For the continuously heated residences, a quadratic correlation was found between temperature and the bacterial concentration which was highest at 23°C. For lower bacterial risk, we suggest that (1) RH in the intermittent heating region should be in the range of 40%–60% and (2) temperature in the continuous heating region should not exceed 22°C. The bacteria-adjusted thermal zones for intermittent and continuous heating are 66% and 77% of the original thermal comfort zone, respectively. Our study provides insights into the set-points of indoor thermal environments based on the microbial perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social determinants of health (SDOH) are structural factors that yield health inequities. Within the context of cancer, these inequities include screening rates and survival rates, as well as higher symptom burden during and after treatment. While pain is one of the most frequently reported symptoms, the relationship between SDOHs and cancer pain is not well understood. The purpose of this study is to describe and synthesize the published research that has evaluated the relationships between SDOH and cancer pain. A systematic search of PubMed, CINAHL, and Embase was conducted to identify studies in which cancer pain and SDOH were described. In all, 20 studies met the inclusion criteria. In total, 14 studies reported a primary aim related to SDOH and cancer pain. Demographic variables including education or income were used most frequently. Six specific measurements were utilized to measure SDOH, such as the acculturation scale, the composite measure of zip codes for poverty level and blight prevalence, or the segregation index. Among the five domains of SDOH based on Healthy People 2030, social and community was the most studied, followed by economic stability, and education access and quality. The neighborhood and built environment domain was the least studied. Despite increasing attention to SDOH, the majority of published studies use single-dimension variables derived from demographic data to evaluate the relationships between SDOH and cancer pain. Future research is needed to explore the intersectionality of SDOH domains and their impact on cancer pain. Additionally, intervention studies should be conducted to address existing disparities and to reduce the incidence and impact of cancer pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several individual social determinants of health have been identified as significant factors contributing to achieving glycemic targets (glycated hemoglobin < 7). However, it remains unclear how these social variables individually or collectively contribute to glycemic targets among adults with type 2 diabetes (T2D) in the United States (U.S.) The purpose of the current integrative review (IR) was to describe and synthesize findings from studies on social determinants of glycemic target achievement in adults with T2D in the U.S. and integrate them into the United States Department of Health and Human Services Conceptual Framework. The databases searched included PubMed, CINAHL Plus with Full Text, Medline with Full Text [EBSCO], Google Scholar, bibliography, and hand searching. A total of 948 records were identified. After excluding duplicates and irrelevant studies based on inclusion and exclusion criteria through title, abstract, and full-text screening, 13 studies were finally included in this IR. The results revealed that race/ethnicity, economic access and stability, educational access and quality, healthcare access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, and social and community context contribute to glycemic target achievement among adult patients with T2D in the U.S. Integrating findings from key studies on social determinants of glycemic health may contribute to developing interventions aimed at reducing and eventually eradicating health disparities for individuals with and at risk for T2D in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Planning Education & Research is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Planning Education & Research is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Planning Education & Research is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Lillian Wald brought public health nursing to New York City's congested Lower East Side in summer 1893, where she recorded tenement dwellers' suffering from cuts, burns, breaks, deaths, illness, and childbirth. Together, nurses traveling streets, alleys, rooftops, and hallways, alongside dwellers acting as "local guides," inaugurated vernacular mappings. Drawing on letters Wald wrote to her benefactor, Jacob Schiff, in July 1893, describing visiting, cleaning, healing, and connecting, this article uncovers a spatial dimension to pain that invites historians of urban America to discover the sick city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores airplane manufacturing in twentieth-century Seattle to trace the correspondence between major developmental moments in the city's history and broader transitional moments in American empire. In doing so, it argues that Seattle is best understood as an imperial city characterized by four ongoing features: extensive connections beyond the city's nominal borders; sustained alliance between private commercial interests and the state that made such connections possible; a built environment of technological infrastructure made to serve that alliance; and labor forces, segmented by race, subject to the evolving needs of empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores three recently published books on urban planning that delve into the characteristics and resilience of ideal, iconic communities. One book, "Iconic Planned Communities and the Challenge of Change," offers case studies of planned communities from around the world. Another book, "Sunnyside Gardens," focuses on a specific community in Queens, New York. The third book, "John Nolen: Landscape Architect and City Planner," traces the career of America's first city planner. The article highlights the connections and influences among different planners and designers of these communities, emphasizing the belief that well-designed physical environments can promote social well-being and a sense of community. It also discusses common design elements of planned communities, such as grid patterns, mix of housing types, and the presence of a town center. The article examines the resilience and challenges faced by planned communities over time, using case studies like Sunnyside, Greenbelt, and Seaside to illustrate how they have adapted to changes in transportation, governance, housing preferences, and population diversity. It underscores the importance of community support and a sense of place in preserving the original design and heritage of planned communities, concluding that the quality of the initial planning is vital for ensuring the long-term viability and distinctive features of iconic planned communities. [Extracted from the article]

"The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age" by Zachary J. Violette and "How the Working-Class Home Became Modern" by Thomas C. Hubka are two books that provide insight into the lives of ordinary people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States. These books challenge the dominant narrative that focuses on the wealthy and their lavish homes, instead exploring the housing conditions and changes experienced by the working class and poor. Violette's book specifically examines the tenements in New York City, highlighting how immigrant builders and architects adapted these structures to meet the needs and desires of the new American residents. The books also discuss the tensions between housing reformers and tenants, with reformers often imposing their values on lower-class immigrants who were satisfied with their homes. The text mentions that Violette criticizes reformer Jacob Riis for his views on tenements, while Hubka focuses on the middle 60% of the income distribution and their housing improvements. It notes that Hubka's book lacks a racial analysis, but praises Violette for addressing the anti-Semitism faced by Jewish immigrants. Both books demonstrate the improvement in living standards for working-class people during this time period, with Hubka's book specifically examining the modernization of homes and its impact on people's lives. [Extracted from the article]

Promoting physical activity (PA) at the community level is a complex, multisector approach requiring researchers and practitioners to impact the individual, interpersonal, environment, and policy levels. One such strategy aiming to impact systems, policies, and environments is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Activity Friendly Routes to Everyday Destinations (Routes to Destinations). This strategy specifically aims to connect pedestrian, bicycle, and public transportation systems with built environment and land use destinations. This article examines Black/African American transportation and land use experts' perspectives and concerns—across multiple mediums—around inequities that have discouraged PA among Black/African American persons specifically Routes to Destinations strategies. In March 2021, a multifaceted scoping review was conducted of peer-reviewed literature, gray literature, and social media authored by Black/African American transportation and land use experts focusing on policy, system, and environmental changes which promote or discourage equitable and inclusive access to physical activity. Themes from peer-reviewed and gray literature resources included: (1) Assessing Racism, Discrimination, and Segregation; (2) Addressing Equity and Inclusion Through Policy; (3) Community Engagement and Place-Based Interventions; (4) Infrastructure Changes; (5) Safety; and (6) Reporting Health Disparities. Twitter topic models suggested the main topics included elements of race/racism, equity, safety, infrastructure, and advancing social justice. Experts called for systemic and systematic change through new policies and implementation of existing policies as well as enhanced community inclusion in decision-making through ownership of policy and built environment change. Safety was discussed differently between peer-reviewed and gray literature and Twitter discussions indicating a publication bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Navigating indoor spaces is especially challenging for individuals with blindness and visual impairments. Although many solutions currently exist, the acceptance of most of them is extremely poor due to their technical limitations and the complete lack of taking into consideration factors, such as usability and the perceived experience among others, which influence adoption rates. To alleviate this problem, we created BlindMuseumTourer, a state-of-the-art indoor navigation smartphone application that tracks and navigates the user inside the spaces of a museum. At the same time, it provides services for narration and description of the exhibits. The proposed system consists of an Android application that leverages the sensors found on smartphones and utilizes a novel pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) mechanism that optionally takes input from the Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons specially mounted on the exhibits. This article presents the extended Usability and User Experience evaluation of BlindMuseumTourer and the findings carried out with 30 participants having varying degrees of blindness. Throughout this process, we received feedback for improving both the available functionality and the specialized user-centred training sessions in which blind users are first exposed to our application's functionality. The methodology of this evaluation employs standardized questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, and the results indicate an overall positive attitude from the users. In the future, we intend to extend the number and type of indoor spaces supported by our application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article employs the labyrinth as an analytical and interpretive tool for thinking about Minoan architectural and especially palatial space with a particular focus on Knossos. Whether or not Minoan ruins inspired later Greek mythical narratives, Knossos can be examined as a kind of a labyrinth towards developing new perspectives on Knossos as an experienced environment and how it was entangled with broader cultural and cosmological ideas. A labyrinth perspective enables bringing together multiple spatial, material and cultural forms for the heuristic purposes of exploring palatial space in relation to how the environment and world were perceived in Minoan Crete. Knossos afforded participants a mystical experience that provided glimpses of, or openings into, different dimensions of a layered reality—the richness of the world extending beyond the readily perceivable surface of reality—in a literally and figuratively labyrinthine experienced palatial environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased urban air temperature considerably affects the health, comfort and consequently the quality of life in urban spaces. Urban design and planning studies, therefore, face an increasing challenge as they aim to improve Outdoor Thermal Comfort (OTC) and microclimate conditions of urban environments. Analysing OTC is more challenging when compared to indoor thermal comfort since a wider range of interrelated parameters exists in outdoor environments. Therefore, this research aims to classify urban studies that investigate OTC by conducting a comprehensive review based on key metrics such as approaches taken, methodologies and spatial and temporal scales. By extracting the key findings, this research forms an integrated framework of these metrics that presents a thorough view of the OTC concept in the context of climate-sensitive studies. Furthermore, this research elaborates on the main two groups of parameters affecting OTC including environmental and human-based parameters. Exploring the intricate inter-relationships of these two groups of parameters clarifies their contribution to OTC. Results of this study help architects and urban planners to improve their climate-sensitive strategies and support the decision-making process by providing a comprehensive perspective about different aspects of OTC. Finally, recommendations for future research are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]