Search

This study explored the health effect of perceived built environment on depression of the Chinese elderly people in rural areas. A multifaceted approach in examining perceived built environment was used. A sample of 670 older residents in rural area of China were interviewed, and data were collected mainly for exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and moderation analysis. Results showed a reliable construct of perceived built environment which was developed by this study. A significant moderating role of personal income per month in the significantly negative relationship between perceived built environment and depression was confirmed. That is, the health effect of perceived built environment on depression became weakened among people of higher income levels. This study added evidence for the health effect of perceived built environment on depression among Chinese elderly people. Additionally, individual income was identified as an important influencing factor in such effect. Discussion on the negative relationship between perceived built environment and depression, as well as the moderating effect of personal income in such relationship were presented., (© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Increasing attention is being directed toward understanding the impact of urban built environments on children's health. The concept of the 15-minute city, or "15-minute life circle", in China is significant; however, the needs of the pediatric population are often overlooked. Walkability and accessibility to urban service facilities are crucial for promoting children's well-being. This paper focuses on the old city of Guilin in western China as a case study. It investigates the service facilities within a 15-minute life circle that affect children's physical health, mental health, and social engagement. Utilizing the Walking Index method, this study assesses the walkability and rationality of these facilities in 621 neighborhoods. Data were gathered from 200 questionnaires and interviews with children, concentrating on their daily use of these facilities, supplemented by a multi-source analysis. The findings reveal that the Walking Index in the study area is generally low, with an uneven distribution, primarily influenced by road network density, block size, and urban landscape patterns. This study proposes the development of a "Children's Healthy 15-minute Life Circle", which would increase child-friendly service facilities, pedestrian infrastructure, and urban road network density. It also advocates for constructing service facilities that enhance children's health and the optimization of the spatial arrangement of these facilities. Furthermore, it suggests the effective utilization of urban landscapes to create a diverse system of leisure spaces for children. This study offers valuable insights for enhancing the walkability of urban life circle service facilities and establishing a child-friendly city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of built environment elements in neighborhoods that have significant impacts on obesity is the basis for scientifically preventing obesity and related chronic diseases, as well as formulating and implementing spatial intervention policies. In recent years, studies on the relationship between neighborhood built environment and obesity and related behaviors have increased rapidly in China with preliminary progresses. This paper systematically reviews the empirical research on the impacts of neighborhood built environment on obesity and related behaviors which was done in China from 2011 to 2021 and selects 44 papers to extract, summarize, and quantitatively synthesize the research results by using the meta-analysis method and through the weighted Z-test. The meta-analysis shows that, according to their significance, the measured built environment elements in neighborhoods that have significant impacts on obesity and related behaviors are ranked in a descending order as accessibilitydensity of physical activity facilities, accessibility-density of bus stops/transit stations, street connectivity--crossing density, and mixed land use rate--destination amount. Meanwhile, the elements of residential density--population density, accessibility-distance to bus stops/transit stations, and accessibility-distance to physical activity facilities do not show remarkable statistic difference. This implies that community planning should highlight the measures of increasing land use for sports facilities and green spaces, improving public transport system, optimizing road network, and strengthening mixed land use to build healthy communities that can facilitate the prevention of obesity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The built environment of old residential neighborhoods poses heightened perceived traffic risks for school-aged children due to their limited cognitive ability to assess hazards, underdeveloped understanding of traffic patterns, and inadequate infrastructure in these areas. However, studies on the impacts of neighborhood environments on children's traffic risk perceptions remain limited. This study aims to reveal the influence of individual attributes, as well as macro- and micro-level environmental factors, on children's risk perception using a hierarchical ordered logit model with random effects. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey of 404 school-aged children across fifty old residential neighborhoods in Changsha, China. The results indicated that girls generally perceive higher levels of traffic risk than boys. At the macro-level, low population density and high activity facilities coverage were associated with reduced risk perceptions among children. At the micro-level, obstructed views of intersections, curbside parking, and road damage were found to increase risk perceptions among children. Additionally, random effects related to gender, intersection type, intersection visibility, curbside parking, and sidewalk availability suggested the influence of unobserved factors. The findings underscore the need for targeted interventions, such as improving intersection visibility, managing curbside parking, and repairing road damage, to mitigate traffic risks. Policymakers and urban designers should focus on these aspects to enhance safety and create child-friendly residential environments., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2025. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

The built environment is an important determinant of travel demand and mode choice. Studying the relationship between the built environment and transportation usage can support and assist traffic policy interventions. Previous studies often assumed that this relationship is linear; however, the impact of the built environment on non-motorized travel efficiency may be more complex than the typically modeled linear relationships. This paper focuses on the core area of Chengguan District in Lanzhou City, utilizing multi-source big data including POI, OpenStreetMap, street view images, and built environment data. Using ArcGIS spatial analysis tools combined with the Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) model, we analyze the non-linear influence mechanisms and threshold effects of the built environment on non-motorized travel efficiency and establish a ranking of the relative importance of all built environment factors. The results indicate that factors such as the branch road/street, land-use mix, land-use density, neighborhood entrance/exit density, bus station density, and dead-end-roads density are key influences on non-motorized travel efficiency. Additionally, based on the non-linear thresholds presented in the partial dependence plots for built environment factors, this paper proposes optimization strategies for small-scale road network patterns, mixed land use, and bus-friendly environments, providing effective threshold ranges and decision-making references for urban planning and traffic management., Competing Interests: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper., (Copyright: © 2025 Dong et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

In China, in recent years it has become a prevailing trend to promote the spatial maturity and high-quality transformation of new towns, yet there are few quantitative methods to evaluate their urban morphological maturity. From the perspective of quantitative urban morphology, this paper integrates street view data and cutting-edge analytical techniques into classic urban morphological study and develops a quantitative index for evaluating urban morphological maturity that fits Chinese cities by adjusting the indicators in line with the unique characteristics of the built environment of Chinese cities. Focusing on five new towns, as well as a historic area, of Shanghai, the paper evaluates their urban morphological maturity with this quantitative index and verifies its validity by comparing the evaluation result with that of expert consensus. It then proposes some design guidelines that may provide robust support for the regeneration of these new towns. Given its reliance on the multi-source data of open access and ready availability, this index holds promise for evaluating the urban morphological maturity of other new towns, to provide support for urban form improvement from both holistic and detailed perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mode of urban renewal in China has changed from incremental expansion to a value-added stage, and the development of cities has increasingly focused on the human experience and quality improvement. However, Cultural Street Vending and the unique street spaces in the historic districts that bear important connotations to the city have shown a trend of rapid decline and even disappearance. Therefore, how to identify the characteristics and connotations of such street vending spaces, grasp the relationship between perception of locality and built environment elements in different states and formulate targeted protection and renewal strategies is presently an urgent problem to be solved. Many studies have now discussed in detail the identification of elements, street perception and preservation strategies for historic districts. However, the Cultural Street Vending space, which carries special urban memory connotations, has been neglected, especially the characterisation of this type of space in different time dimensions. This paper takes the Cultural Street Vending space as a research object and focuses on the perceptual differences between its market day and non-market day, aiming at grasping the perceptual characteristics and constituent elements of this type of street space in different time states, as well as the patterns of changes they undergo. This paper took the Baxian Temple, a typical Cultural Street Vending space in a historic district of Xi'an, as the research object and took 30 architecture students as the evaluators to score 33 pairs of adjectives and recall the elements of nine streets. This paper compared and analysed the differences in the structure of people's psychological perception of the street in the state of market day and non-market day by SD method. It was found that the activities of the vendors obviously promoted people's positive emotions, and three commonality factors including impression, vitality and morphosis were extracted through the factor analysis. Moreover, through the element recall method to understand the change in element perception on the market day, we found that the range of people's perception was smaller on the market day and summarised the element map of the space and the element components of high, medium and low characteristics. The correlation analysis between psychological quantities and environmental elements revealed that people's positive psychology has a positive correlation with vendors, goods and street components and a negative correlation with greening, colour and texture. This study can provide an important research basis for the development of conservation and renewal strategies for this type of Cultural Street Vending space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite increased literature focusing on the role of the built environment (BE) in health, few cohort studies have quantitatively analyzed neighborhood walkability environment in relation to the risk of death and cardiovascular disease (CVD). This longitudinal study aimed at evaluating the association between perceived BE attributeswith mortality and major CVD based on the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology study in China (PURE-China)., Methods: The PURE-China study recruited 47,931 participants aged 35-70 years from 12 provinces of China between 2005 and 2009. The perceived BE information, including land use, street, aesthetics, and safety, was collected using the neighborhood environment walkability scale (NEWS) questionnaire, with higher scores indicating a more favorable rating. Two primary outcomes are all-cause mortality and major CVD event. The Cox frailty model with random intercepts was used to assess the association between the perceived total BE/subscales score and outcomes., Results: Of 32,163 participants included in this study, 19,253 (59.9 %) were women, and the mean (SD) age was 51.0 (9.5) years. After a median follow-up period of 11.7 years (IQR 9.4 - 12.2), we observed that one standard deviation higher of combined BE scores was related to a lower risk of all-cause mortality (HR = 0.85; 95 %CI, 0.80-0.90), and major CVD events (HR = 0.95; 95 %CI, 0.90-0.99). The subscales of perceived BE were related to a lower risk, although a few were not significant. Land use mix-diversity and safety from crime were the two most significant subscales. Stronger risks were observed among urban and female participants., Conclusion: Favorable perceived BE characteristics were linked with a lower risk of all-cause mortality and major CVD events in Chinese population, especially in urban areas and females. Our findings can be used by policymakers to take action to mitigate the adverse effect of poor community conditions on health, such as improving local amenities and transport connectivity, providing building paths for walking, running and cycling., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

The issues of housing and traffic in China's mega cities have become increasingly pressing problems, particularly for middle/low-income tenant workers. These tenants are from less advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, which has resulted in a significant geographical separation between their workplace and their residence. Although a large number of studies have confirmed that built environment factors have a solid impact on residents' commuting distance, few studies have investigated the mechanism underlying the nonlinear influence on middle/low-income tenants. This paper aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the key factors and nonlinear influencing mechanism of the built environment on middle/low-income tenant workers' commuting distance by establishing a gradient-boosting decision tree model, using Beijing as an empirical case. The paper reveals three primary findings: (1) An important nonlinear relationship between the surrounding built environment and peoples' jobs–housing spatial proximity can be observed for those middle/low-income tenant workers who use slow and public modes of commuting. Specifically, the density of public transport stations, road networks, and workplaces, and the land use mix play a dominant role. (2) A limited effect of built environment factors can be found for the same group of tenant workers who choose cars as their mode of commuting. (3) The differences in self-selected commuting modes have a significant mediating effect on the relationship between the built environment and jobs–housing situation among middle/low-income tenant workers. Given this, effective policy guidance for residents' travel modes is necessary to optimize the built environment indicators to achieve the best effect. In addition, we should consider giving priority to the matching indicators such as land use mix and resident population density. Another possibility is to strengthen the connection to the public transport stations, which in turn can optimize the walkability in residential environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's urban expansion, food security, and energy transition are in a critical situation. One solution is to tap into the green production potential of the built urban environment and explore new ways to save land space and alleviate ecological pressure through food and solar energy production. This paper differs from previous ecological compensation studies, which mostly focus on key ecological functional areas or fiscal compensation mechanisms, in that it innovatively establishes an ecological compensation mechanism within the urban space. In this paper, we propose the "green productive area" of cities as a way to measure the ecological carrying capacity improvement potential of cities from the perspective of urban ecology, and it is based on converting the green resource income of cities into the ecological footprint area they could save under the same conditions. First, a typological approach was used to establish a compensation strategy for green production. Second, a spatial inventory was taken of all elements of the built environment and an analysis of their green production potential was carried out. Finally, it was necessary to establish a unified accounting standard for the ecological land saving benefits of different green production options, which could be converted into green productive land area indicators. In the case of Xuefu Street in Nankai District, Tianjin, the available rooftops and idle land were used for green production, which supplemented the ecological carrying capacity provided by the natural land occupied by 12% of the buildings in the district. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent economic advances made by China have now obliged the country to address the need for sustainable urban redevelopment. Unlike other recently developed areas in China, urban villages are in dire need of improvement. Consequently, the redevelopment of urban villages has garnered considerable public and academic interest. However, a comprehensive understanding is lacking on the drivers of urban village redevelopment in China. This study aims to fill this gap through a comprehensive survey of existing literature on redevelopment of urban villages. A total of 167 papers have been retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database. A bibliometric analysis and a critical content analysis are conducted on the bases of these papers. We found at least three main processes which have driven urban village redevelopment in China. First, the growth of urban population and their income level has created a strong emerging demand to improve urban living conditions, which has triggered the restructuring of urban villages with sub-standard built environment into high-quality urban spaces. Second, from the production side, the market-oriented land reforms and the developers' pursuit of land-related investment returns from land rent gap is also a strong driving force for demolition and redevelopment of urban villages. Lastly, the states and local governments have played a critical role in promoting urban village redevelopment and integrating informal urban spaces into formal urban areas. This research concludes with an evaluation of current studies on urban village redevelopment and provides suggestions for further research in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "City in a Park" (CIP) is a new concept of urban transformation and development proposed in China in recent years, guiding the construction of healthy and sustainable living environments. This paper analyzes urban planning based on the CIP concept from a synergetic perspective, aiming to explore how the integrated planning of ecological spaces and built environments can promote systematic sustainable development in ecology, economy, and society. This research employs methods including document collection, unstructured interviews, field observations, and participatory observation, focusing on a case study of the Sichuan Tianfu New Area (STNA), a demonstration zone for the CIP. The study finds that the planning of the STNA extends the planning scope of urban ecological spaces beyond the traditional urban construction boundaries, not only preserving the natural resources but also enhancing the city's overall sustainability through regional ecological services. By designing ecological spaces as green infrastructure that connects urban and rural areas, the primary sector is more readily integrated with the secondary and tertiary sectors, facilitating the integration of the urban and rural infrastructure and industries. The STNA integrates urban and rural administrative divisions, builds a cross-departmental collaborative management platform, and guides public participation in the planning process, ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of planning implementation and enhancing the equitable sharing of social services. This research provides new insights into comprehensive, cross-disciplinary, and ecology-oriented urban planning. It offers evidence for an understanding of the application pathways and effects of the CIP concept in urban planning practice and provides valuable experience for other cities to promote harmonious coexistence between the city and nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into the critical issue of youth suitability in the public primary school campuses in Shenzhen Central District, China. Youths constitute a crucial part of the urban population, contributing greatly to social wealth; thus, considering their needs and well-being is imperative in the urban planning and development process. The paper employs a comprehensive Python script tool, based on ArcGIS, that is augmented with an empirical investigation and data from the statistical yearbook in order to conduct a meticulous evaluation of the youth suitability of primary school campuses. The results of the study reveal spatial differences in the youth suitability of primary school campuses, with the suitability diminishing from the district's inner areas to its outer regions. Additionally, the study unearths that primary school campuses in the Shenzhen Central District are generally stratified, and that the campus service space could be appropriately categorized into several groups based on the dual criteria of accessibility as well as youth suitability. Finally, this study provides illuminating decision-making suggestions for optimizing the youth suitability of primary school campuses in Shenzhen Central District, highlighting the crucial role of education policies, regional economic development, and campus infrastructure improvements in nurturing inclusive, vibrant, and sustainable urban environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metropolises in China are undergoing rapid suburbanization processes, resulting in spatial differences in the built environment from the city centre to the outer suburbs. The continuous suburbanization has changed residents' subjective well-being and behaviours. The association between built environment and subjective well-being has been studied extensively, but there is scarce research on the influence of the built environment on both subjective well-being and behaviours with regards to the self-selection effect in the suburbanization process. This paper constructs an analytical framework to simulate the impacts of the built environment on subjective well-being and behaviours. The propensity score matching method is applied to questionnaire data from Hangzhou in 2018 to investigate these impacts. The results of this research show that in three selected districts, the mean score difference for fitness and social behaviour is quite significant (0.4 and 0.2, respectively), whereas the mean score for subjective well-being is 0.1. Both fitness and social behaviours are significantly and positively related to subjective well-being. Fitness behaviour has a greater impact than social behaviour. The four dimensions of built environment impact on both subjective well-being and behaviours after self-selection were controlled using the propensity score matching method. The results of the study can inform local governments; exurban development zones should be equipped with more high-end public facilities and public transportation in order to improve residents' quality of life in the suburbanization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Amid rapid urbanisation, the health effects of the built-environment have been widely studied, while research on elderly-supportive infrastructure and its interaction with PM2.5 (PM, Particulate Matter) exposure remains limited. Objectives: To examine the effect of PM2.5 on cardiovascular hospitalisation risk among the elderly and the moderating role of elderly-supportive infrastructure in Wuhan, a city undergoing rapid urbanisation. Methods: A time-stratified case-crossover design was adopted in which the K-means cluster analysis was applied to categorize elderly-supportive infrastructure. The correlation of PM2.5 with cardiovascular hospitalisations and the moderating role of elderly-supportive infrastructure were elucidated through the conditional logistic regression and z-test. Nonlinear relationships among variables were determined using restricted cubic splines. Results: 173,486 case days and 589,188 control days were included. The cumulative lag effect of PM2.5 increased over time, peaking at 5 days. For every 10 µg/m3 increase in PM2.5, the risk of hospitalisation rose by 1.5% (OR = 1.0150, 95% CI: 1.0113–1.0190). The aforementioned effect of PM2.5 exposure on health did not differ among varying levels of elderly-supportive infrastructure within a 300 m buffer zone. When the buffer zone was extended to 500 and 1000 m, a higher level of elderly-supportive infrastructure mitigated the adverse effects of short-term PM2.5 exposure on cardiovascular hospitalisations (p = 0.013), particularly for stroke (p = 0.017) and ischaemic heart disease (p = 0.026). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that high-level elderly-supportive infrastructure may protect against the adverse effects of PM2.5 on cardiovascular hospitalisation, highlighting the need to optimize elderly-supportive infrastructure for its health benefits in the elderly. Paper context: Main findings: High level of elderly-supportive infrastructures may mitigate the adverse effects of short-term PM2.5 exposure on hospitalisations for cardiovascular disease, specifically for stroke and ischemic heart disease. Added knowledge: This is the first study to investigate the moderating effects of elderly-supportive infrastructure on short-term PM2.5 exposure and its impact on cardiovascular diseases, highlighting the potential benefits of promoting the cardiovascular health of the elderly through thoughtful planning and development of urban facilities. Global health impact for policy and action: Amid urbanisation and an aging population in many parts of the world, greater attention should be given to the design and planning of elderly-supportive infrastructure to mitigate the negative impacts of air pollution and enhance cardiovascular health outcomes for the elderly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the interrelationship between the built environment and spatial-temporal distribution of population density, this paper proposes a method to predict the spatial-temporal distribution of urban population density using the depth residual network model (ResNet) of neural network. This study used the time-sharing data of mobile phone users provided by the China Mobile Communications Corporation to predict the time-space sequence of the steady-state distribution of population density. Firstly, 40 prediction databases were constructed according to the characteristics of built environment and the spatial-temporal distribution of population density. Thereafter, the depth residual model ResNet was used as the basic framework to construct the behaviour-environment agent model (BEM) for model training and prediction. Finally, the average percentage error index was used to evaluate the prediction results. The results revealed that the accuracy rate of prediction results reached 76.92% in the central urban area of the verification case. The proposed method can be applied to prevent urban public safety incidents and alleviate pandemics. Moreover, this method can be practically applied to enable the construction of a "smart city" for improving the efficient allocation of urban resources and traffic mobility., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Sensing urban vitality is a useful method for understanding urban development. However, the spatio-temporal characteristics of the association between the built environment and urban vitality in Shenzhen, the youngest mega-city in China, have not yet been explored. In this paper, we examined the effects of built environment indicators on urban vitality by using spatial regression models and multi-source geospatial data. The main research findings were as follows. Firstly, urban vitality displayed a consistent high–low pattern during both weekdays and weekends. Differences in the distribution of urban vitality with time between weekdays and weekends were more significant. Secondly, the effects of various built environment indicators on urban vitality exhibited significant temporal disparities. Within a day, population density, building density, bus station density, and distance to metro stations all exhibited positive effects, while distance to the central business district (CBD) exhibited negative effects, with pronounced diurnal differences. Moreover, the effects of road network density and functional mix on urban vitality were both positive and negative throughout the day. Thirdly, besides population density and building density, road network density, functional mix, bus stop density, and distance from metro stations exhibited positive and negative disparities within the study area. Overall, distance to the CBD had a negative effect on urban vitality. This concludes that planning for urban vitality should consider the spatio-temporal heterogeneity of the association between the built environment and urban vitality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the transformation of China's industry and demographic structure, urban shrinkage, especially the resource-based cities due to their single industrial structure, tend to emerge gradually. Using empirical and quantitative methods, this paper explores the evolution mechanism of urban shrinkage in Hegang, a resource-based city in China. Our findings suggest that there are many correlations or cyclic relationships among variables, which provide an empirical confirmation for the complexity of urban shrinkage process. The result shows there is a time delay of about four to five years between the mining industry and the changes of demographic profile, economic performance and built environment variables. The development of Hegang has formed a path dependence on resource-based industries. Furthermore, the time lags between demographic profile and economic performance variables are not obvious, and the real estate market has a certain sensitivity to perceive population loss and economic change. Besides, market led public service facilities are more sensitive to the changes of population outflow and economic recession than government led public service facilities. The study findings could offer insights for other resource-based cities in developing countries to employ on the economic development policies issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driven by the emission peak and carbon neutrality targets, traditional cruising taxis are also under pressure to reduce emissions, and reducing taxi vacant time is an effective way to reduce emissions. This paper aims to examine the influence mechanism of built environment characteristics on vacant time of taxi trips from the supply-side perspective. To do so, the study uses a one week of taxi trajectory data of 2019 provided by a taxi company in Chongqing, a megacity in China. We take the divided square grid cell as the study units, calculate the taxi vacant time of 168 (7 × 24) hourly slots for each grid, and then calculate the built environment indicators of the grids with Point of Interest (POI) and vector road network data. A generalized additive model (GAM) based on panel data is constructed to investigate the influence mechanism of built environment on taxi vacant time. The results show that the time-varying trend of taxi vacant time is opposite to the time-varying trend of taxi trips and is similar to taxi trips in spatial distribution with significant spatial dependence. Taxi vacant time is negatively correlated with taxi trips. POI mixture, the number of enterprises, governmental agencies, and shopping services are negatively correlated with vacant time, while the number of sports and leisure services, hotel services, healthcare services, financial and insurance services, and living services are positively correlated with vacant time. An interesting finding is that metro stations significantly increase the vacant taxi time in the region. Average traffic flow speed, road density, the number of bus stops, catering services, residence communities, and motor vehicle services show strong nonlinear relationships with taxi vacant time, and their influence effects are alternately positive and negative. The study provides useful insights for understanding mechanisms of the role of built environment on taxi vacant time and has important implications for driver searching strategy improvement, taxi management measures development, spatial and temporal scheduling of taxi capacity resources, and urban transportation facilities layout planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As highlighted by the post-Cartesian discourse across philosophical schools, Western thought had been struggling for a long time with conceiving interconnectedness. The problematic of Western dualism is most apparent with the so-called mind-body problem, but the issue does not only relate to the separation of body and mind but also the separation of living beings from their environments. Asian philosophy, on the other hand, has had a long history of thinking relations. The paper argues that an architectural philosophy that is open for a dialogue with Asian views would allow for a new approach to conceptualising the interconnectedness of minds, bodies, environments, and cultures. Linking Asian and Western aesthetics with a discourse on ecology, and setting it into dialogue with contemporary theories of architecture, the paper also refers to recent research on embodiment that is engaging from a new point of view with the natural sciences, and that appears to confirm positions of traditional Chinese philosophy. Reconsidering traditional Chinese art and aesthetics, the paper suggests, could initiate a new eco-poetic way of thinking the built environment and its design in favour of a future that is more than smart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical studies undertaken in developed countries have shown that urban expansion may exert both positive and negative impacts on residents' health, depending on the planning strategy; however, the impact of rapid urban expansion on public health in developing countries is understudied. This paper takes Jiawang, China, as an example of rapid urban expansion and carries out a health impact assessment (HIA) on its regulatory detailed plan to better understand the interaction of the built environment and public health. We establish an HIA framework and select a series of indicators as health determinants. On this basis, we examine what impact the urban expansion will exert on the health equity of the residents by conducting a bivariate spatial autocorrelation. The finding shows that:1) Urban expansion produces positive health impact through the health determinants of public facilities, road transportation and land use. 2) Urban expansion will reduce health disparities between the old and new town and between the urban and suburban areas, especially between the old and new town. 3) The impact of expansion exerts on health equity will be generally positive. Low-income neighborhoods in the old town will significantly benefit from urban expansion in terms of road traffic and land use, but will not fully benefit in terms of public facilities. Low-income neighborhoods will no longer benefit from the accessibility to commercial facilities and will suffer from health inequities in terms of accessibility to healthcare facilities. 4) The government's development strategy of emphasizing on an even distribution of public resources will unintentionally contribute to improving health equity. The significant promotion of health equity will mitigate the negative impacts of the previous urban development., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2022 Ge, He. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The New Silk Road, also called China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is the largest single infrastructure project since the Marshall Plan and an exemplar of infrastructure‐led development of a scope and scale with no precedent in modern history. The project is estimated to cost up to US$8 trillion, involve 130 countries and impact more than 65% of the world's population. Through novel combinations of infrastructure and industrial projects with investments in the urban built environment, the BRI is transforming urban space across the global South and North altering the social and urban geographies of cities at a historically unparalleled scale. Nonetheless, its role in driving global urban transformation remains fundamentally underexplored. Relevant geographical research is scarce and comparative approaches focusing on cities are in their infancy, leading researchers to talk about an 'anti‐urban' bias in contemporary BRI scholarship that prevents an in‐depth understanding of the initiative's true scope. This paper introduces the novel concept of Silk Road urbanisation and puts forward the need for a new research agenda that has the potential to transform geographical and urban research on infrastructure‐led development, urban transformation and inequality. The New Silk Road, also called China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is the largest single infrastructure project since the Marshall Plan and an exemplar of infrastructure‐led development. Through novel combinations of infrastructure and industrial projects with investments in the urban built environment, the BRI is transforming urban space across the Global South and North altering the social and urban geographies of cities at a historically unparalleled scale. Nonetheless, its role in driving global urban transformation remains fundamentally underexplored. This paper introduces the novel concept of Silk Road urbanization and puts forward the need for a new research agenda that has the potential to transform geographical and urban research on infrastructure‐led development, urban transformation and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is very common that taxi is used as a feeder mode to/from a metro station especially in third-tier cities of China. But research on taxi-metro integrated use is rather limited. This paper investigates the relationship between feeder-related built environment and taxi-metro integrated use by using taxi trajectory data in Lanzhou, China. Firstly, regression models are developed to explore the transfer distance of access/egress trips during peak hours. Then, the catchment area is delineated for collecting feeder-related environment variables. Finally, several negative binomial regressions are employed to examine the relationships between feeder-related built environment and taxi-metro integrated use during peak hours on weekdays. The results reveal that (a) people prefer to use taxi as feeder mode for metro access during morning peak hours and for metro egress during evening peak hours; (b) the transfer distance of taxi-metro integrated use is about 3.8 km; (c) higher mixed land use generates more taxi-metro integrated use during evening peak hours. Higher proportion of residential land use attracts more taxi-metro integrated use for metro access during morning peak hours. Those findings will help transport planners to develop tailored land-use interventions to improve transit accessibility and promote the sustainable multimodal travel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the reform and opening up of China, the rural built environment has changed dramatically. There is a need to understand how such changes have impacted rural children's school travel mode choice to design the built environment and plan schools accordingly. This paper combines field measurement methods and questionnaires to obtain data on rural children's school travel behavior and uses the multinomial logit (MNL) model to investigate the impacting factors. The results show the following insights: Age has a significant positive impact on children's choice of bicycles and buses. The improvements in road layout and facility conditions are significantly and positively associated with children's choice of electric bicycles for school. There is a significant positive correlation between a good and safe public environment and children's choice of cycling. Furthermore, distance from home to school has a significant impact on the choice of children's school travel mode: the greater the distance to school, the higher the probability that children will choose motorized modes of travel such as buses and private cars. This study provides empirical data and evidence in designing rural transport systems for school children based on their preferences concerning built environment factors.

Over the past decades, China has built a large number of superblocks and gated residential areas, which have contributed to increased congestion on urban road traffic. Although some studies have found a correlation between residential environments and travel convenience, there is little quantitative evidence to explain which factors influence the connectivity of road networks. This paper aims to clarify the indicators of built environments in Chinese residential areas that affect travel accessibility and their correlation proportions through a more quantitative method and to provide a basis for planning and design decisions. To this end, this study took 204 residential areas in the three districts of Nanjing, China as a sample and calculated 16 built-environment indicators. The path distance (D) and pedestrian route directness (PRD) from the center of these residential areas to the nearest urban intersection were measured by GIS as outcome variables. First, correlation analysis was used to screen for significant variables, and multiple linear regression models were used to examine the significant influencing factors of D and PRD. Then, a binary logistic regression analysis was performed to provide a model that could determine whether the built environment of the residential area met the requirements for convenient travel. The results revealed that the length of the long side, the area size, and the total road length of the residential area were significantly related to D, and the number of entrances and exits, the intersection density, and the X ratio were significantly related to PRD. The indicators that were positively correlated with D were the size, network complexity, and the boundary shape of the residential area according to the degree of correlation. Meanwhile, other indicators such as the density and connectivity of the residential road network were negatively correlated with D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of New Architecture is the property of New Architecture Editorial Office 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.)

Background: Researchers have demonstrated that the built environment is associated with mental health outcomes. However, evidence concerning the effects of street environments on mood in fast-growing Asian cities is scarce. Traditional questionnaires and interview methods are labor intensive and time consuming and pose challenges for accurately and efficiently evaluating the impact of urban-scale street environments on mood., Objective: This study aims to use street view images and machine learning methods to model the impact of street environments on mood states in a large urban area in Guangzhou, China, and to assess the effect of different street view elements on mood., Methods: A total of 199,754 street view images of Guangzhou were captured from Tencent Street View, and street elements were extracted by pyramid scene parsing network. Data on six mood state indicators (motivated, happy, positive-social emotion, focused, relaxed, and depressed) were collected from 1590 participants via an online platform called Assessing the Effects of Street Views on Mood. A machine learning approach was proposed to predict the effects of street environment on mood in large urban areas in Guangzhou. A series of statistical analyses including stepwise regression, ridge regression, and lasso regression were conducted to assess the effects of street view elements on mood., Results: Streets in urban fringe areas were more likely to produce motivated, happy, relaxed, and focused feelings in residents than those in city center areas. Conversely, areas in the city center, a high-density built environment, were more likely to produce depressive feelings. Street view elements have different effects on the six mood states. "Road" is a robust indicator positively correlated with the "motivated" indicator and negatively correlated with the "depressed" indicator. "Sky" is negatively associated with "positive-social emotion" and "depressed" but positively associated with "motivated". "Building" is a negative predictor for the "focused" and "happy" indicator but is positively related to the "depressed" indicator, while "vegetation" and "terrain" are the variables most robustly and positively correlated with all positive moods., Conclusion: Our findings can help urban designers identify crucial areas of the city for optimization, and they have practical implications for urban planners seeking to build urban environments that foster better mental health., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Copyright of Landscape Architecture Frontiers is the property of Higher Education Press Limited Company 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.)

After 40 years of reform and opening-up policies, urbanization in China has significantly improved residents' living standards; however, simultaneously, it has caused a series of health problems among Chinese citizens. Communities' built environment is closely related to their residents' health. However, few studies have examined the spatial differences in the health effects of community-built environments. Based on a 2013 health survey of residents in 20 communities in Wuhan, this study uses multilevel linear models to explore the effects of the built environment on residents' health, analyzing the differences in its health-effect within different types of communities. The results showed that there were significant differences in the self-rated health status of residents in different communities, with those in high-end communities reporting a higher self-rated health status. The effect of the built environment on the health of residents in different communities was found to be inconsistent. For instance, the effect of the built environment on low-end community residents was very significant, but it was not obvious for residents in high-end communities. There are significant community-specific differences in the health- effect of the built environment: in high-end communities, residents' health status was mainly restricted by travel accessibility, while in low-end communities, residents' health status was mainly restricted by the accessibility of health facilities. Therefore, this paper proposes a built-environment optimization strategy for different types of communities to provide valuable insights for healthy community planning from a policy perspective.

Located in the southwest of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Tibet is characterized by high cold, high radiation, and large differences in temperature between day and night. Tibetan residential buildings are famous for adapting to the harsh ecological environment and maintaining durability. Based on the residential buildings in Tibet, this paper extracts the technical process and color decoration culture in the construction process in order to adapt to the harsh natural environment. This paper first analyzed the four ecological construction modes of Tibetan residential buildings, analyzed the interior layout characteristics and cultural customs connotation, and introduced the architectural decoration characteristics and decorative color painting. The results show that the ramming type of adobe mainly includes the selection of building foundation, wall laying, floor and roof construction and so on, and its insulation effect is better. The rubble masonry type mainly adopts irregular gneiss, supplemented by clay, which has strong compressive capacity. Logs dry type using log masonry, heat preservation. and shock resistance is better. Concrete-infilled wall frame is composed of horizontal and vertical load-bearing system, which has stronger seismic performance. Tibetan residential buildings generally have two or three floors. The first floor is the enclosure and sundry room, the second floor is the rest place, and the third floor is the Sutra hall and sun terrace. The overall outdoor color of Kangba Tibetan buildings is mainly red and black, while the indoor color is mainly blue and red, with wood carvings and furniture. The layout of Tibetan villages can be divided into centripetal layout and scattered layout. Tibetan residential buildings provide a new sustainable development direction for the current global urbanization process at the expense of the ecological environment. It can alleviate the crisis of global resource shortage, climate warming, and biodiversity degradation., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Objective: Through interviews with older adults and professionals in Chongqing, China, this paper explores the challenges and opportunities faced by smart cities that undertake to better support ageing‐in‐place. Methods: We undertook a qualitative multi‐methods approach, engaging 46 professional stakeholders and 64 older people to examine the role of smart cities in enabling older people to age‐in‐place in Chongqing, China. Results: With the development of smart cities, technology has the potential to facilitate ageing‐in‐place by creating opportunities for heathy and active ageing. This study identified specific priorities in delivering age‐friendly smart cities, including the following: shaping smart environments around the everyday lives of older people, designing inclusive and equitable smart cities and ensuring strong forms of institutional governance, trust and relationship building with older people. Conclusions: The age‐friendly city and communities movement (AFCC) and smart city policy instruments have potential for realising active ageing by supporting mobility, access to services and civic participation. However, there exists a disconnect between smart city policy and practice in delivering tangible well‐being outcomes for older people. Addressing this requires greater cross‐sectoral working, reconciling smart city policy priorities with AFCC domains and creating the institutional and governance framework to enable socially sustainable cities to support ageing‐in‐place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among cancers, lung cancer is the most common cause of death in China. For the prevention and control of lung cancer, it is necessary to investigate the spatial and temporal distribution of lung cancer mortality, as well as the changes in the trend and the affecting mechanism. Based on statistics and auto-correlation analysis, this paper studied the spatial and temporal distribution of lung cancer mortality in Yuhui District, Bengbu, Huaihe River Basin, from 2017 to 2020. In addition, Spearman's Rank Correlation Assessment Model and Geographic Detector Model were used to examine the relationship between environmental factors and lung cancer mortality to identify impact factors and their mechanisms. The findings indicated that: 1) from the characteristics of temporal distribution, the number of lung cancer deaths exhibited a linear growth tendency, with the highest mortality in winter; 2) from the characteristics of spatial distribution, lung cancer mortality showed a strong spatial agglomeration form, concentrating on two clustering areas, located in the old city and the central city of Bengbu, near the Huaihe River; 3) from the point of view of the whole research area, there were 15 impact factors with significant correlation in the built and natural environment factors. The significant impacting factors in the built environment included land use, road traffic, spatial form and blue-green space, which could indirectly affect lung cancer mortality, while air pollution and temperature constituted the significant impacting factors in the natural environment; 4) the influence of screened environmental factors on lung cancer mortality was different. Spatial stratified heterogeneity assessment, the interaction among environmental factors demonstrated statistical significance, it was found that the interaction between environmental factors in pairs had a significant enhancement effect on lung cancer mortality. To some extent, urban planning and policies could reduce lung cancer mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To reexamine the relationship between leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) and the built environment (BE), this paper takes advantage of the massive amount of data collected by an accelerometer and GPS-based fitness mobile app. Massive LTPA data from more than 3 million users were recorded by Codoon in 500m by 500m grid cells and aggregated to 742 natural cities in mainland China. Six BE indicators were quantified using GIS at the city scale. Robust regression analysis was used to estimate the correlation between LTPA and BE. Five of six BE indicators-connectivity, road density, land use mix, points of interest density, and density of parks and squares-were significantly, positively, independently, and linearly related to LTPA in the regression analysis. The study obtains findings that are consistent with the previous literature but also provides novel insights into the important role of POI density in encouraging LTPA, as well as how the relationship between LTPA and BE varies by time of day. The study also sheds light on the embrace of new technology and new data in public health and urban studies., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The health and welfare of older adults have raised increasing attention due to global aging. Cycling is a physical activity and mode of transportation to enhance the mobility and quality of life among older adults. Nevertheless, the planning strategies to promote cycling among older adults are underutilized. Therefore, this paper describes the nonlinear associations of the built environment with cycling frequency among older adults. The data were collected from the Zhongshan Household Travel Survey (ZHTS) in 2012. The modeling approach was the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) model. The findings demonstrated that nonlinear relationships exist among all the selected built environment attributes. Within specific intervals, the population density, the land-use mixture, the distance from home to the nearest bus stop, and the distance from home to CBD are positively correlated to the cycling among older adults. Additionally, an inverse "U"-shaped relationship appears in the percentage of green space land use among all land uses. Moreover, the intersection density is inversely related to the cycling frequency among older adults. These findings provide nuanced and appropriate guidance for establishing age-friendly neighborhoods.

The essence of sustainable urbanization is to take a holistic approach to the harmonious development of economic, social, cultural and environmental protection. This paper applies the urban sustainability assessment system to analyze the characteristics of indicators related to the quality of the built environment and environmental pressure of 91 cities in four major megalopolises in China from 2010 to 2018. It also combines statistical methods to summarize the general features of urban development through a comprehensive urban performance evaluation by comparative and classification analysis for the purpose of scientific guidance on sustainable urbanization. The comparative results showed that in terms of urban sustainability, the Yangtze River Delta performed best, followed by JingJinJi, Pearl River Delta and Shandong Peninsula. Of which, the quality of built environment in JingJinJi and the environment pressure in the Shandong Peninsula require particular attention to improve and decrease, respectively. Moreover, cities can be grouped into six development types through performance clustering including three positive and three negative types. The characteristics of all types are summarized, and the performance of the specific indicators are detailed compared to serve as a guiding basis for making generic recommendations of sustainable urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A mega city region comprises a cluster of highly networked urban settlements anchored by one or more large cities. Substantial studies have been conducted in the 21st century to theorise the development of mega city regions from two perspectives: one focuses on the rationale/challenges of planning and governance while the other focuses on the economic forces that generate the mega city regions. In China, the outstanding position of mega city regions in China's economic development has been accentuated in both academic research and recent policies. Recent studies have unpacked the political dynamics of mega city regions in China and identified challenges for planning and governance. The present study approaches this issue through another theoretical lens and deciphers the economic process underneath the recent upsurge of Chinese mega city regions. By unfolding the economic transition since the late 1970s to trace the footprints of mega city region development, the paper contributes a discourse of how different waves of economic transition – that is, rural industrialisation, land-centred development and urban tertiarisation – have been steering individual cities towards super mega city regions. The paper also identifies the distinctive challenges confronting the future development of China's mega city regions, including jurisdictional fragmentation, socio-spatial inequality and environmental externalities, which were created because of the strong bottom-up initiatives in land development during rural industrialisation. New policies and planning are required in response to these challenges as well as to the emerging new industries in the new wave of economic transition (i.e. from labour-intensive industries to the development of high-tech industries). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the built environment and physical activity has become a hot topic in the field of urban planning. When discussing the relationship between the built environment and physical activity, how to measure physical activity reasonably and effectively is an important technical link that determines whether the research is accurate and reliable. At present, the measurement methods of physical activity in domestic and foreign research lack a systematic analysis. Based on the analysis of 27 empirical studies on the relationship between the built environment and physical activity, this paper explores the scope of application of different measurement methods of physical activity from the perspectives of economic cost, observation unit, and information collection. The research shows that: ① Self-report questionnaires can provide information of built environment, but may overestimate the intensity of physical activity; ② a single motion sensor can record the duration, intensity and frequency of physical activity objectively and precisely, but cannot reflect the environment information and the types of physical activity; ③ the combination of two methods provide more possibilities for measuring physical activity. Currently, the relationship between the built environment and physical activity in urban China has not yet been clarified. In the future research of healthy cities, it is recommended to consider the status quo of China’s high-density urban built environment, select appropriate measurement methods and recording tools, and comprehensively record the physical activity characteristics of urban residents, so as to better reveal the influence mechanism of the built environment on physical activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global aging has raised increasing concerns on the health and well-being of older adults. Public transport is a viable option to improve the mobility and quality of life among older adults. However, policies that promote the public transport use among older adults are rare. This study utilizes the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) decision tree to explore the non-linear associations of the built and social environment with bus use among older adults in China. The bus use of older adults was obtained from the Zhongshan Household Travel Survey (ZHTS) in 2012. Results show that non-linear relationships exist among all built environment and social environment characteristics. Within certain thresholds, the percentage of green space land use, land use mixture, bus-stop density, and dwelling unit density are positively related to bus use among older adults. Likewise, one social environment variable, the proportion of older adults in a neighborhood, is the key social environment variable. Furthermore, the dwelling unit density and proportion of older adults appear to have an inverse U-shaped relationship. Additionally, age, ownership of motorcycles, and distance from home to the nearest bus stop also show non-linearity. The findings presented in this paper facilitate effective planning interventions to promote bus use among older adults.

The 15-minute community life circle (15min-CLC) strategy is one of Shanghai's important methods for building a global city and facing a society with a more diverse population structure in the future. In the existing research, the balance between the construction of the life circle and the needs of the people in the life circle still needs to be further fulfilled. This paper is based on the city's multi-source large data set including 2018 AutoNavi POI (Point of Interests), OSM (OpenStreetMap) road network data and LandScan population data set, and evaluates the current status of Shanghai's 15min-CLC through the fusion of kernel density estimation, service area analysis and other statistical models and proposes relevant optimization suggestions. The results show that there are the following shortcomings: (1) From the perspective of different types of infrastructure service facilities, the spatial construction of Shanghai's overall life service facilities and shopping service facilities needs to be optimized. (2) From the perspective of comprehensive evaluation, the comprehensive service convenience of infrastructure service facilities in the downtown area is relatively high, while the comprehensive service convenience of urban infrastructure service facilities in the suburbs and outer suburbs is relatively low; The diversity of basic service facilities in the 15min-CLC in the downtown area is more consistent with the population distribution; However, in the peripheral areas of the urban area, too many infrastructure service facilities have been constructed. Based on the above shortcomings and the perspective of supply and demand matching, relevant optimization strategies are proposed in different regions and different types of infrastructure service facilities: (1) focus on the construction of basic service facilities in the urban fringe and urban-rural areas, improve the full coverage of the basic service facilities, and appropriately reduce the number of basic service facilities in the downtown area. (2) The development of community business models can be used to promote the development of new life service facilities and shopping service facilities. (3) Improve community medical institutions through facility function conversion, merger and reconstruction, etc. (4) Optimize the hierarchical basic service facility system and improve the population supporting facilities of basic service facilities in the 15min-CLC. This paper incorporates people's needs and concerns on the living environment into the 15min-CLC evaluation model, and uses Shanghai as an example to conduct research, summarizes the existing shortcomings, and proposes corresponding optimization strategies based on the matching of supply and demand. This article attempts to explore a replicable 15min-CLC planning model, so that it can be extended to the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, to provide reference for further research on the 15min-CLC, and to promote urban construction under the concept of sustainable development., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

At present, there is less attention paid to the relationship between the frequency of travel and built environment, especially in households. In this paper, some of the determining factors in the frequency of daily cycling per household were explored based on the data from 2018 Daily Trip Survey in Xianyang, China. Then a two-level linear model was construct to identify the determining factors in the frequency of per capita daily cycling of household. According to the research results, 22.8% of the differences in the per capita cycling frequency of household are due to the differences between communities. In terms of community factors, the densities of road networks and educational facilities delivered a significantly positive impact on the per capita daily cycling frequency of family; on the contrary, the densities of medical facilities, intersections and POI delivered a significantly negative impact. Per capita cycling frequency varies considerably between households. For instance, the number of bicycles owned and the number of school-age children have a significantly positive impact on the per capita daily cycling frequency of family. However, car ownership, household income and occupation composition impose a significantly negative impact. The findings of this study would benefit the transportation engineers and planners who are keen to boost the use of active means of transportation for residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. 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.)

Considerable studies have been conducted to investigate the tunnels' traffic safety. However, the entrance and exit parts of a tunnel are mostly considered symmetrical in previous studies, and the different lengths (long, medium, and short) of tunnels have not been separately studied. This study aims to investigate the characteristics of traffic crashes in freeway single tunnels by separately considering the entrance and exit of the tunnel as well as the different lengths of tunnels. A six-zone approach is proposed, and the data from 156 single tunnels in Hunan province, China, are applied for safety analysis. The crash rate, crash type, and contributing crash factors are compared between the conventional four-zone approach and the proposed method, and the three types of tunnels with different lengths are also compared for in-depth analysis. Results show that the proposed six-zone method provides a better understanding of the tunnels crash characteristics. The most crash-prone zones for long, medium, and short tunnels are the mid-zone, the entrance zone, and the access zone, respectively. Furthermore, at the tunnel entrance, drivers usually fail to maintain safe distance, which results in the high proportion of rear-end crashes, while at the tunnel exit, they do speeding and improper lane change that increases the risk of sideswipe, rollover, and collision with fixed objects. The study also discusses the crash occurrence mechanism for different types of tunnels. Findings of this study shed some light on the engineering and policy implications for improving traffic safety of the freeway tunnels., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Walking maintains an indisputable advantage as a simple transport mode over short distances. Various situations have shown that when staying in a walk-friendly built environment, people are more likely to walk and interact with their surroundings. Scholars have reported some evidence of the influence of neighbourhood environments on personal walking trips. Most existing studies of the correlation between the built environment and walking, however, have been conducted in the West and are cross-sectional, which leaves a gap in addressing the causality between built environments and walking under the intervention of regeneration measures. This study takes a historic district of a mid-sized city in China as the research area and reports the changes in the traditional residential district's built environment caused by the implementation of urban regeneration. In this paper, we use physical and perceptual indicators to measure the walkability of the built environment. We identify the changed content of the built environment's walkability and the change of residents' walking behaviour through longitudinal and quasi-longitudinal methods. The conclusion shows that the implementation of a regeneration project of the historic district has greatly changed perceived walkability, which has significantly promoted residents' recreational walking trips, especially among the population of middle-aged and elderly people in the district. The conclusion that the built environment's change promotes recreational walking is contrary to the research performed in sprawling Western contexts such as in the US, and it provides a meaningful supplement for research on the topic in an Asian context.

Social and economic factors relate to the prevention and control of infectious diseases. The purpose of this paper was to assess the distribution of COVID-19 morbidity rate in association with social and economic factors and discuss the implications for urban development that help to control infectious diseases. This study was a cross-sectional study. In this study, social and economic factors were classified into three dimensions: built environment, economic activities, and public service status. The method applied in this study was the spatial regression analysis. In the 13 districts in Wuhan, the spatial regression analysis was applied. The results showed that: 1) increasing population density, construction land area proportion, value-added of tertiary industry per unit of land area, total retail sales of consumer goods per unit of land area, public green space density, aged population density were associated with an increased COVID-19 morbidity rate due to the positive characteristics of estimated coefficients of these variables. 2) increasing average building scale, GDP per unit of land area, and hospital density were associated with a decreased COVID-19 morbidity rate due to the negative characteristics of estimated coefficients of these variables. It was concluded that it is possible to control infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, by adjusting social and economic factors. We should guide urban development to improve human health.

Safety performance function (SPF) has been a vital tool in traffic safety evaluation including finding contributing factors to crashes, identifying hotspots, and assessing safety effects of countermeasures. In the United States (U.S.), the Highway Safety Manual provides a number of SPFs for a variety of road facilities. Due to the limited availability of traffic data in many regions, the transferability of SPFs has been an important topic in traffic safety analysis and has been evaluated by several studies. Nevertheless, the international transferability of freeway SPFs and the applicability of transferred SPFs on hotspot identification has been rarely investigated. Based on data from two Chinese cities, Shanghai and Suzhou, and three U.S. states, Texas, New York and Florida, this study analyzes the transferability of freeway SPFs between Chinese and U.S. regions. These SPFs are then transferred to the other country and their performance on hotspot identification is investigated. SPFs were developed in the frameworks of Poisson, Poisson-lognormal and negative binomial regressions for the five localities separately, and were calibrated using the calibration functions before being transferred. Without calibration, the poor model transferability was found between the two countries, while after calibration, the transferred SPFs between Shanghai/Suzhou and Texas/New York showed satisfactory performance on both model fitting and hotspot identification. However, the transferability of SPFs between Florida and the Chinese cities turned out to be unsatisfactory regardless of whether being calibrated or not, which was attributable to the considerable difference in traffic flow. The findings of this study are expected to be a good reference for researchers and practitioners who want to understand the transferability and applicability of SPFs in the international context., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The regenerative design framework aims to ‘engage a broader range of possibilities by moving beyond the immediate building and site boundaries’. It implies that the environmental performance of buildings requires a revised definition so that it considers not only the building itself, but also its contribution beyond its own boundary, i.e. neighbourhoods. In high-density cities, outdoor spaces are culturally considered as the extension of one’s living spaces. The environmental performance of neighbourhoods is particularly important to the health and wellbeing of urban inhabitants. This paper aims to define the environmental performance of neighbourhoods in high-density urban context based on the experience acquired in previous studies in Hong Kong over the last 15 years. These studies cover a wide range of environmental issues including urban climate, outdoor thermal comfort, and daylighting design in high-density cities. Subsequent development of the assessment tools for environmental performance of neighbourhoods in Hong Kong is also presented. The framework of stakeholder engagement, as an integral part of the neighbourhood assessment tool, is discussed. This paper highlights the distinctive features of the environmental performance of neighbourhoods in high-density urban context and how it influences the professional practices in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the attraction of international students makes a direct impact on the host city and the education institutions, retention (or reattraction) of them after their graduation can generate wider, indirect impacts on the local labor market. The link from international study to the labor market means the role of a gateway played out by the host city that offers university education and various urban attributes. This paper presents the relationship between international tertiary students, and the key factors for their attraction and re-attraction in the context of China. The case of the Dushu Lake Higher Education Town in Suzhou is investigated for how international students have interacted with the local built environment and whether this affects their plans to remain locally for work. This research found that the place based offer was generally less significant than the quality of academic institutions and economic prospects in attracting and re-attracting international students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shared parking scheme improves the utilization rate of existing parking resources and contributes to the sustainable development of cities, but many private parking spaces that are not included in the shared parking scheme have a low utilization rate in China. In order to better promote the shared parking scheme, it is necessary to study the intention of the owners of private parking spaces to share their parking spaces. Therefore, this paper used the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and Benefit-Risk Analysis Model (BRA) as the combined theoretical framework (C-UTAUT-BRA). Hypothesis testing using the Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model was performed using an empirical assessment of the shared parking scheme in China. The results show that (1) the sharing behavioral intention (BI) is directly affected by perceived benefit (PB), perceived risk (PR), social influence (SI), and facilitating condition (FC) and indirectly affected by effort expectancy (EE), of which the total effect of PB is the largest; (2) exogenous variables have an indirect effect on BI through other psychological latent variables; among them, different sociodemographic and economic characteristics have a significant influence on different latent variables, while the built environment has no significant effect on latent variables. This research contributes to theory building in shared parking participation intention and informs business and government leaders on how to promote the shared parking scheme through the action mechanism of influencing factors on BI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Channelized right turns or slip lanes have been widely implemented as an effective countermeasure of reducing traffic delay and number of conflicts between vehicles at signalized intersections. However, only a few studies have investigated the impact of channelized right turns (in left-band driving countries) on pedestrian safety. Channelized right turns may increase the risks for pedestrians since they bring pedestrian-vehicle interactions in a fully non-signalized environment. Furthermore, the increased turning radius at channelized lanes can lead to higher vehicle speeds. This paper investigates the impact of channelized right turns on pedestrian safety based on surrogate safety and behavior measures. Video data were collected from twelve signalized intersections in the city of Zunyi, China, involving three main types of right-turn designs: 1) non-channelized right-only lanes, 2) non-channelized right-through lanes, and 3) channelized right-turn lanes. Different measures are used, including interaction and behavior measures based on a recent-proposed Distance-Velocity model, the PET measurement, speed measurements, and observations of failures in interactions (pedestrian retreats and evasive maneuvers from pedestrians or vehicles). Results indicate that the design of channelized right-turn lane increases pedestrian risks at signalized intersections from different dimensions of safety. The impact of the nighttime condition on pedestrian safety was also compared. Pedestrians are safer at nighttime at non-channelized locations, while the impact of nighttime conditions on pedestrian safety at channelized intersections was not ascertained. Consequently, cities should be cautious to install channelized intersections as a safety countermeasure. Treatments are needed to improve pedestrian safety if channelized right turns are implemented., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Respiratory health is a focus of interdisciplinary studies involving urban planning and public health. Studies have noted that urban built environments have impacts on respiratory health by influencing air quality and human behavior such as physical activity. The aim of this paper was to explore the impact of urban built environments on respiratory health, taking chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as one of the typical respiratory diseases for study. A cross-sectional study was conducted including all cases (N = 1511) of death from COPD in the high-density Jing'an district of Shanghai from 2001 to 2010. Proxy variables were selected to measure modifiable features of urban built environments within this typical high-density district in Shanghai. A geographically weighted regression (GWR) model was used to explore the effects of the built environment on the mortality of COPD and the geographical variation in the effects. This study found that land use mix, building width-height ratio, frontal area density, and arterial road density were significantly correlated to the mortality of COPD in high-density urban area. By identifying built environment elements adjustable by urban planning and public policy, this study proposes corresponding environmental intervention for respiratory health.