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This study aims to analyze the extent to which government incentives and village accountability contribute to village development in Indonesia. The achievement of the Village Development Index (VDI) consists of three dimensions: social resilience, economic resilience, and environmental resilience. These indicators align with the goals of achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The research was conducted using village data from Central Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. The data were obtained from 303 villages and sourced from the Central Sulawesi Statistics Agency. The results of the study show that village accountability and government incentives through the village fund have a positive effect on VDI. This finding is consistent with the differences in VDI measurements using both VDI scores and status. After exploring the dimensions based on VDI, this study also found that accountability had an impact on social resilience and economic resilience, while government incentives contributed to social resilience and environmental resilience. However, village assistance does not appear to have made a significant contribution to village development, and it has also been found that village development in Indonesia has not been evenly distributed in terms of topography. This research provides new insights about the relationship between government incentives, village accountability, and the achievement of SDGs in the rural context. It proposes the formation of accountable villages as one of the strategies and indicators for achieving SDGs in the rural areas of Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing precarity amongst rural households in Myanmar is characterised by increasingly debt-fuelled agriculture, decreasing sufficiency and sustainability of rural livelihoods and an absence of social safety nets. This constrains the capacity for viable livelihoods, as risk-averse coping strategies undermine long-term economic sustainability. In this context, informal support networks may be expected to decline or collapse. However, recent evidence demonstrates the widespread emergence of community-based social organisations in rural communities, formed along traditional principles of reciprocity. Analysis of large-scale rural household surveys demonstrates that such organisations are found in nearly 40% of communities in rural Myanmar. These organisations collect and redistribute funds to help with healthcare, education, funerals and other social needs. The presence of such organisations is linked to higher levels of household resilience, achieved through reducing the inequalities linked to gender, disability and poverty, and through providing enabling environments for effective income diversification. Communities with higher levels of migration are more likely to have community-based social organisations, possibly a result of economic and social remittances. In the absence of effective formalised social protection, these social organisations provide most of the social assistance in rural communities, representing new networks of reciprocity in the face of increasing precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecovillage movement places emphasis on the holistic sustainability of living. This study undertakes a comparative analysis of two forms of ecovillage development: establishing new intentional communities and retrofitting existing traditional villages. This article describes the achievements and limitations of intentional communities, with a special reference to the Findhorn Ecovillage in Scotland, Crystal Waters in Australia, and Ecovillage at Ithaca (EVI) in the US. For comparison purposes, this article introduces Mundang Ecovillage, a traditional village located in South Korea. The three intentional communities have given priority to building low-impact housing and relying on renewable energy sources. Mundang Ecovillage has strengths in the aspects of agricultural sustainability and social cohesion. This study posits that collective and cooperative communal work on organic farms generates social interactions and enhances integrity among community members. Thus, a great deal of synergy can be generated from the co-development of traditional and intentional communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sustainability visioning—creating descriptions of sustainable and desirable future states—has become a prominent tool in urban planning to guide how cities are structured, how they function, and how they are governed. In this article, we present the application of a sustainability visioning approach (SPARC) in support of the City of Phoenix's General Plan Update. The study strove to overcome deficits in current visioning practices, including sufficiently accounting for systems relationships, conflicting values, sustainability principles and stakeholder input; combining public participation with capacity building; and linking creative with analytical activities. We discuss and draw conclusions from this study on how to improve professional and civic capacity for visioning as well as how to bridge the gap between advanced planning practice and research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Urban–rural integration has become the macro policy in China to narrow the gap between urban and rural development. Meanwhile, the rapid pace of economic growth and urbanisation has increasingly posed challenges to urban areas over land availability and provision of infrastructure and labour. Policymakers have started to search for a more sustainable development mode to improve urban competitiveness. Against this context, urban master planning has started to adopt urban–rural integration as a core principle and extend its spatial coverage to rural areas. Through the case of Nanjing, this article investigates the practice and delivery of the 2008 planning reforms that enhanced city-regions as a spatial context for planning and assesses whether the new integrative plan achieves the objective of sustainable urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the emergence of the spatial planning approach in England. The difference of a plan prepared under the spatial planning approach from a traditional land use or local plan is described. The issues that the spatial planning approach raises for the delivery of reform of the planning system in relation to local development planning are discussed.

Focuses on sustainable agricultural development in Nigeria. Informal productive development; Concept of ethnoeconomics; Seasonal migration of stocks.

The structural challenges facing China's construction industry are reviewed here. China's current practical intitatives, barriers and problems in moving towards sustainable development are considered: demonstration ecological villages, innovative walling materials, research on passive solar buildings and the improvement of earth buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]