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Over the past three decades, Kuwait's urban landscape has become dominated by the controversial Conocarpus lancifolius tree. This exotic tree is shrouded in a polemic discourse, oscillating between desiring or despising it. On one extreme it is desired by local environmental activists as a versatile evergreen tree that can withstand Kuwait's harsh arid climate and saline soil; on the other, it is despised by local ecologists and engineers for its monoculture and the destructive behaviour of its roots to subsurface urban infrastructure. This qualitative research aims to understand the multiple narratives around C. lancifolius by analysing institutional reports, social media, local news and grounded interviews. It argues for the need to move beyond polemics regarding C. lancifolius by calling for inclusive landscape governance frameworks for its management, and offers initial context-specific recommendations which may contribute to better urban green infrastructure (UGI) implementation in Kuwait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The editors of this recently published book have spent over two decades defining, theorising and promoting the rise and merits of what they, and notable others before them, refer to as "regional design". This defining characteristic of regional design is repeatedly stressed in chapters authored by the two editors but is not so strongly advanced by several contributors of case study chapters. [Extracted from the article]

Murals have become a familiar element in urban landscapes around the world, providing benefits for individuals, communities, and cities. Many murals have been co-opted by city administrations as part of broader municipal policies. Despite the benefits associated with murals, they provoke tensions and contradictions that challenge policymakers, owners, communities, and those involved in their creation. This paper explores and maps the difficulties and challenges associated with placing murals in the public realm, providing a theoretical framework and highlighting their complexity. Additionally, we demonstrate how these challenges may turn into real-life disputes, cause public outrage, and create tensions between stakeholders in a manner which affects cityscape and urban development. Through case-examples from Portland and Philadelphia, we demonstrate how our theoretical framework can be used to better understand these challenges, and to explore how a range of interests might clash in the face of said challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media façades and digital billboards are becoming an increasingly common fixture in urban landscapes. However, these contemporary signage solutions bear a number of negative social and environmental effects. In addition to obscuring historic architecture and increasing light pollution, they also compete with municipal signage, traditional advertisements, and mobile media to increase our experience of information overload. Smart (environmentally responsive) materials represent an ambient, low-energy alternative to contemporary digital signage. Although smart materials are being used as a sustainable alternative in engineering, they are less frequently used as a form of visual communication in urban informatics. This article describes three artistic experiments that reveal how smart materials can be used to convey information in urban settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International migration profoundly reshapes the urban landscape in sending and receiving countries. Compared to ethnic enclaves in migrant-receiving metropolises and remittance houses in sending communities, we know little about systematic urban changes led by emigration states. In this article, based on three months of fieldwork in a migrant hometown in China, I argue that the dispersion of emigrants per se does not make its urban space inherently 'diasporic'. Rather, a 'diasporic place' can be strategically constructed by local sociopolitical actors, a process I conceptualise as 'diasporic placemaking'. To create an international city branding and boost the consumption-based urban economy, the local state promotes Western architectural forms and imagines globalisation as a new way of life. To understand how migrants and local residents make sense of diasporic placemaking, I analyse deep-running tensions between their diverse self-perceptions and state construction. Instead of an innocent project, diasporic placemaking is replete with ambitions, achievements, and anxieties in post-socialist China's march towards modernity, progress, and prosperity. To advance the constructivist momentum in diaspora studies, I explore how diaspora construction is realized and contested in urban transformations while shedding light on how migrant spaces are valorised and performed by local actors for economic and symbolic purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Neuman concludes with an overview of the book, emphasizing the duality of spatial design and governance design. Michael Neuman's seminal 2000 article (Neuman, [1]) initiated a surge of interest in what he has called regional design. The Routledge Handbook of Regional Design: edited by Michael Neuman and Wil Zonneveld, New York, Routledge, 2021, 484 pp., £190.00 (hardback), ISBN 9780367258665 Since its emergence in geography in the late 19th century, the region as a concept has intrigued scholars and practitioners who have seen it as a means to understanding places and to manage their growth and development. [Extracted from the article]

SUMMARY: Newhailes House on the outskirts of Edinburgh is surrounded by an 18th-century designed landscape which encapsulates the philosophical and aesthetic concerns of the Scottish Enlightenment. Through the use of excavation and building surveys this paper examines the surviving elements of this landscape and discusses how their design and function can be interpreted as tools to negotiate, create and sustain social structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent global urban expansion has seen a massive decline and loss in the connectivity of urban vegetation. In urban areas, some vegetation patches have increasingly become isolated and less connected by a matrix composed of impervious surfaces and transportation networks like roads. Vegetation fragmentation is a global threat to the remaining urban green spaces and has an impact on biodiversity conservation, environmental quality and urban microclimates. So far, a lot of work has been done on mapping and monitoring urban green spaces, some using conventional methods and of late using remotely sensed data. However, not much is known or well documented on the new developments in the remote sensing of vegetation fragmentation in urban areas over the last two decades. Thus, the objective of this research work is to present a detailed and comprehensive synthesis of the progress of remote sensing in assessing and monitoring landscape structure of urban green spaces and vegetation fragmentation. Specifically, scientific literature from the year 2000 to 2020 was reviewed to provide a state-of-the-art progress on the remote sensing of vegetation fragmentation in urban areas. Results indicate that between 2000 and 2020, there was a considerable increase in the number of scientific publications on vegetation fragmentation in urban landscapes. The discrete landscape pattern indices are the most widely used method. Comparatively, Land Remote Sensing Satellite System (Landsat) data was widely used due to its suitable spatial and temporal resolution, free availability and the presence of historical archival data that spans over a period of 40 years. The most commonly used scale was local (a city and/or municipality) followed by regional (more than one municipality in one continent) and then global (several selected cities and urban areas across continents). Only two studies were conducted at the global level. Further, geographic bias was observed in most of the accessed vegetation fragmentation studies. The review showed that vegetation fragmentation studies were done mostly for cities in China, North America and Europe while cities in most parts of Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Oceania and South America have not been comprehensively studied. The study also showed that the majority of cities across the globe have experienced severe vegetation fragmentation over the years. This review underscores the relevance of scientific findings in urban and spatial planning to minimize the loss of urban green spaces and to conserve and restore affected areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and analysis of urban growth and its driving factors are crucial to the long-term sustainable development of cities. Based on the multi-temporal Landsat remote sensing data, this paper extracts urban information by interpreting and supervising classification, and makes a dynamic study on the urban expansion of Harbin in different temporal intervals. By analyzing the spatial determinants of urban growth, we deeply understand the process of urban growth, thus providing important help for urban planning and policy formulation. In this paper, four landscape metrics (total area, aggregation index, landscape shape index, and total edge) were selected to characterize the urban landscape characteristics from two spatial scales (2 and 5 km grid sizes), then the spatial regression model was used to explore the relationship between the urban landscape and its spatial determinants. These changes exhibit significant spatial variations and spatial autocorrelation at two spatial scales. Topography and proximity factors have important effects on urban landscape change. These research results may help us to better understand the process and driving factors of urban development, so as to help the underdeveloped cities in northeast China to formulate scientific and reasonable development plans and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study selected nine typical urban lake-wetlands in Daqing as the research object, and analyzed the key factors influencing diversity of the lake-wetland bird based on GIS technology and the field investigation. The bird diversity index (H ') was significantly positively correlated with the proportion of grassland area within the 500 m buffer zone, and the bird diversity was positively correlated with the proportion of grassland area, and grassland became the main habitat or foraging place for birds. Multiple regression analysis of common species and 10 habitat environmental characteristics parameters showed that there were inter-species differences in habitat parameters affecting distribution of birds, which was related to the differences in bird adaptability to different habitats. Moreover, the diversity of birds decreased with the increase of the proportion of urban construction land and the degree of human disturbance. So maintaining the diversity of habitat types and structures is the key to improving the richness of birds. Measures to protect the natural habitat of city and restore the effective habitat of plants and plants will help to increase the diversity of species in urban lake-wetlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, but especially in Africa, increasing human populations and anthropogenic land-use change are generally affecting diversity negatively. Urban environments in southern Africa typically comprise a mosaic landscape of anthropogenic infrastructure with some green spaces. These urban cities have a range of fauna that have persisted or increased in population density compared with areas that are more natural. We analysed the occurrence of diurnal and nocturnal raptors using South African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP2) data and reviewed literature. We found 66 raptor species occurred in South African cities. Thirty species had reporting frequencies greater than 10% in at least one of the 11 cities assessed, revealing impressive diversity of the raptor clade in South African cities. Five species were both abundant and widespread, occurring >10% in five or more cities each, of which three belong to the scavenger guild: Black-winged Kite Elanus caeruleus, African Fish Eagle Haliaeetus vocifer, Common Buzzard Buteo buteo vulpinus, Yellow-billed Kite Milvus aegyptius and Black Sparrowhawk Accipiter melanoleucus. However, only a few of these 66 raptors had been extensively studied in urban areas: the Black Sparrowhawk, African Crowned Eagle Stephanoaetus coronatus, Lanner Falcon Falco biarmicus and Peregrine Falcon Falco peregrinus. This lack of research is specifically severe, given that Africa is hosting a unique and diverse range of raptor species and that numbers and diversity of raptors have declined dramatically over the past decades across the continent. In fact, these four extensively studied species occurred in higher densities in urban areas than rural areas, which indicates that urban areas might create valuable opportunities for urban conservation, not least through public engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I demonstrate my visual-material approach to researching the urban built environment as a medium of communication in its own right. Specifically, I discuss my research on second-tier cities with "world-class" aspirations, which highlights the significance of both symbolic and material resources in processes of urban regeneration and redevelopment. A visual-material approach draws not only from social semiotics and multimodality, but also from critical and material rhetoric to engage with the ways in which increasingly widespread "formats" of urban regeneration and redevelopment are mobilized to transform the urban built environment in the service of a globally appealing aesthetic. In doing so, this is also an approach that illuminates the dialectical relationship between cities' perceived necessity to appear competitive on a heavily mediatized global stage and to intervene on their landscape in ways that mediate the everyday lives of urban communities in lasting ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on new forms of governance of diversity in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), unpacking the ambivalence of its cosmopolitanism from above. It explores how the Dubai government's narratives brand Dubai as a cosmopolitan city, rarely using the term but conveying the idea by promoting diversity, emphasizing on tolerance and happiness as two core national and urban values. The main hypothesis is that the government uses Dubai's own landscape as the principal tool (alongside others, such as policies, institutions, discourses, events) to embody this new ideology, engraving its symbols into built landscapes and making it visible to all. Behind these inclusive cosmopolitan narratives are diverse 'regimes of visibility' which sometimes serve to hide strong logics of exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the consideration of sensory embodied practice offers a route to unraveling subtle and nuanced placemaking practices of multicultural communities, revealing the physical, cultural and social interplay of everyday interactions. While a sensorial epistemological approach has been a relatively recent development in the humanities and social sciences, the 'body' has been theorised extensively. Even so, this has been of a generic body that is typically white, male and middle class. The embodied practices I present here affirm that bodies are social, sensorial and multiplicitous. Drawing from fieldwork in the multicultural Melbourne suburb of Footscray, I discuss the socio-sensory, through two types of sociality encountered on site; firstly, around economic activities, and the other around small groups of individuals, appearing unplanned and leisurely. I discuss the significance of these embodied acts in defining identity and validating presence in the urban landscape, demonstrating the sensescapes they create, informed by culturally specific sensory orders carry the potential to challenge – permeating and confronting, implicitly providing a means of expression and dissonance. I argue, consideration of the socio-sensory dimension provides an alternative framework of analysis that expands vocabulary and recalibrates sensibilities, providing insight into other ways of making and occupying space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variations in avifauna species diversity are subject to environmental factors as well as interactions with other species. We evaluated how landscape structure can influence the composition and distribution of avifauna species groups in a tropical urban landscape from the understudied region of the Harare metropolitan area in Northeastern Zimbabwe. We sampled avifauna species groups and computed patch metrics (size, shape and isolation distance) using remotely sensed data from 35 census plots representing five land use/land cover classes. Using multivariate analysis techniques, we found three habitat patch characteristics distinguishing avifauna species diversity and distribution, namely patch shape complexity (R2 = 0.47–0.64), patch size (R2 = 0.55–0.62) and isolation distance (R2 = 0.73–0.78). In this study, we discuss the implications of these findings with a view to better understanding the effects of urban landscape structure on avifauna species diversity in this understudied region. In particular, contextual landscape features such as native savanna vegetation accompanied by dispersed urban development patterns could mitigate the negative impacts of urbanization on biodiversity. This study may be useful in helping to understand landscape structure–biodiversity linkages in ecosystems outside tropical savannas, as well as in other urban areas of sub-Saharan Africa. provide empirical information for review of town planning by-laws and align zoning proposals to habitat requirements of avifauna species, inform preparation of environmental action plans to restore degraded landscapes and ecosystems and, inform development of subdivision layout design guidelines by managing the size, shape, isolation distance and LULC composition of habitat fragments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article follows the inception and the development of an unauthorized community garden that emerged out of a re-appropriated composting site in a municipal park in Montreal, Canada. The article identifies the principal reasons and mechanisms that account for how the guerrilla garden was able to remain in a high-profile location for a period of time. The article explores the intertwined combination of the guerrilla garden and the spaces it affected vis-à-vis landscape urbanism and its pursuit of a new urban development paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge about landscapes is highly complex and it is important to clarify how that complexity is reflected in the knowledge claims that feed into a particular planning process. Thus, this paper addresses critical issues and challenges regarding the formation of knowledge about landscapes in spatial planning contexts, based on published landscape research and planning theory. The analysis is rooted in planning theorists' discussion of various types of knowledge claims involved in spatial planning practices. Thinking in terms of knowledge, and discussing both the character of knowledge production and types of knowledge claims that will be included, is a useful approach for choosing and developing assessment methods. To aid such approaches, two key aspects of formation of knowledge about landscapes are addressed here. One is the trans-disciplinary challenge of capturing landscapes as a whole. The other is the normative element of knowledge pertaining to landscapes, including diverging moral and ethical perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local native species that decline in response to urbanisation are often classified as 'urban avoiders'. Their decline drives the biotic homogenisation seen in cities but the characterisation of these species as urban avoiders may discourage efforts to conserve them in urban landscapes. We used gradient analysis and species distribution modelling to examine habitat availability and fragmentation along an entire urban-forest gradient for a representative urban avoider – the Eastern Yellow Robin (Eopsaltria australis). Gradient analysis had utility in quantifying threats for this species but species distribution modelling better highlighted conservation opportunities in the landscape. The amount of suitable habitat declined with increasing urbanisation whilst fragmentation increased. Towards the city centre, habitat clustered around major waterways. Riparian networks showed clear potential to facilitate the restoration of connectivity between urban and fringing habitat and we identify 'missing links' in this network – key opportunities for habitat restoration. Riparian vegetation escapes development, is the preferred habitat for many species, including humans, and can serve as the logical architecture on which to focus conservation efforts. Restoring habitat along riparian networks in cities can build comprehensive and fully connected biotic infrastructure that facilitates human-nature connections and conserves local native species diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active methodologies keep students engaged and make classes more interesting. Objectives Students will go on two class field trips in the region; Students will be able to identify the main visual and sensory aspects of a landscape and compare the different perceptions of this geographic space; Students will design one landscape model with the assistance of geography and art teachers; Students will demonstrate that the natural and social elements of a landscape are in constant interaction and transformation; Students will discuss that every landscape holds a story. B Day 7 (special day - 3 hours) b Natural + social = landscape Class display: The students will present in a school fair their final work, explaining what they have discovered about the landscape. [Extracted from the article]

This paper builds on contemporary memoirs of homelessness from cities across the United States to develop a more nuanced understanding of the use value of urban parks and green spaces. Based on analysis of over seventy memoirs, we synthesize the writings of nine memoirists who examine their relationship to green spaces in cities. Instead of framing nature as something pristine and distinct from society—or something dangerous and untamed—these writings portray urban green spaces as sites of belonging and everyday life. In the US today, cities often either value parks as playgrounds for middle-class leisure or devalue them as targets of racialized anti-homeless policing. In both instances, parks are framed in relation to their impact on the exchange value of surrounding urban areas. In contrast, the memoirs of homelessness we examine portray parks and other green spaces as enabling privacy, survival, and emotional solace in an urban landscape often marked by surveillance, deprivation, and violence. These crucial values reveal a new conceptualization of urban parks as profoundly useful to those who are subject to the exclusions of capitalist property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: Urban sustainability; natural hazards; precarity; technologies of security; modes of uncertainty EN Urban sustainability natural hazards precarity technologies of security modes of uncertainty 401 406 6 06/23/20 20200701 NES 200701 Introduction A substantial literature has recently emerged inside and beyond the discipline of anthropology concerning various aspects of a "precarious present" in a globalised world (e.g. Banki [1]; Hinkson [11]; Weston [18]). Our articles aim to account for such more open-ended understandings of urban environments and the locally specific responses to vulnerability such understandings shape. That is, we set out to demonstrate how water management, infrastructure strategies, traffic surveillance, regulation of consumption and political-economic policies and events generate partially new ways of moving around in towns and cities. "As both an insurgent and critical infrastructure", he writes, these drivers demonstrate how the apparently precarious underclass can serve the city as well as serve themselves by stretching across it and capturing its flows in innovative ways to form a non-consenting infrastructure that is able to subvert rules and regulations. [Extracted from the article]

The Latina Province in Italy is synonymous with Italian Fascism. This connection is manifest in the different design perspectives that contributed to the formation of the region's visual character during the 21 years of Fascist rule between 1922–43. Corporativist urbanism framed how Fascism's stories, myths and fables were told through numerous graphic objects that embellished new towns during the region's reclamation. Through the lens of graphic design as urban design, this study provides a comprehensive understanding of how the Latina landscape was conceived, planned and made at the macro, meso and micro scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the shifting dynamics in our Learning Landscapes as pressure for deep systemic change mounts. Concepts of future-fit learning and future-creative competencies are introduced as part of a new narrative for new educational paradigms. A Protopia of Evolutionary Learning Ecosystems (ELEs) is proposed. The emergence of ELEs is more likely to curate and foster a thrivability world during those times of growing pressures. Six integral levels of wellbeing for thrivability are postulated, and the role of education to integrate them in the development of future-fit competencies is considered. These competencies are further explored through five evolutionary archetypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opportunities exist for radical strategies, driven by spatial planning, to adapt our urban fabric to climate change. Floating developments are one such innovation. This phenomenon and its ideas are driven by a variety of societal forces, including by population pressure, rapid urbanisation, the resulting need for additional housing inventory, by urban adaptation strategies to counter fluvial flooding and sea level rise, plus interests in urban landscape renewal. We reflect on seventeen projects in five countries and note that, to date, it is inner city harbours or industrial areas in decline that are being targeted for floating communities. These can add renewal, recreational and landscape value, while simultaneously expanding the existing urban housing stock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by Chinese traditional art forms and architectural thoughts, landscape ecology or landsenseology emphasizes the integration of human physical senses, psychological perceptions and sustainable development concept into the regional ecol-environmental research and planning-construction-management, which is an inheritance and development to ancient Chinese simple ecological ideas and sustainable development consciousness. The multiscale of spatiotemporal combination is one of the principles of landsense creation, which means that people's senses and perceptions at different times and different places can be integrated into a single landsense for a landsense creation. The bidirection of vision manifestation and the vein-compliance of orientation are the other two main principles of landsense creation. As traditional Chinese art creations, poetry, calligraphy and painting possess the same origin, poetry, calligraphy and painting reproduce their creators' perceptions of ecosystems and also present their creators' visions for a better living environment, which reflects people's simple ecological ideas and sustainable development consciousness at that time. Zhihuan Wang is a famous poet in the Chinese Tang Dynasty. The poem, On the Stork Tower, is one of his representative works. This poem is widely loved by people and has been widely spread in China. Based on the theory and methodology of landsenses ecology or landsenseology, this paper analyzes the creation method, lofty artistic conception and good vision of the poem, which provides an effective approach or methodology for art appreciation. The analysis framework formed with this approach is of enlightening significance for the theoretical researches and practices of eco-environmental art creation, eco-environment construction and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization in China is closely connected with ambient particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5). However, the potential for altering PM2.5 through the urban landscape characteristics is uncertain. In this study, we analyzed the urban PM2.5 pollution situation for 2014–2016 and investigated the impact of landscape factors on urban PM2.5 in China at the city level. All the prefecture-level cities were stratified by urban population size into small (<500,000), medium (500,000–1,000,000), and large (>1,000,000), and the other second-level administrative cities were assigned as 'other' cities. The multivariate regression model including both urban landscape factors and social-economic variables explained 70.0%, 32.8%, 19.2%, and 12.4% of the arithmetic mean PM2.5 concentration (AMC-PM2.5) for the other, small, medium, and large cities, respectively. With regard to the configuration of land cover, agricultural activity is a major contributor of PM2.5 pollution, for which the explanatory power ranged from 7.6% (for the large cities) to 64% (for the other cities). In addition, grassland aggregation also has a limited but negative effect on urban PM2.5 pollution, despite the negligible effect on dry deposition. Overall, these findings likely reflect the interaction between urban air quality and urbanization, and will have implications for air quality control strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the value of Hubei Ancient Village as an example of urban villages by examining its historical evolution, cultural continuity, existing problems and corresponding connection to the development of Shenzhen. This paper expounds the necessity of maintaining Hubei Ancient Village, an urban village, and proposes a low-disturbance plan for protecting the human environment and advancing the progressive renewal of the material landscape to ensure the overall protection of the village at the dual levels of material and culture. This study also provides a reference for the formulation of protection rules for other urban villages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a social semiotic approach to vernacular sign-making in place, by examining the visual landscape of Leeds Kirkgate Market, as an example of a semiotically-unregulated place. Traders have ample freedom of self-expression and agency in shaping their stalls through all visual-material resources (beyond mere signage, as analysed in linguistic landscape research). There derives a composite non-cohesive aesthetic of the market's visual landscape, driven by the situated needs and tastes of the socio-culturally diverse population inhabiting the place. The resulting semiotic diversity is remarkable when compared to its neighbouring areas, as well as to recently renovated UK city markets. Against an increased institutional regulation of urban landscapes, semiotically-unregulated places enable vernacular practices from below that defy current aesthetic tenets in professional design and help revealing and questioning the power dynamics underlying a social construction of taste. Research into vernacular semiotics shows the enhanced cultural richness resulting from people's agency in shaping the public spaces in which they live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is much evidence to indicate the climate is changing. In order to investigate the effects of climate change on the designed landscape in the UK and suggest new plant species for using in the UK greenspace, according to the 2050 UK climate change scenario, 12 climate change scenarios were designed and simulated. Eighteen plant species, native to Western Europe, the Mediterranean area, and the Southern Rocky Mountain Region were chosen to represent a gradient from well fitted to poorly fitted to the current British climate. Plant species seedlings were grown in situ under 450 and 900 ppm of CO2 concentration with three watering regime rates and two different temperature treatments. The plant response of the community and individual species to CO2 concentration, changing precipitation, temperature and interaction effects of these environmental factors on designed plant community in urban areas were investigated. The results indicated that a mix of maritime climate species and southern European, Mediterranean climate species which showed a high level of sustainability in current and future UK climate scenarios, is recommended to design a multi-layer plant community and dynamic public landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the analysability of landscape experience and the interpretation enabled by the concept of the chronotope. Beyond its potential for a holistic study of texts, the chronotope can also be applied in landscape studies. In geography, the chronotope has primarily been used for analysis within three different areas: discourses and narratives, spatiotemporal sense of everyday places and biological spaces. Our aim is to show the applicability of the chronotope in the experiential aspect of landscape studies. Experiencing the landscape implies a dialogic understanding of action in a situation including the subject's interrelationship with the environment. We examine how the subjective experience of an abandoned landscape is internally multiple and has significant value for imagination and meaning-making. The example analysed is an Estonian architect's description of his visit to Hashima Island, Japan, and focuses on three levels of chronotopes—the topographic, the psychological and the metaphysical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The physical and social processes in urban systems are inherently spatial and hence data describing them contain spatial autocorrelation (a proximity-based interdependency on a variable) that need to be accounted for. Standard k-fold cross-validation (KCV) techniques that attempt to measure the generalisation performance of machine learning and statistical algorithms are inappropriate in this setting due to their inherent i.i.d assumption, which is violated by spatial dependency. As such, more appropriate validation methods have been considered, notably blocking and spatial k-fold cross-validation (SKCV). However, the physical barriers and complex network structures which make up a city's landscape mean that these methods are also inappropriate, largely because the travel patterns (and hence Spatial Autocorrelation (SAC)) in most urban spaces are rarely Euclidean in nature. To overcome this problem, we propose a new road distance and travel time k-fold cross-validation method, RT-KCV. We show how this outperforms the prior art in providing better estimates of the true generalisation performance to unseen data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peri-urban areas have long and diverse histories but when targeted for large-scale housing expansion, they are at risk of becoming a blank slate for development, a potential loss to both existing inhabitants and potential newcomers. In this paper, we develop a method to recover and narrate the sense of place of members of the pre-existing local community and map those memories onto specific locations and views within the landscape. Situated in a post-mining landscape on the edge of the city of Edinburgh, designated for urban expansion, our case study reveals the rich and diverse memories associated with seemingly ordinary landscape features; a stark contrast with the generic selling slogans and housing typologies presented by the developers. Deployment of methods like ours can help planners of urban redevelopment and expansion to better appreciate the sense of place of long-term residents and stimulate the process of place-making on new housing estates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the influence of sense of place on the city's branding through examining the significance of the natural landscape as an effective factor in the formation of the cognitive images of urban residents and visitors. For this purpose, a theoretical framework was made based on the literature review of place branding and the quality of sense of place, and next, in the experimental section of the research, the needs, preferences, perceptions, and feelings of Sanandaj residents and visitors have been investigated by conducting 41 semi-structured interviews. The result shows that, although urban natural landscape is an identifying feature that may turn into the city brand, sensing the quality of place by the residents and tourists through tangible and intangible factors are also effective factors in forming the city's identity and image and thus the quality of city branding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the technology of RS & GIS and the remote sensing images of Jixi City in 1993, 2003 and 2015, this study analyzes quantitatively the temporal and spatial evolution characters of landscape pattern in the downtown area of Jixi City in China in the past 22 years. The research results show that the area of mine land, farmland and construction land increased greatly from 1993 to 2015. As an important part of the urban natural ecosystem, the area of water area, forest and grassland are also decreasing year by year. In the past 22 years, due to the impact of human activities such as coal resources development, the coal mine land in the central urban area is distributed in the agricultural farming area and the edge zone with different landscape types. On the whole, the fragmentation degree and diversity of regional landscape are increasing, and human activities have a significant impact on the urban landscape pattern of Jixi City. This paper attempts to explore the general law of landscape pattern change under the influence of human activities in mining cities and to provide a reference for urban land use planning and scientific decision-making of relevant government departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Saadians consolidated their power in the al-Maghrib al-Aqṣà and established their capital in Marrakesh, the sultan ʿAbdallāh al-Gālib (1557–1574) spearheaded one of the most splendorous periods of the dynasty. He undertook a series of projects to renew the city and equip it with new facilities, after a century of decline and falling behind other centres. Among the works carried out by this sultan were the reorganization of the city and the construction of infrastructures and monumental buildings that became features in the urban landscape. This paper outlines all of the known works that were part of ʿAbdallāh's project with the aim of highlighting the historical relevance of his reign. It focuses on two religious complexes located in the city that replicate the same architectural model and the same layout in their urban contexts. In both cases, the designs of the complexes and their relationship with their surroundings is studied, allowing the assessment of the impact of their construction on the urban landscape and the development of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the debates regarding native versus non-native plantings in the Israeli kibbutz and their role in the reinvention of the Israeli rural landscape. Based on the assumption that the representation of landscape is always tied to larger questions concerning culture and identity, the genesis of the landscape that has by now become fully naturalised as the new local rural landscape is examined through an analysis of the cultural and ideological roots of its planting design. The Israeli debates reflected the paradox at the heart of a culture that sought to be both 'new' and 'native.' The ethos of 'something from nothing'—expressed as the creation of a new green landscape ex nihilo—as well as the advocates for the use of native plants, will be examined in relation to their respective constructions of a landscape narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the years since the 'January 25th Revolution' of 2011, Egypt has fallen on hard times, wracked by ongoing state instability and the unraveling of its economy. Against the backdrop of this political and economic turmoil, Cairo has emerged as an object of renewed interest and attention. The resulting sociospatial interventions have ranged from restoration projects targeting Cairo's numerous architectural legacies to mapping and documentation initiatives intended to generate reliable urban data. This article queries the reconstitution of the urban landscape via an exploration of the work of the Cairo Lab for Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research (CLUSTER), an independent urban research group established after January 25th. I begin by locating the organization's work in the broader context of sociospatial transformations in Downtown Cairo, a neighborhood that has long played an important role in the urban and national landscapes and which is currently undergoing rapid change. I then unpack the group's activities in the district–especially those pertaining to the neighborhood's so-called passageways–and the political ideologies underpinning them. I conclude by suggesting that CLUSTER's interventions are vulnerable to appropriation by other actors working in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Walking interviews and mobile ways of engaging participants in research have recently begun to emerge as methods to collect data that tries to understand people's relationships with places. This work explores the self-narrated walk as a method to research people's encounters and interactions with the landscape and their associated meanings and values. We address the method by explaining and examining how it has been designed, implemented and experienced by participants who engaged in a set of environmental immersive encounters in urban green landscapes. The findings show that this approach offers the user perspective, and facilitates in situ, mobile and in-the-moment, detailed, complex personal descriptions, and meanings into the mechanisms behind physical and emotional person–place interactions. Additionally, they suggest that the method is excellent to empower participants, to stimulate engagement with places and to capture simultaneously different data-sets. Finally, we discuss potential implications for landscape research and for the design process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban sprawl, a type of urban expansion, is perceived as a global problem due to changes in land conversions and landscape patterns. Farms, forests and shores have been converted into urban areas; this transformation affects energy flow, biochemical cycles and climatic conditions. To follow and evaluate the physical, social and ecological results of urban sprawl, we identified and measured temporal changes in land use and land cover. This is especially important for urban planning policies. In this study, temporal change is identified in the city of Bartın using remote sensing and landscape metrics. An analysis of land cover and land transformation was done with LANDSAT5 TM/ETM satellite images from 1985 and 2015. These images were used to identify agricultural areas as land that has most commonly undergone drastic changes. Bartın is a small semi-rural city that has undergone significant changes. Among the most important reasons for these changes were uncontrolled urban sprawl due to political and administrative decisions that lacked long-term planning and a comprehensive city plan. This study examined the risk factors for loss of semi-rural characteristics using the example of Bartın city. To protect semi-rural city characteristics and control urban sprawl, we propose an agricultural belt based on spatial suitability and an evaluation of landscape metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: In 1571, the Ottomans completed the conquest of Cyprus. In order to consolidate their new territory, the Ottomans introduced a policy of imperial control that was centred on local accommodation and negotiation to facilitate stable governance. This study examines the process of the conquest and the extent to which the conquest changed the character of the urban landscapes of Cyprus. Architecture and urban reshaping represented a central facet of this process of colonial change and introduced a new visual language of control and Islamic presence. Nicosia was established as an administrative provincial capital and underwent redevelopment that followed an urbanscape replicating core features of an Ottoman town. This pattern of redevelopment was replicated elsewhere across the island as its economic infrastructure was strengthened. However, this period remains contested within the context of contemporary conflict on the divided island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As African populations continue to urbanize at the highest rates worldwide, informal peri-urban landscapes have emerged in recent decades, becoming a norm throughout Africa's cities. They continue to grow spatially and in population, outpacing municipal infrastructure. These peri-urban zones have predominantly informal social, political, and economic structures. Unique cultural identities continue to evolve in these emergent landscapes. This project gained key insights into lesser visited spaces during a field study to Pikine. Pikine's dense urban area exhibits socioeconomic marginalization, lack of public services, environmental degradation, health hazards, and high crime rate. The qualitative research herein, illuminates gaps in the understanding of cultural identity and transformations taking place within the peri-urban environment – a human landscape that remains mostly unfamiliar and largely inaccessible to the greater population writ large. The study finds that insurmountable environmental and socioeconomic challenges have helped garner Pikine's reputation within the greater Dakar urban agglomeration as a dysfunctional and criminal urban backwater. Yet, in the face of its social alienation coupled with infrastructural isolation and enduring shared struggle against chronic flooding, the city developed its own distinguishable culture and particularly kindred spirit embodying the Wolof solidarity known in the region as teranga. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on three Irish diasporic representations of the Aran Islands, and is innovative in analysing all three in the light of recent cultural theory, especially around postmemory and postmodernity. In particular, the paintings and photographs of Irish-British artist Sean Scully, especially Walls of Aran (2007), are given a first appraisal in this light. Further angles on Aran, and contexts for Scully's work, are provided by Man of Aran by Irish-American filmmaker Robert Flaherty (1934), and the photographic and literary representations of Aran produced by Anglo-Irish Ascendancy writer J.M. Synge between 1898 and 1902. The works are analysed in relation to a tradition of colonialist and nationalist primitivism and the essay builds a picture of diasporic romanticism that spans three quite different historical moments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study demonstrates the integration of landscape aesthetic quality and probable urban growth patterns in urban landscape modelling. This was performed using SLEUTH as a scenario-based urban growth model in Gorgan City of Iran. Future urbanization was predicted under developing three different scenarios including historical, managed and aesthetically sound urban growth up to the year 2030. Multi-Layer Perceptron neural network model was conducted for mapping the aesthetic suitability of the study area. The aesthetic suitability layer was used in the third scenario of SLEUTH model as the excluded layer to protect the scenic patches in future. The results showed that by correct implementation of urban growth policies, 323 ha in the second scenario and 650 ha in the third scenario would be saved. This integrated model would help the planners for a better management of urban landscapes as a Spatial Decision Support System. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the 22 North American Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) initiated a new era of conservation design in the United States by mandating landscape conservation plans integrating both natural and cultural resources. Similar to the GAP program, efforts in cultural resources will need to expand beyond identifying the most important cultural resource preservation priorities to also ask broader questions about cultural resources as embedded in landscapes and socioecological systems. As we discussed previously, the papers selected were designed to start a conversation about developing a broader approach to integrating cultural resources in landscape-scale conservation design, planning, and management. Important regional science focused on understanding the complex interaction between urban and rural communities and landscapes is critical for future landscape-scale conservation design efforts. [Extracted from the article]

Productive urban landscape is a design concept integrating food growing and animal raising into the design of cities through public and private open spaces in an attempt to support local economic development. This research focuses on farm animals’ husbandry in cities as a type of local food production. Debates about governance tools for sustaining such economic sector arise frequently especially in Egypt, as one of the developing countries, striving to maintain urban quality of life, satisfy the community needs, and compensate the food prices’ increment. Accordingly, field questionnaires for residents of two rapidly expanding informal areas in Cairo (Zabaleen area in Agouza city) and (Masaken Osman in 6th of October city), together with questionnaires for experts and officials who are working in Urban Upgrading Units and those with experiences in the field of upgrading informal settlements were performed. This research thus aims at studying the feasibility and integration of such economic activities informally developing in unplanned areas in Egypt, as ‘new ruralism’, within the strategic and action planning of low-income and informal areas in a legalized regulatory system to tackle their challenges and enhance their economic role. Further, this research ends up with deducing specific values for prioritizing the types of governmental support (financial, space facilitations, social, and medical), as proposed by officials and residents representing the main incorporated stakeholders. This article also highlighted the unwillingness and the on-purpose ignorance of officials to sustain animal husbandry in cities, constituting a challenge that needs to be tackled in all developing countries not only in Egypt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the place of utility cycling (cycling as a means of transport rather than as a sport or leisure activity) under urban modernism in the UK. In many western contexts the dominant feature of urban modernism was its emphasis on accommodating private vehicles to the neglect of other forms of mobility. The result was the production of a ‘car-system’ with significant change to urban and rural environments. This paper assesses resistance to what we term ‘automobile modernism’ during the high watermark of its planning and implementation (1950-1970), using the UK Cyclists’ Touring Club (now known as Cycling UK) archive. We make three contributions. First, and primarily, we highlight how cycling advocacy contested automobile modernism’s claim that cycling was ‘outmoded’. In so doing we note significant continuity in policy debates and political advocacy regarding cycling’s place in the road environment around issues such as segregation from motor vehicles. Contemporary attempts to promote cycling, as well as a wider urban sustainability agenda, are heavily influenced by this history. Second, we highlight a commonality between cycling and other resistance to automobile modernism in terms of rural and urban landscape impacts. Third, we highlight how the CTC ‘professionalized’ its advocacy to resist automobile modernism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of traffic noise can be prevented by suitable planning measures. This study analyses the relationship between urban geometry and traffic noise, recognizing that the arrangement of buildings and streets greatly influences urban noise. The study was carried out in Braga, a medium-sized Portuguese city, by selecting locations with different urban geometries. At each site, the equivalent continuous sound level was measured. Furthermore, the urban geometry was evaluated by using the sky view factor, a parameter which shows the degree of sky obstructed by buildings. Results show an inverse proportionality between noise and the sky view factor. The highest noise levels were found in areas with a low sky view factor. The results also indicate that the sky view factor is a parameter which can potentially be used in research on urban noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several disciplines, such as landscape architecture, species conservation and water management, have contributed to the advancement of knowledge of Green Infrastructure (GI). However, doubts remain on the best approach to embed the concept of GI and related components in planning policies and practice. This paper presents a literature review of the scientific and policy frameworks of GI as well as the knowledge gap that exists between academics and practitioners. Furthermore, a discourse analysis of planning documents was conducted in the metropolitan regions of Milan, Montreal and Helsinki. The three metropolitan regions are challenging new forms of cooperation between academics and practitioners. The results show that while studies on GI are used to support planning strategies, they struggle to address spatial, landscape and environmental issues at the local scale. Closer interdisciplinary cooperation between academics, as well as between academics and practitioners, can help to find new approaches to urban landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant number of water pools existed in Jerusalem in the Late Hellenistic and Early Roman periods. The pools constitute an archaeological phenomenon that should be analysed in its own right. No other city in the region had so many stand-alone large pools in its urban landscape. This paper offers an explanation of this phenomenon based on its cultural, historical, and archaeological context. The article discusses the corpus of pools, including the dating, the methods of water collection and their possible use in light of similar water installations that were common in this period. In the analysis of the pools' appearance in Jerusalem, the paper examines the broader context of the phenomenon—water utilisation by Jewish society in the time of the Second Temple before 70 AD. The conclusion drawn is that the pools are a manifestation of the wide-scale pilgrimage movement to Jerusalem that emerged in the Late Second Temple. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]