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The phenomenon of over-urbanisation in Taiwan has resulted in an over-concentration of the population in urban areas and a widening gap between urban and rural areas. In order to solve this problem, this study selects urban-rural border settlements and uses the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as a basis to conduct cultural landscape, urban-rural disturbance, and cultural education. Through the university's social responsibility program, problem/project-based learning and local needs were developed into practical courses; this addresses urban-rural disparities by engaging faculty and students in the community, identifying problems, solving them, preserving heritage and cultural assets, and assisting in community development. The results found that: 1) systematically preserve tangible and intangible local cultural relics and histories in a digital way and in a timeline; 2) discover and preserve local popular music; 3) compile an audio-visual introduction manual of cultural relics for a wide circulation; 4) promote local linkages, community care, talent cultivation and cultural revitalisation among the university, the government and civic organisations in the region. The objectives of SDGs-11.4, 11.6, 11.7 and 11.a were effectively achieved.

In this article, a new semi-active damper is proposed to reduce the structural displacement and the maximum roof displacement responses of buildings under dynamical excitation. The main feature of such a semi-active mass damper is that it has a high natural frequency relative to conventional mass dampers and that it will only perform negative work on the structure based on the direction of motion of the structure and the control mass. This proposed damper contains a coupling mechanism that uses a small amount of driving force to change the “release” and “capture” states between the control mass and the structure. A mathematical model and the control logic of this proposed method are derived and discussed to compare the structural responses of the structure under various control parameters. Then, a parameter study is conducted to discuss the optimal design parameters for this proposed mass damper. The optimal design parameters for this proposed mass damper are as follows: frequency ratio around 4 with a mass ratio around 0.04–0.06, and suitable mass distribution at each floor. This proposed mass damper achieves constructive shock absorption effects to reduce structural displacement and maximum roof displacement.