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Context: Scenic roads are world-widely implemented as policies that turn automobility into landscape capital. As an essential component of scenic road systems, rest areas provide spaces for people to interact with roadside landscapes, enhancing the quality of experiences of recreational motorists. However, the understanding of scenic road rest area usage still lacks empirical evidence. Objectives: Through the lens of the affordance theory, this study developed an empirical approach to explore the affordance actualisation mechanism focused on the context of motorists-rest area interaction. Methods: Our team has conducted site observation and behaviour mapping on seven rest areas along the Nujiang Beautiful Road in northwest Yunnan, China. By conceptualising Surface Materials and Distance References as landscapes’ physical determinants, and Fixed Functional Meanings and Perceived Use Patterns as individuals’ perceptual determinants, this research investigates how these determinants quantitatively affect affordance actualisation. Results: The results outlined a behavioural profile about the usage of rest areas on scenic roads and further revealed that: (1) inspired affordances and anticipated affordances respectively acted on people’s experiences and satisfaction; (2) perceptual determinants are more proactive on actualising affordances compared with physical determinants; (3) traffic conflicts, landscape availability and distance to parking contributed to affordance actualisation vacancy. Conclusion: The findings may reveal some theoretical insights about the affordance actualisation mechanism via an empirical approach and can be used to assist evidence-based planning and design of scenic road rest areas.

A recurrent critical argument in urban studies holds that theories about relationships between cities and globalisation need to account for a broader diversity of urban experiences and contexts. Scholarship needs to move beyond the narrow focus on a limited number of prototypical cities exerting high degrees of command and control in the global system through networks of specific corporations and sectors, and account for the diverse, inventive ways of being urban. This article contributes to the agendas of ordinary city and comparative urbanism by applying this epistemology to analyses of the recent urban development and urban strategies in Ruili, Yunnan, a small border city at China’s south-west frontier. It argues that, although not qualified as a global or world city, Ruili is a hub of busy connections and flows, drawing opportunities from a vast territorial frame and navigating multiple layers of social, economic, cultural and institutional embeddedness. Engaging with scale thinking to operationalise theoretical ideas in the ordinary city treatise, this study pays specific attention to two scenarios in the recent urbanisation of Ruili: (1) cross-border trade and the blueprint of local industrial upgrading; and (2) the rapid expansion of the jadeite and red timber economy.

Scenic cycleway leads a physically active way of recreation, introduces a low carbon tourist economy to remote and less developed areas. Its construction and designation are increasingly been considered as valid policies for public health and sustainable development. Aiming at encouraging more and better usage of scenic cycleway, this paper adopts affordance theory to explore the complex interaction between cyclists and cycleway environments. Based on previous theoretical work on environmental affordances, we have developed a three-dimensional analytical framework to examine the supply and demand, patterns, and factors of the actualisation of affordances, using a cycleway in the outskirts of Kunming, China as a case study. Results show that 1) scenic cycleway usage includes recreational, incidental, consumptive and sportive categories, consists of 18 types of affordances, and their supply-demand relationships indicate the general usage condition of the cycleway; 2) environment’s function meanings and physical attributes both affect the actualisation of affordances: attractions, amenities, natural areas, and locations with cultural significance invite cyclists to perceive and utilise affordances, whilst everyday environments discourage the actualisation of affordances; 3) Roadway, roadside and climate are the main factors of affordance actualisation, hereinto, natural landscape, traffic operation, and climatic factors are the most significant features that influence recreational cycling. The above findings present a pathway for the evidence-based planning and design of scenic cycleways, so as to consolidate the health and sustainable benefits from recreational cycling.

Recent theoretical advancement in human geography has reconceptualised the border as a process and becoming, which is appropriated and constructed by myriad actors to yield diverse and changing meanings, and accommodate various needs and interests. This enables us to appreciate the dual qualities of the border, both as a barrier to be overcome and an enabling factor for practices and meanings. In particular, cross-border mobility plays an essential role in mediating meanings of the border and identities of those whose lifeworlds are affected by the very existence of the border. On the one hand, mobilities transgress territorial orders imposed by official conceptions of the border. But, on the other hand, the distinctions between economic, social and political milieus at the two sides of the border may give rise to heightened senses of difference and lead to diverging identities. Building on these insights, this article argues for a more nuanced, dynamic understanding of the relationship between border crossing and belonging. It examines two empirical cases: the cross-border attendance of Huashan Festival celebration for Miao people at the Sino-Vietnamese borderland, and the trans-border mobility of Buddhist monks from the Myanmar city Muse to the Chinese border city Ruili. Overall, this paper argues that the potentials of the border to both connect and differentiate are inscribed in the lifeworlds in the borderlands in equally visible ways. Also, this paper adds some twists to Scott's thesis on Zomia, and argues that we must not downplay the importance of the frame of nation-states in shaping the lifeworlds of border inhabitants.