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Wind, a renewable resource with growing importance in the contemporary world, is considered a capable tool for addressing some of the problems linked with rapid urbanization, unsustainable development, and climate change. As such, understanding modelling approaches to wind characteristics in cities becomes crucial. While prior reviews delve into the advancements in reduced-scale models and computational fluid dynamics simulations, there is scant literature evaluating large-scale spatial modelling of urban wind environments. This paper aims to consolidate the understanding of spatial modelling approaches to wind characteristics in cities by conducting a systematic literature review with the PRISMA protocol to capture the contributions to sustainable urban development. The reviewed articles are categorized under two distinctive approaches: (a) studies adopting the wind morphometric approach, encompassing theoretical foundations, input factors, and computation methods and (b) studies adopting the urban climate mapping approach, centering on the amalgamation of wind with urban microclimate analysis. The findings suggest that wind morphometric methodologies hold considerable promise due to their straightforward calculations and interpretability. Nonetheless, issues related to data precision and accuracy challenge the validity of these models. This review also probes into the implications of these two distinctive approaches for urban planning and policymaking, advocating for more sustainable urban development.

In a world with an increasing urban population, understanding how built environments can facilitate psychological as well as physical well-being is an argument broadly discussed in current literature. “Urban happiness” is a field of research dealing with urban landscapes that foster positive emotions in users and visitors. Understanding the parameters of urban happiness is a complex issue due to different meanings associated with this concept from different social groups. Digital media allows us to gather an understanding of what elements the broader population might associate with happiness in the urban environment through the use of image-sharing platforms such as Instagram. This pilot study was undertaken to identify both built and natural forms that users of a city environment associated with happiness. The thematic analysis of images, which were sourced through Instagram, has allowed identified or emerging themes and features. These have been tested with residents of Brisbane, Australia, through an online questionnaire. The pilot study offers a foundation for further research aiming to understand how people’s self-representation of happiness can be translated in design principles for planners, urban designers, architects, and landscape architects.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the creative city discourse expanding on current tangible and intangible strategies, by integrating recent placemaking tactics to develop a multidimensional framework for designing creative places.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology is based on a framework analysis and critical meta-review of current research on creative city and placemaking.FindingsThe findings show that there are three additional factors related to placemaking tactics in the established literature: institutional factors, human factor and arts and design factor emerging from the intersection of creative city and placemaking frameworks.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study can inform a more holistic approach to placemaking in creative cities in both theory and practice, namely, a multidimensional place management framework for creative environments of today.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the current trends in creative city and the development of placemaking guidelines. It provides a simplified view of an exhaustive list of existing literature.

This research provides an assessment tool that assists the selection process of sustainability in detached suburban housing. It investigates the implications of using different design and construction methods including architecturally designed houses, developer housing and prefabricated houses. The study simulates one example of the three types of houses that have been chosen to fulfil a real client brief on a real site on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia. Criteria for sustainability assessment are formulated based on literature reviews, exemplar designs and similar research projects for which the houses can be adequately evaluated. This criterion covers aspects including energy use, materials and thermal performance. The data is collected using computer models and sustainability assessment software to compare and draw conclusions on the success of each house.Our study indicates that architecturally designed housing with prefabricated building techniques are a better alternative to generic developer style housing. Our research provides an insight into the implications of three key elements of sustainability including energy use, materials and thermal performance. Designers, builders, developers and home-buyers are given an insight into some options currently available on the housing market and how the choices made during early design stages can provide a more positive environmental impact.  

Filming the city\" brings together the work of film-makers, architects, designers, video artists, and media specialists to provide three distinct prisms through which to examine the medium of film in the context of the city. The book presents commentaries on particular films and their social and urban relevance, offering contemporary criticisms of both film and urbanism from conflicting perspectives, and documenting examples of how to actively use the medium of film in the design of our cities, spaces and buildings. Bringing a diverse set of contributors to the collection, editors Edward M. Clift, Mirko Guaralda and Ari Mattes offer readers a new approach to understanding the complex, multi-layered interaction of urban design and film.

From the early 2000s onwards, the emergence of digital technology and social media has motived to a questioning of the value of public space, as the relevance of physical places is eroded in the digital age. In recent years, the development of concepts such as media architecture, digital placemaking and the playable city has reignited interest in physical places and opened a discussion about the future, harmonious symbiosis amid the public space and virtual space. Plenty of digital placemaking interventions in public spaces proves how digital interventions can have significant potential for future urban design. Currently, literature on placemaking and human–computer interaction (HCI) showcases the need for a new interdisciplinary approach to evaluate how digital and mobile technologies can be used to enhance the sense of place in a locale. This paper proposes a theoretical framework to investigate digital placemaking, supporting the review of basic attributes of public spaces and the potential of mobile technologies in augmenting places. Further, it reveals how digital placemaking provides an opportunity to generate tension and meaning.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made many urban policymakers, planners, and scholars, all around the globe, rethink conventional, neoliberal growth strategies of cities. The trend of rapid urbanization, particularly around capital cities, has been questioned, and alternative growth models and locations have been the subjects of countless discussions. This is particularly the case for the Australian context: The COVID-19 pandemic heightened the debates in urban circles on post-pandemic urban growth strategies and boosting the growth of towns and cities across regional Australia is a popular alternative strategy. While some scholars argue that regional Australia poses an invaluable opportunity for post-pandemic growth by ‘taking off the pressure from the capital cities’; others warn us about the risks of growing regional towns and cities without carefully designed national, regional, and local planning, design, and development strategies. Superimposing planning and development policies meant for metropolitan cities could simply result in transferring the ills of capital cities to regions and exacerbate unsustainable development and heightened socioeconomic inequalities. This opinion piece, by keeping both of these perspectives in mind, explores approaches to regional community and economic development of Australia’s towns and cities, along with identifying sustainable urban growth locations in the post-pandemic era. It also offers new insights that could help re-shape the policy debate on regional growth and development.

Wind has been utilized for passive ventilation and mechanical power since antiquity. As an abundant renewable resource, today, wind is increasingly seen as a critical resource to help tackle issues associated with rapid urbanization and climate adaptation and mitigation, such as improving thermal comfort, providing clean energy, improving air quality, and reducing carbon emissions. Despite the growing importance of wind as an invaluable resource for cities, wind in the context of urban planning and design is a relatively understudied area of research. This study aims to explore the means by which cities that can benefit from wind and ways urban planning and design can help deliver these benefits. The study adopts a systematic literature review methodological approach. The findings disclosed that: (a) improving urban wind environment via sound urban planning and design may enhance urban ventilation and energy performance; (b) better urban ventilation and energy performance enable cities to become climate positive or net zero and relieve the urgent climate crisis; (c) wind sensitive urban design is an emerging research area critical to harvest the benefits of wind for cities. This study offers a novel conceptual framework and research directions for wind sensitive urban design and informs urban planning, design policy and practices.

PurposeCommunity involvement is a common strategy to negotiate changes to the built environment. Traditional community involvement approaches are increasingly augmented through playful elements or through the use of technology. The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of a community involvement approach aimed at expanding participants’ ability to contribute to the issue. Through the design of bespoke interactive approaches to asking questions and receiving responses, the InstaBooth shifts the involvement process toward an open discussion between community members.Design/methodology/approachThe InstaBooth methodology established in this paper is based on the use of a physical interactive installation for situated community involvement and place-making, the InstaBooth. This methodology embeds design thinking and collaborative approaches to move the focus of the engagement from data gathering to data sharing and content co-creation.FindingsIn 2015, the authors worked with the local community of Pomona, Queensland, Australia, to inform the new masterplan for the town center by using the InstaBooth as a community involvement methodology. Examining the case of Pomona reveals how the InstaBooth approach allows participants to join a discussion about their own environment in a playful and unstructured way. This is achieved through the application of design thinking across three key phases of the community engagement; 1) planning the engagement strategy, 2) implementation of the strategy and deployment and 3) data co-analysis.Originality/valueThe InstaBooth is an interactive methodology which has allowed citizens to engage in the discussion about the future development of their town strengthening their sense of place and sense of community. The significance of this paper is applicable to others interested in community involvement and place-making, as it presents a novel methodology that combines different methods for different contexts while embedding co-creation in its approach.

The lack of management has led to the degrading quality of public space in modern cities around the globe. Contemporary public spaces are facing challenges in terms of maintaining them as a “social space” so that they are accessible and functional for the users. Using Kathmandu as a case study, this paper explores the challenges the contemporary public spaces within urban neighbourhoods are facing in their management. The study reveals that the regulation of use is a major concern of public space management in the new neighbourhoods of Kathmandu as evident in the limited accessibility and utility of public space, due to control and commercialisation. The use of public space has also been affected by the lack of regular maintenance. The root cause of these problems lies in weak urban governance at the neighbourhood level, which has led the local community-based organisations to take a role in neighbourhood management. These findings confirm that the management of public space is a critical issue of urban development with commonalities existing across geographical regions that demand adequate consideration from the stakeholders.