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Research design is fundamental to all scientific endeavors, at all levels and in all institutional settings. In many social science disciplines, however, scholars working in an interpretive-qualitative tradition get little guidance on this aspect of research from the positivist-centered training they receive. This book is an authoritative examination of the concepts and processes underlying the design of an interpretive research project. Such an approach to design starts with the recognition that researchers are inevitably embedded in the intersubjective social processes of the worlds they study. In focusing on researchers' theoretical, ontological, epistemological, and methods choices in designing research projects, Schwartz-Shea and Yanow set the stage for other volumes in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods. They also engage some very practical issues, such as ethics reviews and the structure of research proposals. This concise guide explores where research questions come from, criteria for evaluating research designs, how interpretive researchers engage with \"world-making,\" context, systematicity and flexibility, reflexivity and positionality, and such contemporary issues as data archiving and the researcher's body in the field.

This study aims to explore the interrelationships between urban leisure opportunities, accessibility of cultural resources, residents' active engagement in urban tourism and their perceptions of tourism value. By examining these dynamics, the study seeks to provide insights into fostering sustainable urban tourism that benefits both residents and visitors. A quantitative research design was employed, utilizing a structured survey distributed to urban residents. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the relationships among variables, supported by reliability and validity tests. Bootstrapping techniques further assessed the robustness of the hypotheses. The results indicate significant positive relationships among the studied variables. Urban leisure opportunities and the accessibility of cultural resources positively influence residents' active engagement in urban tourism. Additionally, residents' active engagement and the accessibility of cultural resources substantially enhance residents' perceptions of tourism value. These findings highlight the crucial role of inclusive leisure spaces and cultural resources in promoting community engagement and fostering positive tourism perceptions. The study's limitations include the reliance on cross-sectional data, self-reported responses, and a focus on specific urban contexts, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. Additionally, the study primarily examines residents' perspectives, with less emphasis on other stakeholders in urban tourism. Urban planners and policymakers should prioritize the development and maintenance of accessible, inclusive leisure spaces and cultural resources to enhance resident engagement and tourism value. Proactive measures to address accessibility barriers and involve residents in tourism planning can lead to more sustainable urban tourism practices. This study strengthens the understanding of sustainable urban tourism by empirically examining the perspectives of 300 urban residents on leisure opportunities, cultural accessibility, and active engagement. The findings demonstrate that inclusive leisure spaces and accessible cultural resources are critical in fostering resident participation and shaping positive perceptions of tourism value. By positioning residents as active co-creators rather than passive beneficiaries, the research highlights the social dimension of urban tourism often overlooked in policy debates. These insights provide actionable guidance for urban planners and policymakers in designing participatory, accessible, and sustainable tourism strategies that balance resident well-being with visitor experiences.

Geotagged Twitter data can be used to study the behavior of urban residents as they move to different places suited for various activities. In this study, geotagged Twitter data were used to explore the spatiotemporal changes in activity patterns of Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR) residents before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. BMR-tagged tweets were collected for 6- month periods in 2019 (i.e. before the pandemic) and in 2021-2022 (i.e. during the pandemic), and different statistical analysis methods were applied to extract temporal patterns and spatial distributions of activities. Both the temporal patterns and spatial distributions of activities showed changes between the two periods. The results showed that residents modified their behavior according to the circumstances and demonstrated that geotagged data can be used in urban studies to understand changes in residents' behavior and identify the new normal.

Many Chinese University students' core competencies failed to elevate after four-year schooling, while the pedagogical and curriculum innovations narrowly focused on the usage of technology-laden and quantitative methods. This article discusses how visual-based methods were successfully employed in the NGO Management course at Zhejiang University of Technology to foster Public Affairs Management students' learning outcomes and core competencies. Through a qualitative analysis of student-produced visual materials, along with text and audio content generated during and after the elicitation seminars, we found that this innovation brought about positive pedagogical effects in four ways. First, visual materials stimulated students' everyday creativity and gave the leeway for their critical expression. Second, visual-led inquiry-based learning allowed the students to gain more situated learning experiences, which helped them identify governance issues associated with the NGOs in China. Third, in situ and multi-sensory learning experiences improved students' interpersonal skills and extended their scope of seeing. Fourth, this pedagogical innovation facilitated students to obtain enhanced cultural understanding and ethics education. This research proposes further applications of visual methods in future curriculum innovations across different majors in China and beyond.

This paper investigates the selection criteria and success factors of retailers within mixed-use developments in Shanghai, from the 2009 financial crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic. By using Multiple Criteria Decision Making focused on three groups of key performance indicators: External, specifics of the Industry, and Users, the study aims to provide a comprehensive review of retail location selection within the emerging paradigm of mixed-use environments. The assessment reveals that connectivity, specifically with metro stations within 500 m, is paramount to a project’s success. Moreover, 73% of the projects surveyed feature more than two underground levels, with the top 10 ranking projects boasting 3–4 floors above ground, occupied by both offices and retail spaces. Structurally, almost 90% of the mixed-use developments being studied have commercial areas exceeding 35,000 sqm. The optimal project size is determined to be around 200,000 sqm, with retail making up half of the built area. The preferred land plot size ranges from 35,000 to 40,000 sqm. However, the study also identifies a lack of comprehensive sustainability strategies and net-zero carbon certifications in many of these developments. The findings also contribute to urban researchers and policymakers by offering a multi-criteria matrix to assess and scale mixed-use developments, not only in Shanghai but also in other geographical locations. This foundational study serves as a basis for future MCDM research and provides a comprehensive understanding of the real estate market in Shanghai’s mixed-use developments, offering practical recommendations for enhancing their performance and sustainability.

This paper aims to showcase the community mapping process that took place in the El Pacífico neighborhood in the city of Medellín, Colombia, which runs alongside the urban-rural border of the high slope of the city's Comuna 8. The geographical and socio-economic challenges that the community has historically faced have come to light throughout the years in the form of geological hazards and disasters that have led to the destruction of several buildings in the neighborhood, threatening the community's permanence. As these scenarios intensified, the community sought to participate in research projects with both local and international partners to better understand how to improve their disaster risk management practices. URBE Latam, which is one of these experiences, has been working to improve the neighborhood's data generation practices, adopting the territorial definitions proposed by Milton Santos in Espaço e Método, coupled with participatory mapping strategies for disaster risk reduction during a three-year period. This has resulted in the mapping of El Pacífico and the improvement of the local grassroot organization's territorial management practices. These maps have served as tools for the community's empowerment when dealing with public institutions, as well as for planning and managing their own territorial agendas for the future.

Comprehensive and visual assessments utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) offer an empirical foundation for the planning, construction, and optimization of Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI), effectively promoting its sustainable development. A comprehensive review of this field clarifies the research methods, application scope, trends, and challenges associated with using GIS to advance UGI development. This study synthesizes research findings from the Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) within the Web of Science (WOS) database, as well as from the Scopus database, for the period from January 1, 2020, to June 30, 2024. The initial dataset included 640 articles from WOS and 952 articles from Scopus. After removing 1,572 duplicates and irrelevant studies, the final selection consisted of 20 articles. The integration of both WOS and Scopus databases ensures a comprehensive capture of current trends and limitations in GIS-based UGI assessments. This study centers on the scope, data sources, theoretical models, analyses, and objectives of GIS-based UGI assessments. The research indicates that over the past five years, GIS-based UGI assessments have primarily focused on areas such as accessibility, ecosystem service potential, resilience, and environmental justice, in addition to non-ecological aspects such as social benefits and aesthetics. While the integration of diverse data and analytical indicators into GIS has enhanced assessment comprehensiveness, and AI technologies have deepened data analysis, field research with urban residents remains crucial, underscoring the importance of inclusiveness in the study. This study also reveals a significant increase in interdisciplinarity in GIS-based assessments of UGI. The integration of assessment methods from ecology, computer science, urban planning, sociology, aesthetics, and other disciplines demonstrates that research in this field has fully considered ecological, social, economic, and humanistic factors, thereby more comprehensively reflecting the integrated needs of sustainable urban development.

Most of future population growth will take place in the world's cities and towns. Yet, there is no well-established, consistent way to measure either urban land or people. Even census-based urban concepts and measures undergo frequent revision, impeding rigorous comparisons over time and place. This study presents a new spatial approach to derive consistent urban proxies for the US. It compares census-designated urban blocks with proxies for land-based classifications of built-up areas derived from time-series of the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) for 1990-2010. This comparison provides a new way to understand urban structure and its changes: Most land that is more than 50% built-up, and people living on such land, are officially classified as urban. However, 30% of the census-designated urban population and land is located in less built-up areas that can be characterized as mainly suburban and peri-urban in nature. Such insights are important starting points for a new urban research program: creating globally and temporally consistent proxies to guide modelling of urban change.

Mathematical models have played a key role in understanding the spread of directly-transmissible infectious diseases such as Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), as well as the effectiveness of public health responses. As the risk of contracting directly-transmitted infections depends on who interacts with whom, mathematical models often use contact matrices to characterise the spread of infectious pathogens. These contact matrices are usually generated from diary-based contact surveys. However, the majority of places in the world do not have representative empirical contact studies, so synthetic contact matrices have been constructed using more widely available setting-specific survey data on household, school, classroom, and workplace composition combined with empirical data on contact patterns in Europe. In 2017, the largest set of synthetic contact matrices to date were published for 152 geographical locations. In this study, we update these matrices for populations up to age 80 with the most recent data and extend our analysis to 177 geographical locations. Due to the observed geographic differences within countries, we also quantify contact patterns in rural and urban settings where data is available. Further, we compare both the 2017 and 2020 synthetic matrices to out-of-sample empirically-constructed contact matrices, and explore the effects of using both the empirical and synthetic contact matrices when modelling physical distancing interventions for the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that the synthetic contact matrices show qualitative similarities to the contact patterns in the empirically-constructed contact matrices. Models parameterised with the empirical and synthetic matrices generated similar findings with few differences observed in age groups where the empirical matrices have missing or aggregated age groups. This finding means that synthetic contact matrices may be used in modelling outbreaks in settings for which empirical studies have yet to be conducted.

Generally, educational studies do not problematize the definition of urban education or examine the positionality of sites along a spectrum of urban districts and schools. This study addresses the definitional gap by (a) examining the conceptualization of urban education through an integrative review of prior definitional research and (b) exploring how an urban district may be defined in empirical terms. Our findings indicate six categories are typically used to define urban education: (a) population/location/geography, (b) enrollment, (c) demographic composition of students, (d) resources in schools, (e) disparities and educational inequality, and (f) social and economic context. The results indicate that deficitoriented language permeates prevailing definitions of urban education and that large-city-centered conceptualizations of urban education may overlook a substantial number of smaller districts with similar levels of educational inequality and diversity.