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Over half the world’s population lives in urban regions, and increasingly disasters are of great concern to city dwellers, policymakers, and builders. However, disaster risk is also of great interest to corporations, financiers, and investors. Risky Cities is a critical examination of global urban development, capitalism, and its relationship with environmental hazards. It is about how cities live and profit from the threat of sinkholes, garbage, and fire. Risky Cities is not simply about post-catastrophe profiteering. This book focuses on the way in which disaster capitalism has figured out ways to commodify environmental bads and manage risks. Notably, capitalist city-building results in the physical transformation of nature. This necessitates risk management strategies –such as insurance, environmental assessments, and technocratic mitigation plans. As such capitalists redistribute risk relying on short-term fixes to disaster risk rather than address long-term vulnerabilities. 

The Oudlajan revitalization project proposed in the article, relates to both its contemporary needs and its potential. In its idea, the project uses the Iranian tradition of ‘hangout’ and refers to current trends in spending leisure time as well as shaping (designing) inclusive urban space. In terms of purpose, the project presented is applied, and in terms of methods used, it is a descriptive and analytical (qualitative) study. The article is also a voice in the debate on tourism and urban regeneration. By displaying Persian conditions in shaping the foodscape (tourism taste-space), it contributes to the dynamically-developing research on food tourism and urban culinary space.

This article investigates the role and ways of action of leaderships in urban contexts characterized by urban revitalization processes (RJ/Brazil). Adopting as its theoretical basis the bibliographical review of the literature on leadership and public area requalification processes, as well as research conducted by Jacobs (2011) on diversity and innovation, the present research may be characterized as qualitative in nature (case study). Results indicate that the Porto Maravilha project has transposed business concepts to public administration. Today, the keynote lies in the attraction of new enterprises and in the construction of urban revitalization projects for the city's makeover. With regard to the leadership, although public leadership has apparently adopted management instruments for decentralizing management and for public participation, these measures were not enough to achieve an effectively shared leadership that would reflect the multiple interests of different actors (as the theory of relational leadership presupposes). Thus, a set of contradictions and dilemmas for the leaders is apparent, among them: how to build an effectively-shared leadership, as every urban transformation project depends on the negotiation and complex interaction between different social actors?

Prosocial organizations represent key actors in the quest to promote positive change, foster social impact, and revitalize cities. Notwithstanding their importance in tackling the increasing challenges threatening our society (e.g., pollution, socio-economic inequalities), these actors may not be perceived as salient in the eyes of different stakeholders, and thus their work may be jeopardized by multiple forms of resistance. Scant attention in research has been devoted to understand how prosocial organizations may acquire saliency and navigate these forms of resistance while pursuing urban revitalization. We address this gap by engaging in a qualitative investigation of a Sicilian cultural center. We found that the prosocial organization in our study could navigate different occurrences of resistance and acquire saliency by enacting mechanisms that leveraged the engagement of supporting stakeholders and the idiosyncratic characteristics of place. Our study contributes to the literature about urban revitalization, prosocial organizations, and stakeholder theory—while also complementing research investigating the role of place in management.

With the rapid development of urban construction, the waterfront industrial heritage park has played an active role in shaping the city’s image, regional economic development and environmental improvement, and the continuation of the city’s waterfront history. The waterfront park based on industrial heritage using post-occupancy evaluation will help improve the sustainable management, maintenance, and design level of the project in the future. However, there is insufficient research on the waterfront industrial heritage park using post-occupancy evaluation. This paper takes Shanghai Houtan Park and Xuhui Binjiang Park, the representative industrial heritage parks in China, as the research objects. Through field investigation and nearly 200 questionnaires and interviews regarding user behavior, the importance of design elements (place characteristics, natural environmental characteristics, usability characteristics, and administrative characteristics) and the correlation of satisfaction help us to understand the use of the two parks and analyze and organize the survey data, carrying out the analysis of the questionnaire results using frequency analysis, IPA analysis, t-test, variance analysis, and multiple regression analysis. The research results include: (1) Both parks are mainly used by people in their twenties and forties, and the trail received the highest utilization rate as the main facility, while the visitor center in charge of guiding functions had the lowest utilization rate. (2) While Houtan Park received high satisfaction with natural environmental characteristics, it was found that Xu Hui Binjiang Park had relatively high satisfaction with the place and usability characteristics. (3) The natural environmental characteristics of Houtan Park have a positive impact on overall satisfaction and return visit satisfaction. Site characteristics and utilization characteristics of Xuhui Binjiang Industrial Park have a positive impact on overall satisfaction, while usability characteristics have a positive impact on return visit satisfaction. Finally, according to the questions and suggestions raised by users, an optimization strategy is proposed for the renewal of the park, and it is hoped that it can provide suggestions for the reconstruction and design of similar Chinese waterfront industrial heritage parks.

In order to address the social, economic, and environmental challenges arising from urban development, some urban revitalization plans have been proposed. With the implementation of these plans, the spatial pattern of the region has also undergone corresponding changes. Some of the revitalization projects have driven economic growth while accompanied by ecological degradation, while others have achieved coordinated development and protection. This study selected eight urban revitalization cases, based on remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS), and used the Random Forest (RF) machine learning method to dynamically monitor the spatial changes in the region before and after revitalization through Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) analysis. The research results show that among the eight cases, only the revitalization cases located in Beijing and Swarzędz reflected an increase in water and vegetation areas, while the built-up area decreased. The other six cases located in Nanjing, Kraków, Wągrowiec, Swarzędz, Parczew, and Mosina all reflect the result of built-up areas encroaching water and vegetation areas.

World Heritage plays a vital role in promoting sustainable urban development. Cultural and creative industries (CCIs) have gained recognition as an effective instrument for urban revitalization in recent years. The Cities, Culture, and Creativity (CCC) framework introduced by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Bank emphasizes the core role of culture and creativity in enhancing urban competitiveness, attractiveness, and sustainability. Based on that framework, this study takes Pingyao as a case study, using a literature review and non-participatory observation, systematically examines its assets and resources, assesses the outcomes at the spatial, economic, and social levels, and explores how CCIs, with the support of enabling factors, contribute to urban revitalization. The findings indicate that Pingyao, relying on its historical and cultural heritage, promotes the development of CCIs, resulting in significant spatial optimization, economic growth, and social benefits, while also shaping unique cultural brands. This study verifies the applicability of the CCC framework in analyzing the urban revitalization mechanism, further reveals the role of CCIs in the revitalization of World Heritage cities, enriches the urban regeneration theory, and offers theoretical and practical reference for the revitalization and sustainable development of other World Heritage cities.

The urban landscape is undergoing significant transformations due to economic shifts, urban planning initiatives, technological advancements, and sociopolitical changes. Almost 89% of the U.S. population is projected to reside in urban areas by 2050, which increases a pressing need for innovative and efficient urban revitalization strategies. Modular construction is an extensively researched topic with potential promise for addressing these challenges; however, there is a lack of comprehensive understanding of its specific opportunities and challenges within the context of urban revitalization. This paper explores the potential of modular construction methods as a viable solution in densely populated areas with limited space and competing land uses. This study employs a systematic literature review using PRISMA and mixed methods analysis with NVivo to identify the opportunities and challenges associated with implementing modular construction in urban settings. The findings highlight the advantages of modular construction, including reduced construction time, enhanced quality control, and improved sustainability. However, challenges such as land scarcity, restrictive zoning laws, and the need for innovative planning and collaboration among stakeholders are also emphasized. This paper provides valuable insights for policymakers, urban planners, and developers to effectively leverage modular construction methods for sustainable and efficient urban renewal efforts.

Walking has been studied extensively in recent years. However, one is still hard pressed to find research examining what makes urban settings of different sizes across the Atlantic Ocean conducive to walking, especially in the presence of greenways and green open spaces. Streets and urban greenways both enable flows. Streets are mostly utilized to enable the flow of motorized traffic and people while greenways aim to guarantee the flow of water, nature, biodiversity, and people. Streets are designed to artificially separate motorized traffic from pedestrians, greenways are designed to create the natural conditions for a harmonious co-existence of people with nature. How would street users benefit from streetscape and urban design improvements aimed at promoting the peaceful, silent, and harmonious co-existence of nature, people, and vehicles? Distinct sets of codes and norms dictate how individuals ought to utilize urban public spaces and greenways. We argue that said codes ought to also be aimed at increasing the quality of public spaces and not only their flow capacities. This paper examines streets and greenways in Ballyclare, Leiria, and Scottsdale. We utilize Ballyclare’s High Street and Six Mile Water greenway, Leiria’s city centre and Lis River greenway, as well as Scottsdale Road and the Indian Bend Wash greenbelt and a segment of the Arizona Canal to analyse the positive characteristics and shortcomings of successful streets and greenway systems in three distinct geographic contexts: U.K., Southern European, and North American. The findings comprise the distillation of new results in the analysis of spaces of flows and permanence across the Atlantic Ocean.