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Despite city authorities in Bangladesh being concerned about urban sustainability, they often face difficulties in addressing predominant urban challenges threatening urban sustainability, due to limited relevant literature. To reduce this gap, this study aims to address the predominant urban challenges and assess their severity levels in four city corporations of Bangladesh, e.g. Rajshahi, Sylhet, Barishal, and Gazipur.

Using a mixed-method approach, this study rigorously analyzed field-level data obtained from 1,200 residents across selected cities using diverse statistical techniques. The quantitative analysis included descriptive analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and chi-square tests, whereas qualitative insights were derived through thematic analysis.

The study uncovered nine predominant urban challenges under two crucial factors “Feeble Urban Management” and “Illicit Activities” that collectively explain 62.20% variance. “Feeble Urban Management” explains 44.17% variance, whereas “Illicit Activities” accounts for 18.13%. Within these challenges, uncontrolled urban sprawl, inadequate disaster management, congested roads, and shabby drainage and waste management pose significant threats to urban sustainability. Illicit activities, manifested by encroachment on water sources, grabbing roadside, destruction of natural properties, and activities undermining social security, compound the urban sustainability issue. Severity analysis reveals Sylhet (54.5%), Rajshahi (46.4%), and Barishal (31.2%) as highly impacted, whereas Gazipur exhibits moderate severity (66.7%).

The findings of this study reveal intrinsic insights into urban challenges in Bangladesh that will provide valuable guidance to city authorities, equipping them to implement integrated and effective initiatives and programs that overcome these predominant urban challenges, with a specific focus on Rajshahi, Sylhet, and Barishal city corporations.

The article attempts to shed light on the social aspects of research that deal with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and sustainable cities. The aim is to offer a global view of these facets' evolution and to provide information on people-centered smart cities.

The research is qualitative. A systematic bibliometric approach is a framework for the research. The unit of analysis is publications on SDGs and Smart Cities (SCs) indexed in Scopus. The authors used VOSviewer text mining functionality to construct co-occurrence networks of socially related critical terms extracted from textual data. The co-occurrence of keywords presents a valuable method and process for attaining in-depth analysis and fast comprehension of trends and linkages in articles from a holistic approach.

Social media, social sustainability and social capital are the three multifaceted social keywords that co-occur in SDGs and SCs. The paper provides a brief compendium of resources and frameworks to build a socially sustainable smart city.

The retrieval date was on 15 August 2019. The authors used the same search query for new papers released in 2019 and afterwards to update their findings. The authors collected 657 documents on SCs, compared to 2,975 documents about SDGs demonstrating that their findings are still trending in the same direction, emphasizing the importance of the research topic. SCs' social aspects are still chartered areas that require the attention to future research.

The authors’ decision to use two separate data sets for SCs and SDGs data files helps to provide a more comprehensive picture of the research landscape. It may identify areas where research is lacking or needs future research. The authors present an integrative agenda for a smart city to be socially sustainable. Innovative approaches to urban planning are required to empower the place and context and improve the users' satisfaction, where innovative solutions enable smart, sustainable and inclusive societies. Infrastructure governance is a critical keystone. It could guarantee that public investments contribute to sustainable urban development while enhancing city resilience, particularly in facing climate change and inclusive growth challenges.

The current adverse changes in climatic conditions have necessitated innovative nature-based solutions like blue-green roofs to ensure sustainable built environments. The use of blue-green roofs in combating climate change issues has continued to grow, and its benefits are showcased in many countries' studies. However, there is an absence of reports on the use of this approach in South Africa. Therefore, in ensuring a sustainable built environment through nature-based solutions, this study explored the built environment professional’s knowledge of blue-green roofs, the hindrances to their use and motivations for much wider use of blue-green roofs in the country.

Based on the nature of the study, a quantitative design was adopted and data were obtained from professionals within the built environment through a questionnaire. Data analyses were conducted using the Cronbach alpha test, Kruskal–Wallis H-Test, exploratory factor analysis and fuzzy synthetic evaluation.

The findings revealed a growing knowledge of blue-green roofs, albeit its slow adoption in the country. Also, five critical clusters of hindrances affecting the use of blue-green roofs were identified. These are understanding the blue-green roof concepts, technical, economic, regulation and client hindrances. Furthermore, the ability to manage stormwater properly, provide climate change adaptation and deliver sustainable buildings were the key motivating factors that could drive the use of this innovative solution.

This study offers actionable insights for built environment professionals and stakeholders to address the hindrances to using blue-green roofs in South Africa. Strategies such as improved education, financial incentives and policy development can help overcome some notable hindrances and promote the widespread adoption of blue-green roofs.

The slow adoption of blue-green roofs and the scant nature of research within the built environment required adequate attention to which this current research contributes. Theoretically, being one of the foremost studies in South Africa to explore blue-green roofs, the findings offer a foundation for future studies seeking to explore this roofing system in the country further.

This study aims to identify the determinants that influence citizen’s behavioural intention and continuous usage intention of smart mobility services in Indian smart cities with the help of an extended technology acceptance model.

This study uses a quantitative methodology to analyse the data collected from 509 residents of smart cities in India. The study used the partial least squares structural equation modelling approach to test the proposed hypotheses.

The study highlights the importance of perceived usefulness and ease of use in influencing citizens’ attitudes and intentions towards smart mobility services. Positive attitudes significantly impact behavioural intentions, which, in turn, link to continuous usage intentions.

This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge on smart cities and technology adoption, specifically in the area of smart mobility. The study’s findings will help service providers and policymakers to develop more robust strategies for the future.

Introduction: Entrepreneurship and frugal innovation have emerged as critical drivers for addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a global context. The United Nations developed the SDGs to address social, economic, and environmental challenges, ranging from poverty and inequality to climate change and sustainable economic growth. Entrepreneurship and frugal innovation offer a unique approach to achieving these goals by promoting innovation, creativity, and sustainability in business practices.

Purpose: This chapter aims to examine the role of entrepreneurship and frugal innovation in achieving SDGs in a global context. This chapter seeks to identify how entrepreneurship and frugal innovation can contribute towards realising the SDGs and how these concepts can be leveraged to create sustainable and scalable businesses that promote sustainable development.

Methodology: In order to examine how entrepreneurship and frugal innovation contribute to the worldwide achievement of the SDGs, the chapter will use a qualitative research technique. The literature review will involve the qualitative analysis of both developed and developing countries on some specific sectors like transportation, education, health sector, and financial services.

Findings: Through analysing relevant literature, qualitative research, and related examples this chapter provides insights into the challenges and opportunities associated with promoting entrepreneurship and frugal innovation for achieving the SDGs in different contexts.

Practical Implications: The chapter aims to contribute towards a better understanding of the role of entrepreneurship and frugal innovation in achieving SDGs and to provide recommendations for policymakers, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders on supporting and promoting these concepts globally.

Apart from the challenges related to vehicle technology, the wide-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in cities is linked to unprecedented opportunities and unforeseen impacts. These refer to mobility conditions, infrastructure, land use, wider socio-economic factors, energy use and environmental and climate effects. AVs may affect all these in positive or negative ways, promoting or obstructing the promotion of specific aspects of sustainable urban development. An integrated planning framework is needed to maximise the positive impacts and mitigate the negative ones. The main obstacle in the process of developing such a framework is the absence of empirical data and experience from the implementation of this emerging technology. This chapter outlines the possible impacts of AVs and discusses their uncertainty and trade-offs in relation to sustainable urban development. The categorisation of impacts derives from the priorities of the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. The chapter also highlights the lack of data for the development of an evidence-based planning approach and suggests relevant recommendations to planners. In contrast to the current lack of data, the future abundance of Big Data collected by autonomous road transport systems is discussed in the context of future urban planning purposes. Based on the above, the chapter concludes by stressing the importance of an integrated urban transport planning approach that ensures a positive contribution of AVs to sustainable urban development. Hence, it offers valuable recommendations for policymakers in a range of fields.

In collaboration with their home cities, universities increasingly develop courses in which students investigate urban sustainability challenges. This paper aims to understand how far-reaching the collaboration with urban stakeholders in these courses is and what students are meant to learn from the transdisciplinary pedagogies.

This research is designed as a qualitative multiple-case study into the intentions of transdisciplinary courses in which universities collaborate with their home cities: Delft University of Technology in Delft and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions in Amsterdam. The study compares the written intentions of eight courses in course descriptions with the ideal intentions that teachers describe in interviews.

First, seven of the eight investigated courses were designed for urban stakeholders to participate at a distance or as a client but rarely was a course intended to lead to a collaborative partnership between the city and students. Second, the metacognitive learning objectives, such as learning to deal with biases and values of others or getting to know one’s strengths and weaknesses in collaboration, were often absent in the course descriptions. Learning objectives relating to metacognition are at the heart of transdisciplinary work, yet when they remain implicit in the learning objectives, they are difficult to teach.

This paper presents insight into the levels of participation intended in transdisciplinary courses. Furthermore, it shows the (mis)alignment between intended learning objectives in course descriptions and teachers’ ideals. Understanding both the current state of transdisciplinarity in sustainability courses and what teachers envision is vital for the next steps in the development of transdisciplinary education.

Digitalising cities requires new urban governance processes that account for rapidly changing environments and technological advances. In this context, agile development methods have become valuable, if not necessary. However, agile development contradicts public administration practices of risk aversion and long-term planning. The purpose of this study is to discuss practical avenues for navigating these two contradictions by adapting agile development to the needs of public sector organisations.

The authors review the collaborative elaboration of Dresden’s smart city strategy as a critical case study. Dresden’s smart city strategy was developed using agile development and quadruple-helix innovation. The year-long co-creation process involved stakeholders from various groups to conceive an integrated and sustainable vision for digitalisation-based urban development.

Despite the apparent contradictions, this study finds that key aspects of agile development are feasible for public sector innovation. Firstly, risks can be strategically managed and distributed among administration and non-administration stakeholders. Secondly, while delivering value through short iterative loops, adherence to formal processes remains possible. Informal feedback cycles can be harmoniously combined with official statements, allowing iterative progress.

The empirical material is based on a single case study and thus risks overemphasising the general applicability of the proposed methods.

This paper outlines practical steps to greater agility for public administration engaged in digitalising cities. The paper conceptualises a forward and lateral momentum for the agile development of a smart city strategy that aims to reconcile formal policymaking processes with short-term loops and risk aversion with experimental value creation. This approach balanced risks, created value and enhanced the strategy‘s alignment with strategic frameworks, ultimately promoting innovation in the public sector.

This paper proposes a novel, empirically grounded conceptualisation of implementing agile methods that explicitly recognises the peculiarities of public administrations. It conceptualises the orchestrated and pragmatic use of specific agile development methods to advance the digitalisation of cities.

Urban mobility has substantially evolved in several western countries, shifting from interest in road expansion strategies to cater motorized movement to the emphasis on sustainable mobility. This is, however, not the case in several developing countries that still try to accommodate vehicular flows in inner historic cities. This paper aims at providing an assessment framework that helps in evaluating the effect of streetscape development on the walking and cycling environment in historic contexts.

This research follows a two-phase methodology. Phase 1 is the investigation of the literature review including the streetscape design, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and indicators for the assessment of walking and cycling environment. This phase results in developing a set of indicators for the assessment. Phase 2 is the case study including, methods, steps and results of the assessment based on the output of Phase 1. This phase concludes with a discussion on the challenges and recommendations for the enhancement.

The streetscape development in Afrang was insufficient and negatively affected the walking and cycling environment. It was motorized-oriented, instead of enhancing green mobility. The interventions led to more crowds, safety risks and less pleasant experience. Moreover, the car users' experience was enhanced initially; however, the traffic situation did not persist. A sustainable urban mobility approach is necessary to be implemented with consideration to the global level and the relation to SDGs.

There is a gap in tackling the research problem both within the context of Port Said in particular and Egyptian context in general. Local authorities need a clear structured methodology to follow in the development of the streetscape. The assessment indicators gathered can be the basis for evaluating future plans.

This paper aims to propose a research agenda towards a holistic, grounded and flexible approach to cultural heritage that can address social challenges and transformations in the context of place. It critiques the dominant/hegemonic cultural heritage narratives, deriving from juridification and calls for a grounded approach in the way cultural heritage is framed and experienced.

The paper is conceptual, focusing on the need to open a line of enquiry into the relationship between legal texts, cultural heritage narratives and social challenges and transformations. It follows the letter of the international conventions on cultural heritage against the worked example of the medieval town of Rhodes in Greece.

The paper sets the relevant research priorities for the investigation of the effective relationship between cultural heritage and social challenges in the context of place, and further stretches the need to evaluate the role of legal and regulatory texts to that effect.

The paper identifies new priorities for thinking about the effects of juridification/the law, cultural heritage and social challenges/transformations in a place-specific context. It seeks to open new avenues of scientific explorations and new interdisciplinary dialogues between a variety of disciplines that are relevant to the way a place engages and addresses social challenges and transformations.