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This paper examined the significance of the built environment for shaping inclusion and social connections in housing with care (HwC) schemes for older people (50+ years) in England and Wales. The purpose of this study was to develop a better understanding of how the availability, absence and use of communal spaces impacts social connections with other residents within HwC schemes.

Longitudinal and cross-sectional qualitative interviews were conducted with 72 residents across three HwC providers in England and Wales. Data were analysed using a thematic framework approach to examine how residents experienced their living environments.

Whilst the presence of communal shared spaces helps facilitate social connections and the development of friendships, full and equal access to these spaces remains challenging for residents with minority characteristics, and/or physical impairments. Building designers need to ensure they are complying with building regulations and the Equalities Act. The presence of on-site staff may also help to manage the impact of discriminatory attitudes.

A key strength of this study is its design, both in using longitudinal and cross-sectional interviews and in recruiting respondents with marginalised characteristics, whose voices have often been excluded in gerontological research. Another strength, albeit unexpected, is that this study was able to capture perspectives across the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic, however, may also have generated some limitations in this study. COVID-19 restrictions limited the ability to engage face-to-face within housing schemes whose residents were predominantly from different ethnic minoritised groups, and it therefore limits the inclusion of the voices and experiences of these groups. Responses in later interviews may also have been influenced by the changes in social engagement stimulated by lockdowns and may only be specific to the context of the pandemic. However, the findings reported here focus on the role and use of the built environment, and much of the interview content would feasibly apply regardless of the pandemic.

This research offers some key insights and implications for housing providers and policy. Housing providers and architects must ensure that the design of HwC schemes affords all residents access to every area of the built environment to maintain independence, autonomy and to adopt the ethos of the ageing in place agenda. If communal areas are to function as “third” or social spaces – if they are to remain equally accessible to all members of the community – then building providers must ensure that all areas are accessible to all residents in line with building regulations and the Equality Act (2010).

Housing staff need to balance the natural development of friendship groups with the potential of the formation of exclusionary “cliques” within HwC schemes. Such cliques threaten the accomplishment of communal areas as “third” or social spaces and, as such, impact the quality of life for residents.

This study offers insights into how built environments support the development of social connections and friendships in HwC schemes. It also identifies ways that housing managers can ensure that all residents feel equally valued and included.

The purpose of this paper is to examine undergraduates' perception and use of two distinct library spaces – social and communal – in an academic library in order to provide more customized services.

A survey was conducted at D.H. Hill Library at North Carolina State University, including structured questions on perceptions and use of the library, perceptions of library layout and design, and respondent demographics, as well as open questions on the advantages and disadvantages of social and communal spaces.

Undergraduates frequently use the physical library. Their usage patterns mirror common characteristics of Generation Y by going there mostly on weekday nights, with friends or in a group. Both communal and social spaces appear to be well‐used for many different activities ranging from solitary academic work to technology‐driven collaborative work and socializing. Some demographic variables, such as ethnicity and gender, are found to affect aspects of perception and use. For example, African American and Asian students tend to engage in activities that involve library technology, tools and resources, while White students simply use the spaces. Despite their excitement and appreciation of the social spaces in the library, students consider the quiet communal spaces integral to their experience of the library and stress the need of quiet space for academic work.

This is one of a few systematic empirical studies on end‐users' use of library space.

The purpose of this study is to fill a knowledge gap by analyzing the motivations of tenants to co-living spaces in Klang Valley, Malaysia as the motives of co-living spaces are related to how well that space supports their needs.

Tenants’ behaviors were examined using a convergent parallel mixed-method approach, which included a survey and an in-depth interview. A total of 175 respondents were interviewed using purposive sampling.

The results show that the preference for co-living attributes has changed during the pandemic. User ratings of preference for physical and leasing attributes of co-living spaces are significant in terms of co-living motivations. The findings also revealed that tenants prefer twin-sharing and master bedrooms when choosing a co-living space to stay in.

Identifying the factors that influence such motivations is critical for housing developers and co-living service providers to pay close attention to improving tenants’ living experiences.

There is interest in the co-living spaces that are available for rent. However, very little research is based on an understanding of how the tenants in Klang Valley, Malaysia perceive this type of living arrangement. A better understanding and prediction of tenants’ needs and preferences may lead to a better understanding of the attributes that influence their motivations for using co-living spaces.

The purpose of this paper is to triangulate qualitative and quantitative data with existing data to inform on the function and user experience of a newly created the “News Library,” and, further, to inform on the viability of “bring your own device spaces” (BYOD) in meeting the computing needs of Penn State University Park students through a multi-dimensional study.

This study leverages several methodologies for data collection, including observation, survey, flip chart prompts, interviews and focus groups.

Findings suggest that the News Library accommodates users’ social needs. However, it does not accommodate their communal needs well. The majority of students at the Penn State University Park campus, own laptops and bring them to the library when they intend to study. Personal device usage is preferable to library-provided computers per a familiarity with their personal device, access to personal files and independence of workspace.

As this is a case study, the findings are not generalizable. This study was conducted in one library, on one campus at a 24-campus institution with over 30 libraries.

The mixed-methods study provides multiple views into user behaviors and expectations. The authors propose guidelines for informing the design of BYOD spaces.

Reports about therapeutic communities usually focus on specific therapeutic activities: the various ways of the community functioning correctively, the communal-personal dynamics of the community, the dramaturgically graspable problems and the operating and integrative function of the staff. There is relatively little attention paid to the features of the structure composed of the systems of norms and values of these communities. The purpose of this paper is to focus on this normative dimension of the culture of a therapeutic community.

The authors wish to show this focus with the developmental process of the system of values, rules and norms of the therapeutic community of Thalassa House in Budapest, thinking mainly in self-psychological and ethical paradigm.

The way of operating values, norms and rules – the systems of metanorms – creates the cognitive matrix in which members of the community are both acting and perceiving parties, simultaneously suffering and interpreting the communal occurrence of self-pathologies. It develops the cooperative potential of the community along this “ethical” dimension. In the view, the structure of rules, norms and values operated in the culture of relationships of the community, as a consciously elaborated collective agent, has a specific effect in the healing of self-pathologies.

In the view, the efficiency of the actuation of norms depends primarily on the emergence of metanorms, that is of the ”how” of the application of norms. The values of the metanorms can be found both in the circumstances of the birth of self-according to the attachment theory and in the world of dialogical ethics.

This study aims to trace the transformation in the form of apartment building and the connotations it has in understanding the changes that occurred in the Jordanian society’s lifestyle over the past five decades.

A comparative case study analysis has been conducted amongst 170 apartments, covering 70 design attributes related to aspects of appearance, spatial organisation, parking and access to building, outdoor space and finishing. This was followed by experts and households solicitation to help giving more confidence on the validity and reliability of findings regarding the sorts and justifications for the changes that have taken place in the form of apartments over the studied time frame.

The results reveal changes in design attributes indicating particular alterations in people’s lifestyle. New interests act in formulating recent housing design attributes. People seem to turn into a more open social life within public community but more privatised living amongst family members. People are becoming more attached to indoor modernised lifestyle, in homes and public areas where activities take place. This entails pursuing a more comfortable, facilitating and enjoyable life that presents luxury and tranquillity.

Understanding the relationship between transformations in the built form of apartment buildings and the associated social alterations provides useful insights towards improving housing provision to better match the ever-changing demands of people and respond to alterations in their lifestyles.

This paper aims to investigate the ways that could enhance residents’ social interaction in low-rise residential building neighbourhoods of Basra city in Iraq. The lack of social interaction among residents of Basra city prompted the authors to frame a strategy for this case study.

The spatial design characteristics of low-rise residential building neighbourhoods implicated to support the residents in terms of social interactions in comparison to those exhibited by a single home and traditional neighbourhoods. The statistical data demonstrated that by using this strategy, several unique features of secured, collective, responsive and supportive spaces could enhance the residents’ social interaction.

This study found that all collective space factors have a significant influence on social interaction. “Fostering proper proximity and accessibility” factor was ranked first and the most significant factor with an influence on social interaction. Secured spaces (hierarchical spatial structure, physical security supports and construct) have a significant influence on social interaction. The most interesting finding in this study is that all factors of the supportive spaces construct have a significant influence on social interaction. Finally, this study showed that two factors of the responsive spaces construct, increasing variety and increasing legibility, have an insignificant influence on social interaction.

The design of low-rise residential building neighbourhoods in Basra city may be used to develop social interaction as the contributing factor for maintaining values of traditional neighbourhood communities. This study highlights certain recommendations for architects, especially urban designers, to reinforce residents’ social interaction in low-rise residential building neighbourhoods in Basra city.

After the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, major resettlement programmes were implemented in the affected countries including Sri Lanka and India. New settlements were built from scratch on vacant land, which consisted of building new houses and provision of infrastructure and services. Some of these programmes in Sri Lanka and India were reviewed in an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded research and this paper presents and analyses some of the findings of the research. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The research is based on interviews of residents and representatives of agencies involved in planning and implementing the resettlement programmes, and on-site observations. The investigation examined critical aspects of settlement development including site planning, transport, drainage, water supply, sanitation, waste management and security.

Very little site planning guidelines were available specifically for resettlement programmes; in both the case study countries, general planning guidelines were applied. Provision and management of infrastructure and services presents great challenges in developing countries as high capital investment and good technical skills for design, implementation and maintenance are required. Some of the resettlement schemes had the advantage of being centrally located and hence had access to schools, health centres and other facilities. However, others were in isolated locations and beneficiaries faced problems in accessing basic facilities. Drainage was a problem – most schemes did not have any surface drainage plan; low areas had not been elevated, slopes not levelled, and land not compacted before construction. Electricity and water supply had been provided in all the programmes, but conditions and quality varied. In many of the schemes, sanitation presented a problem. However, in Chennai, the sewage system worked well and this was one achievement all interview respondents praised. Solid waste management and security posed additional problems.

In the global context of increasing frequency and intensity of disasters due to climate change, adequate planning and implementation of reconstruction and resettlement programmes has become more important than ever. In this regard, the lessons gained in this paper should be of value and can provide guidance to post-disaster resettlement programmes in developing countries.

The impact of extreme heat on prisons and carceral facilities is becoming increasingly visible, yet remains overlooked by scholars, practitioners and policymakers. Prisons are a unique type of infrastructure designed to severely limit and control the movement of hundreds and even thousands of individuals as a form of punishment. This leads to many significant challenges to mitigating the risk of heat-related illness in prisons and other carceral spaces that have remained overlooked across many disciplines including emergency management, disasters, corrections and public health.

For this study, we analyzed 192 surveys from incarcerated persons in state prisons throughout Texas to understand how incarceration and the punitive prison environment create challenges to managing extreme heat in prisons.

We found that characteristics of modern incarceration, including communal distribution of resources, crowded conditions and a lack of agency for incarcerated people, create barriers to accessing resources during periods of extreme heat. Furthermore, the punitive nature of the prison environment as manifested in the relationship between staff and incarcerated persons and certain prison policies also create barriers to incarcerated persons accessing resources to reduce their risk of heat-related illness and death.

These issues are particularly relevant to the health and safety of incarcerated persons during periods of extreme temperatures but also speak broadly to the implications of incarceration, disaster risk, and the advancement of human rights for incarcerated people.

This article addresses a gap in the literature by including the perspectives of persons incarcerated in Texas prisons experiencing extreme heat and implicates the characteristics of incarceration and punishment in the production of disaster risk.

Despite opposition from housebuilders, the Nationally Described Space Standard (NDSS) was introduced in 2015 amid concerns about shrinking home sizes. This paper examines Planning Appeal cases to examine how the standard has been enforced.

This paper considers how the NDSS has informed the regulation of housing size, based on an overview of post-2015 Planning Appeal Decisions in England where the gross internal area of the home was below the NDSS.

Appeals by developers have tended to fail where homes are “significantly” – i.e. 10% or more – below the NDSS. However, in some instances – especially where local authorities have not adopted the NDSS – the Planning Inspectorate rules considerably smaller homes “adequate”. These discrepancies appear related to (subjective) judgements about who might occupy the space, alongside consideration of layout, light and fenestration.

This paper is the first exploration of how the NDSS has been enforced, highlighting important contradictions in the adjudication of space standards. Many of these contradictions emerge because the NDSS is discretionary rather than mandatory, with the paper suggesting the need for clearer guidance on their application.