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Constructing livable eco-civilized cities has become one of the important tasks of the reasonable planning of urban development. The construction of an ecological city aims to achieve the harmonious coexistence of society, resource, and environment. However, the current evaluation method system of an ecological building encounters problems from a defective evaluation index. Hence, a relatively perfect evaluation index system is built. First, the analytic network process (ANP) is combined with the existing standards online. Then, a rapid calculation of the index weight is performed using Super Decisions software. Based on the needs of complicated problems, the classical TOPSIS model algorithm is improved by introducing the weight coefficient; this improved TOPSIS algorithm is then taken as the core to build a whole set of comprehensive evaluation method system for ecological buildings. The ecological urban agglomeration in Qinling Mountains of Xi’an is used in this study as the example to perform verification in practice. Contrastive analysis is performed on the evaluation results of the new and old buildings using this method system; the results indicate that the ecological effect of the buildings in the new area is much better than that of buildings in the old area. These results are mostly consistent with the evaluation results given by the expert group. Thus, the comprehensive evaluation system proposed in this article is reliable, and effective, as well as practical to some extent. This method can be used in a wider range of building evaluation and further improved in future studies.

Many cities of various types are distributed in the large area of mountainous regions in China. In these cities, there are acute contradictions between man and earth. Considering that the space growth mode of mountainous cities is widely different from that of flatland cities, the fractal method was adopted in the research aimed at demarcating the urban growth boundary of mountainous cities. The fractal features of the investigated mountainous cities in space were figured out via inference from their function, dimension, region, grade, and environment, and the fractal mode and conceptual framework of urban growth boundary of Qin-Ba mountainous region were constructed according to some concepts and methods such as fractal dimension, fractal network, and fractal order. In the research, the traditional urban growth boundary form-was decomposed into scattered points (point form), paths (linear form), and patches (plane form) to form the fractal theory units for the research of urban growth boundary, and the leading idea, procedure, and control method for “fractal demarcation of urban growth boundary” were established to provide strategies for demarcation of urban space growth boundary of Qin-Ba mountainous region.

It is our pleasure to present this regular issue of Open House International. In this issue (Vol.42, No. 3, 2017), we selected 26 papers which have gone through several rounds of review and revision, and represent a cross-section of research in building management, construction management, house economics & management, urban planning areas that touch upon both building and housing issues. Open House International is only this outsourced issue supplier as the publisher. This editorial remark also indemnifies the Open House International from any responsibility for the content and presentation of this issue.