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This review article advocates for a holistic approach to interpreting and addressing urban poverty through the proposal of “poverty-free urbanism” (PFU). By introducing PFU as a holistic approach to measuring poverty from a deprivation perspective, this article confronts the multifaceted challenges of urban poverty, transcending mere material limitations.

Through an exhaustive qualitative literature review and content analysis, the study identifies six qualitative normative factors: availability, productivity, innovativeness, diversity, fairness, and well-being.

While promising, the applicability and effectiveness of PFU across diverse urban contexts necessitate further refinement and empirical validation. Future research endeavors should prioritize clarifying the concept of PFU, exploring its practical implementation in varied urban settings, and offering actionable recommendations for fostering inclusive and equitable urban development.

These factors, rooted in critical processes such as ensuring essential services, promoting entrepreneurial activities, fostering bottom-up community development, facilitating dynamic typo-morphological transformations, addressing social exclusion and inequality, and promoting healthy communities, offer a holistic approach for policymakers and practitioners in devising sustainable poverty alleviation strategies.

This study aims to explore and analyze the disparities in the distribution of housing types and characteristics among households in Saudi Arabia, taking into consideration the regional perspective.

This study uses quantitative data obtained from the General Authority for Statistics, specifically from the Saudi 2022 Statistical Census. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (percentages) as well as inferential statistics, including correlation analysis (Pearson correlation) and t-tests.

The study found a distinct preference among Saudis for villas, with 85.3% choosing this housing type, while only 14.7% of non-Saudis opted for villas. The statistical analysis confirmed the significance of housing type for Saudi citizens (t = 2.561, p = 0.037), while non-Saudis did not show a statistically significant preference (t = 1.703, p = 0.132). The Pearson correlation results revealed a moderate positive correlation (r = 0.641, p = 0.009) between regional landmass and the number of houses, and a very strong positive relationship (r = 0.984) between population and the number of houses across the 13 regions. As expected, with increasing population, there was a significant increase in the number of houses (p = 0.001).

This study fills a research gap by investigating regional disparities in housing characteristics in Saudi Arabia. The findings are valuable for policymakers, housing developers and the housing market in understanding these disparities. The insights from this research can inform decision-making to promote equitable access to housing types and foster social inclusivity in the housing sector.

Video streaming consumption has become a social and economic phenomenon in an age where the share of online entertainment has become larger and larger in the total entertainment pie. Besides the advancement of technology, the pandemic further contributed to its development. The aim of this study is to analyze the role of price consciousness, anti-socializing behavior and choice of content in shaping the video streaming consumption. Furthermore, we look at the moderating role of gender and marital status on the hypothesized relationships.

The data were collected from a sample of 533 Romanian respondents, and it was processed using Partial Least Square structural equation modeling. In addition, Necessary Condition Analysis was used to assess the necessity effect size of an independent variable for a specific outcome of a dependent variable.

We find that the main hypotheses are confirmed, and that gender as a moderating variable negatively influences the relationship between anti-socializing behavior and video streaming consumption.

Besides the main findings pertaining to video streaming consumption determinants, psychology scholars concerned about the relationship between anti-socializing behavior and video streaming consumption as a part of the total time spent online could also benefit from the current findings.

The results of this study will be helpful to industry players in designing their video streaming offer after taking into consideration the influence of the discussed variables on the consumption behavior.

While anti-socializing behavior drives consumers to a digital environment for which they control the settings, the content being streamed is a cultural product, influenced by society and its consumption immerses the viewer in the cultural mores of the time and place the content was created in or depicts; hence, anti-socializing behavior does not mean a complete break from society, but rather a different instantiation of people’s need to connect with their social environment.

The novelty of this research stands in the integration of anti-socializing behavior as an explanatory factor of video streaming consumption, which has not yet been used in models explaining online consumption so far.

Food security reflects the amount of access and availability of healthy, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food and represents a significant problem both nationally and globally. Individuals and families that are considered food insecure experience disparities and inequities in food access and availability and insufficiency in the amount and kind of food required for a healthy lifestyle. We see high food insecurity as a violation of one's rights to a healthy and secure life and a denial of the opportunity for individuals, families, and communities to realize their full potential in society. Thus, we examine food insecurity from three distinct but related perspectives: social responsibility, social justice, and social sustainability. We then explore the link between food insecurity and the “built environment” as needed to shape research, practice, and sustainable solutions in the future.

Sustainable development (SD) is vital in alleviating poverty, hunger and disease (PHD). The purpose of this study is to present a guiding framework with pathways targeting the sustainability challenges concerning PHD based on urban planning and design literature.

A narrative review and content analysis of 27 articles published by 11 journals indexed in Scopus were conducted using bibliometrics analysis.

The study’s findings discuss contemporary normative planning and design ideas and their ability to alleviate PHD. Considering these findings, the authors recommend that urban planning and design implementation processes carefully pursue the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Vision 2030 by tracking qualitative metrics that consider social, cultural and spiritual well-being.

The contribution is to propose a conceptual framework for alleviating hunger, poverty and disease through Vision 2030. Practitioners and policymakers can use this framework to assess the impact of their actions. Hunger, poverty and disease research could be guided by this framework to identify and prioritize best practices in cities of the Global South.

The purpose of the present paper is to provide a systematic overview of dimensions that need to be enfolded or considered in microfinance policies and strategies designs as well as impact studies aiming to empower or assess the empowerment of a specific category of women, namely women entrepreneurs. Afterward, the study aims to suggest some directions for future studies.

To meet its purpose, the paper applies the systematic review approach. The applied methodology follows guidelines for systematic reviews of social and economic interventions as set out by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA). More specifically, the authors examine 87 empirical papers from 6 databases investigating the impact of microfinance institutions on the empowerment of women entrepreneurs.

Overall, findings of the study suggest that dimensions of the empowerment of women entrepreneurs are formed and conditioned by normative, cognitive and regulative institutional logics. Additionally, the systematic review suggests key research avenues and calls for more inclusive empirical studies in terms of geographical coverage, microfinance services/products assessed and method designs applied.

Findings of the current review provide clear theoretical contribution and useful practical implications in the field of microfinance and the empowerment of women entrepreneurs. On the one hand, the study suggests to scholars key avenues for future studies likely to bring new insights in terms of theory, context and methods. On the other hand, this study extents the understanding of microfinance practitioners on the concept of women empowerment as the field of female entrepreneurship is concerned. This implication is likely to enable the design of appropriate microfinance strategies and policies, allowing women entrepreneurs to achieve an overall empowerment.

The present paper contributes to the debate around the multidimensionality of the concept, “women empowerment.” The multidimensional nature of the addressed concept is well established in the existing literature. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has provided a conceptual analysis of empowerment dimensions of a particular category of women, namely women entrepreneurs. Unlike most of the studies assuming that all women face identical challenges, the present paper brings new insights on the topic as it is built on a different assumption. The paper takes ground from the institutional theory and applies it to the specific case of female entrepreneurship.