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This paper aims to investigate the competitive potential of different classes of municipalities within larger metropolitan areas, considering three dimensions of place competitiveness, associated to contemporary economic recovery agendas: the “dual transition” (green and digital) and socio-economic resilience.

The proposed methodology is divided in two stages, the first aiming at developing a new Index of Urban Competitiveness, based on three key dimensions of place development, by using principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis; the second intends to identify municipalities’ main competitive assets, throughout the examination of the existing links between the overall competitiveness index and intra-metropolitan place conditions in each dimension. This methodology is applied to the metropolitan areas of Porto and Lisbon.

The analysis shows a weak link between population size and urban competitiveness, suggesting that economic recovery investments primarily targeting larger municipalities will not necessarily lead to greater metropolitan competitive advantages. On the contrary, taking into consideration place-based interventions for different “clubs” of municipalities would more likely contribute to enhance competitive performance and valorise territorial assets. Furthermore, while the relationship between competitiveness and environmental performance appears to be non-linear, digitalization and economic and social resilience prove to be key for urban competitive potential.

By drawing on contemporary notions of urban competitiveness, the work proposes a revised method to evaluate competitiveness, latent qualities and intrinsic features of places, constituting an initial step to conceive suitable metropolitan development and investment strategies for economic recovery.

The purpose of this study is to formulate a proposal to fill the gap in national legislation, which will increase the effectiveness of mandatory environmental insurance.

This is a review of scientific doctrine and legislation, which shows the problems and prospects for the development of mandatory environmental insurance on the example of one country.

At the moment, environmental insurance in Russia is at the very beginning of its development. Despite the experiments carried out and fragmentary references in the law, there is a classic example of a gap in the law, when the procedure provided for by the norms of law lacks a clear implementation mechanism. To fill this gap and increase the effectiveness of environmental insurance, the authors propose to clearly localize the scope of its operation, fixing the obligation of environmental insurance only for objects that have a significant or moderate negative impact on the environment (objects of categories I and II), provided for by the Federal Law “On mandatory Environmental Protection.”

A new concept of a mandatory environmental insurance contract is substantiated, which optimizes civil liability for causing harm to the environment, life, health and property of citizens (property of legal entities) as a result of accidents and man-made disasters.

From the perspective of housing affordability, Portugal is an interesting case study, considering that Portugal ranks 5th in terms of price-to-income ratio and has experienced, since 2015, a significant increase in real estate prices.

The provision of housing is a critical social development factor. With the growing worldwide urbanization and the demand pressure over real estate in many cities, the problem of affordability has gained increase attention by policy makers. Housing affordability is hardly a new topic from a literature perspective, but the recent post-pandemic worldwide inflation growth has re-centered affordability as key topic in the housing agenda. This paper provides a comprehensive overview on past literature and a detailed analysis on the Portuguese market at the municipal level, by analyzing the changes in housing affordability in recent years.

Despite this growth, overall, affordability has improved. The study also shows the importance of municipal-level analysis, given the significant geographical differences. The authors' study confirms that many municipalities, outside metropolitan areas, exhibit low levels of affordability. Nevertheless, markets with higher average real estate values tend to exhibit even lower affordability, outpacing the higher levels of income.

Previous studies have focused on affordability issues on a national or highly aggregated level or focusing only on the two largest metropolitan areas in the country. This paper provides a deeper understanding on the inequalities of housing affordability between Portuguese municipalities.

The total defence (TD) concept constitutes a joint endeavour between the military forces and civil defence structures within a TD state. Logistics is essential for such joint collaboration to work; however, the mismatch between military and civil defence logistics structures poses challenges for such joint collaboration. The purpose of this paper is to identify logistics concept areas within the TD framework that allow for military and civil defence collaborations from a logistics operations perspective.

Pattern-matching analysis is used to compare patterns found in the investigated case with those prescribed from the literature and predicted to occur. The study seeks to identify logistics concepts within TD from the literature and from the events describing the Swedish response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Pattern matching thus allows for the reconciliation of logistics concepts from the literature to descriptions of how the response was handled, albeit under a TD framework.

Findings show quite distinct foci between the theoretical and observational realms in terms of logistics applications. While the theoretical realm identifies four main logistics concepts, the observational realm identifies five logistics conceptual themes. This goes on to show an incongruence between the military and civil parts of the TD.

This study provides basis for further research into the applications and management of logistics activity within TD and emergency response.

Logistics applications within TD have not, until now, received much attention in the literature. Given this knowledge gap, this study is of original value.

The purpose of this research is to identify and test selected economic and organisational factors influencing the sustainability of participatory budgeting (PB) in Slovakia.

The data were collected from websites and publicly available documents from all local governments with urban municipality status in Slovakia, for a total of 155 municipalities, 59 of which have established a participatory budget. The main method applied was correlation analysis.

The findings indicate: (1) a weak inverse correlation between debt level and the continuous existence of PB in municipalities; (2) a moderate direct correlation between the duration of PB in a municipality and integration of PB in its programme budgeting; (3) a moderate direct correlation between the duration of PB in a municipality and the political experience of the mayor.

The findings are derived from a quantitative analysis of cases localised in a single country, and therefore interpretation requires an awareness of the context of local democracy in Slovakia. In this regard, any generalisation beyond the context under study needs to be considered with caution.

This research fills a gap in the role of PB in the context of sustainability, especially in the context of a post-communist country like Slovakia. It applies a quantitative approach to the analysis of PB, which is relatively rare in this field of study (qualitative case studies are predominant in PB research).

The digital age requires people of all ages to communicate and organise their lives through digital technologies. The project EQualCare investigates how the growing population of older people living alone is managing this transition, how it shapes their (non-)digital social networks and what changes on a local level need to be brought about. This paper aims to give insight into the process of participatory action research (PAR) with older people in the community across four countries and reflects on experiences made by academic and co-researchers.

Following the emancipatory underpinnings of PAR, which aims to reduce inequalities through collaboration and co-design, EQualCare involved nine teams of co-researchers across Finland, Germany, Latvia and Sweden making older people the centre of policy development. Co-researchers were involved in formulating research aims, collecting data, reflecting on data, formulating and disseminating recommendations for local policy stakeholders.

Co-researchers’ motivation to invest considerable time and effort was driven by a desire to create a more equal future for older people living alone. Moreover, they were keen to involve marginalised older people and became frustrated when this proved difficult. Power dynamics played a role throughout the process but became productive as roles and responsibilities were renegotiated. Doing PAR with older people can be emotionally challenging for co-researchers when negative feelings around ageing are encountered.

The paper advances understanding on the process of PAR in ageing research by reflecting on the social, cultural and political contexts of doing PAR with diverse sets of older people.

The purpose of this paper is to explore elites' prevalence in the process of participatory budgeting (PB) in a Ukrainian municipality.

The paper draws on the elite control and capture literature to examine the occurrence of unintended consequences resulting from the process of PB. Data for this case study are derived from document analysis and semi-structured interviews.

This study demonstrates how the involvement of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) promoted PB in a Ukrainian municipality. In the process of orienting politicians and administrators to PB, its normative benefits tend to be prioritised, whilst very little attention has been paid to making inhabitants aware of their role in the process of participatory decision-making. Although PB is intended to propagate good governance and accountability, it has in fact turned out to be a means of promoting corruption and furthering the personal interests of rent-seeking actors.

The paper demonstrates how elites can capture and control PB in the context of emerging economies, thereby preventing its propagated benefits of ensuring equality, justice and emancipation in local communities from being realised.

Exploring PB in Ukraine, the authors urge that caution should be exercised with regard to the wholesale adoption of externally/NGO-propagated ideas. Each emerging economy context is distinct, and an appreciation of this uniqueness is key to the success of PB reforms in different countries.

The aim is to analyse a regional cultural tourism object in Latvia, focusing on the elements of smart tourism as an indication of opportunities provided by digital technologies and its practical application.

The research employed data from the Central Statistical Office of the Republic of Latvia (hereinafter CSB), publicly available reports by ministries of the Republic of Latvia (hereinafter RoL), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (hereinafter OECD) etc., as well as summarized scientific findings on the research problem. Data on the use of smart technology elements at the Rundale Palace Museum were obtained in two ways: from public reports on the museum in 2016–2021 and additionally an expert interview was conducted with the deputy director of the museum. The expert interview questions were semi-structured.

The characteristics of cultural tourism indicate the use of ICT in destination management, marketing, planning, process organization and changes in organizational culture. The recognizable elements of smart cultural tourism are the smart travel destination, smart experiences and smart business. 4.0 G technologies are required to ensure the functioning of the elements: artificial intelligence, big data analytics, the Internet of things, blockchain, cloud computing, virtual and augmented reality. Smart cultural tourism is a unified system involving several levels of national and municipal institutions, organizations, entrepreneurs and NGOs. The implementation of smart cultural tourism requires centralized funding to implement and manage digital connectivity between the stakeholders. In the Latvian and Baltic context, the Rundale Palace Museum has been established as a cultural tourism object – a Renaissance palace museum, which is the second most visited museum in Latvia. The Rundale Palace Museum digitizes the services it provides within its financial possibilities, e.g. cloud data for remote purchase of visitor tickets, self-registration of visitors in the single visitor system, augmented reality and mobile applications. The Internet of things is not used, while artificial intelligence is partially used by the museum. At the Rundale Palace Museum as a smart tourist destination, the research did not identify the following features: a technological platform, a smart destination strategy and use of big data. Further, public-private consumer cooperation is not in place. The Rundale Palace Museum was not identified as an element of smart business, as a single smart business ecosystem for cultural tourism has not been created in the entirety of Latvia as yet nor in the Zemgale region in particular. Communication between cooperation partners occurred via telephone.

Few research studies on digital solutions for cultural tourism in Latvia and in the region of Zemgale, where the largest Renaissance pearl in Latvia and the Baltic States – the Rundale Palace Museum – is located, have been conducted; hence, this study contributes to addressing the research gap.

The main goal of this study was to determine how students at Ho Technical University (HTU) viewed green construction approaches and the benefits green buildings may provide to Ghana's tertiary institutions to enhance quality of life.

The institution's 350 participants were chosen using a random selection method. A standardised questionnaire was used to gather data, which was analysed using SPSS v.20 and presented in tables using descriptive statistics such as Likert scale analysis, weighted mean and relative importance index (RII).

The study revealed that awareness of the green building principle is comparatively low amongst the survey participants. Participants agree that the University's green building adoption is high. Students cited decreased utility expenses, improved occupant productivity and cheaper operational costs as important benefits of green construction. Students' thoughts on hurdles to implementing green construction ideas at the University were the enormous price tag of green building technology (RII = 0.89), ignorance of demonstration projects and ignorance of information on green building principles (RII = 0.81).

This is one of the first papers to study Ghanaian students' views on green buildings. This study adds to our understanding of students' thoughts on green building ideas. In addition, it sheds insight into their present awareness, which can help the university administration in Ghana design new paths for green building implementation.

The literature on public procurement (PP) has increased significantly in recent years, and, to date, several reviews have been conducted to study this relevant subject. Nevertheless, a bibliometric analysis of the PP knowledge domain is still missing. To fill this knowledge gap, a bibliometric review is carried out to investigate the current state of PP research.

A total of 640 journal articles are selected from the Scopus database for the final analysis. The performance indicators of the literature are identified and explained through bibliometric analysis. Furthermore, the conceptual and intellectual structures are studied through a keyword co-occurrence network and bibliographic coupling.

The results of the review indicate that PP research has increased significantly in recent years. The top ten most productive journals, countries, authors and academic institutions are identified. The findings from the keyword co-occurrence network reveal six main research themes including innovation, corruption and green public procurement (GPP). By applying bibliographic coupling, the focus of PP research revolves around seven thematic areas: GPP, corruption, the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in PP, electronic PP, innovation, labour standards and service acquisition. The research potential of each thematic area is evaluated using a model based on maturity and recent attention (RA).

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to successfully organise, synthesise and quantitatively analyse the development of the PP domain amongst a large number of publications on a large time scale.