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With rapid urbanization, cities are facing various ecological and environmental problems. Living in harmony with nature is more important than ever. This paper aims to evaluate the ecosystem and ecological features of Azheke village, a key component of the Hani Rice Terraces World Cultural Heritage in China. The focus is on exploring effective ways to improve the relationship between humans and the natural environment through urban design in order to create a livable and sustainable city that can promote the development of sustainable smart urban ecology design.

This study conducted a systematic literature review to answer the following research questions: (1) How does Azheke design achieve harmony between humans and nature? (2) What are the effective approaches to improve the relationship between humans and nature within urban ecosystems? (3) How can urban design learn and integrate from Azheke’s ecological features to improve the relationship between humans and nature?

Azheke sustains long-term human-nature harmony through traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and efficient natural resource use. By incorporating biophilic design and nature-based solutions from Azheke, along with biodiversity-friendly urban planning, we can boost urban ecosystem health and create unique Azheke-inspired urban designs.

This research primarily focuses on the human-nature relationship, exploring design strategies based on biodiversity without delving into the interactions between other components of urban ecosystems, such as social-cultural and economic components.

This paper provides a new perspective and strategies for developing sustainable and smart urban ecology design. These findings can provide theoretical references for urban planners, designers and decision-makers.

This study aims to demonstrate how women's involvement in urban planning and design in Gulf cities improves urban space's inclusivity and strengthens identity through cultural heritage revitalisation. It also promotes the participation of women in architecture and city-making by showcasing how shaping urban spaces offers local communities opportunities for social interaction and a more inclusive environment.

The paper critically compares two case studies in the Gulf region—one in the United Arab Emirates and the other in Bahrain—according to four inclusion criteria: context connection, cultural sensitivity, community engagement and choices of amenities. These inclusion criteria are also applied to an experimental project by women architects' students in Saudi Arabia to inspire the future female architects of the Gulf region. From urban to architectural scales, the project offers a glance into the heritage design by women architects.

In light of this critical analysis, this study highlights the sensitivity to issues related to the revitalisation of urban areas by women architects. The case studies identified show the role of the female architect in making architecture and linking cultural heritage with contemporary themes. These projects stitch the past with the present and link cultural identity with aspects related to sustainable architecture. Therefore, valorising women's architectural experience is necessary to contribute to sustainable urban development in the Gulf region and beyond.

The present study addresses the importance of the role of women architects in the Gulf region. The research promotes the full and equal participation of women in the architecture and construction of the city to recognise their achievements by increasing their involvement in the work in a more integrated and balanced way.

This study uses computer-aided design to improve the ecological and environmental sustainability of early-stage landscape designs. Urban expansion on open land and natural habitats has led to a decline in biodiversity and increased climate change impacts, affecting urban inhabitants' quality of life and well-being. While sustainability indicators have been employed to assess the performance of buildings and neighbourhoods, landscape designs' ecological and environmental sustainability has received comparatively less attention, particularly in early-design stages where applying sustainability approaches is impactful.

The authors propose a computation framework for evaluating key landscape sustainability indicators and providing real-time feedback to designers. The method integrates spatial indicators with widely recognized sustainability rating system credits. A specialized tool was developed for measuring biomass optimization, precipitation management and urban heat mitigation, and a proof-of-concept experiment tested the tool's effectiveness on three Mediterranean neighbourhood-level designs.

The results show a clear connection between the applied design strategy to the indicator behaviour. This connection enhances the ability to establish sustainability benchmarks for different types of landscape developments using parametric design.

The study allows non-expert designers to measure and embed landscape sustainability early in the design stages, thus lowering the entry level for incorporating biodiversity enhancement and climate mitigation approaches.

This study expands the parametric vocabulary for measuring landscape sustainability by introducing spatial ecosystem services and architectural sustainability indicators on a unified platform, enabling the integration of critical climate and biodiversity-loss solutions earlier in the development process.

Because of the use of digital technologies in smart cities, municipalities are increasingly facing issues related to urban data management and are seeking ways to exploit these huge amounts of data for the actualization of data driven services. However, only few studies discuss challenges related to data driven strategies in smart cities. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to present data driven approaches (architecture and model), for urban data management needed to improve smart city planning and design. The developed approaches depict how data can underpin sustainable urban development.

Design science research is adopted following a qualitative method to evaluate the architecture developed based on top-level design using a case data from workshops and interviews with experts involved in a smart city project.

The findings of this study from the evaluations indicate that the identified enablers are useful to support data driven services in smart cities and the developed architecture can be used to promote urban data management. More importantly, findings from this study provide guidelines to municipalities to improve data driven services for smart city planning and design.

Feedback as qualitative data from practitioners provided evidence on how data driven strategies can be achieved in smart cities. However, the model is not validated. Hence, quantitative data is needed to further validate the enablers that influence data driven services in smart city planning and design.

Findings from this study offer practical insights and real-life evidence to define data driven enablers in smart cities and suggest research propositions for future studies. Additionally, this study develops a real conceptualization of data driven method for municipalities to foster open data and digital service innovation for smart city development.

The main findings of this study suggest that data governance, interoperability, data security and risk assessment influence data driven services in smart cities. This study derives propositions based on the developed model that identifies enablers for actualization of data driven services for smart cities planning and design.

This study explores the enablers of data driven strategies in smart city and further developed an architecture and model that can be adopted by municipalities to structure their urban data initiatives for improving data driven services to make cities smarter. The developed model supports municipalities to manage data used from different sources to support the design of data driven services provided by different enterprises that collaborate in urban environment.

Many factors contribute to public rail transit use in an urban network. However, a dysfunctional relationship between the built environment and the transport system significantly deters such use. Architects, urban designers, town planners and policymakers must understand the factors that promote or deter pedestrian use of the urban environment.

The paper investigates four connectivity and walkability factors for three different metro stations in Doha, Qatar: Al Aziziyah, Hamad Hospital and West Bay. The analysis includes pedestrian sheds, block sizes, ground-level land uses and connectedness in the urban spatial network based on catchment contour maps using space syntax.

The results indicate the three metro stations and neighborhoods are representative of diverse type of neighborhoods in Doha: relatively compact but expansive for the Hamad Hospital Station area, metrically and topologically restrictive due to the poor planning and the peninsular location of the reclaimed land in the West Bay area, and expansive, shallow and reliant on attraction for the Al Waab transportation corridor associated with Al Aziziyah Station.

Time factors and temporary closure/capacity reductions due to the global pandemic restricted planned efforts to collect more pedestrian use data based on passive observations and preference choices using surveys during the study. Nonetheless, adapting the investigation to the circumstances produced significant findings.

The analysis can help us develop better guidelines and diagnostic tools to calibrate design and planning strategies promoting more walkable, healthy and sustainable neighborhoods.

The study is original due to examining stations of the new Doha Metro for the first time. However, it relies on well-established representational techniques in urban morphology and space syntax research.

The present study investigates human behavioral and emotional experiences based on human-built environment interaction with a specific interest in urban graffiti displaying fear and pleasure-inducing facial expressions. Regarding human behavioral and emotional experience, two questions are asked for the outcome of human responses and two hypotheses are formulated. H1 is based on the behavioral experience and posits that the urban graffiti displaying fear and pleasure-inducing facial expressions elicit specified behavioral fear and pleasure responses. H2 is based on emotional experience and states that the urban graffiti displaying fear and pleasure-inducing facial expressions elicit specified emotional fear and pleasure responses.

The research design is developed as a multi-method approach, applying a lab-based experimental strategy (N:39). The research equipment includes a mobile electroencephalogram (EEG) and a Virtual Reality (VR) headset. The behavioral and emotional human responses concerning the representational features of urban graffiti are assessed objectively by measuring physiological variables, EEG signals and subjectively by behavioral variables, systematic behavioral observation and self-report variables, Self-assessment Manikin (SAM) questionnaire. Additionally, correlational analyses between behavioral and emotional results are performed.

The findings of behavioral and emotional evaluations and correlational results show that specialized fear and pleasure response patterns occur due to the affective characteristics of the urban graffiti's representational features, supporting our hypotheses. As a result, the characteristics of behavioral fear and pleasure response and emotional fear and pleasure response are identified.

The present paper contributes to the literature on human-built environment interactions by using physiological, behavioral and self-report measurements as indicators of human behavioral and emotional experiences. Additionally, the literature on urban graffiti is expanded by studying the representational features of urban graffiti as a parameter of investigating human experience in the built environment.

This article explores the impacts of the changing land-use on urban heat island (UHI) in an urban transformation zone in Ankara (Türkiye). Identifying a characteristic rural landscape until the 1950s, the study area experienced a drastic land-use change by razing the fertile landscape of the city and replacing it with a sealed surface. Development of the squatter houses after the 1960s and, subsequently, the implementation of a new housing morphology have introduced new sceneries, scales and surface conditions that make the study area a noteworthy case to analyze.

Regarding the drastic spatio-temporal change of the study area, this research assesses the impacts of the changing land-use on UHI based on three periods. Using 1957, 1991 and 2021 aerial imaginaries and maps, it analyzes the temperature alteration caused by the changing land-use. To do so, different surface types, green patterns and built-up areas have been modeled using Ankara climatic data and transferred to ENVI-Met to calculate the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) values.

The calculation has been developed over a transect covering an area of 40 m × 170 m, which includes diversity in terms of architecture, landscape and open space elements. To encourage future design strategies, the research findings deliberate into three extents that discuss the lacking climate knowledge in the ongoing urban transformation projects: impervious surface ratio and regional albedo variation, changing aspect ratio and temperature variation at the pedestrian level.

Urban transformation projects, being countrywide operations in Türkiye, need to cover climate-informed design strategies. Herein, the article underlines the critical position of design decisions in forming a climate-informed urban environment. Dwelling on a typical model of housing transformation in Türkiye, the research could trigger climate-informed urban development strategies in the country.

The general concept of public space in Saudi Arabia is relatively recent; it is the result of an attempt to modernize several conservative traditions and norms, as well as the ambitious vision of 2030, which reprioritized Saudi cities' public spaces by implementing a quality-of-life improvement program. This study aims to investigate the relationship between mosque location and surrounding urban context as a significant urban design issue in order to comprehend the potential for transforming such an element into a multifunctional public space destination in a dense urban fabric.

The study's objectives are divided into two areas: a spatial configuration analysis to examine the urban context and an urban analysis of the mosque site with a study area boundary of a 400-m buffer zone. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies were utilized; in addition, a user feedback survey was conducted in which several key insights were compiled, such as the importance of safety urban element factors, aesthetic elements and green areas in the built environment in making mosques places that are active public spaces.

The study’s main finding encourages governmental institutions to change their mindset from “open space around the mosque” to “the mosque as an element within public space,” which will have a significant impact on how the authors approach, improve and redevelop existing mosque locations. Several concepts were presented that should be reconsidered and redeveloped in order to align with the most recent sustainable urban design tools; the mosque to be overlooked as a community gathering place rather than just a place for religious rituals.

This study is limited to sacred mosque sites primarily found in Islamic countries; it focuses on Saudi Arabian urban and planning practices in relation to sociocultural norms. The authors believe that increasing the number of study samples or broadening the scope of the study to include other Saudi regions or other Middle Eastern countries could yield new findings and insights.

The study offers a conceptual design model based on survey results and qualitative analysis and recommending strategies that planners, designers and policymakers can use to design successful mosque places and pedestrian-oriented developments.

The research intends to investigate the different typological and morphological characteristics of the neighbourhood spaces produced by different urban dynamics since the late nineteenth century in Turkey.

The main problem that drives the research is that a significant increase in the construction of gated communities has started to be seen in the last five years as a solution to safety issues in Turkey. However, these gated communities as safe-spaces have resulted in the danger of destroying neighbourhood life's physical and social dynamics by changing their spatial configuration. The study offers an analytical framework structured from defensible space theory and other safe-space theories in the literature. It has analysed the effect of physical characteristics of urban fabric on the production of safe-space in neighbourhoods through mappings and site observations. The case studies are conducted in three different morphological periods in Turkey, which are the Seyrancik neighbourhood in Bolu (the Ottoman Period), the Subayevleri neighbourhood in Ankara (the Republican Period) and the Karaman neighbourhood in Sakarya (the Liberalisation Period).

The analysis concludes that any type does not come to the fore in the production of defensible space in terms of its spatial features, but each has various strengths and weaknesses. As a result, this study emphasises the role of design in providing defensible neighbourhoods in the case of Turkey's cities and reveals the aspects that will guide the design of an urban and housing form in terms of the safety–environment relationship in Turkey.

The significance of the study is the comparative analytical approach to studying the housing development and demonstrates a method for analysing safety issues in the transformation process of neighbourhood structures in Turkey.

This paper introduces the YouWalk-UOS mobile application, a tool that revolutionises the assessment of urban open spaces (UOS). The paper demonstrates how integrating real-time, on-ground observations with users’ reactions into a digital platform can transform the evaluation of urban open spaces. It seeks to address the existing shortcomings of traditional UOS assessment methods and underscore the need for innovative, adaptable and inclusive approaches.

Emphasizing the necessity of UOS for mental and physical health, community interaction and social and environmental resilience in cities, the methodology involves a comprehensive analysis of a number of theoretical frameworks that have historically influenced urban open space conceptualisation, design and assessment. The approach includes a critical review of traditional UOS assessment methods, contrasting them with the capabilities of the proposed YouWalk-UOS application. Building on the reviewed theoretical frameworks, the methodology articulates the application’s design, which encompasses 36 factors across three assessment domains: functional, social and perceptual and provides insights into how technology can be leveraged to offer a more holistic and participatory approach to urban space assessment.

YouWalk-UOS application represents an important advancement in urban space assessment, moving beyond the constraints of traditional methods. The application facilitates a co-assessment approach, enabling community members to actively participate in the evaluation and development of their urban environments. Findings highlight the essential role of technology in making urban space assessment more user-centred, aligning more closely with community needs and aspirations.

The originality lies in the focus on the co-assessment approach and integration of mobile technology into urban open space assessment, a relatively unexplored area in urban design literature. The application stands out as an innovative solution, offering a new perspective on engaging communities in co-assessing their environments. This research contributes to the discourse on urban design and planning by providing a fresh look at the intersection of technology, user engagement and urban space assessment.