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This study/paper aims to evaluate the floral richness of the central part of Chattogram city, Bangladesh. Chattogram is recognized as the largest port city and the commercial capital of Bangladesh, which confronts faster urbanization and swift infrastructure development. Green spaces in and around Chattogram city are shrinking sharply, which resulted in rapid loss of floral and faunal resources in this area. The present study was carried out from February 2018 to January 2019 to enumerate the vascular plant species of the Sulakbahar ward located in the central part of Chattogram City, Bangladesh.

The study area was categorized into 10 habitats to assess the variation of floral composition. The extensive whole area survey method was applied to record the flora from all sorts of plant habitats of the research area.

The study enumerated 418 vascular plant species under 315 genera and 120 families including natural, planted and cultivated from the study area. The habit form of the recorded plant composition indicated that herbs (35%) constitute the major plant category followed by trees (34%), shrubs (17%), climbers (12%), ferns (1%) and orchids (1%). The study also indicated that exotic species (50.3%) became dominant than native species (49.7%) in Chattogram city because of their scenic beauty, easy propagation and ornamental value to the city planners and inhabitants.

It appeared that floral resources of the Chattogram city area are in great threat due to aggressive and unplanned infrastructure development for housing, offices and institutions by replacing the green spaces. The study recommended that urgent protection measures should be taken to conserve and protect the existing floral resources for the well-being of the urban people.

Three residential colleges located in a university campus at the capital city of Kuala Lumpur and built in different decades were selected for landscape studies with respect to species and position of the trees, as well as the effects of the current landscapes as a shelter in reducing solar radiation on buildings, as a pre-assessment for the Low Carbon Cities Framework (LCCF) and assessment system. These landscape designs were carefully studied through on-site observation. The name and location of the matured plants were redrawn and visualised with standard normal photographs. The studies revealed that the old residential college landscape is dominated by tropical forest trees which are able to provide a significant shade to the buildings and offered a potential to achieve sustainable development due to a higher rate of carbon sequestration. While, palm and hybrid fruit plants were most extensively cultivated in the landscape of new residential colleges due to low maintenance and being fast growing.

The urban heat island is an unintended consequence of humans building upon rural and native landscapes. We hypothesized that variations in vegetation and land use patterns across an urbanizing regional landscape would produce a temperature distribution that was spatially heterogeneous and correlated with the social characteristics of urban neighborhoods. Using biophysical and social data scaled to conform to US census geography, we found that affluent whites were more likely to live in vegetated and less climatically stressed neighborhoods than low-income Latinos in Phoenix, Arizona. Affluent neighborhoods had cooler summer temperatures that reduced exposure to outdoor heat-related health risks, especially during a heat wave period. In addition to being warmer, poorer neighborhoods lacked critical resources in their physical and social environments to help them cope with extreme heat. Increased average temperatures due to climate change are expected to exacerbate the impacts of urban heat islands.

Urban landscapes play a significant role in supporting municipal, ecological and social systems. Besides, valuable environmental services and urban green spaces provide social and psychological services, very important for the liveability of modern cities and the well-being of urban residents. It is clear that the area of green space in a city, the method of designing urban landscape and access to urban green space potentially affect the health, happiness, comfort, safety and security of urban dwellers. Urban landscape plays a significant role in providing habitats for wildlife, and an important vegetation type in doing this is species-rich herbaceous vegetation that provides pollen and nectar plus physical habitat for native fauna. Any factor that makes an impression on the urban landscape (such as climate change) will affect people’s lives directly or indirectly. There is a universal consensus that the temperature has increased in most of the world over the past century the investigation of climate change impacts on the urban landscape is the purpose of this study.

Understanding the process of climate change adaptation is necessary to design plant communities for use in public landscapes. Increased CO₂ and air temperature in conjunction with the changing rainfall conditions, as the three important factors of climate change, potentially alter almost all world ecosystems. Climate change provides new opportunities, and in some cases, an obligate need to use non-native plant species in conjunction with native plant species, not only to reduce the side effects of climate change but also to increase the species diversity and aesthetic value in meadow-like naturalistic planting design.

The authors confirm that this work is original and has not been published elsewhere. In this paper, the authors report on the effects of climate change on urban landscape and suggest different kind of solutions to reduce the effects. The paper should be of interest to readers in the areas of landscape architecture, landscape ecologist, landscape planner, landscape managers and environmental designer.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) generate different impacts at the urban scale, such as the ability to regulate water or store carbon, comparable to traditional, gray infrastructures in a more cost-efficient way. On the other hand, by their intrinsic nature, NBS do deliver a series of other services that are commonly defined as social, economic, and environmental cobenefits. These benefits are not always valued in a consistent and complete way, so there is the need to compile a more comprehensive evidence base on the social, economic, and environmental effectiveness of NBS. The chapter attempts to identify a categorization of the existing NBS and define the ecosystem services (ES) provided by them. Furthermore, starting from the results achieved through the definition of the existing NBS frameworks assessment, the chapter will identify a set of key performance indicators KPIs, based on the ES produced by NBS, to measure the economic, social, and environmental benefits generated in by NBS at the urban level taking into account their multifunctional character. In total, 66 key performance indicators have been individuated: 3 for provisioning services, 38 for regulating services, 17 for cultural services, and 8 for supporting services. Each indicator has been associated to a category of ES in order to measure and evaluate the performances of NBS implemented in cities.

The goal of this study is to investigate the nexus among TFP (total factor productivity), IT (information technology) capital accumulation, skills and key plant variables of 34 Indian industries for the period of 2009–2015.

Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) data series are extracted and formulated using Microsoft SQL server. The authors employ Wooldridge (2009) technique to estimate productivity. To investigate the linkages among productivity, IT, skills and key plant variables, the authors estimate specifications using system generalized method of moments (sys-GMM). Advanced estimation techniques such as Heckman two-step process, probit equations, inverse Mills ratio and panel cointegration are applied to overcome problems of nonstationarity, omitted variables, endogeneity and reverse causality.

The results indicate that the level of IT capital influences the TFP of Indian industries, so does the level of skilled workers. The outcome suggests that intermediate capital goods, location and ownership type enable the strength of IT capital and that in turn boosts productivity. The authors fail to find any impact of regional factors and contractual labor on IT capital and productivity. While medium-level gender diversity is statistically significant to influence productivity, however, no complementarities exist between gender diversity and IT capital accumulation. The results also indicate that IT demand of Indian industries is sensitive to availability of skilled workforce, fuel and electricity and access to short-term funding.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the nexus among TFP, IT capital accumulation, skills and organizational factors using ASI unit level data. Besides this, the paper offers two more novelties. First, it uses Wooldridge (2009) technique to estimate productivity, which is used by a handful of studies in the context of India. Second, the study identifies factors that impact productivity growth, IT demand and its adoption in Indian industries and thus contributes to growth and development literature.

In urban development, the difference of construction time series and the diversity of the aesthetic standard all lead to the fragmentation of the urban landscape and the lack of effective integration. The research on urban landscape design based on sustainable development innovation was put forward in this paper. The background of the development of urban landscape design was expounded firstly, and the development status of urban landscape design under the concept of sustainable development innovation was introduced; then the urban landscape design method under the concept of sustainable development was put forward, and the urban landscape planning and design of a city was taken as an example and divided into three functional areas; in addition, the stereoscopic traffic planning, the landscape corridor design and the landscape design planning of water system were proposed. This study is of certain guiding significance for the actual urban landscape planning design.

The purposes of this study is to explore and describe the main campus urban design principles, to investigate and examine the degree of Hashemite University’s (HU’s) student satisfaction with the urban design of their campus, to examine the relationships between the degree of HU student satisfaction and age, gender, educational pursuits and academic year, to define and assess student needs through HU’s campus design and to examine and investigate the relationships/interrelationships between all the campus urban design principles.

This research used a variety of methods: A face-to-face questionnaire (n = 1,443), HU students’ community board design for urban spaces, HU master plan analysis and focus group discussions (three researchers and 30 architectural students). This research used the descriptive statistics and the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (Pearson r) to analyze the data.

This research found that the majority of HU students were dissatisfied with the design of their outside spaces with regard to the effectiveness of space, availability of services, viability and vitality, public realm design, the density of activities, design character, walkability, diversity of existing services, richness, continuity and enclosure design. In contrast, they were satisfied with the accessibility and connectivity between spaces, availability of safe and welcoming spaces, mental map elements design and urban structure. Statistically, this research found that there were no significant relationships between the students’ satisfaction level and their age, gender, educational pursuits, education specialty and education level. Moreover, the correlation results revealed that the relationships/interrelationships between all the campus urban design principles have strong/very strong positive linear associations and significant relationships (r > 89).

This research recommended that the urban designer and architects should adopt the bottom-up approach when they are designing and planning the campus. They should apply all the above urban design principles to achieve the flexible and dynamic campus urban design and the students’ needs. Well-designed campus creates multi-functional places for students’ activities, encourages them for socialization and enhances their academic performance and experience, increases their feeling of belonging, enhances the sense of well-being and supports outside learning activities and experiences. The objectives for the campus urban design should promote high standards and qualities of open spaces, create a sense of places, serve students’ needs, provide effective design for socialization, provide maximum flexible design to allow for future campus growth and create a safe and healthy environment to express the quality of university’s life. Finally, the students should participate actively in the developing design of their campus activity.

To avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, this research is essential for future HU campus design. In addition to defining and describing all the campus urban design principles, this research provides HU decision-makers with an informed, holistic view of their students’ satisfaction levels, needs and requirements within their urban campus design to develop the HU campus design. Moreover, this research provides a new vision for the future in the form of data and guidelines for a new campus design. The findings are intended to provide useful information to university managers, leaders, policymakers and urban designers who implement strategies to improve the quality of campus urban design. This research opens the door for new research by duplicating the same research contents and methodologies on another campus design within different regions and cultures to fully develop a universal guideline for campus urban design.

Sacred forests are biocultural landscapes deeply rooted in centuries-old traditions of spiritual veneration. These sacred sites, including shrines, temple forests churches and graveyards, have historically been significant reservoirs of traditional resource management practices underpinned by spiritual reverence. However, despite their cultural and ecological importance, the cultural ecosystem services inherent to these sacred forests remain unexplored, particularly in urban settings.

This study focused on six sacred sites within Kanazawa City, Japan, using a meticulous face-to-face survey with 342 participants. We collected data on the extent of forest utilisation, the breadth of activities engaged in by visitors and their holistic appraisal of the rendered cultural ecosystem services. The findings illustrate the multifaceted benefits of urban sacred forests, encompassing participation in religious ceremonies, cultural events and festivals, complemented by educational programming that elucidates the historical and traditional underpinnings of the shrines and their surrounding communities.

It has been observed that urban forests have a crucial role in providing spiritual and communal connectivity, preserving traditional heritage, offering vital aesthetic values as green spaces and making visitors connected with nature while they are in the urban landscape. However, a concerning trend has emerged, as the younger demographic appears to lack interest in participating in the stewardship and cultural activities associated with these biocultural landscapes. Community engagement strategies must be strengthened, conservation measures should be implemented and cultural awareness programs need to be established to ensure the perpetuation and appreciation of these valuable urban sacred forests.

This study provides original perspectives on the measurable cultural ecosystem services and intangible values associated with urban sacred forests using the sacred forests in Kanazawa City, Japan. Our research illuminates the various advantages that visitors derive by examining the intersection of spiritual traditions, resource management practices and cultural significance, which has been relatively unexplored. The present study provides a significant basis for establishing initiatives that seek to promote the cultivation of respect and responsibility towards urban sacred forests.