Temperature extremes, heatwaves, and cold snaps pose significant risks to urban infrastructure, public health, economic productivity, and energy systems, making it essential for cities to understand the drivers of these events for effective planning and preparedness. This study quantifies changes in temperature extremes across the Continental United States (CONUS) and examines the relative roles of various climate forcing factors, including greenhouse gas concentrations, land-use change, and natural variability, with particular attention to implications for growing urban areas. Daily maximum and minimum near-surface air temperatures from the Community Earth System Model were analyzed under three forcing scenarios: natural-only, greenhouse-gas-only, and all-forcings combined. Heat waves were defined as six or more consecutive days exceeding the 99th percentile of daily maximum temperature; cold snaps were analogously identified using the 1st percentile of daily minimum temperature. Trend analysis was applied at both CONUS and gridcell scales, and an optimal fingerprinting regression framework was employed for formal detection and attribution. Preliminary results indicate that under all-forcings, extreme hot days increased significantly (slope: 105.45 days/year, p < 0.001) and heat wave frequency rose by 5.02 waves/year (p < 0.001), while cold days exhibited a non-significant declining trend. The attribution scaling factor of 3.51 suggests that combined forcings amplify heat wave occurrence roughly 3.5-fold relative to natural variability alone. Spatially, the Southwest, West, and Florida showed the strongest intensification, overlapping with regions of rapid population growth; gridcell analysis of the 15 most populated cities confirmed increasing heat wave trends in most urban areas. Building on these single-hazard, single-model results, the next phase of this work will extend the framework to CMIP5 and CMIP6 multi-model ensembles and to compound drought–heatwave events, using a daily-scale bivariate SPI–SHI approach, in order to more robustly attribute changes in compound extremes and better characterize urban vulnerability in a warming climate.

Understanding the spatial structure of urban environments is essential for identifying conditions that facilitate or deter property crimes. This study assessed visual connectivity at property crime hotspots (PCHs) in Nashik City, India. Property crime data, including robberies, burglaries, and thefts, were obtained from the Nashik City Police Department, while building footprint data were sourced from Google Open Buildings. Using QGIS, property crime locations were mapped, and hotspot areas were identified. Neighborhood layouts were then developed around these hotspots, and Visibility Graph Analysis (VGA) was performed in depthmapX to assess visual connectivity within 50-meter buffers of property crime locations. The analysis revealed spatial variations in visual connectivity across different PCHs, highlighting how the spatial configuration of neighborhoods influences surveillance and creates opportunities for property crimes. Areas with lower visual connectivity often corresponded to more property crimes, suggesting that restricted visibility due to compact spatial layouts may provide favorable conditions for property crime incidents. Conversely, locations with higher visual connectivity demonstrated fewer property crimes, indicating the positive influence of natural surveillance. The findings underscore the potential of space syntax-based visual analysis as a diagnostic tool for property crime prevention. By integrating spatial configuration analysis of neighborhoods with property crime mapping, this study provides a methodological framework for urban planners and urban designers to identify vulnerable areas and design interventions that enhance street visibility, spatial integration, and safety in urban neighborhoods.

Cities in Africa are undergoing rapid urbanisation to cope with an influx of people mainly seeking better jobs and amenities. Kigali city in Rwanda has evolved rapidly over the past two decades, becoming a hotspot for commerce, finance, and government services. As investment and construction surged, several modern office buildings and commercial spaces have been developed to augment the increasing demand. However, this rapid growth has also led to business concentration in some areas, while other buildings remain vacant, especially on upper floors. This study evaluates how visibility and occupation patterns on lower ground floors influence vacancy in upper floors of commercial buildings in Kigali City, while examining disruptions and spatial relationships between pedestrian crossings and transition stations. Using spatial analysis and architectural assessment, the research investigates how limited visibility, poor vertical circulation, and fragmented pedestrian connections reduce accessibility to upper levels, contributing to their underutilization. Digital platforms such as ArcGIS, Revit, and Lumion were utilised to locate and design key points for these connections. Findings indicate that lower-floor dominance in activity and visibility creates uneven spatial engagement, while discontinuities in pedestrian routes further limit access to elevated spaces. The research highlights the importance of integrated circulation systems, improved visual connectivity, and pedestrian-oriented linkages to support balanced occupation across building levels. These strategies aim to enhance accessibility, reactivate vacant upper floors, and strengthen spatial continuity, contributing to a more efficient and adaptive urban commercial environment.

Corvin Castle in Hunedoara is an important heritage site whose preservation is closely linked to urban planning, sustainability, and local development processes. As historic cities face pressures related to tourism, economic change, and spatial transformation, heritage conservation plays an increasingly relevant role in guiding urban development. This study examines how the preservation of Corvin Castle influences planning policies, the surrounding urban environment, and local adaptation strategies.

The research uses a mixed-methods approach that combines historical and morphological analysis of the urban fabric with spatial mapping of protected and buffer zones. Planning documents and heritage management policies were analyzed to evaluate how conservation principles are reflected in regulatory frameworks. Interviews with planners, heritage specialists, and local stakeholders provided additional insight into governance practices and institutional capacity. This approach responds to current discussions on urban planning, resilience, and sustainable development.

The results show that Corvin Castle functions as a significant spatial reference point within the city, shaping land-use patterns, mobility connections, and the organization of public spaces. Heritage-based regeneration projects support local economic activity and contribute to strengthening community identity. At the same time, challenges remain in balancing preservation requirements with infrastructure upgrades and functional modernization, pointing to the need for better coordination within planning and resilience strategies.

Overall, the study highlights the value of integrating heritage conservation into broader urban development frameworks in order to support coherent, sustainable, and context-sensitive urban transformation.

Rapid urban growth in many African cities frequently outpaces official mapping and monitoring, limiting evidence-based urban planning in data-scarce contexts. This study develops and tests a fully open-data, reproducible geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) workflow to forecast short-term urban land-use/land-cover (LULC) change, using Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) as a demonstrative case study. Multi-temporal LULC maps for 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025 were produced at 10 m resolution from Sentinel-2–derived Dynamic World Version 1 in Google Earth Engine and combined with open explanatory variables derived from NASADEM topography and OpenStreetMap proximity layers. Transition potentials were modelled in TerrSet Land Change Modeler using a multilayer perceptron (MLP) and a support vector machine (SVM) and then integrated with Markov-chain allocation to simulate near-term scenarios for 2028 and 2031 (three-year steps). From 2016 to 2025, built-up areas increased by approximately 114.48 km², while vegetation and croplands declined by about 149.64 km² and 50.80 km², respectively, with the most dynamic changes occurring during 2019–2022; vegetation was the principal donor class to urban conversion (≈110.65 km²). Predictive performance was high, with area-under-the-curve values exceeding 0.89 and overall Kappa statistics ranging between 0.78 and 0.83, indicating reliable short-term forecasting skill. The projected maps for 2028 and 2031 suggest continuing peri-urban sprawl and progressive fragmentation of vegetated zones, demonstrating that open-data GeoAI can deliver actionable, transferable spatial foresight for rapidly growing African cities.

In the contemporary heritage paradigm, the visitor experience can be divided into the tangible authenticity of archaeological ruins and the digital narratives of modern museums. This distinction is particularly evident in Canakkale, Türkiye, which hosts both the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Troy and the award-winning Troya Museum. While these two entities interpret an identical historical timeline, they provide fundamentally distinct spatial and cognitive encounters. As Richards (2018) indicates, cultural tourism is rapidly shifting towards experience-based consumption, yet traditional monitoring methods including surveys and ticket sales fail to capture the qualitative perceptions of the digital-native visitor. To address this gap, Ghermandi and Sinclair (2019) advocate for passive crowdsourcing through social media as a real-time alternative to monitor visitor preferences. This study aims to reveal the digital image of Troy by analyzing User-Generated Content to determine whether visitor perceptions align with the management goals of the Troya. The research adopts a digital footprint approach (Girardin et al., 2008), and it utilizes TripAdvisor as the data source due to its rich textual depth. A balanced dataset of English and Turkish reviews (n=250) are harvested for both the "Ancient City of Troy" and the "Troya Museum". The text data are analyzed by conducting a pipeline of tokenization, stop-word removal, and normalization. The methodology combines methods from Natural Language Processing frameworks: first, Word Cloud visualization (Karayazi et al., 2022) maps the frequency distribution of dominant keywords. Second, VADER Sentiment Analysis (Hutto & Gilbert, 2014) quantifies satisfaction polarities. Reviews of the Troya Museum are expected to emphasize architectural quality and exhibition design (Metin Parlak & Celebi Seker, 2026). In contrast, reviews of the archaeological site are expected to mention environmental aspects, such as walking distances, climatic conditions, and engagement with the landscape (Oncul et al., 2023). As a result, this research proposes a data-driven experience model, and it supports the development of destination identity.

Urban placemaking is a transformative way of thinking about urban development, focusing on how people experience, use, and identify with public spaces to create social cohesion and economic vitality. However, in reality, it has been a fragmented process, being implemented as design interventions rather than a governance process. Conventional urban placemaking analysis tends to be qualitative and design-focused, failing to provide the statistical depth necessary for large-scale governance and policy intervention. This paper proposes a statistically proven "Placemaking Equity Model" developed through a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of Mumbai’s most prestigious Central Business District (CBD), the Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC). The study reduces 30 complex placemaking variables to six fundamental components, accounting for 83.10% of the variability in user perception. The results indicate a substantial "Access-Sociability Gap," in which the presence of "world-class infrastructure" (accounting for 46.24% of the variability) obscures a profound deficiency in human-scale social interaction.

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) serves as a key statistical tool in this study, enabling a transition in urban development from subjective, design-led interventions to an objective, evidence-based governance framework. This paper highlights the need for a paradigm shift in urban governance, employing Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to transition from engineering-led urban development toward evidence-based, governance-driven place management. This model can implement a long-term placemaking vision, ensuring that economically successful areas such as BKC become vibrant and socially resilient spaces.

Most of city life happens in public spaces such that sensory experiences are central to the design of urban built environments. However, the visual hegemony often overlooks the contribution of non-visual sensory dimensions to spatial experience. This research addresses this gap by developing a multisensorial framework for reading and designing urban public spaces, using market streets in Kerala as the contextual setting. Market streets are inherently rich sensory environments, shaped by intense pedestrian activity, vibrant commercial edges, diverse user groups, microclimatic conditions and temporal changes.

The theoretical foundation is drawn from visual and non-visual urban theories. The visual dimension is informed by Kevin Lynch’s concepts of imageability and wayfinding; Gordon Cullen’s serial vision and non-visual theories are derived from the works of Juhani Pallasma, Mirco Zardini, David Howes, Sarah Pink, and Kate McLean. By conceptualising market spaces as a spatial and sensory construct, the research develops a theoretical framework that links tangible elements and sensory parameters such as visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and thermal cues to understand how spatial form and human perception interact to shape place meaning and memory. To operationalise this framework, the study uses a mixed-method approach combining binary surveys, photo elicitation, participatory sensory mapping, field observations, radar charts, and a sensory wheel to document the intensity and quality of sensory stimuli. The data collected from selected market streets is synthesised through a sensory matrix that evaluates each sense based on spatial context, temporal changes, and sources of stimuli. This matrix helps identify both desirable and undesirable sensory landmarks and identify the impact of sensory cues on legibility, orientation and place attachment. The outcome of the research is a multisensory mapping framework that can guide design decisions for urban streets, enabling planners and designers to improve the spatial experience through enhanced sensory comfort.

The Mpenge Eco-friendly Park and Wetland Conservation Project is proposed in Musanze District, Northern Province of Rwanda, a region recognized for its tourism potential and ecologically valuable wetland systems that provide critical environmental services, including water regulation, biodiversity conservation and agriculture support. In recent decades, rapid urbanization has contributed to a significant decline in wetland coverage, with more than 20% lost over the past two decades, posing serious ecological and socio-environmental challenges. This study investigates the role of architectural design in the development of eco-friendly parks that address recreational needs while actively contributing to wetland conservation and ecological restoration.

Using a design-based research approach supported by site analysis, ecological assessment and sustainable architectural principles, the proposed park integrates strategies such as permeable surface systems, rainwater harvesting and native vegetation restoration to enhance environmental performance and ecological resilience. The project prioritizes multifunctional architectural spaces, including eco-friendly parks that address recreational needs while actively contributing to wetland conservation and ecological restoration. The project also prioritizes multifunctional architectural spaces, including eco-restaurants, pavilions and flower gardens designed to promote environmental education, social interaction and community wellbeing while minimizing ecological disturbance.

The project aims to achieve a 10% increase in local biodiversity within five years and is projected to attract over 50,000 visitors annually, strengthening eco-tourism and local economic development in Musanze. Community participation is embedded through conservation initiatives such as monthly Umuganda activities focused on wetland restoration, tree planting and environmental stewardship. The findings demonstrate that architectural interventions, when strategically integrated with ecological restoration frameworks, can serve as effective tools for wetland preservation and sustainable urban development. The Mpenge Eco-Friendly Park positions Musanze as a replicable model for eco-friendly urban parks that balances environmental protection community engagement and socio-economic sustainability in Rwanda and similar contexts.

In the Strategic Development Plan of the Mongolian State University of Agriculture for 2018–2028, one of the eight priority directions is the improvement of the university environment and the enhancement of the quality and accessibility of buildings and facilities. The primary objective of our study is to develop a scientifically grounded spatial planning solution to create a comfortable, favorable environment for students, faculty, and staff.

Within the framework of the research, an assessment of the land-use structure and the current state of the “KHAAN” campus of the Mongolian State University of Agriculture was conducted. Based on field measurements, aerial imagery obtained through unmanned aerial vehicles, and remote sensing methods, we developed an environmentally oriented planning proposal aligned with the requirements of an urban ecosystem and integrated into an optimized land use scheme.

The results of the study allowed us to compare the current condition of the campus with model examples of campuses at several international universities, thereby identifying the potential for developing a territorial plan based on functional zoning. The “KHAAN” campus occupies 22.25 hectares, with land use distributed as follows: educational facilities — 30%, green infrastructures — 14.1%, road infrastructure — 8.3%, office and administrative buildings — 6%, and residential areas — 10.1%.

As a result of the planning analysis, which considered the existing land-use structure, the areas designated for economic activities, residential zones, parking lots, and educational facilities were partially reduced. Instead, the project includes new functional elements such as a pedestrian “light street,” expanded green areas, a student development center, bicycle parking facilities, an agricultural innovation and technology center, as well as public spaces for recreation and leisure.