Pub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2025-12-06DOI: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103677
Hang Yang , Lu Niu , Jasper van Vliet
The area of built-up land per capita (BPC) is a key indicator of land use efficiency, varying by an order of magnitude between countries. While previous studies have examined the effects of GDP and population, the influence of other socioeconomic factors on BPC has remained unclear, as well as potential differences across groups of countries by income. Using a fixed effects regression model, we analyze national-level BPC from 1985 to 2020 and identify significant relationships with GDP per capita, population density, human capital, household size, income distribution, and governance. Future projections under different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways scenarios (SSPs) suggest that global BPC will increase between 1.2 times (SSP4) and 2.7 times (SSP5) until 2100. Combined with population dynamics, this rise will result in a substantial increase in total built-up land demand. The projected variations between scenarios in BPC are more pronounced in low- and middle-income countries than in high-income countries. The disparities in built-up land across countries narrow under SSP1 and SSP5 but remain highly uneven in other scenarios. These findings underscore the impact of socioeconomic factors in built-up land projections and highlight trade-offs between human well-being, equity, and urban land consumption.
{"title":"Diverging trajectories of built-up land dynamics for country groups by income until 2100","authors":"Hang Yang , Lu Niu , Jasper van Vliet","doi":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103677","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103677","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The area of built-up land per capita (BPC) is a key indicator of land use efficiency, varying by an order of magnitude between countries. While previous studies have examined the effects of GDP and population, the influence of other socioeconomic factors on BPC has remained unclear, as well as potential differences across groups of countries by income. Using a fixed effects regression model, we analyze national-level BPC from 1985 to 2020 and identify significant relationships with GDP per capita, population density, human capital, household size, income distribution, and governance. Future projections under different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways scenarios (SSPs) suggest that global BPC will increase between 1.2 times (SSP4) and 2.7 times (SSP5) until 2100. Combined with population dynamics, this rise will result in a substantial increase in total built-up land demand. The projected variations between scenarios in BPC are more pronounced in low- and middle-income countries than in high-income countries. The disparities in built-up land across countries narrow under SSP1 and SSP5 but remain highly uneven in other scenarios. These findings underscore the impact of socioeconomic factors in built-up land projections and highlight trade-offs between human well-being, equity, and urban land consumption.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48376,"journal":{"name":"Habitat International","volume":"168 ","pages":"Article 103677"},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145685110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2025-12-31DOI: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103696
Claire Aragau , Jean-François Valette
Within metropolitan peripheries, irrespective of the national or regional contexts, the clash between rural and urban areas is at the center of metropolitan production. This clash is a twofold movement with urban sprawl, on the one hand, and major environmental injunctions, on the other. By looking at the two contexts of Paris and Mexico City, our research objective is to comprehend peripheries as places magnifying competing land dynamics, leading to scenarios of crises as well as social, political and legal innovations. The methodology is based on the analysis of field observations and surveys, public databases and official documents, using a social geographical approach. The article analyzes how stakeholders within the land system control peripheral land, focusing on public authorities, property market actors, and developers. The goal is to show the limitations of this control and reveal how and why residents and citizen groups build arrangements and regularizations. At the end, this article aims to contribute to the debates on the land rules deadlocks in the urban-rural interface. From different deadlocks observed in each context, the comparison underlines converging geo-legal trajectories of land regulation.
{"title":"Incursions upon agricultural land within metropolitan peripheries: Deadlocks and geo-legal trajectories of regularization in Paris and Mexico-city","authors":"Claire Aragau , Jean-François Valette","doi":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103696","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103696","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Within metropolitan peripheries, irrespective of the national or regional contexts, the clash between rural and urban areas is at the center of metropolitan production. This clash is a twofold movement with urban sprawl, on the one hand, and major environmental injunctions, on the other. By looking at the two contexts of Paris and Mexico City, our research objective is to comprehend peripheries as places magnifying competing land dynamics, leading to scenarios of crises as well as social, political and legal innovation<strong>s</strong>. The methodology is based on the analysis of field observations and surveys, public databases and official documents, using a social geographical approach. The article analyzes how stakeholders within the land system control peripheral land, focusing on public authorities, property market actors, and developers. The goal is to show the limitations of this control and reveal how and why residents and citizen groups build arrangements and regularizations. At the end, this article aims to contribute to the debates on the land rules deadlocks in the urban-rural interface. From different deadlocks observed in each context, the comparison underlines converging geo-legal trajectories of land regulation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48376,"journal":{"name":"Habitat International","volume":"168 ","pages":"Article 103696"},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145884152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rural settlements are reflections of rural production relations and social connections. It is crucial to integrate regional development goals with rural social ties (blood and geographical kinship) to optimize rural settlement patterns and achieve rural revitalization. In this context, this study systematically analyzed rural system resilience (RSR) and rural socio-spatial kinships (SSK). It proposed a rural settlement reconstruction scheme that uses RSR to determine development directions at administrative village level and SSK to guide reconstruction at natural village level. The results demonstrated the following findings. RSR exhibited a spatially diffusive effect driven by central nodes, with high value areas typically concentrated around township government centers. SSK spatial distribution correlated with villages identified by residents as high vitality key settlements. The restructuring scheme categorizes administrative villages into four types: adaptation transformation type, FA enhancement type, ES enhancement type, and general existence type. Natural villages are classified as central village, general village, and relocation merge village. Furthermore, this study discussed that SSK fosters endogenous rural dynamics through a “social kinship foundation–spatial kinship expansion” evolutionary pathway, with corresponding differentiated restructuring strategies proposed. This study has promoted our understanding of RSR and SSK in the reconstruction of rural settlements, and can provide planning guidance and practical insights for rural revitalization.
{"title":"Optimizing rural settlements in China through rural system resilience and socio-spatial kinships: A dual-scale approach at the administrative and natural village levels","authors":"Yiwei Geng , Xiaoshun Li , Jinxin Zhang , Zhehan Shao , Weiqiang Chen , Jiangquan Chen , Jumei Cheng","doi":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103670","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103670","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Rural settlements are reflections of rural production relations and social connections. It is crucial to integrate regional development goals with rural social ties (blood and geographical kinship) to optimize rural settlement patterns and achieve rural revitalization. In this context, this study systematically analyzed rural system resilience (RSR) and rural socio-spatial kinships (SSK). It proposed a rural settlement reconstruction scheme that uses RSR to determine development directions at administrative village level and SSK to guide reconstruction at natural village level. The results demonstrated the following findings. RSR exhibited a spatially diffusive effect driven by central nodes, with high value areas typically concentrated around township government centers. SSK spatial distribution correlated with villages identified by residents as high vitality key settlements. The restructuring scheme categorizes administrative villages into four types: adaptation transformation type, FA enhancement type, ES enhancement type, and general existence type. Natural villages are classified as central village, general village, and relocation merge village. Furthermore, this study discussed that SSK fosters endogenous rural dynamics through a “social kinship foundation–spatial kinship expansion” evolutionary pathway, with corresponding differentiated restructuring strategies proposed. This study has promoted our understanding of RSR and SSK in the reconstruction of rural settlements, and can provide planning guidance and practical insights for rural revitalization.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48376,"journal":{"name":"Habitat International","volume":"168 ","pages":"Article 103670"},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145685112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2025-12-27DOI: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103703
Xin Zheng , Zhaoping Yang , Yuxi Fan
Natural landscape aesthetics have long influenced tourist perception, yet the mechanisms underlying aesthetic appreciation remain poorly understood, constraining sustainable socio-economic and ecological development in critical areas, notably national parks. This study establishes a multi-dimensional framework for assessing the aesthetic quality of natural landscapes in national parks, employing methods such as content-based sentiment analysis, questionnaire surveys, Geo-Detector model, and structural equation modeling to quantify tourists’ perceived value, elucidate its spatial associations, and uncover its underlying effects on landscape aesthetics. The results show that: (1) The spatial pattern of landscape aesthetic quality shows higher values in the east and lower values in the west, with high-value areas primarily concentrated in the southeast regions characterized by uniqueness, diversity, and coordination. (2) Tourist perception exhibits significant spatial heterogeneity. High-perception areas are primarily located in the southeast regions characterized by distinctive landscape clusters, while the southern and eastern regions display secondary clusters. (3) Quantitative findings reveal that the uniqueness and diversity of natural landscapes are the primary driving factors influencing tourists’ perceptions, with the interaction between landscape uniqueness and other factors dominating the spatial pattern of tourists’ perceptions (maximum explanatory power = 0.80). Furthermore, tourism service facilities serve as a significant positive moderator of the relationship between landscape aesthetics and tourist perception. These results provide a scientific basis for advancing sustainable conservation and management of natural landscapes in national parks, as well as for improving public welfare benefits.
{"title":"Spatial correlation mechanism between natural landscape aesthetic quality and tourist perception in Mount Wuyi national park, China","authors":"Xin Zheng , Zhaoping Yang , Yuxi Fan","doi":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103703","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103703","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Natural landscape aesthetics have long influenced tourist perception, yet the mechanisms underlying aesthetic appreciation remain poorly understood, constraining sustainable socio-economic and ecological development in critical areas, notably national parks. This study establishes a multi-dimensional framework for assessing the aesthetic quality of natural landscapes in national parks, employing methods such as content-based sentiment analysis, questionnaire surveys, Geo-Detector model, and structural equation modeling to quantify tourists’ perceived value, elucidate its spatial associations, and uncover its underlying effects on landscape aesthetics. The results show that: (1) The spatial pattern of landscape aesthetic quality shows higher values in the east and lower values in the west, with high-value areas primarily concentrated in the southeast regions characterized by uniqueness, diversity, and coordination. (2) Tourist perception exhibits significant spatial heterogeneity. High-perception areas are primarily located in the southeast regions characterized by distinctive landscape clusters, while the southern and eastern regions display secondary clusters. (3) Quantitative findings reveal that the uniqueness and diversity of natural landscapes are the primary driving factors influencing tourists’ perceptions, with the interaction between landscape uniqueness and other factors dominating the spatial pattern of tourists’ perceptions (maximum explanatory power = 0.80). Furthermore, tourism service facilities serve as a significant positive moderator of the relationship between landscape aesthetics and tourist perception. These results provide a scientific basis for advancing sustainable conservation and management of natural landscapes in national parks, as well as for improving public welfare benefits.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48376,"journal":{"name":"Habitat International","volume":"168 ","pages":"Article 103703"},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145840646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2025-12-08DOI: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103678
Qianxi Zhang , Zhi Cao
Achieving the global goal of curbing rural decline and promoting revitalization requires a clear understanding of rural transformation mechanisms for targeted regulation. However, rural transformation mechanisms at the village scale remain insufficiently understood owing to the scarcity of long-term data. This study integrates rural regional system, Post-Keynesian development, policy process, and human capital theories into an analytical framework, which is empirically tested using SEM and VAR models on multi-source spatiotemporal data (2000–2020) from 460 villages in Lingbao City, China. The findings reveal that rural transformation at the village scale results from the combined influence of policy, technology, and investment (fundamental driving forces), which in turn induce changes in rural economic, social, and cultural dimensions (direct driving forces), ultimately leading to fundamental shifts in the structure of population, land, and industries. However, transformation does not guarantee revitalization; decline risks persist due to divergent driver effects. Specifically, excessive investment in the primary industry hinders industrial upgrading, equitable labor returns, and the development of cultural facilities. Moreover, the cultural "prosperity" spurred by the construction of modern recreational venues may erode distinctive rural landscapes, contradicting the goal of comprehensive rural revitalization. The study recommends strengthening policy implementation supervision in the initial stage to ensure timely and accurate execution; increasing technical training and educational investment in the mid-term to enhance the overall skill level of the rural labor force; and focusing on supporting high value-added industries in the later stage to drive the transformation toward rural revitalization.
{"title":"Unveiling rural transformation mechanisms: Quantitative evidence from 460 villages in China","authors":"Qianxi Zhang , Zhi Cao","doi":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103678","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103678","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Achieving the global goal of curbing rural decline and promoting revitalization requires a clear understanding of rural transformation mechanisms for targeted regulation. However, rural transformation mechanisms at the village scale remain insufficiently understood owing to the scarcity of long-term data. This study integrates rural regional system, Post-Keynesian development, policy process, and human capital theories into an analytical framework, which is empirically tested using SEM and VAR models on multi-source spatiotemporal data (2000–2020) from 460 villages in Lingbao City, China. The findings reveal that rural transformation at the village scale results from the combined influence of policy, technology, and investment (fundamental driving forces), which in turn induce changes in rural economic, social, and cultural dimensions (direct driving forces), ultimately leading to fundamental shifts in the structure of population, land, and industries. However, transformation does not guarantee revitalization; decline risks persist due to divergent driver effects. Specifically, excessive investment in the primary industry hinders industrial upgrading, equitable labor returns, and the development of cultural facilities. Moreover, the cultural \"prosperity\" spurred by the construction of modern recreational venues may erode distinctive rural landscapes, contradicting the goal of comprehensive rural revitalization. The study recommends strengthening policy implementation supervision in the initial stage to ensure timely and accurate execution; increasing technical training and educational investment in the mid-term to enhance the overall skill level of the rural labor force; and focusing on supporting high value-added industries in the later stage to drive the transformation toward rural revitalization.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48376,"journal":{"name":"Habitat International","volume":"168 ","pages":"Article 103678"},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145737611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2025-12-31DOI: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103701
Guiheng Si , Mingyi He , Weimin Zhuang , Ye Zhang
How neighborhoods are defined has long been a key issue in urban research. Traditional approaches primarily rely on census data. However, such demarcations have been increasingly criticized for failing to capture the area that residents perceive as their neighborhoods. These ‘perceived neighborhoods’ more accurately align with their lived experiences. Therefore, identifying perceived neighborhoods would be helpful for understanding residents’ everyday activities and addressing their needs through planning and design. Recently, emerging evidence suggested that residents’ neighborhood perception is significantly influenced by urban form. However, existing studies often oversimplify the influence, tending to examine a single aspect of urban form independently but neglecting the interplay of different aspects, and produce partial understandings. Drawing on diverse urban datasets and cognitive mapping surveys from Singapore, this study develops a machine learning framework to bridge this gap. Using SHAP analysis, the results indicate that residents’ neighborhood perception is primarily affected by urban form features associated with their daily activities—such as footpath density and commercial facility distribution—rather than visual ones. Moreover, how residents perceive a place is affected not only by features of that place itself, but also by those of their own places of residence. It suggests that neighborhood perception is a relative process. Additionally, the findings uncover nonlinear effects of certain features, wherein the effects can diminish or even reverse when over-supplied. This study offers an in-depth understanding of the complexity of urban form’s influence on residents’ neighborhood perception and provides insights for responsive neighborhood planning and design.
{"title":"The complexity of urban form’s impacts on residents’ neighborhood perception: Machine learning evidence from Singapore","authors":"Guiheng Si , Mingyi He , Weimin Zhuang , Ye Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103701","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103701","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How neighborhoods are defined has long been a key issue in urban research. Traditional approaches primarily rely on census data. However, such demarcations have been increasingly criticized for failing to capture the area that residents perceive as their neighborhoods. These ‘perceived neighborhoods’ more accurately align with their lived experiences. Therefore, identifying perceived neighborhoods would be helpful for understanding residents’ everyday activities and addressing their needs through planning and design. Recently, emerging evidence suggested that residents’ neighborhood perception is significantly influenced by urban form. However, existing studies often oversimplify the influence, tending to examine a single aspect of urban form independently but neglecting the interplay of different aspects, and produce partial understandings. Drawing on diverse urban datasets and cognitive mapping surveys from Singapore, this study develops a machine learning framework to bridge this gap. Using SHAP analysis, the results indicate that residents’ neighborhood perception is primarily affected by urban form features associated with their daily activities—such as footpath density and commercial facility distribution—rather than visual ones. Moreover, how residents perceive a place is affected not only by features of that place itself, but also by those of their own places of residence. It suggests that neighborhood perception is a relative process. Additionally, the findings uncover nonlinear effects of certain features, wherein the effects can diminish or even reverse when over-supplied. This study offers an in-depth understanding of the complexity of urban form’s influence on residents’ neighborhood perception and provides insights for responsive neighborhood planning and design.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48376,"journal":{"name":"Habitat International","volume":"168 ","pages":"Article 103701"},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145884156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2025-12-28DOI: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103705
Pixin Gong , Bo Zhang , Xiaoran Huang
Ensuring equitable access to meal assistance facilities (MAFs) is critical for supporting the daily nutritional needs of older adults, alleviating caregiving burdens, and fostering social equity in rapidly aging megacities. Despite substantial investments in community-based elderly care services in China, spatial mismatches and service inefficiencies persist, especially within dense urban cores. This study combines an enhanced Gaussian Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) approach with explainable Random Forest modeling and geographically weighted regression to provide a comprehensive, fine-scale analysis of meal-aid facility accessibility across 27,621 Shanghai neighborhoods. By integrating real-world road networks, age-specific mobility constraints, and high-resolution demographic and built environment data, we quantify pronounced spatial disparities, with central districts exhibiting unexpectedly poor accessibility relative to suburban areas. Our Random Forest model achieves strong predictive accuracy (R2 = 0.89) and reveals key nonlinear drivers: proximity to community-based elderly care resources such as day care centers exhibits consistent positive effects, while institutional care density and housing prices show complex, regionally variable associations. Spatial heterogeneity analysis uncovers substantial neighborhood-level variations in factor impacts, emphasizing the need for localized, context-aware interventions. These findings provide actionable insights for urban planners and policymakers to optimize meal assistance service allocation, enhance integrated elderly care ecosystems, and promote fairness in service provision for aging urban populations.
{"title":"Bridging the meal gap: Spatially-explicit machine learning insights for equitable elderly meal assistance facilities in Shanghai","authors":"Pixin Gong , Bo Zhang , Xiaoran Huang","doi":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103705","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103705","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Ensuring equitable access to meal assistance facilities (MAFs) is critical for supporting the daily nutritional needs of older adults, alleviating caregiving burdens, and fostering social equity in rapidly aging megacities. Despite substantial investments in community-based elderly care services in China, spatial mismatches and service inefficiencies persist, especially within dense urban cores. This study combines an enhanced Gaussian Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) approach with explainable Random Forest modeling and geographically weighted regression to provide a comprehensive, fine-scale analysis of meal-aid facility accessibility across 27,621 Shanghai neighborhoods. By integrating real-world road networks, age-specific mobility constraints, and high-resolution demographic and built environment data, we quantify pronounced spatial disparities, with central districts exhibiting unexpectedly poor accessibility relative to suburban areas. Our Random Forest model achieves strong predictive accuracy (R<sup>2</sup> = 0.89) and reveals key nonlinear drivers: proximity to community-based elderly care resources such as day care centers exhibits consistent positive effects, while institutional care density and housing prices show complex, regionally variable associations. Spatial heterogeneity analysis uncovers substantial neighborhood-level variations in factor impacts, emphasizing the need for localized, context-aware interventions. These findings provide actionable insights for urban planners and policymakers to optimize meal assistance service allocation, enhance integrated elderly care ecosystems, and promote fairness in service provision for aging urban populations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48376,"journal":{"name":"Habitat International","volume":"168 ","pages":"Article 103705"},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145884153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2025-12-25DOI: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103698
Qi Zheng , Jingke Hong , Bingsheng Liu , Xiangyang Tao , Jingya Jiang
Sustainable development embodies the principle of equity while placing an emphasis on addressing climate change. This paper treats the National Sustainable Development Pilot Zones policy as a quasi-natural experiment to explore the extent to which sustainable development can facilitate equity in carbon mitigation. Based on a sample of 179 prefectural-level cities from 2004 to 2017, we employ a staggered difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of the National Sustainable Development Pilot Zones on carbon emissions. The results show that the National Sustainable Development Pilot Zones significantly slowed the growth of carbon emissions and promoted intragenerational equity, as confirmed by extensive robustness tests. Furthermore, the study examines the heterogeneity of the impact and the underlying mediating mechanisms, and also analyzes the policy linkage effects. Finally, the impact of equitable mitigation tends to favor the pilot zones with higher initial carbon emission growth rates, thus achieving intergenerational equity. Understanding whether National Sustainable Development Pilot Zones can effectively facilitate equitable carbon mitigation is crucial for designing policies that balance economic development with environmental sustainability. This paper contributes to both the theoretical foundation and empirical evidence of the impact of establishing the National Sustainable Development Pilot Zones on equitable carbon emissions mitigation.
{"title":"Fostering equity in carbon emission mitigation through national sustainable development pilot zones: Evidence from China","authors":"Qi Zheng , Jingke Hong , Bingsheng Liu , Xiangyang Tao , Jingya Jiang","doi":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103698","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103698","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Sustainable development embodies the principle of equity while placing an emphasis on addressing climate change. This paper treats the National Sustainable Development Pilot Zones policy as a quasi-natural experiment to explore the extent to which sustainable development can facilitate equity in carbon mitigation. Based on a sample of 179 prefectural-level cities from 2004 to 2017, we employ a staggered difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of the National Sustainable Development Pilot Zones on carbon emissions. The results show that the National Sustainable Development Pilot Zones significantly slowed the growth of carbon emissions and promoted intragenerational equity, as confirmed by extensive robustness tests. Furthermore, the study examines the heterogeneity of the impact and the underlying mediating mechanisms, and also analyzes the policy linkage effects. Finally, the impact of equitable mitigation tends to favor the pilot zones with higher initial carbon emission growth rates, thus achieving intergenerational equity. Understanding whether National Sustainable Development Pilot Zones can effectively facilitate equitable carbon mitigation is crucial for designing policies that balance economic development with environmental sustainability. This paper contributes to both the theoretical foundation and empirical evidence of the impact of establishing the National Sustainable Development Pilot Zones on equitable carbon emissions mitigation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48376,"journal":{"name":"Habitat International","volume":"168 ","pages":"Article 103698"},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145840643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2025-12-13DOI: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103693
Peiyuan Zhang , Jiaming Li , Wenzhong Zhang
The locational choices of enterprise migration and the structure of urban industrial space are significantly influenced by agglomeration externalities. Building upon an extended theoretical framework that integrates the firm life cycle, agglomeration economies, and value-chain fragmentation, this study analyzes the micro-level migration data of enterprises in Beijing from 2008 to 2016 to reveal the non-linear and multi-path nature of intra-metropolitan relocation. The results show that firms continuously adjust their locational strategies through a dynamic balance between diversification and specialization rather than following a linear trajectory. In the early stages of the lifecycle, enterprises tend to relocate to diversified agglomerations. During their growth and maturity phases, enterprises prefer relocating within diversified agglomerations, particularly to industrial advantage regions to capitalize on specialization and economies of scale. Furthermore, enterprises exhibit heterogeneity in their inter-agglomeration migrations: service industry enterprises grow towards diversified environments, while manufacturing enterprises move towards more specialized areas. In the decline phase, enterprises tend to distance themselves from industry-specific agglomerations to avoid competitive pressure and innovation inertia, with industries such as software and IT services, real estate, etc., returning to diversified agglomerations like CBD and Haidian Park for innovation activities. These findings refine and extend Duranton and Puga's (2001) “nursery cities” hypothesis by revealing that firm migration is a continuous process of adaptive rebalancing between diversification and specialization. The study contributes a generalized framework for understanding the spatial logic of firm migration in service-oriented metropolitan economies and provides policy insights for promoting industrial upgrading and sustainable urban restructuring.
{"title":"Enterprise migration trajectories in metropolitan areas: The role of life cycle stages and agglomeration externalities","authors":"Peiyuan Zhang , Jiaming Li , Wenzhong Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103693","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103693","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The locational choices of enterprise migration and the structure of urban industrial space are significantly influenced by agglomeration externalities. Building upon an extended theoretical framework that integrates the firm life cycle, agglomeration economies, and value-chain fragmentation, this study analyzes the micro-level migration data of enterprises in Beijing from 2008 to 2016 to reveal the non-linear and multi-path nature of intra-metropolitan relocation. The results show that firms continuously adjust their locational strategies through a dynamic balance between diversification and specialization rather than following a linear trajectory. In the early stages of the lifecycle, enterprises tend to relocate to diversified agglomerations. During their growth and maturity phases, enterprises prefer relocating within diversified agglomerations, particularly to industrial advantage regions to capitalize on specialization and economies of scale. Furthermore, enterprises exhibit heterogeneity in their inter-agglomeration migrations: service industry enterprises grow towards diversified environments, while manufacturing enterprises move towards more specialized areas. In the decline phase, enterprises tend to distance themselves from industry-specific agglomerations to avoid competitive pressure and innovation inertia, with industries such as software and IT services, real estate, etc., returning to diversified agglomerations like CBD and Haidian Park for innovation activities. These findings refine and extend Duranton and Puga's (2001) “nursery cities” hypothesis by revealing that firm migration is a continuous process of adaptive rebalancing between diversification and specialization. The study contributes a generalized framework for understanding the spatial logic of firm migration in service-oriented metropolitan economies and provides policy insights for promoting industrial upgrading and sustainable urban restructuring.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48376,"journal":{"name":"Habitat International","volume":"168 ","pages":"Article 103693"},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145737610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2025-12-17DOI: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103694
Yufeng Yang , Laura Vaughan
Housing developments naturally shape opportunities for people to encounter each other through their co-presence patterns, further determining their social vitality. Analysing co-presence patterns thus offers a promising evidence pathway from housing development design to its social effects. This study investigates whether China's gated and non-gated housing developments differ in their co-presence patterns, and if these differences are associated with their housing characteristics. The co-presence data were collected through walk-by observations at six paired gated and non-gated housing developments, and 120 co-presence networks were constructed using proximity-based social network analysis. Results indicated the non-gated estates had significantly higher levels of co-presence and social mixing, with smaller tendencies towards centralisation and clustering of social group types. Housing characteristics (e.g., enclosure degree, density, location, housing price) significantly correlated with co-presence attributes. However, after controlling for other socio-spatial factors, enclosure degree failed to explain the co-presence parameters significantly. These findings suggest that it is not the enclosure parameter alone that determines people's potential co-presence but the overall housing form. Simply dismantling the gates might not substantially change the way people use previously gated developments. This paper provides a fresh perspective on comprehending the social impacts of gated housing.
{"title":"Encounters within and beyond gates: Decoding co-presence patterns in Chinese housing estates through proximity-based social network analysis","authors":"Yufeng Yang , Laura Vaughan","doi":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103694","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103694","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Housing developments naturally shape opportunities for people to encounter each other through their co-presence patterns, further determining their social vitality. Analysing co-presence patterns thus offers a promising evidence pathway from housing development design to its social effects. This study investigates whether China's gated and non-gated housing developments differ in their co-presence patterns, and if these differences are associated with their housing characteristics. The co-presence data were collected through walk-by observations at six paired gated and non-gated housing developments, and 120 co-presence networks were constructed using proximity-based social network analysis. Results indicated the non-gated estates had significantly higher levels of co-presence and social mixing, with smaller tendencies towards centralisation and clustering of social group types. Housing characteristics (e.g., enclosure degree, density, location, housing price) significantly correlated with co-presence attributes. However, after controlling for other socio-spatial factors, enclosure degree failed to explain the co-presence parameters significantly. These findings suggest that it is not the enclosure parameter alone that determines people's potential co-presence but the overall housing form. Simply dismantling the gates might not substantially change the way people use previously gated developments. This paper provides a fresh perspective on comprehending the social impacts of gated housing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48376,"journal":{"name":"Habitat International","volume":"168 ","pages":"Article 103694"},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145790911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}