Cities pursuing densification and compact growth must add social infrastructure, even as land becomes scarcer and more expensive. We examine vertical allocation as a tool for dealing with this challenge by creating municipally owned floors within predominantly private, mixed-use developments. Doing so requires upzoning existing parcels and using value uplift to compel developers to build public amenities. We argue that vertical allocation represents a form of municipal statecraft and property formation embedded in urban financialization processes. Rather than treating this practice simply as a conventional public-private partnership, we conceptualise it as an in-kind value capture instrument that converts high-value development and value uplifts into a durable municipal property asset. The relationship between the provision of these public amenities and additional development rights varies a great deal, reflecting a hybrid regime of statutory requirements and discretionary negotiation which creates long-term co-ownership, management, accessibility, transparency, and spatial-equity problems.
Offsite construction and biobased building materials, particularly when employed together, provide opportunities to deliver low carbon, high quality, healthy homes at pace. However, both are often underutilised in housebuilding with their benefits underexploited. This study explored why this is the case within UK housebuilding. Semi-structured interviews and a focus group with senior stakeholders from the UK’s biobased building materials, offsite construction and housebuilding industries investigated the factors that impede the wider adoption of this construction method and materials. The key barriers identified by participants included unsupportive policy/regulation, inappropriate procurement models in housebuilding and a sporadic pipeline of housing demand. Participants were positive about the potential to incorporate biobased materials into offsite housing with few barriers and various successful experiences reported, such as with prefabricated hemp blocks, timber frames and panels. The article reflects on the implications of the findings for policy and practice.
Contemporary scholarship on urban mobility acknowledges differentiated urban experiences, yet perspectives of young people navigating the transition between childhood and adolescence remain underrepresented in research and planning. This article examines spatial experiences, mobility practices and emerging agency of youth aged 10–15, positioning them as co-researchers through an Urban Youth Civic Lab in Budapest within the CONIFER project. Drawing on participatory workshops in two schools with contrasting socio-spatial contexts, the study integrates design thinking, co-creation and photovoice methodologies. Findings reveal that youth understand the „15-minute city” through social nodes, emotional attachment and informal spatial practices rather than proximity to services. Mobility is shaped by perceived safety, cultural mentality and permission culture, extending accessibility beyond distance to encompass confidence, autonomy and social norms. The paper introduces mobility literacy – the capacity to read, interpret and navigate urban space – arguing that its cultivation through co-creative processes can support inclusive, child-friendly urban futures.
This study examines how residents’ perceived tourism benefits are associated with place attachment, pro-social behavior, pro-environmental behavior, and support for sustainable tourism development in the tourism-intensive hill towns of Shimla and Manali, Himachal Pradesh, India. Survey data from 451 adult residents were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Only the combined social-and-environmental-benefits construct was significantly associated with place attachment. Place attachment was positively associated with both pro-social and pro-environmental behavior, and pro-social behavior was positively associated with pro-environmental behavior. Pro-environmental behavior, but not pro-social behavior directly, was positively associated with support for sustainable tourism development. The significant indirect association between pro-social behavior and support through pro-environmental behavior suggests that general concern for others may become relevant to tourism support when expressed as concrete environmental action. The study contributes context-specific evidence on residents’ sustainability pathways in Indian hill towns and highlights resident-inclusive environmental stewardship.
Urban sustainability governance increasingly faces uncertainty that linear planning approaches handle poorly. This PRISMA-guided systematic review synthesises 48 studies on strategic design thinking (SDT) in urban sustainability governance to map thematic and methodological patterns, examine governance integration, and identify recurring design–governance shortcomings. Using Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection (2015–2025), CASP/MMAT appraisal, and thematic synthesis with a light exploratory quantitative layer, the review finds uneven regional and thematic coverage, weak links between experiments and long-term strategies, limited operationalisation of equity, patchy institutional learning, and restricted attention to low-resource and Global South contexts. After completing the evidence synthesis, the article proposes DEGA (Design-Embedded Governance Architecture) as a post-synthesis interpretive framework linking strategic design practices to iterative governance routines, and translates it into a municipal playbook and an equity-by-design assessment tool. The article concludes with implications for municipal implementation and future research.
