Urban playgrounds are important in many ways for children’s well-being, yet their environmental conditions remain rarely assessed in an integrated manner, particularly in post-socialist cities. This study evaluates the environmental vulnerability of 214 playgrounds in Iaşi Municipality, Romania, using a geospatial Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) framework incorporating four indicators: land surface temperature (LST), vegetation density (NDVI), noise exposure, and air quality (AQI). Indicator values were extracted within 25-meter playground buffers, normalized, and combined into a composite vulnerability index with PCA-derived weights. Results reveal marked spatial variability, with scores ranging from 6 to 87 on a 0–100 scale. Moderate vulnerability is the most prevalent condition, characterizing 46.7% of sites, while high and very high vulnerability (18.7%) concentrate in dense, traffic-exposed neighborhoods with elevated thermal stress and limited vegetation. Lower vulnerability is associated with higher elevations and proximity to green infrastructure. The findings demonstrate that formal playground distribution does not guarantee spatial environmental equity, with children in post-socialist high-density neighborhoods facing systematically worse outdoor conditions. The proposed framework is transferable and supports evidence-based planning interventions aimed at improving the environmental quality and resilience of child-oriented urban spaces.
Landslides represent a significant yet insufficiently synthesised hazard in post-mining landscapes undergoing closure, reclamation, and land-use transition. This scoping review analyses the extent to which existing research on landslide hazard assessment and monitoring supports reclamation planning and post-closure decision-making, with a focus on coal-mining regions, where decarbonisation is driving widespread closure and where the specific geological setting entails different hazard-assessment and monitoring approaches. A structured search of Web of Science and Scopus identified 669 records. The final set of studies (N = 32) consisted of those that met the inclusion criteria or were found by backward and forward citation tracking. The reviewed literature is dominated by case-based studies focused on hazard identification, site monitoring, and technical stabilisation, whereas relatively few studies provide spatially explicit outputs or decision-support tools directly usable in planning. National practices vary considerably, and critical gaps remain, such as the absence of harmonised directives, unclear monitoring responsibilities, and limited integration of hazard assessment results into statutory plans. The review highlights the need for planning-oriented outputs, particularly spatial hazard and risk mapping, long-term monitoring systems, and multi-hazard assessment frameworks, providing critical support for ensuring the safe and sustainable transformation of post-mining landscapes.
We use the theoretical and conceptual apparatus of the time geography to follow the way from individual behaviour in time-space to the definition of daily urban systems (DUSs). We proceed from locations, through areas organised around the locations and time use limits within the areas towards the aggregation of activity time-spaces into DUSs. We stress the importance of the concept or origin and destination anchor points, rhythms of individual movements and the principle of return. Using two datasets, the sum of daily labour and school commuting census data and the mobile phone location data, we apply regionalisation algorithm to define respective DUSs. We discuss their self-containment with regard to the time-geography, and we compare two spatial patterns. We conclude that, despite the distinctions between the datasets, spatial patterns are very similar. We acknowledge the viability of the relation between DUSs and the time geography and mutual enrichment of both concepts.
The establishment of Geopark Ruhrgebiet was undoubtedly aimed at highlighting the uniqueness and diversity of the region, linked not only to its industrial past but also to its natural environment. Among many geosites offered to tourists, there are a number of former mining and metallurgical dumps (heaps). There are hundreds of them in the Ruhr, and they have permanently shaped the cultural landscape of the region. It would therefore seem that the geopark is exploiting the geotourism potential of the spoil heaps, allowing for active learning in the field of geoheritage and natural resources used by humans. However, an analysis of the current development of the most touristically and recreationally used spoil heaps, as well as the main concepts for the development of tourism, based on mining and metallurgical heaps, clearly outlines a strategy whose main assumptions are: rebranding, blurring the industrial character of the spoil heaps, developing them for sports, recreation, and tourism, and developing green energy. Based on observations, it can be concluded that there is no information about the genesis of the spoil heaps or the processes taking place there (even more, there is no information about geology or geomorphology at all), hence geotourism on the spoil heaps of the Ruhr is more declarative than actual.
Despite a substantial body of research and diagnoses, a gap remains in the literature concerning the identification of the pressures and constraints that shape farmers’ well-being today across different national and regional contexts in Europe, as well as the assessment of the effects of mechanisms designed to address them. The aim of this article was to identify the challenges and the specific problems that affect farmers’ well-being in Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Italy Poland and Romania, and to explore the social innovations that respond to them. The analysis draws on secondary empirical material – six country mapping reports prepared between 2020 and 2022 – and applies a qualitative approach to identify three overarching challenges and nine specific problems linked to low levels of farmers’ well-being. A comparative case synthesis indicates that social innovations that are bottom-up, multi-actor, inclusive and responsive to locally identified needs are associated with positive effects on farmers’ well-being, particularly its social dimension.
