This paper addresses the multifunctional nature of interconnected spatial systems shaped by a network of adjacent regions. The space-time dynamics of the socio-economic patterns of regions are usually co-determined by spatial and temporal dependences, so that also the resilience trajectories of regions are influenced by spatio-temporal autocorrelations. This study employs a new form of spatio-temporal principal component analysis of the multi-faceted socio-economic profile of spatially dependent regions. It seeks to integrate the global Getis–Ord spatial association index in a multifunctional and multivariate approach for the analysis of space-time dependence patterns of a multiregional system, in which both temporal and spatial variability of socio-economic indicators are incorporated. Another novel element of the study is that both positive and negative spatial autocorrelation phenomena are taken into account. Negative spatial autocorrelation suggests essentially a case of spatial vulnerability. This approach is empirically tested by means of an evidence-based examination of the temporal evolution – and resilience patterns – of distinct socio-economic indicators for 16 interconnected regions in Poland. The socio-economic and geographic mosaic of our spatially dependent network analysis is described by means of choropleth maps, which confirm the presence of both positive and negative spatio-temporal autocorrelation among several core socio-economic variables in the Polish space-economy. The analytical approach based on the global Getis–Ord index G enriches the tradition of quantitative research into mutually interacting socio-economic characteristics of complex spatial systems.

Tourism development has, in the past decades, brought new opportunities and challenges to residents' livability in urban destinations, due to mobility, landscape and environmental quality effects. Quality of life may comprise, inter alia, a clean environment, historic atmosphere, cultural identity or a relaxed inner city. In recent years, uncontrolled tourism has led to 'overcrowding' and has prompted 'mixed feelings' on tourism among residents, despite clear economic benefits. Clearly, tourism takes place in a conflicting domain with different local actors. There is a rising fear in many historic cities that the long-run effects of mass tourism may be detrimental to the locals. This study seeks to examine local tensions among different interest groups in the tourism sector as a result of negative externalities such as decay of local livability, traffic congestion, or quality decline in the supply of tourism attractions. In this paper a novel supply-oriented concept, Local Leisure Resources, is put forward to uncover the externality effects of tourism and tourism mobility on urban livability, as well as the moderating effect of intra-city destination mobility of visitors. This concept will be tested for sustainability challenges in urban areas in China. Our empirical modeling analysis, based on data from 247 Chinese tourist places over the years 2008-2018, shows that local leisure resources have a clear mediating effect on the relationship between tourist visits and quality of life in urban destinations. The internal mobility appears to have a positive moderating effect on the role of diverse local leisure resources in supporting place-based livability of various local groups of actors involved. This research highlights the complex mechanism of tourism development on urban livability and environmental landscapes from the new concept of local leisure resources. It provides a solid basis and reference for sustainable development strategies for local policy actors regarding local destination livability.

The 15-minute city concept has gained prominence in urban planning as a framework linking proximity, mobility, and quality of life at the intra-urban scale. An open question is whether this concept remains meaningful when applied to spatially connected urban regions or national urban systems. To address this issue, the new X-minute city concept allows proximity thresholds to vary with spatial context, mobility conditions, and service distribution. This paper develops an operational framework with the aim to examine and highlight spatial accessibility patterns from an X-minute city perspective, using the relatively urbanized area of the Netherlands as a national-scale case study. Accessibility is analyzed at the building level using OpenStreetMap data and a combination of object-based k-nearest-neighbor measures, distance-decay functions, inequality metrics, Average Nearest Neighbor analysis, and quantile regression. Concepts from central place theory are employed as an interpretive lens to understand service clustering and accessibility patterns, rather than as a formal model to be tested. The results show pronounced spatial disparities in accessibility between urban and rural areas, as well as substantial variation within cities. Major urban centers such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht exhibit high accessibility levels due to dense service provision, while peripheral and rural areas face systematically lower accessibility. Next accessibility outcomes also differ sharply across population groups. Elderly residents and groups reliant on walking experience the highest levels of inequality, with accessibility distributions remaining highly uneven at short-distance thresholds. Cycling expands the range of effective activity spaces and reduces inequality, but does not offset structural disadvantages in areas with sparse service provision. The findings point to the limits of uniform proximity targets and reveal the need for context-sensitive accessibility planning that explicitly accounts for service distribution, mobility constraints, and population heterogeneity within national urban systems.

Digitalisation may induce a shift in economic structures towards advanced and cleaner industries, stimulating smart green growth across sectors and countries. Most existing studies examine the relationships between two variables, either economic growth and CO2 emissions or digitalisation and CO2 emissions/economic growth, without analysing the causalities among the three variables together. Furthermore, there are few studies examining Green Total Factor Productivity (GTFP) using a large sample of countries and their income groups. The present study aims to fill this gap by analysing the causal links between the three variables using panels of 164 countries and a sub-panel of countries based on their developmental levels for the period 2000–2020. The paper also estimates GTFP and the contribution of digitalisation to long-run economic growth. The study finds a cointegrating relationship between the three variables mentioned above, and its positive impact on emission reduction and economic growth. A 10

This paper explores how the field of place-based appraisal and land economics is shifting from focusing mainly on market-based values of places with high human and activity densities to a broader and multi-faceted approach that explicitly considers human and territorial wellbeing. Traditional welfare assessment measures like GDP reflect economic growth, but neglect important environmental, cultural, and social factors that shape the quality of places. We propose a new framework for territorial appraisal that addresses spatial value in a more holistic way by breaking it down into economic, environmental, cultural, and social components, and then reconnecting them through an integrated recomposition approach. The paper uses new concepts, in particular circular cultural economies and ‘detouristification’, as regenerative strategies that rebalance sustainable growth, tourism, culture, and land use, showing how places can create new value by reimagining culture and using land in different ways, while strengthening transparent and participatory governance. Digital tools like geospatial models, digital twins, and visual dashboards support this process by improving transparency, participation, and learning across scales and over time. In this framework, wellbeing is not only a human goal, but also a condition for sustainable territorial development. The approach helps policymakers, planners, and appraisers move beyond the yardstick of GDP and support places where economy, culture, and society flourish sustainably, with appraisal guiding both evaluation and renewal.

In transition economies characterized by deep government–business ties, dismantling administrative monopolies is crucial for enhancing market dynamism. Using a city–three-digit-industry panel dataset from China over the period 2003–2023, this paper evaluates the causal impact of the Strengthened Competition Policy (SCP) on firm entry through a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) model. The results show that SCP significantly promotes new firm entry, increasing entry density by approximately 0.69 units. Mechanism analysis indicates that while the policy weakens government–firm connections and triggers “creative destruction,” thereby releasing resources, it also induces defensive expansion by high-quality incumbents. Through innovation and scale expansion, these firms raise effective entry thresholds. Despite this offsetting effect, the institutional dividend dominates overall, particularly in historically entrenched markets where the policy exhibits a strong “ice-breaking” effect.

Tourism is a complex economic activity all over the world shaped by distinct local resources: culture, nature, industrial heritage, urban ambiance, place-based uniqueness, and geographical accessibility. The simultaneous governance and management of economic growth motives, preservation of the cultural heritage base, and respect for nature and ecological quality calls for an evidence-based and multi-faceted policy analysis that seeks to achieve sustainable development among conflicting policy objectives in tourist areas. The present paper seeks to explore the feasibility of a sustainable balance for various heterogeneous cultural heritage areas in Europe (‘urban pilot regions’), with particular attention to sustainable local development characterized by circular economic objectives and an ecological balance strategy based on the principle of stakeholders’ co-creation. The paper addresses the knowledge gap between generic policy aims and site-specific views of actors or visitors. To that end, an extensive survey experiment was administered in the urban regions concerned, in which a wide range of relevant management issues/questions related to environmental preferences and perceptions were posed to stakeholders and visitors. The data were analyzed by means of a novel respondent-oriented multivariate statistical tool, viz. Generalized Q-Analysis, which is suitable for handling big databases with many respondents. The paper shows that the application of Generalized Q-Analysis to common survey data enriches the results from the application of a conventional Q-Analysis. Furthermore, the study also highlights that, based on the views expressed by the surveyed visitors, the tourist areas concerned are quite different from each other in attracting specific classes of visitors. Therefore, functional specialization in the tourist sector seems to be an important anchor point for effective governance of urban tourism, not only in Europe, but also elsewhere in the world.

Assessing whether and how a country is achieving sustainable growth remains one of the most controversial issues in environmental and resource economics. In particular, there is no clear empirical consensus in the existing literature on the degree of substitutability (complementarity) between human and natural capital resources, especially when spatial spillovers are present. This challenging issue calls for further theoretical and empirical insights. To advance and highlight the ongoing debate, we use a sample of 124 countries for the period 1995–2018 and utilise both an Asymmetric Error Correction Model (AECM) and an Asymmetric Spatial Error Correction Model (ASpECM) to explore the degree of substitutability between the two forms of capital. The empirical findings unveil a short-run asymmetric behaviour between human and natural capital which is evident in both types of models (spatial and non-spatial). It is noteworthy that a complementarity relationship appears to be evident when natural capital increases. However, this result is reversed when natural capital decreases, indicating that the two forms of capital are then substitutes. Finally, we find that the existence of long-run symmetry in the non-spatial model embodies a strong bias, if we take account of the existence of spatial dependence, meaning that human capital adjusts more rapidly in response to a negative deviation from its long-run equilibrium with natural capital than to a positive deviation.

A central challenge in urban regeneration is designing sustainable programmes that genuinely improve housing quality and everyday living conditions. In the Netherlands, since the 1990s, the pursuit of durable, long-term solutions has become a core element of regeneration strategy, alongside an integrated approach that combines physical upgrades with environmental, social, and economic initiatives. Because neighborhoods continually evolve under shifting societal and economic pressures, renewal policies must remain adaptive and responsive to changing conditions. Drawing on research into Dutch regeneration programmes and informed by international debates, this paper proposes sustainability criteria for evaluating and guiding urban regeneration. The analysis focuses on urban design and planning, as well as social and economic structures. From a social perspective, key concerns include reducing inequality, preventing exclusion and displacement of vulnerable groups, and strengthening neighborhood safety. Economically, the paper considers how regeneration influences property values and local economic development. Overall, evaluations suggest that Dutch cities have improved, in part due to sustained physical and spatial interventions carried out through regeneration and renewal efforts.

This paper aims to evaluate the internal consistency of reconstruction strategies in post-conflict regions. Various planning tools have been developed to formulate fair allocation rules to finance development projects. What is missing in the research is an actionable analysis of the consistency between geographically oriented reconstruction needs and spatially differentiated actions. To address this link, this paper presents an actor-oriented Generalized Q-analysis to assess the internal consistency of regional recovery plans. This comparative analysis is applied to the reconstruction of regions in post-war Iraq, testing the presence of a possible bias in favour of economic-political heartlands like Babel or Baghdad.

Infrastructural and economic reconstruction of a country following a geopolitical conflict requires a balanced policy strategy. This will be illustrated here for the case of Iraq. The long-range post-conflict recovery of this country needs a strategic, evidence-based approach to optimize regional resource allocation and to speed up regional regeneration. This study employs a qualitative type ofInput-OutputAnalysis and a Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to assess disparities in infrastructure, governance, and economic resilience among regions, providing an analytical and data-driven framework for prioritizing regional investment strategies. By ranking regions based on their recovery capacity, the study aims to provide a targeted strategy for stabilizing Iraqs'space economy and strengthening its governance institutions. Our empirical findings stress the critical need for long-term investments, balancing immediate stabilization with long-term economic transformation. However, governance fragmentation, corruption, and weak institutional frameworks remain significant barriers to resilience, limiting the effectiveness of investments and hindering sustainable economic recovery. Addressing these structural issues-through governance reforms, institutional capacity building, and transparent resource allocation-is essential for the long-term economic resilience of regions in Iraq. If implemented effectively, this strategy can advance Iraqs'space economy from post-war uncertainty to sustained stability and growth.