Andras Reith

This study proposes an integrated analytical framework (IAF) as a tool to simultaneously assess vulnerable social groups within their administrative context. This study hypothesizes that analyzing vulnerable groups through socio-spatial delineation reveals subnational disparities and sub-regional heterogeneity in energy poverty (EP) indicators, associated with additional context-sensitive environmental consequences of energy use. Using Hungarian deprived rural settlements (DRSs) (n = 300) as an example, mixed methods were applied to examine national–regional disparities, intra-regional variations, and the environmental implications of extreme household energy use practices. Results show that both socio-economic indicators and building energy efficiency, and energy-use profiles, fall short of national indicator performance. The sample outlined by the IAF performed homogeneously regarding socio-economic circumstances and showed mild differences in housing quality and energy access. These results indicate not structural differences but variation in underlying regional drivers, highlighting the region-specific manifestation of EP. The energy-use-related environmental assessment was performed using a parametrized building-stock model and the two most extreme energy-use scenarios for households relying on solid fuels. The results suggest that the use of substitute fuels substantially increases the combined emissions of CO₂, CO, PM, NOx, and SOx by up to 32 percentage points. Although limitations constrain the reporting of empirically representative results, findings underscore the potential policy relevance of DRSs in national climate objectives.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought enormous casualties and huge losses to cities around the world, causing urban planning to reflect on its serious inadequacy in public health crisis management. Looking back at the pandemics of modern history, urban planning has been dedicated to enhancing disease prevention capacity as well as improving the wellness of human beings. By systematically comparing the urban planning response between COVID-19 (2019) and its predecessor H1N1 (2009) in the literature, this paper seeks to explore how urban planning theories evolved through the pandemics and whether COVID-19 has led to possible new implications and directions for urban planning in the future. A total of 3129 related results with overlapping themes of “city”, “pandemic”, and “planning” in the database were narrowed down to 30 articles published between 2009 and 2019 on the topic of H1N1 and 99 articles published between 2020 and 2022 on the topic of COVID-19 after careful extraction and integration. Through bibliographic and detailed analysis, twelve urban theories used to fight against pandemics were identified. In addition, three main changes between urban planning responses to the H1N1 and COVID-19 pandemics were summarized: from focusing on stages of “in-pandemic” and “pre-pandemic” to focusing on stages of “post-pandemic”, from global and national to local, and from the absence of an urban-built environment to a return to ‘healthiness’ in urban planning and design. Such comparisons are useful for examining the current situation and providing suggestions for a possible upcoming outbreak.

The 1992, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development highlighted that human impacts on the environment should be reduced. Against this backdrop, publications on restorative and regenerative urban design first appeared in the mid-1990s, and both disciplines have developed rapidly up to the present time. However, there is still some uncertainty regarding the interrelationships and differences between these two terms, and their association with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Based on a search of the Web of Science database, a total of 117 papers were studied with the help of VOS viewer and R studio. The differences between the two disciplines and their respective associations with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals were analyzed using key performance indicators. Detailed analysis was used to explore their current development status. Scientific publication and citation network analyses were used to examine the historical developments and interrelationships between two disciplines. The review revealed that both disciplines are closely related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, especially regenerative urban design, but they have developed independently in the field of urban design. Unlike the descriptions found in many of the identified papers, restorative urban design not only focuses on ecological aspects but also attempts to create a built environment that allows its users to thrive both physically and mentally. Regenerative urban design is more inclined to restore or create an “ability”. Further, both disciplines are in their infancy but have evolved from internal conceptual development to the stage of exploring external relationships and frameworks as well as mechanisms. This review found that although many frameworks and models are used to support and evaluate these two disciplines, almost all of them fail to integrate necessary aspects of the ecosystem, e.g., elements, relationships, processes, etc. Moreover, future work should examine the design patterns that are closely related to restorative and regenerative urban design to better guide the concrete practice.

One contributor’s name was missing in the original version of the authorship of the paper

There are international activities and on-going initiatives, particularly at the European level, to define what Positive Energy Districts should be, as the driving concept for the urban transition to a sustainable future. The first objective of the paper is to contribute to the on-going and lively debate about the definition of the notion of Sustainable Plus Energy Neighbourhood (SPEN), which highlights the multiple dimensions when talking about sustainability in districts moving beyond the traditional and strict building energy assessment. Based on a holistic methodology which ensures the consideration of the multidimensional nature and goals of SPEN, the paper outlines an evaluation framework. The evaluation framework defines the key performance indicators distributed in five categories that consider energy and power performance, GHG emissions, indoor environmental quality, smartness, flexibility, life cycle costs and social sustainability. This framework is designed to be implemented during integrated design processes aiming to select design options for a neighbourhood as well within during the operational phase for monitoring its performance. Further work will include the implementation and validation of the framework in four real-life positive energy neighbourhoods in different climate zones of Europe as part of syn.ikia H2020 project.

Participation has been touted as a critical instrument for both citizen empowerment and responsibility-sharing in sustainability. In architecture, participation allows for the progression of green building to sustainable habitation that integrates environmental, economic, and social dimensions. However, participation in practice rarely delegates meaningful decisions to marginalized groups and is mostly a one-sided process. This study seeks to investigate which factors of the participatory method afford both empowerment and behavioral change to a sustainable lifestyle in low-income groups. To do so, a case study of designing a social housing estate in Hungary is presented, where participatory design was used to codevelop a building that considers and adjusts to the sustainable lifestyle envisioned by the future residents. A coding engine based on the concept of pattern languages was developed that places conditions and experience of everyday activities at the center of design, translating them to spatial features. As a result, a focus group of social housing tenants and cohousing experts were able to define explicit shared spaces, allocate square meters to them, and articulate legible design criteria. Of the early-stage design decisions, 45% were made with or by the participants, and the bilateral process made it possible to convince the tenants to adopt a more sustainable habitation format.