Ilaria Geddes

This special issue on Walkability and Mobility Justice was conceived and initiated by Annika Lundkvist, founder of Pedestrian Space. Together with the Cities & Health team, the aim is to bring a di...

Evidence-Based Design and Planning (EBDP) provides a systematic framework for informing urban design and planning decisions by grounding proposals in data, analysis, and stakeholder input. However, its practical application remains limited and challenging, particularly in contexts where spatial data are fragmented, institutional capacities are weak, and mechanisms for integrating evidence into decision-making are underdeveloped. This paper advances the applicability of EBDP by developing an adaptable methodology suitable for diverse planning contexts, including those with incomplete or inconsistent datasets and institutional fragmentation. The proposed approach integrates targeted data collection, stakeholder engagement, and both hybrid and automated spatial modelling techniques. To evaluate the feasibility of applying EBDP in specific contexts, the study introduces an EBDP Applicability Matrix, a readiness tool that assesses key enabling conditions such as data availability, technical competence, policy alignment, and stakeholder support. The methodology and matrix were tested across three Cypriot case studies at local, regional, and national scales. Findings demonstrate that the approach improves data acquisition, structures stakeholder collaboration, and enables ongoing and verifiable goal achievement through the use of reliable spatial analysis. The paper contributes an auditable EBDP workflow, a readiness matrix for feasibility screening, and guidance on institutional and data prerequisites supporting EBDP adoption.

This study evaluates the extent to which fully automated street network modelling can reproduce the analytical outcomes of a hybrid (automated–manual) approach for centrality and accessibility analysis across four morphologically distinct cities: Nicosia, London, Gothenburg, and Madrid. Results show that the geometry-preserving segmentation logic of the automated workflow systematically increases network granularity relative to the continuity-merging rules applied in the hybrid model, producing higher node densities and shorter street segments, particularly in cities with irregular, historically layered street patterns. Despite these geometric differences, angular integration exhibits strong to near-perfect rank correlation between hybrid and automated models across all cases, with agreement increasing at larger spatial radii. This indicates that global configurational structure is robust in automated simplification. Angular betweenness displays lower, though still moderate to high, correspondence, especially at smaller radii, reflecting its sensitivity to over-segmentation and local geometric variation. Spatial autocorrelation analysis reveals that ranking differences are strongly clustered in footpaths in open green spaces and detailed paths in residential areas. However, the differences are more locally confined and diminish at larger radii. Accessibility results further demonstrate scale-dependent divergence: short-range attraction reach and attraction distance estimates align closely between models, whereas discrepancies increase at larger thresholds due to the cumulative effects of finer-grained connectivity and additional pedestrian paths in automated networks. Overall, the findings indicate that automated street network models reliably capture large-scale integration and accessibility patterns across diverse urban contexts, while local, flow-sensitive measures remain more affected by network granularity and path representation. These results support the use of automated workflows for scalable and comparative urban analysis, with targeted manual refinement reserved for contexts requiring high local precision.

Historical centres are typically the core of a city’s social, cultural, and economic exchanges, where the ‘buzz’ of the city, retail, and nightlife converge. They are also residential places, but this role is diminishing due to factors like unaffordability, the conversion of homes into short-term rentals or commercial spaces, reduced family services due to ageing populations, and preferences for suburban lifestyles. This trend poses challenges to the sustainability of historical centres: they are at risk of being overtaken by limited land uses and losing the population on which such uses initially rely to operate effectively. The configurational and social analysis of Nicosia (Cyprus) reveals that the residential distribution of different population groups is correlated to different levels of street network accessibility, with wealthier and native Cypriot residents concentrating in the least accessible areas. The historical centre is now predominantly inhabited by non-Cypriot citizens, except for the neighbourhoods of Chrysaliniotissa and Agios Kassianos in the eastern edge of the historical core. This research explores the factors contributing to this phenomenon, including spatial characteristics, rehabilitation of architectural heritage, and policy incentives. The aim is to reflect on the role of urban form and historical architecture in supporting residential communities in historical centres.

This research provides an abstract representation of neighborhoods, accounting for the actors involved in the process of their formation and transformation as local entities embedded in a complex yet specific configuration of historical, social, structural, and political contexts. The analysis uses a conceptual framework combining Assemblage Theory and Actor–Network Theory to examine how both human and non-human actors or agents interact and consequently exert an impact on three different neighborhoods in Limassol, Cyprus. The methodology combines both qualitative as well as quantitative approaches. The tools used include space syntax, land use, and building typology, descriptive statistics of social factors, a photographic survey, observation of the built environment’s expressive features, and archival research of press articles. The findings reveal the extent to which global factors, such as colonialism and the mobility of wealthy populations from former Soviet countries, have an impact on the social makeup and expressive features of the environment, while local factors, such as block size and housing typology, have a strong impact on the use of public space. Furthermore, more complex networks may exhibit structural resilience or adaptability but may be, at the same time, more sensitive to varying and conflicting interests.

The urban form is a political and social arena. It is produced as a composite of sediments of various ways of living, of complex flow of history, of relationships and subjectivities through which people build and exercise their agency to negotiate and change contingent urban realities. Studies of urban form have so far confronted the challenge of grasping this complexity by scrutinizing a city's physical features. However, this paper puts forward a proposition that urban morphological approaches can also be resourceful tools for conceptualizing and scrutinizing dynamic relations between plural urban realities and transformations of the physical urban fabric. By drawing on the experiences from the Erasmus+ project Emerging Perspectives on Urban Morphologies (EPUM), this paper suggests a multidisciplinary, open educational framework combining various urban morphological approaches as a productive means of developing an understanding of multifaceted spatializations of lived space within urban form, as well as materializations of urban form within lived space. Such an endeavour can extend the study of urban form beyond the focus on an object, to embrace the processes, practices and agents of the production of the built environment, including multiple tensions between changing scales and material manifestations of political, economic and social relations.

‘Healthy cities?’ is published by Lund Humphries in the Concise Guides to Planning series. It explores the relationships – positive and negative – between the built environment, health, and well-be...

The Cyprus Network of Urban Morphology (CyNUM), established in 2016, is a bicommunal initiative led by scholars residing both in the North and the south of Cyprus. The aim of the network is to promote research on the urban form of Cypriot cities and support its dissemination in Cyprus and abroad. CyNUM also acts as a platform for knowledge exchange and networking among researchers who have a specific interest in Cypriot cities and the wider Eastern Mediterranean region. Because of the relative youth of universities in Cyprus, all leading urban morphology scholars trained in other countries and brought to Cyprus the approaches linked to their alma mater. In the country, there is a strong focus on two approaches: the historico-geographical and the configurational, although typo-morphological studies also exist. Since its inception, the network has made efforts to exchange knowledge, access expertise from other countries and develop various research strands through individual research, funded projects, and scientific events, including regional conferences and hosting the 2019 ISUF Conference. This paper reviews the background to the network, its activities and research outputs to critically discuss avenues for future development of Cypriot morphological research based on the direction of current and proposed future projects.