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The main objective of the present quasi-experi- mental study was to examine the influence of culture (Swedish vs Japanese) and environmental attitude (urban vs open-air person) on participants’ thermal, emotional and perceptual assessments of a square, within the PET (physiological equivalent temperature) comfortable inter- val of 18–23°C. It was predicted that persons living in different cultures with different environmental attitudes would psychologically evaluate a square differently despite similar thermal conditions. Consistent with this prediction, Japanese participants estimated the current weather as warmer than did Swedish participants and, consistent with this, they felt less thermally comfortable on the site, although participants in both countries perceived similar comfortable thermal outdoor conditions according to the PET index. Compared to the Japanese, the Swedes estimated both the current weather and the site as windier and colder, indicating a consistency in weather assessment on calm-windy and warm-cold scales in participants in both cultures. Furthermore, Swedish participants felt more glad and calm on the site and, in line with their character (more glad than gloomy), they estimated the square as more beautiful and pleasant than did Japanese participants. All this indicates that thermal, emotional and perceptual assessments of a physical place may be intertwined with psychological schema-based and socio-cultural processes, rather than fixed by general thermal indices developed in line with physiological heat balance models. In conse- quence, this implies that thermal comfort indices may not be applicable in different cultural/climate zones without modifications, and that they may not be appropriate if we do not take into account the psychological processes involved in environmental assessment.

The climate of a city influences the ways in which its outdoor spaces are used. Especially public spaces intended for use by pedestrians and cyclists, such as parks, squares, residential and shopping streets, and foot- and cycle-paths will be used and enjoyed more frequently when they have a comfortable and healthy climate. Due to a predicted global temperature rise, the climate is likely to be more uncomfortable in the Netherlands, especially in summer, when an increase in heat stress is expected. As the phenomenon of urban heat islands (UHI) aggravates heat stresses, the effects will be more severe in urban environments. Since the spatial characteristics of a city influence its climate, urban design can be deployed to mitigate the combined effects of climate change and UHI’s. This paper explores these effects and tries to provide tools for urban design and strategies for implementation. Consequently, the applicability of the design tools is tested in a design for two existing Dutch neighbourhoods.

Today, although most of the international research community considers climate change adaptation to be essential, there is limited knowledge on its concrete integration with contemporary placemaking. Yet, with the emergence of the adaptation agenda, the effects of urban climatology are continually coercing the need for concrete action to increase the climatic responsiveness of urban environments. This article is constructed upon a “Research for Design” approach, and focuses upon improving urban design guidelines by reviewing existing theoretical/empirical research on how pedestrian comfort levels can be addressed through public space design. The objective is to incorporate such qualitative and quantitative interrogations into a generic tool such as the “Place Diagram” by the PPS. A total of six intangible criteria, and six measurable attributes, are explored and structured in order to introduce new generic design considerations which can contribute to the responsiveness of urban outdoor spaces in an era of expected climate variability.

Four urban public spaces, representing various designs and microclimates, were investigated in Gothenburg, Sweden, in order to estimate how weather and microclimate affect people in urban outdoor environments. The research strategy was both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary and included scientists from three disciplines: architecture, climatology and psychology. The project is based on common case studies carried out during four seasons, including measurements of meteorological variables, interviews and observations of human activity at each place. Multiple regression analysis of meteorological and behavioural data showed that air temperature, wind speed and clearness index (cloud cover) have a significant influence on people’s assessments of the weather, place perceptions and place-related attendance. The results support the arguments in favour of employing climate sensitive planning in future urban design and planning projects, as the physical component of a place can be designed to influence the site-specific microclimate and consequently people’s place-related attendance, perceptions and emotions.

The research examines the shift from flood-resistant policies and plans to flood resilience. We use a case study of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina to illustrate this unfolding process and the emergence of a "living with water" approach to green infrastructure. The article highlights the challenges of this shifting policy landscape through the case of the Lafitte Greenway, a green infrastructure project that transformed a three-mile corridor of underutilized public land into a linear park running through flood-prone neighborhoods. Through the experience of creating this greenway, planners in New Orleans learned valuable lessons about US disaster rebuilding policies and how to implement green infrastructure in urban neighborhoods.

The article explores relationships among urban form, human activities and socio-economic-cultural features in Danwei compound. With Jingmian compound, a typical Danwei compound in Beijing, as a case study, the researcher studies urban form in open spaces from a socio-economic-cultural perspective. In addition, residents' activities are discussed. The research shows that open space form reflects features and transitions of Chinese society from sociological and economic perspectives. This article also proves the validity of thorough micro space form investigation.

This paper examines the relationship between space and the digital industries through everyday work practices in Shoreditch, London. Drawing on interviews with digital workers, the paper examines how work unfolds in multiple settings and how the built environment supports these work patterns. Digital work extends from the office or the residence (the base) to multiple settings (ancillary spaces) in what can be defined as an extended workplace. The study identifies micro and macro scale characteristics of the built environment that are relevant (spatial characteristics of semi-public and public spaces, access and control, location, and attributes of the neighbourhood) expanding the understanding of why and how place matters for these industries. A typology of ancillary spaces and some reflections on policy implications are advanced.

Urban public space is a product of contestations by various actors. This paper focuses on the conflict between local level government and beggars to address the questions: How and why do government actors refuse or allow beggars access to public space? How and why do beggars appropriate public space to receive alms and adapt their strategies? How does this contestation contribute to the trends of urban public space in today's China? Taking the Southern metropolis of Guangzhou as a case study, I argue that beggars contest expulsion from public space through begging performances. Rising barriers of public space require higher investment in these performances, taking even more resources from the panhandling poor. The trends of public order are not unidirectional, however. Beggars navigate between several contextual borders composed by China's religious renaissance; the discourse on deserving, undeserving, and dangerous beggars; and the moral legitimacy of the government versus the imagination of a successful, "modern," and "civilised" city. This conflict shows the everyday production of "spaces of representation" by government actors on the micro level where economic incentives merge with aspirations for political prestige.

This paper emerges from an ethnography of the economic and cultural life of Rye Lane, an intensely multi-ethnic street in Peckham, South London. The effects of accelerated migration into London are explored through the reshaping and diversification of its interior, street and city spaces. A ‘trans-ethnography’ is pursued across the compendium of micro-, meso- and macro-urban spaces, without reifying one above the other. The ethnographic stretch across intimate, collective and symbolic city spaces serves to connect how the restrictions and circuits of urban migration have different impacts and expressions in these distinctive but interrelated urban localities. The paper argues for a trans-ethnography that engages within and across a compendium of urban localities, to understand how accelerated migration and urban ‘super-diversity’ transform the contemporary global city.

As Malaysia's population continues to grow and becomes more concentrated in urban areas, the important benefits of urban green spaces to the environment, the economy, and the health and well-being of city residents become even more significant in counterbalancing some of the negative effects of the country's urban development. With this concern in mind, the authors designed a social survey for urban planners and landscape architects in Kuala Lumpur to identify and study their views on the nature, roles, and benefits of urban green spaces; the problems associated with protecting urban green spaces in Kuala Lumpur; and the attributes of green spaces they thought were most important when considering how much priority a particular green space should be given for preservation. Kuala Lumpur provides a particularly interesting case study as a rapidly growing city in a developing country with a tropical climate - a context in which there has been relatively little research on urban green space, despite the importance of shade in very hot climates. In addition, Kuala Lumpur has experienced a great loss of green space in recent decades, both on its periphery from urban expansion and around the city center from the drive (fueled by economic growth) to use central land more intensively.

Planners and urban designers place high value on public open spaces, because of the latter's contribution to the quality of life and social interaction of residents in an urban development. Many urban theorists consider open space as an important component of a healthy urban environment. It is well established in the literature that the utilisation of public space varies from context to context. This article investigates whether the utilisation of open space at the neighbourhood level is more associated with the physical and functional properties of open space or if it varies across different cultures and contexts of cities. This research adopts the method of comparative analysis, involving three case studies from different cultures, and climatic and geographical contexts. In each of these three cities, the opinions of residents and visitors about public open space were obtained and observation surveys were conducted to measure the utilisation of these spaces. The research found that the utilisation of public space at various levels of neighbourhood significantly differs between cities because of the local context, such as culture, social values and climate, instead of just being due to the physical and functional properties of open space.

Studies of seasonal barriers for outdoor activities seldom view families’ play practices as grounded in the everyday experience of the natural elements. This paper brings 20 families’ mundane outdoor play ex- periences in Auckland's temperate climate to the fore. Through drawings and interviews, families re- siding in both suburban detached houses and central city apartments revealed locally constituted beliefs about appropriate play spaces (e.g. garden, park). While the majority of participants retreated to indoor activities during winter, some children and their parents viewed the outdoors as the only opportunity for ‘real fun’. We advocate the importance of a better understanding of children's seasonal outdoor play. In particular, we argue that in order to promote year-round healthy levels of outdoor activities it is ne- cessary to understand variations in societal, neighbourhood and family values attributed to outdoor activities. Further, to develop a more nuanced understanding of the locational complexities of outdoor play it is important to understand the meanings of, and practices associated with, seasonal and weather conditions in different international locations.

This paper focuses on the development and meaning of informal social control experiences when strangers intervene face-to-face in instances of child punishment in public. The central question is, in the absence of formal authority and institutional resources, how do strangers construe wrongful punishment, negotiate deviant import, and manage control outcomes? Thirty-seven interviews were conducted with people who intervened on at least one occasion, and seven more with witness-participants. Interviewees described the meanings, events, and circumstances surrounding 50 acts of face-to-face intervention. The analysis focuses on some of the micro-political forces, such as claim themes and audience norms, that shape control outcomes. The interpersonal predicament for interveners reflects the cultural tension created when approval of physical punishment is widespread, when distinctions between normal and deviant punishment are ambiguous, and when interaction rules for informal intervention are not institutionalized.

Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) provide supplemental services to urban commercial corridors using funds from member assessments. They have become a very popular urban revitalization tool, but their formation is still largely unexplained. Theory implies that BIDs will form if they add to aggregate welfare and if the marginal net benefit of membership is positive. I test this for the neighborhood overall and at the BID boundary. Using unique, micro-level and longitudinal data from New York City, I employ survival analysis methods to estimate the likelihood of a neighborhood forming a BID. I then estimate the likelihood of the marginal property’s BID membership by comparing the characteristics of properties located immediately inside and outside of the BID boundaries. I find that BIDs are more likely to form when there is more commercial space over which the BID benefits can be capitalized and when there is homogeneity in service and spending preferences across properties. BIDs also tend to form in neighbor- hoods that possess signs of appreciation and growth. Generally, BIDs are more likely to form in neighbor- hoods with higher valued properties with the exception of very wealthy areas. The BID boundary, however, is comprised of relatively less valuable properties.

A great deal is at issue in the handling of the threat of terrorism in the United States today. Restrictions on the use of public space are a direct consequence, at the urban level, of what is happening. But beyond that, and beyond the various abuses of civil liberties and common sense that have been involved in the governmental misuse of the threat after 9/11, the most serious misuse may be the sale of the threat as a threat to existential security instead of as one danger among others to public safety. It has been manipulated for purposes having nothing to do with terrorism. The intended result has been to reinforce the positions of those in power, to displace the insecurity inherent in a capitalist free market system, and to limit further the freedom that is at the heart of the right to the city. The current treatment of public space illustrates the process.

Latino immigrant presence in urban neighborhoods has been linked with reduced neighborhood cohesion in social disorganization-based ethnic heterogeneity hypotheses and enhanced cohesion in immigration revitalization approaches. Using the 2000–2002 Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey and the 1994–1995 Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods Community Survey, we explore the association between Latino immigrant concentration and both levels of, and agreement about, neighborhood collective efficacy. Findings from multilevel models with heteroskedastic variance indicate that Latino immigrant concentration exhibits a nonlinear association with collective efficacy. At low levels, increases in Latino immigrant concentration diminish collective efficacy, consistent with a heterogeneity hypothesis. The negative association between Latino immigrant concentration and collective efficacy declines in magnitude as immigrant concentration increases and, particularly in LA, becomes positive beyond a threshold, consistent with an immigration revitalization effect. We also find an inverse nonlinear pattern of association with the variance of collective efficacy. At low levels, increasing Latino immigrant concentration increases the variance of collective efficacy (reflecting more disagreement), but beyond a threshold, this association becomes negative (reflecting increasing agreement). This pattern is observed in both LA and Chicago. The prevalence of social interaction and reciprocated exchange within neighborhoods explains a modest proportion of the Latino immigrant concentration effect on mean levels of collective efficacy in Chicago, but does little to explain effects on the mean in LA or effects on the variance in either LA or Chicago. These findings offer insight into the complex role Latino immigrant presence plays in shaping neighborhood social climate.

‘Green infrastructure’ is a term used to describe systems of parks, greenways, open spaces and other natural landscape elements that provide community benefits. Although we have some understanding of how people use parks and developed greenways, little has been documented about use of the undesignated public and private spaces along green infrastructure features such as stream corridors. The purpose of this research was to examine characteristics that may influence people’s use of undesignated open spaces along the stream corridors that form the skeleton of many green infrastructure systems. Data were obtained from a Recreational Use Attainability Analysis (RUAA), an evaluation performed for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The RUAA was conducted for 85 survey sites along 243 km (151 miles) of streams in Houston’s Buffalo Bayou watershed. Results indicate that the proximity of stream corridors to local residents, the level of pedestrian access available and tree cover were the best predictors of recreational use while the presence of water, fish or other wildlife were not significant predictors. Observations also indicated that urban and suburban stream corridors afford a variety of recreational and aesthetic values to residents. Implications for policy, planning and design of green infrastructure are discussed.