In the context of urban development, bridging the gap between urban regeneration and people’s demand for high-quality built environments is a current focus of research. Exploring the vitality of certain kinds of urban districts is imperative for comprehending human needs for specific built environments and fostering urban renaissance and advancement. This urgency arises from the prevailing lack of in-depth studies on district vitality, as current research primarily provides a general assessment of street vitality. Thus, this study aims to explore the correlations between indicators of urban vitality in cultural districts and built environments, using Haikou and Suzhou as case studies and employing multiple data sources (e.g., Baidu heat maps and nighttime light) and measurements. By applying a logit regression model, we find the following: (1) Traffic network integration has a positive impact on daytime vitality in Haikou and nighttime vitality in Suzhou, but it negatively affects nighttime vitality in Haikou. (2) In terms of nighttime vitality, both commercial density and greenery positively influence the overall blocks and various subgroups. (3) The proportion of cultural facilities in Suzhou has a detrimental effect on daytime vitality, especially for blocks with fewer permanent residents and lower land values. The present study, while limited to selected cultural blocks in Suzhou and Haikou, establishes the groundwork for a better comprehension of how spatial vitality can be enhanced at the street segment level, thereby contributing to the investigation of the varying impacts that built environment factors have on urban vitality in tourism cities at different stages of development. It uncovers the inherent latent characteristics found within cultural blocks across diverse regions and offers innovative perspectives and recommendations for optimizing the sustainable development of urban blocks.

To address the dilemma of China’s rural areas becoming increasingly homogeneous due to large-scale, campaign-style rural construction. This study proposes an innovative rural spatial pattern evaluation model that integrates geomancy theory with modern spatial analysis methods. Chawan village, Suzhou city, Jiangsu Province, China, is used as the study area, with the aim of better assessing and optimizing rural spatial patterns in China. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a method for ranking factors based on their relative importance, which is used to assign weights to indicators. Combined with the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE) method based on fuzzy set theory and ArcGIS weighted overlay analysis, it is used for evaluating rural spatial patterns. The results show that natural environmental indicators hold more weight than artificial ones. Among these, water body landscapes (0.111), water body buffer zones (0.103), and vegetation ecology (0.073) are the highest weighted indicators. The top three spatial pattern evaluation values are landscape environment (3.85), water bodies (3.52), and vegetation (3.51). The final result for the village is moderate, with an evaluation score of 3.385. This result suggests that the rural spatial pattern has a solid foundation for cultural continuity and significant potential for optimization, particularly in ecological and water body features. The AHP–GIS–FCE multi-method evaluation framework provides an effective tool for assessing and optimizing rural spatial patterns. This approach offers a systematic solution for rural development, promoting localized and diverse planning models, as opposed to the homogenized “one-size-fits-all” approach, and contributes to the protection of cultural heritage and sustainable development.

Purpose: Building a healthy city that is conducive to improving residents' mental health is a current hot topic in the field of urban research on human health issues. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive summary of research on the associations between the urban environment and mental health on the basis of bibliometrics. Design/methodology/approach: VOSviewer software is used to analyze 129 publications from the Web of Science core dataset. Findings: (1) Urban environmental exerts its health benefits by increasing exposure levels, providing ecological service functions and additional benefits. (2) Meditation, as an active intervention factor, reinforces the health benefits by strengthening the human-nature connection and enhances the effects of nature exposure. (3) There are some contradictions between existing examples of meditation-space cases and theoretical knowledge. Originality/value: Some evidence has shown that more research is needed to understand the internal principles when meditation and the environment are superimposed, including examining the specific composition of environmental elements and clarifying the impact of environmental preferences on the willingness to meditate. The theoretical basis can then be fed back into urban design to improve mental health through active intervention.