In contemporary Chinese cities dynamic street vendors are a common presence, frequently occupying spaces where many people regularly walk, leading to functional changes to the streets. This research aim was to examine the everyday use of urban streets at a micro-scale, to explore spatio-temporal relations between the fixed built environment and the ways in which vendors and pedestrians co-produce walkable space and walking behaviours over time. Using field observation and behaviour mapping, we compared spatio-temporal data and spatial patterns of street activities over four daily periods of three urban street spaces in the medium-sized city of Yuncheng. The results indicate that such activities produce environment-behaviour interactions and socio-spatial relations, which leads to an understanding of how city life occurs. The conclusions suggest that vending is important for giving life to urban areas and increasing residents’ physical activity, so that urban governors and designers should consider how to facilitate it better.

Living in compact neighbourhoods that are walkable, well connected, with accessible green space can benefit physical and mental health. However, the pandemic raises concern up to what extent features of compact neighbourhood design affect transmission of viral respiratory infections. We conducted a systematic review to identify, appraise and synthesise evidence reporting associations between transmission of respiratory viruses, including Covid-19, and dwelling or population density or other features of neighbourhood design. Twenty-one studies met our inclusion criteria. These studies used different measures of neighbourhood design, contributing to inconsistent findings. Whereas no convincing conclusion can be drawn here, the outcome of this review indicates that robust, global evidence is warranted to inform future policies and legislation concerned with compact neighbourhood design and transmission of respiratory and viral infection.

In Chinese cities, informal street vendors often appear in a transient space intertwined with a large number of pedestrians and heterogeneity, in contrast with the dichotomous construction of static built environment and dynamic street activity examined in most studies on walkability. This paper explores the rhythm of everyday street spaces and the temporary experiences of pedestrians and street vendors in Yuncheng, China. The author argues that street vendors are particularly well suited for capturing city rhythms and can discern the tempo of social life and pedestrians in urban street spaces. Following Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis approach and drawing on 86 semi-structured interviews combined with on-site observation in three street spaces, this paper investigates how rhythms are linked to spatial form, time and the everyday street activity of walking and vending. It expands an analytical framework in both daily rhythms and long-standing rhythms, including arrhythmia, eurhythmia and polyrhythmia. The conclusions provide an alternative way of understanding why pedestrians emerge, through considering how street vendors temporarily meet the everyday needs of different pedestrians in specific, real and detailed ways. Such fine-grained narratives, in turn, demonstrate the need to advance theoretical and empirical understandings of multiple rhythms in relation to walkable space and walking forms.

As the number of historical urban cemeteries where interment is no longer available continues to grow, the everyday use and restorative benefit of these spaces (beyond commemoration and remembrance) is worthy of further exploration. This study primarily investigates the everyday use of two historical urban cemeteries in Edinburgh through behavioural observation (N = 185). We also explore further the relationships between cemetery qualities and perceived restorativeness through an interviewer-administered survey (N = 134) and face-to-face interviews (N = 24) at the sites. The survey findings showed that usage and aesthetics in the cemeteries were both significantly and positively associated with various restorative qualities including ‘being away’, ‘fascination’ and ‘compatibility’. The data provided from the interviews and behavioural observations complement the survey findings that the everyday use of urban cemeteries (i.e., using them as an alternative route for pedestrian journeys or simply walking the dog) could facilitate users’ mental restorative process. After controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, provision of facilities (e.g., benches and toilets) was found to have no significant association with any restorative qualities. Using a mixed method approach, this study provides a novel understanding of how the urban population uses, and perceives, old urban cemeteries in contemporary Scotland.

During the pandemic lockdown period, residents had to stay at home and increased stress and other mental health problems have been associated with the lockdown period. Since most public parks were closed, community parks within gated residential areas became the most important green space in Chinese cities, and the use of such space might help to reduce the residents’ stress levels. This study aimed to investigate to what extent urban residents in China used community parks, engaged in outdoor activity during the lockdown period (23 January–8 April 2020) and if the use of such spaces helped to reduce their stress levels. An online questionnaire survey (n = 1342) was carried out from 23 March to 23 April 2020. Ordinary Least Squares regression was used to analyse the association between community park use, outdoor activity, willingness to engage in outdoor activity, and stress level. All results have been further analysed by two-sampled t-test to explore the difference between young and old age groups. We found that the overall self-reported stress level of the respondents was relatively moderate during the lockdown period. Respondents had generally reduced their use of community parks and engagement in outdoor activity. There was no significant association between stress level and the use of community parks or the engagement in outdoor activities. However, we found that older people showed much lower stress levels, used community parks more frequently, and engaged in more outdoor activities than younger adults. The findings suggest that outdoor activities and spatial characteristics in urban China differ from Western studies and advance the need to integrate the stress management role of community parks with urban green space policy to optimise the use of community parks blended in with everyday life, particularly during the lockdown period.