Drone-based Urban Air Mobility (UAM) shows immense potential in urban logistics and emergency response; however, evidence regarding its systemic sustainability remains fragmented. In a systematic review using the PRISMA methodology, this study analyzes 301 core articles to construct an evaluation framework spanning environmental, economic, social, and systemic effectiveness dimensions. Given technical similarities, electric Vertical Take-off and Landing (eVTOL) findings are integrated to anticipate operational challenges. Results highlight a clear consensus: drone delivery is time-efficient in high-sensitivity scenarios, though noise, equity, and safety remain critical bottlenecks. Meanwhile, deep controversies persist across some dimensions. Environmental benefits are highly context-dependent, contingent on operating models, battery life cycles, and clean energy proportions from a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) perspective. Economically, a mismatch between high costs and low willingness to pay (WTP) necessitates optimized pricing strategies. Socially, public acceptance is sensitive to the balance between perceived benefits and risks. Furthermore, systemic effectiveness depends on the coupling between vertiports and ground infrastructure. Concluding that sustainable drone-based UAM is a multistakeholder systemic endeavor, we urge future research to prioritize LCA, pricing strategies, public acceptance surveys, and integrated air-ground coordination to resolve controversies and foster sustainable systems.

Engineering-ready 3D reconstruction remains challenging in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) because visually plausible scene representations do not automatically provide structured information for engineering use. Neural scene representations, particularly Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) and 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), offer efficient and low-cost reconstruction, yet their ability to support engineering models remains unclear. This review synthesizes 60 journal studies using a PRISMA-guided search, an eight-dimension engineering-translation evidence matrix, and a risk-of-bias assessment. The findings show rapid progress in scene representation, rendering efficiency, and visual or geometric reconstruction across built-environment applications. However, evidence for engineering semantics, topology-valid models, interoperable translation to BIM and related engineering representations, and validated downstream workflows remains substantially less mature. The resulting progression is therefore asymmetric: neural scene methods increasingly reconstruct and visualize built environments, but less consistently convert them into engineering-ready models. Future research should prioritize task-specific geometric validation, explicit object and topology recovery, standard-compatible translation, uncertainty and failure reporting, and end-to-end evaluation within engineering software workflows.

Chinese cities have experienced rapid expansion in recent years, resulting in the emergence of hybrid neighborhoods characterized by buildings of varying ages, functions, and resident demographics. The distinctive environmental features hold significant research value for understanding their impact on residents’ perceptions of safety. However, research on the security of such neighborhoods remains limited. Q-methodology combines quantitative and qualitative research methods and is suitable for the study of hybrid blocks with complex factors affecting residents’ safety assessment. Three typical hybrid blocks were selected for the experiment. The findings point to six key environmental characteristics affecting residents’ sense of security within the scope of the study. Additionally, different social groups and living environments shape distinct perceptions and standards of security. This work contributes to the study of residential safety under hybrid blocks in China, enriching the existing crime prevention theory and improving its applicability and effectiveness. It can also help urban planners and policymakers reduce the tendency to overemphasize complex external environmental factors and provide a valuable reference to residential safety awareness in hybrid blocks.