This study investigated the impact of spatial configuration on tourist movement patterns and its role in managing cultural heritage destinations in the city of Madaba. Understanding tourist movement patterns is important for the development of sustainable tourism practices in cultural heritage destinations, as it can help to identify attractions of high tourist impact and inform the development of strategies to mitigate the negative impacts on site preservation and management. Madaba is one of the largest homes to ancient mosaics and is one of Jordan’s most important cultural heritage tourism destinations. This study was carried out using a variety of methods, including observation, site exploration, tourist diaries, questionnaires, and interviews. Space syntax was one of the spatial analytical tools used to assess connectivity and integration. The study found that the arrangement of attraction points and routes, physical and visual connectivity, accessibility, and the location of tourist activities all influenced the spatial behavior of tourists. The findings of this study can be used to guide management and development policies such as redistributing tourist flow, managing and developing tourism resources, and promoting the adaptation of sustainable tourism.

Purpose: This paper analyzes and illustrates the spatial distribution of publications in international urban planning journals from 2010 to 2020.Design/methodology/approach: The study employs the Biblioshiny bibliometrix package in R to analyze 44,123 articles from 95 international planning journals. To conduct the spatial scientometric analysis, we adopted the United Nations’ geoscheme focusing on three geographical scales: country, subregion, and region. Collaboration patterns at the country and subregional levels were examined using the VOSviewer tool.Findings: The study found evidence of a spatial polarization of urban planning scholarly knowledge production. Scholars based in the United States and the United Kingdom consistently published at higher rates than any other country in our data set. The region producing the largest number of publications was Europe, consisting of 39.92% of the total publication count. However, urban planning scholars from the Global South authored only 20.96% of planning publications from 2010–2020. Centralization of planning research is also evident within each region and subregion. As such, both the Global North and the Global South should not be framed as homogenous entities and spatial patterns of knowledge production should not be generalized. The analysis also established the emerging role of Northern America as a major collaborator in inter-country and inter-subregional research collaborations. Co-authorship patterns indicate low intra-regional collaboration in planning research, except for Europe.Originality/value: This article argues that a culture of exclusivity may be occurring in urban planning publication production. By highlighting the spatial disparities in knowledge production, we emphasize the need to examine the structural and institutional barriers that exclude urban planning knowledge emerging from the peripheries in international planning journals.

This paper assessed the indicators that presumably impact sustainable tourism in the region of Madaba, one of the most attractive sites in the Middle of Jordan. The indicators were classified into 5 subgroups and include managerial, economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts. The methods of the study relied on structured questionnaires that were distributed over stakeholder and locals. The results show that the carrying capacity at the attraction sites is very high (high tourist flow in a small area). The wastewater, water and energy management is severely impacted as well as transportation. The social impact is also very high and it is substantially contested by the inelastic cultural norms and tradition especially when tackling women inequality and empowerment.

Architectural education programs are rapidly expanding the use of immersive technologies worldwide. An increasing number of architecture schools have incorporated 360-degree videos as one of the accessible and cost-effective immersive tools. Despite their availability and ease of use, research on their effectiveness as a learning tool in architectural pedagogy remains limited and mostly focused on architectural design education. Few studies have discussed their application in theoretical courses and their potential to support cognitive understanding of architecture. Learning cultural heritage is considered a foundation of architectural theory. This study examines how the utilization of 360-degree videos, compared to conventional 2D videos, supports spatial cognition, learning performance and experience in cultural heritage education among undergraduate architecture students. An educational experiment was conducted with 89 students in their second year of the architecture degree at the Applied Science Private University, Jordan. Both 360-degree videos and conventional 2D videos were inserted as learning tools within the curriculum of History of Architecture 1 and 2 courses. A mixed-research-method framework, including observation and a post-test survey, was carried out. Using SPSS and Excel programs, the data were analyzed through a set of statistical analyses such as paired-sample t-tests, AHP, and basic descriptive analysis. The findings demonstrate that students were highly immersed and motivated when using 360-degree videos. Compared to conventional 2D videos, 360-degree videos enhanced students’ spatial cognition, performance, engagement, and participation levels in both face-to-face and online courses. These results suggest that 360-degree videos can serve as a sufficient, low-cost, and equipment-free learning tool, responding to the urgent need to utilize technologies in both theoretical and practical architectural pedagogy.