Following the rapid development and urbanization in China over recent decades, sustainable renovation of urban residences has become an important issue. This study aimed to develop an architectural teaching program integrating the study of local climate, vernacular buildings, climate-responsive design strategies, and simulation tools. A local house in a high-density neighborhood in Guangzhou, China, in a hot-humid climate area was selected for renovation in this teaching program. Investigations of the urban neighborhood development, the construction and climate-responsive characteristics of the vernacular houses, long-term thermal environment characteristics, and sustainable design strategies were conducted before the design project began. The guidelines of Active House combining passive strategies and active technologies were incorporated into the concept design. The students’ works represented their understanding of the characteristics of a hot-humid climate, responsive strategies for the local buildings, preliminary methodologies of micro-climate analysis, and technologies supporting sustainable building design. Thus, this program provided a valuable approach to the appropriate pedagogy for a research-integrated design studio within the context of sustainable architectural education development.

A tailings dam failure can lead to disastrous impacts on people’s livelihood and the surrounding ecological environment. Due to interactions among water, tailings and ground, the mechanism of a tailings flow is more complicated than that of a flood flow. In this paper, the tailings flow is regarded as a homogeneous and incompressible non-Newtonian fluid. Its rheological properties were studied through rheological tests conforming to the Bingham model. The rheological parameters were further used in a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation over complex terrain to explore the tailings flow characteristics. The method was validated with experimental results of a non-Newtonian dam-break flow from literature. The flow characteristics, including flow velocity, runout distance, inundation area and depth, were analyzed in the case of the Dagangding tailings dam. The results showed that the downstream railway and village would not be affected in a conservative scenario. Finally, the effects of two measures for preventing tailings flow hazards were discussed. Setting the check dam and planting grasses and trees can effectively mitigate the damage of tailings flow.

The outdoor thermal environment (OTE) is closely related to sustainable urban development and human living, and related research has attracted widespread attention. The research hotspots and research frontiers were obtained using CiteSpace to analyze 4473 relevant studies published in English from the Web of Science (WOS) core database from 1998 to 2023. The results show that (1) Hong Kong Polytechnic University, National University of Singapore, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, and Harbin Institute of Technology are important in OTE research. China has the largest number of publications in the field of OTE, but the United States has the greatest centrality and significant influence. (2) The focus of OTE keyword clustering research is divided into four main categories: thermal environment perception, the thermal environment index, thermal environment quality, and thermal environment optimization. (3) The frontiers of OTE research have changed from focusing on environmental quality, thermal perception, numerical simulation, urban space, and thermal adaptation to thermal mitigation, energy conservation, energy consumption, and optimization strategies. Visualization research in the field of OTE helps to provide references for the direction of future research on improving climate change, human thermal comfort, urban planning, and pre-planning.

As a city rich in historical and cultural heritage, Guangzhou has made substantial efforts to protect and revitalise its historic districts. This study examines Yongqing Fang, a well-known commercialised historic district in Guangzhou, to understand how tourism-driven development reshapes everyday life and the interactions among its diverse users. Using comparative analysis, interviews, and NVivo 12 coding, the research explores how longstanding residents and newer occupants adjust to the rapidly evolving environment. The findings reveal that urban renewal and commercialisation have undermined local culture and social networks, altering how spaces are used. While lifestyle differences are evident among different user groups, the study also highlights instances of alienation and conflict, as well as moments of positive interaction and mutual support. The research emphasises the importance of inclusive strategies in heritage renewal and raises the question, drawing attention to the challenges faced by marginalised users in commercialised historic districts. It offers recommendations for policymakers, urban planners, and other stakeholders to balance heritage preservation with the social and economic needs of communities, fostering sustainable integration of tourism and local life in historic districts.

Urban systems exhibit multifractal scaling behaviors arising from their hierarchical and heterogeneous spatial organization. Yet the Green View Index (GVI), a widely used indicator of street-level green visibility, is conventionally measured as a static value, overlooking how green exposure is reorganized across scales, which may bias greening evaluations and planning decisions. This study proposes an “X-minute Greenery” framework to examine GVI as a scale-dependent spatial process. Street view imagery and walking isochrone data from Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China, are integrated to measure GVI across 5, 10, 15, and 20 min walking ranges, while a multifractal-inspired approach is developed to characterize its scale-dependent variation structure. Empirical findings show that (1) GVI variation is not random but associated with urban governance and spatial morphology; (2) a staged pattern of variation is identified, with a GVI level around 0.2 marking an approximate shift in configurations of greening dynamics; (3) even under similar initial GVI conditions, areas can still follow divergent variation patterns across walking scales, exposing latent spatial inequalities aligned with institutional and morphological factors. By framing urban green visibility as a scale-aware complex-systems phenomenon, this study adapts multifractal reasoning to street-level greenery, challenges the “equal green, equal policies” assumption, and supports context-sensitive planning interventions.