The older neighborhoods in Chinese cities are the main areas in which the elderly live. Both housing and the older adults have experienced the resonance process of co-growth and co-aging. Along with the acceleration of the aging population, the older neighborhoods with the aging physical space environment are increasingly unable to meet the needs of the elderly, which affects their health and well-being. Although the Chinese government has launched a program of retrofitting older neighborhoods to make them more hospitable for older residents through, for example, elevator installation and infrastructure improvement, these practices are merely associated with various neighborhood features. Most existing research starts from small-scale case studies and consequently lacks macro-level analysis of the characteristics of the physical spaces and aging population in older neighborhoods. Therefore, this paper selects old neighborhoods constructed from 1949–1999 in the central city of Beijing (within the Fifth Ring Road) as research subjects. The research begins with an analysis of the construction and evolution of the standards of selected older neighborhoods in Beijing and establishes measurement metrics for the spatial characteristics of both the neighborhood and aging population. This article concludes that older neighborhoods in central Beijing can be classified into seven clusters based on their spatial characteristics and three clusters based on aging population characteristics through K-means classification. Additionally, this paper conducts an overlay analysis of these two classification results to identify different spatial features of older neighborhoods within varying characteristics of the aging population and proposes suggestions for the renovation of selected old neighborhoods. The study aims to provide a reference for retrofitting older neighborhoods with the goal of creating an aging-friendly community, and to supply a scientific basis for empirical research on the middle scale and micro scale.

The urban metabolism concept is crucial for understanding city–environment interactions. Yet, its use in urban design is limited, and the examination of diverse design hypotheses with the potential to influence metabolic activities is seldom undertaken. This research addresses this gap and aims to analyze how the concept of metabolism (1) Can be leveraged by professionals for making urban design hypotheses, and (2) allows for the assessment of each of these hypotheses to reduce adverse environmental impacts and inform urban design decisions. Focusing on Paris’ Champs–Elysées redesign, in collaboration with PCA-STREAM, an urban design and architecture firm, this research employs fieldwork observations, tenant/store owner interviews, and specific metabolic models for water, energy, and materials. The results demonstrate that while redesigning the avenue’s public space potentially impacts the whole Champs–Elysées metabolism, this impact remains relatively limited. Intervening on objects with higher metabolic activities and using more efficient technologies might be more fruitful in terms of adverse environmental impact reduction, at least in this context.

Dating well back into the colonial period, Singapore began to make a mark in the botanical, horticultural and wildlife worlds. This came by way of both its natural circumstances, including those that survived the onslaught of plantation and other less than discriminating agricultural practices and in the form of its magnificent Botanic Gardens and other related curatorial activities. Biodiversity is also a hallmark of Singapore’s environment, although it was significantly depleted during the colonial era of land exploitation. In the shift that has occurred towards a ‘city with or in nature’, significant aspects of Singapore’s plant and wildlife attributes have been pushed further into service. This shift also appears to expert opinion to be closer to a truer natural state of existence than earlier garden-like interpretations, even though the appropriation of whole-hearted public support might be more difficult to secure. Depending upon the eye of the beholder, it certainly seems true that butterflies are more beautiful than caterpillars, but, of course, without the latter you will not have the former. More prosaically, the greening of roadway verges, public parks and so on, thrive better under mixed rather than mono-cultural species conditions. Also the scale of vegetation involved can be and often is very mature and large, more in keeping with the primeval tropical antecedent conditions and so-called ‘nature’ of Singapore. For this to be sustained successfully, risks from events like falling branches and uprooted trees must be avoided almost at all costs in Singapore’s current socio-cultural environment.

While the Japanese legacy remained in Korean urban planning even after the country's independence following the Second World War, direct influence from Western countries became available through various aid programmes. Amongst planning-related programmes, the Asia Foundation's HURPI (Housing, Urban and Regional Planning Institute), led by Oswald Nagler, an urban planning consultant, was noteworthy in its experimental approach and influence. HUPRI's urban planning approach focussed on minimum dwelling studies which reflected Korea's housing traditions, culture and economic conditions, and expanded them to large-scale planning. Even though literature on modern Korean planning history has acknowledged HURPI, its minimum dwelling approach is rarely mentioned, mainly because of the lack of documentation. By recovering unpublished materials personally kept by HURPI members and interviewing key individuals, this paper identifies the contents and the meaning of HURPI's minimum dwelling approach in the history of architecture and urban planning in South Korea. Comparative analyses with Western precedents and works by other Korean planning agencies at the time are also considered in order to understand HURPI's approach, and to identify how imported architectural and planning methodologies responded to Korean local contexts.

This book is about Singapore’s development into a city in which water and vegetation, along with associated environmental, technical, social and political aspects have been harnessed and cultivated into a livable sustainable way of life. It is also a story about a unique and thoroughgoing approach to large-scale and potentially transferable water sustainability, within largely urbanized circumstances, which can be achieved, along with complementary roles of environmental conservation, ecology, public open-space management and the greening of buildings, together with infrastructural improvements.

In addition to ‘green and clean’ in the service of national identity, equality and attractiveness, sustainability of Singapore with regard to water supply and use is of strategic national concern. Indeed, it is expected to achieve this by 2061 when Singapore’s remaining water agreement with neighboring Malaysia will end, even though imported sources from Malaysia account for 40% or so of overall supply as of 2009. Moreover, sustainability in this regard is so strategically important that all other matters of national concern ‘bend at the knee’, so to speak, in abeyance to this single outcome and issue. At present Singapore is dependent upon what are called its ‘four national taps’ as its supply strategy. In addition to importation, ‘local water catchment’ provides some supply, largely by way of collecting and channeling rainwater to Singapore’s 17 reservoirs via a network of rivers, canals and drains.