As urban environments become increasingly interconnected, the demand for precise and efficient pedestrian solutions in digitalized smart cities has grown significantly. This study introduces a scalable spatial visualization system designed to enhance interactions between individuals and the street in outdoor sidewalk environments. The system operates in two main phases: the spatial prior phase and the target localization phase. In the spatial prior phase, the system captures the user’s perspective using first-person visual data and leverages landmark elements within the sidewalk environment to localize the user’s camera. In the target localization phase, the system detects surrounding objects, such as pedestrians or cyclists, using high-angle closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras. The system was deployed in a real-world sidewalk environment at an intersection on a university campus. By combining user location data with CCTV observations, a 4D+ virtual monitoring system was developed to present a spatiotemporal visualization of the mobile participants within the user’s surrounding sidewalk space. Experimental results show that the landmark-based localization method achieves a planar positioning error of 0.468 m and a height error of 0.120 m on average. With the assistance of CCTV cameras, the localization of other targets maintains an overall error of 0.24 m. This system establishes the spatial relationship between pedestrians and the street by integrating detailed sidewalk views, with promising applications for pedestrian navigation and the potential to enhance pedestrian-friendly urban ecosystems.

How to keep inter-regional gaps in higher-education development within a reasonable range is a shared global challenge, yet much of the literature still treats zero gap as the benchmark. Grounded in the education-led development perspective, we posit that a gap is “reasonable” when education disparities are smaller than contemporaneous economic disparities. Based on this concept, this study develops a Development Equilibrium Index (DEI) framework. Using panel data for 31 Chinese provinces from 2003 to 2020, we find the following: (i) N-DEI is positive in most years, indicating that, overall, education gaps are smaller than economic gaps—consistent with higher education’s leading role in compressing economic gaps and supporting sustainability; (ii) At the provincial level, only 4 of 31 provinces (12.9%) show negative P-DEI, while the vast majority are positive, suggesting more supportive conditions to sustainable development. Furthermore, a median-based quadrant analysis for 2020 groups the 31 provinces into seven descriptive types, helping to interpret the variations in P-DEI signs and magnitudes and to inform targeted policy recommendations. The DEI thus reframes assessment from “narrowing gaps per se” to the goal of keeping education gaps below economic ones, providing a concise diagnostic tool for planning cohesive, resilient higher-education systems.