Public policy for the preservation and development of traditional villages in China has witnessed a shift. That is from the equal distribution of finances to officially recognised traditional villages to the prioritisation of the development of more potential traditional villages that stimulate the development of surrounding villages and regions. This study takes 206 traditional villages in Hubei Province as an example and proposes a method framework for ‘Feature identification, Hierarchical classification (FIHC) that combines field research, spatial geography and spatial network methods. The results of spatial geography show that traditional villages in Hubei province are unevenly distributed, mainly along the mountain ranges in the east and west, with scattered distribution in the central plains. The kernel density result reveals “3 + 2 high-density hotspot zones” (A, B, and C are high-density areas, whereas D and E are low-density areas). Furthermore, the results of the spatial network appear that the traditional villages’ ecological situation in Zone A is better than in other areas, but their transportation accessibility and economy are poor; Zone B villages’ transportation accessibility is better than in other areas; Zone C has the best economy; and three conditions of traditional villages in the D and E zones are poor. FIHC can identify villages with more development potential and stratify these villages in a multidimensional way. It is innovative and an important contribution to policymakers and planners in developing ‘phased and focused’ public policies and rural planning.

Embracing sustainable strategies that consider Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) has become a rapidly growing trend in urban development. Continued uncertainty on the sustainability assessment of design could drive a series of indecisive decision-making among design alternatives, further disrupting the potential opportunities toward sustainable DfMA. However, there is a lack of research on sustainable design assessments for DfMA and establishing a sustainable index. This research establishes an integrated value model for the sustainability assessment framework and DfMA sustainability index to address this challenge. This model integrates Building Information Modelling (BIM) with MIVES, a customisable Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) tool. The pilot case of this framework is the retrofit of a commercial building’s façade system, which demonstrated the capability of the proposed framework. Data collection and analysis include the comparisons between five design alternatives. This research furthers previous studies and has three-fold significance: 1) Establishing reasonable multi-criteria for the sustainable DfMA indices; 2) Adapting the MIVES approach for comparative analysis across three building phases to make it compatible with DfMA; 3) developing a quantitative analysis method for sustainable design assessment of DfMA in the construction industry.

Polder landscapes integrate agricultural production with water, settlement, and habitat management. Assessing these functions together can inform planning in flood-prone lowlands, but land-cover maps alone cannot explain how dikes, ditches, and settlements influence ecosystem services. Using the Honghu Basin in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, China, as a case study, we developed a GIS-based ecosystem service evaluation model combining typological interpretation, value equivalent factors, and analytic hierarchy process weighting. Eight indicators represented provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural dimensions. Services varied markedly across the basin, with higher integrated scores concentrated along major river networks and around administrative centers. Water supply scores were generally higher in the southeast, whereas traditional polders in the northwest combined relatively low flood-season regulation scores with distinctive waterfront landscape resources. Greater water-surface coverage did not consistently correspond to higher integrated spatial performance, suggesting that spatial configuration and connectivity merit attention alongside the area occupied by landscape elements. The findings support differentiated planning, including ditch maintenance, habitat mosaic retention, and protection of the character of waterfront settlements. Comparisons with studies from the Netherlands, Bangladesh, and the Vietnamese Mekong Delta identify potential applications and requirements for local calibration. The framework supports comparative assessment of polder landscapes and the identification of planning priorities. Further integration of hydrological monitoring, local indicator calibration, and beneficiary surveys can support the design of specific interventions.

The oral interview is an essential component of heritage study fieldwork. However, due to the individual memory bias, quick verification of the content's validity about the built environment is required. This paper aims to provide an efficient method for verifying the authenticity of oral interviews by combining architectural heritage data with digital analysis techniques and using spatial analysis as evidence. The method is based on the image pre-processing of existing architectural drawings, the creation of multiple planes and models through parametric variation factors matrix, and the generation of analysis images using daylight analysis algorithms. The Pix2Pix model is also introduced as a basis for tagging the planes and the images of the analysis results according to its principles. Learning by pairing the labeled images enables the computer to generate image analysis based on a given plane figure for fast analysis in the built environment. Following this, the authenticity of the oral interview’s content can be quickly determined. This paper examines the industrial heritage of the Puqi Textile General Factory, which was formed under the idea of rapid construction during the Third Front construction, using the factory ’s built environment and related oral content as the basis for analysis and verification. The findings did not satisfy the poor working conditions described in the oral interviews. Therefore, the authenticity of the oral content is doubtful and requires further verification.