Introduction: Understanding how urban environments shape public sentiment is crucial for urban planning. Traditional methods, such as surveys, often fail to capture evolving sentiment dynamics. This study leverages language and vision models to assess the influence of urban features on public emotions across spatial contexts and timeframes.Methods: A two-phase computational framework was developed. First, sentiment inference used a BERT-based model to extract sentiment from geotagged social media posts. Second, urban context inference applied PSPNet and Mask R-CNN to street view imagery to quantify urban design features, including visual enclosure, human scale, and streetscape complexity. The study integrates publicly available data and spatial simulation techniques to examine sentiment-urban form relationships over time.Results: The analysis reveals that greenery and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure positively influence sentiment, while excessive openness and fenced-off areas correlate with negative sentiment. A hotspot analysis highlights shifting sentiment patterns, particularly during societal disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic.Discussion: Findings emphasize the need to incorporate public sentiment into urban simulations to create inclusive, safe, and resilient environments. The study provides data-driven insights for planners, supporting human-centered design interventions that enhance urban livability.

Purpose: This paper addresses housing problems of coastal areas in Bangladesh and investigates container-modular-housing (CMH) as a potential sustainable solution that establishes a resilient community.Design/methodology/approach: Primary data highlight the underlying challenges of coastal-housing developed by monitoring the day-to-day operations of the community and conducting interviews with community members. Secondary data came from existing literature on coastal-housing rules and regulations, CMH and similar ideas. The study used a hypothetical CMH cluster design, with three primary objectives in mind: future settlement re-arrangement, economic sustainability and environmental sustainability. To achieve the objectives, the research used a comparative examination of the current constructed form and CMH, as well as a computer-aided simulation approach.Findings: Primary findings encompass issues of a given coastal area, including surrounding site studies, sustainability and resiliency demands due to broad exposure to the natural calamities. Driving toward a “CMH” based home design has the ability to create strategies for a resilient and sustainable community development while taking three primary objectives into account.Research limitations/implications: A pilot project is needed to analyze the socio-cultural impact and overall construction feasibility.Practical implications: This research could be implemented to transform an informal construction system into a technical, resilient, sustainable architectural and engineering solution to build resilient communities.Originality/value: Numerous research projects have focused on the environmental sustainability of CMH. However, this study focuses on construction sustainability considering three major aspects which are yet to be addressed.

Systems thinking (ST) is a foundational cognitive skillset to advance sustainability education but has not been well examined for learners prior to higher education. This case study research in rural middle schools in the Midwestern U.S. examines systems thinking outcomes of a place-based energy literacy unit focused on energy-efficient building design. The unit employs the science of energy-efficient, green buildings to illuminate the ways in which energy flows between natural and built environments. The unit emphasized electrical, light, and thermal energy systems and the ways these systems interact to create functional and energy-efficient buildings. This study focuses on three case study classrooms where students across schools (n = 89 students) created systems models as part of pre- and post-unit tests (n = 162 models). The unit tests consisted of student drawings, annotations, and writings, culminating into student-developed systems models. Growth from pre- to post-test was observed in both the identification of system elements and the linkages between elements. System elements included in the models were common classroom features, such as windows, lights, and temperature control, suggesting that rooting the unit in place-based teaching may support ST skills.

The paper analyses the issues faced by a minuscule area of a slum habitat in Dhaka city, Bangladesh. The area of the slum worked upon, the “Beltola Bostee”1, faces major problems of frequent flooding when the households of the area become unfit to live in. Hence, the inhabitants of this area shift to share other households, overcrowding the already cramped living quarters. The idea of “Beltola Lilies” emerges as an attempt to resolve the problem and provide the best possible solution. The “Beltola Lilies” is conceived as a modular accommodation that stands on ground during the dry season, but floats on water during floods, providing the inhabitants a healthy, organised, productive and cost-effective solution for housing. Built with inexpensive and indigenous materials, requiring minimum effort in construction and maintenance, having low energy needs and being sufficiently livable, it promises to address and eradicate some of the current dwelling problems in the slums that exist all over the country.