The research on the quality of natural habitats and human settlements has been paid attention to by academia, design professionals and policymakers in recent years. Most of the concern is driven by rapid spatial transformation of and ecological deterioration in both natural habitats and human settlement globally due to the rapid urbanisation process, climate change, and environmental disasters (Franklin, Anderson, Gutiérrez, & Burnham, 2000; Kareiva, Tallis, Ricketts, Daily, & Polasky, 2011; Zhu et al., 2020). Besides the spatial and environmental changes, various social-demographic and economic factors connected with concerns on gender, age and lifestyle also contribute to the evolution of public space and architectural space that influence the daily life of individuals and communities (Carmona, 2014; Moser, 2017). The questions raised here are, what is the status of habitat quality and the spatial quality in and around the human settlements? How can we assess the status? And to what extent can planners and policymakers develop strategies to better balance the need to sustain the quality of nature and human settlement based on quantitative and qualitative assessment and prediction?

Mega-events have been explored by cities for urban reimaging and urban transformation processes. Due to their scale and catalytic effects, mega-events offer great opportunities for cities to showcase their local culture and create opportunities for their local economy, as well as the tourism and retail sectors, while also serving as catalysts for urban regeneration. The current COVID-19 pandemic has created a global crisis of unprecedented scale. Several extreme measures have been deployed to avoid contagion risk, including city lockdowns, subjecting residents to COVID-19 quarantine and social distancing, the closure of tourism attractions and the retail sector, as well as travel restrictions. This global crisis created a temporary shock to large-scale travel, the tourism sector and mass gathering, which resulted in the cancellation or postponement of nearly all mega-events in 2020. This paper identified the various challenges faced by event organisers during the COVID-19 pandemic and examined how relevant stakeholders addressed event risks and uncertainties. This paper suggests the incorporation of resilience in strategies for event legacy creation. Mega-events must incorporate adaptability and flexibility in their design, as well as event legacy planning and capacity building, to address the vulnerability and disturbances that future mega-events may encounter.

Most High-Speed Railway (HSR) station areas in China can be found at the urban periphery or in suburban areas, a phenomenon that has often been criticised. While debate about the influence these location choices have on the economic and sustainable development of cities rages on, little attention has been paid to the decision-making processes leading to these locations. This paper investigates these processes by comparing HSR stations in three cities: Shenzhen, Lanzhou and Jingmen. Our findings can help actors involved in making location choices develop awareness of different interests and create the conditions for successful development of HSR station areas.

The rapid development of Chinese megacities in the last decades have been mainly characterized by top-down planning and large-scale urban development and redevelopment, as well as by using place-making as a tool for city branding. This approach has also been used in other countries and has been constantly criticized for replacing old neighborhoods. In recent years, alternative development modes and participative approaches in urban regeneration practices have emerged in cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen. This paper investigates participative urban regeneration cases in Yangpu District, located in Shanghai, and the Dalang subdistrict in Shenzhen. Both case studies are located at the urban-rural interface, where past industrialization processes have resulted in complex sociospatial conditions. The primary focus was to analyze the governance aspects in the cases, such as the enabling factors that allow the participative approach to emerge in these projects and their governance model. This paper concludes on the importance of civil society organizations and the incorporation of social objectives in emerging participative regeneration practices.