As important natural features that deliver diverse ecosystem services including temperature regulation, water purification, and habitat provision, urban lakes are among the most revealing artefacts of contemporary urbanization. Once peripheral, they are now located within cities as waterfront amenities, leisure lakes, and neighborhood parks. This shift reflects not only changing urban form but also the human nature to seek out bodies of water for openness, reflection, and relief. It also highlights why urban lakes merit distinct attention: their enclosed and relatively still waters within urban spaces make them especially sensitive to human and environmental pressures. Yet their proliferation has outpaced our understanding. Across the world, cities continue to infill, dredge, and excavate waterbodies without a shared definition of what constitutes an “urban lake”. In China, for instance, our ongoing research has identified 16,522 urban lakes, but global hydrological datasets still treat them indistinguishably from other waterbodies. Despite their growing importance,1 urban lakes remain conceptually underdefined. This commentary addresses this gap by proposing an integrated framework that clarifies what constitutes an urban lake, synthesizes its ecological, social, and economic functions, and outlines future research directions for understanding them within rapidly urbanizing environments. [...] ... Read more

The concept of historic gardens has gradually expanded to encompass a broader range of landscape meanings. UNESCO's cultural landscape categories have significantly influenced land policy improvements in the context of globalization, with historic gardens being classified as Category 1 cultural landscapes. The other categories are organically evolved landscapes (Category 2) and associative cultural landscapes (Category 3). While existing studies have primarily focused on each of these categories individually, it remains unclear how to characterize a cultural landscape when all three categories coexist and influence each other, as seen in complex cases such as the Chengde Mountain Resort (CMR). Furthermore, strategies for improving sustainable land management based on this understanding are still lacking. This study uses landscape mapping to collect data, digitally reconstruct, and characterize cultural landscapes in the CMR based on four environmental factors: topography, accessibility, visibility, and land use changes. Based on this, we illustrate the evolution of the CMR through reconstruction, capturing four phases detailed in 144 scenes. From this, we identify six distinct groups of scenes with six targeted indicators, each reflecting specific spatial attributes of Category 1. Additionally, statistical and comparative analyses of land use changes illuminate various landscape dynamics of these scenes that correspond to Categories 2 and 3. The discussion presents a systematic sustainable pathway to characterize the interdependencies among UNESCO’s three cultural landscape categories. Based on these findings, this research proposes a three-level management model that connects dynamic authenticity and modern functionality, offering insights for urban policymakers navigating pluralistic cultural landscapes. ... Read more

The increasing recognition of the health benefits of blue spaces highlights their crucial role in constructing Healthy Cities and advancing Sustainable Development Goals. Given that promoting recreational running represents a fundamental pathway to harnessing these benefits, integrating it into spatial planning and design is imperative. Nevertheless, this integration process necessitates substantiated evidence, especially concerning variances among population groups. To address this gap, utilising crowdsourced data and a machine learning approach, this study investigates heterogeneous spatial distributions of recreational running across various age demographics in Rotterdam, with a specific emphasis on visual perceptions and built environments. The mapping results illustrate the varied allure of blue spaces for recreational running, exhibiting a trend of increased clustering in running activities with age, extending beyond the city centre. The outcomes of GWR and spatial regression models indicate significant associations between various visual perception factors and built environment indicators with individual running preferences. Crucially, disparities and spatial heterogeneity are evident in the impacts of different environmental factors on running across age groups. Accordingly, tailored planning strategies and patterns are proposed, informed by age-specific environmental perceptions and preferences, contributing to a deeper understanding of the blue-health mechanism and offering practical insights for creating health-promoting blue spaces. ... Read more

This thesis investigates the practical connection between health-promoting evidence and the spatial design of blue spaces. This endeavour aims to develop instrumental resources that facilitate the integration of the health benefits of natural environments into actionable strategies, thereby augmenting the development of design research and enhancing understanding of the nature-health nexus. The research methodically examines three interrelated aspects: understanding the academic contexts and methodological preparation from the design perspective, development of qualitative and quantitative design knowledge for fulfilling health benefits of blue spaces, and applications and reflections on proposed knowledge through design workshops and interviews. Initially, the thesis outlines the relationship between blue space and health from a design perspective, identifying a significant, unexplored gap. It then proposes a methodological framework to translate health-promoting evidence of blue spaces into design knowledge for practices. Subsequently, this thesis employs interdisciplinary techniques, integrating both qualitative and quantitative approaches, to generate varied types of design knowledge, including distilling worldwide precedent cases, summarising diverse geospatial and visualisation tools, and translating site-based evidence using spatiotemporal crowdsourcing data. The effectiveness and usability of the proposed knowledge are evaluated through design workshops, complemented by expert interviews across various fields, providing insights that reflect on the research outcomes and suggest future directions. Overall, by focusing on the interactive relationship between research and design, the principal contribution of this research lies in its attempt to translate theoretical evidence from public health into practical design interventions, exploring the potential of interdisciplinary tools and methods in facilitating this process. ... Read more

Riverscapes are a complex and multi-scale socio-ecological and hydrogeomorphic system, which is the result from the interaction between human and nature. The "River Style Framework", based on the principles of hydrogeomorphology, provides a mature learning tool to understand the "form and process". The paper made a systematic review of the main principles, procedures and contents of river style framework. The multi-scale spatial framework, the classification system of river style and geomorphic units provide the basic approach for describing and interpreting river character and behavior. At the watershed scale, the priority of restoration strategy of each reach can be identified after the geomorphological condition assessment and the restoration potential assessment; at the reach scale, with the evolution trajectory analysis of the specific reach, the change trend can be predicted, and providing knowledge evidence for "process-based" riverscape restoration design and actions. ... Read more

Water plays a fundamental role in human survival and well-being. Despite extensive research highlighting the importance of water-human relationships, how to cultivate intimacy between them at the architectural scale remains largely underexplored. This article explores this dynamic through a case study of the Master of the Nets Garden in China. Using spatial, empirical and experiential analyses, it introduces a three-stage framework that integrates both quantitative and qualitative methods and examines various conditions within the garden that foster intimacy between visitors and water. It concludes that spatial conditions within the perceptual sphere of water, enabling diverse experiential modes, are crucial for fostering a sense of intimacy between visitors and water at the architectural level. The article highlights water-human intimacy as a core value of water-centric built heritage. This value remains significant for researchers, spatial practitioners and policymakers, offering important insights for heritage preservation and sustainable development. ... Read more

Urban blue space offers substantial health benefits by encouraging population physical activity. Despite much evidence on the nature-health nexus, the relationship between blue space and recreational exercises remains under-studied, limiting the realisation of health benefits in blue space design. Using crowdsourced data, including volunteered geographic information and street view image data, this study investigates the associations of blue space quality with recreational running and cycling in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Results show that recreational exercise levels on street segments vary based on the blue space type and design. Compared to inland canals and rivers, small-scale recreational waterbodies are more conducive to running but not cycling, while both activities tend to cluster around the Nieuwe Maas River. Interestingly, the Water View Index shows a general negative association with both activities after adjusting for the blue space type. Besides the waterbody characteristics, eye-level environmental factors, including higher Green View Index, lower building density, more diverse land use, greater connected street network and fewer traffic elements, are associated with more running and cycling exercises. Results for visual complexity and neighbourhood population composition are mixed depending on the exercise type. These findings are further translated into spatial design patterns for developing exercise-supportive and health-promoting blue spaces. ... Read more

[Objective] Water could be regarded as a vital element for human existence, which has shaped cities for centuries. Blue spaces, centred around water bodies, play a pivotal role in urban development by delivering various ecosystem services and influencing the design and planning of urban environments. In addition to the numerous benefits and services provided by water, recent research indicates that blue space exposure and perception could also enhance human health and well-being, especially in urban contexts. However, health benefits are often not or implicitly taken into account in design practices. While an increasing number of researchers acknowledge the importance of applying current health evidence to practice, there is currently a lack of specific methodological support to bridge the gap between evidence and actions. Furthermore, given the growing focus on healthy urban living, the demand for the development of healthy cities, and the requirements of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), addressing this gap is of utmost importance at present. Based on the analysis and synthesis of existing evidence, this research aims to propose a conceptual framework that links the health benefits derived from blue space exposure and perception with spatial design practices. The framework attempts to address the current gap and encourage ongoing exploration in future research and practice. [Methods] This research first searches relevant publications on blue space and human health included in the Web of Science Core Collection and Google Scholar during the past five years, and selects the representative ones for detailed analysis and summary. Based on the analysis results, the key pathways linking blue space exposure and perception with human health are identified. Next, a tailored methodological, conceptual framework linking health evidence and design practices is proposed according to the frameworks and evidence in existing studies. Meanwhile, the results of the literature analysis and several Rotterdam cases at different scales are used to demonstrate the application of the framework and illustrate its feasibility.

[Results] Based on the results of the literature analysis, three main blue space exposure and perception types are summarized, including indirect perception and exposure, accidental perception and exposure, and intentional perception and exposure. Next, four main pathways linking the exposure to or perception of blue space and human health are identified and briefly discussed, including enhancing physical activities, reducing harmful exposure, benefiting psychological outcomes, and promoting social interactions. Subsequently, a four-step conceptual framework that translates the health evidence into practical design knowledge is proposed. The steps comprise extracting critical health evidence, summarizing key design concepts, categorizing core design elements, and translating into design principles, spatial patterns, and evaluation methods. At first, the research extracts key evidence from 57 representative literature. And then, the research summarizes 42 key design concepts. Next, through an analysis of the similarities and differences between the design concepts, five core design elements are identified, including the quantity, accessibility, visibility, spatial quality, and design process of blue space. […] ... Read more

Water, a vital element of human existence, shapes cities and benefits human health through daily exposure. This study delves into advanced digital methods to describe blue space exposure effectively, aiming to optimise spatial accessibility and visibility of water for designing sustainable healthy urban environments. Rotterdam is utilised as a test case, demonstrating the role of these methods in evaluating the performance of blue space exposure in urban environments, specifically in terms of spatial morphology and physical characteristics. Eight distinct methods are discussed, addressing exposure type, scale levels, and design interactions, subsequently offering a novel flowchart for their integration into cross-scale spatial design and policymaking. The findings underscore the need to select appropriate methods to analyse and optimise blue exposure in spatial planning or design assignments. The selection should be based on design intentions and data availability. The biggest potential is found in combining these methods to handle the complexity of urban issues. The research reveals the importance of blue space accessibility and visibility in promoting sustainable healthy urban environments while also emphasising the need to go beyond them, factoring in the quality, function, and usage of blue spaces.
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Existing studies indicate that a direct view of aquatic elements benefits well-being, and houses with blue views are often associated with higher prices. Therefore, developing analysis and design methods for visibility research of blue spaces are crucial to advance spatial design practice. Especially digital methods for analysing blue visibility and their potential in design still need to be identified and explored. This study explores the application potential of some powerful digital visibility analysis methods for blue space design. Specifically, this research first provides an overview of poten- tial methods for analysing the visibility of water. Next, two practical design-oriented digital methods are briefly elaborated and illustrated by cases in Rotterdam (the Netherlands). Meanwhile, the study explores how the analysis results support spatial design practice. Last, the study discusses the potential of integrating blue visibility analysis methods into the iterative design process and makes prospects for future research. ... Read more

Water is a critical element of human existence and has shaped cities for centuries. In urban environments, water provides multiple ecosystem services and is an important element in the design of urban environments. Next to the many qualities and services provided by water, recent research indicates that exposure to freshwater blue space also enhances human health and wellbeing. However, health benefits are often not or implicitly taken into account in the design perspective. This research aims to provide a systematic overview of the available body of knowledge regarding the relationship between freshwater blue space, health, and design. This study first proposes a bi-directional conceptual framework connecting health evidence with design practice. And then, scientometric analysis is employed to review 1338 research articles on freshwater blue-health research. The results show that the number of articles in this area is increasing yearly, attracting more and more disciplines and stimulating interdisciplinary collaboration. Freshwater blue-health research is broadening to emphasize usage and experience, psychological advantages, and particular demographics, which provides a solid basis for future design research. At the same time, it becomes clear that there is a strong demand to develop adaptive design knowledge that integrates the available health evidence and operationalizes it in healthy freshwater blue space design. This paper could help researchers understand the current research progress and future research directions, as well as facilitate multiple applications of health evidence by practitioners. ... Read more