The transition of coal power plants has showed the struggles in overcoming coal energy in Europe, where its largest power plant, Bełchatów Power Station, in 2021 announced its fourteen-year closure plan. In the instances of Poland and Bulgaria, coal regions are hesitant to act for transitioning and their energy distribution systems still predominantly rely on coal. Therefore, alternatives for the transformation of coal-related infrastructure is critical for future urban planning strategies to enable a new adaptable way of living without carbon energy. In the first part, this paper will investigate how coal energy framed current architecture and infrastructure, which indicate why Poland and Bulgaria are reluctant to act due to their deep-rooted energy grids. The analysis of urban economic changes through satellite maps and archived photos in Poland and Bulgaria will demonstrate how their regional urban redevelopment gives urban planners directions for future transition. The last part explores new standards of living comfort for inhabitants to follow to propose new design schemes that architects and engineers should implement. This is supported by evaluations of building design strategies from existing projects. These strategies can suggest future redevelopment of coal-related industrial clusters and prepare a way of living without coal.

More than 3 billion plastic bags are consumed every day in China, posing a huge challenge for solid waste management. And scientists estimate that online food delivery businesses in China generated 1.6 million tons of packaging waste in 2017, nine times more than two years ago. This includes 1.2 million tons of plastic boxes, 175,000 tons of disposable chopsticks, 164,000 tons of plastic bags, and 44,000 tons of plastic spoons(Raymond Zhong & Carolyn Zhang, 2019) Despite the Chinese government's implementation of a "plastic ban" in 2008 and the issuance of guidelines by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in early 2020 to further strengthen plastic pollution control (also known as the new "plastic ban"), many people still use plastic bags in their daily lives, especially for takeaway food.
The take-away industry in China has grown rapidly in recent years, but related take-away waste recycling measures are inadequate, so understanding the implementation of government policies and people's behavior regarding the use of such materials is key to reducing take-away waste. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the socio-demographic, economic, housing, social participation, and environmental perception factors that influence households' use of single-use plastic bags or reusable items when ordering takeaway food, as well as changes in government policies for the recycling and disposal of take-away waste.
The study found that take-out waste includes not only plastic packaging but also food residue, which indirectly increases the difficulty of recycling. So this paper focuses on government policies, recycling strategies and public feedback, and based on these results, implications for policymakers and suggestions for further future study are offered.

Building an oil fairy-tale investigates oil’s potency as a socio-cultural force and its role in shaping civic spaces in Stavanger, Norway. It posits that the Nordic city represents an exemplary case study on the complex and co-dependent interaction between petroleum and architecture. Since the discovery of oil in Norway in the late 1960s, the historically peripheral Nordic nation has experienced a remarkable economic, social, cultural, and architectural transformation. The rapid and comprehensive transition towards a petroleumscape has given rise to the term ‘oljeevntyret’ or the oil fairy-tale in the Norwegian lexicon. The oil fairy-tale has functioned as a reflection of changing socio-cultural conditions and a potent device to perpetuate an energy culture reflected in Stavanger’s architecture, cultural practices, economic developments, governmental policies, and visual expressions over the past decades. Following a general analysis of the national and local historical context, the thesis uses four architectural case studies in Stavanger, supported by archival and contemporary writings and media, to demonstrate how the city’s oil fairy-tale and civic spaces have developed in a feedback loop. Oil actors’ political and economic sway has created a new class of oil-civic spaces in Stavanger. In turn, these oil spaces’ narrative potentials contribute to an ever-expanding petroleumscape and celebration of oil as a heroic and Norwegian product. As the end of the oil age looms closer and cities around the world, including Stavanger, strive to imagine a post-oil future, we must appreciate the power and extent of oil in shaping our everyday spaces. Only then may we engage meaningfully in imagining a post-oil city future for cities that have become deeply drenched in oil.

Since oil was struck at Dammam’s Oil Well No. 7 in 1938, the Dammam Metropolitan Area (henceforth referred to as ‘DMA) has undergone rapid urban expansion, in part due to the influx of foreign national oil workers. With their lifestyles differing from the local population, the urban sphere has developed to cater to their diverse demands. There is limited literature on the relationship between the history the foreign national populations’ urban experiences in the DMA and its petroleumscape. The petroleumscape, as defined by Carola Hein, is the physical, represented and lived palimpsest of petroleum’s physical and financial flows into the (urban) landscape guided by corporate and public actors. In the DMA, the petroleumscape’s main actor - ARAMCO – was the first to define spatial distributions of ethnic and socioeconomic groups in Saudi’s Eastern Province. Other actors such as the Saudi government and other petrochemical companies followed suit, resulting in ethnically segregated urban zones and architectural typologies. A failure to understand the historical relationships between petroleum, ethnicity and nationality could be an obstacle to current Saudi city-planning strategies, particularly frameworks such as Vision 2030, which anticipate an economy slowly shifting away from oil and ‘inclusive’ cities. This paper investigates how the development of the DMA’s petroleumscape resulted in urban spaces for foreign national populations (henceforth referred to as ‘FN populations’) and affected their urban liveability in terms of their housing, work, education and leisure environments. A study of this intricate historical relationship could provide a background for future urban planning policies in the DMA and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The analysis of historic documents, aerial imagery, photographs and geographical information systems can locate oil-related infrastructure throughout history. Coupled with personal accounts and statistics, segregation and integration of FNs in urban space is explored. An online questionnaire conducted for this research provides quantitative and qualitative data on the quality of life for FNs. Secondary sources, such as books, articles and magazines which investigate housing and employment conditions in Middle Eastern oil and port cities are used to analyse and deduce findings from primary sources. A cross analysis of sources and findings identifies and maps out urban interventions that improve liveability arising from Dammam’s petroleumscape. The historical upward trajectory of Dammam’s petroleum industry has improved liveability for FN residents since the discovery of oil in 1938. Consequently, through the creation of urban spaces, such as gated communities, cultural enclaves and commercial districts funded by petrodollars, liveability for FN populations has improved in tandem with the rise of petroleum. However, a generalisation of all FN groups cannot be made as their urban liveability has historically depended, and continues to depend, on their position on the racial and socioeconomic ladder. Saudi’s waning reliance on oil revenue will affect liveability in the DMA for Saudis and foreign nationals alike, possibly even altering urban distributions of various FN groups. The objective is to present the correlations and causations in the history of the DMA’s urban development and its FN population and to illustrate how and why this affects liveability for FNs so that the objectives of local planning authorities can better manage the demands of a historically diverse population, in line with the Vision 2030 framework and local urban planning schemes.