The aging population presents numerous challenges and the design and management of living environments are not an exception. This literature review and analysis brings together topics related to the living environment of the aging population and the concept of sustainability. The article presents the review of the existing design concepts that are applied to planning the environment for the elderly, including (i) design for all, (ii) universal design, and (iii) inclusive design. Furthermore, this review highlights the aspects of sustainability and the peculiarities of the aging population that should be taken into account in the design and management of their living environment. Key points related to sustainable aging are highlighted, and the possibility of complementing the existing design concepts with the concept of biophilic design is proposed in order to strengthen their social, psychological, and ecological aspects.
The ongoing discourse on air quality and climate changes positions walkability as a pivotal point of sustainable urban planning. Urban studies examine a city’s walkability in terms of pedestrian flows, design qualities, and street network topology, leaving walkability comparative frameworks under development. Building on the space syntax theory, this research introduces a “walkability compass”, a four spatial indicator-designed tool for city walkability assessment and comparison. The tools are being tested on eight Baltic region cities: Vilnius, Kaunas (LT), Malmö (SE), Riga (LV), Tallinn (ES), Gdansk, Bialystok, Lublin (PL). The nine-step method framework integrates four indexes: Gravity (Gr), Reach (Re), Straightness (St), and Population density (Pop). The “walkability compass” results reveal significant Re and St correlations; thus, visual and cultural aspects become the main factors in pedestrian-friendly cities. The spatial pattern typology has matched similar cities (Malmö and Kaunas) to work closely on sustainable urban planning development. In all case studies, specific walkability zones were mapped, but the Gr zones turned out to be the most compact ones (the Z-score of Gr was ranged from 355.4 to 584; other indexes oscillated between 209.4 and 542.6). The walkability mapping results are publicly shared via WebMap to stimulate the participatory discussion on case studies cities further development.
The article focuses on sociocultural, socioeconomic and environmental sustainability dimensions with respect to heritage buildings and built heritage management knowledge transfer between two European countries -Lithuania and Cyprus. These countries had joined European Union in 2004 and since then had achieved some advancements in implementing the policies of sustainability and sustainable heritage management. The aim of this research was to demonstrate the possible knowledge transfer fields related to heritage and the body of knowledge that can be transferred from Lithuania to Cyprus and vice versa resulting in the positive heritage buildings management innovations. The methods of research included the analysis of literature, the empirical research in heritage objects, and the descriptive analysis of obtained data and selected cases as a form of narrative knowledge transfer. The results of the analysis have demonstrated that balanced country-to-country knowledge transfer can give stimulus to positive heritage buildings management innovations including re-functioning of heritage buildings, the attention to users' comfort in historic structures and low-cost heritage actualisation initiatives.
The concept of sustainable development has influenced the evolution of many scientific and practical activities. An application of this concept to landscape, as a product and a field of interaction of human and natural processes, is possible and necessary. It is evident that concepts of landscape and cultural heritage are closely interrelated: cultural heritage can obviously exist in a landscape and influence it as well as landscape can be treated as cultural heritage. The interrelationship between these concepts makes possible the search for links between cultural heritage and sustainable development of landscape. Built heritage, the abundant category of cultural heritage encompassing historic buildings, their ensembles, and other structures, has an indisputable influence on landscapes and is crucial for their sustainable development. In order to determine the influence of built heritage on sustainable development of landscape, four main dimensions of sustainability representing the integration of human and natural processes (i.e. cultural, economic, environmental, and social) are distinguished and analysed in this paper.
The urban economists have stressed the importance of various amenities for the attractiveness of urban areas for residents and businesses and built cultural heritage can be considered as one of such amenities, the benefits of which should not be overlooked. This research was aimed to analyze the influence of heritage aspect including the heritage status or features of the building and the historic built environment in general on the real estate prices and development in Kaunas using hedonic price method. Two sets of data were collected for the analysis - general, including heritage buildings and including new construction since 2013. The research has demonstrated that heritage status and the year of construction (as older buildings can be considered having heritage features) have no significant positive influence on the real estate prices. Meanwhile, the location, heritage context and the architectural distinctiveness of new architecture have a direct influence on the real estate prices. The heritage context correlates with architectural quality of new construction as well. This reveals the benefits of heritage context both for the real estate developers and households; however, the study shows the unemployed social-economic potential of historic buildings as generators and maintainers of heritage context.
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