Caterina Villani

University College Dublin | UCD · School of Architecture

Modern Chinese cities, which have developed at a rapid speed and on a massive scale for about thirty years, are confronted with many challenges to becoming more livable, healthy and sustainable. Among a variety of design principles this book suggests that walkability is the fundamental principle to improving quality of life. A walkable city provide...

With face-to-face interaction proving beneficial for mental health, there is still a paucity of research on the correlation between ground floor features (GFFs), defined here as the features of the ground floor of buildings overlooking a street, and public open space face-to-face interaction density (POSFTFID), defined as the density of human face-...

In high-density Asian cities, the increasing scarcity of public open spaces gives rise to the need for stationary activities to tap into spaces originally conceived exclusively to channel pedestrian movements, such as grade separation pedestrian systems. However, the types and patterns of stationary activities on elevated walkways remain mostly une...

Pedestrianisation, the conversion of a vehicular street for pedestrian use, is increasingly being proposed worldwide as a sustainable measure by hegemonic powers. Pedestrianisation can bolster uneven urban development patterns, however social tensions can magnify on the pedestrianised street, where deprived social groups claim the right to the city...

Despite the growing body of work on how COVID-19 impacts the use of public space, few studies focused on vulnerable social groups. This article outlines a systematic analysis of the use of public space by migrant domestic workers before and after the pandemic outbreak in Hong Kong. The analysis reveals changes in behavioral patterns, and we discuss...

Knowledge management (KM) closely relates to team creativity and is a critical strategy for businesses to maintain competitiveness. The synergy between KM and team creativity benefits and empower andragogical leadership by increasing team engagement, which results in organizational success. Prior studies examined the KM models, processes, systems,...

Knowledge management (KM) closely relates to team creativity and is a critical strategy for businesses to maintain competitiveness. The synergy between KM and team creativity benefits and empower andra- gogical leadership by increasing team engagement, which results in organizational success. Prior studies examined the KM models, processes, systems...

In recent years waterfronts have progressively become the focus of local administrations, consultancy agencies, and private developers concerned with public health, city branding, and real estate development. Subsequently, they turned into central stages in which cities and societies can be represented, contested, and inverted. However, many questi...

The e-market is prosperous in China, but the factors that stimulate or deter its development remain unclear. This study focuses on designers (interaction, user interface, product, and user experience designers) in the Chinese e-marketplace to examine the relationship between creative self-efficacy (CSE), achievement motivation (including motivation...

This article retraces the impact of evolving hegemonic rapid transit planning and design strategies on pedestrian integration between stations and neighbourhoods, using Hong Kong as a longitudinal case. Mixed-methods research, triangulating documentary analysis, spatial analysis, and in-depth interviews, identified six typologies across three histo...

Spatial justice, specifically accessibility, Universal Design and the fulfilment of human rights for vulnerable groups are increasingly deemed relevant issues in urban research and city-level agendas concerning public spaces. Although the development of older adult-friendly urban environments is part of the agenda to promote healthy ageing societie...

“Wang-hong” urbanism is an ever-growing trend in Chinese cities. The concept refers to the phenomenon that the (re)development of an urban district happens on the basis of the interactions among physical spaces, app-based sharing platforms, and certain aesthetic criteria. Businesses market themselves on the internet for the sake of a wang-hong vibe...

Asian cities have increasingly been promoting the creation of walkable built environments as a catalyst for local economic development in global competition. However, the economic influences of pedestrianization are still debatable without sufficient quantitative assessments in Asia's commercialized cityscape along with mega-rail projects, high-ris...

The public space plays a crucial role in providing adequate infrastructure for vulnerable social groups in the context of high-density urban Asia. In this study, a well-known elevated pedestrian network in Hong Kong emerges as a revelatory case for the comparative analysis of the pattern of stationary uses before and after the COVID-19 pandemic out...

This study aims to investigate urban ergonomic features through the healthy city approach. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is adopted to make a pairwise comparison and ranking of multiple features of urban ergonomics. A small online panel was organized with ten experts of architecture and urban design with a minimum of 10 years of experience. Find...

COVID-19 is expected to impact the low-income groups' use of public space and related quality of life beyond the current pandemic outbreak. To what extent may the current pandemic affect the use of public space once some restrictions will be lifted? This study focuses on the migrant domestic workers' spatio-temporal changes in the patterns of publi...

An increasing number of urban areas are failing to provide citizens with an adequate amount and quality of public open space. In this regard, Hong Kong epitomizes an extreme condition, supplying only 2.7-2.8 m2 of open space per capita. The burden of this scarcity falls most heavily on economically disadvantaged social groups, such as migrant domes...

In the last decades, urban river regeneration (URR) has been increasingly adopted to solve environmental issues, especially in China. The prevalence of this trend is due in part to the fact that, besides solving water pollution problems, urban rivers are a potential new source of open public space for contemporary cities. Due to the extremely rapid...

International organizations promote the equitable provision of open public spaces (OPS) as a strategy for healthy cities planning. In the context of high-density Asian cities, the densely built environment, constraints generated by mobility infrastructures and the limited distribution of OPS pose challenges to the implementation of equitable OPS pr...

Temporary pedestrianisation of streets is emerging as an effective strategy to increase the supply of open public space and to reduce motorized transport. This was discussed in the book Walkable Cities in High Density China: Livable, Healthy and Sustainable (Wang et al., 2018).The case of foreign domestic workers (FDWs) appropriating a temporarily...

Due to accelerating globalization and urbanization in recent years Shanghai and many other Chinese cities experienced significant transformations in the form of economic investments, city expansions, and development of the transportation networks. This led to the creation of new patterns of urban development consisting of arterial, multi-lane vehic...

The thesis is about Shanghai’s informal patterns of pedestrian mobility. It is organized in three parts: a general part of cities comparison, the second part focuses on Lujiazui area, Pudong district; the third part concentrates on Caoyang village, Putuo district. Firstly, we started our research with a Cities investigation, a comparison between S...