Border cities face significant challenges due to political, environmental, and social issues. Strong urban governance can help resolve many of these problems, but it requires identifying practical factors specific to each city’s location. This study aimed to assess the state of urban governance in Paveh, a border city with a population of 25,771 people. The research used both primary data collection (through a questionnaire) and secondary data sources (local and national databases and documents). The study randomly selected 379 households from Paveh’s population and determined a reliability value of 0.913 using the Cochrane procedure. To assess Paveh’s urban governance, eight criteria were used: participatory, rule-of-law compliance, transparency, responsiveness, consensus-oriented, equitable and inclusive, effective and efficient, and accountability. The findings revealed that Paveh’s urban governance, particularly in the dimensions of transparency and participation, is in an unfavorable situation.

Iran has one of the oldest civilizations in the world, and many elements of today’s urban planning and design have their origins in the country. However, mass country-city migration from the 1960s onwards brought enormous challenges for the country’s main cities in the provision of adequate housing and associated services, resulting in a range of sub-standard housing solutions, particularly in Tehran, the capital city. At the same time, and notably in the past decade, Iran’s main cities have had significant involvement in the smart city movement. The Smart Tehran Program is currently underway, attempting to transition the capital towards a smart city by 2025. This study adopts a qualitative, inductive approach based on secondary sources and interview evidence to explore the current housing problems in Tehran and their relationship with the Smart Tehran Program. It explores how housing has evolved in Tehran and identifies key aspects of the current provision, and then assesses the main components of the Smart Tehran Program and their potential contribution to remedying the housing problems in the city. The article concludes that although housing related issues are at least being raised via the new smart city technology infrastructure, any meaningful change in housing provision is hampered by the over centralized and bureaucratic political system, an out of date planning process, lack of integration of planning and housing initiatives, and the limited scope for real citizen participation.

In marginalized ecosystem-dependent rural communities, access to ecosystem services plays a crucial role in achieving sustainable livelihoods. This study was conducted to find out the influence of various livelihood capital components on the access mechanism for forest-based Provisioning Services (PS) in some selected villages of the Gosaba Block on the fringes of the Sundarban. The contribution of the livelihood capitals to gain access to Provisioning Services (PS) was identified using factor analysis on 160 households, selected through cluster random sampling. The sustainability levels of livelihood capitals were analyzed using the Prescott-Allen method (2001). The natural, financial, social, and physical capitals were significantly below average, while the human capital was close to average. Enhancement of human, physical, financial, and social capital, ease in issuing Biometric Fisherman cards for entering forests, flexibility in borrowing loans, and ecotourism by involving local villagers must be encouraged to enhance forest-based provisioning services in the near future.

Urban public spaces are the interface of any city that could tell about the city’s dynamic and status quo. In addition, Urban public spaces play a pivotal role in shaping societies’ dynamics and can significantly affect conflict and peacebuilding initiatives. In a context marked by Conflict’s profound impact, this article aims to contribute to the knowledge base for informed urban interventions that foster positive interactions and reconciliation in post-conflict cities. The article seeks to explore the intricate relationship between urban spaces and their influence on war or to promote sustainable peacebuilding through investigating the various roles of the urban public spaces during the war and peacetimes via residents’ experiences of the diverse spaces’ functions that shaped the city’s status quo. In addition, considering the interplay of social dynamics, conflict history, and the mental spatial map of cities in public urban spaces can influence lasting peace or upcoming conflicts. This article focuses on Aleppo as a case study, understanding the positive and negative experiences from the residents’ perspective before and during the current war in Syria, and even distinguishes between two periods during the recent war, which are the active violence and after the end of the direct active violence, where it could inform the decision-makers and urban planners on the areas of focus while developing post-war urban public spaces to ensure its positive role in fostering peace and be able to deal with the social dynamic and the mental spatial map that developed along with the conflict history. The paper utilised a mixed-methods approach, encompassing a case study review of Aleppo City from an urban perspective and fieldwork involving focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with Aleppian from different backgrounds and geographic areas that represent the social dynamic of the city, as well as approached Aleppian who are still in living in the city and those who flee out of it to ensure the coverage of different political direction in addition field work engaged with academia and technical from the city who shared their knowledge and experiences working in the city. Participants were prompted to reflect on their pre-war familiarity with public places and share their experiences. These experiences were categorized by enabling a comprehensive understanding of how conflict context influenced these spaces. The article results offer an understanding of the peace-guiding functions of the urban public spaces based on the city residents’ experiences that could inform architects and urban planners in designing spaces conducive to sustainable peacebuilding. The article’s findings underscore the importance of strategically designed urban public spaces in promoting peace and social cohesion.