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Twenty-minute neighbourhoods highlight the importance of well-connected and mixed-used neighbourhoods and communities with proximate access to employment, essential services, public transport, and open spaces. Shorter distances together with re-prioritised public spaces encourage more active transport choices, resulting in public health benefits and reduced environmental pollution. Higher liveability brought about by mixed-use developments enables people to have equitable access to local facilities, amenities, and employment opportunities, promoting vibrancy, social cohesion, and intergenerational connections. The attributes of 20-minute neighbourhoods also combine to create places, that are acknowledged as friendly for all ages, address changing needs across the life course, and provide better support for the ageing population. Furthermore, there are indications that 20-minute neighbourhoods may be more resilient against many of the negative impacts of stringent public health protocols such as those implemented in periods of lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this article, we evaluate and compare planning policies and practices aimed at establishing 20-minute neighbourhoods in Melbourne (Australia) and Scotland (the UK). Using case studies, we discuss similarities and differences involved in using place-based approaches of 20-minute neighbourhoods to address 21st-century challenges in key areas of health and wellbeing, equity, environmental sustainability, and community resilience.

This article examines outstanding “sustainable” skyscrapers that received international recognition, including LEED certification. It identifies vital green features in each building and summarizes the prominent elements for informing future projects. Overall, this research is significant because, given the mega-scale of skyscrapers, any improvement in their design, engineering, and construction will have mega impacts and major savings (e.g., structural materials, potable water, energy, etc.). Therefore, the extracted design elements, principles, and recommendations from the reviewed case studies are substantial. Further, the article debates controversial design elements such as wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, glass skin, green roofs, aerodynamic forms, and mixed-use schemes. Finally, it discusses greenwashing and the impact of COVID-19 on sustainable design.

In this paper, we have examined the effects of COVID-19 on the socio-economic condition of the three-wheeled electric vehicle drivers in some selected areas of Bangladesh from the cross-sectional data (September–November 2020). The results of linear regression indicate that under COVID-19 conditions, age (p = 0.022) and hardship (p = 0.000) positively, and education (p = 0.036), driving duration (p = 0.023), COVID consciousness (p = 0.086) and easy bike vehicle (p = 0.000) negatively affects income of the respondents. The deaths of COVID in the district (p = 0.003), income (p = 0.000), age (p = 0.037), easy bike vehicle (p = 0.018), debt (p = 0.059) and sufferings of diseases (p = 0.044) positively, and property holdings (p = 0.028), residence in urban areas (p = 0.004) and COVID consciousness (p = 0.082) negatively affect the family expenditure. The results from binary logistics regressions show that diseases sufferings (adjusted p = <0.001; unadjusted p = <0.001), corona fear (unadjusted p = 0.005; adjusted p = <0.001) have positive, and income (unadjusted p = <0.001; adjusted p = <0.001), cooking fuel (unadjusted p = 0.003; adjusted p = 0.091) and easy bike vehicle (unadjusted p = <0.001; adjusted p = 0.288) have negative association with hardship or misery due to COVID-19; death of COVID-19 in the district (unadjusted p = 0.008; adjusted p = 0.037), hardship or misery (adjusted p = 0.005; adjusted p = 0.001), and urban dwelling area (unadjusted p = 0.002; adjusted p = 0.004) have positive, and access to pure drinking water (unadjusted p = 0.005; adjusted p = 0.011) has negative link with corona fear; and, family savings (unadjusted p = 0.001; adjusted p = 0.013), satisfaction in the current job (unadjusted p = <0.001; adjusted p = <0.001), and government medical service (unadjusted p = 0.065; adjusted p = 0.012) have positive affiliation, and household size (unadjusted p = 0.007; adjusted p = 0.020) has negative affiliation with the continuation desire of the current job of respondents. All the obtained results are consistent and have significant policy implications.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought rampant changes in skill needed in the labor market. It has accentuated technological disruption leaving millions in dire need of reskilling and upskilling. In this paper, we empirically analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic related lockdown on the thrust of skills upgradation among people. By analyzing the Google trends data of 13 countries, we test the effect of the lockdown implementations on the urge to upgrade the skills through online searches for skills enhancement. Using difference-in-difference estimation approach, we found a substantial hike in the frequency of search terms related to skills upgradation. Our results suggest that people are utilizing the excess time, made available due to lockdowns, by exploring avenues to enhance their skills to accumulate human capital. The online educational platforms have been proven vital. The findings of this study establish the causal link between use of online education platforms and human capital development.

The COVID-19 pandemic affects all of society and hinders day-to-day activities from a straightforward perspective. The pandemic has an influential impact on almost everything and the characteristics of the pandemic remain unclear. This ultimately leads to ineffective strategic planning to manage the pandemic. This study aims to elucidate the typical pandemic characteristics in line with various temporal phases and its associated measures that proved effective in controlling the pandemic. Besides, an insight into diverse country's approaches towards pandemic and their consequences is provided in brief. Understanding the role of technologies in supporting humanity gives new perspectives to effectively manage the pandemic. Such role of technologies is expressed from the viewpoint of seamless connectivity, rapid communication, mobility, technological influence in healthcare, digitalization influence, surveillance and security, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT). Furthermore, some insightful scenarios are framed where the full-fledged implementation of technologies is assumed, and the reflected pandemic impacts in such scenarios are analyzed. The framed scenarios revolve around the digitalized energy sector, an enhanced supply chain system with effective customer-retailer relationships to support the city during the pandemic scenario, and an advanced tracking system for containing virus spread. The study is further extended to frame revitalization strategies to highlight the expertise where significant attention needs to be provided in the post-pandemic period as well as to nurture sustainable development. Finally, the current pandemic scenario is analyzed in terms of occurred changes and is mapped into SWOT factors. Using Fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution based Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, these SWOT factors are analyzed to determine where prioritized efforts are needed to focus so as to traverse towards sustainable cities. The results indicate that the enhanced crisis management ability and situational need to restructure the economic model emerges to be the most-significant SWOT factor that can ultimately support humanity for making the cities sustainable.

Over the last thirty years, sustainability has become a growing concern in the fashion industry. While there is agreement among a growing range of actors regarding the need to engage with the social and environmental challenges created by the fashion industry, there is less consent regarding what sustainability entails. Although “sustainability” may be intuitively understood, it has different meanings, depending on how it is applied, and who it is applied by. Without a clear-cut definition, sustainability becomes subjective. In this context, there is a need for research at the intersection of brand-sustainability initiatives and their communication to consumers, who play a vital role in this transition. Drawing on a case study of the Swedish fashion industry, we explore how evolving industrial business models and emerging best practices are informed by a robust understanding of sustainability. We evaluate how brands communicate sustainability to consumers across three key sites: brand websites (including corporate social responsibility reports), social media platforms, and in-store campaigns. We found that not only do brands use a range of practices to define sustainability differently, but furthermore, these definitions vary depending on the context. Considering the industry’s ongoing history with greenwashing, it is vital to address and confront this issue head on. We argue that there is a need to determine what constitutes sustainability in the fashion industry and, in turn, hold businesses to that standard. As COVID-19 has only magnified and intensified these challenges, the article explores the implications of a more robust approach for both theory and practice.

Neither war nor recession or any kind of prior disaster has been considered a prelude to the looming threat of climate change over the past era as coronavirus (hereafter COVID-19) has in only a few months. Although numerous studies have already been published on this topic, there has not been compelling evidence critically assessing the impact of COVID-19 by and on climate change. The present study fills this gap by taking a more holistic approach to elaborate factors, e.g., natural and anthropogenic factors, ocean submesoscales, radiative forces, and greenhouse gas/CO2 emissions, that may affect climate change in a more prevalent and pronounced manner. Based on the statistical data collected from the NASA Earth Observatory, the European Space Agency, and the Global Carbon Project, the findings of this study reveal that the climate/environment has improved during COVID-19, including better environmental quality and water quality with low carbon emissions and sound pollution. In the lockdown during the epidemic, the emissions of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) significantly decreased because of the lower usage of transportation, decreased electricity demand, and halted industrial activities. The policy implications of this study suggested that keeping the climate healthy even in the post-COVID-19 era is a serious concern that needs to be addressed by investing in clean and green projects, ensuring green energy evolution, dealing with a large volume of medical waste, building health-ensuring and livable societies, and halting the funding of pollution. For governmental and regulatory bodies, these factors will provide a strong foundation to build safer, healthier, and environmentally friendly societies for generations to come.

The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been a tough test on companies in the global food sector supply chain, exacerbating the realities and deficiencies it presents in developing economies. This situation has been reflected in the firm’s performance (F.P.) due to the lack of business conditions to respond to the current pandemic. However, in some companies, the adverse effects of COVID-19 have been counteracted due to endowment and technological capabilities. Thus, this study examined the role of technological innovation (T.I.) and business data analytics (B.D.A.) in the F.P. of foods in Ecuador during COVID-19. A questionnaire collected the information from the food firms. Then, Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling processed the collected information. We found that (B.D.A.) mechanisms and different levels of T.I. within the developing market significantly shape the F.P. The results showed that the B.D.A. enables circular economy (C.E.) practices and the improvement of product delivery services, which constitutes an improvement of the F.P. The COVID-19 outbreak did not significantly affect T.I., unlike what happened with B.D.A. This study concluded that firms with the most extraordinary technological production processes have been the least affected during COVID-19. This study suggested that policy measures should boost food firms’ technological endowment to improve their resilience in uncertainty and risk scenarios.