• Energy Research
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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 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.

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to significant changes in electricity demand around the world. Although these changes differ from region to region, countries that have implemented stringent lockdown measures to curtail the spread of the virus have experienced the greatest alterations in demand. Within Australia, the state of Victoria has been subject to the largest number of days in hard lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conduct an exploratory data analysis to identify predictors of demand, and have built a time series forecasting model to predict the half-hourly electricity demand in Victoria. Our model distinguishes between lockdown periods and non-restrictive periods, and aims to identify a variety of patterns that we show to be influential on electricity demand. The model thereby provides a nuanced prediction of electricity demand that captures the shifting demand profile of intermittent lockdowns.

Food waste has adverse economic, social, and environmental impacts and increases the prevalence of food insecurity. Panic buying at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak raised serious concerns about a potential rise in food waste levels and higher pressure on waste management systems. This article aims to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on food waste behaviour and the extent to which it occurs using the systematic review method. A total of 38 articles were identified and reviewed following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The findings showed that the COVID-19 pandemic led to reductions in household food waste in most countries. Several changes in shopping and cooking behaviours, food consumption, and managing inventory and leftovers have occurred due to COVID-19. Based on these insights, we predicted that some desirable food-management habits would be retained, and others would roll back in the post-COVID-19 world. The review contributes to the food waste literature by offering a comprehensive overview of behavioural changes during the COVID-19 pandemic and future research directions.

The COVID-19 crisis provides an opportunity for sustainable renewal and requires responsible leaders who are responsive to stakeholder needs and able to innovate in light of new challenges. This study draws on stakeholder theory and responsible leadership theory to examine (a) the challenges industry leaders face as a result of COVID-19 and (b) their innovative responses in light of their responsibilities to stakeholders and society. We conducted a corpus linguistics study based on high-volume media websites reporting tourism and hospitality news on leadership and innovation. We applied a stakeholder and social responsibility lens to the data analysis. We discovered that, despite the challenges that leaders faced, some transcended self-interest or integrated self-interest with consideration for the interest of others and formed partnerships with other stakeholders resulting in win-win solutions. In particular, we found evidence of leaders who (1) responded to the needs of owners, employees, customers, and community stakeholders and (2) developed not only incremental innovations but substantial ones benefitting stakeholders in business and society. We discuss responsible leadership as a pathway for transforming the tourism and hospitality industry towards a more sustainable and community-centred ‘new normal’. Based on our findings, we present recommendations for future research and policymakers.