The urban food environment is a key research area for exploring factors influencing diet and promoting healthy eating. Despite numerous studies in this field, reviews and future research agendas from a spatial perspective remain scarce. This paper reviews the measurement of the food environment and its impacts on dietary behavior and health, emphasizing the shift from residential neighborhoods to activity spaces. In terms of measurement, the activity space method provides a more comprehensive depiction of residents’food environments but faces challenges such as the uncertainty geographic context problem and the selective daily mobility bias. Regarding impacts on dietary behaviors, the food environment has a more pronounced effect on fast food consumption than on fresh produce, and the associations between activity space food environment and dietary behaviors are more consistent. In terms of health impacts, a significant association exists between the proportion of unhealthy food stores in residential areas and overweight, while the activity space food environment may mitigate health risks associated with disadvantaged food environments in residential neighborhoods. Building on identified research gaps, this paper discusses trends and future directions in urban food environment research, including integrating temporal and spatial dimensions in measurement, examining the intertwined impacts of spatial and non-spatial factors on dietary behaviors, evaluating the behavioral and health effects of spatial interventions, and addressing challenges posed by online food retailing. This paper aims to provide references for advancing research on the urban food environment.

Creating a favorable neighborhood food environment not only facilitates residents’ access to safer and healthier food but also promotes local food production and consumption, reduces food waste, and encourages low-carbon living. By examining planning documents from 24 international cities and regions, and using planning text content analysis as the analytical techniques, the author introduces Western practices in optimizing community food environments. This analysis is conducted from the perspective of the “vision-goals-strategies-policies-actions” planning elements, covering four key stages: vision description, developing objectives and polices, formulation and implementation, and supervision and evaluation. Focusing on different stages of spatial planning, particular attention is paid to the formulation and implementation stage, with specific recommendations proposed to utilize master plans, detailed plans, and specialized plans to promote the optimization of neighborhood food environments in China. Recommendations during the planning formulation stage aim to achieve effective transmission from vision to action. Recommendations during the planning implementation stage emphasize utilizing and innovating existing planning management tools and advancing the formulation of specialized plans for food implementation.

The urban food distribution and fresh food retail supply chain have undergone profound structural transformations, catalyzed by growing consumer demand for immediate food consumption and promotion of e-commerce platforms. This transition not only improves the availability of access to raw food for residents, but also poses new challenges to the logistical security of the supply chain. Urban planners begin to rethink the layout and distribution of food supply chain facilities to ensure that the accessibility and equity of the food circulation system can be maintained and enhanced. In pursuit of this aim, firstly, this paper examines the process and reasons for transforming the supply chain and presents various types of digital logistics supply chains for urban fresh food distribution. Secondly, employing Shenzhen as an illustrative case, we gather data from prominent e-commerce platforms’ front warehouses. Subsequently, we employ KDE and 2SFCA to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of accessibility and equity within the supply chain. Finally, a multi-objective model was devised, utilizing an optimization algorithm to formulate a more pragmatic arrangement for the placement of distribution outlets practical layout for outlet locations. This paper indicates a misalignment between front warehouses layout and population distribution, and an unequal distribution of fresh food owing to factors such as urban population density, geography, and transportation infrastructure. Furthermore, strategically positioning front warehouses can improve the availability and fairness of fresh food, thereby promoting the sustainable advancement of the food distribution system.

The excessive use of online meal delivery services may negatively impact population health and urban vitality. Before developing urban policies to reduce undue dependence on meal delivery services, it is crucial to identify the environmental and demographic factors affecting their usage. This paper selects Hongkou District, Shanghai, for a case study. It integrates data from multiple sources, such as online food consumption, built environment, and demographic characteristics, to explore the determinants of online meal delivery service usage. By expanding the two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method, we estimate the frequency of online meal delivery use and demonstrated the spatial distribution of online meal delivery usage. Subsequently, spatial econometric models are employed to examine how food retail environment, built environment, and socio-demographics influence online meal consumption. It is found that the number of restaurants, road density, and the number of usual residents and employees positively impact the total frequency of online meal consumption. The per capita frequency of online meal consumption significantly decreases with an increase in the number of grocery retailers within 1 200 m, restaurants within the neighborhood, and the proportion of older and middle-to-high income residents but increases significantly with a rising number of restaurants within the 15-minute life circle and the proportion of employees. Ultimately, this paper discusses the implications of this case study for urban planning interventions on food consumption and directions for future research.

New-build gentrification is the mapping of slash-and-build urban regeneration on social space, one of the main forms of gentrification in Chinese context, and the core element of the third wave of gentrification. However, the conceptualization of new-build gentrification is insufficient, ambiguous and somewhat misunderstood, hindering its academic exchange and value exploration. In addition, domestic research of new-build gentrification mainly focuses on the description of its phenomenon and superficial differentiation of its concept with other types of gentrification, but there is still a lack of understanding of its core characteristics, driving mechanism and specific subdivided types, along with an absence of systematical study of its original theory and academic concerns. In this case, it is unadvisable to do research about indigenization of new-build gentrification without reference and comparison to well-established global theory system. To fill this gap, through an extensive literature analysis, this paper reviews the background of new-build gentrification under transition of public-private partnerships, builds a systematic analysis between classical gentrification and new-build gentrification, discusses the inevitability of newbuild gentrification in terms of the driving mechanism of gentrification, and finally, links the theory of new-build gentrification with what is happening in contemporary urban China. The paper makes the conclusions as follow. (1) New-build gentrification is regarded as a developmental understanding of classical gentrification because they share the core element, “class remake”, while they are also so heterogeneous due to their structural distinctions in construction behaviors, along with non-structural distinctions in displacement, capital, and land use change. (2) New-build gentrification becomes an inevitable part of gentrification due to global strategy of gentrification, capital secondary circulation and consumerism, and is a more commercialized form of gentrification. (3) New-build gentrification expands the internationalization of the study of gentrification, and has great academic value and practical significance in contemporary China by enriching new perspective, new phenomena, new explanation, and new value to Chinese gentrification research.

Globalization, informatization and networking have not only promoted the rise of global cities and strengthened inter-city connections, but also reshaped the connotation, mode, and spatial scale of inter-city connections. The development potential and functions of contemporary cities largely depend on a city’s “positionality” in various world/global city networks. Therefore, investigating World/Global City Networks (WCN) has important theoretical value and policy implication. This paper provides a review of the empirical studies of WCN abroad: (1) we first categorize existing studies into four strands, including the advanced producer services-based studies led by GaWC, the multinational enterprise and world city system theory-based studies, infrastructure-based studies, and the other connection-based studies; (2) then we identify the problems and challenges in methodology, content, objectives, and theoretical basis of relevant studies; (3) finally, we discuss directions for future research, including understanding the formation and process of city networks, enriching qualitative and in-depth case study methods, revealing the impact of WCN on urban spatial development, conducting more studies regarding “ordinary” cities, and examining the nature and formation of intercity power relations.

At present, China’s cities have entered the stage of stock development, and the problems of regeneration planning and its implementation problems have gradually emerged. Reviewing China’s regeneration system from the perspective of action planning, while dividing the planning and implementation of urban regeneration into two task stages, which are ineffective for the government and the market respectively, and need to introduce a new action subject to update back and forth. In order to explore the new mechanism of regeneration and development, we focus on the experience of urban regeneration in the UK, and by introducing urban development corporation in the UK, as a regeneration agency with government control authority and a market operation mechanism, stimulates the market through public investment to release the potential of urban development and effectively achieve regeneration goals. By drawing on the laws and experience of the legal organization construction mode and the evolution of the regeneration mechanism in the UK, this paper provides suggestions for the exploration of the long-term implementation mechanism for the creation and development of urban regeneration institutions in China.

This paper introduces the background of urban regeneration pilot work in Republic of Korea from the aspects of technology, system and model research and development, on-site verification, improvement and promotion of urban regeneration in Republic of Korea. After that, it describes the general situation of the selection guidelines for the local independent pilot and the compound development pilot of urban regeneration in Republic of Korea, and interprets the guidance strategies for the selection and promotion of different types of urban regeneration pilot countries in Republic of Korea from six aspects of the duration and purpose, unit and direction, content, organizational system of the
promotion of urban regeneration pilot work, as well as the selection and bidding methods of the applicant. Based on the experience summary of urban regeneration pilot work in Republic of Korea and the analysis and reflection on the status quo of urban regeneration pilot work and related issues in China, this paper puts forward suggestions for the improvement of urban regeneration and its pilot work in China from the aspects of positioning and procedure, purpose and direction, type and content, organization and support of urban regeneration work.