Examining the Quasi-Public Spaces in Commercial Complexes

Urban spaces as a positive catalyst during pandemics: Assessing the community’s well-being by using artificial intelligence techniques

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, lifestyles changed completely. This new normality damages human psychology and mental health. Hence, new approaches must be considered while shaping public spaces to accommodate the pandemic life. This paper aims to show the importance of exploiting outdoor spaces to save people’s mental health. Accordingly, an online survey is conducted and analyzed by Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for more precise answers. Afterward, the most important public spaces during the pandemic are extracted; consequently, another questionnaire has been held to validate these items. The last one has been run through a machine learning technique to classify and categorize the users’ different preferences in three situations only. It was found that 85,17% of the sample declared the importance of outdoor public spaces. However, future research is needed to rethink urban spaces’ design and to relocate the activities done within indoor public spaces to the outdoors to maintain human mental health.

Unpacking the Mental Health of Nurses during COVID-19: Evidence from Pakistan

The prime objective of the present study is to test the effect of COVID-19 fear on the mental condition of nurses in the public health sector of Pakistan. This study seeks to measure the psychological distress, anxiety, and psychological well-being of nurses due to fear of COVID-19 and exposure to COVID-19. This research further reveals the moderating role of “social support” in the link between COVID-19 fear, exposure and mental health. Through a convenient sampling technique, 250 sample contributors were chosen from 12 public hospitals. The results were obtained by applying multiple regression and moderation analysis by SPSS and the Hayes process. The outcomes indicated that fear of exposure to COVID-19 affects the mental health of nurses. The findings also discovered that social support is not very constructive in the pandemic. However, we suggested that social support is the best weapon to encourage nurses to relieve their fear and minimize negative emotions.

Intrinsic Rewards and Employee's Performance With the Mediating Mechanism of Employee's Motivation

The prime goal of this study is to analyze the impact of intrinsic rewards on the performance of an employee. It also focuses on the role of motivation of the employee as an intervening factor. To achieve this objective, data have been collected through the questionnaire method from small and medium enterprises of Pakistan. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed to the target population, and 300 were received. To test the hypotheses, the confirmatory factor analysis and the structural equation modeling have been used. The main results of the study have shown a positive and significant impact of intrinsic rewards on the performance of the employee. Specifically, the study reveals that the motivation of an employee significantly mediates the association between intrinsic rewards and the performance of the employee. In the light of the findings, implications are outlined.

COVID-19 and Mental Health: A Study of Stress, Resilience, and Depression among the Older Population in Pakistan

Extending studies of the adverse effects of SARS-2 coronavirus on general health consequences, this research explores complexities related to the mental health of the elderly as a result of pandemic-related stress. The study addresses this issue by using resilience theory to examine the effects of fear and exposure related to COVID-19 and depression. Besides, our study examines the moderating effects of self-efficacy in order to provide an understanding of how the coping abilities of the elderly may mitigate the effect of stress levels on mental health during pandemics. Our model is tested by analysing the survey data collected from Rawalpindi, a metropolitan city in Pakistan. The main results of the study confirm the positive association of pandemic-related fear and exposure virus with depression. However, self-efficacy shows a negative direct effect on depression, and the findings also confirm the moderation effect of self-efficacy on the fear of COVID-19 and depression, but the moderation effect of self-efficacy on COVID-19 exposure and depression is not supported. Based on the outcomes, some severe geriatric care policies that could weaken the pandemic-related fear, exposure to the virus, and depression are recommended.

Citizens and Positive Energy Districts: Are Espoo and Leipzig Ready for PEDs?

In urban transformation, no solution works without citizen support. With increasing numbers of building technologies and large-scale urban development on its way across cities, it has become vital to keep citizens informed, engaged, and content with the new changes. This paper looks at citizen engagement in Espoo (Finland) and Leipzig (Germany), and it determines whether the cities are ready for developing and implementing positive energy districts (PEDs). The authors studied the cities’ operations and current citizen engagement methods to understand how the efforts could be combined and improved. The analysis indicated that the city of Espoo already has a well-established system that continuously promotes citizen engagement at various levels, and combining the available infrastructure with company experts on citizen participation will allow Espoo to seamlessly transition towards PEDs in the near future. The city of Leipzig has a rich experience due to several national projects and participation in an earlier European project, which enabled the city to set clearer goals for the future and modify existing citizen methods. As lighthouse cities, findings from Espoo and Leipzig are also aimed at cities across Europe and beyond to boost development of PEDs together with citizens.

The Energy Consumption of Terraces in the Barcelona Public Space: Heating the Street

Terraces, as outdoor extensions of food and beverage businesses located in the public realm, have very high potential to activate the streetscape, bring people together and improving urban experiences. Among the consequences of the current COVID-19 pandemic are the recommendations of maximizing outdoor environments when conducting human interactions. Therefore, outdoor eating has dramatically increased throughout the world, with terraces becoming a radical urban change in many streetscapes. The urgency of the situation, and rapid implementation of these changes, has revealed some aspects of this phenomenon that should be considered when adapting the regulations to this new reality. However, the research on their functioning and impact is limited. Additionally, although energy consumption in the architectural and urban field is considered fundamental, research has rarely addressed small business outdoor spaces, placing the focus instead on residential heating or public lighting. This study focuses on the intersection of these two gaps by analyzing a set of terraces in Barcelona and estimating the power installed in their outdoor heating devices. The goal is to determine the potential energy consumed, contrast it with other values more commonly used when researching architectural energy consumption and point out the lack of sustainability of these approaches to providing comfort. The calculations show that the installed power in Barcelona terraces is significant and, when estimating potential consumption, it presents values higher that the average heating consumption of residential units in Spain. These results support two main conclusions: first, the relevance of addressing the means of providing comfort in outdoor urban spaces due to the high magnitude of their potential energy consumption; second, the importance of adapting those systems to outdoor conditions, understanding the needs of the occupants and the limitations of the environment in order to develop sustainable solutions that provide comfort without attempting to heat the air of the street.