The Fourth Symposium on Social-Ecological Urbanism was hosted by the Urban Studio research programme at University of Gävle, and held 2–3 December 2025 at Gävle Concert Hall, Gävle, Sweden. It examined how multisensory experiences of urban environments and nature relate to human well-being, and how such perspectives can inform social-ecological approaches to urban planning and design.

This paper investigates how x-minute cities consider climate-related hazard management, blue-green infrastructure (BGI) and resilience to climate change challenges. It is important to analyse these concepts together as they are often studied individually. A systematic literature review reveals that climate hazard studies are mostly limited to flooding, water quality and the urban heat island effect. Additionally, BGI needs to be considered and included in sustainable urban development. Finally, the concept of x-minute cities should enhance resilience equitably across all communities. This research highlights the importance of a comprehensive assessment of these concepts in understanding the effects of new urban development.

Flood maps that show predicted flood extents will always be uncertain regardless of how the modelling is conducted. It is therefore important that these uncertainties are represented and communicated in the maps, and that map users understand the presented information. Through an online user survey, this study evaluates how users make geographic decisions based on nine flood uncertainty maps, represented and designed according to data scheme and semantics associated with their values (dual-ended, sequential and binary), and applied with different mapping techniques (continuous surface, choropleth and graduated symbol mapping). The results show that the type of map and the visual variable used for representation (in terms of colours and values) became important when deciding locations. Higher decision confidence was shown when dual-ended and sequential probability maps were used. Medium-to-dark blue regions in these maps made participants avoid locations, while white, brown and the lightest blue colours made them select locations. The usage of a sequential map represented by grey scale colour showed to be less intuitive for the participants, leading to lower task performance and less confidence in decisions. Despite the different backgrounds of participants, comprehension of the uncertainty maps and the tasks did not vary much from each other. Differences among them were observed in location preferences and time to solve the tasks. The user group that had the most professional experience with maps and GIS was most conservative in their site choices, and took longest time to solve the tasks. Students, on the other hand, opted to take more risk in their decisions and preferred more uncertain locations. Apparently, the effectiveness of the flood uncertainty maps used in this study varied mainly on the representations used. Appropriate design made them comprehendible by different users. However, making decisions based on these maps, as well as confidence in decisions and time to solve the task, may also be dependent on other factors such as domain knowledge, line of work, practical experience in handing problems or making decisions, and possibly culture.

Two key goals for sustainable spatial planning are to promote low-carbon travel in daily life and to enhance human wellbeing through diverse human-environment interactions. Yet, the integration of these goals has been underexplored. This study investigates the potential for experiential diversity via active travel in different residential contexts within the Gävle city-region, Sweden. Over 15 months, we collected spatiotemporal data from 165 participants, analyzing 4,362 reported experiences and 13,192 GPS-derived travel trajectories. Our analysis uncovered a significant spatial discrepancy: while the travelled distances to locations of positive experiences typically ranged from 1.5 km to 5 km, active travel predominated only within 1.5 km. This discrepancy persisted across urban, suburban, and peripheral contexts. Although residents in different contexts reported the same types of experiences, urban dwellers travelled about 50 % farther for nature experiences compared with other positive experiences, whereas peripheral dwellers travelled twice the distance for urbanicity experiences compared with other positive experiences. Consequently, urban residents mostly relied on active travel for urbanicity experiences and motorised travel for nature experiences, with the reverse trend observed among peripheral dwellers. These results illustrate the importance of spatial scale for promoting diverse positive experiences via active travel, regardless of residential context. Effective planning strategies may include enhancing environmental diversity near homes and developing infrastructure that favours active over motorised travel for short to moderate distances.

To understand how the produced flood boundaries from hydraulic modeling can be affected by the resolution of the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and the roughness values used, and how different performance measures can affect the choice of most optimal models, different simulations were conducted using varying pairs of DEM and Manning’s n. Each result was then compared to the reference flood data and analyzed using different performance measures that account for the sizes of inundation (F-statistics), and the distance between the modeled and reference flood (disparity measures). The results showed that the different pairs of DEM resolution and Manning’s n produced different performance scores and flood extents. High-resolution DEMs performed generally better with higher resolution DEMs, while lower resolution DEMs received better performance when paired with lower Manning’s n. The different model performances also produced different combinations having the most optimal performances depending on the assumptions they applied in the computations. Additionally, the results showed that models from coarser resolution DEMs can produce higher maximum scores than higher resolution DEMs. However, when the maps, cross-sectional profiles, and the water surface elevations from the coarser resolution DEMs were compared with the higher resolution DEMs, they are more inaccurate in representing the terrain, flood boundaries, and the water depths. Thus, interpreting model results only based on performance measure, particularly for lower resolution DEMs, may give incorrect conclusion on the optimality of the result. It is important that the flood extent maps, cross-sectional profiles, and the derived water depths are analyzed together with the performance scores to gain better understanding of the reliability of flood model results.

To inform spatial planning promoting low-carbon travel and well-being, we investigate the potential for experiential diversity by active travel across different residential contexts. We use spatiotemporal tracking and experience data from the Gävle city-region, Sweden, generated by 165 participants over the course of 15 months. Findings reveal a discrepancy between typical travel distances to locations of positive experiences (1.5–5 km) and the distances at which active travel dominates (up to 1.5 km). This discrepancy largely persists across urban, suburban, and peripheral contexts, with urban dwellers travelling further for nature experiences, whereas peripheral dwellers travel further for urbanicity experiences. These results illustrate the importance of spatial scale for promoting diverse positive experiences by active travel, regardless of residential context. Planning strategies include enhancing environmental diversity close to people’s homes and providing infrastructure that promotes switching from motorised to active travel for trips of a few kilometres.

River flooding and urbanization are processes of different character that take place worldwide. As the latter tends to make the consequences of the former worse, together with the uncertainties related to future climate change and flood‐risk modeling, there is a need to both use existing tools and develop new ones that help the management and planning of urban environments. In this article a prototype tool, based on estimated maximum land cover roughness variation, the slope of the ground, and the quality of the used digital elevation models, and that can produce flood ‘uncertainty zones’ of varying width around modeled flood boundaries, is presented. The concept of uncertainty, which urban planners often fail to consider in the spatial planning process, changes from something very difficult into an advantage in this way. Not only may these uncertainties be easier to understand by the urban planners, but the uncertainties may also function as a communication tool between the planners and other stakeholders. Because flood risk is something that urban planners always need to consider, these uncertainty zones can function both as buffer areas against floods, and as blue‐green designs of significant importance for a variety of ecosystem services. As the Earth is warming and the world is urbanizing at rates and scales unprecedented in history, we believe that new tools for urban resilience planning are not only urgently needed, but also will have a positive impact on urban planning.