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The purpose of this research is to analyse the level of knowledge about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of pre-service teachers in Early Childhood and Primary School Education at the University of Valencia (Spain) and the origin of this knowledge over several academic years, as well as to compare it with that of students of the Degree in Environmental Sciences at the same university.

A questionnaire was designed, validated and administrated to 1,040 students of Degree in Early Childhood Education, Primary School Education and Environmental Science of the University of Valencia to analyse their knowledge of the SDGs and their evolution over three academic years (2019–20, 2020–21, 2021–22).

Statistical analysis shows that most of the participants are either unaware of the SDGs and their importance or have insufficient knowledge of the SDGs and their linkages.

The need to continue promoting teaching resources to favour the implementation of education for the SDG in initial teacher training is highlighted.

Pre-service teachers can become agents of change if they understand the magnitude and complexity of the socio-environmental crisis and get involved through their educational action in the required measures to advance in the construction of more sustainable societies.

This study aims to emphasize the necessary training and involvement of students of the Degree in Early Childhood Education, Primary School Education and Environmental Science at the University of Valencia to advance in the transition to Sustainability.

“When James Boswell returned from a tour of Corsica in 1765 he wrote: ‘It is indeed amazing that an island so considerable, and in which such noble things have been doing, should be so imperfectly known.’ The same might be said today of Puerto Rico.” Thus began Millard Hansen and Henry Wells in the foreword to their 1953 look at Puerto Rico's democratic development. Four decades later, the same could again be said about the island.

According to the Colombian Labour Ministry, in 2015, 750,000 persons officially worked as household employees. Ninety-eight per cent of these employees are women who tend to live in Bogotá’s (southern) urban fringe and travel to the city’s wealthier north on a daily basis. Yet public transportation in the Colombian capital is subject to stratification. Besides overcrowding and delays, petty crime and sexual harassment, fringe areas remain underserved. Based on ethnographic data, in this chapter, the authors discuss findings from a 3-year research project on female household employees’ subjective experience of space. Specifically, the authors explore their capacity (motility) to be mobile. This perspective breaks with the limits of bounded categories such as ‘urban’, ‘neighbourhood’ or ‘class’, to highlight their situational and spatial mutability. Moreover, an investigation of motility includes people’s potential to move as well as their subjective experiences of mobility. The research shows how gender intersects with local labour regimes and infrastructure to negatively affect women’s mobility. Urban stratification is not only a question of locale of residence and access to services, but importantly (re)produced in the household employees’ subjective experience of their daily commute, which they describe as suffering. In their limited spare time, female household employees abstain from travelling, effectively curbing their active appropriation of urban space. The research thus illuminates how spatial, social and economic dimensions mutually interact to impact on the women’s lives and possibilities.

Housing affordability in New Zealand is placing significant pressure on the country’s social housing sector with increased demand for public sector accommodation. A common belief suggests that social housing has a negative effect on nearby residential property values. This study aims to develop proximity and concentration measures of social housing to determine if their spatial distribution affects property values.

Using over 32,000 residential sales transactions from Auckland (New Zealand) during a three-year period (2014–2016), this study applies standard hedonic OLS framework with the addition of spatial autoregressive model and spatiotemporal autoregressive model to test if proximity and concentration of social housing influence residential property values.

The research found that private houses that share boundaries with public housing are discounted by 1.7%–3.3% depending on the socio-economic status of the submarket. The authors find that wealthier submarkets are better equipped to absorbing negative externalities attached to social housing. Proximity measures tend to peak at 250 m, with houses discounted up to 5% within that distance. Concentration levels of social housing had a greater influence on the private residential market. At low levels of concentration, houses in areas of high and low socio-economic levels were discounted by approximately 6.5%. The discount does not remain uniform and the gap between the two areas is apparent at medium and high concentration levels. The negative effect was the highest − 23% – in the neighbourhoods that were socially and economically deprived.

The study’s findings can assist policymakers in informing strategies on the future social housing initiatives. The findings suggest that a dispersed development strategy that incorporates a balanced mix of tenure and socio-economic groups should be preferred over a high-density social housing concentrated in already deprived neighbourhoods.