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Virtual environments (VEs) that represent real spaces (RSs) give people who are blind the opportunity to build a cognitive map in advance that they will be able to use when arriving at the RS. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In this research study Nintendo Wii-based technology was used for exploring VEs via the Wiici application. The Wiimote allows the user to interact with VEs by simulating walking and scanning the space.

By getting haptic and auditory feedback the user learned to explore new spaces. The authors examined the participants’ abilities to explore new simple and complex places, construct a cognitive map, and perform orientation tasks in the RS.

To the authors’ knowledge, this finding presents the first VE for people who are blind that allow the participants to scan the environment and by this to construct map model spatial representations.

Access to food through retail supply chain distribution can vary significantly among the urban poor and leads to household food insecurity. The paper explores this sustainable supply chain phenomenon through a field study among South Africa's urban poor.

Urban metabolic flows is the theoretical basis in the context of supply chain management (SCM). The field study comprised 59 semi-structured interviews in one South African township. Data were recorded, transcribed and translated, and coded using NVivo 12 to provide an inventory of eight themes categorized and patterned from the analysis.

Findings indicate societal factors play a significant role affecting food distribution, access and security from a spatial perspective of retail outlet locations and a nutritional standpoint regarding quality and quantity of food.

The study is exploratory in one township, and while rigorously conducted, the generalizability of findings is limited to this context.

The study practically contributes by providing guidance for food retailers and policymakers to include nutritional guidelines in their distribution planning, as well as the dynamics of diverse neighbourhoods that exist in modern urban contexts.

New forms of retail food distribution can provide better security and access to food for the urban poor, contributing to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2 Zero Hunger and 11 Liveable Cities.

The study is interdisciplinary and contributes by linking UN SDGs and SCM through urban metabolic flows from development studies as an overarching framework to enable analysis of relationships between physical, social and economic factors in the urban environment.

Accessible games, both for serious and for entertainment purposes, would allow inclusion and participation for those with disabilities. Research into the development of accessible games, and accessible virtual environments, is discussed. Research into accessible Virtual Environments has demonstrated great potential for allowing people who are blind to explore new spaces, reduce their reliance on guides and aid development of more efficient spatial maps and strategies. Importantly, Lahav and Mioduser (2005, 2008) have demonstrated that, when exploring virtual spaces, people who are blind use more and different strategies than when exploring real physical spaces, and develop relatively accurate spatial representations of them. The present paper describes the design, development and evaluation of a system in which a virtual environment may be explored by people who are blind using Nintendo Wii devices, with auditory and haptic feedback. The nature of the various types of feedback is considered, with the aim of creating an intuitive and usable system. Using Wii technology has many advantages: it is mainstream, readily available and cheap. The potential of the system for exploration and navigation is demonstrated. Results strongly support the possibilities of the system for facilitating and supporting the construction of cognitive maps and spatial strategies. Intelligent support is discussed. Systems such as the present one will facilitate the development of accessible games, and thus enable Universal Design and accessible interactive technology to become more accepted and widespread.

Territorial food markets and governance have emerged as a key mechanism for the design and implementation new food systems and policies aimed at sustainable cities. However, the many existing policies tend to overlook the way food markets and supply strategies work. This chapter analyses governance in traditional agri-food markets in Brazil, aiming to demonstrate how, in different contexts, the economic interactions between actors are embedded in a set of social institutions (cultural values), which define modes of governance, participation in the markets and can be potential to fostering new (sustainable) rural-urban relations. These institutions challenge and compete with formal regulatory requirements imposed by the public authorities, which often disrupt and/or inhibit the development of local and traditional production and consumption practices, posing obstacles to the fostering rural-urban relations and the construction of solid local policies for food supply. Empirical data refer to three traditional Brazilian markets: the Feira do Pequeno Produtor in Passo Fundo, located in the South of Brazil, the Feira Central de Campina Grande and the Feira de Caruaru, both located in the Northeast of the country. The results point to the necessity and centrality to cities food supply policies recognise, encourage and institutionalise these markets traditional institutions in order to overcome supermarketisation and consolidate sustainable food systems. These process could be able to remove traditional markets from marginalise, promoting not only their survival, but their growth and consolidation as a source of decent work, healthy food and new sustainable rural-urban relationships.

The provision of home and community supports can enable people to successfully age-in-place by improving physical and mental health, supporting social participation and enhancing independence, autonomy and choice. One challenge concerns the integration of place-based supports available as older people transition into affordable housing. Sustainable solutions need to be developed and implemented with the full involvement of communities, service organizations and older people themselves. Partnership building is an important component of this process. The purpose of this paper is to detail the intricacies of developing partnerships with low-income older people, local service providers and nonprofit housing associations in the context of a Canadian housing development.

A community-based participatory approach was used to inform the data collection and partnership building process. The partnership building process progressed through a series of democratized committee meetings based on the principles of appreciative inquiry, four collaboration cafés with nonprofit housing providers and four community mapping workshops with low-income older people. Data collection also involved 25 interviews and 15 photovoice sessions with the housing tenants. The common aims of partnership and data collection were to understand the challenges and opportunities experienced by older people, service providers and nonprofit housing providers; identify the perspectives of service providers and nonprofit housing providers for the provision and delivery of senior-friendly services and resources; and determine actions that can be undertaken to better meet the needs of service providers and nonprofit housing providers in order to help them serve older people better.

The partnership prioritized the generation of a shared vision together with shared values, interests and the goal of co-creating meaningful housing solutions for older people transitioning into affordable housing. Input from interviews and photovoice sessions with older people provided material to inform decision making in support of ageing well in the right place. Attention to issues of power dynamics and knowledge generation and feedback mechanisms enable all fields of expertise to be taken into account, including the experiential expertise of older residents. This resulted in functional, physical, psychological and social aspects of ageing in place to inform the new build housing complex.

The time and effort required to conduct democratized partnerships slowed the decision-making process.

The findings confirm that the drive toward community partnerships is a necessary process in supporting older people to age well in the right place. This requires sound mechanisms to include the voice of older people themselves alongside other relevant stakeholders. Ageing well in a housing complex requires meaningful placemaking to include the functional, physical, psychological and social aspects of older people’s everyday life in respect to both home and community.

The aim of the Game On project is to adapt and create highly engaging and motivating serious games to teach employment skills to prisoners, ex‐offenders and those at risk of offending (termed offenders). The target audience first trialled existing serious games with work‐based educational content to identify their limitations and to highlight gaps in provision. From this, a development plan evolved for the adaptation of these materials and the creation of new materials using 3D games mods' to teach induction information to prisoners in an accessible format. Games features include an ability to personalise educational content, locale detection for use in a variety of countries, accessibility features including signing tracks and closed captions and accompanying activities for a blended learning approach. Retrial of these serious games and games mods' with trainers and offenders found that they provided positive measures of engagement and effectiveness.

TODAY the words ‘Productivity Agreement’ are among the small change of contemporary conversation. They provide the text for many political sermons and are the main debating point across conference tables. They intrude into newspapers almost daily and are regarded in some quarters as a talisman or amulet capable of working wonders.

Technology, telecommunications and new IPO companies bring with them a new definition of ‘rapid growth’ and change. In 1990, ‘fast’ was considered to be a compounded growth rate of 15 per cent. Today companies are currently experiencing compounded growth rates of between 15 and 100 per cent per month! For the real estate practitioner, this creates a definite challenge. Real estate professionals are being asked to create an agile and flexible physical environment that can adapt quickly to the constant change. With this agile and flexible model comes the expectation that corporate real estate (CRE) will provide a return on asset (ROA) and contribute to shareholder value. The key is to manage CRE as a business and to leverage it ‐ whether owned or leased ‐ at the precise moments in the corporate life cycle that make the most sense.

During the past few years the British Food Journal has reported a great many prosecutions under the Food and Drugs Act in respect of “ foreign bodies ” in food. Examples have been cigarette ends and pieces of metal or wood in bread, rat dirt and mouse dirt in cereals, nails or small pieces of metal in sausages, splinters of glass in milk, and a host of similar instances. Some of the prosecutions have been for selling food unfit for human consumption, but many have been for selling food not of the substance demanded. I confess that I have always had some doubt whether a loaf is entirely unfit for human use merely because it contains a clean piece of metal quite easily seen and removed. Still, justices never seem to have any difficulty in convicting the vendor under one Section or another. The older readers of the British Food Journal will remember that until the Act of 1938 came into force it was impossible to institute proceedings under the “ prejudice to the purchaser ” Section unless there was a Public Analyst's certificate. I laboured for many years to get this restriction eliminated. First, I was able to persuade my colleagues on the Departmental Committee on the Composition and Description of Food (which reported in 1934) to make a recommendation in that direction, although it was rather doubtful whether it fell within the terms of reference. Then, contrary to the strong representations of the Society of Public Analysts, but with the approval of the Ministry of Health, I persuaded the Joint Committee of Lords and Commons on the Bill of 1938 to enact that a Sampling Officer should be entitled at his discretion to submit or not to submit a sample for analysis. What I had in mind was this: first, that it was sheer waste of time and money to consult an Analyst when an offence could be quite effectively proved without an analysis. Secondly, a wide range of cases in which what was sold was not of the nature demanded could be better proved by an Inspector or by trade evidence than by analysis in a chemical laboratory. Examples particularly in my mind were the substitution of haddock for hake, witches for lemon soles, sheep's liver for calves' liver, the sale of foreign produce as home‐grown, the sale of apples, plums and other fruit of different kinds from those under whose names they were sold, the sale of margarine for butter when the facts were admitted by the vendor, the improper description of wines which could better be proved by skilled tasters than by analysts, and, of course, though to a minor extent, the inclusion of foreign bodies such as those mentioned above. I had always felt that the public needed vastly better protection than could be given by chemical analysis alone, and that the scope of the Act was quite unduly restricted. But I do not pretend that I anticipated such a spate of prosecutions in respect of the accidental and careless admission of foreign bodies in loaves and the rest. One evident cause for this is that the public, through their association with the local Food Office, have become enforcement conscious. In the old days a normal purchaser of a loaf containing a piece of wood did not dream of taking more drastic action than remonstrating with the baker. Now, everyone's first instinct is to repair to the Food Office or the Town Hall with official complaint. Now that I am on the shelf and no longer concerned either with enforcing the Food and Drugs Act or with defending those charged with offences, I find it interesting to contrast present‐day practice with that of forty odd years ago.