Indonesia’s capital city, Jakarta, is surrounded by several satellite cities and has grown spatially into a larger region called Jabodetabek. The development in Jabodetabek has resulted in changes in the landscape. The increase of impervious surface and decrease of green space has led to the formation of an urban heat island (UHI). UHI could be detected through land surface temperature (LST) monitoring. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to analyze the land cover changes in Jakarta and its satellite cities and to analyze the impact of these changes on LST using GIS-based analysis. We analyzed Jakarta and its three satellite cities, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi, through a satellite image time-series analysis in 1989/1990 and 2015/2018. It is found that, among the four cities we analyzed, Tangerang has the highest built-up area expansion proportion, followed by Bekasi with a slight difference, then Depok and Jakarta. As for the LST, the city that has the most significant difference between mean LST in the initial and recent year is Bekasi with 12.66°C, then followed by Tangerang (11.05°C), Jakarta (8.34°C), and Depok (6.43°C). These orders’ inconsistency might be caused by higher proportion of built-up area combined with higher loss of vegetated area. This shows that the land cover change played a big role in the temperature increase.

Rural areas are facing increasing challenges including declining populations, advanced aging, and a lack of successors. This study aimed to investigate the perceptions of rural areas among Chinese and Japanese university students living in urban areas and analyze the determinants influencing their rural attachment and willingness to reside there. A total of 259 students (126 Japanese students in Chiba and 133 Chinese students in Zhengzhou) were surveyed using the place attachment scale, and asked to describe their past experiences in rural areas. Semantic analysis was employed to further explore issues related to their previous rural visit experiences. The results revealed that students’ place of birth, visiting experience, satisfaction with rural areas, interaction with local people, and convenience of accessing rural areas all influenced their attachment and willingness to move to rural areas. Chinese students expressed greater concerns regarding hygiene issues, while Japanese students were more concerned about safety. This study offers some recommendations: promoting educational resources in rural areas and addressing hygiene issues, such as unclean restrooms, in China. In Japan, the focus should be on continued promotion of rural tourism, providing more education on safe driving and environmental safety for university students, and enhancing more access to rural areas through student transportation discounts.

Land surface temperature (LST) is heavily influenced by urban morphology. Building height is an important parameter of urban morphology that affects LST. Existing studies show contradicting results where building height can have a positive or negative relationship with LST. More studies are necessary to examine the impact of building height. However, high accuracy building height data are difficult to obtain on a global scale and are not available in many places in the world. Using the Digital Building Height Model (DBHM) calculated by subtracting the SRTM from AW3D30, this study analyzes the relationship between building height and Landsat LST in two cities: Tokyo and Jakarta. The relationship is observed during both cities’ warm seasons (April to October) and Tokyo’s cool seasons (November to February). The results show that building height and LST are negatively correlated. In the morning, areas with high-rise buildings tend to have lower LST than areas with low-rise buildings. This phenomenon is revealed to be stronger during the warm season. The LST difference between low-rise and mixed-height building areas is more significant than between mixed-height and high-rise building areas.