Public Policies and Sustainable Urban Planning in the Metropolises of Southern Europe

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue proposes to analyze contemporary governance trends in the metropolises of southern Europe, namely by considering shifts in public policies and urban administration concerned with sustainable and integrated urban planning approaches. In these senses, both multidisciplinary as well as multi-scalar perspectives should be considered.

The focus on southern Europe leads to reflection on innovative urban governance, public policies and planning approaches and practices in order to address some of the most urgent and complex challenges of this specific, but also so relevant, symbolic geographical context (Seixas and Albet, 2016). More specifically, there are several concrete challenges being faced, like urban sprawl and land-use pressure (Tombolini et al., 2015); inclusive housing (Crisci, 2022) and social transformations (Leontidou 2010), with a particular emphasis on the gentrification process; historic preservation and adaptive reuse (Gravagnuolo et al., 2024); circular economy and decarbonization (Mercader-Moyano & Esquivias, 2020); and the overall threats of climate change and the environmental crisis.

Metropolises of southern Europe were selected as the case study because, in addition to these areas remaining insufficiently observed in academic terms, recent pressures combined with new governance practices were expected to induce the quite interesting promotion of lesson-learning synergies—including by comparing the metropolises with other urban areas sharing similar challenges (Seixas and Albet, 2016). The lack of comparative analyses in the academic literature between metropolitan areas makes it difficult to confirm or refute contemporary trends, as well as main dilemmas and even best practices and policies (Sovacool & Brown, 2010). This creates space for an international debate on large urban areas and the complex management of social, economic and environmental aspects within political and urban planning frameworks.

In this sense, this Special Issue presents an opportunity to address some relevant questions:

• To what extent can urban sustainability be pursued within the metropolis scale?
• What new type of urban and metropolitan governance arrangements are being developed?
• How are the roles of urban public policies and urban territorial planning being reframed in the face of the main sustainability challenges? Is the role of these policies a potential driver towards new perspectives for political and administrative changes at the metropolitan level?
• Could some specific vectors of urban policy, like urban regeneration, the 15-minute city or nature based solutions, be drivers towards the reshaping of urban planning and urban governance systems?
• In these senses, what is the role of supposedly external but influential agents, namely, the European Union?

The topics considered will include empirical evidence, critical analyses, and learning lessons and best practices associated with public policies, urban governance and urban planning, aggregating multiple transformative drivers for more sustainable and integrated urban development.   

Another main objective of this Special Issue will be to create an analytical and comprehensive platform for international research on urban and metropolitan governance and planning.

References

1. Seixas, J and Albet, A., (2016). Urban Governance in Southern Europe (1st edition). Routledge.
2. Crisci, M. (2022). The Impact of the Real Estate Crisis on a South European Metropolis: From Urban Diffusion to Reurbanisation. Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy, 15(3), 797–820. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12061-021-09420-4.
3. Gravagnuolo, A., Angrisano, M., Bosone, M., Buglione, F., De Toro, P., & Fusco Girard, L. (2024). Participatory evaluation of cultural heritage adaptive reuse interventions in the circular economy perspective: A case study of historic buildings in Salerno (Italy). Journal of Urban Management, 13(1), 107–139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jum.2023.12.002.
4. Leontidou L., (2010) Urban Social Movements in ‘Weak’ Civil Societies: The Right to the City and Cosmopolitan Activism in Southern Europe. Urban Studies 47(6): 1179-1203.
5. Mercader-Moyano, P., & Esquivias, P. M. (2020). Decarbonization and Circular Economy in the Sustainable Development and Renovation of Buildings and Neighbourhoods. Sustainability, 12(19), Article 19. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12197914.
6. Sovacool, B. K., & Brown, M. A. (2010). Twelve metropolitan carbon footprints: A preliminary comparative global assessment. Energy Policy, 38(9), 4856–4869. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2009.10.001.
7. Tombolini, I., Zambon, I., Ippolito, A., Grigoriadis, S., Serra, P., & Salvati, L. (2015). Revisiting “Southern” Sprawl: Urban Growth, Socio-Spatial Structure and the Influence of Local Economic Contexts. Economies, 3(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/economies3040237.

Dr. Francesca Poggi
Prof. Dr. João Seixas
Guest Editors

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• metropolitan governance
• urban politics
• urban sustainability
• urban regeneration
• proximity
• sustainable mobility
• nature-based solutions
• inclusive housing
• gentrification