Sustainable Urban–Rural Transitions: Integrating Smart Technologies and Inclusive Development from a Socio-Technical Perspective
A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Architectural Design, Urban Science, and Real Estate".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2026 | Viewed by 1180
Editors
Interests: sustainable planning/design strategies; evidence-based design; aging and community; built environmental assessment methods; education for sustainable development
Interests: multi-scale sustainable design strategies; historic environments adaptive reuse; urban–rural environmental perception and evaluation; inclusivity
Interests: urban–rural integration; ecological security pattern; urban regeneration; urban design; spatial planning and governance; spatial structure and form
Interests: sustainable urbanism; urban analytics; urban regeneration; urban planning and design
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The research and development of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and the Internet of Things (IoT) and so on, have not only led to lifestyle changes (e.g., one person company) but also facilitated collaborative planning towards a more inclusive approach. To provide an insight into this trend (e.g., technical innovation–lifestyle change–new scenarios–place-making through planning and design) from a socio-technical perspective, we are organizing an international conference, ‘Future Human Habitat in the era of AI’, to be held in Suzhou on 6-7th June 2026. It will look into important issues arising in the urban–rural transition processes worldwide, mainly focusing on five themes:
- Sustainability: nature-based solutions that can facilitate the green, low-carbon transition from a socio-technical perspective;
- Informatics: data-driven approaches that lead to innovative planning/design paradigms in the era of Human–AI;
- Entrepreneurship and Management: innovation in urban/rural planning, design, and governance in response to new socio-economic patterns (e.g., low-altitude economy) from a whole-lifecycle perspective;
- Social Inclusion: moving from a top-down planning/design approach towards ‘participatory design’ and/or ‘collaborative decision-making’ processes (a.k.a., a bottom-up approach for both human and embodied AI) with support from smart technologies.
- Adaptive Design Validated by AI: the innovative application of digital twins and/or AI toolkits to simulate and verify the short- and long-term impact of specific planning/design strategies on building/district/city performance and thereby generate adaptive evidence that can improve human habitat.
This Special Issue would like to call for innovative ideas, case studies of the best practice, and critical discussions on the above themes from global researchers, urban planners and/or designers, architects, and educators. We also welcome any relevant cutting-edge theoretical, empirical, and practical studies that can help us envision a better future.
Prof. Dr. Bing Chen
Prof. Dr. Leilei Sun
Prof. Genwei Hong
Dr. Yina Sima
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- sustainability
- informatics
- entrepreneurship and management
- social inclusion
- resilience
- low-carbon
- adaptive design
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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