Urban Open Space Conservation: Advances, Perspectives and Contribution in Enhancing Urban Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

There is a rising interest in enhancing sustainability in urban and peri-urban contexts through implementing Nature-Based solutions able to increase ecosystem services provisioning and human wellbeing. Accordingly, the availability of open spaces and vacant lands in urban and peri-urban areas represents a challenging planning issue with particular regard to their multifunctionality. Even being currently often neglected by conservation and valorisation programs and investments, these spaces can play a crucial role in i) hampering further land take in urban areas, ii) increasing urban sustainability through enhancing their ecological and functional role, iii) increasing the liveability and wellbeing of inhabitants, iv) balancing possible environmental and social inequality issues within cities. Despite their potential social and ecological role, there is still a limited knowledge in monitoring trends in the availability, characteristics, and functions of open spaces in urban areas as well as on interventions and measures towards their protection, restoration, enhancement, and better inclusion into urban planning. This Special Issue of Forests is intended as a multidisciplinary opportunity to describe innovative approaches for monitoring the past, current and future trends in urban open spaces and to propose planning instruments and interventions able to emphasize their socio-ecological role in strengthening urban green infrastructures. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the development of advanced quantitative and qualitative methods to monitor the abundance, characteristics (e.g., biophysical, management, functional) and trends over time of urban open areas, even related to different urbanization, planning and socio-economic patterns. Case studies on future possible trends of urban open areas under different planning scenarios are also welcome as well as those dealing with innovative approaches for modelling their contributions in terms of biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services provisioning, and ways to strengthen their inclusion into decision-making processes. Manuscripts can cover a wide range of spatial (e.g., from municipality to regional and national) and implications (e.g., planning, governance, policy) scales.

Dr. Lorenzo Sallustio
Prof. Marco Marchetti
Prof. Dr. Bruno Lasserre
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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