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Land
Special Issues
Historic Urban Landscape and Planning
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Historic Urban Landscape and Planning

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Contexts and Urban-Rural Interactions".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2026 | Viewed by 2337

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Isabella Di Lenardo

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Digital Humanities Institute (DHI), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Interests: history of art and archaeology; urban history; digital humanities; digital cultural heritage; 2D–3D modeling; geographic information systems; history of cartography
Prof. Dr. Sander Münster

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Digital Humanities, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, D-07743 Jena, Germany
Interests: digital 3D reconstructions, esp. work processes, standards, presentation and discourse integration; 3D digitization of cultural heritage, especially automation and user-generated content; information systems for 3D models; science analysis and informetrics; methodological changes through image- and object-related digital humanities in art and architectural history research; visual research processes and visual perception

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the digital reconstruction and spatial analysis of historical urban and rural landscapes has become a dynamic and interdisciplinary field of research. The increasing availability of historical geospatial data—maps, plans, cadastral records, and archival imagery—combined with advances in digital methods has opened new opportunities for understanding how landscapes have evolved and how they can be responsibly managed. Yet, there remains a pressing need to consolidate methodological approaches and critically assess how digital tools contribute not only to the visualization of the past but to future-oriented territorial planning.

This Special Issue addresses researchers working across historical geography, urban planning, environmental humanities, digital heritage, and spatial history. It invites contributions that explore how digital mapping technologies—such as Geographic Information Systems (GISs), Historical GISs (HGISs), spatial analysis, computer vision, and procedural modeling—can support the study of historical landscapes and their transformations. Special attention will be given to methods for 3D reconstruction (manual and automated), algorithmic modeling, and the integration of diverse historical sources to trace long-term urban and territorial dynamics.

In parallel, digital tools now offer powerful means of monitoring historical landscapes that are at risk—whether due to war, environmental degradation, or the increasing effects of climate change. Mapping vulnerable sites and modeling their evolution provides crucial insights for heritage protection and early intervention.

Because historical landscapes often hold cultural, environmental, and institutional significance, this Special Issue also foregrounds the responsibility of planners, architects, and policy makers in dealing with the legacy of the past. The goal is to highlight how digital methods not only document spatial change but also inform sustainable, culturally aware planning strategies.

The aim of the Special Issue is to bring together interdisciplinary approaches that connect historical knowledge with digital innovation, fostering new insights into how historical urban landscapes are recorded, analyzed, preserved, and projected into the future.

Dr. Isabella Di Lenardo
Prof. Dr. Sander Münster
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-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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

  • historical landscape modeling
  • digital heritage mapping
  • procedural and 3D reconstruction
  • GISs and historical GISs (HGISs)
  • urban transformation and planning
  • at-risk cultural landscapes
  • historical maps and archival sources

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 38018 KB  
Article
Echoes of Decay: Rome’s Unconscious Coexistence with Spontaneous Urban Nature
by Flavio Martella and Maria Vittoria Tesei
Land 2026, 15(5), 778; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15050778 - 4 May 2026
Viewed by 338
Abstract
The accelerating pace of global urbanisation is reshaping planning agendas toward integrating urban nature, yet dominant approaches continue to rely on designed or controlled interventions to produce engineered approximations of spontaneity. This study presents Rome as a striking example of spontaneous urban nature, [...] Read more.
The accelerating pace of global urbanisation is reshaping planning agendas toward integrating urban nature, yet dominant approaches continue to rely on designed or controlled interventions to produce engineered approximations of spontaneity. This study presents Rome as a striking example of spontaneous urban nature, where wild flora has reclaimed ruins, walls, and neglected spaces for centuries without planned intervention. By “wild” or spontaneous vegetation, this paper refers to unmanaged, self-seeding flora that establishes itself without deliberate planting, irrigation, or maintenance, colonising ruins, walls, abandoned lots, and urban margins through autonomous ecological processes. The paper adopts a critical narrative synthesis methodology, integrating historical–cultural evidence, contemporary ecological data drawn from peer-reviewed biodiversity surveys within Rome’s urban boundary, and a spatial analysis of georeferenced historical cartographic sources to build an interpretive framework for what is here called passive coexistence. The key findings demonstrate that Rome’s sub-Mediterranean climate and centuries of aesthetic conditioning through visual arts, literature, and film have together produced a tacit social acceptance of spontaneous vegetation, effectively substituting for the deliberate education campaigns and designed interventions required in comparable cities. The study proposes an alternative narrative of spontaneous urban nature, guided by ecological monitoring and grounded in heritage planning frameworks. Despite context-specific limits, Rome’s passive coexistence paradigm offers a provocation and existing proof for more-than-human cities that seek resilience without the resource burden of engineered green infrastructure. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Historic Urban Landscape and Planning)
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38 pages, 4407 KB  
Article
Large-Scale Metadata Processing for 3D Cultural Heritage Objects
by Sander Münster
Land 2026, 15(5), 751; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15050751 - 28 Apr 2026
Viewed by 334
Abstract
Large-scale datasets such as Objaverse or ShapeNet and repositories such as Sketchfab have been compiled for 3D content. Within the European 3DBigDataSpace project, a consortium of 10 partners assess open licensed 3D models to select and retrieve those models representing cultural heritage objects [...] Read more.
Large-scale datasets such as Objaverse or ShapeNet and repositories such as Sketchfab have been compiled for 3D content. Within the European 3DBigDataSpace project, a consortium of 10 partners assess open licensed 3D models to select and retrieve those models representing cultural heritage objects in Europe to aggregate them into the European Data Space. A key component of this work is the classification and geolocalization of 3D content, with mesh models viewable via different viewers and tested in different scenarios such as museum exhibitions, cultural tourism, or education. This article makes four principal contributions: (1) a current empirical overview of the global distribution and linguistic coverage of large-scale 3D heritage datasets; (2) a comparative evaluation of text-based and image-based methods for geocoding and semantic classification; (3) an analysis of data quality challenges specific to uncurated 3D heritage collections; and (4) a discussion of the implications of user-generated content for definitions of digital cultural heritage. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Historic Urban Landscape and Planning)
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23 pages, 48084 KB  
Article
Space Syntax and Urban Morphology in Historical Context: Mapping Green Space Systems in the Hungarian Part of Habsburg Central Europe
by Éva Lovra and Elif Sarihan
Land 2026, 15(4), 564; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15040564 - 30 Mar 2026
Viewed by 714
Abstract
The research examines the evolution of urban green spaces within Habsburg Central European cities. It analyses how the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (Ausgleich, 1867) was associated with urban planning and integrating green space into existing historical urban fabrics. The study combines urban morphological [...] Read more.
The research examines the evolution of urban green spaces within Habsburg Central European cities. It analyses how the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (Ausgleich, 1867) was associated with urban planning and integrating green space into existing historical urban fabrics. The study combines urban morphological analysis and space syntax to compare historical and contemporary urban structures. It identifies the historical factors, including early modern urban planning, relevant legal frameworks, and the emergence of landscape architecture, that associated with the formation of these green networks. Focusing on the late 19th and early 20th centuries’ green spaces in Bratislava and Novi Sad, the study defines the spatial integration of urban green spaces within the built form to represent the change in the urban fabric as a whole. It reveals patterns in their integration, accessibility, and association with urban fabric development, contributing to understanding of Central European urban evolution, planning, and green space distribution’s influence on contemporary towns. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Historic Urban Landscape and Planning)
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