Innovative Strategies for Sustainable Smart Cities and Territories

Dear Colleagues,

The concept of smart cities represents a comprehensive approach to the functioning of urban regions and affects various areas such as culture, infrastructure, the environment, energy, and social services. Each of these areas strives to achieve multiple interconnected goals that, together, create a system based on the principles of sustainable development. This system consists of public administration, the private sector, and civil society entities, all of which are essential to achieving these goals. Due to its complexity, there is no international legally binding definition or precise legal framework for the smart city concept. Individual states follow their own "smart" concepts and methodologies, aligned with global documents addressing these issues. The complexity of the smart city concept, combined with complicated urban problems and the pursuit of sustainable solutions, presents a significant challenge. Therefore, smart city policies must strategically focus on a smart economy, a smart environment, smart governance, smart housing, smart mobility, and smart people. These strategies should also include institutional changes to provide context-sensitive outcomes in local urban areas, potentially shifting to a bottom-up, community-based approach rather than one initiated by institutions and industries.

In this Special Issue, we aim to publish innovative multidisciplinary work on current trends and perspectives in strategic management, innovation implementation, working models, and best practices that could improve the environment, economy, and social well-being in smart cities and territories. We are particularly interested in advances in governance models, simulation methods and data analysis, forecasting techniques, scenario planning, future designs, and complex system models that could contribute to improving critical thinking and decision making in urban and territorial resilience and sustainable development. Smart cities are more efficient, provide more opportunities for job creation, and ensure growth while also improving the social inclusion and engagement of residents. Enhancing the functionality, long-term sustainability, and standard of living for residents in smart cities can be achieved through the creation of effective, targeted, and sustainable smart city strategies.

Potential topics can include the following:

• Multi-scale planning and design;
• Land planning methods, including participatory planning, ecosystem-based planning, collaborative planning, integrated planning, strategic planning, sustainable planning, smart planning, territorial ecological planning, etc.;
• Planning theory and planning policy related to land;
• Digital landscape architecture;
• Urban and regional development related to land, land use and land use change, and disaster risk assessment/management/reduction;
• Climate resilience;
• Nature-based solutions;
• Green/blue/gray/brown infrastructure;
• Landscape protection/management/restoration.

Land planning and landscape architecture pertaining to the following:

• Smart cities;
• Ecosystem services;
• Human health and well-being;
• Biodiversity education;
• GIS, remote sensing, drones, sensors, big data, AI, VR, BIM, IoT, and other advanced technologies;
• Social/spatial/environmental/distributional/procedural justice;
• Transport heritage;
• Real estate;
• Energy transition.

Manuscripts may be of a conceptual–theoretical nature and can be a demonstration of successful cases and applied research. We also welcome short communications on design projects. Inter- and transdisciplinary manuscripts are highly encouraged, as are proposals for relevant Special Issues.

We are particularly interested in submissions relating to the design of healthier, greener cities that will ensure healthy living and promote well-being for all people; contributions aimed at making landscapes inclusive and safe; and manuscripts that demonstrate the design of sustainable landscapes with the aim to strengthen their resilience and adaptive capacity to withstand climate-related hazards and natural disasters.

Prof. Dr. Tomáš Peráček
Prof. Dr. Mária Srebalová
Dr. Andrea Čajková
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.