Spatial Governance, Environmental Change, and Urban Sustainability: Planning Pathways Toward SDG 11 and SDG 13

Dear Colleagues,

Cities today are experiencing unprecedented environmental and climatic transformations. Rapid urban expansion, land-use conversion, ecological degradation, and climate-related risks are reshaping urban regions worldwide. At the same time, global policy frameworks—particularly SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 13 (Climate Action)—call for integrated responses that link spatial development, environmental stewardship, and resilience-building. Urban planning plays a pivotal role in mediating the relationship between land systems, ecological processes, and socio-economic development. However, planning responses often remain fragmented: institutional reforms are discussed separately from spatial environmental dynamics; governance debates are disconnected from empirical geospatial evidence. Recent advances in remote sensing, spatial analytics, and land-change modelling provide powerful tools to understand urban environmental transitions. Meanwhile, institutional and social–ecological frameworks help explain how governance structures, property rights regimes, and collective action shape sustainability outcomes.

This Special Issue examines how urban planning systems address environmental change and climate pressures in pursuit of sustainable cities (SDG 11) and climate action (SDG 13). It integrates spatial governance, institutional design, land-use systems, and geospatial technologies to analyse climate-responsive urban development. By linking institutional planning research with spatial–environmental analysis, it advances understanding of how cities manage land, mitigate risk, strengthen resilience, and drive sustainability transitions across diverse urban contexts.

This Special Issue will welcome manuscripts that link the following themes:

1. Urban Land-Use Change and Environmental Dynamics: Spatial and remote sensing analysis of urban expansion, ecological change, and land degradation, urban heat island assessment, climate exposure mapping, and spatial risk modelling, land-use transition modelling under environmental and climate scenarios;
2. Planning Institutions and Spatial Governance: Institutional adaptation to environmental and climate pressures, planning law, zoning, and development control for sustainability, multi-level and cross-scalar governance for SDG localization, property rights, land markets, and regulatory reform in sustainability transitions;
3. Social–Ecological and Collective Action Perspectives: Governance of commons and collective resource management, community-based adaptation and participatory resilience, application of social–ecological system (SES) frameworks to urban land governance, institutional–environment feedback in land management;
4. Climate-Responsive and Sustainability-Oriented Urban Planning: Integrating mitigation and adaptation into land-use planning, compact urban form, land efficiency, and low-carbon pathways, nature-based solutions and spatial resilience design, urban–rural land transitions under climate change;
5. Digital and Geospatial Innovations in Urban Planning: GIS-based decision-support for sustainable land governance, spatial big data and advanced analytics for SDG implementation, remote sensing for land-use policy evaluation, artificial intelligence, simulation modelling, and digital twins for sustainability planning.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Gabriel Hoh Teck Ling
Dr. Mou Leong Tan
Prof. Dr. Fan Tu
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. 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.

• urban planning
• SDG 11
• SDG 13
• spatial governance
• land-use change
• remote sensing
• social–ecological systems
• climate resilience
• urban sustainability
• geospatial analysis