Urban and Rural Land Use, Landscape and Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

The issues, initiatives, roles and challenges of sustainability differ significantly between rural and urban settings. Land use and landscape studies show these differences very well.

The aim of this Special Issue is to explore how different urban and rural land use practices and landscape perceptions and planning contribute to sustainability. We are inviting papers that discuss the relationships between land use and landscape issues and sustainability with regard to placemaking, territorial development, tourism and agriculture in a regional and urban rural context. It is suggested that the concept of sustainability should be used as a framework to discuss place-related, and especially land-use- and landscape-related, concepts, phenomena and processes in recent societies. We argue that place-related activities and phenomena are crucial aspects of sustainability and play a significant role in the development of quality of life and wellbeing of communities in the era of climate crisis.

This Special Issue invites papers that focus on a broad range of approaches to the topics of land use, landscape and sustainability including sustainable rural and urban tourism, land use landscape planning, place-based development, placemaking, as well as rural and urban development. We also especially welcome papers that examine rural–urban relationships in the context of sustainability.

Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Different approaches to urban and rural landscape planning
• New perspectives on sustainability in the context of climate change
• Placemaking and the social perception of places of particular importance
• The concept of livability in the context of the development of people-friendly places in cities and villages
• Sustainable forms of tourism development as a negation of mass tourism
• Development of agriculture in the context of demographic, climatic and political changes
• Alternative models of urban and rural development
• Social, cultural and spatial relations between the city and the countryside
• Land use and contemporary problems of urban and rural development
• Suburban zones and the phenomenon of urban sprawl

We are looking forward to receiving your contributions!

Dr. Bernadett Csurgó
Prof. Dr. Agnieszka Jaszczak
Prof. Dr. Melanie Smith
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.