Urban Land Use Change and Its Spatial Planning

Dear Colleagues,

Land use is a basic dimension of spatial planning. The most common element of spatial plans is the documents that refer to the future spatial development of an area. In the last decade, more often than not, when we are addressing land use, we are referring to land use change. A driver of this change in cities and towns around the world is often urbanisation, with its effects on the form and function of urban spaces, and other often negative effects such as the increased sealing of the land’s surface, the growth of peri-urban areas, urban sprawl, and a rise in environmental problems. However, there is a challenge to go beyond merely recognising what changes need to be implemented as a result of the evidence from various processes and to actively conceptualise anew the role of planning in directing land use change. This SI aims to collect cutting-edge reasonings and studies related to changes as characteristic immanent dimensions in land use. Indeed, urbanised areas are known for their changes in terms of dynamic patterns of activities, their intensities, and concentration. This implies a shift of a focus from patterns of land use and land cover change to dynamic interactions within socio–economic–ecological systems and the resulting impacts on urban planning. This is especially relevant in increasingly common expectations for future urban developments to be open ended and to consider uncertainty as inherent. In particular, this SI will collate advancements in research and practice to gain insights on approaches to understand the causal connections between planning and land use change. This includes acknowledging change as an inherent constant of urban land uses on one hand, and aspects which are crucial for a successful plan implementation to shape and understand future areas on the other.

Submissions are encouraged to contribute to the following sub-themes, but they are not limited to:

• Novel methods and tools, integrated with urban analytics, to examine the interdependency of urban morphology and social, environmental, and economic processes to better inform urban planning as a tool for shaping urban land use.
• Innovative research and case studies examining dynamic interactions within socio–economic–ecological processes and the resulting impacts on urban planning.
• Best practices, as well as successful or unsuccessful endeavours in the concept of open-ended urban planning, giving room to a change as a key constant in urban development.
• Future directions in addressing environmental, economic, and social issues in cities using notion of change as the driving force of urban land use planning.

Dr. Barbara Goličnik Marušić
Dr. Vita Žlender
Manfred Schrenk
Dr. Kasper Kok
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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