Green Infrastructure for Resilient Cities: Rethinking Urban Parks and Open Spaces

Dear Colleagues,

Rapid urbanisation process leads to a loss of agricultural land and green spaces, increased imperviousness, the deterioration of local environments, and the subsequent public health-related impacts on communities. Research on the contributions to urban ecology of local parks and other green spaces has established evidence of their immense value. Ensuring communities have access to green spaces can improve people’s physical and mental health, local air quality, the urban heat island effect, biodiversity conservation, ecology, and urban agriculture, and can also provide social networking opportunities and play spaces for children, helping to create happy and healthy communities. Parks and other green spaces form crucial elements of sustainable landscapes in cities, and these spaces are important green infrastructure systems that should be protected.

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) that provide insights into interactions between humans and nature in urban environments and the roles and contributions of parks and green spaces in creating ecologically sustainable communities. We welcome research that addresses and attempts to explore a wide spectrum of topics, including urban ecology, science, architecture/landscape architecture, planning, urban design, governance, public health, spatial science and social aspects. This Special Issue aims to bring together various threads of research on sustainable urban landscapes to explore the potential these spaces hold in enhancing ecological and environmental qualities, human well-being, and community participation.

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

• Climate change resilience;
• Biodiversity conservation;
• Nature-based solutions;
• Ecosystem services;
• Community safety and access;
• Urban agriculture;
• Public health (physical and mental);
• Recreation;
• Social networking and community engagement;
• Spatial planning and analysis;
• Environmental inequalities;
• Equal access to green infrastructure.

Standards, policies, and regulatory issues, including obligations related to the provision of access to green infrastructure

Dr. Sumita Ghosh
Prof. Dr. Sara Jane Wilkinson
Prof. Dr. Elizelle Juanee Cilliers
Dr. Louis Lategan
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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.

• urban parks
• ecologies
• conservation
• resilience
• sustainability
• landscapes
• green spaces
• biodiversity
• nature-based solutions
• mental health
• social cohesion