Participatory Urban Landscapes: Designing to Amplify Local Voices and Ensure Multispecies Health

Dear Colleagues,

In the context of worsening climate uncertainty, ecological precarity, and urban health disparities, cities are no longer merely engines of growth or spaces of control—they are being reimagined as spaces of care, resilience, and cohabitation. Urban landscapes—parks, streets, wetlands, courtyards, and even overlooked interstitial spaces—have the latent potential to become not just ecological infrastructures, but also sites of healing, memory, encounters, and belonging. They hold stories. They absorb the traces of bodies, both human and non-human. Yet, we must ask, “Who has a say the making of these spaces? Whose futures are being shaped—and whose are being ignored?”

This Special Issue considers the politics, ecology, and poetics of participation in urban environmental stewardship. It begins with the premise that landscapes –particularly in urban contexts– are not neutral backdrops but contested and affective grounds where health, justice, and the lives of multiple species unfold.

As cities respond to urgent climate, environmental, and health-related challenges, it is important to center local voices and participatory processes that engage communities not as passive recipients of top-down plans, but as active co-makers of the spaces they inhabit. At the same time, we must focus on the non-human aspects of urban health: how the presence, survival, and vitality of natural spaces and multiple species are interwoven into our urban futures. “Participatory Urban Landscapes: Designing to Amplify Local Voices and Ensure Multispecies Health” invites researchers to submit work that spans disciplines—landscape architecture, urban planning, public health, anthropology, geography, ecology, and environmental humanities—and centers voices often excluded from conventional planning paradigms.

“Participatory Urban Landscapes: Designing to Amplify Local Voices and Ensure Multispecies Health” invites researchers to submit work that spans disciplines—landscape architecture, urban planning, public health, anthropology, and environmental humanities—and centers voices often excluded from conventional planning paradigms. It seeks to gather contributions that explore how participatory practices in urban landscape design can cultivate a healthier and more inclusive future for humans and non-human.

Aligned with Land’s interdisciplinary mission, this Special Issue brings together research, design, and practice to investigate how community-led processes can respond to ecological crises while considering diverse forms of life and knowledge.

We welcome theoretical, empirical, visual, and practice-based contributions. Topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Participatory green and blue infrastructure for public and environmental health;
• Local voices and community-based processes in urban landscape design;
• Multispecies urbanism: designing with and for non-human life;
• Climate adaptation and environmental resilience through collective action;
• Considering memory, affect, and belonging in transforming urban landscapes;
• Creative and collaborative methods: storytelling, mapping, and co-design;
• Case studies from diverse global contexts, especially transitional landscapes.

Dr. Maryam Naghibi
Dr. Gayle Souter-Brown
Dr. Rinku Roy Chowdhury
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.

• participatory landscape design
• local knowledge and community voices
• urban environmental health
• multispecies urbanism
• green and blue infrastructure
• urban climate resilience
• public space and wellbeing
• community-led design processes
• ecological urbanism
• spatial and environmental justice