Urban Land Use Change and Its Spatial Planning (Second Edition)

Dear Colleagues,

Land use is a basic dimension of spatial planning. The most common elements of spatial plans are the documents that refer to the future spatial development of an area. In the last decade, more often than not, when addressing land use, we are referring to land use change. A driver of these changes in cities and towns around the world is often urbanization, which affects the form and function of urban spaces and often results in negative effects; for example, it increases the sealing of the land’s surface, the growth of peri-urban areas, and urban sprawl, and exasperates environmental problems. However, it remains challenging to go beyond merely recognizing, using evidence, the changes that need to be implemented, to instead actively conceptualize the role of planning in directing land use change.

This second edition continues the theme of the original Special Issue titled “Urban Land Use Change and Its Spatial Planning“. This SI aims to collect cutting-edge studies that view changes as characteristic immanent dimensions in land use. Indeed, urbanized areas are known for their changing nature in terms of their dynamic patterns of activities, with varying intensities and concentrations. This implies a shift in research focus, from examining patterns of land use and land cover change in order to center the dynamic interactions within socioeconomic–ecological systems and their resulting impacts on urban planning. This is especially relevant in light of the increasingly common expectations for future urban developments to be open-ended and to consider uncertainty as inherent. This SI aims to collate advancements in research and practice in order to gain insights into the causal connections between planning and land use change. This includes, on one hand, acknowledging change as an inherent constant of urban land use, and, on the other hand, examining aspects that are crucial to the successful implementation of plans that aim to shape and understand future areas.

Submissions are encouraged to contribute to the following sub-themes, though this is not a definitive list:

• Novel methods and tools, integrated with urban analytics, that 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 socioeconomic–ecological processes and the resulting impacts on urban planning.
• Best practices, as well as successful or unsuccessful endeavors, related to the concept of open-ended urban planning, which views change as a key constant in urban development.
• Future directions to address environmental, economic, and social issues in cities using the notion of change as the driving force of urban land use planning.

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

Dr. Barbara Goličnik Marušić
Prof. Dr. Trynos Gumbo
Dr. Madina Junussova
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.

• land use change
• dynamic processes
• planning
• policy
• quality
• sustainability
• participation

• Urban Land Use Change and Its Spatial Planning in Land (9 articles)