Urban Planning and the Quality of Life in Neighborhoods: The Built Environment’s Impact on Resident Well-Being

Dear Colleagues,

The imperative to create sustainable, healthy, and equitable urban futures is a central challenge of the 21st century. At the heart of this challenge lies the neighborhood, the fundamental scale of daily life where the abstractions of urban planning and design materialize into lived experience. The built environment, comprising streets, parks, housing, public spaces, and the connective tissue of infrastructure, is not a neutral backdrop but an active determinant of human well-being. It shapes opportunities for social interaction, physical activity, and access to essential services; it influences exposure to environmental stressors like noise, heat, and pollution; and it can either reinforce or mitigate social inequities. Consequently, understanding the multifaceted relationships between urban form, neighborhood quality, and resident well-being is a critical frontier for research and practice.

Historically, debates on urban quality of life have often oscillated between quantitative assessments of service provision and more qualitative, perceptual studies of place satisfaction. However, contemporary urban scholarship demands a more integrated and nuanced approach. There is growing recognition that well-being is a multi-dimensional construct encompassing physical and mental health, social cohesion, a sense of safety and belonging, and the capacity for personal fulfillment. The built environment interacts with each of these dimensions in complex, context-dependent ways. For instance, while mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods are frequently associated with higher levels of physical activity and social capital, their development must be carefully managed to avoid displacement and gentrification. Similarly, green infrastructure offers proven benefits for climate resilience and psychological restoration, yet its distribution is often uneven across socio-economic strata.

Despite significant advances in urban studies, public health, and environmental psychology, critical gaps persist. Research often remains siloed, with limited cross-disciplinary dialogue between planners, geographers, epidemiologists, sociologists, and architects. Many studies focus on singular built environment features (e.g., density, green space) without sufficiently accounting for the synergistic or antagonistic effects of their combination within a holistic neighborhood system. Furthermore, there is a pressing need for more longitudinal and comparative research to establish causal pathways and to understand how the impacts of the built environment vary across different cultural contexts, climatic zones, and demographic groups. The voices and subjective experiences of residents themselves must be more central to the assessment of what constitutes a “quality” neighborhood.

This Special Issue seeks to address these gaps by providing a comprehensive, interdisciplinary forum for cutting-edge research that critically examines the linkages between urban planning, neighborhood-scale built environments, and resident well-being. We aim to collate empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions that move beyond simple correlations toward a deeper understanding of mechanisms, trade-offs, and equitable pathways for neighborhood transformation. The topic is squarely aligned with the scope of Land, which engages with land-use change, spatial planning, and the human–environment interface. By focusing on the neighborhood as a pivotal unit of analysis, this issue will contribute to the journal's mission of fostering sustainable and just land management.

We invite original research articles, systematic reviews, and policy analyses that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Theoretical and Methodological Advances: Integrative frameworks linking urban form, human behavior, and well-being outcomes; novel methodologies for assessing multi-dimensional well-being and built environment qualities; mixed-methods approaches combining spatial analysis, perception surveys, and physiological data.
• Key Domains of the Built Environment: The role of density, land-use mix, street connectivity, and walkability (the "D variables") in promoting health and social life; design and quality of public and green spaces (parks, plazas, blue spaces) for recreation, social cohesion, and mental restoration; housing typology, quality, and tenure security as foundations of well-being.
• Environmental Justice and Equity: Equitable distribution of amenities and exposure to environmental burdens (pollution, heat islands, flood risk); planning responses to gentrification and displacement; inclusive design for children, the elderly, and people with disabilities; gender-sensitive urban planning.
• Health and Sustainability Nexus: Built environment strategies for promoting active transportation (walking, cycling) and reducing sedentary lifestyles; neighborhood design for climate adaptation (green infrastructure, cooling) and mitigation (low-carbon mobility); the impact of noise and air pollution on community health.
• Governance, Co-Creation, and Perception: Participatory planning and community engagement in shaping neighborhood quality; the gap between expert assessment and resident perception of livability; policy instruments (zoning, design guidelines, financing) for fostering well-being-oriented development.
• Emerging Contexts and Technologies: Planning for well-being in peri-urban and rapidly urbanizing areas; the impact of digitalization and smart city technologies on neighborhood life and social interaction; post-pandemic reflections on neighborhood self-sufficiency and public space use.

We look forward to receiving your valuable contributions to this important discourse.

Prof. Dr. Yung Yau
Dr. Antonio Zumelzu
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.

• urban planning
• neighborhood quality
• built environment
• well-being
• quality of life
• livability
• urban design
• social sustainability
• healthy cities
• environmental justice
• public space
• walkability
• green infrastructure
• community health
• place-making