Special Issue "Urbanization and Landscape Change: Tools for Analyzing Socioeconomic and Environmental Issues"

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2021.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Pere Serra
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Geography, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain
Interests: land use planning; landscape dynamics; earth observation applications
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
Dr. Marta Sapena
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1) German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), German Aerospace Center (DLR), Kalkhorstweg 53, D-17235 Neustrelitz, Germany;
2) Geo-Environmental Cartography and Remote Sensing Group, Universitat Politècnica de València, 46022 València, Spain
Interests: urban remote sensing applications; spatio-temporal analysis; spatial metrics; geographic information science; links between spatial structure and socioeconomic factors

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Urbanization, understood as a multidimensional process, implies socioeconomic and environmental changes, alters urban form and size and population density and distribution, changes land use and land cover, and contributes to climate change and pollution, among other issues, at local, regional, continental, and global scales. Therefore, promoting sustainable urbanization, limiting natural land consumption, and ensuring the well-being of the population have become policy targets for urban and landscape planners.

The spatial structure of urban areas and urban area growth patterns influence how the physical, socioeconomic, and environmental characteristics of urban areas change over time. These interrelationships play a major role in the daily life of urban dwellers and lead decision-makers to seek better-informed choices for the sustainable planning of urban areas. Thus, a better understanding of the relationships between the spatial structure of urban areas and the socioeconomic performance of urban areas is of crucial relevance.

Earth observation (EO) provides timely, accurate, and frequent data, along with the tools to capture urbanization and landscape changes at different levels, from coarse to fine resolutions, in a consistent way, which is of prevailing relevance to monitor landscapes. In this context, monitoring, quantifying, and characterizing the progress of urban areas enriches our understanding of past and present trends, provides evidence-based information, supports decision-making processes, and allows unsustainable patterns and their potential consequences to be anticipated.

Therefore, this Special Issue will focus on the complex process of urbanization and landscape change caused by the interaction of several factors that can be simultaneously analyzed due to the ever-growing availability of tools. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the development of advanced quantitative and qualitative tools for analyzing socioeconomic and environmental issues based on EO and geographic information system (GIS) techniques, the spatio-temporal consequences of urban growth and landscape structure dynamics, as well as the urbanization patterns extracted from indicators and models.

Dr. Pere Serra
Dr. Marta Sapena
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 papers will be 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 1800 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.

Keywords

  • planned and unplanned urban expansion
  • decision support context
  • land use change
  • urban growth and socioeconomic factors
  • socio-ecological interactions
  • urban ecosystem degradation and quality of life
  • urban growth and landscape dynamics
  • spatio-temporal patterns

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

Article
Interaction between Land Financing Strategy and the Implementation Deviation of Local Governments’ Cultivated Land Protection Policy in China
Land 2021, 10(8), 803; https://doi.org/10.3390/land10080803 - 30 Jul 2021
Viewed by 308
Abstract
The deviation of implementation of China’s cultivated land protection policy is the core problem urgently needing to be solved in the process of protecting the country’s cultivated land. This paper aims to explain the universality of this implementation deviation from the perspective of [...] Read more.
The deviation of implementation of China’s cultivated land protection policy is the core problem urgently needing to be solved in the process of protecting the country’s cultivated land. This paper aims to explain the universality of this implementation deviation from the perspective of the spatial interaction of fiscal land strategies. Based on the data of 30 provinces in China from 2000 to 2015, the spatial Durbin model is used to validate the corresponding theoretical hypothesis. The results show that: (1) At the national or regional level, the given local government’s behavior with regard to land conveyance and land-orientation investment will aggravate implementation deviations of the cultivated land protection policy in the local area. (2) Land conveyance and land-orientation investment behaviors cause a spatial spillover effect. As a result, these behaviors not only exacerbate the implementation deviation of the cultivated land protection policy in the local area, but also exacerbate this deviation in adjacent areas. (3) The spatial spillover effects of land conveyance and land-orientation investment strategies in the eastern, central and western regions of China show marked differences. However, in general, compared with the land transfer strategy, the spatial interactions of the land-orientation investment strategy represent the more important factor that gives rise to the widespread deviation in the implementation of the cultivated land protection policy. (4) The transformation of the performance appraisal system can help to weaken the interactive behavior of the land financing strategy. This can, in turn, not only alleviate the deviation degree of the implementation of the local cultivated land protection policy, but also the deviation degree of the implementation of the latter in adjacent areas. Full article
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Article
Detecting the Dynamics of Urban Growth in Africa Using DMSP/OLS Nighttime Light Data
Land 2021, 10(1), 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/land10010013 - 26 Dec 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 987
Abstract
Africa has been experiencing a rapid urbanization process, which may lead to an increase in unsustainable land use and urban poverty. Assessing the spatiotemporal characteristics of urbanization dynamics is especially important and needed for the sustainable development of Africa. Satellite-based nighttime light (NTL) [...] Read more.
Africa has been experiencing a rapid urbanization process, which may lead to an increase in unsustainable land use and urban poverty. Assessing the spatiotemporal characteristics of urbanization dynamics is especially important and needed for the sustainable development of Africa. Satellite-based nighttime light (NTL) data are widely used to monitor the dynamics of urban growth from global to local scales. In this study, urban growth patterns across Africa were analyzed and discussed using stable nighttime light datasets obtained from DMSP/OLS (the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program’s Operational Line-scan System) spanning from 1992 to 2013. We partitioned the nighttime lighting areas into three types (low, medium, and high) using thresholds derived from the Brightness Gradient (BG) method. Our results indicated that built-up areas in Africa have increased rapidly, particularly those areas with low nighttime lighting types. Countries with higher urbanization levels in Africa, like South Africa, Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, and Libya, were leading the brightening trend. The distribution of nighttime lighting types was consistent with the characteristics of urban development, with high nighttime lighting types showed up at the urban center, whereas medium and low nighttime lighting types appeared in the urban-rural transition zone and rural areas respectively. The impacts of these findings on the future of African cities will be further proposed. Full article
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