Urban Innovation and Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

In early June 2022, the 50th anniversary celebration of the 1972 Stockholm Conference confirmed that ‘achieving sustainability’ remains a key goal of human endeavor on planet Earth. The global policy and developmental and operational focus on achieving sustainability has gained contemporary significance due to the global megatrends including climate crisis, rapid global urbanization [1], digital disruption, economic shifts, and social equality movements––all of which have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The international development agendas, policy advocacy, knowledge work, and financial and technical assistance for the urban sector evolved considerably over the past five decades. Cities are managing the dual challenges of leading socio-economic development while reducing their large environmental and climate footprints. All of this requires the development, experimentation and implementation of urban innovations and sustainability.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the urban agenda centered on the notion of ‘competitive cities’ to improve urban management. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio resulted in the notions of Local Agenda 21 and ‘sustainable cities’ [2]. UN-Habitat and UNEP launched the ‘Sustainable Cities Programme’ to mainstream urban environmental planning and management. In 2000, the World Bank’s corporate urban strategy proposed the idea of ‘livable cities’, further developed and implemented by international financial institutions, such as the Asian Development Bank and operationalized with the trust funds, such as Cities Alliance, Cities Development Initiative in Asia, and Urban Climate Resilience Trust Fund.

In the 2010s, building on the adoption of smartphones and information communication and technologies, the idea of ‘smart cities’ became prominent [3]. In the current decade, the 4^th industrial revolution resulted from the cost-effectiveness of increased computer power, availability of sensors (Internet of Things) generating big data and machine learning (artificial intelligence) for forecasting based on historical digital data trends coupled with a worsening climate crisis provides the necessary impetus to combine the notions of ‘smart cities’ with ‘resilient cities’ and a focus on engendering urban innovations towards sustainability and low emissions carbon development pathways.

The 2020s are also dubbed as the ‘decade of action’ towards implementing the ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ [4]. As a normative imperative, SDG 11 aims to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable’ [5] as well as support other SDGs. However, the latest statistics from the United Nations show that achieving SDGs remains a formidable task around the world, and concerted efforts are needed from governments, the private sector, civil society, and academic and research institutions.

This SI will complement the current knowledge production, research and development, and policy advocacy discussions on the ‘Value of Sustainable Urbanization’ [6], ‘Envisaging the Future of Cities’ [7], and the implementation of the New Urban Agenda [8]. Engendering urban innovations for sustainability will require the development and implementation of multi-stakeholder partnerships [9] as well as public-private partnerships [10].

Given the urgency of understanding and tackling emergent issues and challenges in cities and human settlements around the world, researchers, scholars, planners, policymakers, and development practitioners have been working towards developing and experimenting with urban innovations for achieving sustainability.

In view of the above, this Special Issue (SI) invites original research articles as well as review papers on ‘urban innovation and sustainability’.

Prof. Dr. Bharat Dahiya
Guest Editor

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. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2400 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 innovation
• urban sustainability
• urban design
• urban and territorial planning
• user experience
• value proposition
• urban resilience
• smart cities
• sustainable cities
• resilient cities and urban resilience
• inclusive cities and urban development
• green cities
• livable cities
• circular economy
• SDG 11
• SDGs
• urban-rural linkages
• urban management
• metropolitan governance
• collaborative governance
• multistakeholder partnerships
• public-private partnerships