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Sustainable Planning and Design of Urban Underground Space for Smart Cities

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Urban and Rural Development".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 17 April 2026 | Viewed by 811

Special Issue Editors

School of Safety Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China
Interests: underground space planning; underground logistics systems engineering; city logistics; freight-passenger integration; transportation modeling and optimization

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Guest Editor
School of Safety Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China
Interests: underground space planning and management; project management; system safety and protection engineering; underground logistics systems engineering

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Guest Editor
Institutes of Logistics Science and Technology, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai 201306, China
Interests: port logistics system operation planning; automated container terminal process optimization; urban underground container logistics; green port energy transformation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The pursuit of smart, livable, and sustainable cities calls for new perspectives on how urban systems are organized across spatial, functional, and technological dimensions. Traditional surface infrastructure is increasingly constrained by land scarcity, environmental pressures, and spatial conflicts, prompting the search for integrated and innovative alternatives. Emerging systems, including underground logistics systems, electric vehicles, and urban air mobility technologies, are gaining attention as promising approaches for enhancing resilience, efficiency, and sustainability in complex urban environments.

These forms of infrastructure are reshaping how cities operate, interact, and evolve. Their integration into existing urban systems introduces important questions related to spatial governance, cross-scale coordination, human–environment interaction, and long-term infrastructure management. Interdisciplinary perspectives and methods are essential for gaining a deeper understanding of their potential contributions to future cities.

This Special Issue welcomes contributions that examine how emerging infrastructures and technologies are embedded within future urban contexts. We invite studies engaging with technologies, planning, policy frameworks, and social dimensions to address the challenges of building inclusive, adaptive, and intelligent urban environments.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Sustainable planning and utilization of urban underground space;
  • Contributions of infrastructure to urban resilience, livability, and decarbonization;
  • Network planning and design of emerging underground/aerial transportation systems;
  • Environmental and operational performance evaluation of infrastructure systems;
  • Human-centered design and operations in complex socio-technical environments;
  • Scenario-based analysis and systems modeling for infrastructure development;
  • Governance, regulatory, and managerial challenges in future urban systems.

Dr. Wanjie Hu
Prof. Dr. Jianjun Dong
Prof. Dr. Chengji Liang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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.

Keywords

  • smart city
  • urban underground space
  • urban planning and management
  • emerging infrastructure
  • underground logistics systems
  • intelligent transportation systems
  • critical infrastructure
  • urban environment modeling
  • social-technological system
  • project and operations management of urban systems

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

34 pages, 5277 KiB  
Article
Immune-Inspired Multi-Objective PSO Algorithm for Optimizing Underground Logistics Network Layout with Uncertainties: Beijing Case Study
by Hongbin Yu, An Shi, Qing Liu, Jianhua Liu, Huiyang Hu and Zhilong Chen
Sustainability 2025, 17(10), 4734; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17104734 - 21 May 2025
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Abstract
With the rapid acceleration of global urbanization and the advent of smart city initiatives, large metropolises confront the dual challenges of surging logistics demand and constrained surface transportation resources. Traditional surface logistics networks struggle to support sustainable urban development in high-density areas due [...] Read more.
With the rapid acceleration of global urbanization and the advent of smart city initiatives, large metropolises confront the dual challenges of surging logistics demand and constrained surface transportation resources. Traditional surface logistics networks struggle to support sustainable urban development in high-density areas due to traffic congestion, high carbon emissions, and inefficient last-mile delivery. This paper addresses the layout optimization of a hub-and-spoke underground space logistics system (ULS) network for smart cities under stochastic scenarios by proposing an immune-inspired multi-objective particle swarm optimization (IS-MPSO) algorithm. By integrating a stochastic robust Capacity–Location–Allocation–Routing (CLAR) model, the approach concurrently minimizes construction costs, maximizes operational efficiency, and enhances underground corridor load rates while embedding probability density functions to capture multidimensional uncertainty parameters. Case studies in Beijing’s Fifth Ring area demonstrate that the IS-MPSO algorithm reduces the total objective function value from 9.8 million to 3.4 million within 500 iterations, achieving stable convergence in an average of 280 iterations. The optimized ULS network adopts a “ring–synapse” topology, elevating the underground corridor load rate to 59% and achieving a road freight alleviation rate (RFAR) of 98.1%, thereby shortening the last-mile delivery distance to 1.1 km. This research offers a decision-making paradigm that balances economic efficiency and robustness for the planning of underground logistics space in smart cities, contributing to the sustainable urban development of high-density regions and validating the algorithm’s effectiveness in large-scale combinatorial optimization problems. Full article
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