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Sustainable Urbanism: Definition, Assessment, and Agenda for Future Research
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Sustainable Urbanism: Definition, Assessment, and Agenda for Future Research

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2024) | Viewed by 6847

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Michael W. Mehaffy

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Sustasis Foundation, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 2579, White Salmon, WA 98672, USA
Interests: sustainable urbanism; science of cities; urban networks; organized complexity; pattern languages
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to invite you to submit an original research article to this Special Issue of Sustainability, “Sustainable Urbanism: Definition, Assessment and Agenda for Future Research.” As cities are currently facing historic challenges in the face of urbanization, there is an urgent need to clarify the place of urbanism in the larger framework of ensuring a sustainable future, and to define a more detailed research agenda for achieving this goal. 

“Sustainability” has become a commonplace term in a variety of fields, including urban planning and development, and it has thereby provided a useful interdisciplinary platform for assessment and reform. Yet, this term is also dangerously ill-defined, and prone to careless use and shallow claims. This Special Issue will consider more precise and rigorous definitions of urban sustainability and assess current research findings. In particular, we will investigate to what extent “urban sustainability” is a matter of maintaining existing urban patterns and ways of life—perhaps with more efficient technology and renewable resources—and the degree to which we much introduce a deeper transformation of our technologies, systems and even institutions to achieve it.

This Special Issue will assess new insights from the sciences that may inform a future research agenda, including the understanding of complex adaptive systems, network science, generativity and evolution, algorithmic processes and biological dynamics. We will also examine human systems and their failures, including the barriers that prevent necessary reforms and the necessary tools and strategies to overcome them. On this basis, we aim to outline future research directions in this crucial field.

The Special Issue recognizes that urban sustainability is inextricably linked to other kinds of sustainability and the goals outlined in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (and its related urban-focused document, the New Urban Agenda). Both documents acknowledge that human settlements are crucial for human movement, interaction and resource consumption; responsible for many or most of human-related impacts on the planet; and directly related to the quality and durability of human life. It is therefore crucial that human settlements receive special attention as we work toward more truly sustainable systems.

Original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Metrics, diagnostics and certifications for urban sustainability;
  • The urban dimensions of climate change: adaptation, mitigation and resilience;
  • The ecology of cities: social, economic and natural systems;
  • Natural systems in cities: water, air, soil, flora and fauna;
  • Social sustainability and social infrastructure;
  • Economic feedback and economic reform;
  • Biophilia in nature, in cities and in buildings;
  • Walkability and multi-modal mobility;
  • Streets and street patterns;
  • Compactness, mix of uses, and coherent public space systems;
  • Self-organization, participation, co-design, and capacity building;
  • Current barriers to urban sustainability and tools to overcome them;
  • Regulatory reforms and innovations;
  • Economic tools and strategies: making sustainability pay;
  • New professional and educational models;
  • Future research topics: theory, practice and policy.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Michael W. Mehaffy
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.

Keywords

  • sustainable urbanism
  • urban sustainability metrics
  • urban ecology
  • urban walkability
  • new urban agenda
  • sustainable development goals

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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16 pages, 2663 KiB  
Article
UN-Sustainable Urbanism: The Challenge of “Lock-In”
by Michael W. Mehaffy
Sustainability 2024, 16(17), 7301; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177301 - 25 Aug 2024
Viewed by 499
Abstract
The term “sustainable urbanism” has been criticized over its inconsistent and imprecise definition, leading to challenges in implementing actionable reforms and achieving urban sustainability goals. A clearer approach may be to identify its opposite: specifically, forms of urbanism that cause an unacceptable buildup [...] Read more.
The term “sustainable urbanism” has been criticized over its inconsistent and imprecise definition, leading to challenges in implementing actionable reforms and achieving urban sustainability goals. A clearer approach may be to identify its opposite: specifically, forms of urbanism that cause an unacceptable buildup of toxic or climate-altering emissions, deplete resources beyond sustainable levels, progressively destroy critical ecologies, and cause other identifiable sources of potentially catastrophic harm to human and urban welfare. Here, we present a model of such an “unsustainable urbanism”, and we further observe that it is in fact the dominant model of urban structure to this day. Its features include an over-reliance on low-occupancy vehicular transport, at the expense of other modes including walking; inefficient envelope, size, orientation and adaptability of buildings; ecologically destructive infrastructure systems for handling water, energy and other resources; and—under-appreciated but fundamentally important, as we will explore—the decline of a well-connected, walkable, functionally and aesthetically appealing public realm. This model remains dominant in spite of the many goals, agendas and declarations on sustainable urbanism at the highest policy level. We observe that the lack of progress is in large part the result of system “lock-in”—economic and professional incentives and disincentives, standards, laws, codes, and other forms of feedback that reinforce “business as usual” and create barriers to reform. Therefore, the agenda ahead must address the specific levers of change to overcome this systemic lock-in, drawing insights from economics, technology and the social sciences to do so. We present the outlines of this agenda and make conclusions for the necessary steps ahead. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Urbanism: Definition, Assessment, and Agenda for Future Research)
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21 pages, 3578 KiB  
Article
Geoscience for Cities: Delivering Europe’s Sustainable Urban Future
by Stephanie Bricker, Jan Jelenek, Peter van der Keur, Francesco La Vigna, Sophie O’Connor, Grzegorz Ryzynski, Martin Smith, Jeroen Schokker and Guri Venvik
Sustainability 2024, 16(6), 2559; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16062559 - 20 Mar 2024
Viewed by 1720
Abstract
European Union (EU) policy is clear in its ambition to deliver a sustainable urban future for Europe. In this paper, we consider the role of urban geoscience to help achieve these ambitions. We highlight the relevance of geology to urban subsurface planning and [...] Read more.
European Union (EU) policy is clear in its ambition to deliver a sustainable urban future for Europe. In this paper, we consider the role of urban geoscience to help achieve these ambitions. We highlight the relevance of geology to urban subsurface planning and wider EU policy and strategy. Despite the lack of explicit mention of urban underground space in key policy documents, we identify a significant number of priority urban issues for which geological characterisation is a pre-requisite and for which the geological system forms part of the solution, such as mitigation of climate impacts, delivering net zero energy, and implementing nature-based solutions. We reflect on the paradigm shift of urban geoscience as a geological discipline, rooted initially in engineering geology but which has moved towards an interdisciplinary, solution-focused science operating at the inter-section of environmental–social–built systems. In this regard, we highlight cutting-edge urban geoscience research aligned to current urban challenges and note, in particular, the significance of digital technologies to enable 3D urban characterisation, support data-driven decision-making for planning and development, and serve as a means to communicate geology to urban practitioners. The role of the urban geoscientist as an agent of change to enhance integrated science, improve the accessibility of geological issues, and accelerate the translation of national–regional geology to local settings and to urban policy drivers should not be underestimated. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Urbanism: Definition, Assessment, and Agenda for Future Research)
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17 pages, 2159 KiB  
Article
A Conceptual Exploration of Hidden Spatial Layers: Reading Urban-Breccia
by Elif Öztürk Aksoy and Pelin Dursun Çebi
Sustainability 2024, 16(4), 1625; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16041625 - 16 Feb 2024
Viewed by 742
Abstract
Sustainable urban spaces, from social and cultural perspectives, can be characterized not only by the preservation of the historical cultural structures within them but also by the subjective and collective meanings contributed by the individuals inhabiting these spaces in their daily lives across [...] Read more.
Sustainable urban spaces, from social and cultural perspectives, can be characterized not only by the preservation of the historical cultural structures within them but also by the subjective and collective meanings contributed by the individuals inhabiting these spaces in their daily lives across physical, social, cognitive, and cultural dimensions. Therefore, the planning and construction of socially and culturally sustainable cities is a challenging endeavor due to the intricate and dynamic nature of the urban phenomenon. The main goal of this study is to investigate the meanings of the different layers of the urban space phenomenon and how they can be conceptualized at the core of social and cultural sustainability strategies for cities. The study aims to reconceptualize urban space through the lens of ‘memory’, depicting it as ‘urban-breccia’ that emerges along the axes of remembering–construction and forgetting–destruction, mediated by visible and hidden layers. Within the entirety and variability of physical realities, concepts, phenomena, and occurrences, the urban-breccia generates dynamic, complex, multilayered, and ambiguous relational systems through the struggles of the visible and hidden layers vying for predominance. These relational systems within urban-breccia signify both semantic and syntactic approaches that encompass visible and hidden layers. It is believed that such a study would contribute to the endeavors that seek to find the fundamental domains that render urban spaces culturally and socially sustainable, within the synthesis of urban space’s physical, social, cognitive, and cultural perspectives, through a temporality inherent to memory. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Urbanism: Definition, Assessment, and Agenda for Future Research)
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18 pages, 2520 KiB  
Article
A New Perspective on the Evaluation of Urbanization Sustainability: Urban Health Examination
by Hang Yan and Zhijiang Liu
Sustainability 2023, 15(12), 9338; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15129338 - 9 Jun 2023
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1431
Abstract
In recent decades, urbanization around the world has become an unavoidable trend. However, rapid urbanization has brought about a number of “urban diseases” which have considerable influence on sustainable urbanization. In order to diagnose urban problems, this study introduces a new perspective for [...] Read more.
In recent decades, urbanization around the world has become an unavoidable trend. However, rapid urbanization has brought about a number of “urban diseases” which have considerable influence on sustainable urbanization. In order to diagnose urban problems, this study introduces a new perspective for the evaluation of urbanization sustainability named “urban health examination (UHE)” based on the urban lifeform theory which treats a city as a human body system. Then, an evaluation index system of UHE incorporating eight dimensions is constructed by referring to the existing authoritative indicator systems globally. Furthermore, a deviation maximization method and obstacle analysis method are integrated to evaluate urban development level and diagnose the urban diseases. Finally, in order to verify the feasibility of the UHE methodological framework, an empirical study was conducted in Wuhan, Central China. The results show that (1) the main urban diseases suffered by Wuhan City in 2010–2019 include traffic congestion, waterlogging, unsafe production, insufficient technological power, and excessive urban development; (2) the evolution mechanism of urban diseases in Wuhan has been explored. This study proposes a methodological framework of UHE which can successfully diagnose urban diseases, so that local urban managers adopt tailored strategies to prevent urban diseases and further achieve sustainable urban development goals. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Urbanism: Definition, Assessment, and Agenda for Future Research)
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Review

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24 pages, 944 KiB  
Review
Walkability Indices—The State of the Art and Future Directions: A Systematic Review
by Alessandro Venerandi, Hal Mellen, Ombretta Romice and Sergio Porta
Sustainability 2024, 16(16), 6730; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16166730 - 6 Aug 2024
Viewed by 1232
Abstract
This systematic review aims to illustrate the state of the art of walkability indices and future research directions. A comprehensive search in the general Google database and Google Scholar identified a total of 45 records published between 2005 and 2023. Using a selection [...] Read more.
This systematic review aims to illustrate the state of the art of walkability indices and future research directions. A comprehensive search in the general Google database and Google Scholar identified a total of 45 records published between 2005 and 2023. Using a selection process based on the PRISMA model, 32 records were identified as meeting the inclusion criteria. These are organized incrementally, highlighting their novelty relative to preceding studies, and divided into sectors of prevalent application. The 5Ds theory provides a first contribution by identifying walkability metrics based on proximity to amenities, land use diversity, and density. Recent advancements, leveraging GIS systems and open data, have expanded such metrics to include green spaces, footpath design, and noise pollution. However, these developments remain largely tied to the catchment area logic and offer coarse descriptions of the built environment’s morphological structure, often lacking justification for metric selection and weighting. To address these shortcomings, future research should use more detailed descriptions of urban form, balance metric comprehensiveness with data availability, employ robust methods for metric selection, and explore alternative weighting techniques based on cognitive and emotional responses to urban settings. These efforts are crucial for advancing the understanding and measurement of walkability in the context of the compact city and place-making paradigms. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Urbanism: Definition, Assessment, and Agenda for Future Research)
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