Planning for Sustainability in Contested Landscapes: Exploring the Potential of Peri-Urban Spaces

Dear Colleagues,

The spaces where rural and urban meet are ‘messy’ and complicated, providing a problematic arena within which future land use change is planned, contested, mediated and delivered as part of wider place-making agendas. However, these spaces are ill-defined, hidden and often incidental in place-making processes and decisions and, despite their growing significance spatially and functionally, they have received scant attention as places in their own right. Indeed, their identity is further obfuscated within a panoply of terms encountered in the academic and policy literature; peri-urban; rural-urban fringe; urban-rural fringe; exurbia. Whatever term is favoured, they have become reactive places, bolted on to urban-centric agendas based on densification and SMART growth with implicit rural subservience and protection. This dualism and prioritisation of urban and rural space are unhelpful and over simplistic, hindering more holistic considerations of the peri-urban as an opportunity space.

This set of papers explores and illuminates the potential of the peri-urban as an asset to placemaking and wider environmental, economic and social agendas signposting more positive, bold and experimental agendas for the improved management and planning of these neglected spaces.

Prof. Alister J. Scott
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 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. 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.