Just Transitions in Urban Space: Geospatial Insights for Equitable and Sustainable Spatial Planning
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2026 | Viewed by 7
Special Issue Editors
Interests: GIS; environmental health; spatial accessibility; healthy cities; socio-spatial inequality
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: geospatial data science; agent-based modelling (ABM); CyberGIS; advanced geocomputation; health geography; spatial accessibility to urban infrastructure
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: GIS; computational and data science; urban informatics; CyberGIS and geospatial computing; geospatial AI
Interests: GIS; machine learning; algorithm; mobility
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Cities worldwide face the intertwined challenges of achieving sustainability, enhancing liveability, and ensuring equitable access to essential services and opportunities. The concept of sustainable spatial planning is crucial for navigating these challenges, requiring integrated, data-driven approaches that bridge urban geography, environmental science, public health, and social equity. Advances in geospatial technologies, mobile sensing, and big data analytics offer unprecedented opportunities to understand complex urban dynamics, measure mobility and exposure with high precision, and identify spatial and social disparities at granular scales.
This Special Issue invites research that leverages these innovative approaches to push the boundaries of sustainable spatial planning. We welcome contributions that focus on the development and application of geospatial methods, spatial modelling, and integrated analytics to design, evaluate, and promote truly sustainable and equitable urban environments. We are particularly interested in studies that move beyond theoretical frameworks to provide actionable urban plans and insights for policymakers, planners, and communities striving towards UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within urban contexts.
Example topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Urban Accessibility and Spatial Justice.
- GeoAI for Sustainable Cities.
- Big Geospatial Data and Real-Time Sensing.
- Health, Environment and Urban Exposure.
- 15-Minute City Metrics and Implementation.
- Climate Resilience and Urban Adaptation.
- GIS/Remote Sensing for Sustainability.
- Urban Policy and Planning Innovation.
- Urban Systems under Environmental Change.
- Mobility Equity and Future Transport.
We seek interdisciplinary contributions that provide robust empirical evidence and advance methodologies for fostering healthy, accessible, resilient, and inclusive cities for all.
Dr. Dong Liu
Dr. Jeon-Young Kang
Dr. Fangzheng Lyu
Dr. Kangjae Lee
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 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 spatial planning
- urban accessibility
- geospatial big data
- GeoAI
- health equity
- climate resilience
- 15-minute city
- environmental justice
- mobility equity
- spatial modelling
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