Sustainable Spatial Planning and Landscape Management

Dear colleague,

Protection, restoration, and promotion of sustainable uses in terrestrial ecosytems form one of the 17 goals that the United Nations have set on their global agenda for Sustainable Development. This forms a broad framework for research and practice in the field of spatial planning and landscape management. The Special Issue on sustainable spatial planning and landscape management integrates two major strands of land use planning and management. Sustainable land use and spatial planning devotes land to ‘principal uses’ in a broad sense, including both residential and commercial areas, and seminatural and natural areas such as forests, agricultural land, lakes, and rivers. Sustainability in residential and commercial areas means to reduce land consumption and land sealing, and fossil fuel use for mobility, production, and heating/cooling. Furthermore, sustainable planning cares for the conservation of ecosystem services both in urban and rural areas, by setting aside land for conservation and providing management frameworks for broad and dispersed protection of natural resources and natural processes. Another concern addressed by sustainable spatial planning and landscape management focuses on resilience and adaptability of land uses. Some changes brought about by sustainable planning are effective in the short term; however, many sustainable land use policies are oriented toward long-term strategies, such as land management for sustainable forestry and agriculture, and the conservation and development of landscapes.

This Special Issue seeks papers in the fields of sustainable spatial (land use) planning, ecosystem services, and landscape governance, management, and conservation. Ideally, papers will provide a strong theoretical and methodological foundation and will present empirical results linking these fields. Policy-oriented papers are especially welcome, as are papers connecting social or natural sciences research results with planning approaches, strategies, and instruments/tools, in inter- or transdisciplinary ways.

Outline of the Special Issue

a. Focus

The focus of the special issue is in the fields of spatial (land use) planning, ecosystem services, and landscape management and conservation. The Special Issue seeks papers that combine theoretical and methodological perspectives with empirical applications and connect social or natural sciences research results with planning approaches, strategies, and instruments/tools.

b. Scope

The scope of the papers in the Special Issue includes contributions from natural and social sciences, planning, and sustainability research. Inter- and transdisciplinary research is particularly welcome, since both spatial (land use) planning and landscape management are typically broad fields of research that are best explored by mixed methods and various combined scientific disciplines.

c. Purpose

The purpose of the Special Issue is to bring together scholars of a wide range of disciplines, countries, and institutional contexts, applying a broad variety of methods and dealing with different spatial planning frameworks and landscapes with ecological, perceptional, and geographical differences.

Prof. Dr. Michael Getzner
Prof. Sibylla Zech
Prof. Dr. Peter Kurz
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 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.