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Sustainability
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Sustainable Comparative Urban and Regional Development in Times of Crisis
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Sustainable Comparative Urban and Regional Development in Times of Crisis

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 (30 June 2022) | Viewed by 10117

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Karina Pallagst

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Guest Editor
Department International Planning Systems, Faculty of Urban and Environmental Planning, RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, Pfaffenbergstr. 95, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany
Interests: comparative urban and regional development; shrinking cities; regional policies; border studies; green infrastructure; structural change
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Mr. Rene Fleschurz

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Guest Editor
Department International Planning Systems, Faculty of Spatial and Environmental Planning, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Gottlieb-Daimler-Straße 47, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany
Interests: participation; demographic change; urban shrinkage; comparative resarch; European spatial development
Prof. Dr. Thorsten Wiechmann

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Guest Editor
Fachgebiet Raumordnung und Planungstheorie, Fakultät Raumplanung, Technische Universität Dortmund, 44221 Dortmund, Germany
Interests: urban and regional planning; strategic planning; metropolitan governance
Dr. Helen Mulligan

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Guest Editor
Cambridge Architectural Research Limited, 25 Gwydir Street, no. 6, Cambridge CB1 2LG, UK
Interests: climate responsive design; natural systems for commercial buildings; energy efficiency in the building stock; energy policy and emission permit trading; application of financial theory to sustainable decision making; client consultation techniques
Dr. Paulo Conceição

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Guest Editor
CITTA/Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
Interests: urban and housing policies; spatial planning systems and policies; evaluation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Urban development is often and repeatedly confronted by crises. We observe ‘old’ crises such as structural change, and, most recently, as a crisis of global force, the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting health, economies, education, and also requirements for urban development. In many cases it is still unclear to what extent cities are changed now and will change in the future, and future-oriented solutions for a sustainable and crisis-proof development may exist. Nevertheless, cities all over the world react in one way or another to crises and are eager to discover best practices and learn from errors. Some scholars argue that crises might offer room for creativity and experiments, such as Schneidewind et al (2020) in their suggestions for the ‘Post corona city’, and Pallagst et al. when they discover ‘out of the box’ strategies for shrinking cities. This Special Issue aims to build on the exchange of knowledge generated by comparative research on urban development. It intends to bring together scholarly work on the design of comparative research, its possibilities and limitations. As the scope of comparisons can extend to a large array of topics, we narrow it down to the way urban development responds to crises. We invite articles on a broad range of topics on both theoretical work regarding comparative formats and also in terms of results of comparative cases of urban development in times of crisis. 

References

Pallagst, K.; Vargas-Hernándes, J.; Hammer, P. Green Innovation Areas—En route to sustainability for shrinking cities? Sustainability 2019, 11, 6674. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11236674.

Schneidewind, U.; Baedeker, C.; Bierwirth, A.; Caplan, A.; Haake, H. Näher—Öffentlicher—Agiler, Eckpfeiler einer resilienten Post-Corona-Stadt; Wuppertal Institute: Wuppertal, Germany, 2020.

Prof. Dr. Karina Pallagst
Mr. Rene Fleschurz
Prof. Dr. Thorsten Wiechmann
Dr. Helen Mulligan
Dr. Paulo Conceição
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.

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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30 pages, 7420 KiB  
Article
Long-Term Development Perspectives in the Slow Crisis of Shrinkage: Strategies of Coping and Exiting
by Ruiying Liu
Sustainability 2022, 14(16), 10112; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141610112 - 15 Aug 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2363
Abstract
As a slow crisis, shrinkage is a situation where if actions are not taken to change things, a downward spiral or a long-term decline could happen. The complex, long-term nature of this crisis underlines the importance and potential of strategic approach. However, the [...] Read more.
As a slow crisis, shrinkage is a situation where if actions are not taken to change things, a downward spiral or a long-term decline could happen. The complex, long-term nature of this crisis underlines the importance and potential of strategic approach. However, the conceptualisation of development strategy remains abstract, attributive, or focused on sectorial policies, lacking a view of their roles in the overall development. Against this context, this research investigates (1) how cities that have acknowledged shrinkage strategically organise degrowth, non-growth, and growth-promoting instruments in dealing with shrinkage, (2) what long-term development perspectives emerge out of their policies, and (3) what factors in the local context constrain their strategies. The empirical basis is a cross-national comparative case study between Den Helder and Zwickau, a Dutch and German midsize city, with a cross-sectorial view and a focus on the long-term aspects to reveal the conceptual structures of their strategies. This approach captures how and explains why the cities, as regional centres with similar attitudes towards shrinkage and comparable economic levels, adopt many similar policies but lean towards contrasting long-term perspectives—one strives to exit the crisis, the other has routinised coping with shrinkage and lacks the vision of a different future. Their differences stimulate reflection on the context and parameters for revitalisation, and their shared challenges underlines the need for theory development based on situated policymaking challenges and a more strategic approach in the development of shrinking cities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Comparative Urban and Regional Development in Times of Crisis)
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23 pages, 19822 KiB  
Article
Narratives of Crisis: How Framing Urban Shrinkage and Depopulation Shapes Policy and Planning Responses in Spain, Germany and The Netherlands
by Bozhidar Ivanov
Sustainability 2021, 13(19), 11045; https://doi.org/10.3390/su131911045 - 6 Oct 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3023
Abstract
Academic research on urban shrinkage and depopulation has advanced significantly in recent years, mostly by attributing causality between the reasons and consequences of shrinkage in the positivist tradition of planning research. This paper critically analyzes shrinkage and depopulation as an issue of planning [...] Read more.
Academic research on urban shrinkage and depopulation has advanced significantly in recent years, mostly by attributing causality between the reasons and consequences of shrinkage in the positivist tradition of planning research. This paper critically analyzes shrinkage and depopulation as an issue of planning and policymaking in a broader institutional context. By applying a qualitative interpretive policy analysis methodology to planning and policy narratives from Spain, Germany and The Netherlands, this article highlights and scrutinizes how policymakers and planners have framed shrinkage, and how this framing has justified some of the selected planning and policy approaches. It is concluded that framing shrinkage in practice may only partially encompass the scientific definitions. It is also concluded that framing shrinkage and depopulation as a crisis may be determined by locally and temporally important issues as well as differences in planning cultures, which in practice may distance the understanding of the phenomenon from the scientific definitions. Debates on shrinkage conceptualization and the development of new planning concepts can become more applicable in practice by incorporating insights from qualitative investigations. This can bring them closer to planning practice and embed them in a wider planning system context, so as to produce more applicable and contextually sensitive proposals for addressing shrinkage. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Comparative Urban and Regional Development in Times of Crisis)
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12 pages, 445 KiB  
Article
Analysis of Hydrous Ethanol Price Competitiveness after the Implementation of the Fossil Fuel Import Price Parity Policy in Brazil
by Aloisio S. Nascimento Filho, Hugo Saba, Rafael G. O. dos Santos, João Gabriel A. Calmon, Marcio L. V. Araújo, Eduardo M. F. Jorge and Thiago B. Murari
Sustainability 2021, 13(17), 9899; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13179899 - 3 Sep 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3185
Abstract
Competition is a relevant element in any open economy. Public policies are necessary to induce economic efficiency and to create conditions to preserve or stimulate a competitive environment. This paper aims to assess the competitiveness of hydrous ethanol price in a period of [...] Read more.
Competition is a relevant element in any open economy. Public policies are necessary to induce economic efficiency and to create conditions to preserve or stimulate a competitive environment. This paper aims to assess the competitiveness of hydrous ethanol price in a period of political, social and economic crises, in 15 Brazilian state capitals between the years 2012 and 2019. We compared the ethanol–gasoline price ratio behavior in two different periods, before and after the import parity price policy implemented by Petrobras in 2016. Mann–Whitney and Levene’s tests, two non-parametric statistical methods, were applied to verify significant changes between these periods. The implementation of changes in Petrobras’ pricing policy from 2016 onwards caused a statistically significant increase in the ratio coefficient of variation in two-thirds of the distribution market and more than the half of analyzed retail markets. Second, overall, the cities that showed statistically significant changes in the median and coefficient of variation in the distribution market price ratio were followed by the retail market. Our findings suggest that government interventions in the fuel and byproduct final selling prices to distributors negatively impact competition between companies that are part of the fuel distribution and retail chain, also affecting the sale of biofuels in Brazil and discouraging the initiatives to use renewable fuels to reduce the emission of pollutants. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Comparative Urban and Regional Development in Times of Crisis)
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