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Special Issue Editor

Prof. Tsuyoshi Fujita

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Guest Editor

Department of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo Graduate School of Engineering, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan
Interests: urban engineering, urban area planning, environmental engineering, urban energy management, urban regeneration

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

While COVID-19 has led to serious issues for all stakeholders from cities to the global community, this could also represent a precious opportunity to transform on-going urban and industrial systems to meet the targets of mitigation and adaptation for the pressing climate change impacts, resilient and efficient circular economy systems, and fundamentally comprehensive social challenges to reach the Sustainable Development Goals in the near future. Research papers on the following topics are invited:

1) Social observation and monitoring research to provide quantitative evidence for environmental limitation and social imbalance against sustainability in the long run;

2) Scenario design theories and methodologies for the sustainable future in the long run and possible demonstrative projects and actions in the short term;

3) Technology assessment of environmental engineering and socio-economic policy systems based on the local and global demand for the future sustainability;

4) Integrative participation systems for scientific simulation among multiple stakeholders for the socioeconomic and environmental transformation projects.

Prof. Tsuyoshi Fujita
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

social transformation
COVID-19
scenario simulation
climate change
social monitoring

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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21 pages, 9776 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Mental Well-Being and the Influence of Place: Conceptual Approaches for the Built Environment for Planning Healthy and Walkable Cities

by Antonio Zumelzu and Marie Geraldine Herrmann-Lunecke

Sustainability 2021, 13(11), 6395; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13116395 - 04 Jun 2021

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 8751

Abstract

Promotion of healthy cities has prompted urban planners and designers to build new conceptual frameworks to improve the design of public spaces, in which mental well-being emerges as a fundamental concept. Mental well-being is related to spatial design, with increasing attention being paid to the built environment as an important predictor of mental well-being. The objective of this article is to advance and contribute new knowledge about the characteristics of the built environment and its potential benefits for mental well-being. A meta-analysis is carried out on various empirical and theoretical approaches from the literature. Using a WOS database as a case study, a methodology based on a bibliometric analysis is proposed to examine which elements of the built environment impact mental well-being in research between 1975 and 2020, using the HistCites and VOSviewer tools. The results show that there are six thematic axes related to the built environment that would favor greater mental well-being in public spaces: walkability, density, spatial design, environmental noise, green areas and social interaction. The six thematic axes are critically analyzed and integrated into a conceptual framework to address the impacts of the built environment on mental well-being in the planning of cities. It concludes with a discussion on the implications of these concepts for urban public policy and the promotion of healthier and more sustainable and walkable environments in Latin American cities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Scientific Theory and Methodologies toward a Sustainable Future under Post-COVID-19 Transition Movement)

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Other

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12 pages, 1817 KiB

Open AccessPerspective

The Post-COVID-19 Era: Interdisciplinary Demands of Contagion Surveillance Mass Spectrometry for Future Pandemics

by Chaitanya Giri, Henderson James Cleaves II, Markus Meringer and Kuhan Chandru

Sustainability 2021, 13(14), 7614; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147614 - 07 Jul 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2511

Abstract

Mass spectrometry (MS) can become a potentially useful instrument type for aerosol, droplet and fomite (ADF) contagion surveillance in pandemic outbreaks, such as the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. However, this will require development of detection protocols and purposing of instrumentation for in situ environmental contagion surveillance. These approaches include: (1) enhancing biomarker detection by pattern recognition and machine learning; (2) the need for investigating viral degradation induced by environmental factors; (3) representing viral molecular data with multidimensional data transforms, such as van Krevelen diagrams, that can be repurposed to detect viable viruses in environmental samples; and (4) absorbing engineering attributes for developing contagion surveillance MS from those used for astrobiology and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear (CBRN) monitoring applications. Widespread deployment of such an MS-based contagion surveillance could help identify hot zones, create containment perimeters around them and assist in preventing the endemic-to-pandemic progression of contagious diseases. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Scientific Theory and Methodologies toward a Sustainable Future under Post-COVID-19 Transition Movement)

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