Special Issue "Sustainable Mobility within the Context of Spatial Connectivity: Geography, Networks, and Economy"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2021.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Dimitrios Tsiotas
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. Department of Regional and Economic Development, Agricultural University of Athens, Nea Poli, Amfissa 33100, Greece 2. School of Social Sciences, Hellenic Open University, Athens 10677, Greece
Interests: network science; regional economics and development; spatial and transportation networks; econophysics
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Christos T. Papadas
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Agricultural University of Athens, Athens 11855, Greece
Interests: rural and regional development; regional convergence; economic linkages of agriculture; input–output analysis; regional R&D activity and knowledge production

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The 21st century has been considered by many scholars and practitioners as the “age of connectivity”, in which the modern society experiences an outbreak to the way that communication is being spread worldwide.  Networks have become an integrated part of the everyday life and describe several of its aspects, such as transportation and mobility, social activity, economic interaction, knowledge exchange, education, energy production and distribution, and many more.  Within the context that connectivity is mutually related to geographical space, where human societies and activities are by default embedded to, the world can be seen as a complex system being interconnected at several geographical scales and functional levels, facilitating the convergence of geographical space that humanity in our century can witness. Therefore, the conceptualization of human mobility, which suggests a major aspect of social communication, should be revisited within the context of connectivity that describes (either directly of indirectly) all geographical and economic structures of the modern world. On the other hand, sustainability in mobility and, generally, in the the functionality of such spatio-economic systems is a major requirement of the modern society for ensuring that the growth and development taking place in interconnected spatial units has the merit to enhance both the current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations.

This Special Issue aims to contribute to the understanding of how sustainable mobility is related to the geographical space and the underlying economy, within the context of spatial connectivity. In particular, it is interested to study the symbiotic relation between these interrelated concepts (sustainable mobility, geographical space, and the underlying economy), preferably by using the network paradigm (as its introduced by network science), although other insightful approaches of spatial connectivity can be also welcomed. The Special Issue welcomes well-founded mainly empirical researches (although theoretical ones are also welcomed) which explore, study, and examine aspects of mobility within the multilevel context of geography, network connectivity, and sustainable economy. The Special Issue welcomes researches that deal with spatial networks that are modeled at all levels of geographical scale (e.g. global, international, national, interregional, regional, and urban) and with diverse aspects of mobility (e.g. human, goods, information) or functionality of geographical economic systems, in which the conceptualization of network modeling and sustainability prevail. The main focus of the Special Issue is to promote multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research, although well-founded approaches focusing on a single discipline can exceptionally be welcomed.

Overall, this Special Issue intends to develop further conceptual links between Network Science, Economic Geography, Transportation Engineering, and Sustainability and to promote multidisciplinary research contributing to a better conceptualization of our wonderfully complex world.

Dr. Dimitrios Tsiotas
Prof. Dr. Christos T. Papadas
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 papers will be 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 1900 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 mobility
  • spatial networks
  • networks of spatial interaction
  • transportation networks
  • tourism networks
  • spatial networks in the global, international, national, regional, and urban economic contexts

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission, see below for planned papers.

Planned Papers

The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.

The topology of cultural destinations in the tourism market: the case of Attica, Greece

Areti Kranioti1, Dimitrios Tsiotas2,3* and Serafeim Polyzos1

  1. Department of Planning and Regional Development, University of Thessaly, 382 21 Volos, Greece
  2. Department of Regional and Economic Development, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece, Nea Poli, Amfissa, 33100, Greece.
  3. Adjunct Academic Staff, School of Social Sciences, Hellenic Open University, 106 77 Athens, Greece

Emails: [email protected][email protected]; [email protected]

* Corresponding author

Abstract: This paper focuses on the study of the cultural landscape in the prefecture of Attica, Greece under the scope of network science. Tourism is a global phenomenon with a considerable effect on space. Among the diverse forms of tourism, cultural tourism stands out, since people often travel to explore different cultures and civilizations. The engagement of different stakeholders in the establishment of policies in regards to tourism development and its relation to cultural heritage demonstrates the need for the phenomenon’s spatial planning. As of recent, network science contributes to many studies of the tourism industry. Under the terms of network science, tourism destinations are conceived as complex networks, while the network measures provided by the literature quantify the spatial aspects of the destinations. Attica has transportation, accommodational, and cultural infrastructures of high quality, and therefore is a suitable case study of cultural destination. The cultural network of Attica was modeled as a graph, whose nodes represent museums and archaeological sites in the region and its edges the possible connections between the nodes by different means of transport (public transport, car, pedestrian). Also, variables related to tourist attractiveness describe the nodes and respectively spatial weights of distance and time distance the edges. Through the complex network analysis, the different topologies of the network’s layers were identified, while the centrality measures revealed the nodes, which undertake a significant role in the network. Furthermore, due to community detection, it was possible to set the different profiles of the communities, in the context of the cultural tourism market, which indicates the need for spatial planning and management of cultural tourism in Attica.

Keywords: cultural tourism market; accessibility network; tourist mobility; network analysis; community detection.

Spatial connectivity and regional economic resilience in turbulent times

Elias Giannakis1, Christos T. Papadas2

1Associate Research Scientist; Energy Environment and Water Research Center; The Cyprus Institute; 20 Konstantinou Kavafi Street, 2121, Nicosia, Cyprus; Tel. +357 22208683; Email: [email protected]

2Associate Professor; Department of Agricultural Economics & Rural Developmnet; Agricultural University of Athens, Iera Odos 75, 11855, Athens, Greece; Tel. +30 2105294724 ; Email: [email protected]

Abstract:

The European economy has experienced great volatility and uncertainty during the last decade. Regional economies are sensitive to external disruptions, such as financial crises (e.g., 2008 global economic crisis), political-geographical developments (e.g., Brexit) and the current corona virus pandemic crisis. The highly heterogeneous territorial impacts of the past and current exogenous shocks reopened the debate on the ability of regions to adapt to unanticipated perturbations. Territories are interconnected at several geographical scales and functional levels. This paper explores the relationship between spatial connectivity and the varying ability of regions to withstand, react and recover from the recessionary impact.

Spatial dependence cross-sectional models, namely, the spatial error term and the spatial lag model, are applied to evaluate the strength and role of the relationship between spatial connectivity and regional economic resilience during the Great Recession and capture the spatial spillover effects as well. A multilevel random intercept regression model is additionally employed to assess the magnitude of the country effects on the economic resilience of the EU regions.

Regional economic resilience is defined in terms of employment growth. The multimodal potential accessibility indicator, which integrates the accessibility by road, rail and air, is used as a proxy for spatial connectivity. The control variables accounting for pre-crisis factors that may affect regional economic resilience, include population density, age structure, net migration, employment performance and the level of development. Model results show that accessibility is an important factor for shaping regional reaction to negative exogenous shocks; higher spatial connectivity is associated with greater regional economic resilience. Our findings confirm that the resilience of regions is significantly influenced by national settings and attributes.   

Keywords: accessibility, migration, exogenous negative shocks, national settings, spatial dependence

Back to TopTop