Special Issue "Sustainable Urban Development and Growth Management"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Social Ecology and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 December 2021.

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Wann-Ming Wey
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Real Estate and Built Environment, National Taipei University, New Taipei, Taiwan
Interests: urban built environment planning and design; sustainable transportation; smart city and big data; growth management with urban development
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Although urbanization brings the benefits of rapid development to us today, at the same time it produces many negative effects in the cities we live in, including the concentration of the population, traffic congestion, housing problems, resource shortages and noise, air, as well as water pollution. In an attempt to solve all those problems existing in our living environment, the emerging urban growth management principles, such as the smart growth principle, sustainable growth principle, and inclusive growth principle, have been successively applied to urban planning practices to respond to all these problems and to improve our quality of life (QoL) in last few decades. As a result, the main concept of various emerging urban growth management principles not only represents one means of facilitating the sustainable built environment to mitigate adverse effects, but could also be interpreted as a specific land use design as well as an urban planning policy that deals with a series of social/natural consequences of urban sprawl.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that there are more and more scientific innovations such as information and communication technology (ICT), Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing/storage, big data (BD), etc., show their potential for studies of urban development. These cutting-edge technologies and their emerging requirements claim that they promote the sustainability and livability of cities or even that they make cities, society or the environment more efficient as well as smarter than ever. These scientific innovations or innovative technologies should be evaluated carefully by relevant experts or research institutions.

From the viewpoint of studies of the link between sustainable urban development, growth management and their interactions, this Special Issue welcomes theoretical and empirical studies on the following main topics:

  • Sustainable urban development planning and design;
  • Sustainable growth management strategies;
  • Quality of life (social inclusion, participation, environment);
  • Resource saving (energy, mobility, infrastructure, building);
  • Innovation (education, economy vs. environment)
  • Growth management principles in smart city planning and designing;
  • Low-carbon communities under smart growth;
  • Walkability/cycling and built environments;
  • Elderly-friendly living environments;
  • Resilience and vulnerability in urban development;
  • Policy-making and sustainable government initiatives for future cities;
  • Urban design innovation for smart cities;
  • Big data, AI and smart cities.

Prof. Dr. Wann-Ming Wey
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 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 urban development
  • urban growth management
  • quality of life
  • social inclusion
  • compact city
  • walkability and cycling
  • environment planning and evaluation
  • future/smart city
  • big/open data
  • AI-related innovative planning technology

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

Article
Green Urbanism Embedded in TOD for Urban Built Environment Planning and Design
Sustainability 2019, 11(19), 5293; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11195293 - 26 Sep 2019
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1030
Abstract
Even though the TOD (Transit-Oriented Development) concepts contribute great innovations to our next-generation metropolis, their means and focusing are primarily on the sustainable transportation dimension. It is debatable that the development mode advocated by TOD seems to lack relative considerations of both the [...] Read more.
Even though the TOD (Transit-Oriented Development) concepts contribute great innovations to our next-generation metropolis, their means and focusing are primarily on the sustainable transportation dimension. It is debatable that the development mode advocated by TOD seems to lack relative considerations of both the ecological and environmental dimensions. Consequently, to achieve a better urban life, our urban planning and design should incorporate the consideration of peripheral areas that have not been further valued in the past, such as ecology diversity, natural energy recycling or reuse, and livable habitat, rather than just focusing on the sustainable transportation dimension of conventional TOD. This study thus explores and summarizes the design criteria of Green TOD through literature review and obtains the evaluation criteria via experts. Furthermore, through the FDT (fuzzy Delphi technique) method, the evaluation criteria from the expert questionnaire are screened. In turn, more important evaluation criteria are obtained objectively. Based on the screening results of FDT, we adopt the HOQ (house of quality) model integrated by FANP (fuzzy analytic network process) and QFD (quality function deployment) to allocate the weighting for each criterion scientifically. Finally, the evaluation results and hybrid decision model provided in this study can be used as an initial reference for improving the planning and design of today’s built environment. We believe that these pioneered attempts will help us in attaining our ultimate pursuit of urban sustainability and livability. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Urban Development and Growth Management)
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Article
Challenges for Integrating Strategic Environmental Assessment to Enhance Environmental Thinking: A Case Study of Taiwan Energy Policy
Sustainability 2019, 11(3), 609; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030609 - 24 Jan 2019
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1143
Abstract
There is an increasing need to evaluate environmental impacts at higher policy planning levels, especially after the European Union (EU) strategic environmental assessment (SEA) directive proposed in 2001. However, integrating SEA and policy planning processes is challenging owing to institutional challenges and/or political [...] Read more.
There is an increasing need to evaluate environmental impacts at higher policy planning levels, especially after the European Union (EU) strategic environmental assessment (SEA) directive proposed in 2001. However, integrating SEA and policy planning processes is challenging owing to institutional challenges and/or political problems. We aimed to explore the challenges of this integration process through in-depth interviews with core stakeholders in Taiwan energy policy making. Our results reveal three main types of challenge related to policy planning, SEA implementation, and difficulties in dealing with environmental issues. The first includes the policy planning model, transparency in the policy planning process, and controversial issues clarification; the second includes the different types of SEA purposes, unclear feedback on policy planning, and public participation limitation; the third includes a lack of knowledge of brokerage processes, scientific uncertainty, the role of the Taiwan EPA (TEPA) for environmental thinking, and the influence of local information in policy planning. The results of this study can be applied to countries that use impact-oriented SEA (currently the most common type of SEA) and consider environmental issues during the energy policy planning process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Urban Development and Growth Management)
Article
A Strategy-Based Model for Low Carbon Cities
Sustainability 2018, 10(12), 4828; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124828 - 18 Dec 2018
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1370
Abstract
Low carbon cities are increasingly forming a distinct strand of sustainability literature. Models have been developed to measure the performance of low carbon cities. The purpose of this paper is to formulate a strategy-based model to evaluate current performance and predict future conditions [...] Read more.
Low carbon cities are increasingly forming a distinct strand of sustainability literature. Models have been developed to measure the performance of low carbon cities. The purpose of this paper is to formulate a strategy-based model to evaluate current performance and predict future conditions of low carbon cities. It examines the dynamic interrelationships between key performance indicators (KPIs), induces changes to city plan targets, and then instantly predicts the outcome of these changes. Designed to be generic and flexible, the proposed model shows how low carbon targets could be used to guide the transformation of low carbon cities under four strategies: (1) Passive intervention, (2) problem solving, (3) trend modifying, and (4) opportunity seeking. Further, the model has been applied to 17 cities and then tested on five cities: London, New York, Barcelona, Dubai, and Istanbul. The paper concludes with policy implications to realign city plans and support low carbon innovation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Urban Development and Growth Management)
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