Indicators, Assessment Tools, and Rating Systems for Mainstreaming Sustainability in Urban Planning and Development

Dear Colleagues,

The past few decades have seen an explosion of interest in the development and application of indicators, assessment tools, and rating systems for measuring the effectiveness of urban plans, policies, and programs on a variety of scales (ranging from neighborhoods, to cities, and even regions).

This Special Issue of Sustainability offers a platform for advancing our understanding of the theory and practice of urban sustainability assessment. It aims to draw together a collection of high-quality papers, discussing how development and application of indicators, assessment tools, and rating systems can support cities in their quest for sustainable development. We encourage researchers and practitioners to submit original research articles, case studies, reviews, critical perspectives, and viewpoint articles on topics including, but not limited to, the following:

• Methodological aspects of urban sustainability assessment;
• The process of urban sustainability assessment (vs. assessment being an end goal in itself);
• Stakeholder involvement in urban sustainability assessment;
• Links between tools and indicators developed for different scales (individual buildings, neighborhoods, cities, and regions);
• Lessons learned from about three decades of research and practice;
• Urban sustainability assessment vis-à-vis urban resilience assessment and smart city assessment;
• Integration of concepts such as resilience and smartness into urban sustainability assessment;
• The level of adoption of indicators, assessment tools, and rating systems by cities;
• Neighborhood sustainability assessment tools;
• Viability of using universal standards for urban sustainability assessment;
• Case studies: success, as well as failure, stories;
• Urban sustainability assessment in the Global South;
• The evolution and future of urban sustainability assessment.

Prof. Dr. Ayyoob Sharifi
Collection 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. 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 collection 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-anonymized 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.