Special Issue "The New Science of Cities and Urban Growth Sustainability"

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2022.

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Yichun Xie
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute for Geospatial Research and Education, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197, USA
Interests: geographic information science; spatial modelling; remote sensing theory and methodology; spatiotemporal modelling of urban growth; grassland ecosystem; coupled impacts of human dynamics and environmental change on resource management and ecosystem recovery; land-use and land-cover changes
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Urban sustainability is a comparatively new research theme, but has attracted a broad spectrum of audiences. Like the three-pillar ecosystem model of the environment, economy, and social system, many notions concerning ecosystem sustainability are dominant in urban sustainability studies. This Special Issue provides a unique opportunity for examining urban growth sustainability from the perspectives of geographical science and complex urban system modeling.

Cities are not simply places, but complex systems of networks and flows, which can be examined better by using urban complexity theories. About 36 years ago, Professor Michael Batty developed the idea that cities might grow through self-similar generating processes like fractals from bottom cells to city structures (Batty and Longley, 1994). Batty has argued that cities should be examined as complex systems (Batty, 2007) through the lens of “the new science of cities” (Batty, 2013), and that the future of sustainable cities can only be invented by human societies (Batty, 2018).

The new science of cities encompasses a suite of evolving computational theories and geospatial technologies, including geo-computational simulations powered by the cellular automata model, multi-agent-based model, and artificial intelligence for assessing how land-use changes impact urban growth sustainability. These tools build on Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing, and spatial statistics for analysing dynamic urban changes and their spatiotemporal variations. This Special Issue invites new applications, theoretical exploration, conceptual innovation, algorithmic advancement, big data analytics, and computational learning in these geo-computation fields concerning current urban structures and future growth. This Special Issue intends to provide peer-reviewed opportunities for collecting the most prominent research findings for analysing, modelling, and planning sustainable cities. Submissions may include research papers, reviews, or case studies, as long as they are related to urban growth sustainability.

References:

Batty, M.; Longley, P. Fractal Cities; Academic Press: London, UK, 1994.

Batty, M. Cities and Complexity; MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 2007.

Batty, M. The New Science of Cities; MIT Press—Journals, 2013.

Batty, M. Inventing Future Cities; MIT Press—Journals, 2018.

Prof. Dr. Yichun Xie
Prof. Dr. Bin Jiang
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

  • agent-based modelling
  • big data and urban analytics
  • cellular automata urban simulation
  • complexity city science
  • computational urban modelling
  • fractal cities
  • geographical simulation
  • spatial analysis
  • urban and regional sustainability
  • virtual geographical urban environments

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

Article
Modeling Pedestrian Flows: Agent-Based Simulations of Pedestrian Activity for Land Use Distributions in Urban Developments
Sustainability 2021, 13(16), 9268; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13169268 - 18 Aug 2021
Viewed by 361
Abstract
Pedestrian activity is a cornerstone for urban sustainability, with key implications for the environment, public health, social cohesion, and the local economy. Therefore, city planners, urban designers, and decision-makers require tools to predict pedestrian mobility and assess the walkability of existing or planned [...] Read more.
Pedestrian activity is a cornerstone for urban sustainability, with key implications for the environment, public health, social cohesion, and the local economy. Therefore, city planners, urban designers, and decision-makers require tools to predict pedestrian mobility and assess the walkability of existing or planned urban environments. For this purpose, diverse approaches have been used to analyze different inputs such as the street network configuration, density, land use mix, and the location of certain amenities. This paper focuses on the location of urban amenities as key elements for pedestrian flow prediction, and, therefore, for the success of public spaces in terms of the social life of city neighborhoods. Using agent-based modeling (ABM) and land use floor space data, this study builds a pedestrian flow model, which is applied to both existing and planned areas in the inner city of Hamburg, Germany. The pedestrian flows predicted in the planned area inform the ongoing design and planning process. The flows simulated in the existing area are compared against real-world pedestrian activity data for external validation to report the model accuracy. The results show that pedestrian flow intensity correlates to the density and diversity of amenities, among other KPIs. These correlations validate our approach and also quantify it with measurable indicators. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The New Science of Cities and Urban Growth Sustainability)
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Article
More from Less? Environmental Rebound Effects of City Size
Sustainability 2021, 13(7), 4028; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13074028 - 05 Apr 2021
Viewed by 641
Abstract
Global sustainability relies on our capacity of understanding and guiding urban systems and their metabolism adequately. It has been proposed that bigger and denser cities are more resource-efficient than smaller ones because they tend to demand less infrastructure, consume less fuel for transportation [...] Read more.
Global sustainability relies on our capacity of understanding and guiding urban systems and their metabolism adequately. It has been proposed that bigger and denser cities are more resource-efficient than smaller ones because they tend to demand less infrastructure, consume less fuel for transportation and less energy for cooling/heating in per capita terms. This hypothesis is also called Brand’s Law. However, as cities get bigger, denser and more resource-efficient, they also get richer, and richer inhabitants consume more, potentially increasing resource demand and associated environmental impacts. In this paper, we propose a method based on scaling theory to assess Brand’s Law taking into account greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from both direct (energy and fuels locally consumed) and indirect (embedded in goods and services) sources, measured as carbon footprint (CF). We aim at understanding whether Brand’s Law can be confirmed once we adopt a consumption-based approach to urban emissions. By analyzing the balance between direct and indirect emissions in a theoretical urban system, we develop a scaling theory relating carbon footprint and city size. Facing the lack of empirical data on consumption-based emissions for cities, we developed a model to derive emission estimations using well-established urban metrics (city size, density, infrastructure, wealth). Our results show that, once consumption-based CF is considered, Brand’s Law falls apart, as bigger cities have greater purchase power, leading to greater consumption of goods and higher associated GHG. Findings also suggest that a shift in consumption patterns is of utmost importance, given that, according to the model, each new monetary unit added to the gross domestic product (GDP) or to other income variables results in a more than proportional increase in GHG emissions. This work contributes to a broader assessment of the causes of emissions and the paradigm shift regarding the assumption of efficiency in the relationship of city size and emissions, adding consumption behavior as a critical variable, beyond Brand’s Law. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The New Science of Cities and Urban Growth Sustainability)
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