Special Issue "Social Sustainability and New Urban Residential Spaces"

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (16 July 2021).

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Iqbal Hamiduddin
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, Central House WC1H 0NN, UK
Interests: housing; transport; neighbourhoods; sustainability
Dr. M. Reza Shirazi
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of the Built environment, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK
Interests: social sustainability; neighbourhood development; urban justice
Dr. Daniel Fitzpatrick
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, Central House, WC1H 0NN, UK
Interests: housing; community; cooperatives; sustainability

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will focus on social sustainability at a granular level in new residential developments. In particular, the collection will attempt to draw together and compare outcomes and experiences from a range of residential development models from a variety of different geographical settings—from community-focused housing developments in Europe and across countries of the Global North, to the new residential spaces associated with rapid urbanisation across cities of the Global South.

Although there has been a significant surge of interest in the field in recent years, Social Sustainability remains, as many commentators have noted, an under-developed domain that remains sparsely represented in the literature and underappreciated as a policy objective, particularly at the ‘micro’ level of the specific residential scheme or street. This situation relates to the continuation of an acknowledged definitional ‘slipperiness’ and a disposition towards considering social sustainability at the macro-scale of the city or meso-scale of the urban district. However, the onset of Covid-19 has renewed interest in processes integral to social sustainability, including social equality, community cohesion, and social capital.

This Special Issue is global in its geographical scope, but focusses primarily on social sustainability and its contributory factors and processes in the urban domain. We welcome a thematic range of contributions that develop and strengthen the conceptual basis of social sustainability, case studies that explore and evaluate social sustainability outcomes from different urban residential settings, and reflective articles that reflect on future directions and developmental priorities of the field.

In summary, this collection aims to carry forward the recent conceptual development of social sustainability (c.f. Shirazi & Keivani, 2019; Shirazi & Keivani, 2017) and fine-grained case study analysis of social sustainability local outcomes (Hamiduddin & Adelfio, 2019; Hamiduddin, 2015) as well as to review the experiences of new residential models that aim to promote social sustainability (Sendra and Fitzpatrick, 2020; Fitzpatrick, 2018). As this Special Issue will form the first of its kind focussing on social sustainability outcomes at a granular level, we anticipate that it will form a substantial and timely contribution to the literature on the topic.

Dr. Iqbal Hamiduddin
Dr. M. Reza Shirazi
Dr. Daniel Fitzpatrick
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

  • social sustainability
  • residential design
  • housing
  • neighbourhoods
  • community
  • cohesion
  • inclusion
  • equality

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

Article
The Interplay between Urban Densification and Place Change in Tehran; Implications for Place-Based Social Sustainability
Sustainability 2021, 13(17), 9636; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13179636 (registering DOI) - 27 Aug 2021
Viewed by 149
Abstract
Recent scholarship on urban social sustainability has redirected its attention to the role of place-based theories and practices in achieving and sustaining social outcomes. The notion of place and its centrality in everyday life of urban citizens could be used as an anchor [...] Read more.
Recent scholarship on urban social sustainability has redirected its attention to the role of place-based theories and practices in achieving and sustaining social outcomes. The notion of place and its centrality in everyday life of urban citizens could be used as an anchor point to study urbanisation processes and rapid urban changes. This paper employs a place-based framework of urban social sustainability in parallel to a framework of ‘place transformation’ to examine the consequences of soft densification on place attachment at the neighbourhood level in Tehran, Iran. Through analysing sixteen semi-structured interviews with residents, this paper argues that the temporal element of soft densification makes it a place undermining process, eradicating individual and collective place memory through resetting the time of the place. Moreover, the findings highlighted parallel trajectories in the meanings associated to place by residents which underscore the contradiction between ‘lived space’ and ‘conceived space’. Furthermore, it was found that loss of place attachment due to urban densification commonly leads to passive modes of response such changing lifestyle and daily routines, and voluntary relocating to adapt to the new socio-spatial order. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Sustainability and New Urban Residential Spaces)
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Article
Planning for Urban Social Sustainability: Towards a Human-Centred Operational Approach
Sustainability 2021, 13(16), 9083; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13169083 - 13 Aug 2021
Viewed by 368
Abstract
In Europe, growing concerns about social segregation and social stability have pushed calls to make cities ‘inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ higher on policy agendas. However, how to approach such generic policy objectives and operationalise them for planning practices is still largely unclear. [...] Read more.
In Europe, growing concerns about social segregation and social stability have pushed calls to make cities ‘inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ higher on policy agendas. However, how to approach such generic policy objectives and operationalise them for planning practices is still largely unclear. This article makes a conceptual contribution to the operational understanding of social sustainability in urban planning practices. The article argues that, between theoretical concept and operational forms, different evaluative approaches towards social sustainability may be taken. Evaluating three dimensions of policy operationalisations in The Netherlands, we argue that Amartya Sen’s capability approach provides a promising conceptual framework for operationalising social sustainability in cities in Europe and beyond. We compare capabilities with a more commonly applied resource-based conception to show that the former is more accurate and potentially more effective, because it shifts the evaluative space of social sustainability from means (i.e., urban resources) to ends: the eventual well-being of urban citizens. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Sustainability and New Urban Residential Spaces)
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Article
The Relationship between Neighborhood Characteristics and Homicide in Karachi, Pakistan
Sustainability 2021, 13(10), 5520; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13105520 - 14 May 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 896
Abstract
The geographical concentration of criminal violence is closely associated with the social, demographic, and economic structural characteristics of neighborhoods. However, few studies have investigated homicide patterns and their relationships with neighborhoods in South Asian cities. In this study, the spatial and temporal patterns [...] Read more.
The geographical concentration of criminal violence is closely associated with the social, demographic, and economic structural characteristics of neighborhoods. However, few studies have investigated homicide patterns and their relationships with neighborhoods in South Asian cities. In this study, the spatial and temporal patterns of homicide incidences in Karachi from 2009 to 2018 were analyzed using the local indicators of spatial association (LISA) method. Generalized linear modeling (GLM) and geographically weighted Poisson regression (GWPR) methods were implemented to examine the relationship between influential factors and the number of homicides during the 2009–2018 period. The results demonstrate that the homicide hotspot or clustered areas with high homicide counts expanded from 2009 to 2013 and decreased from 2013 to 2018. The number of homicides in the 2017–2018 period had a positive relationship with the percentage of the population speaking Balochi. The unplanned areas with low-density residential land use were associated with low homicide counts, and the areas patrolled by police forces had a significant negative relationship with the occurrence of homicide. The GWPR models effectively characterized the varying relationships between homicide and explanatory variables across the study area. The spatio-temporal analysis methods can be adapted to explore violent crime in other cities with a similar social context. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Sustainability and New Urban Residential Spaces)
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Article
Social Sustainability of Compact Neighbourhoods Evidence from London and Berlin
Sustainability 2021, 13(4), 2340; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13042340 - 22 Feb 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 696
Abstract
This article revisits social sustainability of compact urban neighbourhoods based on first-hand evidence from four case studies in London and Berlin. It suggests a working definition for socially sustainable neighbourhoods, develops a tripartite integrative evaluation framework for measuring social sustainability of urban neighbourhoods, [...] Read more.
This article revisits social sustainability of compact urban neighbourhoods based on first-hand evidence from four case studies in London and Berlin. It suggests a working definition for socially sustainable neighbourhoods, develops a tripartite integrative evaluation framework for measuring social sustainability of urban neighbourhoods, and applies it to four case studies in London and Berlin. Findings of this research are in line with some dominant arguments made in favour of social sustainability of compact urban form, but challenges some others. Research findings suggest that compact urban form is not an urban orthodoxy, but has multiple and contrasting social meanings and perceptions in different contexts and places. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Sustainability and New Urban Residential Spaces)
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