Sustainable Residential Landscapes: An International Perspective

Dear Colleagues,

Beyond the four walls of the building, the planning and landscape design of residential development has a profound impact on environmental performance, community function and economic viability. This Special Issue of Sustainability will address residential landscape sustainability in all its facets and scales; from considerations of residential urbanism and its broad disposition of built and natural fabric, to detailed design and materiality of external spaces in housing development. This Special Issue will bring the discourse on residential landscape sustainability up to date, and provide an overview of current directions, trajectories and issues that complements the recent Sustainability edition, Sustainability Assessments of Buildings (December 2017).

Just over a decade ago the book, Residential Landscape Sustainability: a checklist tool (Smith et al. 2007) laid out a “serious attempt to reflect on and improve sustainable practice” (Kim Sorvig, Landscape Architecture Magazine, March 2008). The book provided a framework around seven key topics: energy, transport, pollution, materials, water, ecology and land use, and health and well-being. Although these categories may provide a structure for ongoing discussion, current research and speculation may well blur these distinctions, rightfully reflecting their close interconnection and synergy within sustainability discourse. In turn, inter or intra-disciplinary research may be especially helpful in elucidating emerging challenges and opportunities for residential landscape sustainability. Furthermore, this Special Issue would be remiss if it did not look to incorporate research into contemporary, international issues that have emerged over the past decade: for example, the rise of resiliency thinking in design disciplines, housing and the European refugee crisis, autonomous vehicles, and shifts in demographics and housing preference; as well as ongoing challenges such as biodiversity loss, land management, and sprawl. In closing, this call is intended to encourage a diverse and vital volume on contemporary residential landscape sustainability that:

• Traverses scales of consideration, from urban planning to detailed design;
• Addresses long-standing issues, emerging challenges and speculations on future trajectories;
• Tackles areas of social, economic or environmental sustainability, or a combination of these;
• Springs from traditional research and/or design speculation; and
• Represents the work of scholars in single disciplines as well as in collaboration across disciplinary-lines of science, design, engineering, art and humanities.

Prof. Dr. Carl Smith
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 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 Special Issue 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.