Special Issue "Towards a Sustainable Urban Planning for the Green Deal Era"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Urban and Rural Development".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2021.

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Paola Di Biagi
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, Piazzale Europa, 1, 34127 Trieste TS, Italy
Interests: regeneration of urban suburbs; social housing and public neighborhoods; urban agriculture, food, and the redevelopment of public suburbs; gender approaches to the design and transformation of urban space
Dr. Sara Basso
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, Piazzale Europa, 1, 34127 Trieste TS, Italy
Interests: urban projects and climate change; urban regeneration and food processes; public facilities and rights to cities
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alessandra Marin
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, Piazzale Europa, 1, 34127 Trieste TS, Italy
Interests: participatory urban planning; safeguard and enhancement of cultural heritage; sustainable planning; environmental design; ecological transition; management of risk

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Green Deal and the sustainability perspectives through which we look at cities and territories today highlight the complexity of the challenges that urban planning is facing. This complexity can be attributed to several factors.

Environmental challenges require us, on the one hand, to design responses to rapid and sudden events (such as the effects of climate change or pandemic events), increasing the quality of built and open spaces. On the other hand, they invite us to rethink the role of nature in the city through strategies that aim to increase urban resilience, improve the health of its inhabitants, guarantee food production, etc. Equally significant social challenges, moreover, urge us to rethink cities to make them accessible to all, especially socially vulnerable groups, allowing them to benefit from the services and resources of urban contexts.

Finally, in this context, numerous self-organization practices, where inhabitants and associations acquire a decisive role in urban transformation processes, press us to consider a greater level of complexity in the framework of actors who can participate in a Green Deal city project.

In the face of these conditions, we solicit contributions on the following issues.

  • How can a resilient transformation of open and public urban spaces be guaranteed by welcoming, at different scales, different forms of nature within them?
  • How can safer and more accessible spaces be designed through experimental design techniques and methods, such as Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs)?
  • How can ‘bottom-up processes and practices’ innovate urban planning regulatory tools and design rules towards approaches that are more shared and open to the community?

We favour contributions that combine theoretical reflections with concrete research and project experiences.

Prof. Dr. Paola Di Biagi
Dr. Sara Basso
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alessandra Marin
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

  • bottom-up practices
  • nature-based solutions
  • tools and techniques
  • urban project
  • open urbanism
  • tactical urbanism
  • climate action
  • public spaces
  • urban agriculture

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

Article
Using Decision Support System to Enable Crowd Identify Neighborhood Issues and Its Solutions for Policy Makers: An Online Experiment at Kabul Municipal Level
Sustainability 2021, 13(10), 5453; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13105453 - 13 May 2021
Viewed by 628
Abstract
Planning a city is a systematic process that includes time, space, and groups of people who must communicate. However, due to security problems in such war-ravaged countries as Afghanistan, the traditional forms of public participation in the planning process are untenable. In particular, [...] Read more.
Planning a city is a systematic process that includes time, space, and groups of people who must communicate. However, due to security problems in such war-ravaged countries as Afghanistan, the traditional forms of public participation in the planning process are untenable. In particular, due to gathering space difficulties and culture issues in Afghanistan, women and religious minorities are restricted from joining male-dominated powerholders’ face-to-face meetings which are nearly always held in fixed places called masjids (religious buildings). Furthermore, conducting such discussions with human facilitation biases the generation of citizen decisions that stimulates an atmosphere of confrontation, causing another decision problem for urban policy-making institutions. Therefore, it is critical to find approaches that not only securely revolutionize participative processes but also provide meaningful and equal public consultation to support interactions among stakeholders to solve their shared problems together. Toward this end, we propose a joint research program, namely, crowd-based communicative and deliberative e-planning (CCDP), a blended approach, which is a mixture of using an artificial-intelligence-led technology, decision-support system called D-Agree and experimental participatory planning in Kabul, Afghanistan. For the sake of real-world implementation, Nagoya Institute of Technology (Japan) and Kabul Municipality (Afghanistan) have formed a novel developed and developing world partnership by using our proposed methodology as an emerging-deliberation mechanism to reframe public participation in urban planning processes. In the proposed program, Kabul municipality agreed to use our methodology when Kabul city needs to make a plan with people. This digital field study presents the first practical example of using online decision support systems in the context of the neighborhood functions of Gozars, which are Kabul’s social and spatial urban units. The main objective was to harness the wisdom of the crowd to innovative suggestions for helping policymakers making strategic development plans for Gozars using open call ideas, and for responding to equal participation and consultation needs, specifically for women and minorities. This article presents valuable insights into the benefits of this combined approach as blended experience for societies and cities that are suffering long-term distress. This initiative has influenced other local Afghan governments, including the cities of Kandahar and Herat as well as the country’s central government’s ministry of urban planning and land, which has officially expressed its intention to collaborate with us. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Towards a Sustainable Urban Planning for the Green Deal Era)
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Article
Nature-Based Solutions and Sustainable Urban Planning in the European Environmental Policy Framework: Analysis of the State of the Art and Recommendations for Future Development
Sustainability 2021, 13(9), 5021; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13095021 - 29 Apr 2021
Viewed by 613
Abstract
Sustainable urban planning (SUP) is crucial in the development of sustainable cities, as also underlined by the New Urban Agenda. Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly being recognized for their potential to offer multiple benefits that are necessary in order to cope with present [...] Read more.
Sustainable urban planning (SUP) is crucial in the development of sustainable cities, as also underlined by the New Urban Agenda. Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly being recognized for their potential to offer multiple benefits that are necessary in order to cope with present and future urban challenges. The European policy framework, including the recently released European Green Deal, could strongly boost the role and recognition of NBS and SUP as drivers of sustainable and inclusive urban transition. Through a content analysis of current environmental European policies, strategies and agreements, this paper provides (i) an overview of the state of the art of the environmental European policy framework and the recognized role of NBS and SUP in reaching defined objectives, and (ii) insights on where NBS and SUP could play a larger role within this framework. On this basis, the paper identifies gaps and develops recommendations for a better integration of such concepts into the current framework. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Towards a Sustainable Urban Planning for the Green Deal Era)
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