Towards Sustainable Urban Living: Innovations in Sustainable Buildings and Urban Spaces

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue explores sustainable buildings and green spaces in urban and peri-urban areas in towns and cities that are designed and operated to minimize their environmental impact. Such features are vital to support the culture, health, and well-being of inhabitants whilst also reducing gender inequality and maintaining biodiversity. The practice of carbon sequestration and habitat provisioning through building-integrated vegetation, such as the use of urban trees and grassland, to offset the life cycle embodied and operational emissions is also researched.

Urbanization processes have led to 56% of the world’s population, or 4.4 billion inhabitants, living in cities. This trend is expected to continue, with the urban population more than doubling by 2050.  The speed and scale of urbanization brings challenges, such as the demand for affordable and comfortable housing, viable infrastructure, and basic services, and issues around the urban population who live in informal settlements This includes forcibly displaced people and provision of shelters and employment.  

This Special Issue will also consider approaches that deal with the entire lifecycle of buildings and infrastructure. This includes materials used in construction; energy consumed during operation; the reuse and recycling of materials; sustainable retrofit methods; urban commons; green spaces; and urban planning that provides carbon offset methods to mitigate climate change.

Key aspects may include the following:

• Smart cities and data-driven sustainability;
• Green infrastructure and urban commons;
• Circular economy principles and urban design;
• Resilient and adaptive design;
• Social equity and inclusion and urban design;
• Retrofit methods;
• Sustainable urban agriculture and urban design;
• Renewable energy integration and urban and peri-urban design;
• Preservation of cultural heritage and traditional practices and urban design; 
• Ecotourism, sustainable tourism and urban design;
• Resilient local communities, urban commons, and urban design.

Dr. Yun Gao
Dr. Jieling Xiao
Prof. Dr. Adrian Pitts
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 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 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. Urban Science is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 1600 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.

• sustainable design and construction
• retrofit design and construction
• urban commons
• green spaces
• carbon offset
• right to the city
• urban justice
• city planning