Climate Change and Sustainable City Design
A special issue of Urban Science (ISSN 2413-8851). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Planning and Design".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2026 | Viewed by 2638
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
As more people move into cities and as the world becomes more urbanized, cities have become critical for advancing sustainable development. Numerous cities have become pioneers in terms of taking action to address the climate crisis by developing creative, innovative, and community-engaged strategies and solutions. How a city is designed (including its buildings, transportation systems, green spaces, infrastructure, social networks, and human support infrastructure) is critical to its ability to deploy creative climate action and solutions (including actions striving for mitigation and adaptation, and resilience building strategies). The sharing of knowledge, research, and the practical applications thereof that examine how sustainable city design facilitates climate action has become an important research focus, especially within the context of climate impacts already being experienced by urban environments.
This Special Issue aims to publish original research articles, case studies, and review articles that examine how sustainable city design enables, facilitates, and supports the design and implementation of climate action, and we are particularly interested in the creative and innovative strategies currently being implemented by cities to address the climate crisis.
Research areas may include, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- How sustainable urban design strategies or policies (including buildings, transportation systems, green spaces, infrastructure, social networks, and human support infrastructure) support, facilitate, and spur climate action (including mitigation actions, adaptation actions, and resilience building strategies) such as:
- Multimodal public transportation;
- Urban/local (or community based) food–energy–water systems and building community resilience;
- Creative and innovative climate adaptation strategies;
- Green infrastructure;
- Energy efficient buildings;
- Decentralized renewable energy (community-based solar and micro-grids);
- Transit-oriented development;
- How certain urban design strategies and programs help withstand or recover better from climate disasters;
- Walkable and bikeable cities;
- Climate justice initiatives to protect vulnerable community members.
We are especially interested in articles that demonstrate the connections between proactive urban design and the resulting climate action (compared to research that documents reactive action such as disaster recovery).
We look forward to receiving your contributions. If you have any questions or would like to clarify if your research would fit within the scope of this Special Issue, do not hesitate to reach out to the Guest Editor or the journal office (email: Wfernando1@udayton.edu)
Dr. Felix Fernando
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-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 1800 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
- sustainable urban design
- sustainability
- sustainable urban strategies
- climate action
- climate resilience
- climate mitigation
- climate adaptation
- climate justice
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