Urban Sustainability: A Smart, Compact Future in Landscape Architecture

Dear Colleagues,

“Urban Sustainability: A Smart, Compact Future in Landscape Architecture” is a Special Issue organized in conjunction with the 2nd International Conference on Sustainability, Human Geography and Environment 2018 (ICSHGE18). This Special Issue calls on landscape architects, urban planners and designers, human geographers, botanists, horticulturalists, architects, industrial designers, soil scientists, environmental psychologists, sociologists, ecologists, civil engineers, etc.

The world’s population is rapidly increasing and will top 9.7 billion by 2050 (United Nations, 2015). By 2025, two thirds of the world’s population will be concentrated in urban areas, increasing the importance of providing not only environmental quality and livable spaces but food security and resilient food systems (Haberman et al., 2014). This advanced rate of urbanization has coincided with global environmental degradation, increased consumption of natural resources, habitat loss, and overall ecosystem change (Daily, 1995; McDonald et al., 2013; McNeill, 2000). A cause-and-effect reproach from escalating global population brings to the forefront the need to re-examine how urban spaces are developed, used, and urban inhabitants fed (Ackerman et al., 2014). Recent research has focused on the use of regulating and cultural ecosystem services (ES) for improving environmental, social, and economic conditions in cities (Haase et al., 2014). Some key issues include concepts that focus on urban green infrastructure such as hybrid infrastructure of green and built systems (e.g., urban forests, wetlands, parks, green roofs, and walls that together can contribute to ecosystem resilience) and human benefits through their ecological processes or ES (Demuzere et al., 2014; Russo et al., 2016). These benefits are also referred to as nature-based solutions in which green infrastructure is incorporated into urban management, planning, design, and socio-political practices and policies for climate mitigation and adaptation.

Within this framework, “Urban Sustainability: A Smart, Compact Future in Landscape Architecture” focuses on cities and how to better the urban–human experience. Researchers are invited to contribute original research articles that look at and understand novel knowledge central to this theme. Articles will exemplify novelty, technical depth, practical or theoretic impact and presentation. This Special Issue will include revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at ICSHGE18; conversely, researchers unable to participate are strongly encouraged to submit articles for this call.

References

 Ackerman, K.; Conard, M.; Culligan, P.; Plunz, R.; Sutto, M.P.; Whittinghill, L. Sustainable food systems for future cities: The potential of urban agriculture. Econ. Soc. Rev. (Irel) 2014, 45(2), 189–206, doi:http://www.esr.ie/issue/archive.

Daily, G.C. Restoring Value to the World’s Degraded Lands. Science (80-. ). 1995, 269, 350–354, doi:10.1126/science.269.5222.350.

Demuzere, M.; Orru, K.; Heidrich, O.; Olazabal, E.; Geneletti, D.; Orru, H.; Bhave, A.G.; Mittal, N.; Feliu, E.; Faehnle, M. Mitigating and adapting to climate change: Multi-functional and multi-scale assessment of green urban infrastructure. J. Environ. Manag. 2014, 146, 107–115, doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2014.07.025.

Haberman, D.; Gillies, L.; Canter, A.; Rinner, V.; Pancrazi, L.; Martellozzo, F. The Potential of Urban Agriculture in Montréal: A Quantitative Assessment. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Information 2014, 3(3), 1101–1117, doi:10.3390/ijgi3031101.

Haase, D.; Larondelle, N.; Andersson, E.; Artmann, M.; Borgström, S.; Breuste, J.; Gomez-Baggethun, E.; Gren, Å.; Hamstead, Z.; Hansen, R.; et al. A Quantitative Review of Urban Ecosystem Service Assessments: Concepts, Models, and Implementation. Ambio 2014, 43(4), 413–433, doi:10.1007/s13280-014-0504-0.

McDonald, R.I.; Marcotullio, P.J.; Güneralp, B. Urbanization and Global Trends in Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. In Urbanization, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Challenges and Opportunities; Elmqvist, T., Fragkias, M., Goodness, J., Güneralp, B., Marcotullio, P.J., McDonald, R.I., Parnell, S., Schewenius, M., Sendstad, M., Seto, K.C., Wilkinson, C., Eds. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2013; p. 755. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-7088-1_3.

McNeill, J.R. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World; W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 2000.

Russo, A.; Escobedo, F.J.; Zerbe, S. Quantifying the local-scale ecosystem services provided by urban treed streetscapes in Bolzano, Italy. AIMS Environ. Sci. 2016, 3(1), 58–76, doi:10.3934/environsci.2016.1.58.

United Nations. World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision, Key Findings and Advance Tables. Working Paper No. ESA/P/WP.241, 2015.

Prof. Dr. Giuseppe T. Cirella
Prof. Dr. Alessio Russo
Guest Editors

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