Green Development of Urban-Rural System and Sustainable Land Management

Dear Colleagues,

The world is undergoing a great change that has not been seen in a century. Since the beginning of the new century, with global changes and the continuous growth of global population and economy, the degree of human land use and the intensity of engineering construction have continuously increased. This has led to a strong change in the relationship between humans and the environment caused by human activities, leading to serious resource depletion, ecological degradation, environmental degradation, and frequent disasters in various human–earth system problems. As a result, the Earth has entered a new stage of the Anthropocene. In this context, it is urgent to explore new development mechanisms that integrate social equity and ecological civilization construction in sustainable development towards the global sustainable development goals of 2030. Ecological civilization construction is the fundamental path to sustainable development, and agricultural development relies on ecological civilization. Sustainable development in rural areas is important to narrow the urban-rural income gap and improve social equity. This has prompted scientists to actively call for the coordination of human land relations, the coordinated construction of ecological civilization, the utilization of natural resources, the promotion of green sustainable development in urban-rural systems, and the creation of a sustainable green development path that increases farmers' income and promotes social equity. It is worth noting that the current urban–rural land system is still in the process of transformation, and there are significant differences in the form, structure, function, and management of urban and rural areas in different countries/regions. There is an urgent need for a conceptual knowledge map to address the issues of ecological civilization construction and urban–rural social equity and inclusive growth, as well as to help scholars understand the way out for urban–rural integration and provide a reference for sustainable green development.

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) to give insights about ecological civilization construction and green development of urban-rural systems and sustainable land management strategies, and linking human-land system science with interdisciplinary technical methods would be potential attention, including but not limited to:

• Urban-rural system green development and land use policy;
• Modern human–earth relations and human–earth system science;
• Geographic engineering and strategies for transformation and development;
• Sustainable livelihood and rural revitalization;
• Urbanization stress on rural agriculture;
• Resilience of urban-rural system;
• Geographic Engineering and urban–rural development models.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Lulu Qu
Dr. Yongsheng Wang
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. Land 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 2600 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.

• sustainability
• urban–rural
• agriculture
• green
• intensification
• resilience
• livelihood
• policy
• optimization