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Sustainability of Urban Transformation in the Context of Next Generation EU

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2024 | Viewed by 3969

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Civil, Construction-Architectural and Environmental Engineering (DICEAA) University of L’Aquila, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy
Interests: urban planning; territorial/landscape/habitat fragmentation; geographic information systems; urban sprawl; urban sprinkling; land take; land use/land cover change; urban expansion forecast; urban modeling; spatial analysis; transformations sustainability assessment; indicators engineering; resilience and urban risks
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil, Construction-Architectural and Environmental Engineering (DICEAA) University of L’Aquila, Via G. Gronchi, 18, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy
Interests: environmental analysis and management; urban planning; land use change; geographic information system; indicator engineering
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The new challenges posed by the Next Generation EU necessitate taking measurements of territorial transformations through specific indicators. Spatial planning and land management systems play a crucial role in addressing the issues of policy reform and investment, ecological transition and sustainability in its three dimensions: environmental, economic and social. To this end, adherence of these transformation indicators to the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda is fundamental to measuring the progress and speed of transformation and implementing advances driven by new policies in the field of urban and territorial planning. With the implementation of these new policies at the European level, further changes in land use and land cover, major spatial transformations and the realization of new practices and policies are expected. These transformations, if unmeasured and unplanned, may profoundly prevent the achievement of sustainable development goals and policies aimed at reducing or eliminating land take by 2050.

One of the challenges to which the scientific community will have to respond in the short-to-medium term concerns the development of methodological frameworks and tools for assessing the effects and monitoring the results of these new transformations at different spatial scales. Suitable approaches to integrated planning and change monitoring are still lacking, and decision-makers need to be equipped with decision support systems to design policies and actions that ensure long-term sustainable land use and are in line with local priorities and broader European and global goals.

Under these assumptions, this Special Issue was launched with the aim of collecting research concerning the study and in-depth examination of these phenomena through the use of indicator engineering or, more generally, techniques for monitoring territorial transformations, and more specifically, land take phenomena, the different dynamics of urban patterns and ecosystem service assessment.

References
  • Romano, B.; Zullo, F.; Fiorini, L.; Marucci, A.; Ciabò, S. Land transformation of Italy due to half a century of urbanization. Land use policy 2017, 67, 387–400, doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.06.006.
  • Romano, B.; Zullo, F.; Fiorini, L.; Ciabò, S.; Marucci, A. Sprinkling: An Approach to Describe Urbanization Dynamics in Italy. Sustainability 2017, 9, 97, doi:10.3390/su9010097.
  • Romano, B.; Fiorini, L.; Zullo, F.; Marucci, A. Urban growth control DSS techniques for de-sprinkling process in Italy. Sustainability. 2017, 9, 1852, doi:10.3390/su9101852.
  • Saganeiti, L.; Mustafa, A.; Teller, J.; Murgante, B. Modeling urban sprinkling with cellular automata. Sustainable Cities and Society 2020, 65, 102586, doi:10.1016/j.scs.2020.102586.
  • Saganeiti, L.; Favale, A.; Pilogallo, A.; Scorza, F.; Murgante, B. Assessing urban fragmentation at regional scale using sprinkling indexes. Sustainability 2018, 10, 3274, doi:10.3390/su10093274.
  • Marucci, A., Fiorini, L., Saganeiti, L., & Donolo, R. M. (2022). Indicators for monitoring the Sustainability of Transformations in Territorial Planning, doi: 10.31428/10317/10580

Dr. Lucia Saganeiti
Dr. Lorena Fiorini
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. 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 2400 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

  • indicator engineering
  • sustainability of transformation
  • decision support system
  • land take
  • Next Generation EU
  • Agenda 2030

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

28 pages, 16516 KiB  
Article
Air Quality and Environmental Effects Due to COVID-19 in Tehran, Iran: Lessons for Sustainability
by Simona Tondelli, Ebrahim Farhadi, Bahareh Akbari Monfared, Mehdi Ataeian, Hossein Tahmasebi Moghaddam, Marco Dettori, Lucia Saganeiti and Beniamino Murgante
Sustainability 2022, 14(22), 15038; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142215038 - 14 Nov 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1550
Abstract
The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) global pandemic spread can be considered a disastrous crisis that, in a given geographical area, significantly affects the increase in mortality rate with direct and indirect impacts on different scales and social, economic, political, and ecological factors. The [...] Read more.
The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) global pandemic spread can be considered a disastrous crisis that, in a given geographical area, significantly affects the increase in mortality rate with direct and indirect impacts on different scales and social, economic, political, and ecological factors. The effects of this crisis can be more intense in urban areas with high population density. Due to the more significant presence of vulnerable groups, the risk of death increases significantly. This research describes the environmental impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the city of Tehran, the 37th most populated city in the world. The concentration of six air pollutants (carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate matter with a diameter of 10 microns (PM10), sulfur dioxide (SO2), particulate matter with a diameter of fewer than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) and the Air Quality Index (AQI) were measured in 22 urban regions of Tehran before (20 March) and from (21 March to 10 February) the lockdown, in air pollution evaluation stations. In order to conduct this research, first, the values of the air pollutant indices of the 22 districts of Tehran in the two previous periods (before 20 March) and during quarantine (21 March to 10 February) were obtained from the air pollution measurement stations of the 22 districts of Tehran, together with the results. After the operationalization and quantification of the indicators according to the research objectives, they were entered into the ArcGIS environment, and the spatial analysis of each pollutant was performed, before and during the quarantine. Finally, it was found that the AQI was reduced from 74.95 to 54.15. Full article
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15 pages, 4509 KiB  
Article
Indicators Affecting the Urban Resilience with a Scenario Approach in Tehran Metropolis
by Ebrahim Farhadi, Ahmad Pourahmad, Keramatollah Ziari, Hassanali Faraji Sabokbar and Simona Tondelli
Sustainability 2022, 14(19), 12756; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912756 - 07 Oct 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1629
Abstract
Urban resilience refers to the capacity of an urban system to fully recover from unforeseen calamities. This study aims to assess the physical resilience indicators used to measure urban resilience in Tehran, the political and economic capital of Iran, and to pinpoint the [...] Read more.
Urban resilience refers to the capacity of an urban system to fully recover from unforeseen calamities. This study aims to assess the physical resilience indicators used to measure urban resilience in Tehran, the political and economic capital of Iran, and to pinpoint the most significant direct and indirect influences on urban resilience. The research process divided into two parts. The environmental scanning approach (reviewing papers and published sources, interviewing specialists, and monitoring conferences) and the literature review were employed in the first part to compile a database of the key information on the elements impacting physical resilience. The most significant factors impacting physical resilience over the next ten years were requested to be identified by specialists and intellectuals in the second part. Finally, the MicMac program was used to analyze the data after 29 variables were specified in Delphi. In light of the trace-analysis-dependence diagram, which depicts the instability of the influential factors and the persistence of their impact on other variables, the results demonstrate that Tehran’s physical resilience is in an unstable condition. According to the results, the factors that have the maximum impact on other variables are granularity drivers, emergency evacuation capacity, rescue and security spaces (emergency, fire station, and police station), impermeability, rate of the amendment and retrofitting measures in the buildings of each zone, building age, and the compatibility of land uses. The variables that are most susceptible to change from other variables include the distribution status of dangerous land uses, the quality of the buildings, the rate of historically vulnerable buildings, the vulnerability of internal and external roads, the rate of improvements and retrofitting measures in buildings in each zone, as well as historically vulnerable historical buildings. Full article
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