Future Design

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will comprise papers covering a wide range of aspects related to designing sustainable future societies. Despite the fact that scientists have issued various ultimatums into the future of the earth including biodiversity, climate change, biochemical flows such as nitrogen and phosphorus, and so on, our society remains stuck with the traditional market and democracy and cannot create sustainable social systems including future generations. While the market is ‘an extremely good device for realizing the short-term desires of people,’ it does not ‘allocate resources in a way that takes account of future generations’—the future generations cannot participate in today’s markets. Likewise, democracy is not ‘a device that incorporates future generations;’ it is ‘a device that profits people who live now’. Running for a political office today to enrich a generation a hundred years later would most likely end in an election-defeat. This Special Issue solicits papers on innovative and creative ideas for complementing market and democracy for future generations, including theories, laboratory, social and field experiments, and practices with stakeholders.  

Dr. Tatsuyoshi Saijo
Collection 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. 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 collection 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-anonymized 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.