Submit to Sustainability Review for Sustainability Propose a Special Issue

Journal Browser

Planning Resilient Community: Public Participation and Governance

Print Special Issue Flyer
Special Issue Editors
Special Issue Information
Keywords
Published Papers

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainability in Geographic Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 September 2021) | Viewed by 28052

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Mohammad Swapan

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

School of Design and the Built Environment, Curtin University, Bentley, Perth, WA 6102, Australia
Interests: green adaptation; informal green space; ecosystem services; place attachment; co-production; participation outcomes; Public Private Partnership (PPP); disaster risk paradigm; informality; Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); resilient cities
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Courtney Babb

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

School of Design and the Built Environment, Curtin University, Australia
Interests: urban regeneration; urban governance and institutions; public space and property rights; placemaking

Dr. Reazul Ahsan

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of City and Metropolitan Planning, The University of Utah (Utah Asia Campus), Incheon, South Korea
Interests: Urban ecology; climate resilience; disaster risks reduction; environmental sustainability practice

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleague,

Cities across the globe are increasingly facing complex and multifaceted risks due to mounting population pressure and climatic hazards. It is projected that almost 85% of the population in developed countries and more than 65% in low and middle-income countries will reside in urban areas by 2050 and contribute to even more challenges (Béné et al., 2018). The average annual estimated losses of global cities from climate change and other social and economic risks is around USD 415 billion (WB, 2016). To cater to a sustainable built environment, “the concept of resilience is increasingly being used as an organising principle to frame scientiﬁc and political discourses on cities” (Yamagata & Sharifi, 2018, p. 3). The concept has recently been promoted further by the United Nations through the new Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 9 & 11) to support resilient communities and infrastructure (UN, 2015).

Resilience is a polysemic concept and has a long history in environmental systems and has also been widely used in various fields of knowledge, including climate change adaptation, migration, and psychology. According to Yamagata and Sharifi (2018, p.7), resilience is critical to ‘’enhance resistance, robustness, and absorption capacities of the system, …. and [to] develop plans to recover rapidly in case damage has occurred’’. The concept entered into urban planning as a prominent policy narrative mainly from ecology. It strengthens the ability of socio-ecological systems to tackle urban environmental risks and to cope with changing climatic, socio-economic, political, and institutional landscapes (Harris, Chu, and Ziervogel, 2018). This concept is an improvement on the traditional ‘prevent and predict’ approach and suggests an in-depth understanding and an accommodation of complexities and uncertainties evolving from the changing socio-ecological systems (Orleans Reed et al., 2013). The new strategy calls for more innovative and adaptive planning approaches that involve exploring indigenous knowledge, scenario building, and integrative mechanisms.

This Special Issue ‘Planning Resilient Community: Public Participation and Governance’ will uncover the theory and practice of planning for urban resilience. In this regard, we focus on innovation and investigation regarding community engagement and institutional approaches to deal with socio-ecological systems. The community and individuals are the centre of discussion in resilience-oriented planning, and several studies have recommended innovation and integration through social learning process (Schauppenlehner-Kloyber and Penker, 2016). We are interested to know how the community can engage in reducing vulnerability using local knowledge and self-organisation capacities. The role of institutional reforms for planning resilient communities is also critical in unpacking an adaptive management approach. In line with this discourse, we invite theoretical and empirical papers on but not limited to the following thematic areas:

Adaptive governance and negotiated resilience to urban disaster;
Co-design/co-creation in building resilient communities;
Behaviour and motivation towards residential and industrial energy-efficient practice;
Individual and community approaches in urban greening;
Ecosystem service and the non-monetary valuation of natural resources;
Participatory conservation and the regeneration of the built environment;
Communal approach to food security;
Urban metabolism (linear vs. circular);
Promoting equity and social justice through local engagement;
Reconsidering urban informality in adaptive planning;
Promoting industry, innovation, and infrastructure;
Climate-resilient planning and land use policy;
Sustainable cities and communities.

References

Béné, C., Mehta, L., McGranahan, G., Cannon, T., Gupte, J., & Tanner, T. (2018). Resilience as a policy narrative: potentials and limits in the context of urban planning. Climate and Development, 10(2), 116-133.

Gillard, R. (2016). Questioning the diffusion of resilience discourses in pursuit of transformational change. Global environmental politics, 16(1), 13-20.

Harris, L. M., Chu, E. K., & Ziervogel, G. (2018). Negotiated resilience. Resilience, 6(3), 196-214.

Orleans Reed, S., Friend, R., Toan, V. C., Thinphanga, P., Sutarto, R., & Singh, D. (2013). “Shared learning” for building urban climate resilience–experiences from Asian cities. Environment and Urbanization, 25(2), 393-412.

Schauppenlehner-Kloyber, E., & Penker, M. (2016). Between participation and collective action—from occasional liaisons towards long-term co-management for urban resilience. Sustainability, 8(7), 664.

UN. (2015). Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. New York: United Nations Retrieved from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld/publication.

WB. (2016). How Can We Finance the Resilient Cities of the Future? New York: The World Bank Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2016/10/11/how-can-we-finance-the-resilient-cities-of-the-future.

Yamagata, Y., & Sharifi, A. (2018). Resilience-Oriented Urban Planning: Theoretical and Empirical Insights (Vol. 65). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Dr. Mohammad Swapan
Dr. Courtney Babb
Dr. Reazul Ahsan
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

participatory planning
climate resilience
sustainable behaviour and practice
community innovation
community energy management
urban agriculture
non-monetary valuation
adaptive governance
sustainable cities

Published Papers (7 papers)

Download All Papers

Research

17 pages, 1447 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Social Media Literacy among Oil Palm Smallholders in East Malaysia and Association with Oil Palm Integration Practices

by Abdul Hafiz Ab Rahman, Azlina Abdullah, Sivapalan Selvadurai, Sharifah Zarina Syed Zakaria, Novel Lyndon and Khairul Abidin

Sustainability 2021, 13(24), 13802; https://doi.org/10.3390/su132413802 - 14 Dec 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2792

Abstract

With advancements in technology, social media has revolutionised the way farmers communicate, resulting in an increased level of shared agricultural knowledge. Therefore, this study investigates social media literacy among oil palm smallholders in East Malaysia and the association with oil palm integration practices. A survey of 194 respondents was conducted using a random sampling method. The survey questionnaire was adapted from several previous studies on social media literacy. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses, involving t-test, ANOVA, and logistic regression were conducted. Social media literacy was significantly higher among oil palm smallholders who were younger, with higher educational levels (p < 0.05). The logistic regression analysis showed that as the level of social media literacy increased, the probability for agricultural integration practices also increased (odds ratio (OR) = 1.052; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.022, 1.083). However, smallholders needed to optimise their use of social media to provide greater benefits to their agriculture. The findings of this study are useful in illustrating that interventions in social media literacy may efficiently facilitate oil palm integration. The results of this study can provide information and recommendations towards policies for the modernising of oil palm farming in Malaysia. Such studies, however, need to be further expanded by involving a larger sample of smallholders nationwide, to represent the geography of smallholders with varying levels of internet accessibility in Malaysia. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Planning Resilient Community: Public Participation and Governance)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

19 pages, 3217 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Resilience and Urban Regeneration Policies. Lessons from Community-Led Initiatives. The Case Study of CanFugarolas in Mataro (Barcelona)

by Diego Saez Ujaque, Elisabet Roca, Rafael de Balanzó Joue, Pere Fuertes and Pilar Garcia-Almirall

Sustainability 2021, 13(22), 12855; https://doi.org/10.3390/su132212855 - 20 Nov 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4212

Abstract

This paper addresses socio-ecological, community-led resilience as the ability of the urban system to progress and adapt. This is based on the socio-cultural, self-organized case study of CanFugarolas in Mataró (Barcelona), for the recovery of a derelict industrial building and given the lack of attention to resilience emerging from grassroots. Facing rigidities (stagnation) observed under the provisions of urban regeneration policies (regulatory realm), evidenced in the proliferation of urban voids (infrastructural arena), the social subsystem stands as the enabler of urban progression. Under the heuristics of the Adaptive Cycle and Panarchy, the study embraces Fath’s model to analyze the transition along, and the interactions between, the adaptive cycles at each urban subsystem. The mixed method approach reveals the ability of the community to navigate all stages and overcome successive ailments, despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles (traps) at the physical support (built stock) and the regulatory arena (urban planning). Further, cross-scale, social-centered interactions (panarchy) are also traced, becoming the “sink” and the “trigger” of the urban dynamics. The community, in the form of an actor-network, becomes the catalyst (through Remember/Revolt) of urban resilience at the city scale. At a managerial level, this evidences its temporal and spatial complementarity to top-down urban regeneration policies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Planning Resilient Community: Public Participation and Governance)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

17 pages, 2303 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Participatory Planning through Flexible Approach: Public Community Facilities in Seoul’s Urban Regeneration Project

by Seon Gyeong Baek and Hyun-Ah Kwon

Sustainability 2020, 12(24), 10435; https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410435 - 14 Dec 2020

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2847

Abstract

Since the 2000s, urban regeneration projects have been actively implemented to address urban problems in Seoul. These projects not only help improve the environment but also make the community sustainable. Accordingly, a number of public community facilities have been created through public participation. In Seoul, since there are few existing communities that have been active in relation to public projects, there are many cases in which the government must find residents who could participate in such projects, form a new organization, and induce participation. This study analyzes such cases and identifies related characteristics. In particular, flexibly planning community participation can increase sustainability under these conditions in various communities within cities. Planning from a flexible perspective assumes that the occurrence and impact of participation may not be sequential and allows and induces community change. This study is useful in preparing planning strategies under similar conditions in the future. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Planning Resilient Community: Public Participation and Governance)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

12 pages, 1134 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Theorizing Public Participation and Local Governance in Urban Resilience: Reflections on the “Provincializing Urban Political Ecology” Thesis

by Chihsin Chiu

Sustainability 2020, 12(24), 10307; https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410307 - 10 Dec 2020

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3789

Abstract

Urban political ecology (UPE) infuses Marxism with poststructuralism and constructivism to explore the dialectic relationship between nature and society in urban environments as well as the economic aspect of an urban socioecological system. Nevertheless, the literature on southern urbanism has urged UPE to become more “provincialized” to reflect the diffuse forms of power and everyday governance influencing the planning of cities in the Global South. This article reviews and reflects on this wave of debates raised by critics who have positioned postcolonial thinking as an alternative to Marxist political economy, in which UPE is rooted. It also identifies those works that might help provincialize UPE differently. Without rejecting the Marxism, another set of approaches draws influence from the strategic-relational approach (SRA) to examine environmental issues in ways that destabilize conventionally economic determinist UPE. In addition to involving corporate elites and city officials, a UPE framework incorporating the SRA is capable of bringing the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community leaders, and environmentalists in everyday governance to the front. The article contends that the latter framework adds weight on public participation and local governance in different geopolitical contexts without losing sight of the social inequalities caused by state-led or privatized programs in the quest for urban resilience. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Planning Resilient Community: Public Participation and Governance)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

18 pages, 805 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A National Evaluation of State and Territory Roles in Hazard Mitigation: Building Local Capacity to Implement FEMA Hazard Mitigation Assistance Grants

by Gavin Smith and Olivia Vila

Sustainability 2020, 12(23), 10013; https://doi.org/10.3390/su122310013 - 30 Nov 2020

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4196

Abstract

This article describes the findings of a national survey of State Hazard Mitigation Officers (SHMOs) in U.S. states and territories in order to gain a greater understanding of the roles that they play in assisting local governments to build the capacity required to successfully develop and implement Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)-funded Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA) grants, an important but understudied aspect of hazard mitigation governance. The research questions focus on: (1) How states and territories enable local governments to develop and implement HMA grants and (2) SHMOs’ opinions regarding their perceived capacity and effectiveness in assisting local governments to develop and implement HMA grants. Results show that while states and territories are relatively well-equipped to perform general administrative duties required by FEMA, SHMOs expressed wide variation in their capacity to assist local governments to develop and implement HMA grants. This was particularly evident with regard to the delivery of specific technical assistance measures required to develop HMA grants. Survey responses also highlight modest levels of participation in FEMA-designed efforts to delegate responsibility to states and territories and low levels of participation in programs that offer pre-application funding to local governments to help them develop HMA grant applications. These findings should concern FEMA as the agency embarks on the implementation of the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, an ambitious pre-disaster hazard mitigation grant initiative. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Planning Resilient Community: Public Participation and Governance)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 2025 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Conditions for Co-Creation in Infrastructure Projects: Experiences from the Overdiepse Polder Project (The Netherlands)

by Maria Alina Rădulescu, Wim Leendertse and Jos Arts

Sustainability 2020, 12(18), 7736; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12187736 - 18 Sep 2020

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3589

Abstract

In recent decades, stakeholder engagement had been gaining momentum in planning practice. More recently, at the heart of the discussions about collaborative endeavours stands the concept of co-creation, an umbrella term for multiple forms of collaboration between stakeholders, which is seen as an approach for fostering new and innovative solutions for highly complex challenges. Despite this idyllic representation, co-creation does not always lead to positive outcomes. One reason is that co-creation poses major operationalization challenges, which make it a significant subject for research. In this article, we explore the conditions that allow co-creation practices aimed at fostering innovation and creativity in infrastructure projects to take place and flourish. Based on the review of literature on co-creation, on the analysis of project-related documents, and on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with the stakeholders, this article follows the co-creation process of the Overdiepse polder project, part of the innovative Dutch water management programme ‘Room for the River’. The results show that co-creation is an iterative process that depends on conditions related to the context, the characteristics of the stakeholders and their relationships, but also on the design and dynamics of the process. The results of this study can be of help to researchers, academics, and professionals interested in studying or applying co-creative approaches. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Planning Resilient Community: Public Participation and Governance)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

13 pages, 1357 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Participatory Approach to Gap Analysis between Policy and Practice Regarding Air Pollution in Ger Areas of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

by Bonjun Koo, Jong-Il Na, Throstur Thorsteinsson and Ana Maria Cruz

Sustainability 2020, 12(8), 3309; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083309 - 18 Apr 2020

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4951

Abstract

Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, suffers from severe air pollution during the long winter months, and its air pollution levels are among the highest in the world. Residents in the ger areas of Ulaanbaatar are unable to take advantage of the laws and policy regulations to reduce air pollution despite years of efforts to address this issue by international and local organizations including the government of Mongolia (GoM). Important challenges and barriers that have limited the success of various governmental policies that tackle air pollution problems were identified through participatory approaches. In order to do this, personal interviews were conducted with various stakeholders such as officials from central and local governments, government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international organizations, and academia. Moreover, a workshop was conducted to elucidate the views of ger area community members in Ulaanbaatar. Based on the results of these interviews and workshop, the gaps between the policy approaches of the government, the actual conditions, and the desired situations of the residents to improve air quality in Ulaanbaatar were analyzed. The large gaps that were identified between the national and local perspectives on air pollution issues demonstrated that the reduction of air pollution in Ulaanbaatar requires solving fundamental and complex problems based on a better understanding of the specific conditions and needs of the residents of the ger areas. Moreover, active participation and discussion of the residents at the workshop indicated that community-based approaches could be applied in the cultural context of Mongolia with promising results in finding solutions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Planning Resilient Community: Public Participation and Governance)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Planning Resilient Community: Public Participation and Governance

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Special Issue Information

Keywords

Published Papers (7 papers)

Research

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI