Reviving Shrinking Cities for Being More Sustainable, Just and Resilient–Prospects and Challenges for Urban Transformation, Policymaking and Planning
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainability in Geographic Science".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (29 February 2024) | Viewed by 18536
Special Issue Editors
Interests: shrinking cities; urban (participatory) governance; local development
Interests: shrinking cities; social capital; social sustainability
Interests: sustainable urban development; urban transformations; urban shrinkage and regrowth; socio-spatial and socio-environmental processes in cities; inequality and justice challenges
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear colleagues,
We invite you to submit a paper on the subject of shrinking cities and how we can use urban planning to revive these areas into sustainable places where social, economic, spatial and environmental balance is attained.
Shrinking cities—cities that have experienced population loss, economic downturn, employment decline and social problems as symptoms of a structural crisis [1]—are faced with diverse challenges and require significant efforts to evade urban decline and maintain quality of life. Shrinking cities are faced with possibilities to reinvent themselves in terms of sustainability through innovative urban planning considering the hardware, software and even mindware of shrinking cities. Reviving shrinking cities requires multiple methodologies where sensitive, social, economic, spatial and environmental dimensions meet in the interplay of internal dynamics and external drivers. Sustainable urban planning for shrinking cities is thus faced with varied and complex challenges which raise many questions: How can shrinking cities be revived through qualitative transformation, innovation, new approaches in decision-making, governance and planning? What forms of urban policymaking, planning and governance arrangements should shrinking cities adopt? How do we plan for a more sustainable/just/resilient development of shrinking cities, balancing equality, democracy and diversity regarding sensitive, social, economic, spatial and environmental aspects and which approaches, mindsets and tools should be used?
This Special Issue is intended to stimulate a discussion on how urban policymaking, planning and transdisciplinary research can impact the revival of shrinking cities, with particular focus on sustainability, justice and resilience, particularly considering issues such as social change, new governance arrangements, mindsets and experimentation/innovation as well as monitoring and modeling tools/approaches supporting, measuring and detecting qualitative transformation.
We invite studies with a wide range of approaches including conceptual papers, data-based research, papers presenting results of transdisciplinary research and papers reporting on examples of applications or evidence of policies that point to factors affecting the sustainability/justice/resilience performance of shrinking cities. Comparative and cross-national studies are especially welcome.
References:
[1] Martinez-Fernandez, C.; Audirac, I.; Fol, S.; Cunningham Sabot, E. Shrinking cities: Urban challenges of globalization. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 2012, 36, 213–225.
Prof. Dr. Emmanuèle C. Cunningham Sabot
Dr. Maja Ročak
Dr. Annegret Haase
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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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
- shrinking cities
- revival
- urban transformation
- sustainable city
- just city
- resilient city
- comparative urban development
- urban governance
- urban planning
- social change