Efficient Land Use and Sustainable Development in European Countries

Dear Colleagues,

Land use, land resource demands, and landscape management practices are linked to many of contemporary society's environmental, climatic, and socio-economic challenges. Measuring land use efficiency is pivotal for guiding land use management decisions and promoting more effective and efficient land utilization strategies. Various methods for assessing land use efficiency and facilitating sustainable development have been proposed in the global context. Efficiency measures can be applied to solve conflicting land use interests. Efficiency can be fostered by promoting densification policies that can be translated into actions aimed at redeveloping existing abandoned and derelict urban sites instead of creating new neighborhoods outside urban containment areas. Scholars have recently argued for grounding, sustainable urban regeneration policies that can, on one hand, reduce the consumption of undeveloped land and, on the other hand, increase densification in urban areas, creating the conditions to develop public value capture policies. Linking sustainability with cultural aspects, it becomes relevant to consider fostering urban development without losing local identity; involving the private subjects in the development process when the urbanization of natural land is more convenient for them but often not for society; and relating the development effects to different types of rights, restrictions, and responsibilities. These are a few implications associated with the public value capture tools utilized to foster land use efficiency. However, they must be addressed to achieve a more sustainable urban development that aims to create value by enhancing local assets and features.

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) to provide new knowledge of the European scope and give insights about linking land use efficiency with sustainable development. We welcome empirical research or conceptual/theoretical works examining key processes that include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Institutional frameworks and policy review;
• Land use management and territorial governance;
• Linking land use and value creation;
• Implementing ecosystem services in land management;
• Land use efficiency and value capture;
• Value-led development planning and value capture instruments;
• Land system science and sustainable development;
• Sustainability science for policy-making.

We look forward to receiving original research articles and reviews.

Prof. Dr. Armands Auziņš
Dr. Andreas Hendricks
Dr. Francesco Botticini
Prof. Dr. Vida Maliene
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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.

• land management
• land use and development
• value capture instruments
• sustainability
• comparative analysis
• socio-economic evaluation
• geospatial analysis
• environmental assessment
• ecosystem services
• territorial governance