Territory Spatial Planning and Regional Sustainable Development

Dear Colleagues,

Spatial planning is considered a discipline with an integral and interdisciplinary approach aimed at sustainable and balanced socioeconomic development from the planetary to the local scale. This requires a strong will on the part of public administrations to articulate a set of policies and models clearly oriented in this direction.

During the 20th century, two processes have developed, largely linked to each other: the transport and telecommunications revolution and the concentration of the population in urban centers. Both processes, which are still unfinished, are inherent to socioeconomic development and land use planning. Cities concentrate on facilities and services, but above all, employment, production, and income are the basic requirements for quality of life and well-being in today's society. Cities have become the engines of today's economy. Organizations such as the UN (Habitat), the OECD, and the EU, among others, have oriented their policies, strategies, and agendas for spatial planning and socioeconomic development towards polycentric networks of cities. With their respective functional areas, cities articulate the territory and centralize all development, leaving extensive peripheral areas far behind and unpopulated, with the resulting territorial imbalances. These are international north–south and, to a lesser extent, east–west imbalances linked to development, but which also occur in the more developed countries at the national, regional, and local levels. Spatial planning must therefore consider these scales in an integrated manner in order to achieve harmonious territorial development. But, undoubtedly, it must also be sustainable, necessarily in accordance with the SDG2030, and with a circular economy in the face of the seriousness of soil, water, and atmospheric pollution, with climate change threatening the entire planet, along with a continuous loss of biodiversity and natural resources.

Land, as an interdisciplinary and transversal journal, has among its objectives land use, biodiversity, and sustainability, as well as urban–rural interactions and their planning, which are the basis for spatial planning and, ultimately, for sustainable and territorially balanced development. It is also interested in the evaluation and interpretation of policies, experiences, and good practices, as well as in comparative studies from the international to the local scale through "indicators, indices, methods, tools and approaches (ecosystem services, multifunctionality and sustainability)".

Although the territory has been the essential object of geography up to the present day, spatial planning exceeds any specific discipline. Due to its complexity and integral approach, it is a multidisciplinary concept in which numerous disciplines converge. For this Special Issue, we are interested in contributions related to spatial planning and sustainable development, from the local to the international scale, to address the challenge of territorial socioeconomic imbalances, either through empirical research or conceptual work, examining any key processes, among others:

• Territorial imbalances and socioeconomic cohesion;
• Transport and telecommunications for territorial planning and development;
• Polycentric urban networks: territorial structuring and regional development;
• Global policies and programs;
• Sectorial policies and programs (urban, rural, etc.);
• Urban–rural interactions: partnerships;
• Endogenous potentials and regional smart specialization;
• Analysis methods and tools;
• Analysis techniques: geospatial statistics and geographic information systems (GISs);
• Citizen participation: project generation and management;
• Vertical and horizontal governance;
• Results and monitoring: system of indicators.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Prof. Dr. José Luis Gurría-Gascón
Prof. Dr. José Manuel Sánchez-Martín
Guest Editors

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