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Land
Special Issues
Public Spaces and Smart Technologies
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Public Spaces and Smart Technologies

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Land Systems and Global Change".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2022) | Viewed by 4018

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Pnina Plaut

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel
Interests: urban mobility and new technologies; smart cities; walkability; land uses; travel decisions and environmental quality; “active” transport; the built environment and human health

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In the 21st century cities are facing global, social, economic and environmental challenges. Rapid urbanization accompanied by housing crisis, transportation congestion, social gaps and tensions, personal security problems, deteriorating environmental qualities and climate change manifestations all impact public spaces. Covid-19 pandemic brought public health considerations into the urban realm with special focus on the role of public open spaces in quality of life and wellbeing of city residents. At the same time smart technologies are being developed (e.g., autonomous vehicles, smart mobility), along with information and communication technologies, social media applications and Big Data usage. Data is also produced by sensors and cameras that are installed in public open spaces and along with a combination of cellphones and GPS technology they bring extra power of real-time and location specific data to monitoring, planning and decision making. These smart technologies bring new opportunities to impact human activity and urban processes. They also bare ethical and legal aspects with questions related to privacy, profiling, decision biases, and commercialization of the public arena.

In this Special Issue of Land, entitled “Public Spaces and Smart Technologies” we solicit articles dealing with the myriad of facets related to the role of new technologies in shaping public spaces.  Public spaces and the activities that take place in them are shaped by social, cultural, economic, environmental, political and design processes.

Thus, we look forward to contributions from a wide range of disciplines. Original research articles and reviews are welcome.  Suggested themes and article types include, but are not limited to:

  • Impact of new mobility services and autonomous vehicles on the design of public spaces
  • The role of technology in mitigating climate change (e.g., heat islands) focusing on public spaces
  • How might technology address vulnerability of various populations in public spaces?
  • Community management of public open spaces
  • Challenges, obstacles, benefits and opportunities for incorporating new technologies in planning, developing, designing and monitoring public open spaces.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Pnina Plaut
Guest 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. 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. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 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.

Keywords

  • public spaces
  • new technologies
  • information and communication technologies
  • planning and development
  • vulnerable populations

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 6377 KiB  
Article
Do We Live Where It Is Pleasant? Correlates of Perceived Pleasantness with Socioeconomic Variables
by João Monteiro, Ana Clara Carrilho, Nuno Sousa, Leise Kelli de Oliveira, Eduardo Natividade-Jesus and João Coutinho-Rodrigues
Land 2023, 12(4), 878; https://doi.org/10.3390/land12040878 - 13 Apr 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1561
Abstract
Living in urban areas is the wish of many people. However, with population growth in those areas, quality of life has become a concerning element for achieving sustainable cities. Because quality of life is influenced by the built environment, the state of the [...] Read more.
Living in urban areas is the wish of many people. However, with population growth in those areas, quality of life has become a concerning element for achieving sustainable cities. Because quality of life is influenced by the built environment, the state of the latter is a fundamental issue for public policies. This research expands on previous research on the perceived pleasantness of built environments by presenting a large-scale case study of the urban layout pleasantness in the central area of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, a typical global south city, and correlating pleasantness scores with socioeconomic factors to understand whether people do in fact live where the urban layout is more pleasant and how pleasantness and socioeconomic factors relate and contribute to one’s choice of living location. A comparison with the city of Coimbra, Portugal, representative of the global north, was also carried out. The findings showed that pleasantness tended to correlate negatively with urban density and positively with income. Possible explanations for these results and their generality are advanced. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Public Spaces and Smart Technologies)
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20 pages, 4965 KiB  
Article
Settlements along Main Road Axes: Blessing or Curse? Evaluating the Barrier Effect in a Small Greek Settlement
by Savvas Emmanouilidis, Socrates Basbas, Alexandros Sdoukopoulos and Ioannis Politis
Land 2022, 11(12), 2243; https://doi.org/10.3390/land11122243 - 9 Dec 2022
Viewed by 1965
Abstract
Being the heart of every human settlement, the road network constitutes a significant component of the built environment that serves the accessibility and mobility needs and supports economic activities. Despite its positive role, the road network, in some cases, due to increased geometric [...] Read more.
Being the heart of every human settlement, the road network constitutes a significant component of the built environment that serves the accessibility and mobility needs and supports economic activities. Despite its positive role, the road network, in some cases, due to increased geometric and functional characteristics, can act as a barrier to the movement of vulnerable road users, thus fragmenting the urban space and creating the phenomenon of the “barrier effect”. The barrier effect is considered detrimental to the mobility of vulnerable users, causing delays or even cancellation of trips, increasing collision risk, limiting access to services, posing negative impacts on public health, and loosening social ties. In this context, the current paper focuses on a settlement in Greece (Dispilio) developed along two national roads and comprehensively evaluates the barrier effect. More specifically, the presented methodological approach attempts to investigate the actual and the perceived dimension of this phenomenon by applying well-established metrics and landscape indicators, such as the effective mesh size, and conducting a questionnaire survey, respectively. The overall research results highlighted interesting findings regarding the intensity of the barrier effect in the examined area and outlined some critical interventions that could be implemented in similar cases. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Public Spaces and Smart Technologies)
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