How Masterplanning and Urban Design Practice Contribute to Promoting Sustainability?

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in the use of masterplanning, as evidenced in planning practice and wider urban design discourse. This revival has occurred at a time of significant demographic and social change, widespread economic stagnation, reduced resources and growing concerns about the impact of climate change in many parts of the world. The justification for masterplanning that has emerged is no longer simply due to the age-old desire to create a blueprint of the future uses and the appearance of a site or a place. Increasingly, masterplanning is seen as a means of improving the prospects for securing survival in the face of volatile social, economic, technological and environmental sustainability at this point in the 21^st century—of ensuring future sustainability.

Sustainability implies creating a secure sense of long-term vitality (Watson, 2009). Sustainable thinking has begun to influence all aspects of development, from the built form to financial, economic and social policies, and their delivery mechanisms.  Carter (2007) argued that “sustainable development does not just happen as an outcome in a predetermined way. It requires to be carefully discussed, openly debated and perhaps even centrally planned”. Despite its long gestation, this concept still needs to be translated into real and tangible design solutions if neighbourhoods, towns and cities are to avoid serious problems and high costs in the future. It is important, therefore, to rethink how urban design practice in general, and masterplanning in particular, can contribute to sustainability by challenging underlying assumptions, reflecting on the effectiveness of decision-making and implementation processes deployed, and by learning from hard-won practical experiences from around the world. This Special Issue offers an opportunity to collate this experience and to learn from practice what has and has not worked. 

 The intention is to capture national and international material of relevance to academics, policy- makers, and built environment practitioners. The Special Issue will draw together a collection of high-quality evidence-based papers, discussing relevant theory, research and practice on topics such as adaptive and synergetic masterplanning, masterplanning for change, the integration of resilience and sustainability into masterplanning, collaboration and co-production in masterplanning, and typological and plot-based masterplanning. We encourage researchers and practitioners to submit original research articles, case studies, and critical articles on topics including, but not limited to the following:

• the evolution and future of sustainable masterplanning and urban design practice;
• the integration of concepts such as resilience and sustainability into master planning;
• the use of masterplanning and urban design practice to promote a ‘sustainable neighbourhood’;
• from masterplanning to adaptive planning;
• typological and plot based masterplanning;
• collaboration and co-production with communities in master planning;
• the development of more resilient masterplanning that can adapt to change and uncertainty;
• the use of integrated approaches to masterplanning to promote wellbeing in terms of social capital, health and quality of life;
• sustainable masterplanning ‘value’ and its impact on health, social, economic and environmental outcomes;
• the role of sustainability assessment in the masterplanning process;
• the new types of professionalism required to reconcile the conflicting demands placed upon sustainable master planning;
• case studies: successes as well as failures, and stories.

 Particular attention should be paid to demonstrating, through robust evidence bases, how masterplanning has, in practice, contributed to the delivery of increased sustainability.

Dr. Husam AlWaer
Dr. Ian Cooper
Mrs. Barbara Illsley
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.

• masterplanning
• adaptive planning
• sustainability
• resilient masterplanning
• sustainable neighbourhood
• sustainability assessment
• plot-based masterplanning
• new professionalism
• evidence-based decision-making