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Current State-of-the-Art of Smart Cities and Urban Sustainability 2.0 Based on Climate Changes

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Rares Halbac-Cotoara-Zamfir

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Guest Editor

Department of Overland Communication Ways, Foundation and Cadastral Survey, Politehnica University of Timisoara, 1A I Curea Street, 300224, Timisoara, Timis, Romania
Interests: urban planning; land planning; urban sustainability; urban land-use management; climate changes

Dr. Anca Maria Moscovici

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Guest Editor

Department of Overland Communication Ways, Foundation and Cadastral Survey, Politehnica University of Timisoara, 1A I Curea Street, 300224, Timisoara, Timis, Romania
Interests: urban sistematization, urban polution, 4D cadastre, BIM, land management, sustainability

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues:

Nowadays, urban areas need to face immense a wide range of challenges related to climate change adaptation, sustainable waste management, affordable, reliable and modern energy and sustainable transport and mobility. The concept of ‘smart cities’ is an adequate response in addressing these challenges. Smart City 3.0 concept is the framework in which global challenges can be anticipated, defined and managed so that urban sustainability can be achieved and preserved in the context of climate change.

A smart city is an inclusive and optimized urban area for sustainable economic activity, efficient energy consumption and positive environmental impacts, where stakeholders and citizens are strongly involved in social activity that affects the development of urban communities and helps them to cope with the previously mentioned challenges. A key aspect here is the use of new information technologies, focusing on the implementation of urban sustainability 2.0. and providing new ways of seeing, experiencing and understanding the city.

The main aim of this special issue is to understand how the smart city concept affect the strategies and practices in sustainable urban planning within climate change framework.

This topic will be of interest to scholars who deal with smart and sustainable cities, urban governance and policy-making, transformational cities, urban planning management, climate changes, urban sustainability, urban land-use, as well as managing the synergies and trade-offs these concepts and not only.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the following:

- Climate change adaptation

- Climate change impact on urban areas

- Smart City 3.0

- Sustainable smart cities

- Remote sensing technologies for urban areas

- Urban communities

- Urban land-use management

- Urban planning models

- Urban societal challenges

- Urban sustainability 2.0

- Urban geo-informatics

- Geo-informatics for urban planning

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Rares Halbac-Cotoara-Zamfir
Dr. Anca Maria Moscovici
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.

Keywords

urban areas, city, smart city, urban sustainability, climate change, urban planning

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 2905 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Relationship between Urbanization and Consumption Upgrading of Rural Residents under the Sustainable Development: An Empirical Study Based on Mediation Effect and Threshold Effect

by Xiaobing Le, Xinxin Shao and Kuo Gao

Sustainability 2023, 15(10), 8426; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15108426 - 22 May 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1900

Abstract

With the rapid development of urbanization, the overall consumption level of rural residents has been improved accordingly in China, and the consumption structure has gradually become perfect. However, in the process of urbanization, it is necessary to handle some practical problems in order to realize the sustainable development of consumption in rural areas. Under the concept of sustainable consumption, urbanization has become a new engine that drives rural residents’ consumption in China. The digital economy has injected new vitality to expand domestic demand as well. Therefore, whether consumption upgrading in rural areas is affected by urbanization and the digital economy is a topic worth studying. To discuss the relationship between urbanization, the digital economy and consumption levels in rural areas, this paper uses an intermediary effect model to test how urbanization promotes the consumption upgrading in rural regions with the digital economy as the intermediary variable and explores the threshold characteristics of urbanization. The results are as follows: urbanization significantly promotes the rural residents’ consumption upgrading, and there is regional heterogeneity. It improves the consumption optimization in the eastern and central regions, but not in the western region. The digital economy intermediates the relationship between urbanization and consumption optimization. Moreover, urbanization has a double threshold, and with the increase of the threshold value, the marginal effect of urbanization on rural residents’ consumption upgrading also increases gradually. China should seize the opportunities of the development of urbanization and the digital economy, constantly raise farmer income, and narrow the income gap between urban and rural area, so as to promote the sustainable development of consumption in rural areas. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current State-of-the-Art of Smart Cities and Urban Sustainability 2.0 Based on Climate Changes)

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13 pages, 2123 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Particular Case of Urban Sustainability: Comparison Study of the Efficiency of Multiple Thermal Insulations for Buildings

by Simon Pescari, Mircea Merea, Alexandru Pitroacă and Clara-Beatrice Vilceanu

Sustainability 2022, 14(23), 16283; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142316283 - 6 Dec 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1561

Abstract

Achieving urban sustainability is a complex process that includes improving buildings’ resilience and energy efficiency by using the optimum thermal insulation solution. With the advent of new energy restrictions, it is very important to find the best compromise between the price of the thermal insulation material and energy savings because, sometimes, the initial cost of a thermal rehabilitation seems to be very high. The purpose of this study is to illustrate the variations in the amount of heat energy required by a multi-storey residential structure in Romania that uses 14 various kinds of thermal insulation materials. The energy demand is determined using the dynamic method using a building energy simulator that can evaluate the energy usage of lighting, warmth, ventilation, climate control, and water heating. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current State-of-the-Art of Smart Cities and Urban Sustainability 2.0 Based on Climate Changes)

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