GIS in Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis
A special issue of Urban Science (ISSN 2413-8851).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2026 | Viewed by 783
Special Issue Editor
2. Department of Mineral and Energy Resources Engineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Av Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
Interests: geographical information systems; spatial analysis; geographic modelling; spatial data algorithms and computational geometry; geographical information in planning; building information modelling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Urban planning constitutes a multidisciplinary field of research and practice that necessitates the integrated analysis of economic, social, environmental, and technological dimensions. This approach is guided by sustainability objectives, including the development of cities that are universally accessible, safe, environmentally sustainable, and economically affordable.
Urban planning research necessitates robust information and evaluation tools capable of incorporating temporal and spatial data. Geographical Information Systems (GIS), by addressing spatial phenomena—including environmental and infrastructural characteristics—and offering the ability to integrate heterogeneous datasets, facilitate spatial and temporal analyses, and effectively communicate analytical outcomes, have become integral to an array of applications in sustainable transportation research. Recent scholarly work employing GIS in the context of urban planning has concentrated on topics such as the spatial modelling of active transportation systems, spatial assessment of resource consumption, emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases, as well as the planning of urban interventions related to infrastructure, policy, and demand management—often grounded in spatial attributes or utilizing GIS as a decision-support tool.
Currently, this Special Issue is needed for the following reasons. Firstly, although urban planning and the application of GIS in it have seen certain developments, there is still a lack of fully integrating all the aspects within the multidisciplinary nature of urban planning. There are fragmented studies on different elements, but a shortage of comprehensive works that combine economic, social, environmental, and technological aspects in a unified manner. Secondly, with the continuous evolution of urban planning and the emergence of new challenges like rapid urbanization and changing sustainability demands, it has become crucial to further explore and expand the role of GIS to better cope with these situations.
This Special Issue of Urban Science aims to fill several gaps in the literature. In terms of urban data modelling, while some basic spatial data analysis exists in urban planning, more advanced planar, 3D, and spatiotemporal simulation or modelling of urban data is relatively lacking. Regarding the methodological aspects of geospatial data analysis, the existing literature mainly sticks to common methods and lacks exploration on innovatively combining and refining them to analyze the complex impacts on urban life. For data handling techniques for sustainability-related indicators, although GIS can handle data, the conversion and integration of such sustainability-related indicators into spatial data for comprehensive analysis is an area that needs more attention. When it comes to case studies on urban system aspects, there are individual case studies, but a lack of comprehensive and comparative studies specifically analyzing the application of GIS modelling in relation to social equity, economic efficiency, and environmental responsibility of urban systems. Regarding the impacts of spatial data models on sustainability assessment, the impacts of spatial data models, quality, transformation, and processing have not yet been thoroughly investigated. Furthermore, for applications of spatial data mining and related systems, their potential in extracting useful information and enhancing intelligent urban planning is yet to be fully realized.
This Special Issue of Urban Science will include selected contributions on the theory and practice of analyzing spatial data and using GIS in all aspects of urban planning studies. We encourage researchers to submit contributions through articles, reviews, case studies, and position papers where the role and contribution of spatial analysis and geospatial techniques in this scope are enhanced. This may include (as a non-exclusive list of potential topics) contributions on the following:
- Planar, 3D, and spatiotemporal simulation or modelling of urban data;
- Methodological aspects of geospatial data analysis impacting life in cities;
- Data handling techniques for the spatialization of sustainability-related indicators;
- Case studies concerning the application of GIS modelling and analysis of social equity, economic efficiency, and environmental responsibility of urban systems;
- Impacts of spatial data models, quality, transformation, and processing in sustainability assessment;
- Applications for spatial data mining, geovisualization, or spatial decision-support systems for the urban environment.
Dr. Alexandre B. Gonçalves
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. Urban Science 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 1600 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 planning
- Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
- spatial modelling
- spatial analysis
- spatial decision-support systems
- geospatial techniques
- spatial decision-support systems
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