Sustainability of Urban Transformation in the Context of Next Generation EU

Dear Colleagues,

The new challenges posed by the Next Generation EU necessitate taking measurements of territorial transformations through specific indicators. Spatial planning and land management systems play a crucial role in addressing the issues of policy reform and investment, ecological transition and sustainability in its three dimensions: environmental, economic and social. To this end, adherence of these transformation indicators to the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda is fundamental to measuring the progress and speed of transformation and implementing advances driven by new policies in the field of urban and territorial planning. With the implementation of these new policies at the European level, further changes in land use and land cover, major spatial transformations and the realization of new practices and policies are expected. These transformations, if unmeasured and unplanned, may profoundly prevent the achievement of sustainable development goals and policies aimed at reducing or eliminating land take by 2050.

One of the challenges to which the scientific community will have to respond in the short-to-medium term concerns the development of methodological frameworks and tools for assessing the effects and monitoring the results of these new transformations at different spatial scales. Suitable approaches to integrated planning and change monitoring are still lacking, and decision-makers need to be equipped with decision support systems to design policies and actions that ensure long-term sustainable land use and are in line with local priorities and broader European and global goals.

Under these assumptions, this Special Issue was launched with the aim of collecting research concerning the study and in-depth examination of these phenomena through the use of indicator engineering or, more generally, techniques for monitoring territorial transformations, and more specifically, land take phenomena, the different dynamics of urban patterns and ecosystem service assessment.

• Romano, B.; Zullo, F.; Fiorini, L.; Marucci, A.; Ciabò, S. Land transformation of Italy due to half a century of urbanization. Land use policy 2017, 67, 387–400, doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.06.006.
• Romano, B.; Zullo, F.; Fiorini, L.; Ciabò, S.; Marucci, A. Sprinkling: An Approach to Describe Urbanization Dynamics in Italy. Sustainability 2017, 9, 97, doi:10.3390/su9010097.
• Romano, B.; Fiorini, L.; Zullo, F.; Marucci, A. Urban growth control DSS techniques for de-sprinkling process in Italy. Sustainability. 2017, 9, 1852, doi:10.3390/su9101852.
• Saganeiti, L.; Mustafa, A.; Teller, J.; Murgante, B. Modeling urban sprinkling with cellular automata. Sustainable Cities and Society 2020, 65, 102586, doi:10.1016/j.scs.2020.102586.
• Saganeiti, L.; Favale, A.; Pilogallo, A.; Scorza, F.; Murgante, B. Assessing urban fragmentation at regional scale using sprinkling indexes. Sustainability 2018, 10, 3274, doi:10.3390/su10093274.
• Marucci, A., Fiorini, L., Saganeiti, L., & Donolo, R. M. (2022). Indicators for monitoring the Sustainability of Transformations in Territorial Planning, doi: 10.31428/10317/10580

Dr. Lucia Saganeiti
Dr. Lorena Fiorini
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.

• indicator engineering
• sustainability of transformation
• decision support system
• land take
• Next Generation EU
• Agenda 2030