Urban Form, Sustainability and Resilience
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainability in Geographic Science".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (23 December 2021) | Viewed by 5947
Special Issue Editors
Interests: spatial analysis and modelling of urban space; urban morphology; metropolisation process; housing and residential segregation; transportation geography; sustainable urban development; spatial strategic foresight; artificial intelligence applied to urban modelling; uncertainty issues in geographic knowledge
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
A central idea to urban sustainability is the assessment of the current and future paths of the development of the city. These paths have to be viable in the long run through an attentive use of resources while producing human livability. It is understood that paths of development can at least be outlined, if not precisely predicted. The notion of resilience is more recent and accounts for the recognition of the uncertainty along the trajectory of change that the urban system undergoes during its evolution. Resilience is precisely the capacity of the city to adapt and even, at least in some degree, transform in the face of external or internal challenges without losing some key structure and functions that make it a livable place. Moreover, change, above all sociotechnical change, is constantly produced by cities, and it is intrinsically unpredictable. Thus, the sustainable city needs to be resilient enough in the first place to adapt to a trajectory of change that is highly unpredictable and unspecific.
The urban system itself can be described as an internally articulated structure where various levels of subsystems, for example, cultural, environmental, political or economic, continuously evolve and influence each other in ways that are largely nonlinear. Recent research suggests that the physical configuration of urban spaces, or in short urban form, is one such adaptive system. Much has been written on the link between urban form and sustainability in the last thirty years. Urban form is a key urban resource with multiple links to sustainability goals. Compactness, polycentrism, city of short distances, transit-oriented development, and healthy and walkable cities are all morphological concepts derived from the debate on the sustainable city. By contrast, the link between urban form and resilience is a more recent concern for scholars and urban practitioners, in connection with complexity theory and general resilience theory in ecology. Blue and green corridors are thus morphological concepts of resilient urban ecosystems, while street connectivity has been dealt with when assessing urban resilience to catastrophic events, whether natural or man-made. Much less attention has been given to the resilience of urban form and functioning in the face of sociotechnical change. The aim of this Special Issue is to investigate different facets of urban form resilience and its relationships with sustainable development.
Dr. Giovanni Fusco
Prof. Dr. Sergio Porta
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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