Nature-Based Solutions to Foster Sustainable Urban Development

A special issue of Urban Science (ISSN 2413-8851).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 July 2023) | Viewed by 231

Special Issue Editors

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia, Bogota, Colombia
Interests: urban hydrology; sustainable urban drainage; asset management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
Interests: environmental engineering; exploitation and groundwater protection; incompressible fluid mechanics and hydraulics; transport processes in hydraulic engineering
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK
Interests: whole-water system modelling; integration of innovative and sustainable solutions; water management under uncertainties; system analysis and sustainable development
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The increasing trend of the urbanization process and the current climate crisis had produced adverse effects on citizens’ quality of life such as mental and physical health deterioration, an increase in living costs, and the presence of informal settlements. Under this scenario, nature-based solutions (NbS) are recognized as an essential ally to improve cities’ resilience and generate environmental, social, and economic benefits without adding significant cost. Scientific literature provides evidence of direct NbS benefits quantification in the city context by means of remote sensing-based monitoring, environmental matrices sampling (e.g., leaf, soil, and water), and in-situ testing, among others. Furthermore, several studies used decision support tools (e.g., I-Tree and Best) for NbS benefits accounting.

Despite recent progress in understanding NbS benefits, there is a need to develop new urban planning approaches based on site-specific priority criteria to identify urban challenges, select the best suited NbS, and quantify the benefits derived by their implementation. This new approach implies the transformation of traditional urban planning methodologies to a people-centered perspective created by multidisciplinary stakeholders to ensure a comprehensive understanding of citizens’ needs and improve NbS benefits provision. This Special Issue aims to increase the current knowledge on NbS urban planning by providing insights on (i) NbS implementation criteria, (ii) NbS selection according to their benefit accounting, and (iii) the monitoring and quantification of environmental, social, and economic benefits derived from NbS implementation.

Dr. Juan Pablo Rodríguez
Dr. Anja Ranđelović
Dr. Ana Mijić
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. Urban Science is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly 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

  • nature-based solutions
  • benefits
  • decision support tools
  • urban planning
  • monitoring
  • quantification

Published Papers

There is no accepted submissions to this special issue at this moment.
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