社会科学 | JCR 3区 SCI期刊约稿信息2条

社会科学

Sustainable Cities and Society

Virtual Special Issue on Smart Technologies and Urban Life: A Behavioral and Social Perspective

全文截稿: 2018-08-31

影响因子: 1.777

中科院JCR分区:

  • 大类 : 社会科学 - 3区

  • 小类 : 结构与建筑技术 - 3区

  • 小类 : 能源与燃料 - 4区

  • 小类 : 绿色可持续发展技术 - 4区

网址: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/sustainable-cities-and-society

Virtual Special Issue on Smart Technologies and Urban Life: A Behavioral and Social Perspective

Various smart technologies, including physical and logical applications in all formats, have been developed and deployed in practice, inspired by explosive advancements of sensing technologies, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT). Such technologies may bring about revolutionary changes to various aspects of urban life: e.g., daily trip making, time use and consumption, family life, energy consumption, health, social network, recreation and leisure, residential location, and ways of working and learning. Some people may actively adopt such smart technologies for bettering their lives while other people may adapt to such smart technologies in a passive way. Such changes in people’s lives and the resulting quality of life (QOL) may be drastic: expectedly or unexpectedly, which may have important implications to urban policy, for example, imposing new requirements to urban functions across space and over time. As a result, the next-generation of urban development may need a paradigm shift in the ways of thinking. However, the accumulation of relevant scientific evidence is very limited, at least in terms of the following points.

1) Changes in people’s lives due to smart technologies: types of life aspects, interactions among life choices, spatial choices, temporal choices (short-term, long-term, or even life-course), differences across population groups, etc.

2) Issues of social inequalities in terms of literary of and access to smart technologies

3) Adaptation behavior of the elderly people to smart technologies

4) Long-term impacts of smart technologies on urban forms and the progress of urbanization

5) Cultural and/or geographical differences of the above changes/adaptations/issues

6) Research methodologies for dealing with the aforementioned points

This special issue welcomes theoretical and empirical research papers addressing the above issues from a behavioral and/or social perspective. Smart technologies may include, but are not limited to, smartphone apps, apps in other mobile devices, wearable devices such as smart watches, autonomous vehicles, intelligent transport systems, drones, robots, smart houses, and so on.

社会科学

Sustainable Cities and Society

Virtual Special Issue on Performance-based urban planning to generate sustainable solutions for cities

全文截稿: 2019-05-15

影响因子: 1.777

中科院JCR分区:

  • 大类 : 社会科学 - 3区

  • 小类 : 结构与建筑技术 - 3区

  • 小类 : 能源与燃料 - 4区

  • 小类 : 绿色可持续发展技术 - 4区

网址: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/sustainable-cities-and-society

In a global context of climate change, rapid urban development and socio-political changes, urban planning needs to apply adaptive approaches to generate more resilient complex social-ecological systems, i.e. cities able to face disturbances while retaining or rapidly returning to desired functions, structures, identities, and feedbacks (Pelorosso, Gobattoni, and Leone 2017). The emerging concepts of resilience, vulnerability, ecosystem services and integrated design of urban infrastructure (e.g. green/grey infrastructure nexus) call for innovation of planning practices able to embed the often still theoretical proposals related to few study cases. Issues such as urban regeneration programmes, the shrinking cities, the presence of unused and underused areas represent opportunities for the develop of innovative planning practices aimed at increasing sustainability and resilience of urban systems (La Rosa and Privitera 2013). This innovation in planning practice require planning paradigms focussed on the performance rather than conformance or prescriptivism.

To this end, performance-based planning (PBP), represents an alternative to more traditional urban planning approaches. PBP is built upon the assumption that land use impacts differently socio-ecological systems in function of land use intensity and intrinsic peculiarities of the territory. Therefore, the characteristics of the activity (e.g., built form, noise, impacts on infrastructures and socio-environmental factors) are primary determinants of suitability. A flexibility of land use localisation is then theoretically more guaranteed by PBP with respect to traditional planning regulations which are typically based on prescriptive land use zones and planning standards aimed to purse a higher degree of certainty, particularly in terms of land use distribution and built form (Frew, Baker, and Donehue 2016). Thus, PBP can allow planners to respond flexibly to new and different conditions with larger sets of desired characteristics as opposed to compulsory criteria of traditional zoning and static prescriptive planning (e.g. see Geneletti et al. 2017 for urban periphery contexts). PBP can be then promoted to face unpredictable, dynamic and non-linear processes within complex adaptive systems. For example, looking at the climate adaptation, Uittenbroek, Janssen-Jansen, and Runhaar (2013) report that by defining a strict norm, the planning goal aims at achieving that norm, rather than discovering and activating synergic links among sectorial goals and adaptation goals. Thus, PBP could increase the capability of urban systems to change, and to transform quickly those systems that limit current or future adaptive capacity.

A number of authorities (in particularly in USA, New Zealand, and Australia) have adopted and implemented PBP approaches within their planning systems but often the absence of plan-making guidance, risk and uncertainty have determined the creation of hybrid plans or even caused a return to previous prescriptive and inflexible plan-making methods (Baker, Sipe, and Gleeson 2006; Frew, Baker, and Donehue 2016).

The growth of PC calculation power, the emerging of new modelling approaches of urban and environmental processes (e.g. sprawl, floods, urban heat island), Geodesign technics, the new ICTs, and big data open to new ways of evaluation of environmental, social and economic dynamics providing new information for urban planners. Moreover, GIS, Spatial Decision Support Systems or Planning Support Systems can allow planners to evaluate the impacts of different scenarios of land use and propose suitable solutions for urban developments.

The objective of this SI is to enhance our understanding of the potential of PBP concept to deliver effective and sustainable planning decision and, at the same time, identify barriers and opportunities for its integration in planning practice. The SI welcomes contributes on new modelling approaches, evaluation methods of social/environmental processes related with the functionality and wellness of urban systems (e.g. water, climate, mobility) as well as performance indicators of/for plans and projects that can uphold PBP. The following types of papers are prospected: research paper with specific case studies, reviews and perspective essays.

Authors contributing to the Special Issue should address the followings research questions:

- Which is the contribution of performance-based approaches in moving cities towards sustainability?

- How performance-based approaches can help planners to generate more adaptive and resilient socio-ecological systems in a context of climate changes, urban risks, rapid urban development and socio-political transformations?

- How performance-based approaches can help planners in (re-) establishing the functionality and wellness of urban systems?

- How can new tools and techniques (e.g. modelling, big data, SDSS, geodesign), governance systems and planning strategies help overcoming barriers to performance-based planning in common practice?

- Which are the main benefits and advantages of a performance-based approach compared to a traditional planning of cities? In which direction existing planning processes should be updated or reformulated to include PBP?

- Which potentialities, uncertainties and opportunities for the introduction of performance-based approaches assessment exist in different urban contexts and planning processes?

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