Interrelations in Urban–Rural Transects: Planning Sustainable Transformations for Human Wellbeing

Dear Colleagues,

Understanding the nexus among ecosystems’ functioning, landscape patterns’ change, and socio-demographic trends is crucial to spatial planning research and the achievement of human health and well-being. The effects of the structure and organization of human settlements on health and quality of life have been explored in the last decades (Bramley et al., 2009; Mouratidis, 2021, Tonne et al., 2021), and this dimension has quite recently also been discussed from the spatial planning perspective (Shekhar et al., 2019; Ala-Mantila et al., 2018). The gradient of well-being, which rises in some contexts from its lowest levels in large central cities to its highest levels on the small-town–rural periphery (Berry & Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2013), is actually challenged by several factors such as environmental challenges and the risks posed by climate change, aging societies, accessibility to green areas, social and health services, and infrastructural and economic gaps (Schwanen, T., & Ziegler, F., 2011, Adger et al., 2022).

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) that provide insights about the effects of spatial planning policies, tools and practices on human wellbeing, as well as on the measurement and monitoring of its diverse aspects. This Special Issue aims to overview the latest frontiers in managing urban–rural interrelations both across the transect, as well as in the urban fringes as a very peculiar in-between space, and to collect the most advanced methodological proposals for assessing human wellbeing based on the spatial features of human settlements.

This Special Issue welcomes manuscripts that link the following themes:

• Novel interdisciplinary analytical tools, spatially explicit methods, experimental and modelling;
• Approaches to investigate material and non-material aspects that affect human well-being in the urban–rural transect;
• Cross-sectional and integrated approaches and scaling of policies and practices with focus on sustainable spatial, environmental and landscape planning;
• Active mobility networks for improved liveability standards, and the transposition of the DNSH principle in planning for environmental enhancement;
• Collaboration with communities and local authorities and bottom-up initiatives in urban design practice to shape sustainable transformations.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Luca Barbarossa
Dr. Daniele La Rosa
Dr. Viviana Pappalardo
Guest Editors

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• urban–rural transect
• urban fringes
• human well-being
• active mobility
• sustainable urban transformation
• environmental and landscape planning