Dear Colleagues,

The present Special Issue has the overall aim of developing and offering new resilience strategies developed in urban and rural land.

The consensus is that urban growth, especially low residential densities, sprawl, and leapfrog fragmentation have become increasingly less sustainable and more vulnerable to the uncoupling of social–ecological systems, as demonstrated by the increasing frequency of natural and social disasters (e.g., pollution, traffic congestion, floods, droughts, and poverty). In many cases, these situation are caused by the rapid depletion of (natural) resources and uncontrolled market-oriented production and consumption patterns.

This situation is being aggravated by the appropriation of green areas, in general, and of agricultural land, in particular. As a result, rural ecosystem services and functions can be modified or mitigated: decreasing food production, livestock, and fiber in the case of agriculture; rural tourism, water storage, and cultural heritage in the case of rural services; and nature conservation in the case of protected areas. As a consequence, urban policies and management have become less capable of decreasing the vulnerability of rural and urban areas. Therefore, sustainable urban development should consider patterns that provide the capacity to the system to absorb disturbances and reorganize itself, pursuing two objectives that may seem contradictory: a better connection of the city and the territory, and a circular urban metabolism that minimizes the dependence of the city on the territory.

Urban and rural social–ecological systems can be characterized as complex given the possible conflicting norms and values of actors involved and conflicting interests between actors. The intense land conversion into built-up areas causes an intricate and sometimes chaotic mixture of heterogeneous and fragmented land uses, often hosting marginal economic activities that deteriorate the quality of the environment and weaken agricultural traditions and cultivation practices. In consequence, the resulting fragmented landscapes and transition zones can affect particularly the urban fringe and peri-urban agriculture.

Therefore, some key socio-ecological issues of land use regulations include the relationships between ecosystem functions, services, and sustainability; the loose spatial connectivity; the ecosystem adaptability and resilience; and the links between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.

Case studies on any spatial scale (from local to global), innovative theoretical and methodological contributions, as well as critical discussions on urban and rural management are welcome, with reference to the following topics:

• Sustainable use of land;
• Urban growth form and ecosystem services;
• Ecological resilience of urban and rural land;
• Conserving ecosystem services and functions across urban and agricultural landscapes;
• Landscape patterns of urban and rural dynamics analysed with earth observation and geographic information system (GIS) techniques;
• Urban and rural management to mitigate climate change;
• Urban and rural eco-environmental sensitive areas;
• Urban–rural relationships; and
• Rural–urban fringe as a problematic zone.

Dr. Pere Serra
Dr. Cristina Herrero-Jáuregui
Guest Editors

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• rural and urban management
• land use regulations
• urban and rural resilience
• sustainable urban and rural development
• landscape of rural-urban fringe
• peri-urban agriculture
• social–ecological systems
• eco-environmental sensitive areas