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Sustainable Regional Development: The Social, Environmental and Economic Challenges and...
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Sustainable Regional Development: The Social, Environmental and Economic Challenges and Solutions

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2021) | Viewed by 19188

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Amanda Davies

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Design and the Built Environment, Curtin University, Perth, 6845, Australia
Interests: population growth; demographic change; rural and regional development

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Substantial progress has been made embedding the principles of sustainable development at national and local levels. However, as the forces of urbanization continue to present challenges for rural regions, attention is increasingly being focused on how sustainable development principles can be integrated into regional development strategies and practices. It is now quite well understood that sustainable development involves combining horizontal and vertical linkages within appropriate governance frameworks. Furthermore, regions need to be developed to enhance the specific geographies of place through public and private regional scale initiatives.

This special issue focuses on bringing together contemporary research that provides new insights into how sustainable development can be further embedded into regional development policy and practice. Papers that robustly engage with contemporary scholarship and provide new empirical evidence from case studies are particularly encouraged.

While the scope for papers is purposefully broad, contributors might consider that addressing one or more of the following questions:

  • What are the contemporary approaches to sustainable regional development. Papers might use comparative case studies to focus on matters such as smart specialisation, clustering or knowledge economies?
  • How can social innovation or social entrepreneurship underpin sustainable regional development?
  • What are best practice indicators and approaches for the evaluation of sustainable regional development?
  • What governance structures are effective in supporting the embedding of sustainable development into regional development practices?
  • What type of locally lead initiatives can promote broader sustainable regional development?

Prof. Amanda Davies
Guest Editor

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. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2400 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

  • sustainable regional development
  • regional planning, local initiatives
  • social innovation
  • social entrepreneurship
  • smart specialization
  • knowledge economies

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 2271 KiB  
Article
Analysis of the Local Innovation and Entrepreneurial System Structure Towards the ‘Wrocław Innovation Ecosystem’ Concept Development
by Joanna Helman
Sustainability 2020, 12(23), 10086; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su122310086 - 03 Dec 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3302
Abstract
The city of Wrocław is an important Polish center for creating innovations and modern technological solutions. In general, Polish innovation system is having problems with a lack of cooperation among different actors, a low level of commercialization and a weak uptake of technologies. [...] Read more.
The city of Wrocław is an important Polish center for creating innovations and modern technological solutions. In general, Polish innovation system is having problems with a lack of cooperation among different actors, a low level of commercialization and a weak uptake of technologies. Based on that, the objectives of this paper were set on the identification of the local innovation and entrepreneurial opportunities, the analysis of the current innovation system and the development of a community’s ecosystem theoretical concept. Currently, in Wrocław, many organizations are dealing with innovation. To assess the regional situation of the innovation system the ethnographic analysis was conducted. Each of the stakeholder segments was analyzed based on the resources, activities, value addition and value capture factors. The research showed a huge potential for creating an innovation ecosystem, however due to the variety of different activities, there is no common Innovation Ecosystem. Based on the analysis results, the Ecosystem Pie Model tool was used to create the ecosystem model concept. Research showed a huge potential for creating an innovation ecosystem. Therefore, Wrocław should aim to create a development policy framework that favors entrepreneurial innovation and will allow sustainable regional development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Regional Development: The Social, Environmental and Economic Challenges and Solutions)
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18 pages, 965 KiB  
Article
A Comparative Approach of the Environmental Performance between Periods with Positive and Negative Accounting Returns of EEA Companies
by Mirela Sichigea, Marian Ilie Siminica, Daniel Circiumaru, Silviu Carstina and Nela-Loredana Caraba-Meita
Sustainability 2020, 12(18), 7382; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su12187382 - 09 Sep 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2675
Abstract
In recent years, sustainable growth has become an important issue in the business field. Environment, social, and governance (ESG) actions of companies have come to represent key elements in adopting decisions by stakeholders. The question is to what extent they validate the companies’ [...] Read more.
In recent years, sustainable growth has become an important issue in the business field. Environment, social, and governance (ESG) actions of companies have come to represent key elements in adopting decisions by stakeholders. The question is to what extent they validate the companies’ environmental behaviour, as profitability varies over time. The answer can be obtained by analysing the relationship between environmental performance (EP) and financial performance (FP) of the firms. The paper proposes a new perspective of this relationship, namely, the separate assessment of the EP–FP in the case of positive and negative FP (expressed through accounting returns). A survey on 299 companies in the European Economic Area (EEA), operating in extractives and minerals processing and health care, was conducted. The data were extracted from the Refinitiv database for the period 2009–2018. The findings showed a significant EP–FP correlation in the case of the extractives and minerals processing industry, but their dependency slightly varied on the positive and negative returns’ scenario. As for the healthcare industry, the best result was a moderate correlation between EP and the negative return. Our findings support a managerial design of environmental policy, as well as the future academic research of the EP–FP relationship. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Regional Development: The Social, Environmental and Economic Challenges and Solutions)
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46 pages, 3289 KiB  
Article
Romania’s South-Muntenia Region, towards Sustainable Regional Development. Implications for Regional Development Strategies
by Adriana AnaMaria Davidescu, Simona Andreea Apostu, Andra Madalina Pantilie and Bogdan Florian Amzuica
Sustainability 2020, 12(14), 5799; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su12145799 - 18 Jul 2020
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 4969
Abstract
Currently, at the end of the programming period 2014–2020 and in the view of the new programming exercise, 2021–2027, knowing where South-Muntenia is positioned on the path to sustainable regional development and how the main determinants can be integrated in regional development policies [...] Read more.
Currently, at the end of the programming period 2014–2020 and in the view of the new programming exercise, 2021–2027, knowing where South-Muntenia is positioned on the path to sustainable regional development and how the main determinants can be integrated in regional development policies in order to continuously support the development of the Romanian regions becomes even more important. In this context, the paper aims to evaluate the progress made by the South-Muntenia region towards sustainable regional development for the period 2010–2017 highlighting the main implications for regional development strategies and revealing local initiatives promoting broader sustainable regional development. Thus, more in depth, the paper aims to identify the main determinants of sustainable regional development at the level of South-Muntenia counties using multiple principal component analysis (MPCA), to build an advancement sustainable development index based on panel data for the period 2010–2017 and to reveal the main sustainable development poles at the county level for the year 2017 using hierarchical clustering technique. The empirical results revealed the importance of business environment, public services infrastructure, education, and social protection as main determinants of South-Muntenia sustainable regional development. The advancement composite index pointed out that South-Muntenia recorded a slow but continuous advancement in terms of sustainable regional development, almost doubling its performance in these seven years. At the county level, if Prahova, Argeș, and Dâmbovița exhibited a so-called stagnation, Ialomița and Teleorman were still behind, registering an advancement over the period but remained only halfway on the path to sustainable development, while Calarasi and Giurgiu tried to recover the huge gap, registering very low rates of sustainable development index. On the path to regional economic development, the relevance of two main sustainable regional development drivers can be highlighted—a better allocation for active measures with the reduction of unemployment as a target together with a better infrastructure of public services. National, regional, and local administrations play an important role in promoting sustainability in the economic, social, and environmental activities, in a coherent manner. Regardless of the level at which development policies are designed, local, county, or regional, they must take into account and monitor the sustainable development determinants if the ultimate goal is the overall regional development of South-Muntenia. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Regional Development: The Social, Environmental and Economic Challenges and Solutions)
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15 pages, 777 KiB  
Article
Does the Revised Hukou System Facilitate or Restrain the Short-Term Labor Inflows into Chinese Cities?
by Hao Cui and Joonmo Cho
Sustainability 2020, 12(4), 1295; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su12041295 - 11 Feb 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3679
Abstract
According to previous studies, the Chinese revised Hukou system has not been proven to be effective in the short-term movement of the rural labor force or in controlling urban populations. In this study, we address and analyze the self-selection problem from the perspective [...] Read more.
According to previous studies, the Chinese revised Hukou system has not been proven to be effective in the short-term movement of the rural labor force or in controlling urban populations. In this study, we address and analyze the self-selection problem from the perspective of inflows of short-term migration from the rural labor force and the endogeneity problem in the adoption of the revised Hukou system, based on the data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). The study shows that the revised Hukou system adopted by Chinese local governments was significantly efficient and harmed the short-term migration decisions of the rural labor force. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Regional Development: The Social, Environmental and Economic Challenges and Solutions)
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30 pages, 6970 KiB  
Article
A Comparative Analysis of the International Regulation of Thermal Properties in Building Envelope
by David Bienvenido-Huertas, Miguel Oliveira, Carlos Rubio-Bellido and David Marín
Sustainability 2019, 11(20), 5574; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11205574 - 10 Oct 2019
Cited by 31 | Viewed by 2709
Abstract
To achieve the goals of reducing building energy consumption, regulations are being designed to guarantee the appropriate energy performance of buildings. Both European and South American countries establish requirements of thermal properties of building envelope according to the climate zone, thus implying notable [...] Read more.
To achieve the goals of reducing building energy consumption, regulations are being designed to guarantee the appropriate energy performance of buildings. Both European and South American countries establish requirements of thermal properties of building envelope according to the climate zone, thus implying notable differences in climate classifications and technical requirements. This research provides a general view of advantages and limitations between the different state regulations of three South American countries (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile) and three European countries (Spain, Portugal, and France). A total of 792 simulations were conducted with Energy Plus by considering 12 different dwelling typologies in 66 climate zones. Building envelopes were adapted to the regulations of the various countries. Results showed tendencies of performance clearly different between the South American and the European countries, with the latter being those with the lowest energy demands. The cluster analysis of distributions of energy demand revealed that buildings located in similar climates but in different countries present very different energy performances. This research opens up the discussion on the development of more demanding policies related to thermal properties of buildings. Also, the analysis at a continental scale could reduce the differences between countries and guarantee a more sustainable life for the building stock. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Regional Development: The Social, Environmental and Economic Challenges and Solutions)
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