Climate Proof Territories: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Urban Resilience—2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to contribute to the second edition of the Special Issue “Climate Proof Territories: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Urban Resilience” to be published in MDPI’s open access journal Urban Science.

Continuing the success of its first edition, this Special Issue delves further into exploring innovative urban resilience practices within the backdrop of widespread environmental and socioeconomic fragility exacerbated by the impacts of climate change on the landscape. Indeed, the current crisis facing contemporary cities distinguishes itself from that of the latter half of the last century by the overlay of environmental concerns onto already deeply ingrained socioeconomic issues, necessitating a multidisciplinary and integrated approach to urban complexity. In this regard, there is a tangible risk that efforts to address ecological challenges may negatively impact equality and social welfare within the most vulnerable urban contexts. A recent example of this trend is the renewed commitment in COP 28 (held in Dubai in December 2023) to establish a specific fund to offset the impacts of climate change in the territories of the most vulnerable countries. In this context, the sixth report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2021) explicitly states that the consequences of storms, floods, and droughts will be fifteen times more likely in Southeast Asia, Central America, and sub-Saharan Africa due to climate change.

This trend is evident in the steadily increasing numbers of climate migrants, millions of people moving towards large cities less affected by climate effects or where adaptation interventions are more structural and established. The need to integrate socioeconomic and environmental concerns is also underscored in the United Nations document "Strategy for sustainability management in the United Nations system, 2020-2030 Phase II: Towards leadership in environmental and social sustainability" (UN, 2021), and in the European Commission's communication "A strong Social Europe for Just Transitions", published on January 14, 2020 (COM, 2020), which directly addresses issues of equal opportunities and strengthening social protection and inclusion systems. Therefore, it is crucial to develop and implement specific planning strategies that not only address both mitigation and adaptation goals but also simultaneously tackle challenges related to socioeconomic marginalization, urban crisis, and the urgent need to envision a new model of urban welfare capable of ensuring the right to a safe urban environment for settled local communities.

This Special Issue encourages contributions aimed at promoting a transdisciplinary approach to resilient city planning and management, taking into account not only environmental challenges but also the socioeconomic complexities associated with them. The following topics are covered:

• Sustainable urban regeneration practices from a socioeconomic and environmental perspective;
• Urban planning, social and environmental justice;
• Characterization of the urban environment via ground- and satellite-based techniques for knowledge-based preventive risk analysis;
• The use of innovative computing platforms to manage and process large volumes of data, both socio-economic and environmental, regarding the built environment, and the creation of updated open databases by public administrations;
• The definition of efficient inclusion and integration paths for stakeholders to participate in the definition and implementation of feasible and effective policies;
• Numerical modelling of the urban climate as a constituent of preparatory environmental assessments in support of adaptive urban development;
• The integration of monitoring techniques, numerical modelling and policy planning;
• The replicability of approaches and methodologies in contexts exposed to similar hazards or characterized by similar vulnerabilities;

Dr. Carmela Mariano
Prof. Dr. Laura Ricci
Dr. Irene Poli
Dr. Marsia Marino
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.

• climate-proof urban planning
• urban resilience
• climate gentrification
• local plan
• nature-based solutions
• urban climate
• environmental monitoring
• numerical modelling
• big data
• social-ecological systems
• mitigation
• adaptation
• sustainability