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Tourism Climate Indices (TCIs) are the most widely used method to quantify climate suitability for tourism, yet remain more extensively applied in the Global North. Here we apply the TCI to Namibia, a country heavily economically reliant on outdoor tourism. Rising temperatures and changes in relative humidity and precipitation pose threats to nature-based and adventure tourism in Namibia. The mean annual TCI scores for the period 2008–2018 vary from classifications of ‘good’ for Etosha Safari at 62 to ‘excellent’ for Windhoek at 80. Monthly scores reveal a bimodal-shoulder and winter peak, indicating that the most suitable climatic conditions for tourism occur during the austral spring, autumn and winter months. This is consistent with the literature regarding peak tourist seasons, and fortuitously aligns with school holidays. The spatial and seasonal quantification of climate resources in Namibia derived from the TCI results can inform sustainable planning for tourism and other economic sectors sensitive to climate.

Sustainable development is one of the most important pillars for the development of urban communities, in order to achieve this development, and sustainable planning is an essential factor contributing to the development process. As it is noticed that the misuse of lands and the random spread of urban areas wastes the available areas and resources in cities. This randomness in land use is the result of a lack of organized and effective planning for urban areas to harmonize with the required plans and available capabilities.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent an innovative strategy to transform the socio-economic and environmental aspects of communities. Sustainable development provides the communities with a set of substantial challenges that are totally geospatial in concept and practice. Most of these challenges can be identified, examined, and visualized within a spatial framework. Despite of noteworthy progress in geospatial information system and science, the lack of comprehensive impressions in planning necessitates the integrative role of geospatial information. This study aims to investigate this role in contributing to SDGs by describing each single goal and following objectives. Furthermore, spatial and non-spatial issues regarding every specific SDG will be accurately discussed to determine the spatial aspects in practice. In this way, the communities will be empowered by unique opportunities to integrate and represent geospatial information into the global agenda in a specific manner, specifically in contributing data resources toward measuring and monitoring the 17 SDGs.

Water being one of the most important elements for life on earth and the planetary ecosystem as a whole, it is widely recognized by both society and the United Nations as one of the most important research problems of the modern world. One of the difficulties faced by this system has to do with the management of water treatment plants in the context of sustainable development. This article introduces a decision-making support system conceived to develop an optimal planning aimed at the efficiency and sustainability of the drinking water treatment chain. The system is made up of a mathematical programming model and a solution procedure for the optimal planning of the water treatment in a bi-objective context. Thus, the first objective maximizes profit and the second one minimizes the emission of pollutants. The following constraints are considered: mass balances, production capacities of the different water production echelons and their specific conditions, water supply and demand, and the technically permissible levels of pollutants, which are generically suggested, regardless of the technologies and production alternatives. Due to its particular nature, the model allows solving any instance of the problem in excellent CPU times.

It is well-known that the ultra-peripheral territories as Islands present several limitations such as the lack of resources, restricted land, mass tourism, and barriers to movement, and connectivity between urban centers. These obstacles make ultra-peripheral regions suitable case studies considering their territorial governance and consequently, sustainable development and growth. Thus, transportation and infrastructure sustainability in these regions are not an exception. Considering all the obstacles present in these regions, the accessibility and connectivity patterns that the local population has in these territories should be assessed and monitored. Thereby, through exploratory tools, the present research assumes to examine, using accessibility and connectivity indicators, the consequences across the social-economic dimension that the regional transportation and infrastructure should convey to the Azores Islands Archipelago populations. Therefore, this article allows us to set the present situation regarding this region&rsquo, s accessibility and connectivity patterns, creating an additional tool for supporting the main actors&rsquo, design and implementation of these territories&rsquo, future plans and strategies. Besides, this study enables us to recognize that Pico, Flores, and S&atilde, o Miguel are the ones with better accessibility patterns within the Azores Archipelago.

The ocean provides crucial resources for humanity and enables human existence, but its size and opaqueness limit our capacity for observation and understanding. A recent shift in focus toward developing economic opportunities associated with the ocean, referred to as the “blue economy,” demands environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable planning based on sound scientific knowledge generated from relevant and reliable data. Generating such data requires expanded ocean observations and data management in forms useful to diverse stakeholders, from other scientists to managers to policymakers and society at large. We review past and present biological, physical, and chemical ocean observing technologies, describing some major advances in recent decades and identifying technological gaps and opportunities to improve ocean observation and capacity enhancement. Finally, we discuss what a well-sensed ocean might require to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

The relationships between territorial governance and the pursuit of sustainable development are evidenced to be critical. Exploratory tools, like Geographic Information Systems (GIS), enable us to comprehend the patterns, dynamics, and parameters of land-use changes over the years. The results from such studies could be used in the design of a sustainable territorial governance strategy. Contextually, a study has been conducted based on the changes that occurred in land uses in the Canary Archipelago in the years 1990, 2000, 2012, and 2018 using CORINE (Coordination of Information on the Environment) data. Even if most of the land uses have been stable over the analyzed period, the investigation shows a decrease in agricultural areas. By contrast, it is possible to verify an increase in semi-natural areas and urban agglomerations. Moreover, the authors believe that an assessment of the land-use changes on these ultra-peripheral areas will also enable us to disclose some obstacles and opportunities for sustained development. FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology to VALORIZA info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The importance of scale in research and planning for the MCR in the developing world is no longer debatable. This is especially true in the current era of globalization and technological advances transforming traditional scalar hierarchies and creating multiple spatialities. The aspatial, network-based, representational, and discursive roles of scale are also becoming increasingly more consequential. I see scale as the third prong in a coherent tri-pronged approach to sustainable development in the Asian MCR that should be used in conjunction with the other two prongs, as discussed in the previous chapter. I recognize that scale remains a confounding concept, although a paradigmatic shift toward conceptual inclusivity by reconciling its many facets, seems to be taking place in the literature. In this chapter I offer an overview of this shift, followed by a brief look at the framework of the MCR from a bi-scalar perspective, and, given the need to recognize the diversities among (and within) the spaces in the MCR, conclude with one example of how elements of the three prongs can converge into a coherent approach for sustainable planning.

The article presents the aspects of sustainable planning of outdoor recreation in the protected areas with the emphasis on social carrying capacity. The starting points for the design of measures in the process of sustainable planning of outdoor recreation are presented and promote regular monitoring and directing of outdoor recreation in the protected areas in Slovenia and abroad, especially on the example of Triglav National Park. In the article we are trying to define which forms of outdoor recreation are from the local‘s and visitor‘s perspective recognised as sustainable.

Geosites are sites of scientific interest based on geology or geomorphology that can serve various purposes such as research, conservation, education, tourism, and sustainable development. Quantifying their value to potential visitors and researchers is widely recognized as a useful tool for the effective development and management and for the protection of geological heritage of a certain area. Although many quantitative evaluation schemes have been proposed for various types of sites in Europe, over the past two decades, the schemes can give widely variable results for the same sites due to differences in needs and expectations, which can present difficulties for inter-site comparison for management purposes. It therefore remains necessary to develop a uniform evaluation scheme with low overall complexity to assist with prioritization and management. This study presents a new evaluation scheme based on the most commonly used attributes for quantifying geosites as applied to geomorphological landscapes and geological processes with natural and/or cultural heritage. The utility of the evaluation scheme is demonstrated through application to selected geosites in Japan, Germany, and Poland. The results clearly show the present condition of geosites, identify their promotional advantages and disadvantages, and provide a widely applicable reference for planning and development of such sites for geotourism.

Incorporating principles of sustainable development in long-term socio-economic planning at regional and municipal levels requires novel methodology and its supporting tools. In the chapter, the best practices of strategic planning of sustainable initiatives have been investigated based on the thorough analysis of the dynamics of sustainability indicators, major stakeholders, and organizations involved in the process. The approaches supporting sustainable planning and corresponding tools have been identified using planning activities in a large industrial and agricultural area – the Rostov region. As a result, the recommendations on strategic planning supporting sustainability at the local and regional levels are formulated. These recommendations can be useful for strategic planning in other regions with similar socio-economic characteristics.

The exploitation of the Earth and the alienation of people from the environment prompts us to take up the subject of sustainable planning and design. While new devices, innovations in construction seem to be more and more doubtful, it is worth reaching back to the times when the first initiatives to protect the natural and cultural landscape were created under the influence of the nascent industrialization and urbanization. It is advisable to analyze what principles were followed and how they affected the environment. The idea of building surrounded by greenery is visible in villages, transforming into summer and winter resorts at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century in the Karkonosze Mountains.

The metabolic study of the southeastern part of the Calderona Mountain Range (Sierra Calderona) was developed over an area of 200 square kilometers. Due to its location on the outskirt of the Metropolitan Area of Valencia (Spain), the Calderona Mountain Range presents most of the metabolic challenges and potentials that characterize peri-urban areas. The main goal of the study was to increase the sustainability levels of the region by optimizing the flows of materials and energy, as well as flows related to the transport of people within and in/outside the region. The following article includes a methodological introduction to regional and urban metabolic studies. Secondly, it presents the specific application of those principles in the Sierra Calderona case and the qualitative and quantitative results of the assessed regional flows. Moreover, the use of Metabolic Functional Areas (FMAs) is proposed to better integrate metabolic studies with land-use and spatial planning. In its second section, the article also presents the potential for shifting toward an optimized metabolism of the studied area, as well as a set of strategies and actions for their achievement. Finally, in the conclusions, we present a critical reflection on the methods, data, exportability and scalability of the results produced in the Sierra Calderona Case. Due to its regional character, the metabolic performance of the Sierra Calderona is connected to a wide range of land uses, productive functions and stakeholders. That is the reason why the formulated strategies and actions are deeply interlinked with different sectors and why they were supported by the results of an open participatory process. However, and in spite of its regional scope, the urban systems of the Sierra Calderona proved to be an essential lever for improving the regional and local sustainability, due to their varied morphological structures, distinctive ways of functioning, and different types of interaction with the surroundings.

Along with the increasing recognition of the significance of the neighborhood level for achieving urban sustainability, many Neighborhood Sustainability Assessment (NSA) tools have been developed over the past decade or so. The broad aims of these tools are to guide and promote sustainable planning and design, and to recognize/certify best practice cases. Since the late 2000’s, many articles related to diffident aspect of NSA tools have been published. Through reviewing these articles, this study seeks to identify major methodological limitations that may undermine NSA tools’ ability to promote sustainability. Nine major categories of methodological limitations were identified. These are, namely, limited and unbalanced coverage of sustainability dimensions, top-down and non-transparent approaches, limited consideration of context-specific issues, rigidity and prescriptiveness of design measures, lack of measures to ensure that basic sustainability requirements are met, lack of agreement between different assessment methodologies provided by different tools, limited consideration of interlinkages between indicators, limited consideration of boundary linkages, and the complexity of the assessment tool. In addition to discussing these limitations, this study provides recommendations that can inform tool developers of measures that could be taken to develop tools that are better capable of promoting sustainable development principles. An important issue, however, is that addressing all limitations simultaneously may be challenging due to trade-offs that may emerge between the recommended actions. It is, therefore, essential to develop methods for dealing with such trade-offs. Since the reported evidence is mainly related to a few tools, the study concludes by suggesting that more research on the methodological limitations of all the forty tools identified in this analysis is needed.

Planners need to adopt market-conscious planning to estimate how and where planning interventions create value for both investors and end-users. This article presents such kind of planning support methodology by incorporating difference-in-differences estimation into hedonic price models to examine the added value of sustainable development. It illustrates this methodology by using spatial panel data to compare market effects before and after the extension of the metro system in Nanjing, China. Results show that metro extension has positive effects in suburban areas, particularly in suburbs far away from metro stops before, while it has limited effects in central urban areas. Accessibility to financial and business services and open space also contributes to house prices after controlling for the effects of access to metros. Urban sustainable policies need to emphasize integration between land use and transportation planning in suburbs. This methodology provides planners with a means for determining market value of planning interventions, and contributes to more market-conscious planning.

The connection of urban planning and SEA is understood as the inevitable condition for acceptable development and an important opportunity for enforcing approaches leading to sustainable development in the decision making process. Application of the SEA in such planning could be observed for decades and urban planning is a field to which SEA is most commonly applied in many countries since it is probably the easiest field to implement all types of SEA. This paper is focused on pointing out the “added value” and potential benefits of linking SEA with spatial planning, on reviewing the recent development and application of SEA in planning in various countries worldwide with a special accent to circumstances and conditions under which this development took place. In addition, it provides a summary of the experience with evaluation in this area based on the SEA systems founded so far and case studies. This knowledge implies also proposals for future developments. A special attention is given to the dynamic development of SEA application in spatial planning in all EU member countries. Furthermore, it gives a summary of practical experience in this fields based on available reference SEA system evaluations as well as on a number of published case studies and on personal experience.

China’s urbanization has brought benefits to cities, but the price is the deterioration of the urban ecological environment. As a result of long-term urban-rural dualism, China has actively supported cities, and then cities have occupied nature-based rural areas. Even though China has been aware of the ecological deterioration and has issued rural ecological policies, there is still the existing contradiction between urban expansion and rural protection development. China’s future planning will place greater emphasis on rural areas, and people have just entered the exploration phase. In this regard, the theory of “the urban-rural continuum” proposed by an American anthropologist William Skinner is extended to the field of architecture and planning to explore a sustainable method of urban-rural development. It offers a spatial model to describe China’s traditional social structure, from villages to cities, combined by the community of a standard market town. It underlies a polycentric model with a communal structure that can further balance the urban-rural relationships and realize the sustainable development in the countryside. Keywords: the urban-rural continuum, green city, community, sustainable planning, rural heritage

UHI is an important measure for understanding the urban landscape, especially in terms of thermal agglomeration and disturbance. This research aims to discern the success of sustainability planning by examining and comparing the different characteristics of UHIs through the combination of machine learning and statistical methods. To achieve this, we analyze 4 new towns in Korea, which include two ‘old’ new towns and two ‘recent’ new towns. The key difference between our test towns lies on whether or not the sustainability policies were applied to their development plans. We visualize LST and conduct a k-mean clustering to find and quantify spatial patterning in the resulting UHI measures. We then compare the statistical relations between LST and 6 UHI driven variables across the towns. Using comparative analysis, this research reveals that sustainable development policies have a notable effect on the patterns and intensities of UHI. Urban structures, planned under development policies, including green and blue space ratios, road networks, and housing distributions, were found to affect UHI significantly. We quantifiably confirm that the sustainability policies implemented in planning the ‘recent’ new towns allow the towns to experience less aggravated UHIs than the ‘old’ new towns. However, we also claim a need to develop appropriate, long-term UHI management regulations for the ‘recent’ new towns. This paper provides a solid basis for improving Korean new town planning and managing the environmental issues in urban systems for planners, designers, and decision-makers to establish the sustainable built environment.

The adoption of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the UN General Assembly in September 2015, particularly SDG 11, reiterated the importance of sustainable planning in cities. This study evaluates the contribution of four pre-existing major local planning initiatives towards increasing the capacity of Brazilian cities to deliver sustainable development. A conceptual framework was designed to evaluate four dimensions of sustainable development: social, environmental, economic and political. This evaluation draws lessons to develop an action framework to facilitate the implementation of SDG 11 at the local city level. The evaluation of planning initiatives in 15 Brazilian municipalities was based on a mixed methods and triangulation approach and seems to be helpful for enhancing and facilitating implementation of SDG 11 in Brazilian municipalities. In contrast, due to lack of systematic data from Brazilian municipalities it will be necessary to foster the development of adequate indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of SDG 11. Despite this, SDG 11 can become a referential goal to enhance sustainability in some cities and create opportunity to influence the Brazilian municipalities about the importance of sustainable planning. Keywords: sustainable planning in cities; NVivo

Dans le cadre d’une recherche-action, étant membre d’une ONG canadienne et chargée d’un projet d’économie solidaire " Projet d’aménagement et de développement durable dans la commune rurale d’Ain Leuh dans le Moyen Atlas au Maroc", notre but est d’en assurer le succès sur le plan de la durabilité. L’objectif du projet du territoire est d’offrir d’autres alternatives à la population, par le biais d’une série de thèmes autres que l’exploitation de la forêt du cèdre. Sa vision est fondée sur la durabilité à long terme, afin d’améliorer la qualité de vie de la population, d’alléger la pression anthropique et de favoriser la réhabilitation de l’écosystème forestier. Cette étude innove avec l’élaboration d’un nouveau guide d’analyse spécifique pour vérifier la vision de la durabilité à long terme présupposée par le grand projet, sous l’angle des trois dimensions du développement durable : environnementale, économique et sociale. Une approche systémique est adoptée dans cette étude, afin de tenir compte de toutes les composantes du milieu et de leurs relations complexes. La construction de ce guide a nécessité une étude approfondie et des analyses exhaustives des composantes du projet pour prendre en considération la spécificité du milieu et la vulnérabilité de sa population., As part of a research-action process, being a member of a Canadian NGO and responsible for a project of solidarity economy "Project of planning and sustainable development in the rural district of Ain Leuh in the Middle Atlas in Morocco ", our goal is to ensure success in terms of sustainability. The objective of this territorial project is to offer other alternatives to the population, through a series of themes other than the exploitation of the Cedar Forest. The vision of the project is based on long-term sustainability in order to improve the quality of life of the population, alleviate human pressure and promote the rehabilitation of the forest ecosystem. This study is innovative because it involves the development of a new specific Analysis Guide to be used to verify the vision of the long-term sustainability assumed by the project, from the perspective of the three dimensions of sustainable environmental, economic and social development. A systemic approach is adopted in this study to take into account all the components of the environment and their complex relationships. The construction of this guide required a thorough study and exhaustive analysis of the project components to take into account the specificity of the environment and the vulnerability of the population.

Implementation and integration of sustainable development within a management framework is the main problem of urban regeneration projects. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a sustainable heritage-led urban regeneration planning framework, which will act as an urban regeneration project life cycle model and aid sustainable planning and decision-making processes for project managers. First, a literature review is used to conceptualise the first version of the sustainable planning framework. Then, it is validated by conducting interviews with professionals in Northern Cyprus. Sustainable heritage-led urban regeneration planning problems exist in the case study region. Therefore, the data collected for this research is significant to the research problem. Results showed that there is a lack of knowledge towards heritage-led urban regeneration among the local community and it is the main source of sustainable planning problems. Therefore, a questionnaire survey is conducted to validate this problem. The results validated that there is a sustainability perception difference between the local community and professionals, and the knowledge level of the local community was not satisfactory. Finally, a knowledge management system is introduced in the final version of the framework in order to empower stakeholders, and the “eye of sustainable planning” is introduced. Perception differences between the local community and professionals and the lack of knowledge of the local community towards heritage-led urban regeneration is introduced by this research. This study is limited to heritage-led regeneration projects and future studies may extend the scope of this study to different countries.

In recent years, cooperation among nations has become a critical issue towards sustainable development of neighbor cities in border areas. In this regard, sustainable common planning approaches and policies are an increasing reality, particularly in European territories. Considering the significant amount of cross-border cooperation (CBC) projects and strategies within Europe, it is crucial to promote research approaches that are able to identify the most positive approaches towards the establishment of alliances in border territories, serving as pivotal methodologies for achieving success. Contextually, the present study considered direct and indirect research methods and tools, literature reviews, data collection, computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) and computer-assisted web interview (CAWI), all applied over two European border cities: Cieszyn (Poland) and Cesky Tesin (Czech Republic). These methods enabled the assembly of perspectives of local authorities, public and private institutions, non-governmental organizations, and entrepreneurs from the cities under study. Through the analysis of the collected data, five conditions have been identified for the success of strategic alliances in CBC projects: (i) well defining the alliance goals; (ii) ensuring participation in the alliance of various groups of stakeholders; (iii) involvement of both partners with extensive experience in CBC; (iv) ensuring the coherence of the key objective; and (v) guaranteeing the alliance benefits both sides. These conditions might effectively contribute to achieve more successful outputs in CBC projects, highlighting the relevance of previously developed strategies on the definition of future approaches. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

In Turkey, urban regeneration projects are being used as an important land policy instrument to achievesustainable development. However, the failure to meet residents’ expectations and to establish a soundlegal framework, together with a and failure to establish an effective dialogue with the stakeholders, allhave implications for the sustainability and eventual success of these policies. Firstly, this study is anexamination of urban land development policies in Turkey, focusing on problems of urbanization andland management. Subsequently, urban regeneration projects in Konya, Turkey, were studied from anurban land development perspective and a proposal made for spatial objectives in an area planned forurban regeneration. The purpose of this study is to present spatial solutions the physical and socialstructural problems experienced in the old city center of the province of Konya in Turkey with urbanregeneration applications, which are implementation methods for sustainable estate policies. For thispurpose, firstly the methods that are used in Turkey for implementation of urban estate policies wereexamined in the light of the literature. Then, the urbanization-related problems in the selected site ofurban regeneration were presented, and spatial solution recommendations were made in relation torenewal of the physical structure and increasing the quality of life. This study is important in terms ofpresenting and discussing the process of creating spatial-functional goals for producing sustainableestate policies and urban regeneration applications related to the urban sprawl, property issues andsocial structure problems that occur in city centers that are getting old., Türkiye'de kentsel dönüşüm uygulamaları, sürdürülebilir gelişmenin elde edilmesinde önemli bir arazikullanım politikaları aracı olarak kullanılmaktadır. Ancak uygulamalarda yaşayanların beklentilerinecevap verilememesi, yasal dayanağın oluşturulamaması, katılımcı diğer gruplarla diyaloglarkurulamaması gibi sorunlar uygulamaların sürdürülebilirliğini ve başarısını etkilemektedir. Bu çalışmada,öncelikle Türkiye'de kentsel arsa üretimi politikaları kentleşme sorunları ve arazi yönetimi kapsamındadeğerlendirilmiştir. Ardından kentsel arsa üretiminde uygulama yöntemlerinden olan kentsel dönüşümuygulamaları Türkiye/Konya örneğinde ele alınmış ve planlanan bir kentsel dönüşüm alanına yönelikmekânsal hedefler oluşturulmuştur. Bu çalışmada amaç, Türkiye’nin Konya ili eski kent merkezindeyaşanan fiziki ve sosyal yapı sorunlarına sürdürülebilir kentsel arsa politikaları uygulama yöntemlerindenolan kentsel dönüşüm uygulamaları ile mekânsal çözümler sunmaktır. Bu amaç kapsamında öncelikleTürkiye’deki kentsel arsa politikalarının uygulanmasında kullanılan yöntemler literatür kapsamındaincelenmiştir. Ardından seçilen kentsel dönüşüm sahasında kentleşme sorunları ortaya konularak fiziksel yapının yenilenmesi ve yaşam kalitesinin artırılmasına ilişkin mekânsal çözüm önerilerigeliştirilmiştir. Bu çalışma, eskiyen kent merkezlerinde oluşan çarpık kentleşme, mülkiyet sorunları vesosyal yapı sorunlarına ilişkin kentsel dönüşüm uygulamaları ile sürdürülebilir arsa politikaları üretilmesiiçin mekânsal-işlevsel hedeflerin oluşturulması süreci ve sürecin sorunlarının tartışılması açısındanönem taşımaktadır.

As urban systems continue to grow worldwide, urban peripheries increase in number and typologies, which makes their planning a challenge for sustainable development. The aim of this article is to explore approaches and challenges related to the application of sustainable planning to urban peripheries. We reviewed the content of 102 papers related to sustainable planning in urban peripheries by applying a framework built on two main research questions that address: i) the type of peripheries and sustainable planning approaches considered; ii) the challenges and recommendations reported. The results show that urban peripheries are difficult to synthesize in operative classifications, and are not central in the discourse on sustainable planning approaches. The studies described are mainly context-specific and solution-oriented, aimed at responding to local socio-economic and ecological issues, and the analysis reveals uncertainties about their transferability to other geographical contexts. Few common trends can be highlighted, but many authors acknowledge the cross-cutting risks and trade-offs related to the complexity and dynamism of urban peripheries, which may eventually lead planning to unsustainable or unlivable outcomes. Integration among different scales and sectors emerges as a requirement for effective sustainable planning. We conclude with a remark on the underexploited opportunities offered by urban peripheries, especially with regard to ecological planning approaches.