The urban heat island effect is often associated with large metropolises. However, in the Netherlands even small cities will be affected by the phenomenon in the future (Hove et al., 2011), due to the dispersed or mosaic urbanisation patterns in particularly the southern part of the country: the province of North Brabant.

This paper proposes and defines new metropolitan governance strategies for territorial cohesion between inland and urban areas. Different reflections are here presented to comprehend how is it possible to implement cities’ ability to understand and manage metropolitan dynamics. In Europe, urbanisation and land abandonment is a widespread phenomenon compared to many other parts of the world. According to research carried out by the European Union it is estimated that four out of five European citizens will be living in urban areas abandoning villages and rural areas.

Open space (OS) is a key element in the provision of ecosystem services (ES) in urban environments. Under a land cover-land use perspective, cities are incorporating into the expansion process to different types of surfaces: sealed, paved surfaces and OS. The first corresponds to a land cover change while the second, which includes bare soil, grass, forest or any other type of non-sealed surface, corresponds to a land use change, without physical transformations. As a land use change OS is able to keep fundamental pre-existing ecological properties.

Urban transport plan according to the Italian national Law n.340/ 2000 have the specific aim of improving the traffic situation in the cities. Mobility plans consider all modes of transport planned towards a sustainable urban development. The measures implemented are a mixture of material and immaterial interventions with the aim to reach a better traffic environment with reduced traffic volumes and emissions, increased accessibility and safety and an increased quality of life for all citizens.

Monetary instruments to regulate parking are often used in central areas of cities to discourage long term parking of vehicles. The availability of parking facilities, and its cost, in fact represents an important element in the decision to operate private vehicles in urban areas. The availability of instruments and tools to check the outcome of modification in parking regulations, in terms of modification of car use, successfully support planners in the determination of the best policies to decrease congestion, and regulate the use of transportation in cities.

Land-use management and planning of cross-border regions is a complex problem. Different legislatures, development visions and interests on both sides of the border make it even more complicated. Introducing ecosystem services concept into land-use planning and management at cross-border regions is a challenge.  However not much is said about this issue in literature.

The present study utilized time-series Landsat images to explore the spatiotemporal dynamics of urbanization and land use/land-cover (LULC) change in the Kaski District of Nepal from 1988 to 2016. For the specific overtime analysis of change, the LULC transition was clustered into six time periods: 1988–1996, 1996–2000, 2000–2004, 2004–2008, 2008–2013, and 2013–2016. The classification was carried out using a support vector machine (SVM) algorithm and 11 LULC categories were identified.

Indonesia, as an archipelagic nation, has about 150 million people (60%) living in coastal areas. Such communities are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of change, in the form of sea level rise and stronger, more intense storms. Population growth in coastal areas will also increase the disaster risk mainly because of climate change-related effects such as flooding, droughts, and tidal floods. This study examines the dynamic changes of urban population and urban villages in three decadal periods, from 1990, 2000, to 2010.

Urban sprawl is a concept commonly used to describe the physical expansion of urban areas. It is traditionally associated with lower residential density, poorer connectivity, and higher energy costs for heating and transport. From the period of 1980 to 2000, the extent of the built-up area in Europe has increased at a rate three times higher than that of population increase, and urban sprawl is now recognized as a major challenge. However, for policies to address this issue, it is essential to be able to identify and quantify sprawl.

We live in an urbanizing world. Since 2008, more than half of humanity lives in cities, both large and small, and old and new.[...]

The Galapagos Islands are a unique sanctuary for wildlife and have gone through a fluctuating process of urbanization in the three main inhabited islands. Despite being colonized since the 1800s, it is during the last 25 years that a dramatic increase in population has been observed. Analyzing impervious surface change over this period in an ecologically fragile environment is a challenging task, thus two methods that have been widely employed in studying urban environments were compared in this study: sub-pixel using spectral mixture analyses (SMA) and object-based classification.