The Special Issue invites contributions that explore how urban land use is changing and how spatial planning can respond to contemporary development challenges like climate change..

Land use is a basic dimension of spatial planning. The most common elements of spatial plans are the documents that refer to the future spatial development of an area. In the last decade, more often than not, when addressing land use, we are referring to land use change. A driver of these changes in cities and towns around the world is often urbanization, which affects the form and function of urban spaces and often results in negative effects; for example, it increases the sealing of the land’s surface, the growth of peri-urban areas, and urban sprawl, and exasperates environmental problems. However, it remains challenging to go beyond merely recognizing, using evidence, the changes that need to be implemented, to instead actively conceptualize the role of planning in directing land use change.

This second edition continues the theme of the original Special Issue titled “Urban Land Use Change and Its Spatial Planning“. This SI aims to collect cutting-edge studies that view changes as characteristic immanent dimensions in land use. Indeed, urbanized areas are known for their changing nature in terms of their dynamic patterns of activities, with varying intensities and concentrations. This implies a shift in research focus, from examining patterns of land use and land cover change in order to center the dynamic interactions within socioeconomic–ecological systems and their resulting impacts on urban planning. This is especially relevant in light of the increasingly common expectations for future urban developments to be open-ended and to consider uncertainty as inherent. This SI aims to collate advancements in research and practice in order to gain insights into the causal connections between planning and land use change. This includes, on one hand, acknowledging change as an inherent constant of urban land use, and, on the other hand, examining aspects that are crucial to the successful implementation of plans that aim to shape and understand future areas.