Urban areas are Earth’s fastest growing land use that impact hydrological and ecological systems and the surface energy balance. The identification and extraction of accurate spatial information relating to urban areas is essential for future sustainable city planning owing to its importance within global environmental change and human–environment interactions. However, monitoring urban expansi...

This research explores urban growth based scenarios for the city of Nairobi using a cellular automata urban growth model (UGM). African cities have experienced rapid urbanization over the last decade due to increased population growth and high economic activities. We used multi-temporal Landsat imageries for 1976, 1986, 2000 and 2010 to investigate urban land-use changes in Nairobi. Our UGM use...

Cities around the world are facing an ever-increasing variety of challenges that seem to make more sustainable urban futures elusive. Many of these challenges are being driven by, and exacerbated by, increases in urban populations and climate change. Novel solutions are needed today if our cities are to have any hope of more sustainable and resilient futures. Because most of the environmental i...

Global cities, the command and control centres of the integrated world economy, are facing a sustainability paradox of greater global competition and greater environmental pressure. This study explores the policy approaches to the sustainability paradox by integrating environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness into the development strategy for “the global city”, based on a case s...

Port cities are historically important breeding places of civilization and wealth, and act as attractive high-quality and sustainable places to live and work. They are core places for sustainable development for the entire spatial system as a result of their dynamism, which has in recent years reinforced their position as magnets in a spatial-economic force field. To understand and exploit this...

The chapter includes identification of the need for reconceptualization of architectural and urbanistic discourse in higher education and the definition of the transdisciplinary methodology for a sustainable development of the living environment. Architecture and urbanism as complex disciplines that start from the existential social needs and reach to the most complex challenges and aspirations...

The increasing demand for sustainable development will have a profound impact on all types of urban infrastructures. However, there is a lack of knowledge of how sustainable development should be attained and how sustainability of various technical systems should be assessed. This paper describes the framework of a systems analysis project dealing with the above issues, which focuses on urban w...

This paper examines the role and the place of transdisciplinarity in the urbanism of the 21st century, with the emphasis on Montenegro urbanism. Global processes require a systematic strategy and systemic synergistic engagement in the development of cities in 21st centuries. Urbanism as a profession and a discipline should be developed parallel and in correlation, based on the principles of int...

The wisdom of ‘smart’ development increasingly shapes urban sustainability in Europe and beyond. Yet, the ‘smart city’ paradigm has been critiqued for favouring technological solutions and business interests over social inclusion and urban innovation. Despite the rhetoric of ‘citizen-centred approaches’ and ‘user-generated data’, the level of stakeholder engagement and public empowerment is sti...