This issue covers the topic of sustainable cities and communities: a topic that is given due importance as one of the Sustainable Development Goals. The sustainability of cities and communities is facilitated through a series of actions that aim at improving the quality of life for urban residents, protecting the world’s cultural and natural heritage, enhancing sustainable urbanization, and supporting underdeveloped countries in building resilient cities, among others. This journal issue shall comprise of a number of topics that fall under the umbrella of sustainable cities and communities, which would allow us to encourage the adoption of diverse solutions for sustainability issues and further contribute to the paradigm of sustainable cities and communities. Such issues include, but not limited to, the questions of housing, slums upgrading, sustainable planning, and waste management. These issues require urgent solutions as they pose imminent dangers such as the outgrowth of slums, uncontrollable increase in carbon footprint, shortage of affordable housing, and depletion of non-renewable energy that could be used in a balanced and controlled basket of energies. The urgency needed to address such issues in today’s societies requires the implementation of innovative measures in planning, design, construction, and management of cities and their resources. This is an endeavor for which the accumulation of scientific research in the topic in question is an absolute necessity.

With the pressing need for holistic solutions that can help in overcoming the imminent environmental and resources crises, a call for the conservation of natural resources and sustainable strategies is needed. Sustainable strategies allow for the mitigation against the impact of climate change on the environment while, simultaneously, seeking the health and comfort of users. Another environmental issue that is worthy of the attention of the scientific research community is the reduction of resources consumption, through the implementation of sustainable development concepts and the use of renewable sources of energy generation. These two aforementioned paradigms are both intrinsic in nature and essential for the thriving of humanity. Hence, this issue aims at investigating sustainable strategies and approaches for the preservation of natural resources through a variety of case studies.

This issue illustrates, through cases studies, how strategies such as biomimicry, shading devices, rooftop photovoltaic systems among others, can be integrated into the design of both industrial and residential buildings. The aim of such strategies is to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions while making use of renewable solar energy in reducing our dependency on energy intensive active building services systems such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). The issue also discusses the conservation of the most important of natural resources: freshwater. It highlights the issue of water scarcity and proposes a schema for the positioning of freshwater research.

The need to conserve our natural resources is very crucial to the support of human life by maintaining an ecological balance and ensuring that future generations will be able to access those resources. The challenges that our natural environment is facing today, such as pollution, global warming and resource depletion need to be given their due attention.

Heritage buildings can be the subjects of sustainable design projects that achieve outstanding measures of sustainability and energy efficiency while not compromising the authenticity of the heritage value of the building.

Yet, while heritage conservation process is already an act of sustainable development that protects and preserves heritage buildings and their intangible values, Cultural Heritage Preservation is almost absent in the sustainable development goals agendas.

This ESSD issue aims to encourage further dialogue, critical reflection and cross-disciplinary collaboration by bringing together examples of interesting projects and research that could provide a practically grounded approach.

The issue also seeks to publish papers with case studies of contribution approaches that render cultural heritage, both physical and non-physical, a stimulus for sustainable development. We welcome papers from a wide range of regulations and specifically encourage research that embraces approaches that go beyond disciplinary boundaries. We are also very keen on experimental ways in which heritage can contribute to achieving Sustainable Development Goals.

For each and every person to share a vision that involves experiencing a healthy and happy life within the fair utilization of earth’s resources while allowing space for the wilderness as well as wildlife, people have to adopt the principles of sustainable living. In other words, it must involve ways of living that advance good health and well-being while limiting destruction of the natural environment and wildlife.

Sustainable living is based on four main pillars namely minimizing waste, limiting the use of Earth’s natural resources, wise use of the environment, and ensuring quality working/living environments. 

The sustainability of one’s home depends as much (if not more) on its location as on how the house is built. When we are looking to buy land or to buy (or rent) a house, we should consider the sustainability criteria when comparing the locations of different properties.

Living in an environmentally sensible and sustainable location has numerous benefits. You can reap significant financial savings (e.g., by reducing the amount of driving you have to do; or by avoiding or minimizing the need to build new infrastructure or to do extensive site grading). Location efficiency can also yield broad, collective benefits for society and our shared environment, such as:

1. Reducing sprawl-related automobile dependence, traffic, and air pollution.
2. Protecting public health, environmental health, and the climate.
3. Conserving natural resources, habitat, and open space.
4. Contributing to the creation of livable, walkable, healthy, and vibrant neighborhoods that enhance your community’s quality of life and local economic opportunities.

The world environmental problems have suffered from a prolonged period of seclusion in the eyes of the global community. Nevertheless; after the world has experienced a leap in various disciplines, preserving the environment has become a universal concern. Consequently, discussing the issue of “Innovative approaches towards preserving the environment” is a conversation of critical importance to alternate the societal way of thinking, moreover; shedding the light on the focal role of academic research is crucial to start reaching goals, instead of counting failures. The dire state of the world environmental problems demands innovative solutions that have the ability to tackle complex issues. The society is obligated to adopt dynamic approaches to successfully address the matters at hand. For instance, if we look closely at the topic of climate change, it is quite apparent that the issue needs to be examined from different angles, and inventive solutions need to surface. The preservation of the environment is every person’s concern as it impacts climate change, biodiversity, energy efficiency, renewable energy, recycling, land degradation, natural resources protection, natural disaster rates and agricultural production. In order to reach a permanent solution, a set of skills and modernized knowledge of multiple fields need to be put in action, such as behavioral science, community involvement, politics and economics. The execution of the answers to numerous environmental problems must be implemented through harmoniously coordinating the efforts of the participants with their different backgrounds. The bearing of these solutions through time has to be achieved through acknowledging the complexity of the issues and the readiness to change the current hierarchy of the environmental management. Although the environmental issues are measurable, researchers are always faced with some level of scientific uncertainty, in addition to the uncontrollable factor of the ever-changing nature of the climate. Hence, society needs to adopt a dynamic mindset to flourish in prosperity.

Activating sustainability concept in practices is a critical issue that achieves sustainable development of the whole cities. The sustainable city is a rather recent concept, which has managed to gain increasing attention over the last decades, both through the international community and through grass root movements. This special issue on Improving Sustainability Concept: From Theories to Successful Practices aims to explore how the sustainable city can be translated from theory to practice. Upon discussing the topic of urban planning, participants take a close look at the matter of living in an eco-city, as the concept regards the integration of land-use and transportation systems which is a solution to improve the efficiency of cities. Paying close attention to this issue allows for a balance between land-use and the environment, accordingly, the spread of land can continue but not on the expense of greenhouse gas emissions. It is believed that this balance could be achieved by adopting a long-term political engagement plan as retrieved from the experience of the cities that implemented customized strategic plans. The conflicting interest in growth is found to be an obstacle when it comes to applying radial strategies. Subsequently, governments avoid adopting these concepts and would rather think of them as a constant process.

Sustainable engineering is a vast field that applies to all the branches of engineering and its derivatives. It requires practitioners to use energy and resources in a sustainable manner in the designing and operating phases to avoid compromising the environment in any way. All engineering disciplines should be engaged in sustainability by making sure all engineering-based projects live well within the limits of our finite planet. Practitioners should have a profound understanding of principles of resource efficiency, ecology, sustainable development and design along with their own fields. This can only be achieved by generating literature that highlights various issues and solutions related to sustainable engineering.

ESSD's fourth issue discusses green infrastructure in depth as a significant factor for sustainable development. Known to be an economical, safe, and qualitative management of the natural water cycle, it encompasses greening, or the planting of trees, restoring wetlands and a way to benefit out of investments made. Green infrastructure in general is an improvement to the ecological situation, a promotion of domestic and inbound tourism as well as an improvement to living conditions for citizens. Since many communities across the world are working towards protecting their water quality, conserving, restoring and enhancing natural areas is a must. Such approaches to using green infrastructure strategies as an attempt to protect the environment and human health is a also a way to shape sustainable future communities. Articles featured in this issue introduce green infrastructure as a solution to issues of sustainability in green spaces and beyond. The issue then explores several urban, environmental and cultural concerns, provides recommendations and set goals to protect the environment, improve public health and economical situations as well as prepare for impacts of climate change.

This issue displays research that demonstrates an integration between resilience and sustainable development and beyond. Since both are indistinguishably linked, an investment in resilience or infrastructure is useful for a developed future and environment. Whether its food scarcity, climate change, issues of dry port, pollution, or loss/shortage of energy, a need to address key global challenges exists to shape a more sustainable future. The issue attracted a number of high-quality submissions from researchers in the field and disciplines that address the above-mentioned challenges and that includes the built environment and human behavior, dry ports as an approach to relocate city gateways to maximize efficiency, building technology that supports sustainable architecture, renewable materials, and environmental approaches that deal with architectural heritage.

This issue examines various digital and computerized technological solutions to enhance energy performance and examines the impacts of all the aforementioned solutions on the environment and the economy. The production of solar energy, wind energy, and thermal energy is deeply analysed in 3 different papers as solutions towards cleaner energy and, therefore, a cleaner environment. Some of the authors have also given in-depth accounts of current environmental ailments as a first step towards resolving them, including analysing soot emissions. In addition to technological solutions, some of the authors chose to study the urban and built environment while others focused their research exclusively on the environment. All the papers in this issue focused their research on attempting to achieve sustainable solutions towards sustainable development.

Green architecture is building using sustainable methods. It combines both construction and architectural methods and policies while keeping the environment in mind. In this issue, the manuscripts discuss various solutions for energy reduction and environmental sustainability. Two manuscripts address passive strategies to achieve the aforementioned by using cool clay tiles on roofs as a cooling strategy that saves energy and reduces urban overheating. Other papers in this issue discuss the importance of urbanization in developing areas by applying sustainable strategies including saving energy by utilizing solar energy. The authors have also explained the economic benefits associated with sustainable buildings such as driving designers to think about the environment. Saving power by applying sustainable policies, along with the rising energy prices, increase the demand for sustainable buildings. Sustainability, therefore becomes a driver for designers.