This article undertakes an analysis of current urban planning programs at universities with a focus on sub-Saharan English-speaking African (SSA) and South East Asian countries (SEA) as comparison cases. The aim is to identify, as an important part of sustainability, the existence and share of climate change and disaster related courses in the curricula, and to understand to what extent these topics are already integrated into current urban planning programs at the university level and thus shape the knowledge and skills of future urban planners. The local academic and professional environments in which the programs are based are taken into account by a review of the historical development of the programs. The analysis in mid-2020 took only those universities and programs into account that have curricula and course titles available online. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The second part of the research deals with the discussion of how these courses can be best integrated into the existing curricula and thus serve the adequate education of urban planners by providing some concrete ideas.

Land use planning is an important task for every country in the world to ensure the sustainable use of land resources for economic and social development activities. However, many land use plans have not achieved their desired effectiveness due to a lack of consideration and evaluation of factors affecting the land use planning implementation process. This study was conducted to answer the following question: what are the main factors influencing the land use planning process in Vietnam? In this study, we use multivariate regression to identify the main factors influencing land use planning in Vietnam, including the economic factor group; institutional and policy factor group; urbanisation factor group; planning factor group; social factor group; environmental factor group; and organisational and implementation factor group. The results identified five groups of factors influencing land use planning in the Dan Phuong district through the influencing factor analysis method, including policy (Po), economy (Ec), society (So), environment (En), and others (Ot). In addition, the linear regression model obtained for land use planning in Dan Phuong district is as follows: land use planning = 0.408Po + 0.454Ec + 0.398So + 0.368En + 0.259Ot. In which the group of factors with the strongest influence was the Eco factors (β = 0.454), the second was the Po factors (β = 0.408), the third was the So factors (β = 0.398), the fourth was the En factors (β = 0.368), and lastly, there were the Ot factors (β = 0.259). The results of the analysis were used to plan land use effectively and according to local conditions. This can help managers to find solutions for the sustainable use of land resources in the future.

The Sultanate of Oman has been undergoing massive changes in the last 50 years. The Gulf State transformed from a very traditional and isolated country into a wealthy and modern state. After Sultan Said was enthroned in 1970, the young Sultan Qaboos, who passed away in 2020, began to modernise Oman’s economy and society. Today, widespread, single-family houses are the prevailing residential building type, with an urban sprawl characterised by mono-functional zoning and a dependency on motorized individual transport with long commuting distances. All these conditions have been strongly supported by governmental planning policies. Since this urban sprawl causes unsustainable land consumption, this study addresses options for urban development and housing typologies aiming at a compact city with a higher density. However, the term density has to reflect local cultural and climatic conditions and, in time of the pandemic as special focus of this issue, has to be critically discussed and reviewed. Thus, this study identifies, as a base line study in Muscat Capital Area, Omani residents’ housing needs by an online questionnaire survey focusing on housing layouts, features and locational preferences, exploring alternatives to the current situation. Findings are that housing needs do not necessarily demand a single-family building but can be achieved better by different housing layouts, at the same time supporting social distances measures via outdoor options during the pandemic.

The migration-city-nexus has become central in migration and urban studies alike. This ‘local turn’ has not only initiated a rethinking of the local level as an independent level of migration policy-making but also broadened the discourse on how migration processes actually change cities. Therefore, the thematic issue at hand seeks to understand how migration-led development processes in cities promote and shape institutional change, and which actors transform policies, structures, and discourses on migration in different settings. It questions how migration-related issues in urban development are being handled and transformed by local state and civil society actors. With 11 empirical articles on local negotiations of migration in urban development in different settings, this thematic issue applies an institutional change perspective on local migration policy-making to contribute to a broader understanding of migration-led development in both urban and migration studies. When it comes to clearly capturing migration-led institutional change in urban development and planning, the contributions demonstrate great heterogeneity. They reveal that research on migration-led institutional change still has many biases and is very dependent on theoretical perspectives, positionalities of researchers, and the local context of the case studies.