At present, sustainable urban development constitutes a major planning goal for many urban environments coping with contemporary challenges and problems confronted by world cities. Towards this end, the concept of smart cities emerges as a promising policy option for effectively dealing with sustainability objectives. In this respect, the focus of the present paper is on the development of an ICT-enabled participatory planning framework for guiding policy-making towards the planning of smart cities. This framework is in alignment with the argument that smart-city solutions must start with the “city” not with the “smart,” shifting from a technology-pushed to an application-pulled smart-city planning approach, matching different types of “smartness” (technologies, tools, and applications) with different types of urban functions and contexts. It is also built upon a digital platform, integrating tools and technologies for data management and e-participatory planning that can support city- and citizen-specific decision making, capable of dealing with objectives for urban sustainability.

Under the current climate change scenery, coastalization, i.e. a linear-type of urban sprawl along the coastal zone, has become a key planning and policy concern at a global scale. Such a coastal urban sprawl trend seems to be further intensifying by, among others, mass tourism development in coastal destinations. This is evident by the abundance of relevant examples, being detected, among others, in the Mediterranean region. Taking into consideration the extreme pressure of the coastalization trend on land/marine ecosystems and its impacts on sustainability and resilience objectives, the focus of this research is on the development of a spatiotemporal and data-driven methodological approach that is capable of quantifying the dynamics of coastal urban sprawl. The proposed approach is grounded on a set of spatial metrics and a combination of the multitemporal Global Human Settlement Layer and the Corine Land Cover data; and is tested in four Mediterranean highly-rated tourism destinations in Spain, France, Italy and Greece. The variation of spatial metrics along different time spots and distinct distance buffers from the coast, unveils diversifying coastalization typologies and urban sprawl patterns; and provides input for more informed and place-based policy decisions on sustainable coastal land management. The proposed approach is easily replicable to other coastal regions as well for capturing/quantifying aspects of urban sprawl and coastalization dynamics and supporting relevant evidence-based decision-making.

The value of ICTs in support of a variety of functions in urban environments, serving people, businesses and governmental institutions is nowadays greatly acknowledged. The concept of ‘smart’ cities has emerged, where local innovation systems, largely supported by digital networks and their applications, are contributing to the: diffusion of knowledge and information, knowledgeable decision making, network cooperation, efficient interaction among various actors and intelligence gathering. The aim of the paper is to indulge in the concept of ‘smart’ cities for inclusive community development. The first part elaborates on the concept of ‘smart’ city, by exploring its various meanings, key dimensions, and potential for community development. In the second part, the Greek experience is presented, by means of a prominent example of a Greek ‘smart’ city, developing city-specific ICTs applications for inclusive community development. Finally, in the last part, some conclusions and future prospects of the concept of ‘smart’ cities for community development in Greece are drawn.

Radical developments in information and communication technologies (ICT) have widely affected urban sectors including cultural tourism. Furthermore, ICT have influenced modern spatial planning practices and have contributed to the advancement of interactive Web-GIS technologies that create new challenges and opportunities for spatial data management and potential for stakeholders’ engagement in planning. The convergence of culture, tourism, and ICT; developments in ICT-enabled planning; and interactive Web-GIS technologies have offered new opportunities for collaborative cultural planning. In such a context, the scope of this paper is to combine ICT-enabled, planning-related principles, cultural mapping, crowdsourcing, data management tools, and spatial models in an integrated framework, serving heritage-led development objectives. Focus is placed on broadening cultural planning perspectives through strengthening stakeholders’ engagement in the process of sustainably managing local assets and designing cultural tourism products that spread benefits to the local economy and reboot development processes. The study attempts to illustrate the added value of mature ICT-enabled approaches, tools, and technologies in the cultural tourism sector, reflecting the increasing smart tourism interest and applications that flourish in a smart city context.

Fatal events taking place in World War (WW) I and II have left behind important historical evidence as an underwater cultural heritage (UCH) (e.g., shipwrecks, submerged aircraft, war artifacts), lying in peace at the bottom of, among others, the Mediterranean Sea. The article aims at exploring the challenges for UCH protection/preservation and sustainable exploitation with emphasis on this sea. UCH is so far dealt with in a “silo” approach by marine archaeologists or heritage professionals, who often ignore its potential for serving local sustainable development goals. The paper elaborates on the value, but also the complexity, multi- and inter-disciplinary as well as multi-actors’ nature of UCH management and sustainable exploitation, perceiving these as a “wicked” planning problem. It attempts to illuminate various important dimensions of this problem, such as its glocal (global/local) context; the conflicting and, in certain cases, inconsistent UCH legal protection framework, touching upon a variety of spatial scales; the contemporary policy frameworks favoring UCH management; etc. Exploration of these dimensions reveals open issues or gaps that need to be filled, and sets the ground for a more holistic and integrated UCH research and management approach for building up the yet largely untold, Mediterranean WW I and II UCH narrative; and shifting this area from a sea graveyard to a place of memory and cultural enrichment.