Recent advances in sustainable multifunctional land and urban management in Europe: a review

This review discusses high impact research in sustainable urban and land management. The focus is on large European projects that have a holistic and multi-disciplinary assessment approach towards the total environment. This paper clearly indicates that many projects propose decision-making tools partly supported by numerical models. Successful projects were identified as applying the following criteria: a communicative and holistic approach involving economic, environmental and social sciences throughout the project; sufficient geographic coverage; engagement of stakeholders from a wide variety of sectors; and plans for dissemination of project outcomes and active knowledge sharing.