Editorial to the Inaugural Issue

Dear editors, reviewers, authors, readers, and other members of the whole scientific and professional community,

Welcome to this inaugural issue of Journal of Urban Development and Management (JUDM)!

On behalf of the editorial office, I am writing with great pleasure and sincere privilege to present the first issue of the journal OCS.

In the first issue of the Journal of Urban Development and Management (JUDM), we have collected a fascinating set of articles that enables us to obtain more insights, new trends, and dynamics of this so-critical field for the proper development of our urban areas and territorial management and governance. Therefore, this issue is organized into seven articles. So, a short description of each of the manuscripts follows.

Article 1 focuses on how data could be the catalyst to assess city dynamics and tendencies through smart modeling.

Article 2 gives us an overall view of the power of regional development and how it can be a catalyst for the territory through the study of the markets in Medan, North Sumatra, and Indonesia in 2020. Moreover, this manuscript explores the nexus between the support to regional development with the quadruple helix creative industry model through descriptive qualitative analysis.

Article 3 deals with the problem of green urban space optimization. For that, this manuscript uses an interesting technique, the Green Plot Radio.

Article 4 explores the social sustainability assessment of neighborhood design. Therefore, the work uses a comparative study of multiplicity and singularity in Nablus.

Article 5 studies the new recent fire safety designs of vertical buildings – the so-called high-rise buildings. In fact, a topic with increasing growth and interest in the last few years regarding urban design in medium-size cities.

Article 6 presents an Indonesian case study. This article studies the effects of Covid-19 food prices, specifically for rice as a strategic commodity. The study shows that during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, prices showed wild and extreme behavior. In a market situation facing high pressure, government intervention with appropriate policies is needed to stabilize prices.

Finally, this issue ends with manuscript 7, which delves into the topic of Political Ecology. This paper emphasizes environmental certification through a case study regarding urban agriculture in an Indonesian metropolitan area.