Certain flexibilities in land-use plans Towards a method for assessing flexibility

The trade-off between flexibility and legal certainty is inherent in every planning system. This trade-off is especially apparent within a land-use plan. Flexibility and legal certainty are often seen as communicating vessels: the demise of one leads to an increase in the other. Within land-use plans, however, the connection between the two is more subtle. For a land-use plan, the choice between being specific or open, and rigid or adaptable, determine the amount of flexibility. With these choices a land-use plan can increase its flexibility without decreasing legal certainty. Within reason the legal certainty can even benefit from more flexibility. However, current academic literature lacks a structured way to analyse flexibility contained within a land-use plan. Such a method is necessary for analysing and comparing different land-use plans. This paper will provide such a method and analyse thirteen different land-use plans in the Netherlands on their flexibility. It will show that a structured method can prove to be useful for analysing and comparing different land-use plans. The research provides insight into the complex balance between flexibility and legal certainty and presents an assessment tool which can be used for further academic research.     

The actual impact of comprehensive land-use plans: Insights from high resolution observations

Like most EU and US planning systems, planning in Israel aims to promote certainty regarding future development by employing statutory land-use plans for stabilizing and binding the development of land use. In Israel, district planning from the 1980s onwards took place in the form of long-term land-use plans. However, in practice, Israeli planning witnessed a movement toward discretionary-oriented decision-making, providing for revisions of the land-use plans and subsequently diminishing its efficacy. A pending reform suggests eliminating district land-use plans and absorbing them into national and local plans. Concerning the debate on the future of the Israeli planning system, this research aims to assess the gap between certainty-oriented regulation and actual development, often occurring on a case-by-case basis. Our aim is to evaluate the actual performance of a district land-use plan, focusing particularly on aspects of land-use. Remote Sensing and GIS-based Plan Implementation Evaluation (PIE) analysis was used to test the impact of a comprehensive outline plan for Israel's Central District on the actual development of the built environment. The results show fundamental gaps between the original land-use assignments of the district plan and actual development. The limited effectiveness of regulatory land-use planning for complex, densely populated districts is then discussed in line with the certainty–flexibility dilemma in land-use planning and the structure of planning decision-making in Israel.     

British discretion in Dutch planning: Establishing a comparative perspective for regional planning and local development in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom

Regional planning and development is continuing to take an important role in planning agendas throughout Europe. In the United Kingdom (UK), the planning system has been reformed during the last decades, marking a noticeable shift from a development-led towards a more plan-led system. In the Netherlands, strictly regulated growth-control policies have been abandoned to some degree, in favor of more decentralized planning policies featuring negotiated development. Dutch planners have been specifically interested in a more British approach, that is, a more discretionary and development-led type of approach to spatial planning. In this paper, we will discuss current efforts in Dutch regional planning to adopt new principles for planning delivery and will provide a comparative perspective between spatial planning in the UK and the Netherlands. This paper discusses the changing structure of planning delivery in both countries. At the same time, it establishes a framework for identifying critical lessons for Dutch regional planning practice as opposed to planning in the UK. Three characteristics are pivotal for the comparison: (1) the establishment of comprehensive principles for project coordination; (2) options for the settlement of planning gain, packaging interests, and regional redistribution; and (3) the institution for development-oriented planning and discretion for planning decisions. The evidence used is based on a literature review of recent debates in both countries and illustrative cases, including the Dutch ‘Heart of the Heuvelrug’ plan.     

Water safety and spatial development: An institutional comparison between the United Kingdom and the Netherlands

The Netherlands and the United Kingdom are known for their different traditions of river flood risk management, which is reflected in their respective institutional frameworks. Whereas the Dutch have focused almost exclusively on reducing the probability of flooding by defining high safety standards, British flood managers are known for their propensity to influence spatial planning decisions as a means to reduce the potential impacts of flood events. This paper scrutinizes this alleged major difference in institutional arrangements and planning practices, so as to evaluate the room for elements of the risk approach in the Netherlands. Using Ostrom's IAD framework, we analyze the rules-in-use in two cases in which a new hospital is being planned in a flood-prone area. It will be shown that in spite of some important differences observed in the rules-in-use, the Dutch institutional configuration has absorbed several elements of the risk approach, and displays a higher similarity in planning practice to the UK than expected. It thus seems that Dutch flood risk management is gradually evolving into the direction of a more integral approach to water safety in spatial planning.     

新时期土地利用规划修编的理论与方法及实施制度创新的研究

利用文献资料分析法,在分析我国土地利用规划所面临的形势和总结了1997—2010年轮次土地利用规划决策实施存在问题的基础上,提出了土地利用规划理论、方法和实施制度创新的设想,指出规划需要树立以人为本的理念、目标有限性理念和刚性与弹性规划结合等理念,注重绿色规划;规划分区应在建立新的土地分类基础上,按照土地利用规划控制方向的一致性划分土地利用区,以适用规划管理的要求;注重规划编制修改制度的规范化,提出了规划实施制度创新的设想。     

International perspectives on future land use

The different approaches that other countries take to land use reflect many national variables, including planning systems, institutional structures, socio-cultural characteristics, population pressures and environmental priorities. Literature reviews of relevant land-use issues in Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Sweden provided the background material for this paper. Other European countries appear to offer models of more pro-active and indicative land-use planning, in contrast to the adversarial system in the UK, and a much stronger regional focus. This seems to have made it easier to implement other policies, for example on renewable energy. Experience with liberalisation of agricultural markets, and the promotion of environmentally sustainable farming are both relevant to an increasingly polarised agricultural sector in the UK. Cutting across all these themes is a reflection on governance of land use. Of the countries considered, Sweden's focus on environmental sustainability, international responsibility and long-term consistency of direction appears to be most closely aligned to the coming land-use challenges. When drawing conclusions from this review it is important to bear in mind the effect of differences in bio-geographic factors, socio-economic conditions and political culture, both in other countries and within the UK.     

Using compensation instruments as a vehicle to improve spatial planning: Challenges and opportunities

Planners are increasingly adopting market-oriented compensation instruments. This is not only the result of a shift from government to governance, but also because governments are increasingly required to compensate private citizens for losses incurred due to planning regulations. Market-oriented compensation instruments have a broad scope as they also enable non-financial compensation opportunities. Non-financial compensation schemes normally use – not necessarily transferable – rights to compensate for a loss in economic value. Countries that adopt such instruments – such as The Netherlands, the US and Spain – often not only use them for compensation, but also to recoup some of the windfall profits that are then used for the improvement of urban and regional areas.     

浅析土地利用规划实施动态监测预警技术

以土地变更调查数据、遥感影像数据、计划审批数据等多元数据为基础,研究基于不同数据进行土地利用规划实施动态监测的技术思路与方法,构建土地利用规划实施动态监测指标体系,探索了以监测指标预警土地利用规划实施进度、成效的有效机制,为建立健全土地利用规划实施动态监测技术体系,促进土地利用规划科学有效实施提供一定参考。     

Urban sprawl factors in the surface water resource basins of Istanbul

This paper presents the reasons for uncontrolled land-use changes in the water resource basins of Istanbul. These changes are evaluated with a Geographical Information System (GIS), using four Landsat (1990, 1995, 2000, 2005) satellite images. Additional spatial information about capital improvement projects (highways and the Bosporus bridges), industrial land-use decisions, land ownership, and jurisdictional boundaries is also utilized. We observe that the most critical land-use changes have occurred in places with higher accessibility, mostly in close proximity to the metropolitan city center. The literature describes large public capital improvement projects (primarily the Trans European Motorway – TEM) as the primary reason for a trend of illegal occupation of public lands; however, the TEM should not be considered as the sole reason. This study explores other possible causes for these illegal developments in the water resource basins, grouped into three broad dimensions physical, socio–economic–political, and legal. Finally, we put forward possible policy suggestions for the preservation of the limited surface water resource basins in Istanbul.     

Moving out or living on a mound? Jointly planning a Dutch flood adaptation project

All over the world spatial flood risk management policies are on the rise. This paper analyses the planning process for the Overdiepse polder, a so-called “Room for the River” project in the Netherlands. After high water in the 1990s, the Dutch government changed its flood risk management policy. While before 2000 it leaned heavily on dikes to separate water from land, after that year spatial measures to “let the water flow” were introduced. This required the integration of two formerly separated policy domains: flood risk management and land use planning. In the densely populated and economically highly developed Netherlands, returning space to the river unavoidably impacts on the lives and livelihoods of those who live and work along the rivers. Therefore, such spatial measures to decrease flood risk have to be negotiated with various stakeholders. The planning process towards making the Overdiepse polder suitable for temporary water storage deserves more in-depth analysis. We describe and analyze the development of relationships between key actors in the planning process, with a focus on planning practices rather than on assumptions about the existence of certain types and qualities of relationships. We conclude, among others, that citizen involvement can, under specific socio-political and institutional conditions, build trust among stakeholders and increase local legitimacy for interventions by government agencies. However, it should not be idealized as “self-governance” or assumed to be part of a unidirectional change in water interventions towards new relationships between actors.     

The adaptive efficiency of land use planning measured by the control of urban sprawl. The cases of the Netherlands,Belgium and Poland

The paper aims to position the concept of adaptive efficiency in planning theory, by providing insights on the conditions that explain why land use planning in some institutional contexts is able to adapt and improve more efficiently than in others. This is done by focusing on a specific planning goal: the control of residential sprawl. The paper presents a theoretical framework based on two models, one on the coordinating mechanisms regarding the use of land and one to explain institutional changes. This framework is exploited with empirical case studies where we compare the control of sprawl in the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland. The analysis diagnoses a duality of planning practices. Even though planning failures occur in the Netherlands as well, we provide evidence that Dutch land use planning has been able to efficiently adapt regulatory instruments and collaborative practices to societal changes. By contrast, Belgian and Polish planners face huge difficulties to incorporate new initiatives to control urban sprawl or, in more general terms, to reinforce their influence on land uses.     

Impacts of land use and amenities on public transport use,urban planning and design

Various land-use configurations are known to have wide-ranging effects on the dynamics of and within other city components including the transportation system. In this work, we particularly focus on the complex relationship between land-use and transport offering an innovative approach to the problem by using land-use features at two differing levels of granularity (the more general land-use sector types and the more granular amenity structures) to evaluate their impact on public transit ridership in both time and space. To quantify the interdependencies, we explored three machine learning models and demonstrate that the decision tree model performs best in terms of overall performance—good predictive accuracy, generality, computational efficiency, and “interpretability”. Results also reveal that amenity-related features are better predictors than the more general ones, which suggests that high-resolution geo-information can provide more insights into the dependence of transit ridership on land-use. We then demonstrate how the developed framework can be applied to urban planning for transit-oriented development by exploring practicable scenarios based on Singapore's urban plan toward 2030, which includes the development of “regional centers” (RCs) across the city-state. Results show an initial increase in transit ridership as the amount of amenities is increased. This trend, on the other hand, eventually reverses (particularly during peak hours) with continued strategic increase in amenities; a tipping point at 55% increase is identified where ridership begins to decline and at 110%, the predicted ridership begins to fall below current levels. Our in-silico experiments support one of the medium-term land-use transport goals of stakeholders—to alleviate future strains in the transportation system of Singapore through the development of RCs. The model put forward can serve as a good foundation in building decision-support tools that can assist planners in better strategizing and planning land-use configurations, in particular the amenity resource distribution, to influence and shape public transportation demand.     

空间规划体系下的“用地”规划协调研究

各类规划拥有自身理念和功能,在"多规并存"的现实需求下,"用地"协调成为各类"空间规划"协调的关键。运用文献研究法、比较分析法、归纳总结法,探索了"用地"类型、"用地"规模、"用地"布局以及规划年期等在"空间规划"协调中的现实途径。结果表明:"用地"类型要做到宏观上有统一、微观上有特色,一、二级地类强调一致,三级地类彰显特色;各类用地规模,尤其是农业用地和未利用地规模,应在区域规划宏观指导下由土地利用规划总体上统筹,用地规模管控做到"纵向到底、横向到边";用地布局做到各类规划合理分工,土地利用规划实行"刚性"与"弹性"相结合的土地利用分区,城市规划依据城镇用地和农村居民点用地合理确定每个城、镇、村的布局;同时保持各类规划的基期、近期和远期年份应至少有一个保持一致。     

Planning the horticultural sector: Managing greenhouse sprawl in the Netherlands

Greenhouses are a typical example of peri-urban land-use, a phenomenon that many planning systems find difficult to address as it mixes agricultural identity with urban appearance. Despite its urban appearance, greenhouse development often manages to evade urban containment policies. But a ban on greenhouse development might well result in under-utilisation of the economic value of the sector and its potential for sustainability. Specific knowledge of the urban and rural character of greenhouses is essential for the implementation of planning strategies. This paper analyses Dutch planning policies for greenhouses. It concludes with a discussion of how insights from greenhouse planning can be applied in other contexts involving peri-urban areas.     

Risk assessment along the gas pipelines and its application in urban planning

With the rapid development of industry in China, the number of gas pipelines that are proposed or under construction is increasing year by year. Accidents such as fire, explosion, and toxic diffusion inevitably happen, which often cause a large number of casualties and property losses. It is increasingly important to analyze the risk along the gas pipelines realistically and to suitably plan, and utilize the surrounding land based on the risk analysis results, thereby reducing the hazards. A theoretical system for risk assessment along the gas pipelines is proposed in this paper. Risks of various major accidents are considered together, superposition effect is analyzed. After the individual risk distribution is obtained, risk zones are divided according to corresponding individual risk value of HSE, and land-use planning suggestions are proposed. Finally, a natural gas pipeline in China is used as an example to illustrate the risk assessment process and its application in urban land-use planning. The proposed method has a certain theoretical and practical significance in establishing and improving risk analysis along the gas pipeline and urban land-use planning.     

土地利用规模和结构调整的环境影响评价模型研究

研究目的:构建一个可全面定量评价土地利用规模和结构调整相关环境影响的模型体系。研究方法:系统整合土地利用类型转移计算模型、多样性指数模型、土地生态服务价值计算模型、生态足迹和生态承载力评价模型等相关模型,并以上海市为例进行实证研究。研究结果:该模型体系比较全面地评价了上海市土地利用规划的环境影响,结果显示上海市的土地利用规划将导致区域土地利用结构明显变化,在一定程度上减少区域生态压力。研究结论:该模型体系能够客观评价土地利用规模和结构调整的相关环境影响,有一定的应用推广价值。     

从土地利用规划到国土空间规划 ——科学理性规划的视角

研究目的:深入探讨从土地利用规划到国土空间规划的重大变革,明晰国土空间规划的观念、体系、任务、方法和实施要求,以期对正在开展的国土空间规划编制工作提供参考。研究方法:文献研究法和比较分析法。研究结果:国土空间规划要着力强化可持续发展、高质量发展、以人民为中心的发展观念,在规划体系建设中处理好空间规划与发展规划,国家规划与地方规划,总体规划与专项规划、详细规划之间的关系,把重塑国土空间开发保护格局和推动自然资源节约集约利用和自然资源资产保值增值同时作为新时代规划的主要任务,全面推进空间规划基本理论、基础性方法和前沿性方法研究,创新规划实施的行政、法治、经济、社会和技术机制。研究结论:国土空间规划作为空间规划体制改革的产物,既要继承包括土地利用规划在内的原有空间规划的优点,也要注意克服其不足,根据国土空间治理现代化的战略需要,在规划观念、规划体系、规划实施等方面进行全方位、重构性变革,发展具有中国特色的空间规划理论和方法。     

Tradable planning permits for land-use control in Germany

In addition to a broad range of qualitative land development objectives, the German Federal Government has committed itself to reduce the growth of settlement and traffic areas from currently 113 ha (2004–2007) to 30 ha per day by 2020. In order to attain this ambitious quantitative goal, our paper presents a market-based policy of ‘tradable planning permits’. This system would control land development by fixing the total amount of open space loss in a period with allocated planning permits, which can be traded between local jurisdictions. Since this approach is based on the cap-and-trade principle, we evaluate the transfer of traditional emission trading concepts to land-use control and explore regulatory options of potential systems: an undifferentiated permit system, a trading-ratio system and variations of zonal permit systems. We subject these alternative approaches to critical evaluation by using a variety of important criteria including efficiency gains, ecological effectiveness, hot spot formation and transaction costs. Finally, we summarize the potentials, limitations and risks of a permit trading system in general while reflecting the ongoing German debate on open space preservation.     

国内土地利用规划中公众参与的研究进展与展望

采用文献资料法、归纳综合法、对比法,对国外土地利用规划中公众参与的理论研究和经验借鉴、土地利用规划公众参与的现状研究、完善土地利用规划公众参与的对策研究等方面进行综述,并相应地提出几点建议:对国外研究要多结合我国实际情况,多借鉴国外成功经验;现状研究要更多体现特殊性以及规划的层次性;对策研究应以相应理论为支持,并对某一方面多加深入、重视实证。     

Spatio-temporal dynamic patterns of farmland and rural settlements in Su–Xi–Chang region: Implications for building a new countryside in coastal China

This paper analyzes the spatio-temporal dynamic patterns of farmland and rural settlements from 1990 to 2006 in Su–Xi–Chang region of coastal China experienced dramatic economic and spatial restructuring, using high-resolution Landsat TM (Thematic Mapper) data in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2006, and socio-economic data from both research institutes and government departments. To examine the spatial patterns of farmland and rural settlements and their change over time, a set of pattern metrics that capture different dimensions of land fragmentation was identified. The outcomes indicated that, to a large extent, land-use change from 1990 to 2006 in Su–Xi–Chang region was characterized by a serious replacement of farmland with urban and rural settlements, construction land, and artificial ponds. Population growth, rapid industrialization and urbanization are the major driving forces of farmland change, and China's economic reforms played an important role in the transformation of rural settlements. China's “building a new countryside” is an epoch-making countryside planning policy. The focuses of building a new countryside in coastal China need to be concentrated on protecting the farmland, developing modern agriculture, and building “clean and tidy villages.” Rural construction land consolidation and cultivated land consolidation are two important ways to achieve the building objectives. The authors argue that it is fundamental to lay out a scientific urban–rural integrated development planning for building a new countryside, which needs to pay more attention to making the rural have certain functions serving for the urban. In addition, the cultural elements of idyll and the rural landscape need to be reserved and respected in the process of building a new countryside in coastal China, instead of building a new countryside, which looks more like a city.