Land use and land cover scenarios: An interdisciplinary approach integrating local conditions and the global shared socioeconomic pathways

Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) changes have profound impacts on the functioning of (agro)ecosystems and have potential to mitigate global climate change. However, we still lack interdisciplinary methods to project future LULC scenarios at spatial scales that are relevant for local decision making and future environmental assessments. Here we apply an interdisciplinary approach to develop spatially explicit projections of LULC at a resolution of 30 × 30 m informed by historic relationships between LULC and their key drivers, within the context of the four qualitative scenarios of global shared socioeconomic pathways. We apply this methodology to a case study in the Zona da Mata, Brazil, which has a history of major LULC changes. The analysis of LULC changes from 1986 to 2015 indicates that pasture area decreased from 76 to 58 % of total area, while forest areas increased from 18 to 24 %, and coffee from 3 to 11 %. Environmental protection legislation, rural credit for smallholder farmers, and demand for agricultural and raw products were identified as main drivers of LULC changes. Projected LULC for 2045 strongly depends on the global socioeconomic pathway scenarios, and forest and coffee areas may increase substantially under strong government measures in the environmentally conscious Green Road scenario or decrease in the high consumption Rocky Road scenario. Our study shows that under the set of drivers during the past three decades reforestation can go hand in hand with increase of agricultural production, but that major and contrasting changes in LULC can be expected depending on the socioeconomic pathway that will be followed in the future. To guide this process, LULC scenarios at the local scale can inform the planning of local and regional development and forest conservation.     

Upzoning and value capture: How U.S. local governments use land use regulation power to create and capture value from real estate developments

The public sector can harness its authority to control land uses to secure valuable public benefits from real estate developments. This paper investigates how five major U.S. cities—Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle—are using their land use regulation powers to create and capture value for the public benefit. An analysis of the zoning and entitlement processes of the 20 largest real estate development projects in each city reveals that value has been captured from all 100 projects. Furthermore, these cities implicitly differentiated value capture into two distinct components: value creation and value capture. Among the 100 projects, cities created value for 90 projects by allowing greater density and height—a practice often referred to as “upzoning.” Distinguishing such upzoning incidences from traditional land use exaction tools is important because the added value gives local governments greater legitimacy in asking for public benefits. The experience of the five cities further revealed that value capture strategies can be customized to adapt to unique regulatory, political, and cultural contexts. Lastly, despite the fact that the majority of the upzoned projects increased density and height through project-specific negotiations, none of the cities had clear standards or evaluation frameworks for determining: how much value was created, what can be asked for in return, and who should benefit from the value captured. Cross-national scholarship on value capture can be leveraged to address these important questions.     

Land use regulation and urban land value: Evidence from China

Land use regulation has always been regarded as one of the most crucial means of macro-control of urban growth, which can affect a city’s land values directly and further determine related urban economic well-being. Since the New Type Urbanization Strategy proposed by the government in 2014, China’s mode of urban growth has been transformed from addressing “quantity” to “quality" in the urbanization process. In this case, the regulation of land use by the Chinese government plays a more important role in urban growth. With their planned land regulatory scheme, the various instruments employed by Chinese governments have quite different mechanisms influencing land prices. However, there are no rigorous studies focusing on the land use regulation system and its impact on land values to date, particular in China. This study seeks to explore how land use regulation affects urban land values through the systematic lens. We summarize the main land use regulatory instruments based on the analysis of China’s planned land use system and urban land banking system, including the construction land quota, constraints on the allowed floor area ratio (FAR) of each land transaction parcel, and land supply restrictions. A new dataset based on land transaction data from 2007 to 2016 that covers 286 prefectural cities from the country’s coastal, central, and western regions is used in the empirical analysis. The results show that the effects of the floor area ratio (FAR) on land values are significant and positive, with the residential and commercial land supply ratio being a key factor. Moreover, the results imply that the effects of constraints on FAR and commercial land supply vary between regions. These findings indicate that the Chinese land market is considerably distorted by excessive administrative interventions by local governments, in the stage of urban transition guided, the capable regulatory instruments could play an important role in adjusting urban land prices and hence impact on urban growth.     

Comparing the spatial and temporal dynamics of urban expansion in Guangzhou and Shenzhen from 1975 to 2015: A case study of pioneer cities in China’s rapid urbanization

The distinct urbanization process of China has attracted worldwide attention because of its impressive speed, massive scale, and policy intervention. However, the interrelationship between urban expansion and government policies is still not well understood. The Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration of China is the first national pioneering urbanization area since the implementation of the policy “Reform and Opening-up” in the late 1970s. Here we compared the spatial and temporal patterns of urbanization in two leading cities of the Pearl River Delta (i.e., Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the provincial capital and the first Special Economic Zone of China, respectively) from 1975 to 2015, using Landsat data integrated with urban growth and landscape metrics analysis, and examined possible footprints of major economic and urbanization policies. Our results illustrated that urban land areas in both Guangzhou and Shenzhen have experienced magnificent annual growth rates at 8.1% and 11%, respectively between 1975 and 2015. On average, Shenzhen witnessed substantially higher urban growth rate than Guangzhou during the past four decades, particularly in the initial period (1978–1990) when the Reform and Opening-up policy was launched and Shenzhen was designated as the first Special Economic Zone in China in the late 1970s. However, the speed of urban expansion in Shenzhen became considerably lower than Guangzhou from 2005 to 2015, subject to physical conditions and a series of urban land use policies. Both cities showed a generally similar dynamics of urban growth forms with leapfrogging as the predominant type of urban growth at first and then edge-expansion while the contribution of infilling in Shenzhen was higher than that in Guangzhou, especially since 2005. The urbanization processes characterized by landscape and urban growth metrics revealed that a diffusion-coalescence-diffusion-coalescence process was identified for Guangzhou, while Shenzhen was generally consistent with the diffusion-coalescence urban growth hypothesis.     

Evaluation of forestland use in mining operation activities in Turkey in terms of sustainable natural resources

Mining has been necessary for human activities and is conducted in line with this need. The location of mines must sometimes be where land use overlaps with other activities because the location of the mined substance cannot be changed. In Turkey, forestland are the most common of these overlapping areas. Therefore, mining has frequently occurred on forestland in Turkey—and worldwide. After the mining operation activities are conducted, the forestland are rehabilitated and returned to the forest administration. The examination of used and returned areas provides an opportunity to create an optimal situation between “mining for sustainable development” and “protection of forestland.”Accordingly, several questions, such as mining production amounts, degrees of social and economic development of the cities in which enterprises are conducting mining, the quantity of the areas they used for mining activities in forestland, the areas which were returned to the forest administration, operating license areas and operation permit areas, and the life of mining operation, were asked to the mining enterprises in Turkey through the “Survey Monkey” program in 2018. Thus, according to mineral groups, different land use rates were compared with the operating license areas, and the land uses for each mineral group were analyzed by considering the operation activity periods. The results indicate that the sustainability of the use of forestry in mining activities in Turkey has changed in a positive direction, particularly because of changes in mining and environmental legislation in Turkey over the last decade.     

Rural Residential Land Transition in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region: Spatial-Temporal Patterns and Policy Implications

Rural residential land transition (RRLT) dominates rural land use transition. Therefore, analysing the laws of transition and differentiation of land use is not only the basis for the differential management of rural residential areas but key to the sustainable use of rural land. This study constructs a conceptual model of RRLT using multi-period remote sensing monitoring data based on a comprehensive index method, ArcGIS, and FRAGSTATS landscape pattern analysis, among others. It also analyses the characteristics of the transition extent, transition trend, transition morphology, and transition intensity of rural residential land in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region from 1980 to 2018. The results show that, from a vertical comparison of long time series, the transition extent is characterised by a process of ‘slow growth—expanding start—fast expansion—slowing down’; the transition trend is characterised by an increase in the amount of cultivated land occupied by rural residential land, followed by a large number of rural residential land is reclaimed as cultivated land; the transition morphology is characterised by an increase in mean patch size and degree of irregularity, as well as aggregation; and the transition intensity is characterised by fluctuations in the process of ‘small-scale reduction—small-scale growth—substantial growth—small-scale growth and reduction’. A horizontal comparison of counties in the BTH region reveals a long-lasting and active growth trend in transition extent and transition intensity in the Beijing-Tianjin region, and a gradually slowing trend in the areas around the region. The transition morphology features of the northwest Hebei region are more prominent, and show that the scale of rural settlements is small, the plaques fragmented and irregular, and the layout more scattered. The BTH region should formulate a differentiated transition direction for rural residential areas based on the different functional areas, and play into the agglomeration, scale, and synergy effects of urban agglomerations. It should also coordinate and improve the human–land relationship in rural areas, and construct an orderly and densely distributed pattern of urban and rural spatial development with a reasonable layout and complementary functions.     

Business model innovation in cultural and creative industries: Insights from three leading mobile gaming firms

This paper contains an exploratory analysis of the business model innovations (BMIs) that firms in cultural and creative industries (CCIs) undertake along their life-cycle. Despite the role that creative and cultural and creative firms (CCFs) have in the economic development of industrialised countries, they tend to remain small and often fail due to industry-specific constraints and tensions, such as the lack of managerial capabilities and complexity in nurturing value chain relationships. However, there has been relatively limited scholarly interest into the specific conditions and processes that enabled CCFs to overcome these liabilities, and in particular into the identification of the business models they have adopted along their life-cycle. In this paper, this issue is analysed by using the concept of BMI, which sheds light on how the reconfiguration of the activity system through which a CCF creates, delivers and captures value enables the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities over time. This paper builds on an in-depth historical study of three leading firms operating in the mobile gaming industry, namely Rovio, Zynga and King Digital Entertainment. Three main results emerge from this study. First, in the ramp-up phase of their life-cycle, CCFs organize their resource architecture to build a strong and recognized reputation. Second, in the development phase, BMI is used to leverage new distribution paradigms. Finally, in the maturity phase, firms dedicate resources to innovate their product portfolios by providing platforms that support the development and testing of new creative ideas and solutions. Findings and implications are then discussed.     

The State as Both Regulator and Player: The Politics of Transfer of Development Rights in China

The conventional argument that the introduction of transfer of development rights (TDR) shifts the power of land use regulation from the state to the market is increasingly under challenge. In China, the state's grip on land is reinforced through TDR, in which the state is both regulator and player. This state-dominated form of TDR affects China in three ways. First, competing aspirations of different scales of government complicate how TDR is implemented. Although the central state promotes TDR to maintain a national balance of arable land, some local states instrumentalize it to expand their landed basis of accumulation. Secondly, TDR tends to benefit the state but not its people. It may increase the fiscal income of the sending government and lessen the land shortage of the receiving government, but sometimes at the expense of the interests of land users without land ownership. Thirdly, given the state's deep involvement in TDR programs, the key for China's TDR to protect arable land lies not so much in clear property rights or a fully fledged market as in effective checks and balances regarding the state's powers over TDR. These three observations attest to the embeddedness of TDR in the local political economy.     

Creative Cities,Graffiti and Culture-Led Development in South Africa: Dlala Indima (‘Play Your Part’)

Creative cities and culture-led development discourses have come under increasing scrutiny as elite-centric economic development agendas tend to trump ‘civic creativity’ ideals as imagined by Charles Landry. In South Africa, culture-led development and cultural policy tends to primarily mimic that of the global North, largely focusing on culture as a catalyst for economic and property development. Public art commissioning processes tend to focus on decorative projects as part of urban upgrading, which are often associated with ensuing gentrification and displacement of the urban poor. In contrast to focusing on these kinds of regeneration strategies, this article investigates Dlala Indima, a hip-hop-led graffiti project in a rural township in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. This article situates graffiti as a critical social and spatial practice to argue that this case challenges normative cultural planning paradigms. Dlala Indima's work is an alternative approach to cultural development by and for young people who are usually marginalized by the mainstream practice of culture-led economic development. The project challenges dominant creative cities and culture-led development discourses in three ways: first, it challenges the normative processes of regeneration; secondly, it grounds participatory practice; and finally, it shifts participation from ‘tyranny to transformation’ through the ubuntu of hip-hop, the notion of ubuntu being based on the communitarian notion of ‘ubuntu, ngubuntu ngabantu’—‘I am because you are’.