Governing Suburbia through regionalized land-use planning? Experiences from the Greater Frankfurt region

This paper explores the case of peripheral settlement growth in the Greater Frankfurt (Main) region within current debates on global suburbanization. Within Germany’s sophisticated spatial planning regime, Greater Frankfurt’s system of regionalized land-use planning marks an ambitious initiative to contain urban sprawl. Nonetheless, expansive peripheral settlement growth, and socio-spatial polarization remain distinct characteristics of the booming region. Analyzing state regulation vis-à-vis dynamics of capitalist urbanization and private authoritarianism, we decipher the complex governance arrangements producing this, at first sight, contradictory simultaneity. We uncover the rationales of local growth politics of autonomous municipalities and the region’s multiplied institutional fragmentation that undermine planning ambitions to contain suburban growth. We conclude by critically assessing the political economies of suburbanization in Greater Frankfurt and point to prospects for regional reform.     

基于农业可持续发展的湖南省乡村规划影响因素分析

[目的]文章从乡村规划的角度出发,以乡村振兴战略规划为指导,从农业可持续发展的角度探寻乡村规划的影响因素,以期对湖南省乡村阶段性规划提供合理的参考建议。[方法]运用DEMATE方法对湖南省乡村规划影响因素进行定性识别,并利用熵权法对湖南省乡村规划影响因素系统进行定量评价。[结果](1)城镇化率对乡村规划的影响度最大,其在所有因素中影响度和被影响度均最大,其次为第三产业从业人员、农业财政支出、规模农业经营。(2)结合中心度与原因度的分析对湖南省乡村规划重要影响因子进行识别,其中,城镇化率、农业财政支出、规模农业经营、第三产业从业人员、节水灌溉面积共5个因素为湖南省乡村规划实施的重要影响因素。[结论](1)经济因素是农业可持续发展背景下乡村规划的主导因素,以休闲农业产值、规模农业经营和农业财政支出构成乡村规划实施的关键因素,提升经济效益对湖南省乡村规划建设具有重要的推动作用。(2)从结果因素来看,贫困发生率、休闲农业产值、城乡居民人均收入比受农业生产方式、城乡资源分配和产业融合的影响较大,充分掌握重要影响因素之间的相互关系是巩固湖南省乡村规划结果因素效益的关键。(3)人口因素和社会因素是湖南省乡村规划实施的制约因素,加快推进湖南省科技兴农、特色强农、质量强农、开放强农建设成为其提高农业可持续发展能力和乡村规划实施的关键。     

Stakeholder perceptions and governance challenges in urban protected area management: The case of the Las Piñas – Parañaque Critical Habitat and Ecotourism Area,Philippines

The conservation and management of protected areas in urban settings has become increasingly challenging with dynamics over land use change in adjacent urban areas being highly relevant to, but at times conflicting with, the protected area. This study seeks to better understand the implications of land use change processes to urban protected area management through the case study of the Las Piñas – Parañaque Critical Habitat and Ecotourism Area (LPPCHEA) in Metro Manila, Philippines. Factors and processes influencing land use change and protected area management and the impact of stakeholders’ perceptions on protected area were analyzed. The urban protected area in itself has limited influence on its surrounding urban areas, as land use change in these areas is shaped more by social, economic and policy/institutional factors occurring within the context of urban-regional development. The study also found that land use conflict is evident in an urban protected area due to the competing ecosystem services derived by various stakeholders. This discord is deepened by the lack of coordination between land use planning and protected area management. Integrating protected area management with land use planning through legally binding instruments, specific timeframes and clear internal procedures can help resolve land use conflict for an urban protected area at the strategic or policy level.     

China’s megaregion policy: Performance evaluation framework,empirical findings and implications for spatial polycentric governance

Megaregion has emerged as a new dimension of global urbanization. A megaregion approach based on polycentric strategy is deemed to enhance regional economic competitiveness. Numerous studies have highlighted the economic benefits, celebrated the spill-over effects, and outlined the creative potentials of contemporary megaregion policies in different nations worldwide. However, further policy instruments require the knowledge about the achievement and failure of megaregion policies that seek for spatial, economic, social, and environmental efficiency and sustainability. This paper introduces China’s megaregion policy and proposes an analytical framework for performance evaluation from four principle domains (rational urban growth, economic development, social equity, environmental protection) at three levels (internal collaboration, integral development, and overall development). Using a case of the Megaregion around Hangzhou Bay (MAHB), we find very limited success of China’s megaregion policy. In particular, the megaregion policy only accomplishes the economic goal, and fails to achieve the goals of rational urban growth, environmental protection, and social equity. A series of mechanism based regressions are established and show that the implementation duration of megaregion policy: (1) associates positively with the economic growth; (2) relates negatively to social equity and urban rational growth; and (3) has no significant relationship with improved environmental quality. Institutional fragmentation, no unified spatial planning, and inadequate legislation at megaregional level are the underlying causes of the expected performances within the policy context of governance itself. We finally propose some possible solutions and discuss the implications for spatial polycentric governance. The demonstrated methodological framework can be applicable to other megaregions around the world. This paper is thus believed to provide some new insights for land use policy.     

江苏省空间开发适宜性与土地利用效率的协调性分析

研究目的:根据开发适宜性与土地利用效率的空间协调关系,判断江苏省县级单元的空间开发合理性状态。研究方法:基于经济社会发展、交通可达和生态约束3方面因素评价江苏省空间开发适宜性,运用数据包络模型测度江苏省土地利用效率。研究结果:(1)空间开发适宜性方面,高适宜区域主要分布在苏锡常和南京,中适宜区域位于苏中地区和苏北地级市、县(市)的城区,低适宜区域主要分布在苏北的非建设用地上;(2)空间开发效率方面,综合效率呈现南高北低的格局,高效率县市主要分布在长江以南区域,规模递增仍然是苏北和苏中地区投入产出的主要特征,但其建设用地投入存在冗余现象;(3)匹配关系方面,开发适宜性与土地利用效率协调类型以苏南地区的"HH"型、苏中地区的"MM、MH"型和苏北地区的"LL"型为主,高适宜区域普遍具有较高的开发强度。研究结论:江苏省大部分县市(区)的空间开发适宜性和开发效率是基本协调的,但部分地区仍然存在开发过度和土地利用效率低下的问题。     

Critical analysis of the official Greek urban planning indicators of private uses

The aim of the article is to review the official Greek target indicators, i.e. those standards that are included in the current planning legislation (Official Government Gazette 285/D/5.3, 2004), and are used for the planning of private uses, such as manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, offices, and housing. The article elaborates on the general typology of urban indicators and, more specifically, it addresses the methodology for the calculation of target indicators. Part of this methodology is utilized for the evaluation of the official target indicators that are currently in force. This evaluation is mainly based on the comparison of target indicators with the respective state indicators of years 2004, 2008, and 2012, and is carried out for each category of private urban uses separately. The article concludes on the inappropriateness of the values legislated as target indicators, and stresses the need for their immediate revision.     

Towards a sustainable capacity expansion of the Danish biogas sector

Promotion of bioenergy production is an important contemporary topic around the world. Vast amounts of research are allocated towards analysing and understanding bioenergy systems, which are by nature multi-faceted. Despite a focus on the deployment of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods for planning of bioenergy systems, only little research has addressed the location component of bioenergy facility planning. In this paper the authors develop a model for sustainable capacity expansion of the Danish biogas sector allowing for an identification and prioritization of suitable locations for biogas production. The model builds on a framework for spatial planning and decision making through the application of spatial multi-criteria evaluation (SMCE). The paper is structured around a case study including four Danish municipalities in order to demonstrate the power of the spatial multi-criteria evaluation model. The model allows a two level comparison of suitability, within municipalities as well as between municipalities. Criteria weights for generation of alternatives are obtained through an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) analysis, carried out among a group of Danish central governmental decision makers. We find that resource and production economic criteria are given highest priority followed by environmental and social criteria. In all four case study municipalities, the identified alternatives are compared through incorporating economic, environmental and social criteria. It is found that 4–6% of the municipal area is suitable for biogas facility location and among the best performing sustainable locations the potential of reducing overall production costs is 3% as compared with current biogas plants. The results of this paper can provide support to central governmental decision makers, regarding regional allocation of subsidies in the country. Likewise local decision makers can obtain important information for planning and decision support, allowing for a more inclusive and transparent planning procedure.     

Public participation and local environmental planning: Testing factors influencing decision quality and implementation in four case studies from Germany

Public and stakeholder participation in environmental planning is often assumed to enhance effectiveness through improving the environmental quality of decisions and enhancing implementation. We draw on the literature on participatory environmental governance in order to derive key participation-related factors that are hypothesized to impact on decision quality and implementation. We then outline four cases of decision-making processes in local environmental planning in Germany, representing a variety of forms of public participation, and what we suggest can be seen as four different pathways to ‘success’ in participatory planning. The case studies, recounted on the basis of stakeholder interviews and secondary research, are subjected to a cross-case analysis in order to examine the influence of participation in each case. We consider how key participation-related factors played out across the cases, and assess both decision quality and implementation against counterfactual non-participatory, or less-participatory, scenarios. In moving beyond accounts of ‘what happened’, and considering how participation changed the order of things relative to ‘what would have happened’ under different scenarios, the research highlights how very different pathways may lead to ‘success’ in participatory environmental planning from the viewpoint of process organizers and planners sympathetic to environmental issues. We conclude that, given the significance of context and surprises, planners and process organizers must be open to different pathways to the successful conclusion of participatory planning processes.     

Methodology to calculate the carbon footprint of household land use in the urban planning stage

The growing concerns of climate change require implementing measures to quantify, to monitor and to minimize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Nonetheless, most of the measures available are not easy to define or execute because they rely on current emissions and have a corrective character. To address this issue, a methodology to characterize GHG emissions that allows implementing preventive measures is proposed in this paper. The methodology is related to household urban planning procedures and considers urban infrastructures to characterize GHG emissions and to execute preventive measures based on sustainability design criteria. The methodology has been tested by applying it to a set of medium-sized municipalities with average GHG emissions from 6,822.32 kgCO_2eq/year to 5,913.79 kgCO_2eq/year for every residential unit. The results indicate that the greatest pollutant source is transport, especially in the issuance of street network design, followed by gas and electricity consumption. The average undevelopable land area required for the complete GHG emissions capture amounts to 3.42 m² of undevelopable land for every m² of urbanizable land and 9.02 m² of undevelopable land for every m² of built land.     

Experts’ perceptions of the sloping land conversion program in the Loess Plateau,China

China’s Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) is the world’s largest payment for ecosystem services program for improving ecological conditions and farmers’ livelihood. Communicating the SLCP outcomes across diverse stakeholder groups in ecological, socio-economic, political and institutional contexts can facilitate the effective implementation of the new round of the SLCP. Experts from various fields involved in the SLCP have developed good connections with governments, agencies, and farmers; therefore they can play an invaluable role in informing urgent policy changes. This study is based upon 24 interviews with the SLCP experts with the aims of assessing their perceptions of ecological, economic, political and social impacts of the SLCP on the Loess Plateau of China, and then gathering their policy recommendations to ensure that the new round of the SLCP would be implemented efficiently. Content analysis based on the grounded theory is used in present study. Judging from expert-based consensual statements from this study’s interviews, the main concerns about the first round of the SLCP on the Loess Plateau are that the dramatic increase in the farmer’s income and livelihood is mainly from off-farm sources rather than the SLCP subsidy, that equitable government compensation is dependent on the outcome of the SLCP, that the aggressive SLCP causes soil drought which have negative effects on ecological restoration, and that the stakeholders’ interaction could be improved. Based on the analyses of the experts’ interviews, the recommendations are summarised as follows: strengthening the farmers’ environmental awareness and vocational skills, establishing multi-source financial supports and flexible compensation mechanisms, establishing participatory planning that requires stakeholder involvement especially farmers and insisting that scientific studies on the ecological restoration of the Loess Plateau must be shared with local governments and farmers.