An evaluation framework for land readjustment practices

Land readjustment (LR) is an important technique used in a variety of countries to realize the development plans by converting rural land into urban land and providing city infrastructure. Although the main aim and the processes are similar around the world, each country has a different degree of success in the application of LR, which reveals the need for a comprehensive evaluation. However, the research to date has generally tended to focus on describing the main concepts such as the usage, principles, advantages, and disadvantages of the existing implementations rather than evaluating LR. A systematic approach, which provides an objective basis and removes subjectivity by identifying good practices and their indicators, is needed to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the LR process. In this article, we analyzed a wide range of ISI journal articles on LR to establish a framework and a methodology that will help evaluate and compare the national LR processes. The main contribution of this article is to build an awareness for the establishment of an internationally agreed methodology to evaluate the performance of a country's LR in a systematical way, which is currently not available in the literature.     

A conceptual framework for utilising VGI in land administration

Land administration systems assist citizens in identifying their rights, restrictions and responsibilities (RRRs) associated with land and property. However, delineating the spatial extent of all RRRs regulated in legislation remains a challenge. Approaches that have been used so far are mainly based on accurate surveying processes, which are untimely and too expensive. Previous studies proposed Volunteered Geographical Information (VGI) as a practical and low-cost method for fast acquisition of spatial data from volunteered contributions, mostly for countries where a limited number of land rights records exist. However, VGI could be beneficial for advanced and developing land administration systems in terms of collecting a range of RRRs which are not spatially well recorded and represented. A multidisciplinary review of the literature on VGI and land administration reveals the lack of a comprehensive conceptual framework for utilising VGI in land administration for the purpose of collecting a range of RRRs related to land and property. This paper investigates the main aspects of utilising VGI in land administration based on qualitative content analysis of available resources. The outcome of this research suggests that using VGI in land administration requires a comprehensive understanding of the complexities and interconnections of legal, institutional, technical and social aspects within each jurisdiction. These findings are merged to formulate a generic and innovative conceptual framework which serves as a basis for the process of collecting land and property RRRs from volunteer contributions.     

Land administration “best practice” providing the infrastructure for land policy implementation

Land administration systems, and particularly their core cadastral components, are an important infrastructure which facilitates the implementation of land use policies. While most land administration systems traditionally have a primary objective of supporting the operation of land markets, they are increasingly evolving into a broader land information infrastructure which supports economic development, environmental management and social stability in both developed and developing countries. While a great deal of attention is given to land use policies worldwide concerned with such areas as forest management, coastal zone management, environmental sustainability and managing the urban environment, less attention is given to the infrastructures which facilitate the implementation of the associated policies and programmes. Importantly, all these activities rely on some form of land administration infrastructure which permits the complex range of rights, restrictions and responsibilities in land to be identified, mapped and managed as a basis for policy formulation and implementation. As a result, there is an increasing interest in the concept of land administration infrastructures and their core cadastres, in the principles and policies concerned with establishing such infrastructures and in “best practices”. In addressing this need, this paper attempts to explain the evolving concept of land administration infrastructures, the concept of “best practice” and the concept of a land administration “tool box” of principles, policies, laws and technologies which are useful in reforming or re-engineering land administration systems in support of a broader land policy agenda.     

Impact of local payments for ecosystem services on land use in a developed area of China: A qualitative analysis based on an integrated conceptual framework

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) have increasingly been applied as economic incentives for improving ecosystem services around the world. However, due to difficulties in measuring and attributing ecosystem services provisioning, a land-based approach has been popularly adopted as a proxy for the desired ecosystem services. In this study, we demonstrate the impact mechanism and outcomes of locally financed PES programs on conservation-based land use in a developed area of China. We present this work using a PES-land use proxy framework that is examined empirically through a variety of qualitative assessments. Our framework illustrates that, within the ecological, socioeconomic, and institutional conditions of developed areas, land use class, pattern and function would be impacted by (a) conservation effect, (b) stakeholder response, and (c) institutional adaptation mechanisms of local PES programs, with multiple land use trends as potential outcomes. We examine the framework using materials from Suzhou, China, which has implemented a top-down, partly involuntary (ecosystem services supply side), land based PES program. Our results show that, expected land use class, land use pattern and land use function are observed in areas where the PES programs were implemented. We also find that the conditions of developed areas and locally financed payments mechanism indeed played a crucial role in promoting conservation-based land use in Suzhou.