Understanding value changes in the urban development process and the impact of municipal planning

An urban development process causes spatial changes and changes of associated property rights, and, as a consequence, the value of the property will change as well. This linkage between spatial changes, changes of associated property rights and property values represents an important element in understanding how property values change during the urban development process and the role of municipal planning as a value changing factor in the urban development process. The objective of this paper is to analyse how property values change throughout the urban development process, and further, to discuss the explanations for these changes by comprising the impact of municipal land-use planning. This paper presents a conceptual model showing how property values in urban development areas change during the urban development process and information about the extent to which value increases. The model is directed towards countries with a regulated land use, exemplified by Denmark.     

Industrial land price and its impact on urban growth: A Chinese case study

China is experiencing rapid progress in industrialization, with its own rationale toward industrial land development based on a deliberate change from an extensive to intensive form of urban land use. One result has been concerted attempts by local government to attract foreign investment by a low industrial land price strategy, which has resulted in a disproportionally large amount of industrial land within the total urban land use structure at the expense of the urban sprawl of many cities. This paper first examines “Comparable Benchmark Price as Residential land use” (CBPR) as the theoretical basis of the low industrial land price phenomenon. Empirical findings are presented from a case study based on data from Jinyun County, China. These data are analyzed to reveal the rationale of industrial land price from 2000 to 2010 concerning the CBPR model. We then explore the causes of low industrial land prices in the form of a “Centipede Game Model”, involving two neighborhood regions as “major players” to make a set of moves (or strategies). When one of the players unilaterally reduces the land price to attract investment with the aim to maximize profits arising from the revenues generated from foreign investment and land premiums, a two-player price war begins in the form of a dynamic game, the effect of which is to produce a downward spiral of prices. In this context, the paradox of maximizing profits for each of the two players are not accomplished due to the inter-regional competition of attracted investment leading to a lose-lose situation for both sides’ in competing for land premium revenues. A short-term solution to the problem is offered involving the establishment of inter-regional cooperative partnerships. For the longer term, however, a comprehensive reform of the local financial system, more adroit regional planning and an improved means of evaluating government performance is needed to ensure the government's role in securing pubic goods is not abandoned in favor of one solely concerned with revenue generation.     

Valuing the benefits of an urban park project: A contingent valuation study in Thessaloniki,Greece

This paper aims to estimate the non-market benefits derived from the potential development of a new urban park in the city of Thessaloniki (Greece). The city of Thessaloniki has up to now a very low rate of proportional green space per capita. On this context a large metropolitan park was announced, as part of a large-scale redevelopment project, but the final decision has not been made yet. In order to help policy makers to their final decision, an ex-ante valuation of the potential benefits of the park is carried out in this study. A contingent valuation survey was designed and implemented aiming to estimate the willingness to pay of local residents for the provision of this park, as well as to determine the spatial scale at which these values are assessed. The main finding of this study is that people living within 20 min from the reference site are willing to contribute a significant amount of money to support this project. Another interesting outcome is that the willingness to pay for this project was not considerably modified during a period of economic recession (2010–2013), which is mainly due to the growing public awareness of the importance of green spaces, as well as of the benefits of the planned park.     

Contingent valuation of urban public space: A case study of Ljubljanica riverbanks

The article presents an economic valuation of the Ljubljanica riverbanks area, which is an urban cultural landscape with distinct qualities of international importance. For this purpose, we combined a classical contingent valuation with a closed-form version of discrete choice method, where the protest responses have been removed. By using econometric analysis, we obtained the willingness-to-pay (WTP) value and established its determinants. It was ascertained that residents derived more utility from implementation of the targeted development scenario than visitors. Thus, a discriminatory contribution scheme similar to the one with respect to the mean WTP could supply substantial revenue for further targeted development, while still providing ample consumer surplus for both residents and visitors. The present analysis represents one of the method’s very few applications to urban landscape in Central and Eastern European countries.     

An innovative means of urban land development: A case study of Trichur in India

Summary

For more than seven decades, several Indian states have used the plot reconstitution technique in managing urban land development. Recently, Kerala, a small southern state, has experimented with this technique for the first time in a scheme in Trichur. The Trichur experience is unique in that it incorporates significant innovations over a somewhat similar method of land readjustment which is widely practiced in the Asian‐Pacific region. Formulated for complete cost‐recovery, the Trichur project incorporates the active cooperation of the landowners and officials, and is a time‐bound programme to complete all land development and building construction works within six years of the finalization of the scheme proposals.

This paper attempts to explore the use of this innovative means of land development in Trichur with a view to assessing the potentiality and constraints in its use, and identifying critical areas where further refinements would be desirable. Based on fieldwork in the state and intensive interviews, the paper finds the Trichur experience to be of great importance as a viable strategy of urban land development and management. The paper concludes with some recommendations on legal and institutional aspects, and stresses the need for refinements in the scheme preparation and information dissemination for transferability and wider application of the technique.     

Linking participatory and GIS-based land use planning methods: A case study from Burkina Faso

Sustainable land use planning is crucial for realizing the aim of food security and for combating land degradation in the Sahel. A participatory land use planning workshop was organised in a village in the eastern region of Burkina Faso to investigate land use problems, their causes, effects and possible solutions. Participatory research tools and GIS were combined to get insight into possible conflicts or synergies between different land use options as mapped by different ethnic groups. Pictograms were used to locate alternative land use options on the map, after which they were digitised for analysis with GIS. The workshop confirms the importance of integrating scientific and local knowledge to develop concrete options for sustainable land use that fit to local realities and aspirations. Local people are knowledgeable about the driving forces behind land degradation, they take actions to combat the effects of degradation, and they have concrete ideas about alternative land use options. The use of GIS proved its added value in the participatory process of integrated land use planning. The maps that were produced also facilitate discussions between community members, researchers and government representatives at the regional level, both regarding current land use problems and regarding alternative options as perceived by the local population.     

A review of spatial planning in Ghana's socio-economic development trajectory: A sustainable development perspective

This study provides a review of spatial planning in the context of Ghana's socio-economic development trajectory. Spatial planning has been integral to the economic policies of the country since colonial rule. Yet, its role has been overshadowed by the domain of socio-economic planning. Drawing from published literature, policy documents, legislative frameworks and interviews, this study reveals the different context and scope within which spatial planning has been implemented in Ghana, and the successes and failures thereof. While the colonial governments employed spatial planning on limited scale and for exploitative purposes, post-colonial governments have implemented broad-based planning grounded in the ‘genuine’ aspiration to promote a spatially balanced development. This study argues that post-independence planning has not been successfully implemented compared to pre-independence planning due to a myriad of factors including rapid urban growth, inadequate staffing, low capacity, lack of institutional coordination, political interference in planning, complex land tenure and evolving land markets among others. Consequently, urban centres in Ghana are beset with problems such as poor environmental conditions, poor infrastructure and service delivery, and uncontrolled growth; and these are inimical to sustainable urban development. The study lauds renewed efforts to transform planning in the spirit of sustainable development through the national urban policy framework and a proposed land use and spatial planning bill; the latter proposes planning based on spatial development framework, and a repeal of an obsolete 1945 planning ordinance that has underlain planning since. It is argued that if supported and harmonised the two initiatives present the best planning framework in the 21st century Ghana.     

Monetary valuation of urban underground space: A critical issue for the decision-making of urban underground space development

Urban underground space (UUS) has attracted more and more attention worldwide, but its value, external value particularly, is often ignored or underestimated, which will influence or even change the trade-offs in the decision-making processes of UUS development. This paper employed service replacement cost method (SRCM) to access the value of urban underground space. Since the precise estimate of the value of urban underground space is almost an impossible task, this paper can only provide a crude approximation, in other words, a relative magnitude of the value of urban underground space. The case study of Changzhou City in China manifested that urban underground space provided an important portion of urban economy, which reached up to, but not be limited to, 1.8% of its GDP. This paper should aid in giving urban underground space more weight in urban decision-making process.     

Agriculture and the city: A method for sustainable planning of new forms of agriculture in urban contexts

Contemporary cities are threatened by urban development decreasing the overall environmental quality and fragmenting natural and agricultural landscapes. As a result of this fragmentation the number of Non Urbanized Areas (NUAs) present in urban contexts is dramatically decreasing. These areas include cultivated land, Abandoned Farmlands, Grassland, Woods and Shrubs that are often located at the peri-urban cities’ fringes. Among NUAs, farmlands and other forms of urban and peri-urban agriculture provide all three major categories of ecosystem services, provisioning, regulating and cultural services. Recently, New Forms of Urban Agriculture (NFUA) have gained increasing attention from researchers for their promising multifunctionality. Incorporating NFUA into the urban environment will thus improve the sustainability of cities, taking advantage of the multiple benefits and services they can provide.This paper presents a method for the characterisation of NUAs in terms of their physical, ecological and social features. These areas are analysed with different criteria and related indicators structured according to a GIS-based Multi Criteria Suitability Model. The proposed model checks the suitability of transformation of the NUAs toward NFUA, thereby enhancing their ecological and social function as well as accessibility and overall connectivity. Different scenarios of spatial configurations for NFUA have been explored with a sensitivity analysis on the values of used indicators. The method was tested for the municipality of Catania, south Italy, an urban context characterised by a relevant shortage of public green spaces and services.     

Assessment of regulation of legal relations of territorial planning: A case study in Lithuania

Land management is inevitably linked to the regulation of activities of its proprietor or operator stipulated by legislation and documents of territorial planning. In Lithuania, as in many European countries, territorial planning is a key measure for the formation of landscape and the alteration of its elements. With the help of territorial planning documents, governing authorities has the opportunity to orderly regulate the layout of long-term stable elements of landscape and the sustainable territorial development. However, in comparison with other European Union (hereinafter – EU) countries, territorial planning system valid in Lithuania until January 1, 2014 is still “young” and having specific features with former countries of the Soviet bloc legal regulation. The system did not provided a consistent and sustainable territorial development mechanism: there was the lack of measures allowing to manage the development processes of residential areas and implementation of territorial planning documents (especially the municipal master plans) solutions for the creation of a harmonious functional spatial system. The aim of the present paper is to assess the regulation of legal relations of territorial planning in Lithuania and the EU member states. The assessment summarizes processes of the formation of a landscape during the territorial planning, introduces new opportunities to more accurately predict the results of the current process of landscape planning, and highlights legal and sustainable elements of territorial planning system optimization. As can be seen from the assessment carried out, one of the most important territorial planning objectives was and still remains the balance of mutual relations (hierarchy of plans) of territorial planning documents in shaping the cultural landscape to ensure the rational distribution of the land fund, combining a variety of activities as well as often different land users’ and public interests. Therefore, the implementation of the territorial planning reform of Lithuania capacitates for the transition to an integrated territorial planning, ensuring sustainable development.     

Exploring the mechanism of border effect on urban land expansion: A case study of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in China

Though previous studies have revealed the mechanism of urban land expansion based on different perspectives, the role of the administrative border tends to be ignored. Combined with empirical study and theoretical analysis, this paper attempts to explore the mechanism of border effect on urban land expansion. Firstly, we propose three hypotheses and develop an initial model. Then, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is applied to the empirical study. Based on the findings in the case study, we concretize the border effect and reveal the mechanism from a theoretical perspective. Our research indicates that borders have an indirect effect on urban land expansion. The indirect effect consists of the influence of administrative borders on medium and the impact of the medium on urban land expansion. The border effect is mainly caused by the influence of administrative borders on medium, while the disparity in border effect among cities and different years is determined by the impact of the medium on urban land expansion. Between 1990 and 2010, financial expenditure and the non-agricultural population were dominant components of the medium in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region (BTHR). The social fixed asset was an important medium when regional marketization and integration were at a low level. Although urban land expands in the limited space built by administrative borders, it is caused by cross-border communication among cities. Findings in the paper are expected to enrich our knowledge of the relationship between borders and urban land expansion and provide potential support for the delineation of Urban Growth Boundary.     

The intensity change of urban development land: Implications for the city master plan of Guangzhou,China

The Chinese economy has experienced substantial development over the last thirty years. This growth has resulted in an enormous expansion of China's urban areas and it has also led to a growing scarcity of land resources. Consequently, there is currently an urgent need to mitigate the conflict between the needs of growing urban areas and the shrinking supply of land resources. Understanding land-use intensity and its changes can provide important information to find mitigating measures for this conflict in the demand for land. Previous studies have found that increasing the utilization efficiency of land resources is one of the most effective ways to resolve this issue. This study focuses on the city of Guangzhou, which is an intensively developed megalopolis. A number of different data sources have been analyzed to find the characteristics and changes in urban land use in Guangzhou, including: Landsat data from 1979, 1990, 2000, and 2009; relative socioeconomic data from the Guangzhou statistic yearbooks; and the master plans of Guangzhou. The results indicate that the area of developed land has continued to increase. Urban development land intensity and its change were then explored using a Back Propagation neural network model of the city. Although the analysis revealed that urban development land did not have a higher intensity overall, it also showed that there was a sectional upward trend throughout the study period. Consequently, there is a potential to improve the land-use intensity of Guangzhou. A linear regression model was then adopted to explore the mechanism of land use change. The results reveal that rapid industrialization and urbanization have improved land-use intensity in Guangzhou. The per capita urban road area and per capita GDP show a strong relationship when compared with land-use intensity. Using the relative city master plans, the authors have argued that local government in Guangzhou has taken active steps to address land issues to promote the city's socioeconomic development; however, a scientific city master plan in the study area is still necessary to ensure the effective utilization of the city's limited land resources.     

An agent-based learning-embedded model (ABM-learning) for urban land use planning: A case study of residential land growth simulation in Shenzhen,China

A forward-looking urban land use plan is crucial to a city’s sustainability, which requires a deep understanding of human-environment interactions between different domains, and modelling them soundly. One of the key challenges of modelling these interactions is to understand and model how human individuals make and develop their location decisions by learning that then shape urban land-use patterns. To investigate this issue, we have constructed an extended experience-weighted attraction learning model to represent the human agents’ learning when they make location decisions. Consequently, we propose and have developed an agent-based learning-embedded model (ABM-learning) for residential land growth simulation that incorporates a learning model, a decision-making model, a land use conversion model and the constraint of urban land use master plan. The proposed model was used for a simulation of the residential land growth in Shenzhen city, China. By validating the model against empirical data, the results showed that the site-specific accuracy of the model has been improved when embedding learning model. The analysis on the simulation accuracies has proved the argument that modelling individual-level learning matters in the agent’s decision model and the agent-based models. We also applied the model to predict residential land growth in Shenzhen from 2015 to 2035, and the result can be a reference for land-use allocation in detailed planning of Shenzhen. The ABM-learning is applicable to studying the past urban growth trajectory, aiding in the formulation of detailed residential land and public service facility planning and assessing the land use planning effectiveness.     

Planning for social inclusion: The impact of socioeconomic inequities on the informal development of farmland in suburban Beijing

Informal development on farmland is not only a major problem facing thousands of people, but also a major challenge to land use planning. In the rapidly growing literature on informal land development in China, most authors claim that ambiguous property rights and the dual land tenure system are the primary factors involved. As a result, existing state-led land use planning responses to informal development are solely focused on strengthening the legal regulation of land development. This paper challenges this approach, on the basis of the theory of urban informality. By examining many illegal gated communities in suburban Beijing, the paper argues that the informal development of farmland on the urban fringe is the result of local grassroots groups spontaneously responding to socioeconomic inequities in the context of transition to a market economy. These inequities mainly concern distributive inequity, procedural inequity and contextual inequity in relation to land use. It appears that the ongoing market-oriented initiatives of the state government could worsen informal land development unless these socioeconomic inequalities at the local level are tackled. The growing civil society is another change to the state's control of informal land development in China's cities. A new land use planning system which has more concern for social inclusion rather than focusing on centralized control is imperative in China.     

Telecoupling mechanism of urban land expansion based on transportation accessibility: A case study of transitional Yangtze River economic Belt,China

Several studies have explored the drivers of urban land expansion (ULE), but disregarded the influence of distant spatial effect on ULE at a large regional scale. This study contributed to a tele-coupling relationship framework between spatial spillover of ULE and transportation accessibility to find the influence of distance spatial effect on ULE. Drawing upon land-use remote sensing data from 1990–2015 and transportation network data, this study assessed the relationship between transportation accessibility and ULE, and developed a second-order spatial autoregressive model (SO-SAR) to explore the spatial spillover mechanism of ULE in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB). The results find that ULE exhibits a significantly positive spatial correlation when the connection criterion of accessibility is 2 h≤hour≤3 h. The SO-SAR model results show that ULE is affected by the historical ULE, which presents a significant path-dependence effect. Moreover, the ULE in most local cities has a weak inhibition on the ULE of the surrounding cities where the connection criterion of accessibility is 1 h. However, the spillover effects of remote city’s ULE have a slight positive impact on local ULE due to the improvement of traffic accessibility from 2005 to 2015. In addition, openness, labor flows, institutional hierarchy, and economic structure had a significantly positive effect on ULE during the period 1990–2015 in the YREB. Policy reforms are suggested to encourage the development of integrated transportation and urban land use at a large regional scale in China. Moreover, there is a need for a mindset shift from cities competing competition over land to cooperation between the cities in YREB.     

Maize production and environmental costs: Resource evaluation and strategic land use planning for food security in northern Ghana by means of coupled emergy and data envelopment analysis

This paper applies an integrated methodology which is constituted of the following: (i) the Emergy-Data Envelopment Analysis (EM-DEA), (ii) environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), (iii) Value Chain Analysis (VCA), and (iv) Sustainability Balanced Scorecard (SBSC) approaches, -to support multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) for strategic agricultural land use planning, which could contribute to improve food security in northern Ghana. Five scenarios of land use and resource management practices for maize production were modelled. The business-as-usual scenario was based on primary data, which were collected using semi-structured questionnaires administered to 56 small-scale maize farmers through personal interviews. The dominant land use was characterised by an external input ≤12 kg/ha/yr inorganic fertilizer with/without the addition of manure in rainfed maize systems. The project scenarios were based on APSIM simulations of maize yield response to 0, 20, 50 and 100 kg/ha/yr urea dosages, with/without supplemental irrigation. The scenarios were dubbed as follows: (1) no/low input systems were denoted by Extensive0, Extensive12, and Intercrop20, and (2) moderate/high input systems were denoted by Intensive50, and Intensive100. The EM-DEA approach was used to assess the resource use efficiency (RUE) and sustainability in maize production systems, Ghana. The measured RUE and sustainability were used as a proxy for further analyses by applying the environmental CBA and VCA approaches to calculate: (a) the environmental costs of producing maize, i.e. resource use measured as total emergy (U), and (b) benefits from the yielded maize, i.e. (b i) food provision from grain measured in kcal/yr, and (b ii) potential electricity (bioenergy) which could be generated from residue measured in MWh/yr. The information which was derived from the applications of the EM-DEA, CBA and VCA approaches was aggregated by applying the SBSC approach to do a sustainability appraisal of the scenarios. The results show that, when labour and services are included in the assessment of RUE and sustainability, Intercrop20 and Intensive50 achieved greater marginal yield, better RUE, sustainability and appraisal score. The same scenarios caused lesser impacts in terms of expansion of area cultivated compared to Extensive0 and Extensive12. Meanwhile the impacts of Intercrop20 and Intensive50 in terms of ecotoxicity, emissions, and demand for resources (energy, materials, labour and services) were lesser compared to Intensive100. The implications of the various scenarios are discussed. The environmental performance of the scenarios are compared to maize production systems in other developing regions in order to put this study within a broader context. We conclude that, the EM-DEA approach is useful for assessing RUE and sustainability of agricultural production systems at farm and regional scales, as well as in connecting the management planning level and regional development considerations.     

Recent trends in the supply of land for industrial development in Hong Kong: A case study in planned decentralization

Summary

Although free enterprise remains the dominant characteristic of the Hong Kong economy, new land supply is controlled largely by the Hong Kong Government. Rather than establish a detailed system of development plans and controls, the Government has been able to achieve substantial decentralization of housing and industry through the location of new land release. The evidence suggests that industrial developers have been willing to build and industrialists to locate in decentralized areas, especially those close to the main urban areas. Furthermore, although vacancy rates are generally higher and rental levels lower in decentralized compared to centralized locations, the extent of the differences over time is not as pronounced as might be expected. Indeed, the overall strength of demand for industrial land, other than in the recent slump, has necessitated special policies to protect land for low‐density industrial users in decentralized locations. As planned decentralization approaches completion, attention is beginning to focus upon redevelopment in the older urban areas and upon the consequences of the Sino‐British Joint Declaration of 1985. Overall, recent land policies in Hong Kong offer the British observer some useful indications of the impact of government intervention in land use on existing property markets.     

Assessing lost cultural heritage. A case study of the eastern coast of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria city (Spain)

Land use changes have caused important losses of cultural elements around the world. While sometimes due to the impact of natural disasters, in recent decades urban sprawl invading coastal areas has intensified these losses. This process is one of the main factors responsible for the globalization of urban spaces worldwide, which implies a loss of cultural elements with heritage value. This is the case of the eastern coast of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria city (Canary Islands, Spain), which underwent major transformations from the late XIX century to the 1960s. This study evaluates the historical and cultural heritage lost along this stretch of coast. Historical sources were used to identify lost heritage elements, which were divided into four categories (military, industrial, commercial/services, and public infrastructure) and evaluated by 56 experts for six clearly defined intrinsic variables: uniqueness, identity, scientific, historical-cultural, aesthetic and social. Overall, the lost elements were given a medium heritage value score, with the highest valued elements tending to be associated with commerce/services. A link was also established between elements with the highest heritage value and the willingness to pay for them. The results of this work are of academic, social and educational interest, and can have a positive effect on the cultural sustainability of future urban planning.     

This land is your land,maybe: A historical institutionalist analysis for contextualizing split estate conflicts in U.S. unconventional oil and gas development

In the 21st century, the U.S. has experienced a boom in unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD). In part due to advances in technology, this rapid increase in UOGD has moved extraction practices into geographic areas that have previously seen little or no oil and gas development. As a result, conflicts over property rights have erupted—particularly in relation to split estate situations. To understand this controversy, we must situate it in the conditions which have shaped land use and mineral rights. We argue that past federal and state level governance decisions have created the conditions for UOGD conflicts today. Here, we utilize historical institutionalism (HI) to review the historical actors, processes, and institutions that have shaped how mineral rights have developed in the context of split estates in the U.S. We suggest that tracing this legislative and judicial history through HI is an essential foundation for exploring issues related to UOGD. Most importantly, we highlight these processes of governance as a bedrock for understanding spatial inequality inherent in current split estate law that grants the mineral estate dominance over the surface estate. We suggest that this codification of spatial inequality is problematic both in and beyond the context of split estates in UOGD.     

How imbalanced land development affects local fiscal condition? A case study of Hubei Province,China

Aiming at realizing the efficacy and fairness of spatial allocation of land resources, zoning is one of the most widespread tools adopted by governments around the world. However it also brings imbalanced land development which will lead to the "windfall-wipeout dilemma" of stakeholders. Local government regarded as the regional governor and economic driver, is an important part of stakeholders, and will fall into fiscal dilemma when the land development is restricted. In this paper, we discuss how imbalanced land development affects local fiscal condition based on the theory of farmland preservation externality and finance and taxation system. Taking Hubei Province as an example, the degree of imbalanced land development, and the relationship between local fiscal condition and imbalanced land development are quantified by employing a panel dataset of 88 local jurisdictions (counties or districts) from 2009 to 2014. The results show that: (1) The degree of imbalanced land development in Hubei Province is 0.260 with characteristics of temporal decrease and spatial increase from high urbanized eastern areas to middle, northern agricultural dominate areas to low urbanized western mountainous areas. (2) The imbalanced land development aggravates the local government fiscal difficulty, the higher degree of imbalanced land development, the more serious the fiscal condition is. Therefore, innovation of trans-regional fiscal payment on the basis of the degree of imbalanced land development can effectively address the local fiscal dilemmas and achieve regional coordinated development.