Institutional causes of urban and rural sprawl in Switzerland

Open space is a very scarce resource in Switzerland. The Federal Government aims to stabilize the use of settlement area per resident at 400 m². This paper starts by outlining the institutional system of spatial planning in Switzerland. Regressions then explain both the current level of land use per resident as well as the development of this indicator. Factors like cars per resident, the proportion of old people and the rural character of the municipality do increase land use per resident. Case studies show that there are currently hardly any instruments available with which to steer land use beyond the local level. It is concluded that incentives for local administrations should be introduced in order to limit urban and rural sprawl.     

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.     

The potential effect of national growth-management policy on urban sprawl and the depletion of open spaces and farmland

The debate over the effectiveness of growth-management policies reinforces the importance of empirical studies in this field, which has become not just relevant but also crucial to many places. Israel, through its spatial national-level planning, experienced especially during the 1990s, presents an empirical example that may be used to address a complementary strategy to the one that is most commonly used, as this paper suggests. This strategy is based on an examination of the future potential impact of growth-management tools proposed by national plans on the depletion of open space and farmland versus the consequences expected from the continuation of current trends. Accordingly an appropriate methodology is introduced for implementing this strategy.     

Uncertainty awareness in urban sprawl simulations: Lessons from a small US metropolitan region

Land use change modeling and simulation is a popular tool in land use planning and policy formulation. However, the outputs of land use change simulation are not always accompanied with information on uncertainty. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the inherent uncertainty in sprawl simulation, which is attributable to error in the input parameters and to limitations in our understanding of land use systems. To reach this goal, the paper determines sprawl simulation accuracy and uncertainty for a small US metropolitan region as produced by the CLUE-S modeling framework. The model simulates sprawl location in the region accurately, but the certainty of sprawl location projections decreases with time. This uncertainty in the simulation suggests that modelers should report uncertainty with their output over all time horizons so that, on the one hand, land use planners and decision makers do not place too much confidence in any single sprawl simulation (which could lead to unwarranted and expensive urban growth management policies) and, on the other hand, do not place too little confidence in sprawl models (which could have severe socioeconomic and environmental consequences). Thus, reporting uncertainty with simulation output provides planners and decision makers with a platform for more informed land use policy.     

Urban land administration and planning in China: Opportunities and constraints of spatial data models

China's economic reforms over the past decades have given rise to the development of a rudimentary urban land market. Although one cannot speak of a land “market” in the strict sense of the word, there is an urban land allocation system in which land lease rights can be acquired through the payment of a land-use fee. If the urban land market is to develop in a sustainable manner, new credible institutions need to be established that can safeguard greater legal security and transparency. For these purposes, it is necessary to establish a management system that can support the legal (tenure security), economic (leases, taxes) and broader aspects (spatial and environmental land use policies) of land administration. To make an urban land administration system socially credible and functional, land-related information should be registered and structured at a detailed spatial level, such as parcels. There is no parcel-based information system in China, but the country has developed a population registration system at a detailed spatial level that could be a starting point to develop integrated information systems, or a so-called “local spatial data infrastructure”. This paper reviews China's population registration system and their spatial units and presents a proposal for an information system that can be expanded or adapted to meet the requirements of an effective land administration system.     

Containing urban sprawl—Evaluating effectiveness of urban growth boundaries set by the Swiss Land Use Plan

Urban containment strategies are one of the best-known planning instruments for managing urban sprawl. The two main types of such strategies are greenbelts and urban growth boundaries. The boundaries set by the Land Use Plan in Switzerland have been applied since 1970. We evaluate the effect and success of this strategy by analysing expansion of developed land, change in number of buildings, and building density within and outside building zones in four Swiss municipalities 1970–2000. Our results show that the boundary restricted most development to building zones and promoted increased building density. Generally, building density increased in the building zones but decreased outside of building zones. For more efficiency and success, the political institutions should specify explicit goals for development inside and outside of building zones, and develop new instruments for guiding development outside of building zones.     

SEA making inroads in land-use planning in Brazil: The case of the Extreme South of Bahia with forestry and biofuels

In Brazil, incorporating the environmental dimension to the planning process is a challenging process. Planning has historically been carried without considering environmental protection concerns. The country's large development projects have engendered a discussion on the feasibility of these works given the conflicts with environmental policies. The strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is a tool that has the potential to integrate the sectoral, territorial and environmental perspectives to promote sustainable development, as shown by international experience. Its use has not yet been regulated in Brazil, only been voluntary initiatives, both public and private, have been implemented. This paper presents the structure and results of the SEA of the plans to expand silviculture of eucalyptus and biofuels in the Extreme South Region of Bahia state, in the Brazilian Northeast, in a context of sectoral planning dissociated from government guidelines for land use policy and environmental protection. It portrays a practical case of methodological proposal for the use of socio-environmental criteria to establish limits for land occupation by monocultures, for each of the municipalities of the study region, according to their specific climate, soil, relief and environmental preservation characteristics. Various alternatives were identified to ensure areas with greater productivity for small family farming and areas with potential for preservation. SEA helped to a better understanding of the effects of the expansion of the planting areas in each alternative, which was essential to help all stakeholders visualize the consequences of their strategies. Consequently, as results the SEA outlined a series of guidelines and restrictions for the various levels of government and the production sector. For instance, SEA suggested for Federal, State and Municipality governments that areas with better soil and climate conditions could be reserved for public policies to incentive the diversification of the uses of the territory, such as food production. SEA also suggests the adoption of incentive programs to establish multiple-use forests. The SEA recommended that the state government integrate its program for strengthening family agriculture with land-use planning criteria, based on cooperative systems The methodology employed has evidences to be replicable in other regions of Brazil and in developing countries.     

Property rights of urban underground space in China: A public good perspective

With the booming development of urban underground space in China, “fuzzy” property rights of this special form of land use type are not only the cause of ownership disputation and registration chaos, but also may seriously delay the undertaking of related underground land laws or regulations. China's emerging property rights issue of urban underground space, especially the delimitation of the surface and ground or underground, is facing such a challenge. This article aims to identify the property rights of urban underground space by using a practical method that classifies the underground space as economic goods, and to analyze attributes of different property rights of urban underground space within the theoretical framework of public goods. We use civil defense projects and underground parking lots as case studies. Both case studies are the most utilized types and controversial ownership cases of urban underground space in present China. Our case studies indicate that it is a feasible method to avoid the delimitation of the start-stop height of 3D property right vertically, and directly define the attributes of surface and underground property rights in line with the supply mode of goods. Our results show that the method proposed in this study can effectively solve the dispute of property rights against problems rising with unclear contract and lags in the legislation of urban underground space and clearly delimited the interests boundaries among different parties of property rights for urban underground space. Ultimately, this study may offer better insight into the utilization and registration work of urban underground space in China as well as reference for countries with similar property rights issues.     

Land use policy in China: Introduction

This themed issue of Land Use Policy builds mainly on papers presented at an international conference on ‘Land Use Issues and Policy in China under Rapid Rural and Urban Transformation’, convened by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China, in October 2012. The conference set out to share and promote new scientific findings from a range of disciplines that advance research on land use policy in China. The contributions to this themed issue provide conceptual–theoretical and empirical takes on the topic, around four main areas of interest to both researchers and policymakers: nation-wide land use issues, the Sloping Land Conversion Program, land engineering and land use, and land use transitions. Various land use issues have been associated with rapid urban–rural transformations in China, giving rise to formulation of new policies directly affecting land use. However, these have contributed to new land use problems due to the nature of the policies and the difficulties in policy implementation constrained by the special ‘dual-track’ structure of urban–rural development in China. In view of this, this themed edition makes a compelling call for more systematic research into the making and implementation of China's land use policy. It also emphasizes the challenges for further research on land use policy in China.     

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.     

Land change in the Brazilian Savanna (Cerrado), 1986–2002: Comparative analysis and implications for land-use policy

The Brazilian Cerrado, a biodiverse savanna ecoregion covering 1.8 million km² south and east of the Amazon rainforest, is in rapid decline because of the expansion of modern agriculture. Previous studies of Cerrado land-use and land-cover (LULC) change imply spatial homogeneity, report widely varying rates of land conversion, use ambiguous LULC categories, and generally do not attempt to validate results. This study addresses this gap in the literature by analyzing moderate-resolution, multi-spectral satellite remote sensing data from 1986 to 2002 in two regions with identical underlying drivers. Unsupervised classification by the ISODATA algorithm indicates that Cerrado was converted to agro-pastoral land covers in 31% (3646 km²) of the study region in western Bahia and 24% (3011 km²) of the eastern Mato Grosso study region, while nearly 40% (4688 km² and 5217 km², respectively) of each study region remained unchanged. Although aggregate land change is similar, large and contiguous fragments persist in western Bahia, while smaller fragments remain in eastern Mato Grosso. These findings are considered in the current context of Cerrado land-use policy, which is dominated by the conservation set-aside and command-control policy models. The spatial characteristics of Cerrado remnants create considerable obstacles to implement the models; an alternative approach, informed by countryside biogeography, may encourage collaboration between state officials and farmer-landowners toward conservation land-use policies.     

Ecosystem-based adaptation in cities: An analysis of European urban climate adaptation plans

Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) measures have been increasingly promoted in the literature, as well as in policies and practices, for their environmental and socio-economic co-benefits. The recent scientific literature has shown a growing interest to assess climate adaptation plans at the urban level, in recognition of the important role played by urban areas in addressing climate change challenges. However, little information is available on the combination of these two issues, i.e., the actual inclusion of EbA measures in climate adaptation plans at the urban level. This paper addresses this gap by developing a framework to analyze the treatment of EbA in urban level climate planning, and apply it to a sample of climate adaptation plans in Europe. The framework consists of a classification of EbA measures, and a scoring system to evaluate how well they are reflected in different components of the plans. The results suggest that there is in general good awareness in plans of EbA measures, and of their potential role in addressing climate change challenges. However, their treatment in climate adaptation plans at the urban level often lacks sufficient baseline information, as well as convincing implementation actions. The paper concludes by offering recommendations to improve future practice, in terms of enhancing the baseline information to improve the proposal and design of EbA measures, improving the treatment of co-benefits associated to EbA measures, and strengthening coordination with other planning tools. Possible future development of this works include the integration of the proposed EbA classification, and the analysis of a larger sample of territorial plans.     

Synergy between urban planning, conservation of the cultural built heritage and functional changes in the old urban center—the case of Tel Aviv

The old urban center of Tel Aviv, like other urban centers in the western world, is undergoing accelerated development processes. Together with the trend towards gentrification are processes of urban renewal and infrastructure development and increasing demand for land and buildings, all of which increase the value of the land. The difference between Tel Aviv and other cities in the western world, as well as in Israel, is its young age and its quick pace of change. The old urban center of Tel Aviv is unique in that it is less than one hundred years old and is changing rapidly. Tel Aviv, which in 1909 was a small suburb of Jaffa, has evolved into an independent city, which is today the center of economic and cultural activities in Israel. Tel Aviv's short but significant history, together with its rapid changes, creates its image as an active and vivid metropolis with embedded heritage values. However, rapid development brings with it dilemmas. On the one hand, urban planners, tourists and entrepreneurs identify the center of town with its historical nucleus and heritage values. On the other hand, the rapid development and need for urban renovation are clearly in conflict with the need to preserve Tel Aviv's historical values and unique qualities. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that conservation of built heritage and urban development in ‘Young Tel Aviv’ can coexist and synergistically support each other, and that the historical values have economic potential, which may contribute to urban development. Heritage values can be formulated and even artificially produced to promote urban development. Although Israel has many very old cities with universal historical values, the young city of Tel Aviv is at the forefront of conservation.     

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.     

Government intervention in city development of China: A tool of land supply

There has been continuous debate on whether the state can support market-based activities in the land market. It is widely recognized that land markets do not function by themselves, mainly because they are inherently imperfect; this imperfection provides foundation for state intervention. Under the Land Use Rights System of China, land supply is a powerful tool for intervening into land markets, and proceeds from land supply greatly contribute to local revenue and financing of infrastructure construction. The state, however, is not an impartial entity. Its desire to increase local revenue through land leasing has led to the oversupply of land and housing affordability problems in real estate markets. This paper, using evidence from Guangzhou, argues that land supply intervention is a two-edged sword in Chinese city development. It further claims that the state intervention is becoming gradually professional after the real estate market bubble in the early 1990s. Problems, such as structure imbalance in land supply, however, still have negative impacts on the sustainable development of Chinese cities.     

Urban agriculture and land use in cities: An approach with the multi-functionality and sustainability concepts in the case of Antananarivo (Madagascar)

Urban planners are increasingly interested in agriculture around cities and have to decide whether to maintain or not areas of agricultural land use within and close to growing cities. There is therefore a need for researchers to design tools to guide public decision-making on land use. Various approaches, originating from different disciplines, may be adopted in this respect. We designed an interdisciplinary research program in order to test two related concepts: the “sustainability” and the “multi-functionality” of agriculture. We show that these concepts provide a useful framework for obtaining appropriate knowledge about urban agriculture, which urban planners could apply in real situations. In close collaboration with urban planners, we applied an interdisciplinary research methodology, based on common farm surveys and territorial approaches, to the Antananarivo area (Madagascar). The main functions analyzed were the food production and environmental roles of urban agriculture. Two aspects of sustainability were assessed: the farm sustainability and the territorial sustainability, with expert scores. This approach identified a wide diversity of farming systems that performed differently, depending on their intra- or suburban location. The food supply function appeared to be important not only for fresh produce but also for rice consumption. The function of protection against flooding is now important and this importance will increase with climate change. A diagnosis of sustainability was made and discussed with urban planners: several farming systems and zones were identified in which agriculture was considered important as a means of maintaining or developing the food supply, employment and incomes, and even landscape or environmental quality. We also identified other areas in which poor production conditions and/or the negative effects of urbanization on agriculture jeopardized its sustainability. This methodology appeared to be useful for determining the most appropriate role of urban agriculture in the land-use planning of this city. Our study raises new questions on the subject and should lead to more focused research programmes. We discuss several points of interest and the limitations and possible extension of this method.     

Assessing the fragmentation of construction land in urban areas: An index method and case study in Shunde, China

The fragmentation of construction land due to decentralised urban development, disorderly mixed land use, and large-scale transportation infrastructure poses a threat to urban integrity. There is a need to quantify the fragmentation level in a consistent way for inclusion in planning-related decisions. In the context of China's urban sprawl, this study develops a quantitative and intuitive index approach that planners can use to analyse multiple fragmentation features of construction land within urban areas. The approach can be used in planning policy reviews for timely land-use assessment and can be integrated into urban planning processes for developing strategic land-use scenarios. The method was applied in Shunde, a typical urban area in southern China, and construction-land fragmentation and its impacts on environmental quality were analysed. The results show that the entire built-up area in Shunde displays a high level of fragmentation. Patches of industrial and rural residence have been identified specifically higher fragmentation level. The shortage of available construction land makes land consolidation within built-up areas very important in planning Shunde's future development. Moreover, the land shortage requires the progressive reduction of construction land fragmentation. The results of the study also indicate that although land fragmentation has been affected by transportation infrastructure and the existence of rivers and hills in this region, decentralised decisions from hierarchical local governance regimes have greatly exacerbated this situation. Shunde provides examples of typical land-use problems associated with quasi-urbanised regions in China; construction-land fragmentation is a greater determinant for the sustainable development of urban and rural areas than construction-land growth.     

To reallocate or not: Reconsidering the dilemma in China's agricultural land tenure policy

In China, rural land is collectively owned at the village level. Village officials usually have the power to reallocate land property across families on an ongoing basis due to demographic changes in the village. Realizing that frequent land reallocation and abusive land requisition will undermine economic productivity as well as social stability, the “Rural Land Contract Law” passed in 2002 explicitly reads that farmland tenure security must be maintained for at least 30 years since the last nationwide reallocation in 1998. The frequency and magnitude of land reallocation in Chinese villages have decreased as a result. However, failure to allocate land to the newly increased population often induced conflicts among village members if the security of land tenure for 30 years was strictly implemented. Administrative land reallocations then still continued in some villages to accommodate demographic changes in these places. Based on an almost nationally representative rural dataset collected in 119 villages of 6 provinces across China in 2008, this paper lays out some stylized facts about the administrative land reallocation after 1998. By analyzing the opinions of over 2200 farmers on the central policy of maintaining farmland tenure security, we are able to rationalize why some farmers support the policy while others oppose it. This analysis helps us to better understand the dilemma between efficiency and equity embedded in the current agricultural land system in China. It is further shown that social conflicts among village members may easily arise either due to administrative land reallocation or due to lack of it. We argue that this dilemma cannot be resolved effectively without coordinated reforms in household registration system which can help hundreds of millions of Chinese rural migrant workers to permanently settle in cities and release their farmland to those who stay in the countryside.     

Preserving and destroying soils, transforming landscapes: Soils and land-use changes in the Vallès County (Catalunya, Spain) 1853–2004

In this paper we analyse the relations between land characteristics and land use, and their evolution in the Vallès county (Catalunya) since 1850. We reconstructed in digital format the 1850s cadastral maps of three villages (Caldes, Castellar, and Polinyà) and those made in 1950 of five villages (the previous three plus Sentmenat and Palau-Solità). For 1999 we used the available cadastral and land-use maps and conducted field surveys. We evaluated the suitability of land for the various agricultural uses (winter cereal, alfalfa, vineyard, olive, and almond orchards) considering the different land-use systems of 1850 and 1999. Forty to sixty percent of the land was more or less suitable for each of the land uses. Whilst in 1850 land used for agriculture was 46% of the total area and 29% was used for forest, these figures turned to 28% and 53%, respectively, by 1999. Urban and industrial areas now occupy 13% of the total land area and 47% of the best agricultural land. In 1850, 34% of the vineyards and 23% of the area with cereal crops were located on non-suitable or poorly suitable land for these uses. This shows a much more strict criterion for the location of cereal fields. But it also shows how the land-owning class tried to prevent further social conflicts by leasing their least suitable land for agriculture to the landless classes. In 1850 in the village of Caldes, 85% of the cereal fields were on slopes less than 20%, but 30% of the vineyards were on slopes of more than 30%, and sometimes up to 60–70%. Slopes protected with stone terraces occupied 700 ha, 43% of the land in agriculture in 1850, and 80% of that area was used for vineyards. Building of these terraces, which were generally small, required some 120,000 work days, and was undertaken on relatively soft geological materials while they disappear on the transition to competent geological materials. These results show that land characteristics influence land-use decision making and historical landscape changes. However, the extension of agriculture to non-suitable land in 1850 reflects deeper social conflicts, and required a vast labour investment in soil conservation by the poorest rural classes. The importance of terraces within this landscape and the land-use alternatives are also discussed.     

发展权受限角度下永久基本农田划定中补偿价格的测算 ——以重庆市为例

国家对永久基本农田建立了严格的保护制度,各地也尝试构建耕地保护的补偿机制,但补偿价格的测算目前还没有比较科学的方法,多是结合当地财政状况和经验值进行估算.本文从土地发展权损失的角度,通过量化发展权受限的损失对永久基本农田保护补偿价格进行测算,为建立基本农田保护激励机制提供依据和支撑.