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.     

Promoting planning for housing development: What can Sweden learn from Germany?

In the years 2006–2014, urban planning reform was seen as the major remedy against housing shortage in Sweden. The present government has the continuation of such reform on its agenda, but as of yet has made no proposals; instead, other housing policy measures have been introduced.In light of the uncertainty as to the future course of urban planning reform, possible future steps can be discussed. This article accordingly investigates whether German urban planning law and implementation could provide interesting reference points for discussion of further urban planning reform in Sweden, and if so, what parts of the German experience should be the center of attention.The article covers three aspects of German planning that influence the uncertainty, duration, and cost of residential planning as well as social goals addressed through planning: planning law, focusing on facilitated planning procedures of German planning law, measures taken in the organization of planning authorities to make development planning more efficient, and planning-related city demands for affordable housing.The conclusions encompass proposals for the further reform of the Swedish planning process in the form of a facilitated and accelerated development planning procedure for housing projects, as well as the introduction of private initiative in development planning. Further improvements to the organization and incentives of planning authorities are proposed. More research is required into municipal demands for affordable housing in the form of inclusionary zoning; such research should draw on the extensive international experience of such zoning, relating it to a Swedish pilot project.     

Land-property markets and planning: A special case

Land use policy often intervenes in land-property markets. This raises a question that may have critical implications for land use policy: are these normal markets? This paper addresses that question: are land and property ordinary market goods, or do they lack some of the preconditions necessary for markets to work properly? We find that land-property has limited substitutability, due to the critical factor of location; qualified by location, land is limited and sometimes unique. These attributes make land and property investment assets risking speculation, warranting public intervention to mitigate negative social consequences. Land-property markets need market or administrative support to work, which planning provides through public and private agents. The paper reviews the different forms of planning and development control in land-property markets.     

A spatial land-use planning support system based on game theory

Spatial urban land-use planning is a complex process, through which we aim to allocate suitable land-uses while taking into consideration multiple and conflicting objectives and constraints under certain spatial contexts. Landowners should be modeled as players that are able to interact with each other so as to seek their best land-uses while considering multiple objectives and constraints simultaneously. Game theory provides a tool for land-use planners to model and analyze such interactions.In this paper, spatial urban land-use planning is considered as a game to model local competitions between landowners, whose players (i.e. landowners) of which play to pick the most suitable land-use for themselves. The game is defined based on the objectives of consistency, dependency, suitability, compactness of land-uses, and land-use per capita demand. In this paper, three different scenarios are designed for the players. In the first scenario, the players are greedy and only accept the most compatible land-use. In the second scenario, conversely, the players are fully collaborative and care about other players’ payoff. In the third scenario, the players are first greedy, but when they cannot achieve an agreement with other players, they change their attitude to become gradually collaborative for reaching the Nash equilibrium (NE). Furthermore, the dissatisfaction index (DI), which represents the number of unsatisfied landowners with their current land-use, is defined to compare the different scenarios. The proposed model is tested in a district located in District 7 in Tehran (the capital city of Iran) with 2710 parcels.Results of the first scenario showed that, at the beginning of the game, 50 % of the landowners were not satisfied with their current land-uses, but after 50 iterations, about 100 landowners were dissatisfied with their land-use and this scenario was not able to reach the NE. Results of the second scenario indicated that, in order to reach an optimized layout, 325 parcels needed to be changed. Also, after reaching the NE in this scenario, values of the objective functions did not significantly improve. So, lowering the expectations of the players would not lead to appropriate results. The outcomes of the third scenario provided appropriate results, which could be achieved when the expectation levels of the players could be changed during the game. Furthermore, the NE was obtained among the players and the objective functions improved by 20 % on average in comparison with the other scenarios.Moreover, results of the scenarios were compared with the optimized layout obtained by a genetic algorithm (GA) using different parameter values. Results of the comparison also revealed that the urban layouts produced by game theory improved the objective function values obtained by the GA in about 10 % and improved the GA’s running time in more than 85 %, on average in this research.     

Measuring urban sprawl and exploring the role planning plays: A shanghai case study

Measuring the degree of urban sprawl largely depends on the local context and available data. This research establishes a multidimensional index which combines city expansion, urban compactness and urban form to measure sprawl. Urban planning, as part of the state-led growth approach, has exerted dramatic impact on city growth in China. Recent studies have discussed the role of planning in city growth. However, measuring the impact of planning on sprawl, has not been conducted. Taking Shanghai as a case study, this paper builds a multidimensional index to measure the spatio-temporal characteristics of urban sprawl in Shanghai from 1990 to 2010. It finds that urban sprawl was more serious in 2000s than in the 1990s, and the sprawl also presents spatial heterogeneity within different areas of the city. While quantifying the role of planning in urban sprawl, this study adopts the Geo-Detector based on spatial variation analysis of the geographical strata in order to assess the impact of planning on urban sprawl. It finds that planning is strongly correlated with urban sprawl, in other words, urban sprawl is kind of a "planned sprawl" in Shanghai. The research concludes with future planning policies necessary for a more sustainable and compact development pattern.     

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.     

Urban green infrastructure in Europe: Is greenspace planning and policy compliant?

Urban green infrastructure (UGI) planning, based on certain principles, has emerged as a way to conceptualise connected greenspace in urbanised environments. This is achieved through the application of processes and approaches linked to policy themes to which the concept can significantly contribute. Taken together the processes, approaches and policy themes constitute the principles of UGI, which when adopted can promote, maintain and enhance quality of life in resource-efficient, compact and climate-resilient cities. In this study we explore the extent to which strategic greenspace planning in Europe is UGI compliant, as we hypothesised that the above principles are presently under-represented in planning documents and policies. This was accomplished by conducting a comparative analysis of the adoption of UGI principles in current practices of greenspace planning across European city-regions based on a systematic review of previous data and reports. The study found that many UGI principles and related concepts are present to some degree in strategic greenspace planning in Europe. However, gaps exist with regard to their scope and level of consideration. Presently, conservation emerges as the predominant task in strategic urban greenspace planning. However, enhancing network connectivity is key to the development of UGI, hence a greater focus on the restoration and creation of greenspace is required in the future. Based on our analysis it can be concluded that the advancement towards UGI planning is well established and progressing, although some areas are markedly under-represented. Strategic greenspace planning in Europe, with a few exceptions, requires further development to be effectively considered as UGI compliant.     

Environmental policy integration: Towards a communicative approach in integrating nature conservation and urban planning in Bulgaria

As urban areas continue to expand, the need to consider nature conservation objectives in planning is growing. Policy makers across Europe recognize that effective nature conservation requires an integrated approach to land use planning that includes relevant ecological and spatial knowledge. Although a number of such integrated approaches have been developed, many local authorities in Europe encounter important institutional barriers to this integration. This is particularly true for countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) like Bulgaria. The post-socialist transformation in Bulgaria led to intensified urban growth and local authorities struggle to find a balance between environmental and socio-economic interests. Meanwhile, the Environmental Policy Integration ‘principle’ (EPI) has been gaining prominence in Europe, aiming to address the trade-offs between environmental and economic incentives. Research highlights that successful EPI depends on institutional processes within different economic sectors and across governmental scales. These processes have not yet been comprehensively studied in the CEE and in Bulgaria. This article assesses the EPI process in urban planning in Bulgaria and identifies the institutional approaches that may contribute best to EPI in urban planning. Using the example of the “Corner Land” project in the city of Burgas, we discuss the key challenges that the local authorities face in addressing nature conservation in land use plans. The findings indicate that EPI is to a high degree constrained by the lack of an efficient communicative process across fragmented organizational structures throughout the entire planning process. While a procedural approach to EPI appears to be prevalent it is concluded that a communicative approach is urgently needed if the sustainability of urban plans is to be safeguarded and negative impacts on nature prevented.     

Urban crops and livestock: The experiences,challenges, and opportunities of planning for urban agriculture in two Canadian provinces

While many municipalities globally are currently undertaking initiatives to support urban agriculture, policies and zoning regulations can act as barriers, with the former usually not integrated with planning. Extensive research has been conducted on urban agriculture policies in the global South, but much less is known about associated practices and policies in the global North. This is especially true for the Canadian context and therefore the present study aims at improving our overall understanding of the urban agriculture situation in two Canadian provinces. Relevant policies, such as official plans or official community plans, alternate policy documents and guidelines, zoning by-laws, and animal-related by-laws were reviewed for 10 municipalities in Ontario and in British Columbia, all varying in socio-economic and climatological characteristics. Additional key informant interviews were conducted with municipal planners, community garden coordinators, and other municipal staff familiar with urban agriculture policies from six of the selected municipalities.In line with global trends, our results suggest that urban agriculture is becoming more widespread in the two provinces. However, even though all studied municipalities consistently support urban agriculture, they vary significantly in their approach, with some municipalities focusing much more narrowly on certain types of activities than others. Overall, community advocacy and municipal council support are the most important drivers in the policy process. Key informants expressed a need to bridge existing gaps between policy adoption and implementation of tools, emphasize public education and public awareness, create inventories of land available for urban agriculture, incorporate urban agriculture in the development review process, and focus on the commercial potential of the practice. Encouragingly, despite the many challenges that need to be addressed, we found that many opportunities exist that municipalities could consider when creating improved local urban agriculture policies and tools to enhance the urban food system.     

Influence of purchaser perceptions and intentions on price for forest land parcels: A hedonic pricing approach

A hedonic model was developed to analyze the market for undeveloped forest land in Minnesota. Variables describing in situ conditions, locational characteristics, buyer perceptions and intentions, and transactional terms were tested for their influence on sale price. The independent variables explained 67% of the per hectare sale price variation. Water frontage, road access and density, absentee ownership, future intentions, and financing arrangements had large, positive influences on price. Lack of a real-estate agent and agricultural land in the vicinity of the parcel had negative influences. A parcel's merchantable timber volume was not a significant predictor of price.     

Green infrastructure planning: Unveiling meaningful spaces through Foursquare users’ preferences

The design of efficient Green Infrastructure —GI— systems is a key issue to achieve sustainable development city planning goals in the twenty-first century. This study’s main contribution is the identification of potential GI elements to better align the environmental, social and economic perspectives in the GI design by including information about the use, activities, preferences and presence of people. To achieve this, user generated content from Location Based Social Network —LBSN— Foursquare is used as a complementary data source. This involved the construction of an interdisciplinary correlation framework, between the Landscape Ecology principles and the GI elements, that included the classification of Foursquare data into grouping types. The classification considered the potential role of Foursquare venues in the GI network. Valencia City in Spain served as an illustrative case study to test the validity of the proposed method. The results suggest that Foursquare can provide a valuable insight on user perceptions of potential GI elements. Moreover, the findings indicate that user generated content from LBSNs like Foursquare can serve as a complementary tool for analysing the dynamics of urban outdoor spaces to assess GI network, thereby facilitating more effective urban planning and contributing to the social sustainability of the city.     

Protection of coastal areas in Italy: Where do national landscape and urban planning legislation fail?

Italian coastal areas have been subject to strong anthropogenic pressure and urbanization processes over the past 60 years. Urbanization of the protected 300-m strip from shoreline has reached levels of over fifty per cent in some parts of the country. This article, by building on previous quantitative analyses and by providing some more quantitative data on the urbanization processes of coastal land at the provincial level, seeks to understand whether a con-cause that has led to a considerable urbanisation process is to be found in the way national landscape legislation has been designed, in its relationship with urban planning, and in the institutional and administrative fragmentation that characterise the management of coastal areas in Italy. After analysing landscape legislation and assessing its relationship with urban planning functions, following an approach based on concept of nomotropism the article highlights, for Italy as a whole, that national landscape legislation while seeking to protect and safeguard coastal areas paved the way for increased urbanization and development. Drawing on regional data on illegal development, the concept of nomotropism is also used to emphasise the impact that building amnesty laws have had on the practice of illegal development so contributing to increased urbanization processes.     

Urban development versus wetland loss in a coastal Latin American city: Lessons for sustainable land use planning

Urbanization is a primary cause of wetland loss in coastal metropolitan regions. Therefore, it challenges the preservation of biodiversity and the provision of key ecosystem services for urban settlements. These services include leisure and recreation, climate and water regulation, water purification, and especially alleviation of natural hazards. Tsunami flood mitigation is a particularly valuable regulating service provided by these wetlands, as recently evidenced during the 2010 tsunami that hit the central coast of Chile.The Concepción Metropolitan Area (CMA), located on the central coast of Chile, has experienced noticeable wetland loss in recent decades. Our study focused on the Rocuant-Andalién wetland, which has been particularly affected by urbanization. This wetland strongly contributes to flood control, and has provided effective protection against the CMA’s latest tsunamis (1835 and 2010). Based on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), we have quantified urban growth over the wetland, both executed and projected under the Metropolitan Urban Plan of Concepción (MUPC). Recent loss in wetland area by urban growth has been quantified using land use and cover change (LUCC) maps from 2004 to 2014, obtained from the classification of Landsat images. Prospective changes (considering the complete MUPC deployment) have been inferred by combining the MUPC with the 2014 land cover map. In addition, we quantified the observed effect and planned urban growth on the wetland protected area, geoforms and potential flooding based on the area affected by the last Tsunami. Results show that urban areas have increased by 28% between 2004 and 2014, while future increase is expected to reach 238%. In contrast, wetland area has decreased by 10% from 2004 to 2014 and is expected to decrease by up to 32 %. Thus, the MUPC is not contributing to the mitigation of wetland loss nor the preservation of its biodiversity and ecosystem services. Implications for coastal planning are discussed.     

Price predictors in an extended hedonic regression framework: An application to wholesale cattle markets in Ethiopia

Livestock markets influence income generation for producers, but also accessibility and affordability of highly nutritious animal-sourced foods for consumers. Despite their importance, the functioning of livestock markets in lower-income countries is poorly understood and rarely studied compared to more developed countries. This study analyzes wholesale cattle markets in Ethiopia using a uniquely rich large-scale dataset covering both prices and cattle characteristics in 39 markets (in both highland and lowland areas) over a 10-year period, and hedonic regression models structured to understand both cattle price formation and seasonal and secular price dynamics. We show that cattle prices are influenced by a wide range of factors, including proxies for meat quality, religious fasting practices, climate-based seasonality but also climate shocks and availability of grazing land, competition from animal traction services, and rising consumer incomes. However, the implied effects of these factors are often significantly different in highland mixed crop-livestock areas compared to agro-pastoralist lowland areas, emphasizing the dualistic nature of cattle markets in Ethiopia. The analyses help inform the systemic challenges that Ethiopia will need to overcome to meet rising demand for beef products in the face of sustained income and population growth, as well as the adverse effects of climate change.     

Urban consolidation,strategic planning and community opposition in Sydney,Australia: Unpacking policy knowledge and public perceptions

Australian cities are facing a number of challenges, including a significant growth in population, a growing housing affordability crisis, a greater concern for environmental issues (such as climate change), and shortfalls in transport and other urban infrastructure. In response to these challenges the promotion of a higher density built form has come to represent an urban planning orthodoxy promoted via metropolitan strategies across the country. Despite the dominance of the higher density ideal within policy rhetoric, its virtues remain the subject of significant debate. To date this debate has been played out in academic and policy circles, with limited recognition of the knowledge and perceptions of such policies held by the general public. Debate around public perceptions of higher density housing has been constrained within the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) discourse which works to position public opposition to higher density housing as either an illegitimate and selfish form of localised protest or a valid example of urban citizenship and democracy. This paper takes a step back from these localised debates around the value of higher density housing to explore public opinions of higher density housing at the metropolitan and suburb scales. Drawing on a survey administered across the Sydney metropolitan area this paper explores the extent to which the public is aware of policies at state and local levels which promote higher density development, the extent to which the public supports some of the underlying principles of higher density housing (such as sustainability, affordability and reduced urban sprawl) and the impact of higher density developments on their suburb. In doing so, the paper develops a typology of support/resistance for higher density housing and associated planning objectives/tools.     

Urban flood resilience,a discursive-institutional analysis of planning practices in the Metropolitan City of Milan

Flood risk is increasing all over the globe due to urbanization and the effects of climate change. Water managers and urban planners try to cope with flood risk by enhancing urban flood resilience. Three main discourses of resilience are engineering, ecological, and socio-ecological resilience. Whereas the discourse of engineering resilience emphasizes the use of flood protection infrastructures, the discourses of ecological and socio-ecological resilience advocate river restoration and spatial strategies to reduce flood risk. In this paper, we investigate which resilience discourse is dominant in the Lambro river basin (Metropolitan City of Milan), and how this discourse has been translated into institutions (rules-in-use) and outcomes, such as flood protection infrastructures or building regulations. Our discursive-institutional analysis is informed by the (politicized) Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, which highlights the role of discursive, institutional, and contextual factors in explaining the outcomes of strategic interactions within action arenas. It is shown that whereas bottom-up initiatives try to foster socio-ecological resilience, the engineering resilience discourse still dominates within the Lambro river basin because national policies and funds are geared towards hard infrastructure measures.     

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.     

Managing cities and resolving conflicts: Local people’s attitudes towards urban planning in Kumasi,Ghana

This study explores local people’s attitudes towards urban planning, and the effects of development benefits on local support for planning in Kumasi, Ghana. Kumasi is a rapidly urbanising city in Ghana where urban growth between 2000 and 2010 exceeded 5%, and where local support for urban planning has not been studied adequately. Based on Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly, Town and Country Planning Department and Ghana Statistical Service’s residential area classifications, household survey with 360 respondents were conducted in nine high, middle and low class neighbourhoods in Kumasi, in addition to interviews with six representatives from two planning agencies. Results indicated that two-thirds of the household respondents were positive towards urban planning and support urban planning. The household respondents were aware that more development benefits are possible from an inclusive and pro-poor urban planning. There appears to be correlation between development benefits obtained by local people from urban planning, and support for urban planning, indicating that development benefits impact people’s attitudes towards urban planning. Some of the main problems are social and spatial inequity among people living in different classes of residential neighbourhoods, and lack of locals’ inclusion in urban planning and management. There is a need to clearly address these issues, so that urban planning may get the support of local people which may lead to sustainable urban development.     

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.