Rapid land use change by coastal wind farm development: Australian policies,politics and planning

The siting of both onshore and offshore wind farms has caused controversy in a number of countries, particularly in Europe, which currently has the world’s largest array of offshore wind turbines. Like the rest of the world there has been a dramatic increase in wind farm development In Australia over the last two decades but none of this has occurred in the offshore environment. Australian wind farms are predominantly located onshore around the southern part of the continent where wind energy is high. This has specifically affected rural coasts where it has created planning and land use policy issues along with environmental impacts and associated public and political reaction. This paper examines the geographic spread, timing and concentration of Australian wind farms around the coast. It also examines the extent to which scientific knowledge on wind farm impacts is incorporated into different state and federal land use and environmental policy and legislative frameworks. The paper concludes that the rapidity in the expansion of the Australian wind energy sector has outpaced strategic land use planning resulting in a piece-meal and cumulative wind farm development on rural coasts.     

The impacts of population and agglomeration development on land use intensity: New evidence behind urbanization in China

The impacts of population growth and agglomeration development on urbanization are complex. They cannot be effectively disentangled by simple fixed-effect regression analyses. This study introduces the land use intensity (LUI) metric to measure urbanization, and further applies quantile and threshold regression models to examine the impacts of population (POP) and agglomeration development (AGD) on land use intensity using a sample of 297 Chinese cities. The results reveal the heterogeneous effects that POP and AGD have on LUI. Variation is also observed in the effects of POP and AGD on LUI by POP/AGD intervals. As POP increases, its pressure on LUI increases. In contrast, the accumulative effects of development are beneficial in restraining overdevelopment of land resources within a specific range. The findings suggest that understanding complex human and development effects provides valuable insights, references, and implications for urban development and land use policies, which can guide cities with greater potential land development space in reducing the risk of unsustainable urbanization. Policies are recommended for ecological construction, city grouping, and sustainable land use.