How to achieve best-practice integrated land-use and safety assurance policy for hazardous on-farm water storage

Communities downstream of hazardous on-farm water storages are at threat because of the severe consequences of potential dam failure. This threat exists due to inadequate development and integration of land-use planning and safety assurance policies in relation to private dams. Adequate policy integration is key to saving lives, public and private property and the environment downstream from dam failure. Whilst numerous studies have explored land-use policy and its relationship to safety, there has been limited attention to the safety risk posed by dams above increased housing development. Thus, this paper aims to explore the interrelated land-use policy and engineering issues associated with planning for and assuring safety of hazardous farm dams involving land developments and how best to integrate the policies. The extent of this problem is demonstrated in the Australian context but also has international relevance. Key guidance on the design of best-practice integrated land-use planning and safety assurance policy is provided based on (1) a comparative review of policy and practice in a wide range of different jurisdictions in Australia against indicative evidence of policy performance to determine best-practice policy elements for integration, and (2) development of a cost-effective flood safety review/design tool to help policymakers and planners with the integration process as well as minimising cost burdens to dam owners. This guidance follows on from previous research reported in this journal to help jurisdictions world-wide address the threats associated with farm dams and land developments within catchments.     

International perspectives on future land use

The different approaches that other countries take to land use reflect many national variables, including planning systems, institutional structures, socio-cultural characteristics, population pressures and environmental priorities. Literature reviews of relevant land-use issues in Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Sweden provided the background material for this paper. Other European countries appear to offer models of more pro-active and indicative land-use planning, in contrast to the adversarial system in the UK, and a much stronger regional focus. This seems to have made it easier to implement other policies, for example on renewable energy. Experience with liberalisation of agricultural markets, and the promotion of environmentally sustainable farming are both relevant to an increasingly polarised agricultural sector in the UK. Cutting across all these themes is a reflection on governance of land use. Of the countries considered, Sweden's focus on environmental sustainability, international responsibility and long-term consistency of direction appears to be most closely aligned to the coming land-use challenges. When drawing conclusions from this review it is important to bear in mind the effect of differences in bio-geographic factors, socio-economic conditions and political culture, both in other countries and within the UK.     

Land-use change in the ‘edgelands’: Policies and pressures in London's rural–urban fringe

Green Belt policies have helped to create chaotic landscapes at the rural–urban interfaces of the United Kingdom's largest cities. Their prime functions, to control urban sprawl and preserve an encircling green girdle to separate the urban from the open countryside, have created ‘edgelands’ that have been remarkably dynamic despite relatively strong controls on certain types of development. A detailed case study of one part of London's Metropolitan Green Belt, drawing upon analysis of planning registers, reveals long-term trends in land-use change linked to the development controls operated within the context of the Green Belt and the adjacent built-up area. This paper also outlines the history of the Green Belt policy in the United Kingdom (UK) and discusses recently proposed policy changes that have provoked ongoing debate about this form of control on urban sprawl and its consequences for the land use of Green Belts and the edgelands.     

British discretion in Dutch planning: Establishing a comparative perspective for regional planning and local development in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom

Regional planning and development is continuing to take an important role in planning agendas throughout Europe. In the United Kingdom (UK), the planning system has been reformed during the last decades, marking a noticeable shift from a development-led towards a more plan-led system. In the Netherlands, strictly regulated growth-control policies have been abandoned to some degree, in favor of more decentralized planning policies featuring negotiated development. Dutch planners have been specifically interested in a more British approach, that is, a more discretionary and development-led type of approach to spatial planning. In this paper, we will discuss current efforts in Dutch regional planning to adopt new principles for planning delivery and will provide a comparative perspective between spatial planning in the UK and the Netherlands. This paper discusses the changing structure of planning delivery in both countries. At the same time, it establishes a framework for identifying critical lessons for Dutch regional planning practice as opposed to planning in the UK. Three characteristics are pivotal for the comparison: (1) the establishment of comprehensive principles for project coordination; (2) options for the settlement of planning gain, packaging interests, and regional redistribution; and (3) the institution for development-oriented planning and discretion for planning decisions. The evidence used is based on a literature review of recent debates in both countries and illustrative cases, including the Dutch ‘Heart of the Heuvelrug’ plan.     

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.     

To populate or preserve? Evolving political-demographic and environmental paradigms in Israeli land-use policy

There has been a recent proliferation of national land-use policies that emphasize protecting open space and ecosystem integrity. However, countries grappling with internal political conflict, or that are engaged in military conflicts with neighboring countries, have priorities that focus on control of land in areas where state sovereignty is perceived to be threatened. These two concerns, political-demographic control and environmental protection, create very different paradigms for how to think about open space policy. The objective of this paper is to consider the impact of competing paradigms in land-use policy formulation and implementation—one that encourages sprawl and the other that encourages compact development and the preservation of open space. We use Israel as a case study where both political demography and environmental land-use paradigms are currently influencing policy and planning. We explore the historical evolution of both land-use paradigms and consider how they are currently competing in the formulation and execution of land-use policy decisions. We consider how these distinct priorities are playing out in current discourse and policy implementation, and characterize the past, current and prospective future physical outcomes of policies on the landscape. Our goal is to alert policy makers and land-use scholars of the subtle and contradictory influence of political-demographic land-use priorities with regard to their potential impact on the successful implementation of environmental policies. The Israeli case study is indicative of a diversity of countries that have a history of political-demographic land-use policies, but have also begun to adopt environmentally motivated policies.     

Retail planning policies in Scottish structure plans

Summary

This paper examines in detail the policy responses of planners, as seen in structure plan policy statements, to the challenge of a dynamic retail sector. The spatial scale of Scotland is taken to rectify the omission in previous work on planning and retailing which has been mainly Anglo‐centric in focus. Common themes from the structure plans are identified and analysed and the Scottish experience compared to the wider British context. The process of plan monitoring and policy review is examined to see if planners are meeting this challenge of retailing in a constructive way. The question is posed as to whether the traditional approach to retail planning, as exemplified in the structure plans, can now be maintained in the light of persistent attacks on the grounds of inadequacy and inappropriateness.     

2013年土地科学研究重点进展评述及2014年展望——土地利用与规划分报告

研究目的:总结2013年国内外土地利用与规划方面的研究进展,展望2014年国内研究趋势。研究方法:文献调研法。研究结果:2013年国外土地利用与规划研究侧重在土地利用动态监测、土地利用变化效应以及土地利用规划理念和方法等方面;国内研究主要集中在土地利用调查与动态监测、土地评价、土地利用变化效应和模拟以及土地利用规划编制和评估等方面。研究结论:构建国土空间规划体系、建立"生产、生活、生态"的"三生"空间分类、强化土地利用的生态环境保护和土地利用效率评价,将是2014年及未来土地利用与规划领域着重研究的方向。     

2019年土地科学研究重点进展评述及2020年展望 ——土地资源利用与空间规划分报告

研究目的:总结2019年国内外土地资源利用与空间规划方面的研究进展,展望2020年国内研究趋势.研究方法:文献调查法.研究结果:2019年国内研究主要集中在土地资源的自然与生态属性、低碳土地利用、土地利用转型、自然生态空间用途管制制度、智慧型空间规划、国土空间规划体系等方面;国外研究侧重于土地资源配置、土地质量、土地利用变化、土地规划的公众参与技术与生态影响等方面.研究结论:2019年土地资源利用与空间规划在自然资源资产、国土空间用途管制、国土空间规划、土地资源资产核算、土地生态系统服务价值评价和土地利用转型潜力评价等基础理论和实践研究方面取得了一定进展.2020年及未来将重点关注自然资源优化配置、土地利用转型、自然资源资产、资源集约利用、国土空间用途管制、自然生态空间管制、国土空间规划编制技术、村庄规划等研究方向.     

Spatio-temporal dynamic patterns of farmland and rural settlements in Su–Xi–Chang region: Implications for building a new countryside in coastal China

This paper analyzes the spatio-temporal dynamic patterns of farmland and rural settlements from 1990 to 2006 in Su–Xi–Chang region of coastal China experienced dramatic economic and spatial restructuring, using high-resolution Landsat TM (Thematic Mapper) data in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2006, and socio-economic data from both research institutes and government departments. To examine the spatial patterns of farmland and rural settlements and their change over time, a set of pattern metrics that capture different dimensions of land fragmentation was identified. The outcomes indicated that, to a large extent, land-use change from 1990 to 2006 in Su–Xi–Chang region was characterized by a serious replacement of farmland with urban and rural settlements, construction land, and artificial ponds. Population growth, rapid industrialization and urbanization are the major driving forces of farmland change, and China's economic reforms played an important role in the transformation of rural settlements. China's “building a new countryside” is an epoch-making countryside planning policy. The focuses of building a new countryside in coastal China need to be concentrated on protecting the farmland, developing modern agriculture, and building “clean and tidy villages.” Rural construction land consolidation and cultivated land consolidation are two important ways to achieve the building objectives. The authors argue that it is fundamental to lay out a scientific urban–rural integrated development planning for building a new countryside, which needs to pay more attention to making the rural have certain functions serving for the urban. In addition, the cultural elements of idyll and the rural landscape need to be reserved and respected in the process of building a new countryside in coastal China, instead of building a new countryside, which looks more like a city.     

Rural housing in the UK : Current policy issues

This Viewpoint outlines the general issues which arise in relation to rural housing in the UK, focusing in particular on the policy dilemma of countryside protection versus housing provision. Several related issues also arise, the most notable of which is the key role which housing markets play in the social restructuring of the countryside under current policies. The implications of these changes for low-income groups in the countryside are also considered.     

Switzerland’s transition from flood defence to flood-adapted land use–A policy coordination perspective

This contribution examines Switzerland’s shift towards integrated flood risk management from a policy coordination perspective. The study applies a heuristic framework of policy coordination to explore how adaption needs promoted cross-sectoral policy coordination between hydraulic engineering and land use planning and enhanced coherence in flood policies targeting extreme flood events. To account for the temporal dimension in policy coordination, the article traces Swiss flood policies back to the early 1800s and distinguishes four phases of policy coordination. Across the four periods, the analysis focuses on (a) the drivers of policy coordination, (b) the manifestation of policy coordination in terms of policy frames, goals, instruments and subsystem involvement, and (c) the performance of policy coordination. Complemented by an in-depth case study of cross-sectoral flood policies in the Swiss canton Nidwalden findings show that the coordination between flood and land use policies has primarily been driven by three factors: (i) extreme floods as focusing events, (ii) an increasing problem pressure, and (iii) strategic reorientations in flood and land use policies. Today, flood risk management in Switzerland displays a high degree of sectoral interplay between hydraulic engineering and spatial planning. By fostering flood-adapted land uses Switzerland’s coordinated flood policies reduce the vulnerability to uncertain future changes in flood risk and strengthen the country’s capacities to mitigate damage in extreme floods events.     

Prices,policies, and place: What drives greenfield development?

While the recent global financial crisis heightened awareness of the linkages between global financial capital and urban spatial pattern, the timing of urban development – largely thought to be market driven – is not fully understood. Parcel-level studies of urban land-use change, which often use hazard models to investigate if and when development occurs, offer an opportunity to juxtapose the extent to which decisions to develop individual plots of farmland into housing are driven by market forces, the unique characteristics of the land and its intraurban location, or policies such as transportation infrastructure and municipal annexation. Using residential completion data in the Phoenix, Arizona region from 1992 to 2014, a period of dramatic commodity, fuel, and home price swings, and land cover imagery, we develop a parcel-level hazard model to gauge the relative impacts of market, policy, and place-based drivers of land change. We find limited evidence of induced development associated with freeway planning, that annexation and development are closely linked and moreso during economic booms, high fuel prices spur development in the region's core, and agricultural and urban land rents affect the timing of development. This study advances our understanding of development decision- making, policy impacts, and urban land-use change modeling and provides an empirical connection between local and global drivers of Greenfield development.     

Historical and critical review of spatial and transport planning in the Netherlands

The spatial and transport planning have geographical, economic and environmental constraints and are closely linked to the social and political conditions of each country as well as are well under the influence of globalization forces. This makes it all a highly complex issue and requires a better understanding of the background and products of policies and the interaction of a number of key determinant factors in policy-making and implementation. Within this large picture, the long-term review of different cases may provide useful discussions for the guidance and reinforcement of policy assessment. Therefore, the primary aim of this study is to critically analyze the planning in the Netherlands through examining the issues of governing structure, spatial policy-making, and transport re-structuring. The leading characteristic of the Netherlands is the scarcity of usable land that has raised high and early awareness on spatial development issues and its connections with natural and environmental protection. The functioning of planning systems, and policy aims and measures within the planning documents since the end of the 1950s, have been reviewed and the key planning concepts have been examined by bringing in general and current discussions on the issues. The success and failure in past policy-making and implementations have been highlighted. The policies of the current spatial and transport planning documents have been evaluated by their main policy titles such as compact city, network of cities and sustainable mobility. There is a general consensus that the Netherlands has been developed into a well planned and organized society and has designed leading policies such as the ABC firm location policy. However, a number of issues such as increasing vehicle kilometres, urban decline and sprawl, and some gaps in policy making remain to be the critical planning challenges.     

Administrative restructuring and land-use intensity—A spatial explicit perspective

BackgroundThe rapid industrialization, urbanization, and population explosion have ushered forth the era focusing on the efficient use of land resources to achieve sustainable development. “Intensive Land-Use Plan” was therefore proposed in the context of shifting the focus from “incremental planning” to “inventory planning” in rapidly developing countries, particularly China.MethodsWe develop our framework based on the hypothesis that administrative status has a spatial effect on intensive land use and explore this effect dynamically. In the first step, we summarized the different degrees of land-use intensity based on different administrative status (i.e., urban district, suburban district, county, county-level city, and district) and make categorizations. We also devised spatial models in multiple strategies embedded with different spatial weight matrices to the underlying driving forces using Wuhan agglomeration as the case.ResultsResults show that 1) urbanization, industrial structure, and retail sales of consumer goods are highly correlated with land-use intensity change, with all factors being positive; 2) the influences of different administrative status exist and strengthened in the past decade; the spatial interaction is greater when urban district is adjacent to district in the prefecture city in 2005 and 2015. In turn, this finding affirms the phenomenon that the administrative power has gradually strengthened, and the city centers are the most vibrant areas to compete for higher land-use efficiency.RecommendationThe emergence of diversified types of counties, such as urban districts and county-level cities, has further pressed the necessity to embed administrative influence in spatial regression. These findings provide theoretical basis for understanding the administrative dimension in new urbanization and have important policy implications on administrative adjustment and intensive land use.     

英国城乡规划体系及农村规划管理的经验与启示

[目的]对英国城乡规划体系及农村规划管理的发展历程、基本经验和主要特点进行归纳总结,分析其对我国当前加强农业与农村规划管理、推进城乡统筹发展、促进新型城镇化建设的启示和借鉴意义。[方法]基于赴英国进行城乡规划体系及农村规划管理与保护方面的实地考察、培训以及相关文献的综述分析。[结果]英国城乡规划体系建立缘于其解决城镇化发展过程所产生的"大城市病"问题,其发展经历了多次修改和调整,目前形成了"区域空间战略"和"地方发展框架"两级规划结构;英国的城乡规划体系十分注重对农村地区和小城镇的规划管理和保护,形成了一系列重要规则和制度。[结论]英国在城镇化发展过程中,完整地保存了传统乡村的历史建筑、风土文化和景观环境,值得充分学习和借鉴。当前,在统筹城乡发展和推进新型城镇化建设过程中,应充分发挥规划的引导作用和社会公众的参与作用,高度重视对农业与农村的保护和规划管理,同时要注重基于中国国情的再创新。     

Modeling the effects of tourism and land regulation on land-use change in tourist regions: A case study of the Lijiang River Basin in Guilin,China

To a large extent, tourism development triggers an economic boost in certain regions. However, given its complex and dynamic forms of land use, tourism development also causes changes to land-use demands and patterns in tourist regions, which directly and indirectly interfere with local environments. The development of tourist regions must achieve a series of trade-offs to meet sustainability goals. This paper discusses the effects of tourism on land-use change and how land regulation policies integrate tourism development with land use. We employed a system dynamic-cellular automata hybrid model using the Lijiang River Basin as an example to translate tourism-affected land dynamics into spatial distributions and project their likely future changes under various development scenarios. We determined three major outcomes. (1) Tourism development causes a quantitatively increasing demand for construction land. With effective spatial regulations, the expansion of construction land does not necessarily suggest the loss of eco-land; rather, land-use pressures accordingly shift to cropland. Under these circumstances, land regulation policies help to balance land demand and optimize land-use patterns. (2) Tourism development causes a continuous spatial interference with landscapes. Land regulation policies have the positive and active effect of ignoring this interference rather than counteracting it. (3) The strict implementation of land regulation policies does not necessarily improve land-use patterns. Flexible policies achieve a better balanced land-use pattern than a combination of individual strict policies. However, the former cannot reduce as much vulnerability as the latter. Hence, policy assembly represents a trade-off with regards to balancing land demands, and it should vary based on regional land-use patterns and targets.     

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.     

Exploring the influence of urban form on land-use efficiency from a spatiotemporal heterogeneity perspective: Evidence from 336 Chinese cities

Effective land-use is a prerequisite for sustainable urbanization. Land-use efficiency is intimately related to factors such as economic growth and industrial policies; however, limited studies focus on the spatial effects of urban form on land-use efficiency. Our empirical analysis includes 336 Chinese prefecture-level cities located in 31 provinces and four regions. We use five landscape metrics (patch density, mean patch size, edge density, mean shape index and patch cohesion index) to characterize urban form. Overall, China’s urban form metrics demonstrate significant regional differences from 2000 to 2015. Furthermore, land-use efficiency also demonstrates significant regional disparities. We prove the importance of the spatial effects of urban form on land-use efficiency using spatial regression models. Moreover, the impact of urban form metrics on land-use efficiency is sensitive to regional heterogeneity and city sizes. An urban form characterized by high patch density and large urban patch size is not conducive to increases in land-use efficiency in small cities although it is conducive to such increases in large cities. This research facilitates policymaking in the areas of spatial regulation and spatial planning in connection with national land-use.     

A cellular automata-based land-use model as an integrated spatial decision support system for urban planning in developing cities: The case of the Bogotá region

Bogotá and the 17 neighboring municipalities make up one of the biggest metropolitan areas in Latin America. However, despite strong functional interactions within the area, there is no official government body at this level in charge of coordinating authorities and providing solutions to the wide variety of issues arising in the regional urban land system. Aiming at providing an insight on future land-use developments linked to new transport infrastructures and at offering a tool to support territorial decision-making, this paper presents a cellular automata-based (CA) model based in Metronamica® software, that allows testing different scenarios based on potential land-use policies, environmental suitability and transport alternatives.There has not been, so far, an urban planning tool that accounts for the complexities of this region. CA-based land-use simulations constitute a useful approach to understanding the impacts of urban planning policies and regulations. This tool can help to improve inter-territorial and inter-institutional coordination, which through planning and management policies seek a spatially integrated development, with a long-term perspective.The CA-based model proposed was calibrated to reproduce land-use changes between 2007 and 2016 using different methods and indicators. The model was used to simulate and analyze eight scenarios with different policy directions of transport infrastructure in the future of the region. The results of the simulations reflect the dynamics of territorial occupation. The calibration indices in the experiment indicate a high degree of suitability for the CA Bogotá model, proving its effectiveness and potential as a useful tool for decision-making. The results show that occupation scenarios with restricted developable zones within the city, tend to have the greater dispersion rate in the study area, compared to scenarios where land development plans are promoted in Bogotá, which representing a more compact development.