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.     

Environmental impact assessment of urban land use transitions—A context-sensitive approach

Land consumption due to residential development, economic growth and transportation belongs to the most serious environmental pressures on landscapes worldwide, in particular in urbanised areas. Accordingly, the aim of containing the development of land is rated increasingly high on the agenda of environmental policy, at least in densely populated countries such as Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands or the UK. As a result, different strategies and instruments to prevent excessive land consumption are being discussed. However, many of these strategies and instruments adopt a rather general approach, while it seems more effective to define the particular areas where the goal of reducing land consumption is to be pursued. Such an approach must draw on information about how detrimental specific land use transitions are with regard to, for instance, the functionality of soils, water balance or habitat quality at specific locations. This paper introduces a conceptual framework for the impact assessment of land use transition in urban areas which highlights how such information can be acquired. This framework includes the differentiation of two levels of impact assessment: the level of the single land unit and the context level which takes into account regional and aggregated impacts of land use transition bound to the spatial context. The conceptual framework provides a basis to disaggregate (supra-)national policy targets regarding land use, to scale them down to the regional level, and thus to clarify the spatially explicit implications of land use policies.     

Strategic targeting of agricultural conservation easements as a growth management tool

Public and private programs have preserved an estimated 730,000 ha of agricultural land in the United States by acquiring agricultural conservation easements (ACEs) that retire a property's development rights. ACEs could be a potent tool for smart growth if strategically targeted. This paper attempts to quantify measures of strategic targeting of ACEs as guidance for planners. Evaluating the placement of 157 ACEs in the San Francisco Bay Area of California produced mixed results. Preservation and development of agricultural land were both consistent with general plans. In contrast, we found little evidence of ACEs being used on a regional scale either to reinforce urban growth boundaries or to coalesce with other open space to form large contiguous blocks of protected areas. We used the TOPSIS method (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) to identify the most strategic agricultural lands, which are quite different from where easements have been established through 2002. We encourage planners to consider strategic targeting of ACEs as a politically acceptable mechanism to complement traditional planning tools to minimize low density sprawl.     

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.     

Urban spill over vs. local urban sprawl: Entangling land-use regulations in the urban growth of China's megacities

Rather than a bad case of urban sprawl, the physical expansion of China's megacities may be viewed as a combination of ‘urban spill over’ and ‘local urban sprawl’. This paper reviews land use regulations in their institutional context and argues that conflicts in land use regulation are related to ideologies of land ownership and embedded in different planning doctrines. These hypotheses are investigated with special reference to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province in southern China. The evidence suggests that entangled land use regulations for “urban” and “rural” land have imposed serious constraints on urban growth, while the contradictions of different policies and regulations in the use of rural lands for urban construction have led to intensive and unhealthy competition among stakeholders. As a result, not only have the costs of land conversion from rural to urban uses increased, but the spatial development of Guangzhou has been distorted. The implications of these failures for future policy are discussed with emphasis on the reform of the land use regulation system.     

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.     

城市三维形态与热环境的相关关系研究——以大连市金普新区为例

由城市各种实体空间结构所构成的三维形态是城市形态的重要组成部分。而城市的空间结构与城市空间环境的热场分布也有着密不可分的关系。本文运用地理信息系统与遥感技术,获取三维形态指标与地表温度,对各因子进行回归分析,建立城市空间形态热场分布研究的回归模型。分析了金普新区空间实体的占空度、错落度、建筑密度等空间形态对城市亮度温度的影响,发现占空度与城市亮温成正相关并且相关性较高,绿化率与亮温成负相关,而建筑密度与错落度对城市热场的影响较小。     

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.     

A hedonic analysis of the demand for and benefits of urban recreation parks

Increasing population and urbanization in U.S. cities is not only contributing to the congestion in urban recreation parks but also is likely to exceed the capacity of these parks’ recreational and amenity benefits. In order to estimate the demand for and benefit of parks, we employed a typical hedonic model, which confirmed that the urban recreation park acres increase nearby property values. Two Step Clustering, which is capable of defining the optimum number of submarkets based on the data, was employed to define the submarkets within Roanoke, Virginia and to obtain enough implicit price points to further estimate the demand for urban park acres in the second stage. Results from the second stage hedonic estimation revealed that demand for urban park acres was inelastic in price and income; and the size of the park was a substitute for living space and proximity to park. In addition, increasing the average size of parks by 20% from the current level increased the per household consumer surplus by $160. The estimated amenity benefits of urban recreation parks will be useful in urban landuse planning and open space preservation.     

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.     

The direct use value of municipal commonage goods and services to urban households in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

To redress past racial discrepancies in ownership and tenure, the ANC government of South Africa initiated programmes to make land accessible to the previously disadvantaged. A key component of the national land reform programme was the provision of commonage lands to urban municipalities for use by the urban poor. However, there has been no assessment of the contribution that urban commonage makes to previously disadvantaged households. This study assessed the economic benefits of the commonage programme to local households, through an in-depth survey of 90 households across three small towns in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. We examined the marketed and non-marketed consumptive direct-use values of land-based livelihoods on commonage, calculated via the ‘own reported values’ approach. The results indicate that a proportion of South Africa's urban population rely to some degree on municipal commonage for part of their livelihoods. Commonage contributions to total livelihood incomes ranged between 14 and 20%. If the contributions from commonage were excluded, the incomes of over 10% of households in each study town would drop below the poverty line. Overall, the value of harvests from commonage was worth over R1 000 (US$ 142) per hectare per year and over R4.7 million (US$ 0.68 million) per commonage per year. However, the extent and nature of use and reliance was not uniform among households, so that we developed a typology of commonage users, with four types being identified. However, rapidly growing urban populations and high levels of poverty potentially threaten the sustainability of commonage resource use. Yet the national land reform programme focuses largely on the transfer of land to municipalities and not on sustainable management. Municipalities, in turn, invest relatively little in commonage management, and the little they do is focussed on livestock production. Non-timber forest products are not considered at all, even though this study shows that they are a vital resource for the urban poor, notably for energy and construction materials.     

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.     

Technological driving forces of LUCC: Conceptualization,quantification, and the example of urban power distribution networks

Consideration of technology is important for understanding the driving forces of human induced land-use and land-cover changes (LUCC). However, technological driving forces (TechDF) are seldom considered in quantitative analyses of LUCC because technology is difficult to quantify. In this paper we suggest addressing this difficulty by deducing quantification rationales from conceptualizations. We use the example of a comparative study of urban medium-voltage networks (MV networks) and urban land-use distribution to illustrate our approach. First, we outline how the effect of TechDF on LUCC can be conceptualized based on ‘contextualism’, a position concerning the role of technology in social and environmental change, and contrast this with the more common assumption of technological determinism. We outline further how MV networks can be conceptualized based on network genealogy, deduce a quantification rationale based on contextualism and network genealogy, and quantify MV networks. As a result of our case study we find that based on contextualism and network genealogy, the Tech DF of MV networks can be conceptualized as relational graphs of supplier–consumer interactions. Thus, the supplier–consumer-land-use interactions are specific for each context, for example for each city. A number of graph-theoretic measures of network topology provide a corresponding quantification rationale. Second, we use the results of a statistical analysis to discuss whether the quantification and quantification rationale for MV networks correspond to the conceptualization of MV networks based on contextualism and network genealogy. We answer this question broadly in the affirmative. Third, we discuss the issues that remain ambiguous for a conclusive answer. We also discuss the results of the statistical analysis in the light of comparative studies of urban land-use distribution. In conclusion, we regard combining conceptualization, quantification rationale, and quantification as promising in overcoming difficulties with the quantification of Tech DF in general.     

转变渔业增长方式必须加强渔业经济与政策研究

增长方式转变是当前现代农业建设的重要任务,转变渔业增长方式必须加强渔业经济与政策研究。本文从准确把握现代农业建设的时代背景,明确当前渔业经济政策研究的重点领域,深刻认识政策和科技支撑渔业发展的重大作用等三个方面,阐述了加强渔业经济与政策研究的着眼点,以便为推动我国渔业增长方式转变提供具体的途径。     

青岛市水产业增长方式转变的制约因素及对策

改革开放以来,青岛市水产业发展迅猛,但是粗放型增长的弊端在20世纪90年代后期已开始显现。21世纪以来青岛市开始重视水产业增长方式的转变,取得了一定成效,但是目前依然存在着近海资源衰退、海洋环境恶化等问题,青岛市水产业增长方式仍然需要进一步转变。论文在对青岛市水产业发展历程及其增长方式的变迁进行总结的基础上,根据影响其增长方式转变的因素提出了突破资本、技术、制度、政策等约束的一系列对策。     

武汉市城乡结合部征地制度调查研究——基于农户与村级问卷调查

随着改革的不断深入，现行征地制度已明显滞后于市场经济的发展。本文以武汉市为例，对被征地农户进行了实地调查与分析，从征地类型的界定、农民的补偿安置、完善社会保障体系、加强法制监督等几个方面提出了完善征地制度的合理化建议。     

对渔业综合生产能力与渔业增长方式转变辩证关系的探讨

本文在对渔业综合生产能力与渔业增长方式转变概念进行阐述的基础上，分析了渔业综合生产能力与渔业增长方式转变的区别与联系，指出渔业综合生产能力与渔业增长方式转变都是基于生产要素之上的概念，而渔业生产要素状况决定着其生产能力状况，综合生产能力的量变将引致增长方式转变的质变。所以，要实现渔业增长方式的根本性转变，首先要提高渔业综合生产能力，而渔业综合生产能力的提高主要依赖于渔业生产要素状况的改善。基于此，改善渔业生产要素状况是我们当前工作的重中之重。