Trade-offs at a regional level in spatial planning: Two case studies as a source of inspiration

Societal and technological changes are influencing the spatial expression of human activity and governance. The focus on the regional level is stronger and there is greater cooperation at more levels between public and private stakeholders. Furthermore, there is a growing demand for a better quality of space and new concepts for funding spatial interventions. This whole intricate scenario is in need of new planning instruments that can be deployed at a regional level.     

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.     

Internalising the costs of fragmentation and nutrient deposition in spatial planning: Extending a decision support tool for the Netherlands

The Land Use Scanner (LUS) is a decision support system for land use planning that is widely used in the Netherlands. The model yields solutions that have a high resolution (500×500 m) and reflect economic equilibrium in the land market, in which eighteen types of land use and nine aggregated habitat types competitively bid for locations. Here, an extension to the LUS is presented that enables the internalisation of environmental externalities. The focus in this study is on two important externalities, namely ammonia emissions from agriculture and habitat fragmentation. We simulate four IPCC-based land use scenarios and assess the level of fragmentation of the nine habitat types. We also perform sensitivity analyses in the most market-oriented scenario on the effectiveness of market-based instruments in promoting more efficient land allocation. The simulation results suggest that particularly the habitat type ‘rain-fed mires and bogs’ is susceptible to fragmentation. The sensitivity analyses show that internalising the damage costs of fragmentation resulted in smaller changes in land allocation than internalising those of nitrogen deposition. For both instruments, the policy effort was large in relation to the efficiency gains in land allocation.     

Using IT approaches to promote public participation in renewable energy planning: Prospects and challenges

In response to recent policy initiatives and UK and European legislation there is increasing focus on alternative methodologies and procedures to encourage public participation in environmental planning. This paper is concerned with outlining those methodologies that involve the use of IT methods in enabling a possible consensus to be reached between participatory groups on decisions that may effect their local environment. Specifically, we focus on integrated approaches that involve the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) techniques in facilitating public participation using the case study of the planning of wind farms. The introduction of renewable energy technologies can be a particularly contentious issue in some areas of the UK and we draw on a review of the use of such software tools in order to highlight their application within a decision support system framework. One area where there has been less input from potentially affected local communities or stakeholders relates to the use of computer-generated visualisations in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process. We describe future research challenges facing those charged with encouraging participation in the siting of such facilities before re-iterating the policy relevance of this research given the UK governments’ stated commitment to the incorporation of public input into the decision-making process.