Mining towns and urban sprawl in South Africa

South Africa’s mining towns were established by mining companies mostly after World War II. The workforce lived in company-owned or privately-owned houses, or high-density compounds. Since the demise of apartheid, South African government policy for these towns has promoted integrated mining communities and homeownership. The government’s urban policy aims to densify the country’s urban areas, which have some of the lowest urban densities. This paper compares the changes in urban density and the unintended land-use implications of mining in settlements around five types of mines: iron ore, manganese, coal, gold and platinum, and in a combination of towns during periods of mining boom and bust. We ask how the South African legal framework addresses land issues that are associated with mining settlements, how urban density has evolved in the five case studies; and how this evolution should be explained. We argue that the sprawl is associated with historical path dependencies and interdependencies. Contributing factors are the need to house miners, the unintended consequences of policies designed to minimise compound living, changing labour regimes, the continuation of migrant labour and the presence of traditional-authority land. This sprawl is evident in market-driven housing, government-subsidised housing and informal settlement development.     

Empowering residents and improving governance in low income communities through urban greening

This paper describes the objectives, process and outcomes of three urban greening projects and how they contributed to sustainable development. The first two were conducted in low-income communities in Bangkok, Thailand, and in Badulla, Matale and Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. The lessons from these two projects were then incorporated in a post-tsunami project in Moratuwa and Matara, Sri Lanka. In addition to achieving urban greening objectives, the projects developed and validated a conceptual framework of sustainable community development (the Four-Directional Framework) using participatory action research. This framework facilitated rapid community learning and development objectives such as urban greening and consequential poverty reduction, empowerment of women, and improvements to the environment. Urban greening, incorporating urban agriculture, was an effective tool to improve the relationship between local authorities and the residents of marginalized and low-income communities and build a foundation for continuing sustainable development initiatives and city-to-city learning.     

Informal settlements’ needs and environmental conservation in Mexico City: An unsolved challenge for land-use policy

The aim of this article is to analyze the effectiveness of land-use policy in Mexico City in controlling the expansion of informal human settlements in peri-urban zones of high ecological value. It is argued that Mexico City's land-use policy has been reactive and internally inconsistent, failing to take informal settlements into account, has not offered the poor access to housing with adequate services and greater security in terms of land tenure, and lacks the necessary financial resources and institutional capabilities for providing solutions to these problems. Through a case study of informal settlement management policy in the Tlalpan Delegation,¹ applied in what has been termed SC or “Conservation Land,”² we conclude that local government exhibits an inability to confront the new challenge of urban sustainability, that it resorts to conventional solutions which give rise to contradictory situations where political decision-making prevails over ecological considerations, so land-use policy is permissive and does not halt informal urban expansion in areas of high environmental value.     

Urban greening: A new paradox of economic or social sustainability?

Cities globally have incorporated sustainable development into their planning, and led the way in responding to the world’s ecological crisis by “going green”. Urban green space accessibility is considered as the key to urban sustainability progress, not only environmentally, but also economically and socially. However, previous research rarely considers the latter two dimensions together. This study therefore joins the sustainability discussion from a new perspective, in particular the debate concerning the value of urban green spaces and whether and how they contribute to the variegated sustainability agenda? Based on data for 76,595 residential housing units in New York City, measuring the economic gains and equity losses from current urban green space accessibility reveals a paradox in sustainable development where the economic and social benefits of urban green space accessibility are seldom compatible, tending to involve a trade-off of some kind. In response, it is proposed that the spatial patterns of land use can represent a step towards multifaceted aspects of sustainability, with the provision of numerous small green areas that are “affordable and accessible” throughout the city being a more appropriate policy agenda than a few vast parks. Such a policy approach, it is argued, will provide a ‘win-win’ situation in terms of simultaneously contributing to both economic prosperity and the social justice of sustainability. This research also provided evidence for the institutional-driven countries such as China on how to learn from western experiences on planning land use patterns that are sustainable for individuals.     

The role of land planning policies in supporting housing affordability: The case of the Gaza Strip

The Gaza Strip suffers from a limited amount of land compared to the population growth rate. This imposes several challenges on urban planners in managing housing land in a way that protects housing affordability, especially for the low-income category. In general, housing in the Gaza Strip is unaffordable, for several reasons, including a recent abnormal rise in urban land prices. The study investigated this issue based on a survey of local housing specialists in addition to residents. The study found that to support housing affordability in Gaza, planning solutions that ensure efficient use of urban land in the first place need to be implemented. Furthermore, two parallel actions are required: (i) to implement measures that increase housing land supply and improve security of land tenure; and (ii) to establish a robust and effective housing finance system that fits the socio-economic situation in the Gaza Strip.     

近十年来北京市住宅用地出让与空间演变研究

研究目的:揭示2001年以来北京市住宅用地出让的空间分布与动态演变,探讨增量住宅用地空间演变带来的城市土地利用方式的变化。研究方法:欧氏距离分析法,核密度估计法。研究结果:近郊区住宅用地出让所占比重下降、中心区和远郊区比重上升;住宅出让高集聚区主要分布于近郊大型居住区和旧城区,中、低集聚区主要分布于远郊新城和交通廊道沿线的乡镇;长安街以南地区住宅用地外延扩张较典型,以北内部填充式发展较明显。研究结论:新时期北京市住宅用地存在旧城区有机更新、近郊区内部填充式发展和远郊区分散组团式发展三种方式,并非简单的圈层式蔓延。     

‘If I want safe food I have to grow it myself’: Patterns and motivations of urban agriculture in a small city in Vietnam’s northern borderlands

Urban agriculture literature regarding the Global South reveals important knowledge gaps concerning spatial variations of food gardens across cityscapes, gardener motivations, and tensions with urban planning regulations, especially in locales beyond sub-Saharan Africa. In Vietnam, urban agriculture is growing in popularity and gaining media attention but there is little research as to why urban agriculture is practiced in smaller Vietnamese cities, especially those close to rural hinterlands. In this paper we investigate small-scale urban agriculture – or food gardens – in Lào Cai, a small upland city located on the Sino-Vietnamese border. We find a complex diversity of garden sizes and land management arrangements where gardens are built, including on state institutional land, thanks to informal arrangements. Gardener motivations focus predominantly on food safety concerns, contrasting with key motivations found elsewhere in the Global South. Throughout the city, albeit more so in newly urbanising sectors, this urban practice remains precarious due to irregular land access and confusing city authority regulations. We thus examine how urban residents are working to access safe food and contribute to their city’s urban food system while state officials tend to focus their priorities elsewhere.     

Constraints to the sustainability of a ‘systematised’ approach to livestock marketing amongst smallholder cattle producers in South Africa

Commercialization of smallholder agriculture in South Africa is underpinned by reforms to improve livestock off-take in communal areas and engage smallholder farmers with formal markets. To achieve this, Custom Feeding Programmes (CFPs) were established to improve the condition of communal cattle prior to their sale into formal markets and to ‘systematise’ the informal marketing of cattle in communal areas by enabling participants to achieve higher informal market prices. We evaluate the sustainability of eight CFPs located in Eastern Cape Province in terms of their ability to add value to smallholder cattle production and encourage market participation. Communities with CFPs achieved a 16.6% mean cattle off-take rate, substantially higher than in most communal systems. Furthermore, cattle sold through CFPs attained a 17% higher mean selling price than those sold through other marketing channels. However, these benefits were mainly realized by better-off farmers with larger cattle herds and greater ability to transport animals to and from CFPs. More marginalized farmers, particularly women, had low participation. CFPs also face challenges to their sustainability, including inconsistent feed and water supplies, poor infrastructure and high staff turnover. Key to enhancing participation in CFPs, will be improving the way they are supported and embedded within communities.     

基于居民生活质量视角的山东城镇相对贫困测度研究

随着2020年农村绝对贫困即将消除,城镇相对贫困问题日渐凸显,阻碍城镇经济及社会的发展,故城镇相对贫困将成为贫困治理的新重点。以山东省为例,从居民生活质量视角对城镇相对贫困进行测度研究,结果发现,福利基础、城镇建设、居民生活状态等指标不同程度地影响着城镇相对贫困。为此,提出了要各方面同时发力,做好顶层设计,建立多元化体系,深化居民生活质量标准,以达到缓解城镇相对贫困问题,提高居民生活质量的目的建议。     

Property rights and housing prices: An empirical study of small property rights housing in Shenzhen,China

Small Property Rights Housing (SPRH) is an important part of informal housing in China. SPRH is defined as housing developed with collective land ownership that is then sold to outside homebuyers such as non-indigenous villagers. This housing practice is legally forbidden and comes without formal titles. SPRH is popular in big Chinese cities where formal housing prices are constantly rising and increasingly unaffordable for many urban residents. However, research on SPRH is rare. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effects (or the lack thereof) of de-jure property rights on housing prices by using the empirical case of Shenzhen where SPRH and FPRH estates constitute the main sources of urban housing for its residents. We collected both SPRH and formal Full Property Right Housing (FPRH) data in the Shenzhen housing market and adopted the Boundary Fixed Effect method and matching strategy to mitigate the bias caused by unobservable location and neighborhood factors. This empirical study shows that the lack of de-jure property rights has negative and significant effects on housing prices. The average housing price for SPRH apartments is, ceteris paribus, 52.82% lower than for formal FPRH apartments. Also, the premium of property rights varies across two administrative regions with different locations and economic environments, and the premium decreases as the age of the building increases.     

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.     

“Development strategies at station areas in southwestern China: The case of Mianyang city”

This paper analyses the possibilities for implementing a TOD model around a railway station in Mianyang City, in southwestern China, through a Node-Place model to determine the potential for developing the areas around railway stations to foster a sustainable economic and urban development. For this purpose, the implementation of a TOD model means an interesting sustainable way for smart growth, whose successful implementation will strongly depend on the context, where the Growth Pole Theory is being implemented through the Western Development Strategy to strengthen the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone. The Hukou system (household registration) and the current rapid urbanization and motorization trends are featuring the economic growth, creating inequities among urban population, informal settlements and problems in the accessibility of low-income residents. Therefore, not only does it lead to an analysis of the most important station areas in northeastern Sichuan Province but also of the socio-economic trends of one of the most underdeveloped regions of the country, yet with a high potential to be developed. Consequently, the real situation of the Northeast of Sichuan province is studied through fieldworks which complement the lack of reliable information, determining the most suitable features for achieving the best urban planning solution.     

Mapping Brisbane’s Casual Creative Corridor: Land use and policy implications of a new genre in urban creative ecosystems

Creative hotspots have become a key driver for urban policies to stimulate social, cultural, environmental and organisational growth of creative and knowledge-based clusters, districts and hubs. However, their functional and spatial characteristics vary due to their different evolving structure as new spaces of economic activity in different contexts. This article points to a consideration of new foci for both land use and urban economic policy through a mapping of formal and informal creative hotspots in Brisbane, Australia. The study found two distinctive development patterns: (a) earlier top-down approaches as instigated by national and international innovation policies, and; (b) recently emerging bottom-up spaces for creativity, knowledge and innovation practices. This study examines how formal creative strategies and emerging informal creative spaces shape cities and urban policies. The methodology comprises online data collection and a review of creative and knowledge strategies and implementation policies. Data was then analysed via multiple mapping techniques illustrating the spatial distribution of creative hotspots, formal and informal formations, scale and land use characteristics. The research findings consolidate our understanding of Brisbane’s creative ecosystem and suggest new urban policy mechanisms to better foster the interrelationship between top-down and bottom-up approaches in cities, that is, between formally planned and large-scale interventions and small-scale organic and informal creative activities.     

Agriculture and small towns in Africa

Africa is urbanizing rapidly. Yet most dual economy models focus on the sectoral rather than spatial dimensions of development. This article adopts a “dual–dual” approach to measuring rural/urban and farm/nonfarm linkages. We develop an economy‐wide model of Ethiopia that distinguishes between cities, towns, and rural areas. The model captures detailed sectoral and regional linkages, internal migration flows, and externalities from urban agglomeration. We find larger linkages between agricultural production and small towns and show that redirecting urban growth toward towns rather than cities leads to broader‐based economic growth and poverty reduction. In contrast, industry and services, particularly within cities, are far less effective in reaching rural areas and the poor. Africa's current urbanization pattern—toward major cities rather than towns—will weaken national growth–poverty linkages. Urbanization that takes advantage of the synergistic relationship between agriculture and small towns has the potential to result in a more inclusive growth trajectory.     

基于多群组结构方程模型的市民城市林业支付意愿及行为研究

基于计划行为理论框架,采用2015年北京市五环路范围以内的3 000位市民实地调研问卷数据,利用多群组结构方程模型(SEM),从小区绿地、公园以及古树名木3个典型区域出发,研究了北京市民对城市林业的支付意愿及行为。研究结果表明:市民的主观规范、行为态度和知觉行为控制均会对其支付意愿产生正向影响,其中知觉行为控制发挥的作用更大;市民的支付意愿会对其支付行为产生促进作用,但总体幅度较小。基于研究结论提出以下政策建议:加强对公众参与城市林业的宣传和引导,深化市民感知,营造全民支持城市林业的社会氛围,充分发挥公众作用;完善城市林业发展政策的制定和实施环节,提升政策的稳定性和可持续性;夯实发展城市林业的基础,完善城市林业的各项功能。     

Paths of urban planning in a post-mining area. A case study of a former sandpit in southern Poland

Decision-making on the directions of spatial development are particularly visible in post-mining areas in large cities. This issue is one of the key themes in a discourse that focuses on how to reconcile strategic urban planning and urban policy in post-mining towns, and is based on the concepts of brownfield regeneration and just transition. This paper approaches the issue by taking the redevelopment of the site of a large former stowing sand pit, operated for the needs of coal mining in Sosnowiec near Krakow (southern Poland), as an example. The dilemma concerns turning the former mining area into a new zone for industrial investment or transforming it into a leisure area around a new reservoir. An important part of the study involved obtaining, via a questionnaire survey, the opinions of residents as to their vision for how the former sandpit should be redeveloped. The paper underlines that due to limited social participation in this regard, this is a challenging issue for local urban policy. In post-mining towns, in which sustainable development is particularly important, the changeability of socio-economic phenomena on the one hand and residents' opinions on the other merit special attention.     

Climate resilient urban development: Why responsible land governance is important

In less-developed countries, the major global pressures of rapid urbanization and climate change are resulting in increased vulnerability for urban dwellers. Much of the climate impact is concentrated in urban and coastal areas, as urban development spreads into areas that are hazard-prone. Often this development is dominated by poor quality homes in informal settlements or slums on informal or illegally occupied or subdivided land.Urban development needs to be more climate-resilient to meet the post millennium development goals (MDGs) agenda. One of the elements in achieving climate-resilient urban development is the degree to which climate change adaptation and risk management are mainstreamed into two major elements of land governance, viz. securing and safeguarding of land rights, and planning and control of land-use.This paper proposes ways in which the growth of human settlements can be better managed through responsible governance of land tenure rights, and effective land-use planning to reduce vulnerability, provide adequate access to safe land and shelter, and improve environmental sustainability.     

Taken for a ride? Mainstreaming periurban transport with urban expansion policies

This article describes the transportation needs and practices of periurban residents in a village in the Gurgaon district of the Northwestern Indian state of Haryana. As conurbations grow, urban authorities place much emphasis on connecting them with other major cities or towns. Improving their connectivity with the peripheral villages receives scant attention. This ignores the duality of economies that operates within the newly created urban spaces. This article argues that this reflects a bias in and politics of urban planning that accepts the hegemony of cities to the peril of rural areas that support them and with whom crucial rural–urban links evolve with urbanization. Using a qualitative research design, an ethnographic approach and a diversity of data sources, this article shows how social heterogeneity, land use change and other transformations in rural–urban links brought on by urbanization shape periurban transportation needs and practices. Though the acquisition of private means of transport is made possible through the sale of agricultural lands by the periurban elite, the article shows the increasing role of shared private transport in linking the village with the city. Urban authorities focus on connecting growing cities with other major urban centers; however, the article argues that linking them better with peripheral villages will be essential for making processes of urbanization equitable and sustainable and have wider spin-off effects. Such interventions need to be based on a nuanced understanding of transition processes underway in periurban spaces as well as the complementary roles of private, public and shared private transport.     

Land registration effectiveness in a state-subsidised housing project in Mbekweni,South Africa

As part of a programme examining the effectiveness of land tenure forms − tenure administration system combinations, the paper examines how and why beneficiaries use land registration in Project 2, a state subsidised housing project in Mbekweni, South Africa. The ownership − registration combination can have a number of negative consequences when policy makers focus on economics alone, rather than the complete set of factors that are critical for registered ownership to work in poor urban communities. South Africa’s state-subsidised housing programme has created up to 3.7 million housing opportunities. Off-register secondary transactions constitute a major problem when the properties registered in ownership. Building on a series of related case studies, an evaluative schema classifying an ownership − registration combination as strong, semi-strong, semi-weak or weak is presented, along with the main findings from three previously reported case studies where the combination was classified as semi-strong. The beneficiaries in Project 2 were predominantly in-migrants from a rural customary area, and based on earlier work and the literature, a weak or semi-weak classification was expected. However, the case was classified as semi-strong. Ongoing, visible administration is possibly a major factor underlying this classification.