Forecasting housing land requirements

Summary

Because of pressures on the countryside by private housing development, the Government and the planners have become increasingly involved in planning policy issues and in forecasting land requirements. The forecasting techniques used are examined, and their translation into local allocations through structure and local plans and land availability studies are looked at. The demand for more land releases is attributed more to structural changes in the housebuilding industry and local land shortages in the south‐east than to real shortfalls in housing provision. There is a need for improved monitoring systems for land resource management, particularly in balancing ‘green‐field’ releases against development/redevelopment in existing urban areas.     

新疆农村土地整治的特点和对策

新疆以其独特的地理区位、重要的战略地位和丰富的自然资源禀赋成为我国土地整治的重点地区和国家土地整治重大项目工程的实施地区。2001年以来,新疆累计投入资金50×108元,实施土地开发整治项目292个,新增耕地面积7.15×104hm2。要结合新疆土地利用,树立环保优先、生态立区的理念,坚持走资源开发可持续、生态环境可持续的道路,以改善民生为目标,围绕高标准基本农田建设、安居富民、定居兴牧等民生工程,积极探索有效利用土地资源的新机制,扎实有效推进新疆土地整治工作。     

Progressive fragmentation of a traditional Mediterranean landscape by hazelnut plantations: The impact of CAP over time in the Langhe region (NW Italy)

Land use change is strongly modifying the traditional landscape of hilly productive Mediterranean sites. An example of these circumstances is the Langhe region (Piemonte, NW Italy), where woody plantations such as vineyards and orchards have been cultivated on hillslopes for centuries. In this paper we assess landscape changes occurred in the Diano study area (2651 ha) in the 1954–2000 period and we ascertain land use transition paths and rates of this rural ecosystem. Land use mapping obtained from object-oriented analysis of aerial photographs was used to quantify land use changes between 1954 and 2000. To examine the spatio-temporal patterns of land use change over time, a set of spatial statistics capturing different dimensions of landscape change was identified. An increase of landscape heterogeneity from 1954 to the present was observed due to the expansion of orchards and the fragmentation of field crops. A significant portion (55%) of current orchards surface is represented by former field crops, 24% by vineyards and 15% by forests. The strong expansion of hazelnut orchards concurred to the fragmentation of traditional rural landscape was dominated by vineyards, field crops and forests. Hazelnut orchards expansion was mainly located in places where grapes cultivation was less remunerative. A further expansion of hazelnut in the area should be planned, discussed and carefully monitored through change detection studies in order to avoid potential unsustainable use of the land.     

Adaptive society in a changing environment: Insight into the social resilience of a rural region of Taiwan

Taiwan has abundant biological resources that provide a quality living environment; however, industrial land use may change that environment through urban sprawl and thus have impacts on rural society. This study examined the experience of a Taiwanese rural region that has been exposed to industrial wastewater discharge specifying the relationship of industrial development to rural society and its role in policy. We addressed the societal adaptation to environmental degradation from risk perception perspectives about land use. Drawing on social vulnerability concept, semi-structured interviews were conducted in five communities that use irrigation water exposed to wastewater discharge. The interviews were designed using the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) causal framework to examine residents’ risk perceptions highlighting both built-environmental sensitivity (degradation) and residents’ adaptability (capacity). In addition, remote sensing technology was used to identify the urban sprawl that led to industrial land use and exposed the rural region to water pollution risks. As a result, we present a social resilience cycle to introduce adaptive responses underlining social amplification of risk. Both local knowledge of the locals (the Hakka people) and their societal response to environmental change reflect the role of culture in influencing land use policy. It is underlined that individual and community responses shape the social experience of risk and are related to both the ethnicity of the locals and the land use policy of the government. We indicated further that a large-scale survey that would really quantity this exploratory study to support land use decision-making is expected.     

Organizing anarchy: The food security–biodiversity–climate crisis and the genesis of rural land use planning in the developing world

Shortfalls in global food production, coupled with the growing visibility of climate change's disruptive effects, have underlined for many observers the importance of devoting rural lands to their ‘optimal’ use, where they can make maximal contributions to the global imperatives of feeding the human population and maintaining vital environmental services. In this context observers have endorsed rural land use planning as a way to insure that, at least in theory, lands get devoted to their best uses. In practice, land use planning in the developing world has resembled ‘organized anarchy’. Small landholders with insecure land tenure, overseas investors seeking large land deals, NGOs representing indigenous peoples, government officials, and staff from international environmental NGOs and multilateral organizations have come together in strategic action fields to struggle over and sometimes negotiate land use plans for contested landscapes. These plans represent a strategic, spatially explicit response to the climate change–biodiversity–food security crisis.     

Multi-scale integrated analysis of rural Laos: Studying metabolic patterns of land uses across different levels and scales

This paper presents an application of the Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) approach to the analysis of rural land uses. Using secondary data on farming systems in Laos, we illustrate how the concept of metabolic pattern can be used to establish links between the various indicators of performance of rural systems. To this purpose, we characterize the socioeconomic activities in rural Laos by a series of quantitative indicators defined across: (i) different hierarchical levels of organization described at different scales (i.e. households, rural villages, administrative regions and the whole country) and (ii) different dimensions of analysis, including economic, agronomic, social, biophysical, and ecological analysis. The MuSIASEM approach simultaneously employs two non-equivalent criteria for quantification. The observed rural system is described in terms of an integrated set of flow elements (money, food, energy, water, fertilizer and other materials), which are mapped against two distinct fund elements: (i) a multi-level matrix of human activity (flows being expressed in terms of intensity per hour) and (ii) a multi-level matrix of land uses (flows being expressed as density per hectare). Our case study shows that in this way it is possible to move across different hierarchical levels, scales and dimensions, to arrive at an integrated representation of the metabolic pattern of farming systems.     

Land use changes in protected areas and their future: The legal effectiveness of landscape protection

It is expected that the application of a restrictive legal instrument would be an important barrier to human pressures on protected areas in Brazil. One aspect that remains to be determined is whether the applied restrictions will be related to the quality of scenarios at the borders of protected areas. The objective of this work was to analyze the capacity for minimizing the impacts on two protected areas and to identify the effective function of the barrier imposed by an environmental legal border. The borders of two protected areas, the Despraiado Sustainable Development Reserve and the Jureia-Itatins State Ecological Station, as well as the corresponding buffer zone were studied. The historical evolution of the land cover/land use of these regions was analyzed by dividing the regions into 900 m² hexagonal units. The scenarios for the years 1962, 1980 and 2007 were overlaid for each hexagon. The hexagons were classified according to the possible effects of conservation, and the results were quantified in terms of the frequency of land use and ecological flows. A simulation of future land use in 2028 was performed using the Kappa index, Markov chain modeling, multi-criteria analysis and cellular automata modeling. Based on the trend for the last 45 years, a very dynamic interaction at the legal boundaries was identified; in certain cases, either conservation or degradation were stimulated, and the intended objectives of legal environmental measures were never fulfilled. The simulation showed that by 2028, the frontiers of these protected areas will retain less than 10% of the natural vegetation cover, and 43% of this area will be covered with banana plantations.     

Land system change in Italy from 1884 to 2007: Analysing the North–South divergence on the basis of an integrated indicator framework

Over the past centuries, land systems in Italy experienced fundamental shifts, owing to the availability of new energy forms, population surges, and technological progress. The 20th century was characterized by massive productivity increases, accompanied by gradual land abandonment and the return of forest land. We here analyze 120 years of land system change in Italy, applying the human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) framework, a metric for socio-economic pressures on terrestrial ecosystems. HANPP allows integrating ecological with societal perspectives, by systematically quantifying (a) biomass harvest and (b) the difference between potential productivity of ecosystems and current productivity induced by land use processes, such as land conversion, or land degradation. Besides assessing national trends we calculated HANPP separately for the Italian North and South between 1934 and 2007, in order to scrutinize if high regional discrepancies in terms of natural and socio-economic preconditions translate into diverging land system trajectories. Our results show that national HANPP has been declining from 78% of natural productivity before WWII to 56% in 2007, indicating a declining land -use induced pressure on biomass flows over time. Simultaneously, biomass harvest increased by around 26% due to agricultural intensification, despite shrinking croplands. Although we found a significant difference between the Northern and Southern region in the absolute levels of several land use indicators related to biomass appropriation, the overarching trends of land system change were remarkably similar in both regions. This suggests that underlying drivers of land system change, such as policies aimed at land-use intensification and structural change were equally dominating land system trajectories in the North and South of Italy, not withstanding their socio-ecological divergences.     

Water resources and land use planning systems in Portugal—Exploring better synergies through Ria de Aveiro

The paper discusses the relevance of a stronger articulation between land use and water resources systems to enhance the success of the Water Framework Directive. Using article 11 of the WFD, this paper assess (i) how the Spatial Planning and Urban Development Law as well as the Portuguese Water Law converge to promote better integration of water resources into spatial planning, (ii) how their prospects are developed at the regional basis, namely through the Regional Spatial Development Plan and River Basin Management Plan, and (iii) how these are prepared to inform other planning instruments at the local level. It shows through a spatial analysis of the regional land-use plan and the river basin plan as applied over the Ria de Aveiro estuary area, the conflicts and opportunities for stronger synergies. The paper concludes with a critical analysis of the integration of the spatial planning and water resources planning systems in Portugal, and reveals new insights and challenges for more productive synergies between these systems.     

Land owners’ perception of land consolidation and their satisfaction with the results – Slovenian experiences

Land consolidation has been an important instrument of rural development for over a century throughout Europe. Nowadays, land consolidation can be an integral part of both rural and urban development projects, but the focus of our study is on land consolidation in rural areas. In addition to the efforts aimed at making agriculture and forestry more competitive through a comprehensive reallocation process, improvement of road and drainage networks, landscaping, environmental management, conservation projects, and other functions may be implemented in land consolidation. There are differences in the objectives and procedures of land consolidation among the countries. Beside the formal institutional framework of land consolidation, informal institutions can have a substantial influence on the implementation of land consolidation. In the article, the past experiences in the field of land consolidation in Slovenia are presented, which are still reflected in the limited acceptability of this instrument among land owners. Furthermore, the current institutional (legal) framework is analyzed in detail. The main objective of the research was to investigate the opinion of land consolidation participants about land consolidation. Based on the field survey conducted on a sample of private land owners involved in selected land consolidation projects we tried to define the advantages and disadvantages of the current practice. The main finding is that the active participation of land owners contributes to their comprehension of the aims and to their satisfaction with the results of the land consolidation. It has been shown that the active participation of land owners in the land consolidation is the basis for developing good practices; moreover, it affects the land owners’ perception of land consolidation. The transfer of knowledge and representation of good practices among actors are still needed, in particular because of bad experiences in the past (i.e. enforced and environmentally unfriendly projects) and the traditional emotional attachment to land among land owners. In parallel, there is a great need to provide an optimization of the land consolidation process in Slovenia.