Land Use Policy最新文献

The overreliance of local governments on land finance has resulted in a series of problems in China, which call for the transition of land finance. While existing research focused on the risk and sustainability arising from land finance overreliance, an assessment of land finance transition performance is still lacking. Based on neo-liberalism and neo-Marxism theories, we proposed an analytical framework for assessing land finance transition considering market-government interplay. Based on this framework, we evaluated the performance of the market, government, and overall transition among 105 prefecture-level cities using land market data and governmental policy data. The results indicated that market-oriented transition performance declined gradually from the eastern cities to the western and northeastern cities. Government-led transition performance was still low in the central and northeastern cities. Overall, the land finance transition in eastern cities achieved positive progress, contrasting with the lagged progress in northeastern cities because of urban shrinkages and revenue shortages. We further reflected our analytical framework and empirical findings on land finance transition by integrating neoliberal and neo-Marxism approaches and market-state interplay, which can provide insights for the continual transition in the future.

In considering complex human-land systems, the land use and planning for places of worship is perhaps not an issue that may first come to mind. Simultaneously, however, it has become an increasingly critical and researched topic due to rising ethnic and cultural tensions in the West. Contrarily, the topic is virtually terra incognita for the Chinese context. This article aims to make up for that shortfall, and examines the way how the space for religious sites in China is acquired, planned and governed. It focuses on one of the more prominent places of worships often contested in the West: the mosque, and particularly those belonging to the Hui minority. The study relies on surveys, in-depth interviews, participant observation and rare documents hitherto unavailable in English, such as (informal) contracts, ownership titles, and historical court rulings. A dual finding is reported: 1) over time, the Chinese state’s envisioned ownership for religious property in general, and Islamic property in particular, has evolved into common property slightly comparable to condominium; 2) despite stated intentions to formalize religious planning, mosques’ land use has remained largely informal. Markedly, local planning authorities continue upholding a grey zone in which Hui Muslim sites of worship are tacitly condoned. Although there are caveats, this “tolerance of informality” offers leeway for religious praxis while providing space to a revolutionary past of complex, contested and convoluted property rights.

Providing incentives to local communities to mitigate negative impacts of protected areas is an important component of conservation policy. Incentives may take various forms, including direct payments and income diversification training. For a case study of Chitwan National Park in Nepal, we evaluate the welfare effects of incentives delivered to buffer zone communities in the form of income diversification training. Evidence on the effect of such incentives on household welfare is limited. We evaluated the welfare effects in two ways. First, we measure the economic effects of living within the buffer zone, and second, we evaluate the effectiveness of two training interventions namely, income-generating training and tourism development training on increasing household income. We surveyed 728 households and used a quasi-experimental method (Propensity Score Matching). Results suggest that households living inside the buffer zone have 19 percent higher per capita household income than similar households living outside. Notably, income-generating training does not lead to an increase in household income, whereas tourism development training results in a substantial 52 percent growth. Our findings from Chitwan National Park suggest that conservation efforts do not necessarily adversely affect local communities. Interventions such as training programs can increase income, but are most effective when they allow households to take advantage of economic activities, such as tourism, linked to a protected area. This highlights the importance of crafting well-designed and targeted policy interventions that simultaneously enhance conservation goals and benefit local people.

This research delves into the urgent issue of farmland fragmentation in Türkiye, highlighting the necessity for farmland consolidation and the crucial role of legal regulation in preventing farmland fragmentation. Despite official data revealing an average farmland size of 7.0 parcels per household in 2016, small-scale farms persist. This issue, a significant obstacle for the agricultural sector, requires immediate attention. Given the uneven land distribution, the study employed mixed methods using primary and secondary data, revealing the need to increase the average farm size. The findings underscore the urgent nature of land fragmentation, exacerbated by population growth and lack of motivation in agricultural employment opportunities. Addressing these issues is not straightforward, as they involve legal complexities. However, the research proposes that land consolidation projects and regulations authorising land transfers based on farm size, revenue, and economic integrity could significantly alleviate arable land fragmentation due to inheritance and sales. The study also highlights the potential positive impact of these new regulations on land tenure, land management, local land markets and land resources sustainability. These findings are pivotal for comprehending the current state of land fragmentation and its implications for the agricultural sector in Türkiye.

Zoning regulates which land uses belong on land. Also, zoning ordinances signal the local government’s intent for land use regulation and its consequent exclusion of land uses, activities, and people. Exclusionary zoning has been well studied in urban settings, but less is known about its impact on farmlands. The archipelago of Puerto Rico serves as an important case to examine recent land-use policy changes and the government’s intent on agricultural lands. This paper examines the 2010, 2015, 2019, 2020, and 2022 Joint Permit Regulations to ask: What rhetorical work do these five regulations employ for agricultural land? What insights do each of the Joint Permit Regulation offer about the government’s intent for agricultural land? How do these regulations shape Puerto Rico’s agricultural landscape and whose interest do they serve? To answer these questions, I employ two policy analytical methods, policy archeology and genealogy, along with five key subject-matter experts’ interviews to assess how municipal-level zoning policies articulate territorialized politics of belonging on agricultural land zoned as productive agriculture (agrícola productivo, in Spanish). Theoretical thematic analysis from interviews with subject-matter experts shows how the official planning discourse in Puerto Rico uses the cover of disaster recovery and sustainable development to foster land dispossession and exclusion of farmers on Puerto Rico’s most valuable agricultural land.

Urban green spaces (UGS), often metaphorically referred to as the “green lungs of cities,” play a crucial role in sustainable urban development and are a key element of land-use policy. This study evaluates the economic value conferred by UGS through urban parks, employing a Multi-scale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) model within a hedonic pricing framework. By focusing on the localized impact of UGS on housing markets in developing megacities, this research utilizes Chengdu, China, as a case study to reveal spatial patterns in property valuations. The findings demonstrate a significant localized impact of UGS on housing prices, characterized by pronounced spatial heterogeneity. A substantial premium on housing values is correlated with proximity to urban parks, reflecting a high market valuation of these green spaces. This premium varies spatially, diminishing in more peripheral urban zones but still significantly influencing overall housing market dynamics. The study highlights the importance of reassessing rapid, policy-driven park expansions. There is a need for value-based UGS integration in sustainable urban planning, emphasizing strategic, ecologically informed decision-making that balances land development with conservation and meaningful resident engagement.

Urban regeneration is developed as a major strategy for improving the quality of life for citizens. However, social conflicts and contestations related to justice are often witnessed in the process of implementing urban regeneration projects. Justice is a complicated phenomenon and is embedded in various activities throughout the whole urban regeneration process, which can be interpreted differently by different resident groups. This entails gaining a clearer concept and a practical approach to diagnose justice issues and ensure accordingly justice between different groups of residents. To achieve this, our paper proposes a methodological framework to analyse the justice phenomenon in the process of implementing urban regeneration projects from a Chinese perspective. This framework conceptualises urban regeneration justice into four hierarchies in referring to different residential groups affected by regeneration activities. By applying this framework to the urban regeneration project of Xiaohe Street Historic Block in Hangzhou City, China, it is found that the hierarchy of justice varies among different resident groups. In the construction stage, tenants and shop owners tend to be the most marginalised groups, whereas residents who resettled locally enjoy the best level of justice performance. Our findings further suggest that the enhancement of justice pertaining to all affected groups in the operation stage may benefit from establishing resident participation channels for governing regeneration projects. The methodology proposed in this paper also provides a referral approach for examining the justice phenomenon involved in urban regeneration programmes in other cultural contexts.

Forestry plantations can potentially foster rural development and mitigate environmental threats, but their impacts on neighboring peoples’ livelihood strategies are ambiguous. Forestry plantations are particularly important in Mozambique, where a national strategy aims to establish one million hectares of forests by 2030, focusing on Miombo ecoregions in the provinces of Niassa, Cabo Delgado, Nampula and Zambezia. This paper evaluates the causal effects of large-scale forestry investments in northern Mozambique on smallholders’ farm size, crop productivity, and employment. We take advantage of a remote sensing approach that produced maps of forestry plantations and their expansion trajectories from 2001 to 2017 and combine them with data from two georeferenced nationally-representative agricultural surveys administered in 2007 and 2017. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we evaluate the effects of exposure to forestry plantations established after 2007, defined by the presence of newly established and expansion of existing plantations and their distance to households within a 20-km buffer. We find that households exposed to forestry plantations increased their planted areas but did not change hired farm employment, which was accompanied by a decrease in crop yields. The heads of households close to forestry plantations were also less likely to work in agriculture as their main activity, especially as salary workers, and more likely to be self-employed and employed in the nonfarm sector. This study contributes to an improved understanding of local dynamics resulting from forestry investments, which have critical implications for investment targeting and sustainable land use planning.

As the significance of cities worldwide with regard to human activities increases, Urban Development Intensity (UDI) becomes an increasingly critical factor for achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 11.3 and serves as a scientific foundation for establishing urban land development guidelines. However, the existing literature lacks systematic quantification of fine-scale UDI on the global scale. In this study, we propose a comprehensive framework for evaluating UDI globally, utilizing multi-source surveys to compare spatial variations between the Global North and South. We created structured grided UDI layers at a 1-km resolution covering urban areas worldwide, considering various aspects of urban development on land surface characterized by three-dimensional (3D) building metrics, population density, nighttime lights, and transport constructions. By employing composite models and the inequality index, we assessed UDI disparities across 6986 cities and metropolitan areas globally to investigate variations in UDI levels and heterogeneity among the Global North–South regions, inter-city, and intra-city contexts. Furthermore, the bivariate local Moran’s I statistic and k-medoid algorithm were utilized to identify spatial and pattern clusters of UDI among global cities. Our findings revealed diverse spatial distribution of multi-source UDI differences globally, with urban areas in the Global North generally exhibiting higher and more equitable intensity than that exhibited by urban areas in the Global South, where the intensity tends to be lower at the urban peripheries and highly concentrated in city centers. Recognizing the disparities and clustering patterns of UDI levels of global cities underscore the importance of promoting urban equalization to ensure containment and drive improvement in UDI towards diverse models under local urban circumstances for effective implementation of sustainable urbanization development across cities both in the Global North and South.