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Spatial planning system needs the support of approaches toward achieving sustainability, with sustainable landscape pattern (SLP) for one potential spatial approach. However, the scientific definition of SLP has not been clarified in previous studies, and the support of SLP for spatial planning is also few summarized. The scientific definition and conceptual connotation of SLP were proposed, and its application status and development directions of theory and practice in spatial planning were further summarized. We systematically reviewed the literature on landscape sustainability, urban growth boundary, ecological network, green infrastructure, ecological security pattern, ecological red line and others close to SLP, and qualitatively summarized the key theoretical and practical support of SLP for spatial planning. SLP is defined as a certain combination of composition and configuration of landscape elements that enables social-ecological processes to sustainably provide stable ecosystem services for promoting human well-being in a particular region. SLP effectively supports spatial planning to determine planning targets, analyze spatial patterns, and compare and select schemes by assessing target landscape elements, identifying key spatial areas, and simulating future development scenarios. It is proposed that frontier concepts (i.e. spatial resilience, metacoupling framework and landscape multifunctionality) provide new research perspectives for SLP, and that SLP can also be applied to ecological restoration, urban agglomeration coordinated development, and nature-based solution in the future. Clarifying the scientific connotation of SLP can provide theoretical and methodological support for spatial planning practice and also a spatial approach for sustainable development.

Recently, research on sprawl was increasing due to its impacts on the economy, society, and environment. Severalstudies have focused on the application of containment strategies to curb urban sprawl. Urban growth boundaries (UGBs) were among the containment policies adopted to tackle the issue of sprawling cities. This paper set out to undertake an analysis of the factors influencing the performance of the UGB of Riyadh City. A qualitative data analysis using NVivo12 software was adopted. To collect the required data of UGB, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine experts involved in urban management, Riyadh city development, and other planning agencies. If the application of UGB policy in the western countries has managed to restrain more or less city sprawl, its replication to the case of Riyadh seems to have had some adverse impacts. That is, instead of controlling urban sprawl, it has stimulated it. The reasons may lie in the deficiency of monitoring and evaluation of urban studies, free provision of infrastructure, and lack of coordination between different city planning agencies. Understanding the factors affecting the UGB efficiencywill assist policymakers and urban planners in reducing the spread of scattered and leapfrog residential development, lowering the cost of service supply and promoting infill development

This research paper investigates urban sprawl in Thiruvananthapuram Urban Agglomeration (UA) and attempts to delineate Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) for promoting urban sustenance. A 112% rise in the spatial expanse of Thiruvananthapuram UA from 256.22 km2 in 2001 to 542.57 km2 in 2011 might induce urban sprawl in the peripheral areas. The Landsat satellite imagery for the years 1987, 1997, 2007, and 2017 were extracted to examine the spatiotemporal urban growth pattern. Shannon’s entropy index was employed to detect urban sprawl in Thiruvananthapuram UA. The UGB delineation process involved future urban growth prediction using the MOLUSCE (Modules for Land Use Change Simulations) plug-in of QGIS software. ANN-MLP (Artificial Neural Network-Multi Layer Perceptron) and CA (Cellular Automata) model was preferred in MOLUSCE to predict future urban growth for the year 2027. Thereafter, hexagons of one square kilometer were used to demarcate the Contiguous built-up Growth Boundary (CGB), and later, sub-administrative units were selected to delineate UGB. The results revealed a rise in the built-up areas from 36.04 km2 in 1987 to 140.69 km2 in 2017. Shannon’s entropy index indicated the prevalence of urban sprawl in Thiruvananthapuram UA. The future growth prediction by 2027 exhibited a further rise in built-up areas to 173.31 km2. The total area within CGB is 213.58 km2, while UGB accounted for 355.59 km2, which included 16 sub-administrative units. This study exhibited a unique methodology to delineate the urban growth boundary, which optimizes the future land requirements in developing nations.

Urban agglomeration is the main spatial organization mode used by the Chinese government to promote the policy of new urbanization strategy. Hence, a better understanding of the urban growth boundary (UGB) has profound theoretical and practical significance regarding sustainable urban development. This study devised a raster-based land use spatial optimization (LUSO) framework, and utilized ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm to delimit the smart growth boundaries of the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan city group (CZTCG) in China. The aim of this study is to design a LUSO model to explore an optimal pattern of urban agglomeration for sustainable growth. Multi growth scenario including a single development center, multipolar development and balanced development patterns are generated by the LUSO model for the year of 2050, and the optimum spatial pattern is chosen based on objectives comparison and the present stage of economic and social development in CZTCG. The main results are listed as the following. 1) It is feasible to identify the growth boundaries of the urban agglomeration using the land use spatial optimization model, and the optimal form of the spatial pattern can be defined. 2) With the growth trend of the urban agglomeration gradually spreads from a single center to multi-centers and even small towns, the total optimization target performance gradually increases, which means that the traditional pie-shaped development does not meet the maximum comprehensive benefit of the city group. 3) Subject to the regional social and economic development stage, absolute fair development or simply developing the central city is not conducive to promoting the coordinated development of the urban agglomeration. Gradient equalization and gradual advancement are the best choice for UGB delineation of urban agglomeration. The findings of this study would be useful to identify the UGB in CZTCG for more sustainable urban development in the future.

Facing the need to control urban sprawl, many Chinese cities are exploring the use of development-limiting boundaries, such as urban growth boundary (UGB) and urban development boundary (UDB), as required by the central government. Through a key word search of several databases including Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure, we identified and reviewed hundreds of articles published in academic or professional journals. Our review shows that policy processes discussed in the literature have emphasized the technical aspect with analytical sophistication. We identified three types of approach to UGB and UDB in the literature: the growth-driven, the constraint-oriented, and the hybrid. While urban theories and modeling techniques that originated from Western countries have greatly influenced the analytical process underlying some of these approaches, the UGB/UDB policy debate and explorations were also responsive to China’s unique urban and policy conditions. Despite the rich empirical content in the literature, very little research has been grounded in a scientific understanding of China’s urban development. Issues such as intergovernmental coordination, policy enforcement, and evaluation were also inadequately addressed in the existing literature. The literature’s newness may have been a major factor for these limitations. Our critique of the current literature may inspire new areas of research to generate knowledge that can inform China’s continuous policy efforts to combat urban sprawl.

Urban boundaries (UBs) are of great significance for urban planners to constrain urban expansion and protect the surrounding rural landscapes. However, existing studies mainly focus on evaluating land use suitability and modeling land conversion; thus, the prediction of UBs is indistinct and often even failed. The current study presents an urban growth boundary model (UGBM) using space syntax and multivariate regression model. The UGBM is established on the basis of the location of UBs and regards the layout of traffic network as a crucial factor influencing the pattern of UBs. The independent variables of the multivariate regression model are obtained from morphological variables, and the dependent variable is the distance to the UBs. As the morphological variables are highly correlated with the aggregation degree of human activities and traffic flows and an overwhelming majority of human mobility is found inside the UBs, we assume that UBs can be predicted using such variables to extend the UBs from urban physical development to contain the dimension of human mobility and activities. The simulation of UBs in the fast-growing town of Cotton Lake in Guangdong, southern China, was implemented. We compare the UB simulation of the proposed UGBM with a null UGBM without incorporating predictor variables. The results show that the proposed UGBM performs better than the null UGBM using quantity and location metrics of percent area match. We argue that space syntax has a great potential in simulating the expansion of UBs.

Urban growth boundaries (UGBs) have been adopted worldwide as a policy tool to control urban sprawl. However, the delineation of recently piloted UGBs in rapidly urbanizing areas of China has methodologically relied mainly on local officials’ personal willingness and urban planners’ work, thus lacking sufficient scientific evidence and reliable quantitative analysis. To fill this gap, this study simulates the spatial pattern of land use based on the CLUE-S model and land development suitability assessment. The principal advantage of this method lies in the innovative combination and effective balance of the central government’s dual requirements of arable land protection and intensive urban development in a rapidly urbanizing country. Moreover, we argue that the village collective—China’s rural land owners—should be treated in its entirety in land development policy-making, and we accordingly adjust the simulation results with village administrative boundaries in the UGB delineation to guarantee its effective implementation. Shenyang metropolis in Northeast China is taken as a case study. The results show that urban expansion and farmland shrinkage are two major features of future land use change in Shenyang; the most striking growth of urban land takes place mainly in the central city, especially in the northeast and southwest sectors. Despite slight variations in the growth rate, predominating directions, main sources, and ecological effects, urban development in Shenyang shows quite similar patterns under different development scenarios. Therefore, UGBs delineated on the basis of these scenarios are almost identical in the basic outline, with changes only in marginal areas. This novel method is proven to be effective in delineating UGBs in urbanizing China and has referential significance for urban growth management in other developing countries.

A green infrastructure assessment (GIA)-constrained cellular automata (CCA) model was developed to integrate habitat preservation with spatial-temporal simulation and the corresponding establishment of an urban growth boundary (UGB). A case study of the Hangzhou Metropolitan Area successfully demonstrated the application of the GIA-CCA model. Multitemporal land use maps interpreted from remotely sensed images taken in 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015 were utilized for validation and UGB prediction for 2020. The GI scenario incorporating the ecological network and a baseline scenario (BS) involving a current growth trend of no environmental constraint were designed to further investigate the unique advantages of the GIA-CCA model over the CCA model. Comparative analysis with groups of landscape metrics indicated that the GI scenario improved the connectivity among ecological elements, reducing urban fragmentation and promoting growth compactness, yet many irregular forms of edge sprawl and main city expansion were observed under the BS. Based on the GI scenario, the final UGBs were established, covering the central city, six new cities and nine towns. In contrast to the proposed UGBs, the planned UGBs generated by economic policies might play a negative role in preserving natural resources and responding to development uncertainties and could be improved by considering the forecasted results based on the GIA-CCA model as a helpful decision-making tool. The model could become an increasingly important part of growth management, particularly for developing countries and regions that are exposed to environmental deterioration due to rapid urbanization.

This paper examines the application of remote sensing, based on the Vegetation-Impervious surface-Soil (V-I-S) model and spatial metrics, in an urban analysis for promoting sustainability and understanding urban growth theory. In order to improve the accuracy of land-cover classification, spectral angle mapping (SAM), spectral mixture analysis (SMA) and band ratioing were applied on satellite images for land-cover classification and comparison of the discrimination efficiency of these techniques. For the SMA, subsets of the Landsat (2, 3, 4, 5, and 7) and ASTER (1, 2, and 3N) images were selected. After endmember extraction and purification, the Bayesian probability of each component was computed and used for spectral unmixing. The classified images of different years were compared to analyze the changes in land-use and spatial pattern using V-I-S, a form of percentage of landscape (PLAND) and annualized urban sprawl index (AUSI). The result indicates that the performance of band ratioing (69% accuracy) is not as good as that of SAM (75%) and SMA (86%) in discriminating between vegetation and agricultural land. It is concluded from the land-use analysis that the growth dynamics substantiate the urban theory of diffusion and coalescence and urban growth management strategies have not been completely successful.

This study provides evidence for the impact of an urban growth boundary (UGB) on house prices. The study employs a two-stage quantile spatial regression method on a dataset that inventories sales transactions of single-family houses within two miles of either side of the eastern boundary of the primary UGB in King County, Washington. The results show that while the UGB decreases house prices across the entire house price spectrum, the impact is uneven; it is most pronounced for houses in the 5th to 8th decile of prices. These findings should encourage policy makers to adopt sub-housing-market-level policy approaches to address UGB and other urban and regional development policies’ potential impacts on house prices.

The rapid expansion of cities in tropical regions has triggered a series of problems such as the destruction of rare natural resources and decreases in the environmental resource carrying capacity and ecological security, which seriously threaten the sustainable development of tropical cities. In this study, the city of Sanya, Hainan, China, is taken as an example. A bottom-line ecological security pattern is constructed based on the remote sensing ecological index (RSEI) and the patch-generating land use simulation (PLUS) for urban growth boundary (UGB) delineation. The results show that Sanya has a good ecological background, but the overall ecological quality decreased from 2014 to 2018 due to the expansion of construction in hot spot areas. Under the natural growth scenario, the urban built-up area in Sanya in 2030 will be 73.81% greater than in 2018, mainly occupying a large amount of agricultural and ecological space, and urban expansion will not be effectively suppressed. Delineation of the UGBs combined with the ecological constraints can effectively protect the regional ecological security and control the urban sprawl, which is relatively consistent with the current planning. The results of this study demonstrate that the RSEI-PLUS-based UGB delineation perspective has a high scientific and applicability, and they provide a reference for the coordinated ecological–economic sustainable development of ecologically fragile cities in tropical areas.

The legislation governing Ontario’s Greater Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt is set to be reviewed in 2015. This will be the first opportunity to review the defined boundaries of the protected area. This paper examines four other greenbelt areas to provide insight into how the province should deal with boundaries at the review. The case study areas are Ottawa’s National Capital Greenbelt, British Columbia’s Agricultural Land Reserve, London’s Metropolitan Greenbelt and Portland’s Urban Growth Boundary. Based on lessons from these case studies, the paper concludes with recommendations to provide a structure to the greenbelt review process, including harmonizing boundary definitions and exploring a more flexible approach to boundary definition.

This paper discusses the process of economic growth and urbanization in Malaysia, the contribution of Johor in the nation’s growth and the development of Iskandar Malaysia. First, we explore the range of institutions that engage in urban and regional planning at various level and their respective statutory development plan. Next, we present the contextual of the south Johor particularly Iskandar region and the new administrative of Iskandar Puteri. The development of Iskandar region is intended to benefit all in south Johor and by coordinating the efforts of various Government agencies, Iskandar Regional Development Authority (IRDA) is helping locals share the benefits of economic growth. Afterwards, we evaluate some issues that have arisen with regard to the physical development and the statutory development plans in Johor and Iskandar region on urbanization and urban growth pattern. From the analysis, we identified that among issues aroused are the absence of urban growth boundary within Iskandar region; land use change and agricultural land encroachment; low density and mixed-use development and environmental change and degradation.

Village-in-city is a non-agricultural village formed by the rapid advancement of urbanization in China and the urban-rural dual structure, where the urban service boundary (USB) failed to keep up with the urban growth boundary (UGB). The governance of village-in-city is a complex system involving a large number of stakeholders. In addition to local governments, village collectives and villagers, floating population is also its core stakeholders. This paper took 14 villages in Beilun District, Ningbo as the research object, selected typical cases to conduct field surveys, questionnaire surveys and interviews. Then classified each group based on the Mitchell score-based approach, and summarized Demolition and Reconstruction (M1), Partial demolition and space Optimization (M2) and Facilities and Landscape Comprehensive Consolidation (M3) three types of governance modalities. The internal mechanisms of each modality were analyzed and compared through SCM to compare their distribution characteristics. Finally, it proposed future governance directions in terms of housing, employment, planning and government.

Rapid urbanization has caused many environmental impacts associated with the reduction of green space. Having realized the importance of green space in urban ecosystems, local governments in China have set out a series of green space control planning. However, the relationship between the evolution of green space and control planning is not well studied in existing literature. This paper combines the analysis of remote sensing image interpretation to characterize the changing patterns of green space in Wuhan, China from 1995 to 2015. Results revealed that green space control planning accounted for the process of green space change, but failed to achieve its management and control objectives, the urban growth boundary (UGB) has broken. Although forests have efficiently recovered in some places, a significant amount of farmland and grassland have been invaded and damaged by urban expansion in the suburbs of the city. This situation has not been efficiently improved after the introduction of the control planning. We then further discuss the underlying causes of unproductive control planning by considering the stage of development in Midwest China. The analysis indicates that ignorance for the demands of regional development, disorganization among the governments and failure of suburban planning are the key factors contributing to inefficient planning.

With the rapid and unregulated nature of urban expansion occurring in Chattogram, Bangladesh, the adoption of urban growth restriction mechanisms such as the urban growth boundary (UGB) can provide a robust framework necessary to direct the development of built-up areas in a way that curtails the growth in environmentally sensitive areas of the city. Using a support vector machine (SVM)-based urban growth simulation model, this paper examines the areas of future contiguous expansion of the city to aid in the delineation of the UGB. Utilizing landcover, topographic, and population density data from a variety of sources for the past twenty years, the SVM method with the radial basis function (RBF) kernel is used to develop a model based on fourteen predictor variables. A grid-search is used to tune the hyperparameters and determine the best performance combination of the hyperparameters for the RBF kernel function used in the SVM. The final SVM model using the best performance combination of the hyperparameters indicates a high percentage agreement of 91.79% and a substantial agreement for the Kappa coefficient of 0.7699. The developed SVM simulation model identifies potential areas that are more likely to undergo urban expansion in Chattogram in the next twenty years and provides aids for a stringent and strict delineation of UGB for this region.

Reasonable delineation of the urban growth boundary (UGB) plays a vital role in guiding orderly urban space growth and ensuring urban environmental health. Existing methodologies for UGB delineation have failed to address the significance of ecological security. Therefore, this study presents a framework that couples ecological security pattern (ESP) establishment and construction land expansion (CLE) simulation to delineate the UGB. The proposed framework is applied to the Nanchang Metropolitan Area (NCMA) in southeastern China. First, we established the regional ESP of the NCMA in 2018 based on an improved minimum cumulative resistance model. The areas of low-, medium-, and high-level ESP were 1050.75, 736.42, and 720.59 km2, respectively. Second, we implemented a multi-scenario simulation of CLE in the NCMA in 2025 based on a cellular automata–Markov model. A natural development scenario was superior to urban growth and ecological protection scenarios for social, economic, and ecological development at the regional scale. Accordingly, we delineated the UGB of the NCMA in 2025 with a scale of 687.87 km2, based on dynamic adjustment using the results of ESP establishment and CLE simulation in the natural development scenario. The rationality and scientificity of the proposed framework were verified by comparing the scale and layout of the delineated UGB with the regional planning of Nanchang City. The framework incorporating dynamic adjustment with ESP establishment and multi-scenario CLE simulation provides a useful tool for the delineation of the UGB in similar urbanized cities. Its application is conducive to achieving a win–win outcome of regional ecological security and urban development.

Simulation models offer a way to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the consequences of alternative community planning scenarios. For example, a community might want to understand how a particular decision—such as expanding an urban growth boundary into lands zoned for agriculture—will result in ecological, economic, and social tradeoffs for various stakeholder groups. This chapter explores the utility of ENVISION, a spatially-explicit decision support framework that integrates various ecological and human systems model “plug-ins” for informing Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) options. While ENVISION already has a reasonably large tool box of such plug-ins, its usefulness could be further extended to address a wider range of community and ecosystem types. We specifically examine how a suite of existing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decision support tools (VELMA, HexSim, CORESET, Coral PF and others) could significantly extend ENVISION’s plug-in toolbox for coastal ecosystem EBM, inclusive of terrestrial-marine interactions and restoration goals of coastal communities dependent on marine ecosystem services.

Delineating urban growth boundaries (UGBs) has been proved as an effective approach to constrain urban encroachment and achieve sustainable urban development. However, so far, many studies have not fully taken account of the ecosystem integrity in simulating the urban growth as well as the corresponding UGBs delineation. To bridge this research gap, this paper proposes an ESP-FLUS model to predict the future land use pattern with a comprehensive consideration of ecological protection. In this paper, on the one hand, the ecological security pattern (ESP) is integrated from four ecological aspects (i.e., hydrology, geology, biodiversity, and recreation) and classified into three levels (i.e., basic ESP, intermediate ESP, and optimal ESP). On the other hand, drawing on historical records, random forest coupled with Gini importance are applied to identify the driving factors in shaping the land use variation. Taking the classified ESP as the spatial constraint allied with the identified driving factors into a FLUS model, this paper predicts the urban growth in 2035 in a multi-scenario manner. By analysing the multi-scenario simulation results at both region and district levels, the possible urban planning option under the requirements of local master plans is suggested for sustainable urban development. Against a backdrop of an increasingly severe environmental crisis, this paper develops a new research paradigm to incorporate ESP into UGBs delineation as a way to shed light for urban planners on reaching the balance between eco-environment protection and socio-economic development.

Since the seminal contribution of McCallum (1995), border study has been introduced to broader fields. However, it’s still a puzzle that how administrative boundaries affect the process of urban land expansion. In this study, we develop the Stage Model of Border Effect on urban land expansion based on Core-Periphery Theory and divide the evolutive process of border effect into four stages: the invisibility stage of administrative boundaries, the differentiation stage of administrative boundaries, the channelization stage of administrative boundaries and the evaporation stage of administrative boundaries. In the model, urban land distribution of different cities in urban agglomeration is in high-level balance after the evolution which is from low-level equilibrium to none-equilibrium state during the invisibility stage and the evaporation stage. Then, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is fully studied based on conditionalβconvergence analysis. Research results show that the model is well adapted to empirical study and evolutive process of border effect on urban land expansion in the region experienced the invisibility stage of administrative boundaries, the differentiation stage of administrative boundaries and the channelization stage of administrative boundaries from 1990 to 2010. We also find that the wider the gap between cities of different administrative ranks is, the larger the border effect tends to be. When border effects of different cities are equal and measure results are “1″, process of urban land expansion enter the evaporation stage of administrative boundaries. Additionally, impact of boundaries on urban land expansion is a long-term and cumulative process. The longer the research period is, the more significant the border effect tends to be. These findings can serve as basis of theoretical support and policy recommendations in breaking restriction of boundaries, delimiting the urban growth boundary and contributing to the rational expansion of urban land.

Urban sprawl is a major barrier for the precise demarcation of administrative boundary in the world. In India, medium and small towns have so far developed outside the envisaged planning, resulting in a leapfrog and haphazard growth. This paper has attempted to simulate the spatial extent of urban expansion and boundary demarcation for the purpose of efficient urban planning and land resource management. An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model and a set of landscape metrics were used to delineate the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) and characterize the future patterns of growth in Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC, India). In particular, two urban boundaries – namely, Urban Hard Boundary (UHB) and Urban Soft Boundary (USB) – were simulated. The results suggest a USB with the area of 123 km2 to address the basic service delivery and a UHB with the area of 211.88 km2 to manage the ecological fragmentation.

Urban growth boundaries (UGBs) have been applied in many rapid urbanizing areas to alleviate the problems of urban sprawl. Although empirical research has stressed the importance of ecological prot...

Extant literature on travelling planning ideas has been focusing on the need to understand the specificities of both origin and destination contexts, and the need to utilise ‘thick descript...

The urban growth boundary (UGB) concept is useful in the field of urban planning, but models that can simulate the change in UGBs remain limited to date. In this paper, we propose a model known as UBEM that can simulate the future UGB. UBEM combines historical trajectories of UGB development and its extension potential in each azimuth to predict the future UGB for one city. UBEM consists of two parts: 1) the radiation method (RM) is used to describe the incremental length between the urban boundaries. In RM, urban centroids are used as the origin points to generate a set of radial lines from each azimuth, and we calculate the total and annual urban boundary length increments for each azimuth. 2) the extension pressure of the urban boundary is evaluated for different azimuths based on the potential value, which is generated by selecting a set of variables that are related to urban growth potential. Multiple time series maps were used to calibrate the model to reduce the randomness in future modeling. We compare the calibrated modeling result with those generated by the uncalibrated UBEM and a separate null model, applying two goodness of fit metrics to evaluate model accuracy: percent area match (PAM) quantity and PAM location were used to demonstrate that the calibrated UBEM performed better than the uncalibrated UBEM and null model when modeling the change in the urban boundary. Wuhan City in central China is used as a case study to test the viability of UBEM and predict the future UGB in 2020. The predication result offers helpful guidelines for Wuhan's future urban planning and UGB design.

Oregon is known for its strict Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) policies. While UGBs are designed to accommodate land supply for 20 years of growth, land within UGBs must be annexed into city limits before it can be developed at urban densities and serviced. In Oregon, cities use a variety of municipal annexation and voter†approved annexation policies (VAAPs), providing an opportunity to study how different annexation policies affect land and housing markets, and affect urban density. Previous research on annexation has not considered how annexation policy influences housing values. This paper examines how VAAPs impact land growth, housing development, and density at the city level. It also examines how VAAPs impact housing values. Based on city†level and tax†lot†level statistical analyses from 107 cities outside Portland Metro area, the results suggest that VAAPs negatively impact the availability of developable land within city limits. VAAPs also positively impact residential density and housing value. Lastly, VAAPs inequitably affect housing value between relatively high†value housing and relatively low†value housing, posing economic equity impacts for lower value housing. These findings provide important lessons for Oregon and other states. While VAAPs may increase residential density in cities, the policies may exacerbate affordability problems.

Many cities of various types are distributed in the large area of mountainous regions in China. In these cities, there are acute contradictions between man and earth. Considering that the space growth mode of mountainous cities is widely different from that of flatland cities, the fractal method was adopted in the research aimed at demarcating the urban growth boundary of mountainous cities. The fractal features of the investigated mountainous cities in space were figured out via inference from their function, dimension, region, grade, and environment, and the fractal mode and conceptual framework of urban growth boundary of Qin-Ba mountainous region were constructed according to some concepts and methods such as fractal dimension, fractal network, and fractal order. In the research, the traditional urban growth boundary form-was decomposed into scattered points (point form), paths (linear form), and patches (plane form) to form the fractal theory units for the research of urban growth boundary, and the leading idea, procedure, and control method for “fractal demarcation of urban growth boundary” were established to provide strategies for demarcation of urban space growth boundary of Qin-Ba mountainous region.

In a continuous city with three distinct land use zones consisting of business, condominiums and detached houses, we derive the formulae which simultaneously optimize regulations on building size, lot size and the three zonal boundaries under the existence of agglomeration economies and traffic congestion. The formulae show that the optimal regulations require a combination of downward and upward adjustments to the market sizes of buildings within both the business zone and the condominium zone, followed by minimum lot size regulation in the housing zone. The outer boundaries of the condominium and housing zones should be regulated inward whereas the optimal business zone boundary regulation depends on the trade-off between agglomeration economies and traffic congestion costs.

Delimiting urban growth boundaries (UGBs) has been generally regarded as a regulatory measure for controlling chaotic urban expansion. There are increasing demands for delimiting urban growth boundaries in fast growing regions in China. However, existing methods for delimiting UGBs mainly focus on intrinsic dynamic processes of urban growth and ignore external planning interventions. Delimiting UGBs to restrain chaotic expansion and conserve ecological areas is actually a spatial optimization problem. This study aims to develop an optimization-based framework for delimiting optimal UGBs by incorporating dynamic processes and planning interventions into an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm. Local connectivity, total utility values and quantity assignment were integrated into the exchange mechanism to make ACO adaptive for the delimitation of UGBs. The core area of Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration, a very fast growing area in Central China was selected as the case study area to validate the proposed model. UGBs under multi planning scenarios with given combinations of weights for urban suitability, high-quality farmland protection, and landscape compactness were efficiently derived from the ACO model. Hypothetic datasets were initially used to test the performance of ACO on global optimum and its ability to optimize complex landscape patterns. Compared with experts' planning scenario, the optimal UGBs delimited by ACO model is practical. Results indicate that spatial optimization methods are plausible for delimiting optimal UGBs.

An analytically tractable city model with external increasing returns is presented. The equilibrium city structure is either monocentric or decentralized. Regardless of which structure prevails, intracity variation in endogenous variables displays exponential decay from the city center, where the decay rates depend only on parameters. Given population, the equilibrium of the model is generically unique. Tractability permits explicit expressions for when a central business district (CBD) will emerge in equilibrium, how external increasing returns affect the steepness of downtown rent gradients, and how wages and welfare vary with population. An application to urban growth boundary is presented.

Development pressures threatening northwestern Baltimore County, Maryland, in the early 1960s led to the creation of the private Valleys Planning Council, which commissioned University of Pennsylvania Professors Ian McHarg and David Wallace to produce The Plan for the Valleys, featuring McHarg’s approach of ecological determinism to locate development and preserve land, with Wallace designing the type and density of development. We analyze The Plan’s development and land protection elements and the County’s subsequent use of an urban growth boundary, agricultural zoning, and conservation easements. Although a catalyst for landscape protection, The Plan’s substantial development elements were never built.

While scholars in North America, China, India, and Western Europe have examined the extent to which urban planning policies have contained growth, we still have yet to understand the role of urban growth containment strategies in mediating growth dynamics in non-Western regions of the world. We examine the case of Doha, Qatar to assess two future growth scenarios: (a) future growth, based on historical patterns of development; and (b) the extent to an urban growth boundary will mediate future growth. By using a combination of spatial analysis, and the application of a land transformation model, we address two research questions: (1) what landscape features help to explain the rapid expansion? And (2) how much land does an urban growth boundary help to conserve from future development? The results suggest that Doha has grown by approximately 213% between 1987 and 2013, and that if similar trends continue, the region will see another 26,350 hectares of urban development by 2028. We identify approaches for rapidly growing cities to apply modeling technique for evaluating the extent to which urban containment policies can support more sustainable forms of development.

Urban areas in most countries are confronted by various externalities. Agglomeration externalities arise in business areas, based on communication among people and firms. Negative externalities, which typically include traffic congestion, congestion in public facilities, noise, and insufficient sunlight, are prevalent in business areas and residential areas. This chapter argues that, to manage these externalities with floor area ratio (FAR) regulations, a minimum FAR regulation, though not common in current practices, is necessary nevertheless, along with a maximum FAR regulation. This chapter examines where and how to impose FAR regulations in the presence of negative externality arising from population density using a simple two-zone city model in which population density externality is larger in one zone than in the other zone. Applying the model to obtain optimal FAR regulations following Kono et al. (2010) , we show that a maximum FAR regulation should be imposed in the zone with larger externality and a minimum FAR regulation in the other zone. In other words the imposition of only maximum FAR regulations, a practice common in actual city planning, is not optimal. This necessity of minimum FAR regulations has also been argued by Joshi and Kono (2009) . For designing a second-best policy, the deadweight losses in the related markets play an important role. This chapter shows how a minimum FAR regulation minimizes the total deadweight loss, hereby justifying its necessity. We also verify, through numerical simulation, the necessity of simultaneous imposition of minimum and maximum FAR regulations in a monocentric city with traffic congestion externality. We also compare welfare gains under market equilibrium and different policy regimes including congestion toll (first-best policy), FAR regulation, urban growth boundary (UGB) regulation, and FAR with UGB regulations.

In this chapter, following Kono and Joshi (2012) , we determine and compare optimal land use regulations in monocentric closed and open cities with traffic congestion externality. We define optimization as the maximization of social welfare. In our model, floor area ratio (FAR) and urban growth boundary (UGB) are regulated. Our definitions of closed and open cities slightly modify the standard definitions. In our closed city, population does not change in response to the land use regulation. An example is Silicon Valley that mostly attracts skilled ICT workers, and, as such, the total population is not affected much by the regulations. In contrast, in our open city, population changes in response to the regulation. Examples include towns that primarily consist of residences for workers employed elsewhere such as the “bed towns” in Japan.

Urban sprawl as a low-density, planned or unplanned, unlimited and discontinuous expansion in peripheral areas of the cities is traditionally considered one of the global challenges. Iran has confronted with urban sprawl over the past four decades. The present study aimed to review and compare the relevant literature in developed and developing countries in order to study the drivers of urban sprawl particularly, the most crucial ones in Iran as a developing country in the Middle East. Accordingly, it was found that the processes of urbanization and particularly socio-economic conditions affected urban development areas in Iran. Based on the findings of previous studies, fast urbanization, land policies, and shortcomings in the planning system are the most influential drivers of the urban sprawl in Iran considering that these drivers work with each other instead of working in separated lines.Resumen La expansión urbana como una expansión discontinua, planificada o no planificada, ilimitada y discontinua en áreas periféricas de las ciudades se considera tradicionalmente uno de los desafíos globales. Irán se ha enfrentado a la expansión urbana en las últimas cuatro décadas. El presente estudio ha tenido como objetivo revisar y comparar la literatura relevante en países desarrollados y en desarrollo para estudiar los impulsores de la expansión urbana en particular, como los más importantes en Irán, un país en desarrollo en el Medio Oriente. En consecuencia, se ha encontrado que los procesos de urbanización y, particularmente, las condiciones socioeconómicas afectaron las áreas de desarrollo urbano en Irán. Según los hallazgos de estudios anteriores, la urbanización rápida, las políticas de tierras y las deficiencias en el sistema de planificación son los impulsores más influyentes de la expansión urbana en Irán, considerando que estos impulsores trabajan juntos en lugar de trabajar en líneas separadas.

I measure the economic effects of greenbelts that prohibit new construction beyond a predefined urban fringe and therefore act as urban growth boundaries. I focus on England, where 13% of the land is designated as greenbelt land. I estimate a quantitative general equilibrium model that includes amenities, housing construction, a traffic congestion externality, agglomeration forces, productivity and household location choices. To identify causal effects of greenbelt land, I construct counterfactual greenbelts, use greenbelt land in 1973, or focus on areas within a km of greenbelt boundaries. Greenbelt policy appears to generate positive amenity effects, but also strongly reduces housing supply. I find the greenbelts seem to increase welfare, as the equivalent income increase of workers is 0.3% and land rents increase by about 6.5%. Whether greenbelts benefit workers critically depends on the presence of spillovers and greenbelt amenities.

This study explores the simultaneous imposition of cordon pricing and land-use regulations in a continuous and closed monocentric city with homogeneous households. Results reveal the optimal level of a single cordon toll and its location and the optimal floor area ratio (FAR) regulation, clarifying what distortions remain in the existence of cordon pricing and FAR regulation. Among other results, this paper shows that, with an optimal cordon toll, FAR regulation should alternate between a minimum and a maximum regulation, both inside and outside the cordon line.

This paper develops a spatial general equilibrium model that accommodates both congestion and agglomeration externalities, while firms’ and households’ land-use decisions are endogenous across continuous space. Focusing on the interaction between externalities and land use patterns, we examine the efficiencies of first-best policies and second-best pricing and place-based strategies using numerical simulations. A first-best policy must combine both Pigouvian congestion tolling (PCT) and Pigouvian labor subsidies (PLS) instruments, or design an optimal toll (or subsidy) internalizing agglomeration externalities (or congestion externalities). We also examine second-best pricing policies if only one instrument is adopted. Congestion pricing policies alone (e.g., a partial PCT or a flat-rate toll) can improve social welfare only in heavy-congestion cities, and their welfare gains may be insignificant (e.g., below 10% of the welfare improvement achieved by first-best policies). In contrast, second-best labor subsidy policies alone are a more effective alternative to first-best policies. As to place-based policies, the firm cluster zoning (FCZ) regulation is more efficient than the urban growth boundary (UGB) policy. UGBs only have small effects on the agglomeration economy but could worsen land market distortions via residential rent-escalation effects. These findings suggest that it is important to internalize business land use decisions and relax monocentricity assumptions, in order to appreciate the interplay of both urban externalities, since spatial adaptations to policy interventions can distort system efficiencies.

Drastic growth of urban populations has caused expansion of peri-urban areas&mdash, the transitional zone between a city and its hinterland. Although urbanisation may bring economic opportunities and improve infrastructure in an area, uncontrolled urban expansion towards peri-urban areas will negatively impact the environment and the community living within the area. Malaysia, for example, has become one of the most urbanised countries in East Asia. However, cities in Malaysia are relatively small and less densely populated compared with other cities in East Asia. This indicates that urban expansion has been sprawling towards peri-urban areas, and not being controlled and properly managed. To ensure urban expansions occur sustainably, urban growth boundary (UGB) can potentially be used as a mechanism to contain and limit urban expansion, and allow urban growth to be planned to achieve sustainable development. A scientific approach is essential to determine an UGB that allows future growth to be predicted and taken into consideration. Potentially, urban spatial models have been widely used to plan and predict future urban expansions. George Town Conurbation, the second largest urban conurbation in Malaysia, has been chosen as the study area in this study. This study aims to demonstrate the application of a GIS-Cellular Automata model, known as FutureSim, which was developed to simulate land cover changes and generate a designated UGB for this area. The model was developed based on the transition rule derived from land cover changes, from 2010 to 2018, and then used to predict future land cover changes under two different planning scenarios&mdash, compact growth and urban sprawl scenarios. With the accuracy of the model exceeding 74%, FutureSim was used to predict land cover change until 2030. The model can potentially be used to assist planners and policymakers to make decisions on the allocation of sustainable land use and planning for rapidly developing regions.

Rapid urbanization leads to a disorder land use pattern, posing severe threats to natural resources with high-quality ecosystem service (ES), hence, it is necessary to delineate ecologically constrained urban growth boundary (UGB) for containing sprawling urban expansion. The ecological constraint based on the assessment of specific or comprehensive ecosystem function provides little information about how the ecological correlation within different ESs affecting urban growth probability. This paper defined the strictest conservation with the least cost of total ES value as ecological constraint through excluding ESs trade-offs areas from potential urban development area, and the ecological constraint was further integrated into cellular automata (CA) to develop the ES-CA model for acquiring a win-win simulation between urban development and natural environmental protection. The case study of Hangzhou was implemented for the model application. Equivalent ES value was adjusted by spatial difference assessment to evaluate and visualize ES. Spearman correlation coefficient was adopted to retrieve the relation mechanism among different ESs and extract ESs trade-offs areas. Two alternative scenarios whether conserving the ESs trade-offs areas were established to investigate the unique advantages of the ES-CA model over the traditional ecological constraint-based CA. The comparative analysis using habitat quality and landscape metrics indicated that the urban growth pattern where the ESs trade-offs areas were prohibited for construction performed more effective in reducing habitat degradation, promoting land use compactness, and controlling sprawling urban expansion. According to the win-win scenario, the UGB having a polycentric spatial structure was delineated. In contrast with the planned UGB determined by socio-economic development policies, the proposed UGB demonstrated that the ES-CA model could play a more important role in growth management for ecological fragilely developing regions.

This paper examines the impact of a wide variety of factors on spatial size, spatial compactness measured by population density, and average travel demand measured by daily vehicle miles traveled per capita. The simultaneous equation regression results indicate real average household income has a positive impact on spatial size and average travel demand while a negative impact on urban spatial compactness. Transportation cost measured by fuel cost per mile has a negative impact on spatial size while a positive impact on urban spatial compactness. Among the land use policy tools, urban growth boundary has a positive impact on urban compactness while minimum lot size has a positive impact on urban spatial size.

Though previous studies have revealed the mechanism of urban land expansion based on different perspectives, the role of the administrative border tends to be ignored. Combined with empirical study and theoretical analysis, this paper attempts to explore the mechanism of border effect on urban land expansion. Firstly, we propose three hypotheses and develop an initial model. Then, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is applied to the empirical study. Based on the findings in the case study, we concretize the border effect and reveal the mechanism from a theoretical perspective. Our research indicates that borders have an indirect effect on urban land expansion. The indirect effect consists of the influence of administrative borders on medium and the impact of the medium on urban land expansion. The border effect is mainly caused by the influence of administrative borders on medium, while the disparity in border effect among cities and different years is determined by the impact of the medium on urban land expansion. Between 1990 and 2010, financial expenditure and the non-agricultural population were dominant components of the medium in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region (BTHR). The social fixed asset was an important medium when regional marketization and integration were at a low level. Although urban land expands in the limited space built by administrative borders, it is caused by cross-border communication among cities. Findings in the paper are expected to enrich our knowledge of the relationship between borders and urban land expansion and provide potential support for the delineation of Urban Growth Boundary.

Within international planning educational circles, the Netherlands has long been held up as an exemplar of effective national and regional land use planning practices. Well-known examples are the water management policies (van der Cammen and de Klerk 2012). The clearly defined administrative hierarchies, the policy consistency, and the management of the land resource with governmental controls in planning have been praised in planning literature. The Dutch planning system is seen as a great example for other countries, just as Sullivan’s Portland example (Bontje 2003; Fainstein 2005). The urban growth boundary (UGB) of the Regional Framework Plan of Portland is likewise one of the most outstanding elements of the land use planning system in State of Oregon. This is an example of an instrument accompanied by many other complementary ordinances, regulations, and rules that together result in a desired planning outcome. The UGB is therefore often compared to national planning instruments in the Netherlands intent on enforcing a strict boundary between the urban and the rural. In the Netherlands, this divide has always been a keystone concept of the land use planning system, which is to keep as much open space ‘open’ as possible, while concurrently address the need for expansion and growth by ensuring enough land for residential development in a context of land scarcity in the upcoming decades. This is a similar situation to Portland where the growth necessary for the next 20 years needs to be balanced by the geographical constraints of the nature and agricultural areas. Although the regional UGB enjoys statutory status in Portland, regional coordination is considered an informal norm within the Netherlands. For example, certain provinces keep to an 80–20 rule, whereby the majority of new developments should take place within existing urban contours. The regional focus of Portland’s planning system is relevant for international planners as most land use issues tend to cross administrative borders in nature and involve more than a single government level. On the surface, the Dutch planning system might not have much to offer as compared to Portland as the legal force is maintained mostly at the local level in the form of municipal land use plans (Needham 2016). Although the 2008 revision of the planning law (WRO 2008) does enable regional and inter-municipal zoning plans 138that can be brought forward by multiple municipalities or proposed by the Dutch regional government – the province – this instrument has been hardly implemented. From the provincial perspective, ‘overthrowing’ municipalities is politically not popular; municipalities – and their governors – focus on the land in their municipality as they are accountable for planning within the municipality, not outside.

The Oregon planning program has devised several strategies dealing with land scarcity over the Twenty first century. This chapter examines one aspect of statutory regime in one area of the state – growth management in the Portland Metropolitan Area, the state's most populous region. Under that regime, each city must have an urban growth boundary (UGB) separating urban from rural lands. In lieu of establishing a UGB for each city, Oregon statutory law delegates to an elected regional body, Metro, the power to set a regional UGB for the 23 cities and the urban portions of three counties within that region. Understanding the evolution of the Metropolitan Service District (Metro) as a policymaking entity is important in order to understand growth management in the Portland metropolitan area. Metro thus derives its land use planning power from statutes, the Oregon Constitution, and a charter approved by regional voters in 1992.

This chapter explores the potential of geospatial analysis to characterize land use dynamics in urban areas and the surrounding urban fringe. It focuses on the difference between policy ambitions and reality with respect to urban densification. Policy ambitions for the containment of urban development are ambitious in the Netherlands, as is evident from the many local objectives to concentrate residential development within existing urban areas. These ambitions are formulated as target shares of the total net increase in housing stock that should be realized within designated urban area boundaries. Following a GIS-based analysis of local changes in housing stock between 2000 and 2008, we are able to describe actual intensification shares and residential densities in newly-developed urban areas. We observe that, especially in the already densely-populated western part of the country, the realized urban intensification shares are below the specified policy goals/ambition levels. Using these observations along with scenario-based projections of the regional increases in housing stock, we are able to determine the demand for new urban land in 2020. Using a land use simulation model, we simulate the urban development processes until 2020 according to two scenarios and two policy alternatives. In the first policy alternative, growth in the number of house units is based upon policy ambitions, while in the second scenario growth is based upon observed trends over the past decade. The results show that current policy ambitions related to urban intensification levels will greatly help in containing the substantial urban growth that is projected in the case of a high economic and population growth scenario. If urban development follows past trends, unabated, thus demonstrating relatively low urban intensification shares, large-scale urban extensions are likely to occur.

Housing, particularly affordable housing, has been the center of much discussion in the second decade of the twenty-first century in the United States. This Article focuses on that discussion in one American state — Oregon — containing slightly more than one percent of the country’s population, but possessing a land-use planning system that aspires to promote housing affordability, as well as address other social, economic, and political concerns. Indeed, Oregon’s land-use system is nationally known for its centralization and focus on containing sprawl. This paper analyzes the limited role that the federal government has played in facilitating the construction of housing and providing public and affordable housing, and how these efforts have fared in Oregon. It then assesses the tools that Oregon's land-use system provides for facilitating affordable housing, including binding plan and zoning designations, a prohibition on vague standards, requirements for a regional approach towards housing obligations, and the favorable treatment of most local housing decisions on review. Finally, the article analyzes data demonstrating that much work remains to be done in Oregon, particularly in a housing market that has been heated for almost a decade.