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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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We study how congestion tolls and an urban growth boundary should be designed optimally in a monocentric city with both car and public transit commuting from the suburbs to the central city. The existing monocentric city literature has repeatedly shown that mitigating the congestion externality causes the densification of population toward the city center. In contrast, we find the opposite of densification can occur if public transit mode is present. Modal substitution effect limits the centralizing force of anti-congestion policies. In addition, redistributing tax revenues among residents generates a decentralizing effect by increasing housing demand because marginal utility of income is higher in suburbs. At the optimum, mitigating congestion can cause urban sprawl depending on degree of substitutability between automobile and public transit, relative congestibility of the two modes, tax revenue redistribution and preferences for location and lot size.

China’s domestic urban planning only worked on researches of urban space control, the scope definition of urban development is not clear enough. The purpose of this study is to present a new urban growth boundary (UGB) delimitation method which combined land suitability evaluation (LSE) and cellular automata (CA). This method gave credence to LSE’s advantage in sustainable land use, and CA’s advantage in objective dynamic simulation. The ecological limitation areas were defined by LSE, which were regarded as the restricted areas of urban growth; meanwhile, it was taken as an important model input to guide intensive land allocation in urban growth model (CA model). The future urban growth scenarios were predicted by CA model and the corresponding UGB lines were delineated by ArcGIS 10.1. The results indicated that this method had good performance in Ningbo’s urban growth simulation. When compared to the planned UGB in urban master planning, the simulated UGBs under port development and regulated scenarios showed more intensive and suitable spatial layout of land. Besides, the simulated UGB under regulated scenario had the most reasonable space structure and the largest ecological protection effect among the UGBs. Hence, the simulated UGBs were superior to the planned UGB. The study recommends that this UGB delimitation method can promote sustainability of land development and ecological environment in Chinese cities.

With the development of economy and society, the comprehensive strength of Wuhan has been increasing rapidly. The expanding of urban space has caused traffic congestion, population density, environmental degradation, urban ecology and a series of social and environmental issues. It has an extremely important far-reaching meaning on discussing the law of urban expansion for the reasonable control of urban disorder, blind expansion and predicting future patterns of development of the city under different planning scenarios. Cellular automata (CA) is a popular and robust approach to the spatially explicit simulation of land-use and land-cover changes. This study attempts to use temporal dynamic simulation technology of cellular automata machine to predict future urban growth boundary in Wuhan, and to provide visualization process of future urban growth in Wuhan, which contributes to further validating the universal SLEUTH model. This paper is based on the remote sensing data of Wuhan in 1991, 2000, 2007, 2014, as well as Wuhan digital elevation data, various socioeconomic statistics and other data to establish spatial data system of Wuhan. Based on SLEUTH model and space-time simulation, this experiment forecasts the urban expansion in Wuhan in the next 20 years and visualizes it with GIS to better grasp historical inertia and characteristics of the urban expansion in this area.

Our research evaluates and compares the effects of three land-related policies on land development in a sprawling metropolitan area during a real estate boom and a recession. Our findings suggest that during a real estate boom 1) the urban growth boundary (UGB) serves its purpose of attracting urban development inside the given boundary during a boom while its effectiveness diminishes with increased development pressure from lower-valued land outside of the UGB during a recession period, 2) the agricultural zone works well for restraining new development during a boom period while agriculture zoned parcels are more likely developed during a recession period, and 3) an increase in the land-value tax bill increases the incentive for development during a recession period while higher tax bills do not affect development during a boom period. In anticipation of a re-emergence of urban sprawl with the recovery of the real estate market, our findings imply that land planners and others concerned with sprawling development should pay more attention to development in sprawl-prone areas during recession periods.

While there has been controversy over the negative and positive effects of urban containment policies (UCPs), little is known about their impact on urban growth with policy tightness. This paper empirically analyses UCP impacts on changes in population, employment, built-up areas, and housing values. A simultaneous equation model is estimated, with, as endogenous variables, the above changes at the city level. Both stringent containment policies (SCP), such as greenbelts and urban growth boundaries, and less stringent containment policies (LSCP), such as urban service areas, are found to have significant impacts on changes in population, employment, housing values, and city land area. SCPs have positive effects on changes in population and housing values twice as large as LSCPs, suggesting that SCPs more successfully accommodate new growth within growth boundaries and that housing values increase with the tightness of UCPs.

Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) traces an irregular circumference around the city’s periphery defining urban from non-urban land. The UGB was established to provide clarity on Melbourne’s future urban footprint. Undermining this clarity is an irregular but ongoing amendment process which results in the UGB being moved. The UGB is a planning tool and as such is an intangible and immaterial boundary; neither marked nor signposted. This inquiry is concerned with the UGB as a ‘site’, an area that can be occupied as well as subject to interventions and speculations. A number of design implications of the UGB as a ‘site’ are considered as well as the agency of design on our reading of the UGB. Specifically this research asks two questions. Firstly, in what ways can design define a ‘site’, or series of sites, of the UGB? Secondly, how can design support the basic intent of the Urban Growth Boundary to define an urban limit? Using a design-led methodology this research was undertaken in three stages. The first examines the ‘site’ of a northern section of the UGB through mapping and photography building knowledge of the UGB as both a map and place. The second interacts with the UGB as a ‘site’ through the design and installation of a site-specific work. This work has implications for both the specific and general meanings of the UGB ‘site’. The final stage expands on these implications through a body of design work focusing on exploring urban and landscape design scenarios within the UGB site. In conclusion, this research argues that design can play an important role relating planning regulations with place. Design has the potential to support planning directives through its critical and creative processes seeking to connect people and place through imagined design scenarios. Reading the UGB as ‘site’ creates the opportunity for design to engage with the broader city-wide strategy of the UGB.

In response to the increasing loss of native vegetation and biodiversity, a growing number of countries have adopted ''offsetting'' policies that seek to balance local habitat destruction by restoring, enhancing and/or protecting similar but separate habitat. Although these policies often have a stated aim of producing a ''net gain'' or ''no net loss'' in environmental benefits, it is challenging to determine the potential impacts of a policy and if, or when, it will achieve its objectives. In this paper we address these questions with a general approach that uses predictive modelling under uncertainty to quantify the ecological impacts of different offset policies. This is demonstrated with a case study to the west of Melbourne, Australia where a proposed expansion of Melbourne's urban growth boundary would result in a loss of endangered native grassland, requiring offsets to be implemented as compensation. Three different offset policies were modelled: i) no restrictions on offset location, ii) offset locations spatially restricted to a strategically defined area and iii) offset locations spatially and temporally restricted, requiring all offsets to be implemented before commencing development. The ecological impact of the policies was determined with a system model that predicts future changes in the extent and condition of native grassland. The case study demonstrates how relative and absolute policy performance can be quantified in relation to best and worst-case scenarios. The study also shows that the ecological benefits of being temporally and spatially strategic in choosing offsets locations are substantially greater than being spatially strategic alone. We also show that even with considerable uncertainties in the system model predicting future grassland condition, the performance of the three offset policies can still be differentiated. Finally, we show the extent to which a policy achieves a ''net gain'' is dependent on the baseline against which policy performance is measured. The quantitative framework presented here can also be used to evaluate other offset policies or extended to deal with different types of environmental policies.

Anthropogenic landscape change has had a disproportionately large effect on temperate grassland systems. We used simulations of landscape change to compare the impacts of three commonly applied alternative residential development policies (protecting productive lands, growth boundaries, targeted protection of conservation lands) on ecological and socially important resources in a rural grassland landscape of northern Idaho, United States. Our simulations showed that development patterns were least socially acceptable and most detrimental to ecological resources under current land-use policies. Protecting productive agricultural lands led to the highest level of endangerment for remnant Palouse Prairie communities. Urban growth boundary policies produced the most socially acceptable development patterns and supported habitat for a wide range of species. Targeted conservation actions protected key habitat areas but did little to protect habitat for wide-ranging species. Detailed analyses such as these provide planners with the information required to assess and mitigate the consequences of policy decisions.

Urban growth boundaries (UGBs) are common tools employed by planners to constrain urban expansion in order to increase density of urban services and protect surrounding rural landscapes. Planners could use models that estimate future urban growth boundaries based on those factors that drive urban expansion. Unfortunately, few models have been developed that simulate the urban growth boundary. This paper presents an urban growth boundary model (UGBM) which utilizes artificial neural networks (ANN), geospatial information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) to simulate the complex geometry of the urban boundary of Tehran, Iran. Raster-based predictive variables are used as inputs to the ANNs parameterized using vector routines. ANNs were used to train on seven predictor variables of urban boundary geometry for Tehran: roads, green spaces, slope, aspect, elevation, service stations, and built-area. We show that our UGBM can predict urban growth boundaries with urban area with 80–84% accuracy. The model predicts urban boundaries in all cardinal directions equally well. We use the model to predict urban growth to the year 2012. We summarize the use of UGBs in planning around the world and describe how this model can be used to assist planners in developing future urban growth boundaries given the need to understand those factors that contribute toward urban expansion.

Statewide growth regulations are often a site for conflict over appropriate land use and the interests it should serve. Perceptions of environmental policies’ effects on local economic development provide the foundation for tension between environmental quality and economic growth. Rural perceptions are of particular importance due to the economic hardships that have hit many rural communities. I examine rural leaders’ perceptions of growth management policies with respect to achieving economic development. Results suggest that several community leaders view state growth management legislation as negatively affecting the implementation of outside industry or business as well as the sustaining of livestock farms. Interviewed leaders do not perceive the presence of an urban growth boundary to have much of an impact on economic development. Rather, they perceive certain characteristics surrounding the amendment of the urban growth boundary, such as lengthy timelines and county approval, to have the most impa...

Urban growth boundary (UGB) is a regulatory measure of local government for delineating limits of urban growth over a period of time. Land within the UGB allows urban development, while the land outside of this boundary remains primarily non-urban. The increasing popularity of UGB demands an easy and effective method to design this boundary. This article introduces a new concept, Ideal Urban Radial Proximity (IURP), to designate a spatial UGB using geoinformatics in the digital environment. The Kolkata urban agglomeration was considered to demonstrate this model. Remotely sensed imageries of three temporal instants (years 1975, 1990 and 2005) were considered to determine the information on urban extent and growth of the city. These data were then used as inputs to model the UGB for the years 2020 and 2035. The proposed model discourages scattered development and increase in urban growth rate. It preserves urban vegetation, water bodies and any other important non-urban areas within the inner city...

Based on the remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) analysis of the Landsat multispectral scanner (MSS) and thematic mapper (TM) satellite images of 1983, 1993, and 2005, the present research examined the effectiveness of the urban construction boundaries (UCBs) in containing urban growth within the 6th Ring Road of Beijing Municipality. Three indicators on boundary control were proposed, through which the effectiveness of boundary containment, land inventory sufficiency and illegal adjacent development to the UCBs were explored. The results suggested that, first, the UCBs were limited in effectiveness in containing urban growth; second, the area encompassed by the UCBs might not be designed large enough to accommodate new development. The frustration of the urban growth control through the UCBs mainly resulted from the lack of a transparent system for urban land use planning and control to provide sufficient information, the limitation of the traditional land use prediction method to consider contingencies, and the absence of a mechanism to monitor and adjust the UCBs to respond just in time to urban change.

The rapid growth of cities around the world is now seen as a major contributor to global biodiversity loss and many governments include biodiversity conservation as an explicit policy goal. To help prevent further loss of biodiversity, there is an urgent need for more strategic approaches to conservation planning in urban environments based on a scientific understanding of landscape patterns, species requirements and development pressures. In this study, we demonstrate the use of new conservation planning tools to better integrate information on threatened species into landuse planning. We present a case study in the Greater Melbourne area that utilises the Zonation conservation planning tool with data for 30 threatened fauna species. We perform a multi-species spatial prioritisation that incorporates species-specific connectivity requirements and demonstrate the use of this information in a number of landuse planning contexts. First, we quantitatively assess the differences between Melbourne's current conservation areas with the locations prioritised by Zonation and determine priority areas for their extension. We then show how the prioritisation can be used in decisions regarding Melbourne's Urban Growth Boundary and in rezoning land for development. Finally, we demonstrate how the prioritisation can be used to identify areas of conservation significance within individual developments that account for the wider landscape context. These results demonstrate how conservation planning tools can be better integrated into the different stages of landuse planning for future urban growth.

Forecasting urban futures is of great importance to ensure the adequate provision of public and private services and to implement policies that guide demand while mitigating negative impacts. This study produces year 2030 predictions of land use and travel conditions across the Austin–Round Rock statistical metropolitan area of Texas by integrating a gravity-based land use model (modeled on Putman's Integrated Transportation–Land Use Package specification) with a standard travel demand model. The land use model cycles through job, household, and land consumption estimates across traffic analysis zones before feeding forward into a contemporaneous model of travel patterns. To understand the implications of different policies better, three scenarios were generated: a business-as-usual scenario, a congestion pricing plus carbon tax scenario, and an urban growth boundary (UGB) scenario. Results reveal how these transportation and land use policies may shape our land and travel futures, and they illuminate challenges and pitfalls of the gravity-based approach to land use (including the accompanying land consumption model). Of particular interest is that the imposition of road pricing (roughly 5¢/mi) had almost no discernable effect on land use predictions, yet resulted in the same predicted reduction in regional vehicle miles traveled as the UGB policy (roughly 15%).

The empirical evidence is mixed on whether urban growth boundaries (UGB) effectively moderate urbanization. The spatially varying effects of a UGB on land development patterns and land value in Eastern Tennessee, USA, were estimated to examine the impacts of the UGB in different submarkets. A simultaneous-equation model was used with an endogenous binary variable to reflect the parcel's state of development and an endogenous continuous variable measuring parcel land value. Submarkets were identified using cluster analysis. The results suggest that the UGB slowed down development in urban submarkets but development accelerated in rural–urban submarket interfaces where the UGB did not play a role in land values.

This study evaluates how successful smart growth policies in Portland, best known for its smart growth policies such as the urban growth boundary, extensive public transit service, and transit-oriented developments along the transit corridors, are in achieving one of their policy objectives, a reduction of automobile dependence. Empirical evidence reveals that more diversified land use in neighborhoods, more extensive provision of public transit service, and decreasing accessibility to freeway interchanges were associated with fewer choices of driving alone, while making settlements compact via the urban growth boundary and transit-oriented developments has no clear relationship with reducing the choice to drive alone. Empirical analyses also suggest that provision of public transit service and mixed land use implemented at residential zones (origins) were more effective in reducing automobile dependence than those implemented at places of work (destinations).

This study tests the hypothesis that a higher present value of expected rental stream of undeveloped land in the urban growth area influences the effect of the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) on the values of newly developed houses in Knoxville and Knox County, Tennessee. We estimate a version of the Box-Cox (BC) transformed hedonic housing price model, which accommodates both non-normality and heteroskedasticity in the stochastic error term. The finding of this study verifies the premise that the values of newly developed houses after the implementation of a UGB are likely to be higher within the urban growth area than those outside, all other things equal.

The impact of an urban growth boundary (UGB) on land development in Knox County, TN is estimated via two-stage probit and neural-network models. The insignificance of UGB variable in the two-stage probit model and more visible development patterns in the western part of Knoxville and the neighboring town of Farragut during the post-UGB period in both models suggest that the UGB has not curtailed urban sprawl. Although the network model is found to be a viable alternative to more conventional discrete choice approach for improving the predictability of land development, it is at the cost of evaluating marginal effects.

This study compares net impacts of developmental potentials, externalities, and uncertainties associated with the urban growth boundary (UGB) with those of certainty and tax savings in the exclusive farm use (EFU) districts on land values in Portland, OR, using a hedonic Thünian econometric model. Using a geographic information systems—based data set of Christmas tree and horticultural farms, value effects of the urban growth boundary were found to vary by farm size, land use, and proximity to urban activities. The results suggested that proximity to negative externalities associated with urban activities had strong impacts on farming within the UGB. These impacts overweighed advantages associated with tax savings and increasing certainty within EFU districts.

This paper analyzes characteristics, major driving forces and alternative management measures of land-use change in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, China. The study used remote sensing (RS) maps and socio-economic data. Based on RS-derived maps, two change matrices were constructed for detecting land-use change between 1987 and 1994, and between 1994 and 2000 through pixel-to-pixel comparisons. The outcomes indicated that paddy fields, dryland, and forested land moderately decreased by 8.2%, 29% and 2.6% from 1987 to 1994, and by 4.1%, 7.6% and 8% from 1994 to 2000, respectively. In contrast, the following increased greatly from 1987 to 1994: artificial ponds by 48%, urban settlements by 87.6%, rural settlements by 41.1%, and construction land by 511.8%. From 1994 to 2000, these land covers increased by 3.6%, 28.1%, 23.4% and 47.1%, respectively. For the whole area, fragmentation of land cover was very significant. In addition, socio-economic data were used to analyze major driving forces triggering land-use change through bivariate analysis. The results indicated that industrialization, urbanization, population growth, and China's economic reform measures are four major driving forces contributing to land-use change in Kunshan. Finally, we introduced some possible management measures such as urban growth boundary (UGB) and incentive-based policies. We pointed out that, given the rapidity of the observed changes, it is critical that additional studies be undertaken to evaluate these suggested policies, focusing on what their effects might be in this region, and how these might be implemented.

This study estimates the effects of an urban growth boundary (UGB) on land development decisions in Knox County, TN, using a heteroscedastic probit model. With combined effects of increased land development within the city boundary and decreased development within the UGB and the neighboring town of Farragut after the implementation of UGB, the UGB of Knox County has been successful in urban revitalization within the city boundary and discouraging urban sprawl. These UGB impacts may be related to the city government having the right to annex land parcels within the UGB without consent of land owners.

Metro Vision 2020 is a collaborative effort to manage growth in metropolitan Denver. Based on interviews, surveys and document analysis, an evaluation revealed that it was a well-managed process that raised awareness about growth problems. The efforts also resulted in an approved regional plan that initiated an innovative urban growth boundary policy. However, the lack of broad-based participation, limited understanding of policy effects, and inadequate implementation tools raised doubts about long-term effectiveness. The broader implications are that collaboration at the metropolitan scale needs to explore more participatory models, stronger implementation tools, and institutional structures that will support consensus.

This paper investigates how development fees and urban growth boundaries affect urban development when the short run construction supply function is upward sloped (i.e., convex development costs). Whereas the policies are equivalent in the traditional static model, dynamic analysis reveals important differences out of the steady state. In particular, the development fee that is efficient in the steady state is also dynamically efficient. In contrast, the long run efficient urban growth boundary generates inefficiently fast development out of the steady state. The results are robust with or without location rents and perfect or myopic foresight assumptions.

Too often we plan and engineer rather than design. Planning tends to be ambiguous, leaving the critical details of place making to chance, and engineering tends to optimize isolated elements without regard for the larger system. If we merely plan and engineer, we diminish the possibility of developing a design that makes informed trade-offs between isolated efficiencies and integrated parts. Design is multidimensional problem solving, while engineering is single-issue optimization. Both are necessary, but at this stage of development Bucky Fuller’s whole systems design is what is needed.

I remember when President Jimmy Carter proposed sweaters as an energy conservation strategy. He was right—dressing for climate and season has always been a natural and sensible part of life (and even fashion). But the idea that we had to compromise our thermostat settings and change our behavior, even in a minor way, resulted in political outrage. In the end, it seemed better to control OPEC even if it led to war—as it has repeatedly. Sadly, more than thirty years later, we still have the same three basic options: maintain our oil dependence through dollars and blood, implement a new set of technologies that can supply our current energy appetite with renewable sources, or build a more urban future and in so doing conserve more resources and change our lifestyle.

Searching for urban growth boundary, understanding the process of urban expansion and analyzing the evolution characteristics are of great practical significance to understand the city's historical evolution and to make the scientific planning. Meanwhile, remote sensing, geographical information science, Geo-Informatic Tupu provide the efficient means in such study. The aim of this paper is to discuss the initial work of establishment and analysis of Geo-Informatic Tupu in urban land use change. Taking Nanjing as research area, establishment and application of Geo-informatic Tupu for urban growth is discussed in this dissertation. Based on the analysis of temporal evolution maps and spatial characteristic maps, Nanjing urban expansion characteristics are recognized, which contains the whole evolution in time series and spatial difference in multi-districts and multi-orientations. The urban expansion pattern and its changes in Nanjing city since 1949 are summarized for future references.

The popularity of exurban living challenges regional planners as they seek to conserve natural resources, scenic amenities, and natural open space. This chapter highlights planning tools and techniques that have proven successful in preserving environmental integrity at regional- and site-specific scales. The chapter describes the unique context that colors rural land-use planning, describes a typology of tools and devices that promote rural land conservation, and provides a case study that highlights conservation efforts in rural South-Central Wisconsin.

This paper examines different models of governing structure found in metropolitan areas around the world. It evaluates how well these models achieve the coordination of service delivery over the entire metropolitan area as well as the extent to which they result in the equitable sharing of costs of services. Based on theory and case studies from numerous cities in developed and less developed countries, the paper concludes that there is no"one size fits all"model of metropolitan governance. Other observations from the case studies highlight the importance of the process of implementing a metropolitan structure, the need to match fiscal resources with expenditure responsibilities, the need to have a governance structure that covers the entire economic region, and the critical importance of having a strong regional structure that ensures that services are delivered in a coordinated fashion across municipal boundaries.

Though many people consider Portland, Oregon, a model of 21st-century urban planning, the region's integrated land-use and transportation plans have greatly reduced the area's livability. To halt urban sprawl and reduce people's dependence on the automobile, Portland's plans use an urban-growth boundary to greatly increase the area's population density, spend most of the region's transportation funds on various rail transit projects, and promote construction of scores of high-density, mixed-use developments. When judged by the results rather than the intentions, the costs of Portland's planning far outweigh the benefits. Planners made housing unaffordable to force more people to live in multifamily housing or in homes on tiny lots. They allowed congestion to increase to near-gridlock levels to force more people to ride the region's expensive rail transit lines. They diverted billions of dollars of taxes from schools, fire, public health, and other essential services to subsidize the construction of transit and high-density housing projects. Those high costs have not produced the utopia planners promised. Far from curbing sprawl, high housing prices led tens of thousands of families to move to Vancouver, Washington, and other cities outside the region's authority. Far from reducing driving, rail transit has actually reduced the share of travel using transit from what it was in 1980. And developers have found that so-called transit-oriented developments only work when they include plenty of parking. Portland-area residents have expressed their opposition to these plans by voting against light rail and density and voting for a property-rights measure that allows landowners to claim either compensation or waivers for land-use rules passed since they purchased their property. Opposition turned to anger when a 2004 scandal revealed that an insider network known as the light-rail mafia had manipulated the planning process to direct rail construction contracts and urban-renewal subsidies to themselves. These problems are all the predictable result of a process that gives a few people enormous power over an entire urban area. Portland should dismantle its planning programs, and other cities that want to maintain their livability would do well to study Portland as an example of how not to plan.

As urbanization continues across the globe, cities face significant challenges and opportunities to grow in ways that reduce carbon emissions while providing high quality of life. An EcoPartnership between the cities of Portland, Oregon, USA and Kunming, China is designed to accelerate the exchange of policies and strategies for low-carbon development. Kunming successfully implemented China's first bus-rapid transit system (BRT); Portland is currently analyzing the feasibility of BRT. Portland relies on an urban growth boundary (UGB) as a key policy to guide growth management; Kunming is evaluating the feasibility of a UGB. Both cities are investing in infrastructure for bicycle networks. Key characteristics of successful collaboration include shared substantive priorities; familiarity with the institutional context and roles of the individuals involved; a good match in the responsibilities of the participating agencies and individuals; interpersonal rapport and trust; and the persistence of the collaboration over time.

Ballplayer Satchel Paige said, “Don’t look back — somebody might be gaining on you.” The 4th International Conference on Technology Policy & Innovation in Curitiba, Brazil (August, 2000), suggested the opposite: We Portlanders had better look back — to remind ourselves that others are gaining on us.

The process of planning and constructing a new light rail system or freeway, setting an urban growth boundary, changing tax policy, or modifying zoning and land use plans is often politically charged. Our goal in the UrbanSim project is to provide tools for stakeholders to be able to consider different scenarios, and then to evaluate these scenarios by modeling the resulting patterns of urban growth and redevelopment, of transportation usage, and of environmental impacts, over periods of 20-30 years. UrbanSim, combined with transportation models and macroeconomic inputs, performs simulations of the interactions among urban development, transportation, land use, and environmental impacts. It consists of a set of interacting component models that simulate different actors or processes within the urban environment.

Many regions of the globe are experiencing rapid urban growth, the location and intensity of which can have negative effects on ecological and social systems. In some locales, planners and policy makers have used urban growth boundaries to direct the location and intensity of development; however the empirical evidence for the efficacy of such policies is mixed. Monitoring the location of urban growth is an essential first step in understanding how the system has changed over time. In addition, if regulations purporting to direct urban growth to specific locales are present, it is important to evaluate if the desired pattern (or change in pattern) has been observed. In this paper, we document land cover and change across six dates (1986, 1991, 1995, 1999, 2002, and 2007) for six counties in the Central Puget Sound, Washington State, USA. We explore patterns of change by three different spatial partitions (the region, each county, 2000 U.S. Census Tracks), and with respect to urban growth boundaries implemented in the late 1990’s as part of the state’s Growth Management Act. Urban land cover increased from 8 to 19% of the study area between 1986 and 2007, while lowland deciduous and mixed forests decreased from 21 to 13% and grass and agriculture decreased from 11 to 8%. Land in urban classes outside of the urban growth boundaries increased more rapidly (by area and percentage of new urban land cover) than land within the urban growth boundaries, suggesting that the intended effect of the Growth Management Act to direct growth to within the urban growth boundaries may not have been accomplished by 2007. Urban sprawl, as estimated by the area of land per capita, increased overall within the region, with the more rural counties within commuting distance to cities having the highest rate of increase observed. Land cover data is increasingly available and can be used to rapidly evaluate urban development patterns over large areas. Such data are important inputs for policy makers, urban planners, and modelers alike to manage and plan for future population, land use, and land cover changes.

In 1973, Oregon adopted a statewide comprehensive land use management program. It represents an important new approach in land use control and merits careful consideration and examination by land use analysts, policy makers, and the public. By providing statewide standards for land use planning and implementation carried out through an ongoing local administrative process, an important state land use management role has been established and, many argue, without a substantial erosion of local flexibility. Rural land use management, particularly farmland protection, is an important component of the Oregon program. The combination of state mandated, locally implemented urban growth boundary designations and exclusive farm use zoning represents a unique case in farmland protection policy. The performance of the program is evaluated, and economic trade-offs in the selection of minimum lot size standards are discussed. This program offers the promise of substantially improving rural land use management...

In Oregon, comprehensive land use legislation has been enacted creating a state land use program, ORS Ch. 197. The original thrust of the Oregon land use program was not the provision of housing but the conservation of agricultural lands and the containment of urban facilities and services through urban growth boundaries around Oregon cities. Despite this orientation, the Oregon legislature became increasingly concerned about the implementation of the state housing goal, which provides in relevant part: “plans shall encourage the availability of adequate numbers of housing units at price ranges and rent levels which are commensurate with the financial capability of Oregon households. …” The legislature also enacted a state housing policy declaring that “the availability of housing opportunities for persons of lower, middle, and fixed income is a matter of state-wide concern…. [W]hen a need has been shown for housing within an urban growth boundary at particular price ranges and rent levels, neede...