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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Habitat is one of the important research contents of regional ecological security. Based on land use data, this paper analyzes the spatio-temporal characteristics of Changchun's landscape pattern, habitat quality and its sample zone on the basis of comprehensive utilization of spatial analysis and ecological model analysis, and further discusses the spatial heterogeneity of the impact of urbanization on habitat quality. The results show that first, there is a typical correlation between landscape pattern and topography. Urban expansion promotes patch density(PD), edge density(ED) and Shannon's diversity index (SHDI) of built-up areas, but lowers the aggregation index(AI) level. Second, the overall degradation of the habitat quality is obvious. The significant degradation area is mainly located in the urban expansion areas, mountainous and hilly areas, and areas along the traffic. The ecological protection area of Dahei mountains has a high level of habitat quality. The fluctuation frequency and amplitude of habitat in the four sample zones are affected by both topography and human activities. Plain areas and the intensification of human activities will lead to the gradual degradation of habitat quality. Relatively complete high-quality habitat areas are mostly distributed in mountainous areas or areas with weak human activity intensity. Third, the natural environment determines the overall distribution pattern of habitat, while human activities play a leading role in habitat change. The degree of impact of urbanization speed and breadth on habitat is characterized by significant heterogeneity. The impact of settlements on habitat quality is affected by both scale and landscape pattern. Under the background of rapid urbanization, problems such as the degradation of habitat quality, the habitat integrity of ecological protection area is under many threats appear gradually in Changchun city. Therefore, this article puts forward to prevent arable land expansion and deforestation in the forest area of the Dahei mountains, implement “returning farmland to forest and grass”, improve land use efficiency of built-up areas, set urban growth boundary, delimit the red line of farmland protection, adopt a policy of “rotation and rest” in economic forest and grass area,and promote the recover of regional habitat quality by ecological means.

Policymakers, planners, engineers, and others seek effective ways to anticipate and manage greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for a sustainable future. Here, a microsimulation model was developed to demonstrate how one can forecast Austin’s demographic and firmographic attributes over time, using a variety of national and local, aggregate and disaggregate data sets. Year 2030 household energy demands and GHG emissions estimates are compared under five different land use and transport policy scenarios. Application of an urban growth boundary provided the lowest increase in overall vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and GHG emissions, while network additions resulted in the highest rates of increase. Average energy consumption per household are estimated to fall over time (by 11–19% depending on the scenario), but the region’s overall energy consumption is estimated to increase dramatically – by nearly 88% in terms of home energy consumption (in the base scenario) and 108% in the transport sector, relative to the 2005 base-year scenario. Such increases are considerably higher than proposed GHG targets, presenting a serious energy and emissions challenge for Austin as well as other U.S. regions.

The fuzziness exists in spatial distribution of geographic data of land suitability evaluation processes, which makes it difficult to quantify land boundaries by using traditional binary logic-based overlay model. Aiming at this limitation, an ecological suitability evaluation analysis model was presented based on fuzzy theory and a research on urban growth boundary (UGB) of the Great-Hexi Leading District (GHLD) of Changsha was conducted. With the support of GIS, RS and MATLAB, slope, elevation, vegetation, soil productivity, soil permeability, water body and land use are selected as the input of model according to the characteristic properties of soil and terrain in red soil hilly areas. The running result of this model indicates that the ratios of highly suitable land, suitable land, moderately suitable land and unsuitable land in GHLD are 18.75%, 10.31%, 64.16%, 6.78%, respectively. This result accords with spatial structure worked out by Space Development Strategy Planning of GHLD. Based on this result, several suggestions are made to guide UGB developments in future.

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...

The multi planning contradictions and maladjustment of spatial management that evolved from an unbalanced development are becoming increasingly serious in China, therefore, it is imperative to know how to coordinate spatial planning. The scientific division of spatial unit attributes and the identification of ecological–agricultural production–living spaces (EPLs) have become the key scientific problems of this period. The existing urban structure zoning model, the urban growth boundary model, and the function-oriented zoning model show three main shortcomings: the difficult data acquisition and the large limitation of the application because of their high requirements of the related parameters, strong subjective weight setting, and lack of comprehensive zoning in the EPLs practice. This paper builds a quantitative and easily operated model for the spatial zoning of municipal administrative areas (MAA) based on the existing spatial equilibrium model for regional development. Three representative cities in China were modeled empirically with this model and the results were compared with those obtained by the existing models. We investigated the image consistency of this model to the three existing models where the Kappa values were 85.9%, 88.2%, and 85.2%, respectively, with an average of 86.4%. This showed that the model could reduce the data limitation and expand the scope of the application while ensuring the accuracy of the model’s analysis results. Meanwhile, the EPLs zoning was clearer, which made the spatial plan coordination more efficient and scientific. Overall, this model could not only solve the problem of the EPLs zoning and spatial plan coordination in MAA, but also guide urban land use planning from two dimensions of space and time and effectively promote the coordination and sustainable development of spatial planning.

Much has been said about planning for sustainable urban future. However, it is difficult to find practical and workable solution to ensure the sustainability of urban development. Malaysia for example, is one of the most urbanized countries in East Asia, however; Kuala Lumpur urban area is one of the largest in the region as measured by area but the least dense in East Asia. This is due to the expansion of urban area is not properly controlled. The aim of this paper is to propose an urban growth boundary as a planning mechanism to plan for sustainable urban development. Taking the George Town Conurbation as the study area, this paper demonstrated the application of spatial temporal model of urban growth that can simulate future urban spatial growth. Land use data obtained from the Federal Department of Town and Country Planning (FDTCP) will be used as sources of the data. The model will be developed using ArcGIS software and simulated using Idrisi Kilimanjaro software. Then, based on land demand and land suitability, future urban spatial growth will be planned within urban growth boundary. Such as approach allows land demand to be allocated in a sustainable manner. The model will be useful in planning for future urban spatial growth.

The effects of land use and transportation policies on emissions, ozone concentrations, and a metric for population exposure were investigated for Austin, Texas. Three distinct transportation and land use scenarios were examined with a gravity-based land use model and a standard travel demand model: a business-as-usual scenario, a road pricing policy that included a flat-rate carbon-based tax and congestion pricing of all Austin-area freeways, and an urban growth boundary policy. Two scenarios, a business-as-usual scenario and a flat-rate carbon-based tax and congestion pricing policy, were also examined with a novel, parcel-level land use change and land use intensity model and a standard travel demand model. Transportation and land use policies were predicted to have substantial effects on travel and on emissions of ozone precursors. Emissions of ozone precursors decreased markedly for all 2030 scenarios because of the implementation of more stringent federal motor vehicle emission control programs. Transportation and land use policies were predicted to lead to greater reductions of emissions of ozone precursors relative to the business-as-usual scenario. The effects of such policies on ozone concentrations and population exposure vary. Lower exposure was predicted for the road pricing scenarios, but a penalty appeared to exist in the form of relatively higher exposure predicted for the urban growth boundary on some days. This analysis indicates the potential complexity of planning for urban growth and equity and the need for integrated modeling and policy evaluation efforts.

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%).

This article analyzes the evolution of built landscapes in six U.S. metropolitan regions using historic maps, aerial photographs, and GIS software. The analysis identifies seven main historic patterns of urban form and nine types created in the 1980-2005 period. This recent period was characterized by a proliferation and fragmentation of built landscape types, rapid spatial expansion, and falling densities. These trends raise the question of whether the public sector should more proactively shape urban form. Rural sprawl accounts for much of the land now being urbanized, representing a new planning challenge. The Portland Urban Growth Boundary is found to be effective at limiting this type of development. The New Urbanist neighborhood form is still extremely rare.

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.

Pines and Sadka proved that a not-too-stringent urban growth boundary is a second-best policy to congestion tolls when traffic congestion is unpriced, by assuming that all jobs are exogenously located at one urban center (monocentric city) [D. Pines, E. Sadka, Zoning, first-best, second-best and third-best criteria for allocating land to roads, Journal of Urban Economics 17 (1985) 167–183]. The result is also implied by Kanemoto [Y. Kanemoto, Cost-benefit analysis and the second-best land use for transportation, Journal of Urban Economics 4 (1977) 483–503] and Arnott [R. Arnott, Unpriced transport congestion, Journal of Economic Theory 21 (1979) 294–316]. Brueckner extrapolated this narrow theoretical result to real cities [J. Brueckner, Urban sprawl: Diagnosis and remedies, International Regional Science Review 23 (2000) 160–179]. We show that if there is no cross-commuting between city and suburb, first-best efficient tolls on traffic can reduce congestion and total travel cost by shifting worker-residents from the city to the suburbs, causing urban expansion. Then, planned urban boundaries of any stringency are not a second-best policy because they induce people to relocate to more congested areas. With cross-commuting, boundaries of any stringency can be inefficient even when tolls shrink cities, as boundaries do little but tolls do a lot to reduce inefficient suburb-to-city commuting. We also show that when the urban radius is limited by a natural boundary, then growth boundaries of any stringency are inefficient.

When considering a topic for a tribute to Wilbur Zelinsky, I immediately thought of cemeteries. The first meeting of the Association of American Geographers I attended was in 1973, at which he presented his work on cemetery place-names, later published as "Unearthly Delights" (1976). His enthusiasm for cemeteries as objects of geographical study made an impression, and in a landscape seminar at Pennsylvania State University in 1975, I spoke on the topic. Now, I return to the subject with a look at the cemeteries of Portland, the largest city in Oregon--not their internal form but as urban land use and as places in cities. My perspective in this essay derives from recent news stories about the city's cemeteries. Cemeteries have historically been seen primarily as sacred spaces, and that aspect should not be forgotten; people are, after all, laid to rest in them. However, ordinary urban cemeteries are increasingly viewed as amenity landscapes that provide historic, scenic, and ecological values to the communities that surround them (Jackson 1967-1968; Howett 1977; El Nasser 1998). The population of the five Oregon counties in the Portland Metropolitan Area, in northwestern Oregon, grew by 27 percent in the 1990s, but suburban expansion has been constrained by an urban growth boundary (UGB). (1) Over the same decade the city of Portland's population grew by 21 percent, although a little more than half of that was through annexation (Edmonston, Pepos, and Stewart 2003). The recognition of cemeteries as protected open spaces in the urban landscape may be particularly felt in such a rapidly growing, but bounded, area. At the time of their establishment, old cemeteries were typically a fringe-belt land use in American cities. Established on what were, at the time, the outskirts of the built-up areas, many cemeteries are now surrounded by urban development and have become intimate parts of the urban fabric through annexations of outlying territory. Aside from small churchyard burial grounds and family plots, cemeteries were seldom planned as an urban land use. In "Unearthly Delights," Zelinsky wrote: "In few of the many maps and drawings of nineteenth-century American cities that I have recently examined is the cemetery an integral part of the initial plan. When the cemetery did come into being in plan or in actuality, it was obviously an after-thought" (1976,172). As William H. Whyte, writing about new towns of the twentieth century, had noted earlier, "In no new town plan that I have seen is there space allotted to a cemetery" (1968, 240). David Sloane pointed out more recently that "new cemeteries are usually unwelcome in the neighborhoods of America" (1991, 243). Several reasons for the outlying locations of cemeteries come to mind. In the nineteenth century, municipal governments saw burial grounds as potential health hazards. In addition, cemeteries, even those privately owned and operated for profit, were not--and are not--typically subject to property taxes, so they provide little municipal revenue. Cemetery founders sought outlying locations where large tracts of land were available at a reasonable cost. Faced with the need to balance fringe locations with accessibility, the developers often located cemeteries near public transit lines--directly along routes of urban expansion (Pattison 1955; Rugg 2000). In "Gathering Places for America's Dead," Zelinsky noted that "zones of high population density, and most particularly metropolitan areas, will acquire numerous cemeteries as a matter of course" but that "within the metropolitan areas the price of inner city real estate has propelled most cemeteries into suburban tracts" (1994, 35). Municipal reluctance to plan for and locate cemeteries within cities is not matched by a contemporary desire to remove existing burial grounds. In many cities, including Portland, residential demand for close-in locations has led to redevelopment and infill construction. …

Portland's moderately high housing price inflation between 1975 and 2000 is moderate only when compared with other metropolitan areas in the western United States. The West, led by California, pioneered the growth control movement, which raised housing prices in the late 1970s to a permanent differential. Portland's policy of promoting infill development does not seem to have offset the containment effects of its urban growth boundary.

Forms of urban containment are found in more than a hundred jurisdictions across the United States. The lightning rod for the debate over urban containment is metropolitan Portland, OR, which has had an urban growth boundary for a generation. In the early 1990s, housing prices there soared, providing fodder to interests opposed to public interference in the private development market. Downs contributes to the debate by finding that over the long term, metropolitan Portland's housing prices are more in line with its West Coast and national contemporaries than not. This comment first reviews some of the literature associating growth controls and growth management with housing price changes. I then examine how Oregon's and metropolitan Portland's particular institutional measures ameliorate potential price effects, offering lessons for containment programs everywhere. I caution that urban containment is here to stay and that the best way for development interests to protect themselves from undesirab...

The nation can learn much from regional growth management in Portland, OR, which uses an urban growth boundary (UGB) to maintain a compact metropolitan form. Carl Abbott, Henry R. Richmond, and William A. Fischel offer very different views on how to interpret Portland's lessons; however, they agree that Portland is clearly trying something innovative. In fact, Portland's style of growth management has touched a nerve in the booming urban West, where even California is actively debating its implications. We fear that many fast‐growing regions throughout the country will use UGBs to simply slow development rather than integrate them into a comprehensive planning strategy as Portland has. We especially worry about the impact on affordable housing. Portland's politics give the region a unique urban form that now—in and of itself—helps maintain a coalition between city and suburbs on such key issues as housing, transportation, economic development, and equity among municipalities.

Urban growth boundaries (UGBs) place a boundary on urban development and typically aim to redirect growth to existing metropolitan or regional areas, increase the efficiency of land use, and protect the natural resources and environmental values of adjoining rural areas. They can provide orderly growth or be inflexible. Research into UGB impacts shows variable results on whether they limit housing supply and raise housing prices. Many other factors, such as government housing subsidies or taxation policies, can influence demand for housing and property price. UGB impacts on land and housing supply will vary with the type of city and their manner of implementation.

Over the past two decades, the tension between public and private interests in the use of land has given rise to state-level legislation seeking to limit government controls on private property. In 2004, voters in Oregon approved Measure 37, which required payments to private landowners for reductions in the value of their property resulting from land-use regulations. The central economic question behind Measure 37 and compensation statutes adopted in other states is, what is the effect of land-use regulations on property values? Economists investigating this question have typically estimated hedonic property value models with regulations included as exogenous regressors. This approach is likely to be invalid if the parcel characteristics that determine property values also influence the government's decision about how to implement regulations. We use Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) to study the effect of the Portland, Oregon, Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) on property values. RDD provides an unbiased estimate of the treatment effect under relatively mild conditions and is well-suited to our application because the UGB defines a sharp treatment threshold. We find a price differential on the western and southern sides of the Portland metropolitan area ranging from $30,000 to at least $140,000, but no price differential on the eastern side. Support for Measure 37 was fueled by price differences such as these among parcels subject to different regulations, but one must be careful not to view current price differentials as evidence that regulations have reduced property values.

For a monocentric city with traffic congestion, Wheaton [W. C. Wheaton, Land Use and Density in Cities with Congestion, Journal of Urban Economics, 43 (1998) 258-272] describes that, to optimize the congestion externality, lot size zoning requires upward adjustment to the market population density throughout the city and that optimal lot size regulation is the first-best policy. We show that, in contrast to lot size zoning, optimal Floor Area Ratio (FAR) regulation is at most a second-best policy and requires, in a closed city, not only upward adjustment to the market population density at central locations by minimum FAR regulation but also downward adjustment at boundary locations by maximum FAR regulation. In an open city, only the latter is required. Furthermore, the optimal urban boundary is more compact than the market equilibrium boundary irrespective of whether the city is closed or open.

Employment deconcentration has become a major issue on the policy and planning agenda in many metropolitan areas throughout the western world. In recent years, growing evidence indicates that in many developed countries, the deconcentration of employment - particularly of retail centres and offices - has become a key planning issue. This chapter uses the UrbanSim forecasting and simulation model in order to investigate some of the projected changes in land use, land value and sociodemographic characteristics of metropolitan areas undergoing employment deconcentration. The process of model application in the Tel Aviv metropolitan context is described. Two land-use scenarios of very different scales are simulated: a macro-level scenario relating to the imposition of an ‘urban growth boundary’ and a micro-level scenario simulating the effects of a shopping mall construction in different parts of the metropolitan area. The results are discussed in terms of the potential and constraints of microsimulation for analyzing metropolitan growth processes.

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.

For many years, neighborhoods have been classified as either “suburban” or “traditional.” But new homes today are built in many different types of neighborhoods with many different design features. In this paper, we develop a quantitative method for classifying the neighborhoods of new homes in the Portland metropolitan area. We proceed in three steps. First we measure urban form attributes of neighborhoods around newly developed homes. We then use factor analysis to identify a small set of factors that capture essential differences in urban form. Finally we use cluster analysis on these factor scores to identify distinctly different neighborhood types. Applying these methods to neighborhoods around new single family homes in the metropolitan Portland, Oregon, we are able to identify eight factors of urban form and six neighborhood types. We then show that most new single family homes in metropolitan Portland are built in new suburban neighborhoods but a substantial portion is occurring in traditional urban neighborhoods.

Sprawl issues and growth management have become a larger part of American cultural consciousness in recent years. A variety of responses, including political and grass-roots movements, have attempted to address uncontrolled growth and its economic, ecological and social consequences. These efforts have generally met with limited success. In many cases, political solutions as well as proposed land use plans can often be poorly designed, despite careful study. My case study of land-cover change in the Seattle metropolitan area during 1999 illustrated that the 1991 Washington State Growth Management Act did not successfully curb growth outside the established urban growth boundary. The language of the legislation, implementation and enforcement of the law failed to curb further development within the designated rural use areas. Land-cover change in the rural area actually was more rapid than within the designated urban area. Case studies such as this one, observing the effectiveness of land use legislation, are too rare.

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...