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Ecosystem services (ES) such as carbon storage (CS), soil conservation (SC), habitat quality (HQ), and water yield (WY) play a crucial role in maintaining ecological balance and supporting sustainable regional development. With increasing environmental changes, understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics of these services and their driving factors has become essential in environmental science. This study focuses on the Nanchang metropolitan area, quantifying CS, SC, HQ, and WY from 2000 to 2020. It explores the impacts of major factors, including climate, topography, and social aspects, on the spatial heterogeneity of ES. The results reveal that between 2000 and 2020, CS and HQ decreased by 0.1385×108 tons/ha and 0.0507, respectively, while SC and WY increased by 2.4754×109 tons/ha and 1.6668×1010 m3, respectively. Notable spatial heterogeneity exists in the correlation between driving factors and changes in ES. The spatial distribution of ESs is higher in mountainous regions compared to central plains. Among human factors, population (POP) and gross domestic product (GDP) predominantly influenced changes in CS and HQ, whereas climate and POP drove changes in SC. Changes in WY were primarily affected by climate and topography. These findings suggest a need to focus on key driving factors to formulate targeted land policies aimed at enhancing the ES value in the Nanchang metropolitan area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The study aims to identify factors affecting land bank creation and propose policy implications to improve land use efficiency in Vinh Long province. Methods: Based on applying institutional theory and land rent theory, the authors develop hypotheses and a research model that determines the relationship between factors affecting land banks, land rent theory and land use efficiency. The quantitative research method used the measurement model and PLS-SEM structure to test the correlation between factors. The survey was conducted with 170 respondents working in the land field. Result: According to research, the land bank is the factor that has the most significant impact on land use efficiency, with legal, planning and financial policy factors comprising in second and third. Based on these results, land policy and lawmakers can apply this research theory to adjust land-related factors according to administrators' wishes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of land/soil consumption and degradation has been extensively explored in international literature, yet a universally accepted definition of soil quality remains elusive. Over the decades, the scientific community has witnessed the evolution of the concept of land/soil quality, with varying nuances across different disciplines. The absence of a shared definition poses challenges in addressing local concerns and preserving the distinctiveness and well-being of the soil. The present paper seeks to fill this gap from the spatial planning perspective by proposing a soil quality detection framework tailored for the sub-regional spatial context, offering support in particular for local planning decisions. The concept of soil quality is approached comprehensively, and the indicators put forth are selected based on specific soil functions, services, or threats. To support this all-encompassing approach through a case study in the Italian context, this paper suggests integrating 11 datasets and 55 indicators. This extensive dataset aims to quantify and generate meaningful cartographic representations, offering a multifaceted and detailed understanding of soil quality within the sub-regional context. The goal is to establish a framework that facilitates a more holistic understanding of soil quality, aiding in effective spatial planning and policy-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use planning tools are essential for effective land management. However, existing research has not thoroughly explored the evolution and future potential of these tools. This study addresses this gap through comprehensive literature review and data collection, mapping the progression of land use planning tools from their inception to their future trajectories. Our findings indicate that land use planning tools have evolved through four distinct epochs: 1.0 to 4.0. These epochs are defined as follows: Foundational Surveying Tools (1900s–1950s), Computerized Tools (1960s–1980s), Internet Technology Tools (1990s–2000s), and Smart Tools (2010s to Present). Presently, these tools face several limitations, including complex and redundant planning systems, poor adaptability, insufficient public engagement, and a lack of emphasis on sustainable development. Looking ahead, the emergence of the 5.0 era around the 2040s is anticipated, marked by advancements such as blockchain, VR/AR, quantum computing, and digital twins. This study provides valuable insights for scholars in the field and informs future development of land use planning tools.

This paper primarily investigates the influence of spatial layout on the safety risks associated with urban natural gas pipelines. Drawing from the actual spatial configuration around the pipeline and local climatic characteristics, the study delves into the distribution patterns of natural gas leakage diffusion and explosion accident consequences, considering various factors such as leakage apertures, soil porosity, and spatial layouts. By integrating the outcomes of the consequence analysis, the quantitative risk of urban natural gas pipelines, accounting for the impact of spatial layout, was computed and juxtaposed with the results of traditional two-dimensional risk analysis. The findings underscore that spatial layout exerts a substantial impact on risk distribution, with significantly elevated risk values in more congested spatial layouts. Additionally, the introduction of a barrier along the pipeline leakage path resulted in a 91.4% reduction in risk compared to scenarios without obstruction. It is evident that the spatial layout surrounding the pipeline plays a pivotal role in influencing the distribution of pipeline failure risks, establishing the spatial environment as a critical factor in risk analysis. This study offers valuable insights for urban land planning, safety control line establishment, and related considerations.

Ecosystem services (ES) such as carbon storage (CS), soil conservation (SC), habitat quality (HQ), and water yield (WY) play a crucial role in maintaining ecological balance and supporting sustainable regional development. With increasing environmental changes, understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics of these services and their driving factors has become essential in environmental science. This study focuses on the Nanchang metropolitan area, quantifying CS, SC, HQ, and WY from 2000 to 2020. It explores the impacts of major factors, including climate, topography, and social aspects, on the spatial heterogeneity of ES. The results reveal that between 2000 and 2020, CS and HQ decreased by 0.1385×108 tons/ha and 0.0507, respectively, while SC and WY increased by 2.4754×109 tons/ha and 1.6668×1010 m3, respectively. Notable spatial heterogeneity exists in the correlation between driving factors and changes in ES. The spatial distribution of ESs is higher in mountainous regions compared to central plains. Among human factors, population (POP) and gross domestic product (GDP) predominantly influenced changes in CS and HQ, whereas climate and POP drove changes in SC. Changes in WY were primarily affected by climate and topography. These findings suggest a need to focus on key driving factors to formulate targeted land policies aimed at enhancing the ES value in the Nanchang metropolitan area.

This article delves into the unique evolution of Lanzarote as a benchmark for sustainable tourism. It examines how the island's cultural values and political influences have shaped its sustainable tourism model over the last 50 years. This study utilizes a review of academic literature on tourism sustainability and case studies, emphasising the need for a conceptual and analytical framework. By analysing Lanzarote's sustainable practices and challenges, this article highlights the island's paradoxical status as both a mass tourism hub and a sustainable destination, led by the artist César Manrique's visionary approach, which seamlessly integrates art and nature while providing a blueprint for sustainable tourism. Key milestones and achievements are identified, such as UNESCO's designation of the entire island as a Biosphere Reserve in 1993, showcasing Lanzarote's governance approach to balancing economic, socio-cultural, and environmental sustainability. The findings underscore Lanzarote's role as an international benchmark in sustainable tourism, offering insights and lessons applicable to other destinations. The article concludes that Lanzarote's sustained commitment to social awareness and natural resource protection continues to address global challenges, serving as a reference for sustainable development in island tourism destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research work arises from the need to design specific techniques for the characterisation of cultural sites. Assuming the increasing complexity of the protection typologies, the expansion of working scales gives thanks to technology and the pursuit of social sustainability objectives. Thus, its main objective is to search for innovative tools that other disciplines can contribute to the work of architects specialising in heritage studies. To this end, the research explores the main methodologies, maps, guides, and registers of landscape and historic landscape characterisation developed in Europe, particularly in Spain, over the last 40 years. Considering this intense and profound evolution of landscape analysis, useful strategies for the assessment of cultural sites from their conception in the 21st century arise. Nevertheless, landscape characterisation methods have been mainly developed and applied by geographers and are absent in many urban and territorial heritage studies. In response, this article proposes a new methodological approach focusing on contextual values to be used in the assessment of architectural heritage at the territorial scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring the impact of land use regulation on the land market involves identifying and classifying relevant impact factors related to the land market. The objective of this study was to identify land market impact factors in the context of the introduction of land use regulation in Nepal. Through a combination of desktop review and the incorporation of stakeholder perspectives, the paper presents a new approach for determining land market impact factors due to land use regulation where both generic and country issues are considered. A desktop review was carried out to identify a preliminary set of impact factors, which were reclassified through intuitive analysis based on the degree of thematic closeness. Perspective-based impact factors were identified through the qualitative analysis of primary data collected through semi-structured interviews with the Nepalese land market stakeholders. These independently derived impact factors were compared with the desktop literature review impact factors, resulting in 14 land market impact factors across four dimensions, including transaction cost, valuation, mortgage availability, taxation, and compensation across the economic dimension; lot size, subdivision restrictions, and coordination across the institutional dimension; awareness, expectation, and proximity across the social dimension; and risk reduction, quality of residential land, and suitability of zoning classification across the environmental dimension. There was significant overlap and commonality across factors identified from both the literature review and semi-structured interviews. The land market impact factors determined in this study may be adapted and generalized across other countries and could be utilized to better understand the impacts of land policy decisions on urban planning and development. Further research is recommended on the process to operationalize the use of these factors to quantify the impact of land use regulation on different land markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil is now a central issue on the European as well as the national political agenda, as it represents a fundamental ecosystem for human survival on the planet. Today, more than ever, its protection and proper use in various contexts (agricultural, natural, urban) require stringent policies that can be implemented immediately. The difficult reversibility of urban transformations is the main threat to the ecosystem integrity of soil. Starting from this statement, the main objective of the proposed work is to analyze how the main European countries (Italy, France, Germany, and Spain) are addressing the issue of the goal of zero net land take by 2050 by examining the current laws and strategies. The results highlight how the regulatory aspect plays a key role in managing the phenomenon and how the absence of a national framework law can generate strong distortions and different interpretations of the soil ecosystem. The analysis of the Nature Restoration Law, adopted by the European Commission in July 2023, enables us to assess whether the regulations and measures adopted by the major European countries align with the European Union's trends. Through a comparative perspective, the study aims to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of sustainable development practices and provide valuable insights for policymakers, urban planners, and academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research work arises from the need to design specific techniques for the characterisation of cultural sites. Assuming the increasing complexity of the protection typologies, the expansion of working scales gives thanks to technology and the pursuit of social sustainability objectives. Thus, its main objective is to search for innovative tools that other disciplines can contribute to the work of architects specialising in heritage studies. To this end, the research explores the main methodologies, maps, guides, and registers of landscape and historic landscape characterisation developed in Europe, particularly in Spain, over the last 40 years. Considering this intense and profound evolution of landscape analysis, useful strategies for the assessment of cultural sites from their conception in the 21st century arise. Nevertheless, landscape characterisation methods have been mainly developed and applied by geographers and are absent in many urban and territorial heritage studies. In response, this article proposes a new methodological approach focusing on contextual values to be used in the assessment of architectural heritage at the territorial scale.

The European Parliament has recently passed the "Nature Recovery" law to restore degraded ecosystems and prevent natural disasters as part of its "Biodiversity Strategy 2030" and "Green Deal". In this respect, wetlands can provide a wide range of ecosystem services such as biodiversity conservation, hydrological land protection, provision of products, cultural and recreational benefits, and many others. However, they are still threatened by the expansion of agricultural land, overexploitation of water resources, water pollution, climate change, etc. Wetland conservation, however, is essential and requires coordinated action by managers, policymakers, stakeholders, and scientists. A systemic planning and design process is required to address these complex challenges. This research aims to outline an integrated, comprehensive, and well-structured planning framework for wetland systems that can be applied to different wetland types, in line with institutional wetland policy, governance, and management. The methodological approach developed in this study aims to integrate a longer-term strategy plan with a shorter-term action plan by combining the Yeomans scale of permanence and the Driver–Pressure–State–Impact–Response model. This innovative approach was applied to a specific case study and may guide further wetland planning in the future. The Nominal Group Technique was used, a consensus method aimed at achieving a general agreement and convergence of opinion. An expert group of seven members with different technical backgrounds was engaged and expert consultation was found to be a simple and rapid technique for carrying out wetland planning. The expert judgements were sound, consistent, and did not overlap (i.e., were not redundant). "Pressures" and "Impacts" were identified by the experts and clustered according to corresponding "States" and "Drivers". Expert scoring allowed the resulting "Responses" to be ranked in terms of their relevance and influence on the development of the wetland strategy and action plan, while a priority order for their implementation was assessed according to the Yeomans scale of permanence. Agriculture was the highest rated 'Driver'; similarly, Biodiversity (habitats and species) was the 'State' with the highest score. Therefore, their combination (agriculture and biodiversity) should be considered as the strategic cornerstone of the whole planning framework. This means designing and implementing a system in which agriculture and nature (in our case a wetland) are allied ecological systems in mutual compensation, according to the way natural elements are embedded in the agricultural system. A collection of factsheets containing the full list of responses considered in the Wetlands Action Plan, with detailed operational actions, is provided in the Appendixes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power system transformation can unleash wide-ranging effects across multiple, frequently interlinked dimensions such as the environment, economy, resource systems, and biodiversity. Consequently, assessing the multidimensional impacts of power system transformation, especially under rapid transitions, has become increasingly important. Nonetheless, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to applying such an analysis to a Mediterranean country facing structural socioeconomic challenges. This paper explores the potential multifaceted implications of rapidly decarbonizing the Greek power sector by 2035, focusing on the local-level consequences. The evaluation criteria encompass the cost-optimal power mix, power costs, land use, biomass utilization, GDP, and employment. In this effort, a technology-rich cost optimization model representing Greece’s power sector is linked to a global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) macroeconomic model focusing on the Greek economy. The results indicate that a fast decarbonization of the Greek power sector could trigger positive socioeconomic consequences in the short- and medium-term (GDP: +1.70, employees: +59,000 in 2030), although it may induce negative long-term socioeconomic effects due to increased capital investment requirements. Additionally, the impact on land use may only be trivial, with the potential to decrease over time due to the de-escalation of biomass power generation, thereby reducing the risk of harming biodiversity.

Improving citizen consultation in land planning is a major current challenge answering to the lack of representativeness, modernization and time consuming processes. This paper is based on an original hybrid participation research, mixing face-to-face formats (participatory workshops, debate forum, etc.) and online debate (numerical platform). In this context, audiovisual media seem to be promising, as they are frequently used in geography and planning to give voice to stakeholders and sensitively transcribe the territory, but also within the framework of participatory processes (documentaries, journalistic formats or films made by the participants). The project presented here aimed at improving citizen commitment and participation within land planning projects. We have thus developed very short video formats presenting different types of scenarios to support the participatory process. The goal is that these tools are easily used by planners and citizens as “video media” to enhance the debate. This article tries to questioning the innovative audiovisual protocols deployed and their potential for transferability to other territories or land planning projects.

The rational planning of land around rail transit stations in cities can effectively improve the convenience of transportation and economic development of cities. This paper briefly introduced the transit-oriented development (TOD) mode of urban planning. We constructed a hierarchical structure for evaluating the quality of land plan-ning of urban rail transit stations through the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. The structure started from three large aspects, i.e., traffic volume, regional environmental quality, and regional economic efficiency, and every large aspect was divided into three small aspects. Then, an optimization model was established for land planning of rail transit stations. The land planning scheme was optimized by a genetic algorithm (GA). To enhance the optimization performance of the GA, it was improved by coevolution, i.e., plural populations iterated inde-pendently, and every population replaced the poor chromosomes in the other populations with its excellent chro-mosomes in the previous process. Finally, the Jinzhonghe street station in Hebei District, Tianjin city, was taken as a subject for analysis. The results suggested that the improved GA obtained a set of non-inferior Pareto solutions when solving a multi-objective optimization problem. The distribution of solutions in the set also indicated that any two objectives among traffic volume, environmental quality, and economic efficiency was improved at the cost of the remaining objectives. The land planning schemes optimized by the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algo-rithm, the traditional GA, and the improved GA, respectively, were superior than the initial scheme, and the opti-mized scheme of the improved GA was more in line with the characteristics of the TOD mode than the traditional one and the PSO algorithm, and the fitness value was also higher. In conclusion, the GA can be used to optimize the planning design of land in rail transit areas under the TOD mode, and the optimization performance of the GA can be improved by means of coevolution.

Measuring the impact of land use regulation on the land market involves identifying and classifying relevant impact factors related to the land market. The objective of this study was to identify land market impact factors in the context of the introduction of land use regulation in Nepal. Through a combination of desktop review and the incorporation of stakeholder perspectives, the paper presents a new approach for determining land market impact factors due to land use regulation where both generic and country issues are considered. A desktop review was carried out to identify a preliminary set of impact factors, which were reclassified through intuitive analysis based on the degree of thematic closeness. Perspective-based impact factors were identified through the qualitative analysis of primary data collected through semi-structured interviews with the Nepalese land market stakeholders. These independently derived impact factors were compared with the desktop literature review impact factors, resulting in 14 land market impact factors across four dimensions, including transaction cost, valuation, mortgage availability, taxation, and compensation across the economic dimension; lot size, subdivision restrictions, and coordination across the institutional dimension; awareness, expectation, and proximity across the social dimension; and risk reduction, quality of residential land, and suitability of zoning classification across the environmental dimension. There was significant overlap and commonality across factors identified from both the literature review and semi-structured interviews. The land market impact factors determined in this study may be adapted and generalized across other countries and could be utilized to better understand the impacts of land policy decisions on urban planning and development. Further research is recommended on the process to operationalize the use of these factors to quantify the impact of land use regulation on different land markets.

Soil is now a central issue on the European as well as the national political agenda, as it represents a fundamental ecosystem for human survival on the planet. Today, more than ever, its protection and proper use in various contexts (agricultural, natural, urban) require stringent policies that can be implemented immediately. The difficult reversibility of urban transformations is the main threat to the ecosystem integrity of soil. Starting from this statement, the main objective of the proposed work is to analyze how the main European countries (Italy, France, Germany, and Spain) are addressing the issue of the goal of zero net land take by 2050 by examining the current laws and strategies. The results highlight how the regulatory aspect plays a key role in managing the phenomenon and how the absence of a national framework law can generate strong distortions and different interpretations of the soil ecosystem. The analysis of the Nature Restoration Law, adopted by the European Commission in July 2023, enables us to assess whether the regulations and measures adopted by the major European countries align with the European Union’s trends. Through a comparative perspective, the study aims to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of sustainable development practices and provide valuable insights for policymakers, urban planners, and academics.

Power system transformation can unleash wide-ranging effects across multiple, frequently interlinked dimensions such as the environment, economy, resource systems, and biodiversity. Consequently, assessing the multidimensional impacts of power system transformation, especially under rapid transitions, has become increasingly important. Nonetheless, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to applying such an analysis to a Mediterranean country facing structural socioeconomic challenges. This paper explores the potential multifaceted implications of rapidly decarbonizing the Greek power sector by 2035, focusing on the local-level consequences. The evaluation criteria encompass the cost-optimal power mix, power costs, land use, biomass utilization, GDP, and employment. In this effort, a technology-rich cost optimization model representing Greece's power sector is linked to a global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) macroeconomic model focusing on the Greek economy. The results indicate that a fast decarbonization of the Greek power sector could trigger positive socioeconomic consequences in the short- and medium-term (GDP: +1.70, employees: +59,000 in 2030), although it may induce negative long-term socioeconomic effects due to increased capital investment requirements. Additionally, the impact on land use may only be trivial, with the potential to decrease over time due to the de-escalation of biomass power generation, thereby reducing the risk of harming biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use planning involves making an appropriate decision and selecting a use over other alternatives. A step-by-step methodology was developed to evaluate the optimal combination of regional land use technologies and the spatial allocation. For a realistic approach, a case study (specifically Rivadavia department, Salta, Argentina) is considered, which has deforestation problems and the advance of intensive and extractive agriculture. Five management techniques are considered for the area: precision agriculture (T1), advance livestock farming (T2), payment for ecosystem service (T3), traditional agriculture–livestock farming—Criollo (T4), and traditional forest management—Wichi (T5). A land evaluation on a GIS model is carried out to obtain the land suitability for each technique. Analyzing local experts' opinions using the Markowitz portfolio methodology allows us to obtain an optimal combination of techniques. Finally, a Simplex method analysis linked with the GIS is performed to allocate the five techniques over the territory maximizing land suitability and in compliance with percent surface assignments. The result assigns each GIS polygon to a specific technique, reaching optimal land suitability in 92% of the territory. Natural capital and social attributes had a significant and complex impact on technology choice, but objective and optimized approaches in their allocation were possible and provides valuable information to guide public policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the electronic process of land management is accelerating, the research on the construction of land use planning system tends to be intensified. This paper combines the concept of traditional farming culture to construct a rural land planning system, and proposes a stacked combination collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm to process traditional farming cultural data and promote the integration of traditional farming cultural data and rural land planning data. Moreover, starting from the existing problems in urban land planning at this stage, this paper proposes the rationality and importance of the land use planning system, and at the same time guarantees that it can be used in a standardised and scientific way. In addition, after explaining the construction purpose of the land use planning system, this paper also explains the tasks, design and corresponding steps to be completed to construct the system. Finally, this paper verifies the performance of this system through experimental research. Through the experimental results, we can see that the method proposed in this paper has a certain effect.

Physical geography is the foundation of urban social and economic development. The quantity and quality of land resources and their distribution directly affect the economic, social, environmental and comprehensive benefits of the city. Now, in our country, low land use efficiency and irrational land structure in physical geography are both prominent phenomena. One of the main reasons is the lack of scientific and reasonable physical geography land use structure and utilization efficiency plan. Using remote sensing and geographic information system technology, this paper conducts a comprehensive and systematic survey of urban land use changes and obtains land use classification maps for two periods, supports further research and correctly guides people to develop and utilize natural resources and protect the ecological environment and provide powerful reference materials for realizing sustainable land use and sustainable social and economic development. In addition, this article will also introduce multi-source remote sensing image data fusion technology, including fusion information representation, fusion principle, fusion system framework model, fusion algorithm, control and application. By combining ETM remote sensing data with large-scale topographic maps, GIS is used as a supporting tool to construct a spatial database of urban environment, which promotes the development of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA) has the potential to support decision making but there are few cases of their application to public policy or planning. In this paper we review five government policies related to land use planning and environmental management in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), assess the data available to inform these policies and link the polices to the accounts that could assist with their implementation, evaluation and update. We find that a range of SEEA-based accounts are potentially useful for the plans and strategies reviewed. Data available for accounts are of varying quality, scattered and are not integrated nor regularly summarised. The available data were to produce accounts for ecosystem extent and land cover, and these provide a platform for continuing engagement with the ACT government and for developing accounts for ecosystem services, ecosystem condition and environmental protection expenditure that could inform ACT policy for land use planning, management of ecosystems, protected areas, and urban forests. Six steps for developing ecosystem accounts to support policy are recommended to accounts producers and three priority actions for SEEA-based accounting to support environmental management in the ACT are identified. Preparing the accounts and linking them directly to existing plans and strategies is a first step to acceptance and use of SEEA in the ACT and elsewhere. • Ecosystem accounts can be mapped to policy and be useful to decision makers. • Ecosystem accounts can inform the different parts of the policy cycle. • Land and ecosystem extent accounts can be produced and are the starting point for ecosystem condition and service accounts. • Data gaps and deficiencies on the physical environment can be overcome through use of global datasets and methods. • The development of spatially referenced economic data must be encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work is aimed at assessing the change in time of flood risk as a consequence of landscape modifications. The town of San Donà di Piave (Italy) is taken as a representative case study because, as most parts of the North Italy floodplains, it was strongly urbanized and anthropized in the last several decades. As a proxy for flood risk, we use flood damage to residential buildings. The analysis is carried out at the local scale, accounting for changes to single buildings; GIS data such as high-resolution topography, technical maps, and aerial images taken over time are used to track how the landscape evolves over time, both in terms of urbanized areas and of hydraulically relevant structures (e.g., embankments). Flood hazard is determined using a physics-based, finite element hydrodynamic code that models in a coupled way the flood routing within the Piave River, the formation of levee failures, and the flooding of adjacent areas. The expected flood damage to residential buildings is estimated using an innovative method, recently proposed in the literature, which allows estimating how the damage evolves during a single flood event. The decade-scale change in the expected flood damage reveals the detrimental effect of urbanization, with flood risk growing at the pace of a fraction of urbanized areas. The within-event time evolution of the flood damage, i.e., how it progresses in the course of past or recent flood events, reflects changes in the hydrodynamic process of flooding. The general methodology used in the present work can be viewed as a promising technique to analyze the effects on the flood risk of past landscape evolution and, more importantly, a valuable tool toward an improved, well-informed, and sustainable land planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary presents the main contributions contained inthe recent judgment of the Supreme Court of April 27, 2022, in relation to therequirements that must be accomplished by certain elements from the processingof territorial planning and with the scope attributed to them. Its content isimportant, fundamentally, for two reasons. In the first place, it makes it possibleto assess the depth of the arguments that justified the appeal filed againstthe territorial action plan and the judgment that declared its nullity. Secondly,the doctrine it provides, in addition to saving the legality of the action for thetime being, contains valuable interpretations for the regional administrationsimmersed in the task of drawing up and approving plans of a homologous nature.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to quantify to what extent the housing bubble in the early-to-mid 2000s in Spain exacerbated land planning corruption among Spain’s largest municipalities. Design/methodology/approach – The authors exploit plausibly exogenous variation in housing prices induced by changes in local mortgage market conditions; namely, the rapid expansion of savings banks (Cajas de Ahorros). Accounting for electoral competition in the 2003–2007 and 2007–2009 electoral cycles among Spanish municipalities larger than 25,000 inhabitants, the authors estimate a positive relationship between housing prices and land planning corruption in municipalities with variation in savings bank establishments using instrumental variables techniques. Findings – A 1% increase in housing prices leads to a 3.9% points increase in the probability of land planning corruption. Moreover, absolute majority governments (not needing other parties’ support) are more susceptible to the incidence of corruption than non-majority ones. Two policy implications to address corruption emerge: enhance electoral competition and increase scrutiny over land planning decisions in sparsely populated. Originality/value – First empirical evidence of a formal link between the 2000s housing bubble in Spain and land planning corruption.

Misallocation of industries can cause environmental degradation and land misuse, and therefore, to control the deleterious impacts of which on the environment, it is required to use land planning besides the environmental rules on the allocation of industrial units in accordance with the environmental characteristics of land. This article, addressing the interplay between land planning and environmental law, discusses the mechanisms of land planning application in reasonable location of industries and the challenges that hinder this process. The article exercises the land planning regulation in Iran’s environmental law and concludes that land planning can pave the way for the environmentally sound location of the industries through three mechanisms: industrial development strategy designation, zoning for the industries, and their wastes. However, due to some legal ambiguities in land planning, the Iranian environmental law does not apply this instrument in the environmentally sound location of the industries appropriately. The article suggests effective enforcement of land planning in the environmentally sound location of the industries through the legal and institutional improvement of land planning rules in Iran’s environmental law.

The Si-available (Siap) content in the soil of paddy fields is decreasing, so it will affect decreasing the productivity of paddy fields. Soil type maps can be used to estimate the potential Siap content in paddy fields. The purpose of this study was to assess the productivity of the paddy field in West Java Province based on the Siap potential in each region using maps of soil types and paddy productivity data. This research was conducted in West Java Province. The research was carried out from February 2021 to March 2021. The research method used was the descriptive research method. This research is secondary data analysis so that no field test is carried out. The validation of the data from the analysis was based on the literature from the previous researchers. The parameters measured in this study were: the distribution of paddy fields, the percentage of soil types in each paddy field, the average productivity of paddy field on each type of soil, the distribution of paddy productivity levels, the potential for Siap to paddy productivity and map of the potential distribution of Siap in West Java Province. Secondary data obtained were then analyzed using spatial analysis and descriptive analysis. The results of the spatial analysis show that 77% of paddy fields in West Java have medium Siap potential, 17% low and 7% high. The results of the correlation analysis show that the productivity of paddy plants has a strong correlation (r = 0.99) to the Siap of paddy soil. The soil maps can be used to estimate the potential of Siap and the productivity of paddy plants. The Si application was recommended in paddy fields in the southern region of West Java Province.

The overall land use planning is the basis for the implementation of the land use control system and the advance estimation of the future land use development trend. The smooth implementation of the planning will directly affect the direction and status of land use. Taking the preparation of rural land use planning as an example, this study realizes “one map” to control village development and planning through the scientific and rational use of planning methods and technologies. Guide the reasonable arrangement of various land use at the village level to make it consistent with the revitalization and development of the village, so as to put forward suggestions and Countermeasures for the preparation of village land use planning. Then, according to the specific actual situation of the countryside and making full use of the comparative analysis method and ecological service value analysis method, this paper makes a comprehensive qualitative and quantitative evaluation from the realization degree of planning control indicators, the protection of cultivated land and basic farmland, and the progress of spatial layout of construction land. The results show that cultivated land and basic farmland have been well protected, but due to the great potential of rural industrial and mining surplus indicators. In future construction projects, local modifications within the scope of the village can be appropriately carried out according to the construction needs of the project.

Ecosystem services have been steadily incorporated into policy and planning, particularly for conservation. While biophysical and economic values are often part of ecosystems assessments, integrating participatory approaches with these valuation tools into planning is essential. This study demonstrates the importance of undertaking case studies with an integrated approach from valuation to practice. We focus on the evaluation of ecosystem services based on user priorities in three different countries that comprise the northwestern part of the Amazon basin: Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. A total of 473 community and government representatives were interviewed and their priorities for ecosystem services were elicited. We used three approaches to value the prioritized services, market prices, cost avoided, and the value transfer method. We linked the economic valuation results with policy and development alternatives that focus on ES management and we utilized an adaptive policy framework as a crucial step to assess the "trade off" in relation to any given economic, social, and environmental goal. Seven ecosystem services were identified as priorities: fish, timber, and non-timber forest products as provisioning services; disease regulation, water purification, and carbon sequestration as regulating services; and scenic beauty as the only cultural service. The ecosystem services contributing to the highest proportion of local GDP were regulation of malaria (3.9%) in Colombia, followed by ecotourism (1.75%) in Ecuador and fish (1.7%) in Peru. The instruments developed to help integrate this information into policy actions are mostly related to improving the property right systems currently implemented in each country. The results of this study will enable the management of ecosystem service values to be targeted in planning development at the subnational level in each country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rural land use preferences of multiple agents are crucial for optimizing land-use allocation. Taking Guanlin Town, Yixing City, China as an example, this study analyzed the factors by agents effecting rural land use conversion probability, identified the objectives and the constraints within the optimization of rural land-use allocation, and simulated the optimal land-use allocation for 2030 by combining MAS with an MOPSO procedure. The results showed that the preferences and decisions of main actors effected the optimal land-use allocation. The Government determined the conversion between land-use types. The preferences of the entrepreneurs resulted in the distribution of industrial land. Town residents made a high contribution to the configuration of the town residential land by considering some factors. Rural families influenced land-use allocation by considering the quality of cultivated soils, and the optimal spatial location of aquaculture systems. Four optimization objectives were identified. The most relevant constraints were the upper and lower limits of each land-use type. The land-use types in Guanlin town in 2015 had a low intensification and an unreasonable structure. The modeling results indicated a tendency for concentrated spatial distributions of rural land. The results of the present study can provide useful support for decision-making within land planning and consequent management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The main Spanish local entity above municipalities is, currently, the province, whose primary function is to support the smaller municipalities that are often unable to provide the services that their inhabitants require. The lack of efficiency shown, in general, by the provincial institution as a local entity, and the need to create a more efficient autonomous territorial organization, has led the autonomous communities to implement other types of entity between municipality and province: some of top-down kind –comarca (county), functional areas or metropolitan areas– and others of bottom-up type –municipal associations or municipal consortiums. These entities have diverse functions, depending on the autonomous community (decentralization, planning, local development), that usually compete with those of the province. In Comunitat Valenciana, top-down delimitations have not been feasible, for the time being, with regard to regionalization (comarca), but they have been in terms of the metropolitan area. On the other hand, many bottom-up demarcations have been developed. To combine both types of demarcation, in 2018 a new Valencian municipal association law was presented that promotes a mixed model: classic bottom-up municipal associations alongside comarca associations (voluntary but adapted to a top-down scheme). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Digital de Derecho Administrativo is the property of Universidad Externado de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

I will describe a multi-scalar project concerning the municipality of Castelnovo ne' Monti, where I try to develop spaces for socializing in compliance with the distancing constraints that are required at us. The project strengthens structuring elements of this territory by resorting to various interventions. The organization of the small villages connected together working as an integrated system, the insertion of a new central place, the eco-camping project and the three pine forests regeneration without forgetting the desire to spread the interest in two authentic treasures: Pietra of Bismantova and Gessi Triassici of the Secchia valley.

The Alpine protected areas are important spaces in the implementation of ecological networks in the Alpine context. Their role is not limited to being the core areas of these networks due to the richness of their fauna and flora. The managers are also actively involved in the design and implementation of ecological networks, in some cases even contributing directly to their materialisation in spatial planning documents.

Tourism management involves using a systematic approach to spatial planning that involves multiple variables in land planning. However, it is common to find multiple approaches for the more negative aspects of tourism, such as its impact on natural spaces. On the other hand, the idea of including tourism in land planning finds unanimous support in academia. Although scientific research on tourism and land planning in natural areas is significant, many topics do not receive sufficient attention and the domain has not yet been subject to a systematic analysis, which is the purpose of the present study. To this end, bibliometric data is gathered from the Scopus database and analyzed through a bibliometric approach involving keyword analysis with Pearson correlation coefficient. The results indicate that development, landscaping, and management are the most researched topics, followed by community and system, natural/nature, and the local community. The results of the detailed analysis of the word "tourism" connected with planning in natural spaces reveal that research in the area defends sustainable management, economic growth, energy management and monitoring, and the adoption of a green economy model by the hospitality industry. By featuring the overall structure of research on tourism and land planning in natural spaces published in Scopus, this study provides helpful and timely information to researchers, scholars, destination managers, industry managers, and tourism and hospitality consultants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable land management is one of the key actions for the achievement of objectives set by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In particular, land represents a fundamental resource to address issues of climate change, biodiversity preservation, maintaining ecosystem services, and at the same time ensuring shared prosperity and well-being. Therefore, it is necessary to activate strategies to monitor changes in land use and land cover in order to evaluate strategies for proper management. To do this, the new open source geospatial analysis tools and the increasing availability of remote sensed open data can allow the activation of methodologies for monitoring changes in land use and land cover in order to provide data usable in other research areas or, for example, to implement a decision support system for environmental sustainability. In this study, a GIS approach based on open remote sensing data has been used to perform a spatial analysis of land cover changes within the Basilicata region (Southern Italy) that is spatially expeditious yet accurate. The results showed a very evident land transformation with important repercussions on the environmental components. The ease of use of techniques makes this methodology replicable in other territory and can be used as a preliminary approach to sustainable development model.

[In Italian]

Mining can be the source and target of opportunities and threats of different natures exceeding the mine site perimeter, affecting the socio-ecological system and leading to social conflicts and entrepreneurial risks for mining companies. Hence, a mining project is a matter of land planning rather than a simple industrial object. Nevertheless, current mandatory risk and impact assessment methods are often performed on one project at a time, neglecting the coexistence of different mining activities and the socio-ecological vulnerability of the territory where mining takes place. This paper proposes an original risk-based approach to develop and compare different territorial mining scenarios (TMSs) to support land-planning strategies in mining territories, tested on the French Guiana gold mining sector. Five TMSs combining different mine types (e.g., legal artisanal, medium, large-scale mining, illegal mining) were developed for the same total amount of gold production at the watershed level. For each TMS, both accidental and ordinary risk scenarios were assessed through a GIS-based approach considering watershed socio-ecological vulnerability. Risks were finally weighted according to different stakeholders' perception, and the TMSs were compared based on their global risk scores. Despite the multiple challenges highlighted, this paper highlights the feasibility of a methodological framework to support mining planning at the territory level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]