The paper aims to position the concept of adaptive efficiency in planning theory, by providing insights on the conditions that explain why land use planning in some institutional contexts is able to adapt and improve more efficiently than in others. This is done by focusing on a specific planning goal: the control of residential sprawl. The paper presents a theoretical framework based on two models, one on the coordinating mechanisms regarding the use of land and one to explain institutional changes.

In the jaragua-bahoruco-enriquillo biosphere reserve, located on the southern border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, there are depressed rural areas with soils with high content in Cadmium and other heavy metals which originate naturally in the geological substrate.

The study of the effect of habitat fragmentation on species that inhabit residual patches requires the investigation of the relationship existing between species distribution and landscape components. To understand which components of landscape mosaics are more influential for species’ persistence, we compared the distribution of two arboreal rodents proved to be sensitive to habitat fragmentation, the hazel dormouse Muscardinus avellanarius and the red squirrel Sciurus vulgaris.

The links between built form and environmental health are, as yet, inadequately understood. Risk is a formless and ambiguous phenomenon tightly embedded in the myriad pattern of land uses that generate it. Our research, which is founded on a contextualist notion of policy design, demonstrates the potential of innovative land use policy instruments (i.e. form-based codes, conditional use permits) to address risk. We model environmental risks from point and mobile sources in Southeast Los Angeles (SELA), a known air toxics hotspot.

Based on the theoretical framework, in this article we demonstrate how Decision Network can be used to formulate the inventory approach to urban growth boundaries (UGBs) as an application of the planning tool to a general case. In particular, in the inventory approach expansions of UGBs are considered as decision situations, land consumptions as problems, and order sizes of UGBs as solutions. We compare the time- and event-driven systems of the inventory control problem based on the decision network framework.

Soil erosion by water is a major environmental threat to the sustainability and productive capacity of agriculture in many tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. In temperate regions, meanwhile, the ‘off-site’ transport of sediment and pollutants into nearby water courses and the ‘muddy flooding’ of properties and infrastructure pose a much greater threat.

Peri-urban ecosystems are often managed as recreation areas or to enhance aesthetic value on the urban fringe. Scholars and land-use practitioners lack a current understanding of the supply of and the demands for these peri-urban ecosystem services (ES). In this study, we analysed the perceptions of 500 users and interest groups regarding the ES provided by the Bilbao Metropolitan Greenbelt (BMG) ecosystems in northern Spain, and we compared these perceptions to the demands for ES. The objective of this study is to understand user preferences and to thereby better orient land use planning.

Digital 3D cadastres are often envisaged as the visualisation of 3D property rights (legal objects) and to some extent, their physical counterparts (physical objects) such as buildings and utility networks on, above and under the surface. They facilitate registration and management of 3D properties and reduction of boundary disputes. They also enable a wide variety of applications that in turn identify detailed and integrated 3D legal and physical objects for property management and city space management (3D land use management).

A number of previous studies have emphasized the determinants of land-use change, as well as the management of communal lands in the pastoral systems, without assessing the effects of such changes on pastoralists/agro-pastoralists’ food security. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to assess the determinants of food security under changing land use and land management systems—from communal to private investment—using household survey data collected from pastoral and agro-pastoral communities. The data were analyzed using ordinary least-square econometric analysis.

In the last two decades, planners and landscape architects have been concerned with the open space planning concept called ‘greenway planning’. This approach aims at nature protection that balances both conservation and growth, creating livable environments and maintaining open spaces. In Istanbul, the functional and spatial connectivity of greenways can protect the local landscape against urbanization and population growth problems. This study aimed to emphasize the natural and cultural heritage in an ecologically based planning approach.