Many Polish cities are faced with a dilemma: to enact their local land-use plans and be exposed to the immediate financial consequences of their adoption, or to protect their budgets against these costs and give up control of the development of the cities.

For a long time sub-Saharan Africa has been considered to have abundant and underutilized land than any other continent. On the contrary, recent studies show that many rural Africans live in increasingly densely populated areas where all arable land is allocated or under cultivation.