Fragmentation and Sprawl: Evidence from Interregional Analysis

Recent years have witnessed widespread expansion of state and regional planning programs in the United States. A major purpose of these efforts is to reduce urban sprawl—low density, discontinuous, suburban–style development, often characterized as the result of rapid, unplanned, and/or uncoordinated growth— by promoting jurisdictional cooperation and regulatory consistency across metropolitan areas. This paper evaluates the efficacy of this approach by examining the relationship between governmental fragmentation and several measurable outcomes of urban development: density, urbanized land area, property value, and public expenditures on infrastructure. The four dimensions are modeled in a simultaneous equations framework, providing substantive evidence on how fragmentation and other exogenous factors affect metropolitan growth patterns. Fragmentation is associated with lower densities and higher property values, but has no direct effect on public service expenditures; less fragmented metropolitan areas occupy greater amounts of land due to the extensive annexation needed to bring new development under the control of a central municipality. The findings of the analysis lend support to state and regional planning efforts aimed at increasing cooperation among local governments, but also suggest that further research is needed in order to evaluate whether or not they produce their intended effects.     

Spatial Patterns in the Economic Development of the Mountain West

ABSTRACT Many counties in the mountainous areas of the western U.S. are experiencing rapid growth in population and income, even though extractive industries that served historically as their primary economic base are in decline. The purpose of this paper is to establish statistically the spatial determinants of population, employment, and income densities in 86 rural mountain counties and any changes in those determinants between 1985 and 1994. The results of this analysis indicate that densities are oriented to regional metropolitan centers and critical amenities such as ski areas, national parks, and universities or colleges. Negatively sloped density gradients with respect to distance from regional metropolitan centers suggest that the densities of settlement patterns beyond metropolitan boundaries are analogous to those within metropolitan areas relative to urban centers. In short, a tension apparently exists in locational choice; residents of the Mountain West desire to live near the beauties and amenities of the mountain landscape but do not want to entirely sever their urban ties. Because amenities are the primary attraction of mountain counties rather than employment in locationally dependent industries, at least some migrants must have relatively footloose forms of income.     

The Public Participation in the Urban Planning

The policy of public participation in urban planning was first practiced in Europe in the 1960s. After 40 years of development, the policy has become the essential step of city planning in Western countries where as is just at the elementary step in China. For the purpose of knowing the situation about the policy performing in local cities and discussing the feasibility of public participation in urban planning, several kinds of investigation have been done. From the investigation, it is found that although the public participation has already been the important step of urban planning in some city during just several years,there are still many problems. This paper shows a panorama view of this issue. Th describe the future of public participation in e authors will offer some solutions according to the problems and the urban planning.     

The Appreciative System of Urban ICT Policies: An Analysis of Perceptions of Urban Policy Makers

ABSTRACT Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become an important tool to promote a variety of public goals and policies. In the past years much attention has been given to the expected social benefits from deploying ICTs in different urban fields (transportation, education, public participation in planning, etc.) and to its potential to mitigate various current or emerging urban problems. The growing importance of ICTs in daily life, business activities, and governance prompts the need to consider ICTs more explicitly in urban policies. Alongside the expectation that the private sector will play a major role in the ICT field, the expected benefits from ICTs also encourage urban authorities to formulate proper public ICT policies. Against this background, various intriguing research questions arise. What are the urban policy‐makers’ expectations about ICTs? And how do they assess the future implications of ICTs for their city? A thorough analysis of these questions will provide a better understanding of the extent to which urban authorities are willing to invest in and to adopt a dedicated ICT policy. This study is focusing on the way urban decision‐makers perceive the opportunities of ICT policy. After a sketch of recent development and policy issues, a conceptual model is developed to map out the driving forces of urban ICT policies in cities in Europe. Next, by highlighting the importance of understanding the decision‐maker's “black box,” three crucial variables are identified within this box. In the remaining part of the paper these three variables will be operationalized by using a large survey comprising more than 200 European cities. By means of statistical multivariate methods (i.e., factor and cluster analysis), the decision‐makers were able to be characterized according to the way they perceive their city (the concept of “imaginable city”), their opinion about ICT, and the way they assess the relevance of ICT policies to their city. Next, a solid explanatory framework will be offered by using a log‐linear logit analysis to test the relationships between these three aspects.     

Air Passenger Transportation and Growth in the U.S. Urban System, 1950–1987

The relationship between transportation and urbanization at the national scale is revisited by focusing upon the role that air passenger transportation has played in the post-war evolution of the U.S. urban system. Theory suggests that major transportation innovations have exhibited profound and prolonged interdependencies with patterns of growth in national or regional urban systems. As the most recent major intercity transportation innovation, it should be expected that utilization of air transportation should bear some relationship to patterns of growth in urban places. This paper documents this relationship by using FAA and U.S. Census data to correlate volumes of air passenger flows per capita with changes in population and employment for the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. The expectation that higher volumes of air passenger flow per capita exhibit a positive correlation with both previous and subsequent growth is confirmed by the analysis. More detailed examination of both high and low air passenger index cities suggests functional and regional consistencies with the central hypothesis. The implications of these results for air transportation and airport planning include at least some justification for increased attention to provision of air service and adequate airport infrastructure as well as reiteration of the importance of air transportation in economic development.     

Update Planning and Design Concepts of Taiping Old Downtown Areas in Shuangliu

China has witnessed unprecedented rapid and massive urbanization in recent years, and the urbanization has infl uenced almost all corners of the country, which is a natural process and necessary result of the social and economic development. Development and expansion of cities has been the keynote of the contemporary era. Meanwhile, existence and future development of traditional urban areas that have gone through the long-term natural development have been faced with serious crisis. This paper focused on the relative constancy and changeability of major elements in the natural evolution of traditional cities and towns, so as to explore an organic development mechanism, and make a daring attempt in update planning of old downtown areas of Taiping Town in Shuangliu County. On this basis, the paper aims at exploring a new development concept for common cities and towns that balances inheritance and innovation.     

Innovation in suburban development zones: Evidence from Nanjing,China

While suburban areas have been typically related with urban sprawl, low density, cheap land price and low‐end manufacturing industries, relatively little attention has been paid to the spatial organization of innovation in suburban areas. In some Chinese cities, development zones (kai fa qu) in their suburban areas which are generally regarded as major spaces for traditional manufacturing industries have been transforming into spaces for innovation. This paper provides a case study of Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province in Eastern China by investigating and explaining the learning and innovation processes in suburban development zones. Drawing upon a unique database on 733 state‐certified high‐tech firms in Nanjing from 2008 to 2012 which contains detailed information on their addresses and number of patents, we observe strong spatial disparity in the distribution of innovation. Suburban districts of Nanjing where its three national‐level development zones and many provincial‐level development zones are located have become major spaces for innovation of the city. The planning of industrial clusters in development zones, the place‐based investment in the suburbs, and the suburbanization of universities are three major mechanisms behind the learning and innovation processes in Nanjing’s suburban development zones.     

Internal Migration in Mexico: Consolidation of Urban–Urban Mobility, 2000–2015

Internal migration has been recognized as the major influence in terms of population redistribution across urban systems, but it is not a homogeneous phenomenon. Within the context of internal rural‐urban migration decline and the negative changes in migratory balances in the metropolitan area of Mexico City, the core of enquiry in this paper is the approach to growth and consolidation of an internal urban–urban migration system in the early twenty‐first century (2000–2015). This process has taken place through two main networks, among metropolitan areas not corresponding to the principal city and among intermediate cities. Internal migration is a complex process that involves both individual and spatial characteristics and which leads to spatially uneven development in the long term. Data from three censuses of the population of Mexico (2000, 2010, and 2015) show a transition to a more urban–urban migration pattern, with skilled migrants tending to have metropolitan and urban destinations, whereas less‐skilled migrants prefer rural and small urban destinations.     

Producer services and growth management of a metropolitan region: the case of Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia

Producer services growth can change the character of a metropolitan region. Achieving that outcome may require the intervention of government, which is not necessarily a simple process as it creates tension between regulatory and developmental roles for government. This paper will address three interrelated issues in connection with the above-mentioned core idea in the context of the city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: first, the extent to which the evolution of the Malaysian economy has been felt in the growth of the service sector; second, the way that evolution has led to change in the sectoral and spatial character of Kuala Lumpur; third, government’s responses in terms of spatial planning and management in order to accommodate producer services growth. The experience of the Kuala Lumpur region shows how global market forces and national development policies that influence producer service location and growth can reshape the spatial arrangement of a metropolitan region. Managing the growth of producer services calls for new approaches to manage metropolitan change. An ‘enabling’ model is proposed to replace the present ‘policing’ model of spatial planning.     

The geographically variegated connections of the Jakarta metropolitan area as produced by manufacturing firms

Connectivity in urban networks is often deemed to be an important feature of economically vibrant cities. Under conditions of contemporary globalization, the importance and geographies of these connections are increasingly variegated. Accordingly, various attempts have been made to analyse the external relations of cities and metropolitan regions, often through the lens of multilocational firms. Our purpose in this paper is to address the to‐date limited empirical knowledge about whether firms originating from different regions (i.e., firms with different headquarter [HQ] locations) create different patterns of inter‐urban relations. Drawing on the interlocking network model and using the Jakarta metropolitan area (JMA) as a case study, this paper explores how manufacturing firms with HQs either inside (further differentiating between the JMA and other cities) or outside (further differentiating between East Asian and non‐East Asian countries) Indonesia produce different patterns of external relations. Our findings indicate that each category of firms generates unique configurations of interurban relations for the JMA at the global and national scales. We argue that these variegated networks patterns not only reflect different locational strategies of firms, but also Indonesia's evolving policy orientations which have complex relations with evolving patterns of economic globalization.     

Assessment of the Importance of Greenery in Urban Planning in Modern Britain

In recent years, the world has embraced rapid and large-scale urbanization making more citizens share the progress of society, such as abundant commodities, convenient and fast transportation, excellent medicine and education. For the urbanization, more land inside or around the limited cities have been exploited at the expense of greenery to build buildings as well as infrastructure to satisfy the according demands caused by urbanization. But human beings can never live without greenery, and more citizens mean more needs on greenery. In view of this, the importance of greenery has been increasingly recognized by urban planners and policy makers. This essay aimed to explore the role that greenery plays in urban planning in modern Britain and provided the theoretical basis for better utilization of greenery in the future urban planning.     

Agglomeration of Services in American Metropolitan Areas

The growth of many service industries among American metropolitan areas stem from an eclectic set of forces. These include market penetration effects of increasing importance of services throughout the economy, agglomeration effects in immature and deregulated industries, and institutional and infrastructure constraints. These diverse forces are interpreted as urbanization and localization economies. A cycle of centralization of 27 fast growing service industries is documented for MS As in the period 1977-84. The two agglomeration effects are tested directly, using a power function model that relates employment and establishment growth to MSA size and initial level of employment in a local industry. Localization economies rather than the general advantages of metropolitan size best explain the growth patterns. This result implies that service industrial complexes are rapidly emerging in American metropolitan areas.     

Optimization of differentiated regional land development patterns based on urban expansion simulation—A case in China

The advancing global urbanization puts great pressure on the society and ecosystem, especially in developing countries. Reasonable land-use policies adapted to local conditions are the key issues to prevent disordered urban expansion. Multi-scenario simulation provides a new perspective for differentiated policy formulation based on regional heterogeneity. Regarding the Shaanxi Province, a rapid urbanized area with high spatial heterogeneity in western China, as the study case, we tracked its past land-use changes and predicted the characteristics of urban expansion using the Future Urban-Regional Environment Simulation model. We found that (1) during the past 35 years, built-up land evidently increased accompanied by the loss of cropland, grassland, and unused land. (2) The urban expansion mainly will occur in the areas with flat terrain under three scenarios. (3) The urban expansion will transit into the “requiring land from mountains” pattern in the future, which means that it will gradually spread to areas with higher slopes. (4) Differentiated and optimal development patterns are proposed for different subregions by accounting the loss of ecosystem service in the procedure of urban expansion. This research can help local governments formulate differentiated future macro control of territorial spatial planning to optimize subregional land development.     

Regulation of space in the contemporary postcolonial Pacific city: Port Moresby and Suva

Abstract: National development problems in the weak states of Papua New Guinea and Fiji have resulted in external intervention. However neo‐liberal development strategies have not resolved development problems and may have further weakened state structures. In both capital cities rural‐urban migration, rising urban unemployment, and the expansion of squatter settlements and the informal sector have all continued in recent years. The numbers of beggars, street kids and prostitutes have increased, as has domestic violence and crime. Governments have opposed all these trends, by regulation and intolerance, violence, routine repression and eviction, rather than by pro‐poor policies. Settlers, prostitutes, beggars, street kids and market vendors have been evicted and moved on, on the ideological premise that that their true place is in rural areas, and that their urban presence challenges and threatens notions of urban order. Moral regulation, social exclusion and moral panic have divided ‘good citizens’ from marginal and possibly criminal others, intensifying social divisions within the cities. Sustainable urban development has proved difficult to achieve.     

Measuring the Containment and Spillover Effects of Urban Growth Boundaries: The Case of the Portland Metropolitan Area

Although urban growth boundaries (UGBs) are increasingly used as a containment policy to promote contiguous and compact urban forms, little is known about how UGBs affect development within the designated area or how development is displaced to other cities. This study analyzes the UGB's containment and spillover effects, focusing on the case of the Portland metropolitan area where UGBs have long been implemented. This is accomplished by employing a spatial market disequilibrium framework in which explicit consideration is given to the containment and spillover processes when under the influences of UGBs. The findings suggest that UGBs can promote development within the boundaries, but that cooperation with neighboring municipalities is necessary to effectively attain the policy goals.     

Twenty‐first century nomadic city: Ger districts and barriers to the implementation of the Ulaanbaatar City Master Plan

Since the early 1990s, Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, has experienced rapid rural to urban migration and population growth resulting in the growth in informal settlements across the city. The informal settlements are known as ‘ger’ districts. In response to these pressures, since the 1990s, the central government has adopted a programme of land reform and metropolitan planning. These new reforms take place in the context of a unique, post‐socialist political, economic and institutional context. The land reform process has attempted to privatise land ownership, which has traditionally resided with the state. The privatisation process was initiated under the new Constitution of Mongolia, which initiated reforms in all sectors of social and economic development, and since 2003, targeted land reform in ger districts. Running parallel, a series of urban land‐use planning schemes have been introduced to frame the development of Ulaanbaatar in the context of an emerging market economy. Although master plans for urban development have been established since the 1950s, urban land‐use planning is a new concept in this emerging market economy. The aim of this paper is to trace the rationales and challenges of implementing master plans and land privatisation processes in Ulaanbaatar. Drawing on interviews with city, national and local government officials conducted in 2009, the paper focuses on the implications of these reforms for both the government and the residents of ger districts.     

城乡建设用地增减挂钩政策实施后复垦农民满意度研究——基于渝东南少数民族地区扶贫乡镇的调研

城乡建设用地增减挂钩是国家优化城乡用地结构与开展扶贫攻坚的重要政策,复垦是该政策的重要环节,复垦农民满不满意是衡量该政策有效性的重要指标。本文通过对重庆市复垦阶段的政策与流程梳理,结合对渝东南少数民族地区扶贫乡镇的实地调研,构建了复垦农民满意度指标体系,采用模糊综合评价法对政策实施细则改变前后的满意度差异进行了分析和评价。研究结果表明,通过对政策进行调整后,复垦农民对“经济补偿”与“环境改善”的满意度有了较大提高,但在“政策宣导”、“复垦实施”、“政府服务”及“法律保障”等方面仍有改善的空间。最后从复垦农民满意度的角度出发,在补偿方式、权益保障等方面对增减挂钩政策提出了优化建议。     

Recent intra-metropolitan patterns of spatial mismatch: Implications for black suburbanization and the changing geography of mismatch

Kain's spatial mismatch hypothesis (SMH) (1968) highlights the segregation of Black population in the inner city as well as the decentralization of jobs, both of which played a role in the poor labor market outcomes for Black residents in the inner city. Demographic and economic changes in U.S. metropolitan areas since the late 20th century have transformed the urban spatial structure. This paper aims to revisit the SMH and investigate whether the spatial pattern of mismatch has changed as a result of geographic shifts in the Black population. This paper specifically examines how the suburbanization of the Black population has affected the geographic patterns of mismatch and whether the mismatch is disappearing in the major U.S. metropolitan areas. Using spatial measures of mismatch, this paper presents intra-metropolitan spatial mismatch patterns that capture the clustering of jobs and the Black population based on their relative distributions, showing that the overall level of spatial mismatch declined in major U.S. metropolitan areas between 2000 and 2015. However, geographical evidence reveals that the spatial mismatch has shifted to the outer suburbs, replicating city-suburb spatial inequality, implying that although mismatch may have declined in the inner city due to Black suburbanization, spatial mismatch continue to persist in U.S. metropolitan areas in Black suburbs. The findings also demonstrate that although spatial mismatch generally declined in the inner city, it increased in cities with high inner city polarization, particularly New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.     

Urban Growth Boundaries and Betterment: Rent‐Seeking by Landowners on Melbourne's Expanding Urban Fringe

Melbourne's Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) was legislated in 2002 and expanded substantially in 2010. Although based on strategic planning goals, UGBs have the capacity to influence land and housing markets. Landowners on the rural–urban fringe are a stakeholder group directly impacted by UGB policy, with multiple interests in containment policies and any land‐value effects. Following the 2010 expansion, substantial windfall profits to “instant millionaire” Melbourne landowners were openly reported. This paper critically interprets claims made by landowners in 264 public submissions responding to the proposed UGB expansion, and to an accompanying new policy instrument, the Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution (GAIC). The GAIC was, in effect, a hypothecated tax on betterment expected to result from the UGB shift. Landowners commonly expressed fears that the UGB shift would not result in claimed value increases. On this basis, the GAIC was revised such that it is—at least in intention—a system wherein the tax is to be paid by housing developers and passed forward to homebuyers. The paper argues that the series of changes to the UGB and GAIC, including the modified “purchaser pays” system, may be understood as a response to rent‐seeking policy pressures from existing landowners as “insiders.” Although the unpopularity of the GAIC with landowners might have been anticipated, the outcome appears to legitimise their misinterpretation of the premise of development gain. A broader implication is that rent‐seeking behaviour by existing property owners can determine whether and how strategic planning policies are implemented.