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Informal economic activities not only contribute to the economic growth of most countries, they also have a significant effect on the built environment. This study assesses the effect of urban informal economic activity (UIEA) on the quality of the built environment in residential areas of the metropolis of Lagos, Nigeria. It adopts a case study methodology with survey research design, disproportionate sample size, and multi-stage sampling techniques. Data collection utilises questionnaire surveys and personal observations from 1345 informal economic operators in 52 administrative wards of the 16 local government areas (LGAs) of Lagos. This research uses descriptive and inferential statistical tools for analysis and interpretation of 973 completed questionnaires (73.9%) returned from the survey. The results reflect an adverse effect of UIEA on the quality of the built environment in residential areas with regard to aesthetic disorder, street trading, traffic jams, visual obstructions, indiscriminate disposal of waste and land use conversion. This finding implies that a significant inter-group relationship exists between the effects of UIEA on the quality of the built environment, and that UIEA creates a severe increase in environmental challenges in Lagos. Recommendations include policy formulation, integrated socio-economic and environmental planning design approaches for curtailing these challenges and improving the quality of the built environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Super Typhoon Haiyan devastated portions of Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines on November 8, 2013. It caused unprecedented destruction but it also brought about new awareness for urgent and immediate action, not only on integrating Disaster Risk Management in our daily functions but also on addressing Climate Change variation impacts. In response, various stakeholders have made numerous efforts in reducing the country’s risk through crafting laws, statutes and government issuances. However, adaptive and coping capacities of Local Government Units remain very weak, and information on how to assess expected risk and incorporate it in developing local risk sensitive physical and development plans are still not part of the planners’ and decision makers’ agenda. The main objective of this study is to develop a technical Risk Sensitive Comprehensive Land Use and Development Planning Model to mainstream scientific-based risk assessment into the Quezon City Government (the pilot urban area) planners’ and decision makers’ agenda. The Model also comes with a toolkit with eight (8) Guideposts in operationalizing the Model. It is an effective tool and is a foundation to support in achieving imminent 2020 targets of the Sendai Framework, Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals up to 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The status of urban forests and other green open spaces has always been ambiguous within the context of rural-urban peripheries. On one hand, most European countries have introduced protected green zones around cities to contain their sprawl and to provide urban dwellers recreational space and sanitation services since the early days of city planning policies. On the other hand, the ecosystems of green open areas remain under high pressure due to high demand for suburban land, causing issues ranging from illegal dumping to ecosystem fragmentation and forest loss. In Eastern Europe, in particular in the former USSR, rural-urban peripheries went through series of socio-economic transitions that resulted in complex interplays of socialist and post-socialist institutions. In this paper we explore these interplays in the context of land-use dynamics of rural-urban peripheries of two middle-sized cities in Belarus (Mahilioŭ) and Russia (Pskov), with particular attention to open green spaces and environmental status of their ecosystems. We describe the properties of the rural-urban peripheries of Mahilioŭ and Pskov, offer an overview of legal frameworks and actor networks involved in the planning policies, and describe land-use pressure on ecosystems. Then, we discuss dilemmas of spatial planning in rural–urban, including spatial investment, regulation, and spatial intervention dilemmas. Planning process in the two cities demonstrates a search for compromise between a compact city cherished by the socialist planning tradition (and supported by planners’ backgrounds and existing regulatory frameworks), and the increasingly noticeable tendency toward urban sprawl. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanisation and land supply are real problems in many urban centres. Due to the concentration of people in towns and cities beyond their capacities and lateral urban expansion into the peripheries, municipal facilities and resources, particularly land, are constrained or overstretched to engender unfavourable competition among land uses. In this way, less economic yielding land use like cemeteries are competed out. This study, therefore, explored the trio of urbanisation, land supply and how the Ghanaian physical planning system contribute to sustaining cemetery land use in the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area of Ghana. Having been underpinned by the interpretive research paradigm, the study correspondingly used qualitative research methodological approaches including in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions to collect data through audio tape recording from thirty (30) interviews which were transcribed and analysed. Findings of the study include encroachment on cemeteries primarily by traditional leaders for economic gains, acute shortage of burial spaces in the metropolis' cemeteries leading to congestion and re-use of old graves with shallow depths in order not to disturb earlier interments. Unfortunately too, the physical planning system does not provide for detailed and conscious planning for cemeteries to sustain them. To help deal with the situation, policy measures have been suggested. • Urbanisation and natural population growth are constraining land availability for cemetery land use in Cities including the Greater Kumasi Metropolis in Ghana. • Burial plots have become expensive due to the shortage of spaces in urban cemeteries for burial of the dead. • Re-use of old graves has been adopted as a coping strategy in Ghana's cities with potential environmental and public health risks due to shallowness of the graves. • Governmental acquisition of land for cemeteries in the cities is apt to provide burial spaces and curtail associated risks due to shallow depths of the re-used graves. • Conscious land use planning for cementeries should be considered to ensure sustainability of cemeteries in urban Ghana and other cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos de Vivienda y Urbanismo is the property of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana 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.)

Abstract: Contemporary land-use planning is based on project-specific evaluation methods from various scientific disciplines and has come to focus more recently on the integration of sustainability issues. Context-specific sets of indicators are typically used to evaluate and quantify the sustainability of different planning options for given contexts. The evaluation of these indicators relies heavily on (expert) stakeholder input and can therefore not simply be integrated into standardized and automated assessment tools. This is seen as one of the reasons why sustainability – despite being widely accepted as one of the most crucial aspects in any development – is often not considered on equal terms in decision making and planning compared to environmental risks and economic considerations. In this paper we propose a scheme to transfer the evaluation of site-specific sets of sustainability indicators into automated quantitative and spatially explicit assessments, which can be integrated into multidisciplinary spatial optimization algorithms. Using simple landscape metrics along with typical spatial data and stakeholder knowledge on a brownfield near Potsdam, Germany, this transfer is implemented for an existing site-specific indicator set to evaluate the sustainability of brownfield redevelopment options in a case study. The automatic spatial evaluation and analysis of hundreds of systematically designed land-use options is explored to provide a detailed understanding of the indicator-based evaluation of sustainable land-use planning on the study site. The results suggest that a spatially explicit algorithmic evaluation of sustainability indicators may significantly improve the applicability, comprehensiveness and reliability of the indicator-based evaluation of sustainability. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Revista Ciência & Saúde Coletiva is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Pos-Graduacao em Saude Coletiva 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.)

Abstract: Urban land use has been a major driving force behind land use change in Estonia since regaining independence and land reform process in the 1990s. The study summarizes land use change, land management and planning practices in the urban fringe over a period of 20 years with the aim of introducing a sustainable land use policy in highly fragmented suburban land. The processes and dynamics of land use change are explored using cartographic and landscape metrics analysis. The liberal-conservative planning practices have resulted in ad hoc allocation solutions which have created dramatic changes in land use in Estonia during the 1990s and 2000s. The patchy and scattered suburban land is formed by occupying former agricultural land, natural grasslands and forests. In the framework of physical planning, the land use, spatial and urban changes are related to master plans. The nature of the evolution of land management and the deficiencies of institutional framework are discussed as factors in inefficient land use in the sprawling suburbs. A further debate on the feasibility of encouraging land use diversity in peri-urban zones is advocated. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Journal of International Social Research is the property of Journal of International Social Research 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.)

Copyright of Ciencia en su PC is the property of Instituto de Informacion Cientifica y Tecnologica 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.)

Abstract: Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) provide two interlinked platforms for the assessment of impacts on biodiversity caused by human developments. Although it might be too early to draw conclusions on the efficiency of SEA to assess such impacts, a number of persistent problems have been identified in the case of EIA. Some of these shortcomings concern the lack of proper prediction and impact quantification, and the inadequate/insufficient assessment of cumulative effects. A number of problems are related to the scale(s) at which the assessment is performed. SEA may provide a more adequate framework than EIA to discuss scale-related issues (i.e. cumulative impacts) but it also requires the use of adapted tools. This paper presents a case study where a GIS-based habitat model for the lesser spotted woodpecker is tested, validated and applied to a planning scenario in the Stockholm region in Sweden. The results show that the method adopted offers great prospects to contribute to a better assessment of biodiversity-related impacts. Even though some limitations remain in the form of data requirement and interpretation of the results, the model produced continuous, quantified predictions over the study area and provided a relevant basis for the assessment of cumulative effects. Furthermore, this paper discusses potential conflicts between different scales involved in the assessment — related to administrative boundaries, ecological processes, data availability, the method adopted to perform the assessment and temporal aspects. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Both public and private allotments are nature-based solutions with particularly positive impacts on the health and well-being of their users. • The impact on the environment, and especially on the biodiversity of a public allotment garden, is more significant than that of a private one. • Public and private allotment gardens are not competitive, but complement each other. • The freedom of cultivation and the freedom of access seem to be the main criteria to cultivate private or public allotment garden. • The role of both types of allotment gardens in mitigating unfavourable climatic conditions can and should be increased and further developed. Many European countries witness growing interest in allotment gardening. Thus, private allotment gardens (AGs) have been created in some countries, including Spain. As a result, there are places where non-consumptive and commodified allotment gardens coexist. The paper presents an in-depth comparison of public and private AGs through the lens of the nature-based solutions (NBS) concept. First, we assess the importance that gardeners attribute to the spectrum of environmental and socio-economic impacts provided by both types of AGs; we identify differences and similarities in their development and management, and assess the demographic and socioeconomic profile of gardeners. Subsequently, we discuss gardeners' and other stakeholders' opinions on both types of AGs and explore the roles that they can play as solutions for urban policy challenges. Our results show that both types of AGs are nature-based solutions with particularly positive impacts on the health and well-being of their users. These gardens do not compete but complement each other, fostered by their role as multifunctional nature-based solutions. Moreover, the option of cultivating a private or a public AG seems to be more linked to the freedom of cultivation and the freedom of access rather than economic reasons. We conclude that in the current complex scenario, public and private AGs must have territorial, legal and institutional frameworks within all urban policies that explore NBS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]