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The recovery of the global economy in the aftermath of COVID-19 faces enormous challenges. Ensuring stable income growth of the population has become an important means for developing countries to ensure sustained economic development. Raising the overall income of the population is a public initiative that benefits all citizens; therefore, governments of developing countries should promote the implementation of relevant public policies and the provision of public goods to ensure that existing economic instruments can benefit the entire population. In this regard, public space, as a typical form of public good, may play an important role in promoting the benefits of existing economic policies for all residents. This paper examines how residents' use of public space contributes to their income growth through social capital. Hypotheses are tested based on an econometric analysis of 1565 questionnaires received from Chinese workers. The results show that residents' use of public space can indeed be an important way to increase their income, which is realized through the enhancement of social capital. The research presented in this paper provides a new influence variable of public space to improve residents' income. Further, it improves people's understanding of the three classical concepts—public space, social capital, and income—by establishing the logical connection and theoretical explanation of physical space, emotional space, and value space in human society. The conclusions of this paper highlight the important role of public space in urban and rural development planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial land is essential for supply-side structural reforms, particularly in the Chengdu–Chongqing area, Western China's most densely populated and industrially robust region. This area, a pivotal hub linking Southwest China with South Asia and Southeast Asia, is critical for the national strategic layout and regional economic restructuring. Despite its substantial industrial foundation as an old industrial base, internal developmental stagnation has led to an irrational industrial land use structure. This paper analyzed land transaction data from the China Land Market Network (2010–2021) using methods such as kernel density estimation, the standard deviation ellipse method, and Global Moran's I index. The analysis focuses on the spatiotemporal evolution of industrial land marketization and its driving factors in 44 cities within the Chengdu–Chongqing economic circle. The findings aim to enhance the strategic implementation of national policies and regional economic optimization, suggesting intensified development efforts in key cities and promoting integrated growth in potential areas like Suining and Ziyang to foster a conducive environment for high-quality regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's rural industrialization, which flourished in the 1980s, has suddenly declined since the mid-1990s. Based on the perspective of institutional change of rural collective construction land, this paper discusses the reasons behind the rise and fall of China's rural industrialization. Using the empirical tests of China's provincial panel data from 1987 to 1997, it is found that from the 1980s to the mid-1990s, the government relaxed the regulation of collective construction land and allowed its transfer, which was the institutional basis for the rapid rise of China's rural industrialization with township and village enterprises (TVEs) as the main form. Furthermore, this paper takes the government's policy of prohibiting the circulation of collective construction land from the mid-1990s as the breakthrough point, and uses the "Land Administration Law of China" promulgated in 1998 as a quasi-natural experiment to examine the causal relationship between restricting the circulation of collective construction land and the decline of TVEs. It is found that the restrictions on the circulation of collective construction land caused by the implementation of the law significantly hindered the development of TVEs. After the implementation of the Land Administration Law, in areas affected more by the law, the development scale of their TVEs shrunk even more. The analysis of this paper shows that deepening the reform of the system of property rights on agricultural land and ensuring farmers' rights of land circulation are important ways to revitalize the rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using panel data from 275 prefecture-level cities in China spanning from 2003 to 2019, this paper employs the multiperiod difference-in-differences method to empirically analyze the policy effect of land negotiation policy on local governments' hidden debt. The paper also investigates the influence mechanisms of land finance, budget soft constraints, fiscal decentralization and government competition. The empirical results reveal that: (1) Land negotiations promote the expansion of local governments' hidden debt, which is counterproductive to the sustainable development of government finances. (2) The impact of land negotiation policy on local government's hidden debt is transmitted via its effects on land finance. (3) The greater the degree of soft budget constraint and the degree of government competition, the less the expansion effect of land negotiations on the hidden debt of the government. The greater the degree of fiscal decentralization, the greater the expansion effect of land negotiations on the government's hidden debt. (4) Land negotiation promotes the expansion of hidden debt in eastern China and inhibits it in central China, with no significant effect observed in western China. (5) Cities with larger urban scale and higher economic development levels experience stronger effects from land negotiation policies. Therefore, it is imperative to deepen the land negotiation system further, develop policy indicators and feedback mechanisms tailored to local conditions, and introduce a multiparty supervision system to enhance implementation of the land negotiation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxes on the consumption of certain products have played a key role in public revenue analysis in European countries. This work assesses the differences in tax planning for new non-combustion products across some European territories. Through theoretical analysis, the paper has three distinct aspects. Firstly, we show the taxpayer profile in different countries. Secondly, the study analyzes the risks for the health system and the individual. Thirdly, the design of the national tobacco tax is based on previous experience and planning in Europe. This paper concludes with a case study for different countries: (1) Spain "vapers" and "smokers", where the analysis is based on micro-data from the European Health Interview Survey 2020. (2) Sweden, with the analysis of snus, shows it as a practice on how to reach economic savings while decreasing economic costs thanks to the nudging of consumers towards better products. The results show taxation and, especially, land taxation should consider differences in planning in the case of new products, such as non-combustion products, given the user per capita income and the potential lower health risks involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the socio-economic channels through which farmers affect agro-biodiversity (ABD) represents a relevant research area, especially in the light of the new sustainable development paradigm. Supporting ABD is one of the main goals of the EU Green Deal and the agricultural sector is being called on for a higher commitment. Nowadays, ABD interventions are linked not only to the genetic and natural resources of species, but also to farming practices, land management, living standards in rural areas and all the policy interventions supporting them. However, the existing literature is still mainly focused on the environmental and agronomic perspectives. This paper aims to assess the extent to which different socio-economic and policy factors affect the performance of farmers in supporting ABD at the territorial level. Starting from the FADN data and focusing on Italy, we built a new regional comprehensive indicator that accounts for three levers through which farmers mostly interact and can influence ABD: land use strategies, agriculture practices and management decisions, and Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) funds. Results reveal a heterogeneous spectrum of indicator scores at the regional level. Land use strategies have a significant relevance for the North-East regions and the Islands (Sicily and Sardinia), whereas agricultural practices emerge as the primary influential factors in the Centre and South. Policy funds dominate in the North-West, reflecting the greater expenditure capacity of the northern regions. These findings have important policy implications for the future of the CAP and the biodiversity EU strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an overarching goal, economic growth targets have a strong leading and constraining effect on the behavior of local governments. China's new-type urbanization strategy emphasizes balanced development across population, economic, social, space, ecological and income-gap dimensions and relies on multifaceted government policies. Therefore, setting reasonable economic growth targets has an important impact on the process of new-type urbanization. This paper uses panel data from 30 provinces between 2005 and 2020 to empirically examine the impact of economic growth targets on the new-type urbanization process. The results reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth targets and new-type urbanization, with public expenditure and land finance acting as a mediator and a moderator through fiscal expenditure. The mechanisms of influence are as follows: economic growth target—infrastructure construction, regional innovation, energy structure, and financial development—population development, economic quality, ecological civilization, and income gap—new-type urbanization. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the inverted U-shaped relationship is significantly present in the western and central regions of China and before 2014. This paper not only clearly illustrates the institutional mechanism of urbanization in China but also highlights its government-led and "land-for-security" approach, which has important implications for urbanization in other regions of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a summary of a special issue titled "Public Spaces: Socioeconomic Challenges." The issue explores the concept of well-being in urban environments and how certain urban or environmental contexts can positively impact the well-being of individuals. The articles in the issue cover a range of topics, including urban green regeneration, the relationship between theater architecture and public spaces, the contribution of disabled entrepreneurs to urban spaces, and the impact of hotel rooftops on tourism planning. Other articles discuss citizen participation in urban energy transition, waste management in the Canary Islands, land reclamation strategies in Indonesia, digital technologies in urban greening, the development of aerotropolises, and the effects of fiscal decentralization on regional development in China. The issue aims to inspire further research and contribute to the understanding of well-being in urban environments. [Extracted from the article]

(1) Background: Achieving harmonious human–land relations is one of the key objectives of sustainable urban–rural development, and the degree of decoupling of permanent population levels from changes in construction land use is an important factor in related analyses. Due to the existence of huge urban–rural differences, rethinking China's human–land relations from the perspective of integrating urban and rural areas is of great value for the advancement of high-quality urban–rural development. (2) Methods: By studying the lower reaches of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers of China, and based on data from the second and third national land surveys of China, this paper analyzes the spatio-temporal evolution of urban and rural population, construction land use, and human–land relations from 2009 to 2019 using exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) and a decoupling model; in addition, this paper proposes a differentiated zoning management strategy and establishes a new framework that integrates evolutionary patterns, human–land relations, spatial effects, and policy design. (3) Results: The geographic distribution patterns of urban and rural population and construction land use remained stable over time, with high levels of spatial heterogeneity, agglomeration, and correlation. Changes in urban and rural population levels and construction land use are becoming increasingly diversified and complex, with both increases and reductions existing side by side. Based on a Boston Consulting Group matrix, the evolution patterns of urban and rural population and construction land use are divided into four types, referred to as star-cities, cow-cities, question-cities, and dog-cities. Over the time period examined in this paper, the spatial autocorrelation of urban land evolution patterns turned from negative to positive; however, that of rural land, as well as those of urban and rural population evolution patterns, were statistically insignificant. Urban human–land relations are coordinated, in general, and are mostly in a state of either weak decoupling or expansive coupling. In contrast, rural human–land relations are seriously imbalanced, and most of them are in a state of strong negative decoupling. Human–land relations are dominated by regressive changes in urban areas but remain unchanged in rural areas. Cold- and hot-spot cities are concentrated in clusters or in bands, forming a core-periphery structure. The formation and evolution of the decoupling relationship between construction land use and permanent population are the results of multiple factors, including urbanization, industrialization, globalization, and government demand and policy intervention. The interaction effects between different factors show bifactor enhancement and nonlinear enhancement, with complex driving mechanisms and large urban–rural differences. It should be highlighted that the influence intensity, operation mechanism, and changes in the trends for different factors vary greatly. Urbanization rate, gross domestic product, and government revenue are key factors that exert a strong direct driving force; international trade, foreign direct investment, and per capita GDP are important factors, while the remaining factors are auxiliary factors that remain heavily dependent on interaction effects. (4) Conclusions: To further transform human–land relations from imbalanced to coordinated, we divide the study area into four area types based on the concept of urban–rural community: urban and rural intensive policy areas, urban intensive policy areas, rural intensive policy areas, and urban and rural controlled policy areas. Furthermore, we put forward suggestions on the differentiated management of land use for the four types of policy areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-based tourism (CBT) has been adopted as an effective and practical solution to land use policies by governments that simultaneously pursue upgrading of local economy, conservation of local ecosystem and development of local communities. Confronting with new normality of detrimental eventualities in situated environments, destination management organizations (DMOs) or local governments have to employ effective governance strategies for fostering tourism community resilience in order to sustain development of CBT destinations. In viewing of that facilitating development through evaluation usually manifests as an efficient strategy in governance practices, this paper contributes to fill two main gaps in tackling comprehensive evaluation of tourism community resilience. Firstly, by noticing the fact that current literature overlooks processual characteristics of tourism community resilience, which originate from integration of disaster management and destination management (DM2), we have developed an analytical framework comprised of six attributes for comprehensively evaluating tourism community resilience. Secondly, aiming at the phenomena that cognitive assessments on attributes of tourism community resilience often exhibit complicate uncertainties caused by low-structured or ill-structured problem nature, we have put forward a powerful expression tool of probabilistic dual hesitant fuzzy uncertain unbalanced linguistic set (PDHF_UUBLS) to simultaneously capture evaluators' cognitive characteristics of decision hesitancy, bipolar epistemic notions and relative importance among assessments. Then by formalizing comprehensive evaluation of tourism community resilience as a multiple attributes decision making process, we construct an effective multiple attributes group decision making (MAGDM) approach with assessments in the form of PDHF_UUBLS. Theoretical analyses verify the effectiveness of our constructed MAGDM approach and also show the approach avoids potential information distortion in comparison with other approaches. Overall, this paper provides effective and pertinent solutions, with both analytical framework and methodology, to the urgent task of comprehensive evaluation of tourism community resilience in DM2 agenda, thereby is of apparent significance in governance practice of CBT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the Multifunctional and Territorialised Agri-Food Systems (MTLAFS) in areas of direct urban influence, focusing on the metropolitan region of Madrid. MTLAFS are contextualised as alternatives to the hegemonic global model of mass production and consumption. They are created by combining two conceptual and theoretical bodies of knowledge that share many elements: the study of Local Agri-Food Systems (LAFS), a critical approach to agri-food economies and the re-territorialisation of agri-food systems. The paper analyses the factors that negatively affect the resilience of LAFS and it describes re-territorialisation strategies that enable MTLAFS to be built. By using a multi-criteria methodology to identify agri-environmental and food governance indicators, the research identifies and describes the characteristics that allow the case studies selected in the region of Madrid to be classified as MTLAFS. This has been carried out by gathering the main discussion points on the fractures and relocation strategies that accentuate the vulnerability or, on the contrary, enhance the resilience of the cases analysed. The paper concludes with some recommendations for strengthening the socio-ecological resilience of MTLAFS by using the systemic basis provided by the agro-urban project. This agro-urban project brings together different public policies, governance tools, territorial and food planning, as well as agrarian practices anchored to each specific territory. All these agrarian practices contribute to the configuration of an alternative territorial agri-food model that ensures food security and a shift towards the sustainable development of our planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Belt and Road" has developed from a Chinese initiative to an international consensus, and Silk Road cities are becoming a strategic step for its high-quality development. From the perspective of industrialization, the "Belt and Road" can be regarded as a "spillover" effect of the industrialization process in China. With the spatial shift of Chinese industries along the "Belt and Road" and their clustering in Silk Road cities, the development and change of industrial land in Silk Road cities has become a new area of concern for governments and scholars. In this paper, the driving mechanism of industrial land change in 129 cities along the Silk Road in China is empirically studied by the GeoDetector method. The findings include: first, the development and changes of industrial land in Silk Road cities are significantly spatially heterogeneous, and the "Belt and Road" reshapes the town system and economic geography along the route by virtue of the differentiated configuration and changes of industrial land, changing the social, political, landscape and spatial relations in cities on the line. Second, the driving forces of industrial land change in Silk Road cities under the influence of the "Belt and Road Initiative" are increasingly diversified and differentiated, with significant two-factor enhancement and non-linear enhancement interaction between two driving factors, and growing complexity of the driving mechanisms, requiring policy makers to design policies based on key factors, comprehensive factors and their interaction. Third, the environmental effect of industrial land change is highly complex. The industrial land quantity has a direct impact on the ecological state parameter and plays a decisive role in the quality of the ecological environment and its changes in Silk Road cities. However, changes in the industrial land affect the ecological state change indirectly, mainly interacting with it through the coupling of pollutant and carbon dioxide emissions, energy use, ecological planning and landscape design and policy interventions. Finally, this study provides a new framework and method for Silk Road scholars to analyze the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of land use and coverage in cities along the "Belt and Road" and their influence mechanisms, and provides a basis for the government to make decisions on industrial land supply and layout planning and spatial governance policy design, which is of great theoretical significance and practical value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The studies of spatial-temporal land use and land cover (LULC) change patterns, supported by future scenarios and simulation methods based on the assumption of natural socio-economic and territorial driving forces, allow us to go beyond an accurate diagnosis of the dynamics that have occurred so far, providing a picture of possible alternative futures, and are fundamental in assisting with the planning and policy-making in the territory. In this paper, we use LULC maps and explanatory variables aggregated in five dimensions (physical/natural, economic, sociocultural, technological, and demographic) to identify which are the main drinving forces in the evolution process and the simulation of LULC dynamics for 2036, using as a case study the Chapecó River ecological corridor (Chapecó EC) area. The Chapecó EC was created by the state government in 2010 with the goal of combining nature conservation with local and regional development. In this region, in the last two decades, the loss of areas of natural grassland and forest was on average five times higher than the average recorded in the state. Based on scenario-building methods using artificial neural networks, six predictive scenarios were elaborated, based on three socioeconomic scenarios (current conditions, growth, and socioeconomic recession) and two territorial intervention options (actions). This includes an action based on maintaining the current LULC, and another action of a conservationist nature with the recovery of forest and natural grassland areas to the proportions of areas found in 1990. The results indicate that if the current LULC is maintained, forest, pasture and agriculture areas tend to increase, while silviculture and natural grassland areas decrease, driven by economic and physical/natural driving forces. If there is a conservationist action, natural grassland and pasture areas tend to increase and silviculture and agriculture tend to lose area due to economic, technological, and physical/natural driving forces. These trends have revealed that the natural grassland preservation/restoration, the encouragement of conservationist agricultural practices combined with economic strategies, and the technological development of the rural sector seem to form the basis of economic development combined with biodiversity conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most Chinese cities have spent decades achieving urbanisation. So far, rural urbanisation has shifted to urban renewal. However, the distinction between a rapidly changing social environment and the establishment of an institution has led to the failure of urban renewal policies to sustainably achieve complete transformation through urban modernisation involving many stakeholders. Owing to the top-down political system in China, the formulation and implementation of urban renewal policies are carried out in a closed-loop process in which "decisions are issued by the central government to the local government which gives feedback to the centre". This seems to affect urban renewal through a transfer of renewal policies in a local area. Therefore, it is essential to explore the differences between the urban renewal policies at different government levels and to analyse these policies in diverse urban contexts with multiple stakeholders. Based on the policy transfer theory, this paper selects 216 core policy texts at the state level and at the level of four first-tier cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen), and uses the methods of text mining and semantic analysis to form open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. Furthermore, it discusses the policy transfer and impact mechanism of urban renewal policy at different levels with diverse characteristics of policy subsystems. We found that the transfer of urban renewal policy occurred in China through top-down coercive vertical transfer, bottom-up combination reverse transfer, and voluntary horizontal transfer among cities. Finally, we suggest that "inspiration"-type policy transfer is an effective method to promote urban renewal in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agglomeration is the strategic core area of social–economic high-quality development in the world. However, high-density agglomeration and high-speed expansion have caused dramatic changes in land space, leading to prominent eco-environmental problems and, thus, threatening human well-being. How to solve the contradiction between urban agglomeration land expansion and eco-environment protection has become an urgent scientific problem. In this paper, we constructed a framework of assessing land space change and its eco-environmental effects in the urban agglomeration by using the Geo-informatic Graphic, eco-environmental quality index (EQI), and eco-environmental contribution rate. We then quantitatively analyzed the characteristics of land space transition as well as its eco-environmental effects in the Guanzhong Plain urban Agglomeration (GPUA) based on the land use data in 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2020. The results indicated that from 1990 to 2020, the production space of the GPUA continued to shrink, the living space continued to expand, and the ecological space showed a fluctuating increasing trend. There were significant regional differences in the land space change of the GPUA, with 92.2% of the counties showing a significant contraction in agricultural production space, 93.3% and 91.1% showing a significant expansion in urban and rural living space, and 64.4% showing an increase in woodland ecological space. Agricultural production space is transformed into ecological space and living space, and living space occupies ecological space and agricultural production space, which is the main mode of land space transition in the GPUA. With the continuous expansion of low-quality and high-quality areas of the eco-environment and the continuous contraction of medium-quality areas, the improvement and deterioration of the eco-environmental quality of the GPUA have coexisted, first showing a trend of deterioration and then improvement. The transition of agricultural production space into grassland and woodland ecological space improved the eco-environmental quality, while the transition of grassland ecological space into agricultural production space, and the occupation of agricultural production space by urban and rural living space as well as industrial and mining production space resulted in the deterioration of eco-environmental quality. The findings of this study may provide a theoretical basis for optimizing the allocation of land space resources in ecologically fragile urban agglomeration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of defined land uses in most parts of Greece (80%) has led to multiple environmental problems and phenomena of informal (arbitrary) construction with secondary side effects, such as a lack of basic technical and environmental infrastructure, unfair competition among private investors, the strengthening of climate change (increase in the number of urban diffusion) and the decline of natural and cultural resources. The Greek urban policy, over the last 100 years, has not succeeded in limiting these problems and for that reason the new Law 4759/2020 is expected to promote the development of a more efficient spatial planning system reform implemented through the Local Urban Plans (LUPs) and the Special Urban Plans (SUPs) that are funded by the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). These programs will contribute to the preservation of cultural heritage and to the development of productive activities at both local and national levels, especially on the sectors of renewable energy sources, the circular economy, and the construction of "green" materials, digital applications and products etc. LUPs and SUPs are related to the holistic reform of the national urban policy and the relevant planning system that horizontally affects a wide range of policy areas such as: environmental protection and adaptation to climate change (for natural ecosystems and biodiversity; agriculture; forestry; fisheries; water resources; coastal zones), built environment and development, protection of historic sites and buildings, allocation of the public infrastructure, allocation of investments etc. The General Secretariat of Spatial Planning and Urban Environment Ministry of Environment and Energy has the main responsibility for the implementation procedures of all the proposed actions that will start in 2022 and will end in 2026. This paper focuses on the analysis of the current urban policy reform in Greece and the reasons that this reform is considered an immediate necessity in the current Greek urban legislative framework and the expected outcomes of LUPs and SUPs, which are examined in the literature for the first time, contributing to research on the present EU planning systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban–rural transformation development is the key to resolving the imbalance in the dual structure of urban and rural areas. However, the transformation of the urban–rural relationship will also affect the structure and spatial distribution of land use. This paper measured the spatial–temporal characteristics of land–use transition in the Yangtze River Delta from 1990 to 2018 by using a geo–information Tupu method and explored the driving mechanism of land–use transition under the background of urban–rural transformation development by using a spatial regression analysis method. The results showed the following: (1) The transition from cultivated land to urban construction land, from rural residential land to cultivated land, and from rural residential land to urban construction land were the three main types of land–use transition in the Yangtze River Delta during urban–rural transformation development. (2) The transition from cultivated land to urban construction land was always the most important type of land–use transition. It expanded from the central area to the surrounding cities. The transition of rural residential land to cultivated land and urban construction land began to increase significantly after the year 2010, which was the urban–rural integration development period. (3) The urban–rural land–use transition was driven by government policies, industrial restructuring, population urbanization and migration. During the urban–rural integration development period, secondary industry and tertiary industry were the main driving factors of the transition from cultivated land to urban construction land. The number of policies, the primary industry, the total population, and the urbanization rate were the main driving factors of the transition from rural residential land to cultivated land. Primary industry, secondary industry, and tertiary industry were the main driving factors of the transition from rural residential land to urban construction land. Finally, the study provided some suggestions for policy, industry, and population driving forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy integration is a substantive and innovative strategy, used to address complex problems that go beyond the scope of sectoral policies, and require a joint and integrated response. While theoretical advances have been made in the field, there have not been many empirical proposals of a comparative nature. This paper develops a proposal for the analysis of integrality in the domain of urban policies, in which the integrated strategy has become a key component. Following a literature review, three dimensions were defined, referring to the diagnosis, the action strategy, and the project governance, which have allowed us to examine the presence of an integrated strategy in the designs of the projects developed within the framework of the URBAN and URBANA, initiatives implemented in Spain between 1994 and 2013, promoted by the European Union (EU). The results show that, as occurs in other public policies, the extent of the integrated strategy is limited and varies according to the dimensions. Moreover, the differences found between the two initiatives support the idea that policy integration is a gradual and dynamic process, with a certain learning effect, which develops over time and in which the dimensions of integration do not evolve in a coordinated manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural ecological revitalization (RER) is one of the five goals of China's rural revitalization strategy. However, there is a lack of an effective index system to evaluate RER levels, which hinders the implementation of this national policy and reduces the effectiveness and efficiency of public resource input. Using the driver-pressure-state-impact-response (DPSIR) framework, this study developed an evaluation framework consisting of 5 subsystems, 12 secondary indicators, and 33 tertiary indicators. Using the entropy-weighted TOPSIS method, we analyzed a set of 30 provinces' data and empirically determined the weights of each indicator. We found that the response subsystem had the largest weight (0.338), followed by the state (0.271), impact (0.148), pressure (0.130), and driver (0.113). We then evaluated the RER level in each province and found that five provinces had high RER levels, 16 provinces had moderate RER levels, and nine provinces had low RER levels. Using Moran's I, we examined spatial autocorrelation of provincial RER levels at global and local dimensions. We found significant positive global autocorrelations across all subsystems, indicating that geological aggregation exists in all RER subsystems. The local autocorrelation results showed that low–low and high–high patterns were the dominant local autocorrelation patterns. According to the findings, we discussed the possible implications of this RER evaluation index system and provided policy recommendations for strengthening RER in different regions across the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservation easements (CEs) are used as a conservation mechanism to conserve the biodiversity and ecosystem on private land, and are receiving increasing attention around the world. Most of the literature mainly focused on the contribution of CE to private land conservation in the U.S. and other countries, while its role in collective land conservation remains underreported. China planned to build the world's largest national parks (NPs) and faced the conflict between nature conservation and social development. As a private and voluntary conservation tool, CEs have the potential to fill the conservation gap, reduce conservation costs, promote adaptive management, and incentivize sustainable national park construction. We reviewed the recent CE practices in Qianjiangyuan, Wuyishan and Nanshan National Parks. The local government and NP administration drove its practices in China's NPs, whereas non-profit organizations have few opportunities to participate. Furthermore, due to the current legislation's lack of explicit specifications regarding CEs, the provisions outlined in the CE agreement were insufficiently constructed and did not align with the unique circumstances of the park. Thus, the implementation of the National Park Act serves as a fitting means to introduce the CE in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land disputes have significantly disrupted legal order, production, and social harmony, and has been regarded as a quintessential challenge in public governance, attracting worldwide attentions from scholars. As an emblematic feature of China's latest reform and opening-up strategy, the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) in China has experienced rapid development after entering the new era (2012–2021) alongside substantial risks and challenges, particularly regarding land disputes. Better understanding of the manifestation and formation mechanism of new characteristics of land disputes is beneficial for contemporary public governance and for achieving a high-quality development of the YREB, whose Gross Domestic Product (GDP) accounted for 46.3% of the national GDP in 2023. A total of 325,105 land dispute cases in 11 provinces or municipalities of the YREB from 2012 to 2021 were collected and analyzed. On this basis, an evaluation index system of the new characteristics of land disputes, named the overall land dispute (OLD) index, was constructed according to measurement theory by coupling the interactions of quantity, claim amounts, duration periods, and the appeal rate of land dispute. Then, the OLD index was evaluated by descriptive statistical methods, a geographic information system (GIS) spatial analysis, a center of gravity model, kernel density estimation, and Theil index methods, to reveal the new characteristics and formation mechanisms of land disputes in the YREB from 2012 to 2021. The results indicated that: (1) The OLD index exhibited a trend of an initial increase followed by a decline, indicating that land disputes in the YREB showed signs of alleviation. (2) The government's capacity for resolving land disputes was significantly improved, as evidenced by the decline in the OLD index from 0.59 in 2018 to 0.51 in 2021. This improvement could be attributed to the effectiveness of enhanced governmental working mechanisms, regulatory standards, and the integration of digital technologies. (3) The analysis of the center of gravity model indicated that the focus of land disputes shifted westward, propelled by national policy support for upstream regions of the YREB and the need for land ecological protection. (4) The analysis of kernel density estimation indicated that regional disparities in land disputes within the YREB had declined, driven by a positive trend toward balanced regional development and rural governance. This study provides scientific insights into the new characteristics of land disputes in the YREB and guidance for policy decision making on effective land dispute management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Grand Canal has been fundamental in supporting Chinese industrialization, as evidenced in the great changes witnessed across industrial lands, but few studies have approached this issue from a cultural perspective. After an extensive industrial recession in the early 21st century, canal cities like Hangzhou have seen changes in the cultural functions of industrial lands, relocating, transforming, and demolishing factories and other constructions to develop new cultural spaces and products. A deep analysis of these cultural changes is, therefore, quite helpful to appreciate the features of and reasons for Chinese national policy setting in the cultural sections of the Grand Canal, such as the UNESCO World Heritage-recognized purpose of the Grand Canal, etc. Therefore, by focusing on the Hangzhou section of the Canal, and via the integration of high-resolution Google Earth images with a 1.5 spatial resolution, we dynamically monitored the land use of the 10 specifically selected industrial lands and interpretated the various uses of the areas from 2000 to 2020. Then, with archival data from 1950 to 2024 and fieldwork conducted over 1 year, and in consultation with major experts, we designed a mark sheet with factors and scores to comprehensively assess cultural changes in those lands. Consequently, the history of industrialization along the Hangzhou section was thoroughly analyzed with these investigations and data, and the reasons for and influence of cultural changes were presented in detail; subsequently, the outstanding problems were addressed, and suggestions were offered. This study contributes to a better understanding of Chinese cultural policy regarding cities along the Canal after the industrial decline, especially the critical implication of cultural loss within these cities. In addition, it also provides novel perspectives for cultural research, heritage conservation, and urban planning of canals or waterfront spaces for world heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous Peoples throughout the world have been displaced from their ancestral territories through colonial land use management. Indigenous Peoples have pushed settler-colonial governments to shift their policy frameworks to better support Indigenous rights and leadership across land management, but particularly in conservation. In Canada, this has recently involved the development of Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas. Combined with pressure from international organizations, Canada's Federal Government has dedicated substantial funds to support the establishment of these areas and to achieve conservation and reconciliatory goals. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori groups have shaped new legislation that recognizes legal personality status for natural features, which contrasts with Western understandings of land ownership. Indigenous-led conservation in Canada faces many interrelated barriers grounded in colonial histories that complicate land jurisdictions, reconciliation, and protected area networks. This research reveals some of this complexity by examining how Indigenous-led conservation can contribute to more equitable and consensus-based decision-making frameworks in land use management. Policy and legal analyses of Canadian, Aotearoa New Zealand, and international conservation and human rights documents inform our results. We affirm that Indigenous-led conservation can foster relationships between Indigenous Nations and Crown governments. They can also provide steps towards reconciling colonial injustices, supporting Indigenous self-determination, and advancing more sustainable land use systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a pivotal framework to guide government policies and mobilize public engagement for sustainability, although further exploration is still needed to analyze the attention given to the SDGs by these stakeholders using multi-source data. To comparatively analyze government and public engagement in the SDGs, based on a case study in China, this study employed a multi-source data and content analysis to assess the perceived importance and performance of the two stakeholders. Then, this study performed an importance–performance analysis (IPA) to assess the SDGs' priority for further improvement. The results highlight the government's emphasis on SDG 7, SDG 2, and SDG 9, contrasting with public attention predominantly on SDG 8, SDG 9, and SDG 4. Regarding the performance of the SDGs in China, the greatest achievements have been exhibited for SDG 4 and SDG 1, while SDG 10, SDG 15, and SDG 17 have shown the least progress. Concerning the individual indicators, 12 out of 98 have attained 100% completion, while 19 out of 98 remain below the 50% threshold. According to the IPA results, China should concentrate on SDG 10 and SDG 15 and improve SDGs 6, 7, 14, 16, and 17 as a relatively low priority. The stakeholder analysis indicated that these SDGs are neglected zones by both the public and government. This research innovatively assessed the priorities of SDGs and could strengthen the cooperation between the government and the public to drive the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals more effectively. This study could contribute to guiding policy directions, inform strategies for public engagement, and enhance the comprehension of sustainable development in China. The framework could serve as a valuable reference for stakeholder engagement in the SDGs in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protecting cropland quality is a fundamental national policy that China must adhere to for the long term. This study examines the impact of market-oriented allocation of land factors on farmers' cropland quality protection behaviors and its mechanism of action, based on survey data from 3804 farm households in the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS). The study employs the Ordered Probit (O-probit) model, the mediated effect model, and other econometric tools to analyze the data. The study found that the market-oriented allocation of land factors can significantly promote farmers' adoption of cropland quality protection behaviors. The robustness test supports this conclusion. The market-oriented allocation of land factors indirectly promotes the adoption of cropland quality protection by expanding the plot size and improving agricultural income. The analysis of heterogeneity indicates that farmers are more likely to adopt cropland quality protection behaviors in the plains, suburban areas, or areas with better developed labor markets. Therefore, it is essential to continue promoting market-oriented reforms of rural land factors, actively promoting land transfer policies, and guiding the development of agricultural operations towards scaling, specialization, and modernization. This will achieve the rational allocation of land resources. It is important to consider geographical variations in each area when implementing policies to guarantee effective utilization and protection of cropland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In multicentric and increasingly complex urban regions, a city centre reinvents itself. In the case of Porto, tourism was essential for its "Baixa" renaissance. A relevant increase in visitors meant also a dramatic increase in real estate prices and significant land-use change. In field interviews, retailers noticed a "new life" before COVID-19 arrived, remarking on the positive role of tourism on urban rehabilitation and the economic viability of companies, and the negative effects for residents and traditional shops, directed to the common resident. In this article, we present and discuss its main effects in this exceptional area in Portugal's second city. We also discuss tourism dependency and the challenge of sustainability in a high-density context, defending public policies oriented for a "city with tourists" that replaces the current construction of a "city of tourists". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the resource environmental carrying capacity (RECC) and supply-side reform are crucial for achieving sustainable national developments. However, current research on RECC lacks consideration of the supply-side industrial structures and factors, and the relationship between RECC and supply-side reform remains unrevealed. In order to measure the RECC in China at the provincial level from 2005 to 2019, this study constructs an evaluation index based on industrial structure. It utilizes the TOPSIS model coupled with the supply-demand balance method and environmental capacity method while gathering and summarizing the indicators related to natural resource support, socio-economic support, and environmental factor accommodation. The analysis of evolutionary characteristics and spatial heterogeneity is carried out by statistical and spatial econometric methods, and the impact of the supply-side reform policy on RECC is examined using a bidirectional fixed-effect model. The findings indicate the following: (1) China's RECC demonstrates a clear upward trend, with higher values in the west and lower values in the east. The average annual growth rate from 2016 to 2019 (18.12%) is nearly three times that of the period from 2005 to 2010 (6.28%), indicating a significant acceleration in the increase in RECC post-supply-side reform. (2) The spatial agglomeration of RECC and its sub-system support is observed, as the allocation of nature resources and markets promotes the convergence of regional differences and enhances the spatial convergence of the RECC. (3) The implementation of supply-side reform policies has a positive impact on RECC, with industrial upgrading playing a particularly significant role. This study provides a new idea and method for the selection of evaluation indicators, quantitatively assessing province-level RECC and understanding the potential effects of national supply-side policies on RECC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an implementation gap between government plans and land-use changes at the local level in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. This stands in the way of the sustainable development of the delta, especially in the face of environmental degradation, climate change, and water-use conflicts. To narrow the gap between plans and practice, the government needs a better understanding of what drives land-use decisions at the farm level. Our research developed and applied a multi-scale framework to identify the principal drivers of land-use changes at the farm level in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta over the past 40 years. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 31 farmers in the highly flooded zone, then used transcript analysis to quantify the influence of the drivers mentioned by farmers. We found drastic shifts in land uses, predominantly towards rice intensification. Among the 43 change drivers the farmers mentioned, those operating at the regional scale were particularly influential, including the activities of local authorities, neighborhood effects, and the development of water management infrastructure. Market factors have become more prominent in the last two decades, motivating farmers to shift from double to triple rice or to gradually diversify into vegetables. However, agricultural diversification remains limited by the agro-hydrological context, which favors triple rice cropping, as well as household scale factors such as natural and physical assets of the farm, household capital, and labor capacity. The local community also played a key role in land-use change, though with a double-edged effect, both delaying implementation of central government policy and forcing farmers to follow the majority's decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of border resilience is an effective means to analyze the development status of border cities. This study constructs a border city resilience assessment framework, measures the urban resilience level of 13 prefecture-level administrative regions in China's northeastern border region from 2010 to 2019, reveals their temporal and spatial differentiation characteristics, analyzes the main obstacles, and proposes development strategies. This study reveals the following: (1) The overall resilience of the northeast border cities is at a medium level, and differences between regions and cities are large. (2) The resilience of the northeast border cities increased rapidly between 2010 and 2015, especially in the western area; the improvement effect was poor between 2015 and 2019, and except for the increased resilience of individual cities in the eastern area, the development of other cities was slow and some even declined. (3) At the city scale, the development potential, economic structure, residents' security, and environmental governance capabilities are the main factors restricting improvement in the basic resilience of the northeast border cities. Insufficient national policy support and the poor development of neighboring countries have become obstacles to cities' exclusive resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatio-temporal changes in cultivated land have a profound impact on food security and sustainable development. However, existing studies on spatio-temporal changes in cultivated land mostly focus on single factors, for instance quantity, quality and ecology, that cannot comprehensively reflect the changes in total production capacity and the sustainability of cultivated land. This study aims to construct a comprehensive analysis approach and to provide a reference basis for a comprehensive analysis of the extent of changes in overall cultivated land food-production capacity and the formulation of cultivated land conservation-related policies. This comprehensive analysis method constructed from three dimensions: quantity, production capacity and ecology, fully reflects the changes in the total amount, structure, rate of change, spatial distribution, quality, total production capacity and sustainability of cultivated land. The results from the application of this approach to Long'an County, Guangxi Province, China demonstrate that: (a) from 2010 to 2020, the total amount of cultivated land in Long'an County decreased sharply by 30.83%, accounted for mainly by the conversion into orchards, forest land and other garden land; (b) the quality of cultivated land improved by 2.71% on average, mostly in relation to natural factors; (c) the total food-production capacity of cultivated land decreased by 28.96% on average, mainly due to the decrease in the area of cultivated land; (d) both the ecological grade and the sustainability of cultivated land decreased slightly; (e) the barycenter of cultivated land migrated 3.3 km to the ecologically sensitive areas in the west, and the patch size of cultivated land decreased from an average of 2.60 hectares/pc in 2010 to that of 1.34 hectares/pc in 2020, suggesting increased fragmentation of cultivated land; and (f) the patch regularity of cultivated land decreased from 2.08 in 2010 to 1.76 in 2020, showing improved patch regularity and slightly better adaptability to mechanization. There were two main reasons for the lower, total food production capacity in Long'an County: first, the low comparative income of grain cultivation, because of which farmers spontaneously adjusted the agricultural cultivation structure to pursue high returns; and second, the lack of targeted government policies to protect cultivated land. In general, this comprehensive analysis method is applicable to other provinces in China or other regions abroad to provide a reference basis for a comprehensive understanding of changes in the food production capacity of cultivated land and the formulation of policies on cultivated land protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We produce results that bridge the gap between physical and textual study of the ancient Mesopotamian landscape in the region south and west of the city of Uruk (Biblical Erech, Modern Warka). A brief survey of gazetteers of Mesopotamia, volumes listing place-names drawn from translated and published cuneiform texts from the 2nd and 1st Millennium BCE, are presented. The various gazetteers were reviewed for relevant place-names, and the results were recorded and analyzed. These are described in detail below, as are their implications. The resulting data are then compared to the results of a recently completed archaeological survey of the same region. The synthesis of textual and archaeological surveys indicates a more exacting methodology to add geographic objectivity to textual results, while connecting physical results to the qualitative detail available within the Uruk textual record. More broadly, we demonstrate how long-term historical records align with archaeological data, delineating state-level and local land use efforts around a major Mesopotamian city. In the 2nd millennium BCE, settlements were generally small but more numerous, but in the 1st Millennium BCE there was a shift towards fewer and larger settlements connected to the city of Uruk. These shifts reflect deliberate central, government policy and local responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy poverty, considered a form of deprivation distinct from income poverty, is associated with three factors: low-income levels, high energy costs, and poor residential energy efficiency. It is necessary to study the socio-spatial distribution of energy poverty, particularly in metropolitan areas, due to persistent socioeconomic segregation and their public agenda implications, including the U.N. SDGs. A model of these characteristics can propose a spatial analysis of urban and climate implications, contributing evidence for public policy. This article aims to address energy poverty from a spatial approach extended to the urban area in Santiago de Chile through an exploratory model that estimates the impact of socioeconomic, urban, and climatic variables at a territorial scale on the performance of homes. Using a geographical weighted regression with the inside home temperature in winter as the dependent variable, the independent variables were the percentage of professionals, NDVI, annual thermal amplitude, and housing material quality. A housing quality pattern that acts as a proxy for vulnerability to energy poverty was found, repeating the distribution pattern of the different socioeconomic sectors. The findings incorporate a new interpretive matrix into the complex reproduction of segregation and inequality in a capital city from a developing country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on its national conditions and food availability, China has embarked on the road to establishing food security in a way by implementing the concepts of innovative, coordinated, green, open and inclusive development, and the requirements of high-quality development and a national food security strategy for a new era. As a result, the permanent basic farmland protection zone designated for high-quality arable land reserves had become a fundamental national policy. However, the allocation of permanent basic farmland protection quantity indicator is always a challenge due to the conflicts between the development and protection process. The unequal protection indicator allocation is often cited as an inefficient source of permanent basic farmland production and protection. In this article, an optimization model is introduced to allocate preservation indicators by using the Gini coefficient, a widely used index of income inequality in economics. The optimization model is based on a hierarchical structure of the multi-criteria factors and the objective weighting method. The allocation of a permanent basic farmland protection indicator in W county, China, is chosen as a case study to illustrate the application of this model with a focus on a balance between equality and efficiency. The result shows that the method can provide profound insight for land management policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving agricultural green total factor productivity (AGTFP) is an important aspect of sustainable agricultural development. Agricultural services, a new way of farmland utilization in agricultural production, solved the problem of 'who and how to farm' in the context of labor off-farm migration. The literature has analyzed different factors that affect AGTFP, but there is a relative dearth of research into agricultural services and AGTFP. Therefore, based on the panel data of 31 provinces from 2011 to 2020, this study firstly measured carbon emissions in agricultural production and then took it as an unexpected output to measure the AGTFP by using the global Malmquist–Luenberger (GML) productivity index. Finally, the effect of agricultural services on AGTFP and its decomposition were empirically verified. The main findings are as follows: (1) Between 2011 and 2020, agricultural carbon emissions increased from 85.63 million tons to 90.99 million tons in the first five years and decreased gradually to 78.64 million tons in 2020; the government policy significantly affects carbon emissions reduction. (2) AGTFP has been increasing for the past decade, and the average growth rate of AGTFP reached 1.016, and agricultural services promoted AGTFP growth significantly, in which technological progress was the crucial driving factor. (3) Taking the Heihe–Tengchong line as the demarcation, the improving effect of agricultural services on AGTFP in the eastern region is better than the western region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, the municipality of San Andrés Cholula, Puebla, has been a territory with constant clashes between its rural population and the official land use policy. In this context, the rural community and its millenary bio-cultural traditions have collided with neoliberal political and economic interests, new urbanism, and land speculation, commodification of local culture and privatization of the public space. The above-mentioned facts represent a challenge for sustainable land management of the territory and for socio-spatial justice, as a large portion of the land is becoming a private asset, meanwhile the large extension of rural land has been for communal use. The present work aims to discuss the processes triggered by neoliberal urban development logic in the area, and how these dynamics have affected the identity of the place, endangered its bio-cultural heritage and jeopardized the local communal right to the land. It will also examine the possibilities for a creation of a collaborative instrument to enhance the participation of the local community (or pueblos originarios—original people—as they identify themselves), in sustainable land management processes, in order to obtain a balance between the community, the public policy and the economic forces in urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The market entry of collectively-owned operating construction land (COCL) is an important policy of the Chinese government to promote the flow of rural land elements in the market. Describ-ing, characterizing, and understanding collective action for COCL marketization in China is conducive to identifying potential contradictions in a timely manner, constructing common goals, and promoting stakeholder cooperation to improve the efficiency of land marketization. Our re-search question is to identify which conceptual and theoretical models would be most appropriate to evaluate the market-based land reform in China. Relying on a narrative review approach, we interpret the literature and infer that trust is conducive to cracking the collective action puzzle of COCL marketization, and propose a conceptual or theoretical framework for the joint analysis of social capital, trust, and cooperation performance for modeling and investigating the important role of trust in collective action. Concentrating on the role of social rationality in land marketization, we suggest a pathway to break away from the collective action dilemma focusing on land property rights to build stakeholder trust relationships. Subsequent research could continue by developing indicators to measure social capital, trust, and cooperation performance and empirically investigate the relationship between them on this basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities continuously evolve and dynamically organize themselves in unbalanced ways and by means of complex processes. Efforts to minimize or solve the problems resulting from spatial inequalities tend to fail when relying on traditional public policies. This work is committed to analyzing the context for implementing public policies and their impacts on the periphery of São Paulo, Brazil. São Paulo is a city characterized by territorial and social heterogeneity and inequality. The materialization of these public policies involves the construction of unified educational centers in peripheral neighborhoods that, in addition to education, offer sports, leisure, and entertainment activities not only to enrolled students but to the wider residents' community. The adopted methodology was based on cellular automata models driven by remotely sensed images designed to investigate land use and land cover patterns in the surroundings of these educational centers before and after their construction. The achieved results demonstrate that the initial land use and land cover configurations have a great influence on the land use and land cover spatial arrangements after the construction of the educational centers. However, in all the test sites of this research, it was observed that these social infrastructure facilities favored the reproduction of real estate market logic, marked by socially exclusive differentiation and an uneven appreciation of the urban environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2030 Agenda has influenced the design of public policies in Colombia and other countries in the region, but there are many gaps in the way a global policy can be interpreted and adapted to the territories. Thus, this article aims to critically evaluate the public policy of sustainability implemented in the Colombian Caribbean and to suggest contributions from an intercultural socioenvironmental justice perspective. For this purpose, the public policy of sustainability that orients the plans for the use of insular ecosystems in Cartagena de Indias has been examined and confronted with local evidence that shows significant changes in the forms of life and ecological degradation in multi-temporally analysed coverages. Methodologically, this research is based on three aspects: the theoretical discussion of the notions of sustainability and justice in public policies, spatial databases to analyse the transformation of landscapes and ethnographic work with Afro-descendant peoples to recognise their socioecological systems. We found that the public policy of territorial planning aligned with the 2030 Agenda nominally includes a rights approach, but management practices or governance structures do not consider the very high asymmetry in land tenure, the growing private and non-participatory regulation of coasts and the sea or the exclusion of Afro-descendant peoples who claim tenure and autonomy rights. Then, we propose integrated dimensions of sustainability that overcome the socioecological negativity observed and articulate criteria of intercultural justice in public, social and environmental policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around the world, the number of people displaced from their homes continues to increase due to political conflict and climate change. The Ugandan government's policy for settling refugees shifts the focus from seeing refugees as humanitarian obligations to recognizing that refugee settlements bring improved services and infrastructure that can serve both refugees and residents of the host communities. A key aspect of this policy is to provide refugees with land use rights, so they are able to achieve "self-reliance". This research investigates (1) the role of planning in establishing the physical layout of Bidi Bidi, Uganda's largest integrated settlement, (2) the host community's rationale for allowing refugees access to their land, and (3) how refugees used this land. Based on interviews, participant observation, GIS analysis, and document analysis, we learned how refugees altered the settlement's layout to better meet their needs, the unintended consequences of large- scale deforestation on the most vulnerable, and the limitations of the land-based approach to achieve self-reliance. These findings suggest expanding the avenues to achieve self-reliance, improving "integration" of service provision between refugees and residents of the host community, and protecting the area's environment to maintain needed resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a crucial part of China's development strategy, the redevelopment of urban villages and the redevelopment willingness of villagers have attracted considerable scholarly interest. However, the literature to date has neglected the effect of the geographical location of urban villages on the redevelopment willingness of villagers. The purpose of this study is to examine the influential factors of the redevelopment willingness of urban villagers, especially with regard to geographical differences and their effects. Based on prospect theory and 1083 questionnaires administered in 45 selected urban villages in Guangzhou, we use the ordinal logistic regression model to explore the influential factors behind villagers' redevelopment willingness in inner villages (<15 km from the city center), urban fringe villages (15–40 km from the city center), and suburban villages (>40 km from the city center). The results show that in inner villages the confirmation of residential land rights can significantly increase redevelopment willingness, but in urban fringe villages the number of stories in dwelling houses significantly decreases the willingness. Further, a high level of villagers' trust in the government, market enterprises, and the village collective each has a significant positive impact on the redevelopment willingness of villagers in urban fringe villages. However, only trust in the government and market enterprises have significant positive impacts on redevelopment willingness in the inner villages and only trust in the village collective is significant in this regard in suburban villages. The effects of geographical differences imply that China's redevelopment policy should be applied in a differentiated way based on the geographical locations of urban villages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]