Land-use planning in the Valencian Mediterranean Region: Using LUPIS to generate issue relevant plans

Abstract

The Valencian Mediterranean Region is one of the most dynamic regions of Spain in terms of industrial–urban development, population growth and agrarian activity. Consequently, land-use conflicts (agrarian uses vs. industrial–urban uses vs. conservation uses) and environmental issues (surface and underground water pollution, soil and air pollution, soil erosion and salinisation, landscape degradation and deterioration of areas of high conservation value) are emerging increasingly in this region. A land-use-planning exercise (scale 1:200 000) in a representative area of the Valencian Mediterranean Region has been carried out using the LUPIS system. LUPIS facilitates the generation of alternative land-use plans by adjusting the relative importance attributed by multiple stakeholders to preference and avoidance guidelines. The system leads to the allocation of competing land uses to mapping units in accordance with their preferred resource requirements, conditional upon the resource base of the area and the stakeholders’ demands. After generating two plans which showed the possibilities for accommodating the two main land uses (agrarian and industrial–urban uses) without undue conflict with conservation, a consensus plan addressing the land-use conflicts and environmental issues of the study area is presented. In addition, as an example of tactical replanning, the consensus plan was modified in response to an imposed but common environmental change (a fire) to minimise the risk of land degradation within the region. The use of the LUPIS system facilitates, in a transparent and explicit way, agreement between contending stakeholders as to how areas of land suitable for competing land uses can be resolved. In addition, environmental management strategies can be derived for minimising remaining and/or arising environmental issues. Although the planning exercise did not directly involve stakeholders, the results are sufficiently practical and realistic to suggest that the approach could be extended to the entire European Mediterranean Region. Such results suggest that comprehensive land-use planning can play a vital role in solving land-use conflicts in the region. Moreover, the experience gained in this exercise further suggests that the LUPIS system can be used to improve the effectiveness of the planning process in other democratic and pluralistic European regions.