Land Consumption Research Articles

Crossing artificial obstacles during migration: The relative global ecological risks and interdependencies illustrated by the migration of common quail Coturnix coturnix

The increase of urban expansion, whereby soils become altered or filled with buildings through human action, presents a global threat to biodiversity and the spread of disease. Many of the factors determining bird migration routes and disease spread are poorly understood. We studied the migration routes of common quail Coturnix coturnix in western Europe. We examined the recoveries of ringed birds to characterize their migration trajectories to understand how this nocturnal migrant crosses artificial areas and predict the risk of migration collapse and disease transmission. We evaluated the possible consequences of quail collisions with human infrastructure elements (i.e., buildings, cranes, overhead cables and wires, and wind farm structures) to assess disease transmission in relation to the amount of urban soil. Our results show that variations in the amount of artificialized soil in central Europe are correlated with the relative absence of quail migratory routes. Conceptual models incorporating environmental ecology showed the relationships between climate warming, agroecosystems, and urban ecosystems as well as human health and economic growth. We predict a drastic loss of biodiversity and spread of disease if we do not curb the spread of land consumption. Taking a broad view of the interrelations discussed here allows predictions of global vulnerability and increased risks to health due to losses of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Lessons drawn from migration route maps of quail in relation to the distribution of urbanized soils provide tools for global conservation political decision making.

Socio-environmental impacts of diamond mining areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The mining industry of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) represents the most important sector of the country's economy, and the DRC belongs to the world top five diamond producers. Artisanal small-scale mining (ASM) of alluvial diamonds represents an important source of alternative income for subsistence farmers, but it also leads to several socio-environmental impacts: deforestation, river pollution, water resources exploitation, unhealthy, unregulated and sometimes dangerous work environments. We perform a data-driven comprehensive analysis of the impact of the diamond mining industry on natural resources and assess the potential relevance of these resources to the DRC food system. To this end, we evaluate land and water resources consumption associated with diamond mining from 2001 to 2018, cross-referencing high-resolution data on mines, land use and tree cover, and using a dynamic and spatially distributed agro-hydrological model. We leverage disaggregated agrological data to provide alternative resources allocation scenarios, and use subnational development indicators and spatially explicit conflict data to frame our analysis within the socio-economic context.We find that, despite the richness in natural resources of the DRC, the impact of diamond mining is relevant because of its effects on ecology, economy, and society. Resources and efforts currently put into the mining industry may have the potential to alleviate the malnourishment crisis in DRC if diverted towards the construction of a more structured and resilient food system. Phenomena such as the illicit trafficking of diamonds and their use to finance wars contribute to nullify the potential of mining as an alternative source of income for subsistence farmers.

The Financial Sustainability of Cultural Heritage Reuse Projects: An Integrated Approach for the Historical Rural Landscape

In the last decades, the growing concern about land consumption, together with the awareness about cultural heritage’s key role for sustainable development, has led to greater attention to cultural property reuse as a conscious process of new values production. However, decisions about heritage bring a high degree of complexity, related to the need to preserve properties’ values and fulfill protection legislation, thus bringing high cost, which discourages public and private investments for reuse interventions. In this context, it becomes urgent to support reuse decisions through proper evaluation methodologies that, dealing with the complexity of interests at stake, allow individuals to assess the financial sustainability of conscious cultural heritage reuse projects. For these reasons, the paper proposes a methodological framework that, grounded on the recognition of cultural properties’ values and their possible integration in the local economic system, assesses reuse projects’ financial sustainability. This methodology’s application is discussed through a case study, represented by a project for a historical rural landscape in Pantelleria island. The application to the case study allows us to discuss the role of the proposed evaluation framework in supporting and promoting cultural heritage reuse and its possible room for improvement.

Trends in United States Human Footprint Revealed by New Spatial Metrics of Urbanization and Per Capita Land Change

Accelerations in population growth and urban expansion are transforming landscapes worldwide and represent a major sustainability challenge. In the United States, land conversion to impervious surfaces has outpaced population increases, yet there are few spatial metrics of urbanization and per capita land change available nationwide for assessing local to regional trends in human footprint. We quantified changes (2000–2010) in housing density, imperviousness, per capita land consumption, and land-use efficiency for block groups of the contiguous U.S. and examined national patterns and variation in these metrics along the urban–rural gradient and by megaregion. Growth in housing (+13.6%) and impervious development (+10.7%) resulted in losses of rural lands, primarily due to exurbanization and suburbanization. Mean per capita consumption increased in all density classes but was over 8.5 times greater in rural lands than in exurban, suburban, and urban areas. Urban and suburban areas had significantly lower mean consumption, yet change was unsustainable in 60% of these areas. Megaregions across the sprawling Sun Belt, spanning from Arizona to North Carolina, grew most unsustainably, especially compared to regions in the Pacific Northwest and Front Range. This work establishes 21st-century benchmarks that decision-makers can use to track local and regional per capita land change and sustainable growth in the U.S.; however, these metrics of the form, extent, rate, and efficiency of urbanization can be applied anywhere concurrent built-up area and population data are available over time. Our web mapping application allows anyone to explore spatial and temporal trends in human footprint and download metrics, and it is designed to be easily updatable with future releases of validated developed land cover, protected areas, and decennial Census data.

Appropriate Housing Typologies, Effective Land Management and the Question of Density in Muscat, Oman

The Sultanate of Oman has been undergoing massive changes in the last 50 years. The Gulf State transformed from a very traditional and isolated country into a wealthy and modern state. After Sultan Said was enthroned in 1970, the young Sultan Qaboos, who passed away in 2020, began to modernise Oman’s economy and society. Today, widespread, single-family houses are the prevailing residential building type, with an urban sprawl characterised by mono-functional zoning and a dependency on motorized individual transport with long commuting distances. All these conditions have been strongly supported by governmental planning policies. Since this urban sprawl causes unsustainable land consumption, this study addresses options for urban development and housing typologies aiming at a compact city with a higher density. However, the term density has to reflect local cultural and climatic conditions and, in time of the pandemic as special focus of this issue, has to be critically discussed and reviewed. Thus, this study identifies, as a base line study in Muscat Capital Area, Omani residents’ housing needs by an online questionnaire survey focusing on housing layouts, features and locational preferences, exploring alternatives to the current situation. Findings are that housing needs do not necessarily demand a single-family building but can be achieved better by different housing layouts, at the same time supporting social distances measures via outdoor options during the pandemic.

Using geographically weighted regressions to explore spatial heterogeneity of land use influencing factors in Campania (Southern Italy)

The progressive artificial covering of originally natural surfaces (land consumption) is a major concern of today’s societies due to the implications for the environment and the availability of land resources. This study aims to explore the local variations in the effects of the main socio-demographic, economic and institutional determinants of land consumption in Campania (southern Italy). Using data from official sources for 2020 at the municipal level, geographically weighted regression was run to address local variations through a set of coefficients as a function of spatial location. One of the main elements of novelty of this study is that it links research on land use influencing factors to such a high level of geographic detail (all 550 Campanian municipalities), while controlling for spatial non-stationarity and morphological characteristics. Understanding how the impact of the determinants varies across municipalities can help local policy makers adopt the regulatory instruments for land use management envisaged by law. The results show that the levels of land consumption are not aligned with the real demand and carrying capacity of several areas of the region, suggesting that: i) knowing the local specificities explaining land consumption is the prerequisite for preserving environmental quality and ecosystem services; ii) better quality local institutions are needed to curb unbalanced land consumption and to guide spatial planning in support of sustainable land management.

Quantifying embodied cultivated land-use change and its socioeconomic driving forces in China

In recent decades, with the growth of population and the acceleration of urbanization in China, cultivated land resources have become increasingly scarce, and cultivated land embodied in trade has become more and more important to areas with insufficient arable land. The measurement of embodied cultivated land is critical to explore the land use profile and understand the social and environmental issues related to land. However, few studies have explored the embodied cultivated land change and its socio-economic driving forces. Therefore, this study tracks the cultivated land embodied in products and serves traded between 30 provinces and 8 regions in China, adopting a multi-regional input-output model. We also identify the determinants of the changes in embodied cultivated land use through the structural decomposition analysis (SDA). Here we found that more than 80% of total cultivated land consumption in Shanghai, Tianjin, and Beijing is satisfied by other provinces, indicating that the more economically developed a province is, the less self-sufficient it will be with respect to the land required to support its consumption. The average proportion of embodied cultivated land among Chinese provinces is shown to have decreased from 41.39% in 2007 to 35.35% in 2012, indicating that dependence on cultivated land among Chinese provinces increased over this period. The results also highlight the fact that the most affluent regions in China, including the South Coast, Central Coast, and Beijing–Tianjin, have the highest imports of cultivated land embodied in products from the underdeveloped central and western regions. Further, our SDA results reveal that in most provinces, changes in embodied cultivated land can be attributed to the factors of cultivated land-use intensity and consumption volume. This paper helps determine where the responsibility for land consumption lies and provides data support for the construction of a land governance system, which helps to achieve environmental equity in the context of regional trade.

Secular stagnation, financial frictions, and land prices

We explore a model in which large transitory financial shocks can generate persistent slumps in output, land prices, and interest rate. The propagation channel works through a high sensitivity of land prices with respect to fundamental, achieved by a high complementarity between land services and consumption in households’ preference. When this complementarity is disciplined by micro-level evidence, the equilibrium features non-linear dynamics between two steady states. Large transitory financial shocks push the economy into a constrained region in which low interest rate makes firm unwilling to save out of the financial friction, leading to a secular stagnation. (JEL codes: E13, E32, E44)

Modelling the spatial impact of regional planning and climate change prevention strategies on land consumption in the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area 2017–2030

Urban sprawl is a ubiquitous with a complex network of driving forces and human and natural impacts on various scales of the coupled human-environment urban system. In Germany, a land consumption of 30 ha per day is envisaged. In that regard, the effect of growing metropolitan areas on the climate of local neighborhoods becomes more and more a topic in regional planning. Accordingly, the objectives of the study are a) to contribute to the climate change related land cover simulation efforts in Germany in a spatially explicit manner with a resolution of 30 m, b) to investigate future land consumption rates and population growth rates having a view on goal 11 of UN’s SDG, and c) analyze the spatial impact of planning policies in regard to land use planning and official climate change prevention strategies using Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area (RRMA) in Western Germany as a study area. The study makes use of land use and land cover classification of multispectral satellite data and the derivation of land surface temperature based on Landsat satellite in order to calibrate and validate the urban growth model SUSM (scenario-based urban growth simulation model). Two scenarios for future land consumption 2030 are implemented and the future impacts of urban growth with the projection of land consumption rate (LCR), population growth rate (PGR), and LCRPGR index on municipality level, as well as the impact on regions vulnerable to climate change evaluated. The comparison of simulated urban growth to observed urban growth from 2005 to 2017 shows that the PA of SUSM for historic scenario is 68.06% with an overall accuracy of 97.15%, a Matthews correlation coefficient of 0.66, a figure of merit of 0.51 and area under curve of 0.84. The total quantity of new urban areas of our SUSM simulation 2030 were approximately 283 km2. While the difference in the simulated total quantity is nearly zero, the simulated allocation of new urban areas across the districts can differ by up to 25 km2 in the two scenarios. The number of municipalities with efficient urban land development rates increases in the SUSM scenario where no regional land development plan has been incorporated. This holds true for the number of municipalities with inefficient land use where even an increase from no plan to plan can be observed. LCRPGR is negative in most municipalities reflecting opposing trends of population and land consumption development. Most of new urban areas are distributed in open spaces important for the regional climate change prevention strategy. 32.98 % of new urban areas in our region of interest can be found in these zones in the planning scenario and 25.76 % in the scenario without planning information in SUSM model. It can be concluded that regional planning in RRMA region has no positive effect on the interregional development of future land consumption in terms of quantity, allocation, and impact on climate change prevention.

SDG Indicator 11.3.1 and Secondary Cities: An Analysis and Assessment

Secondary cities are rapidly growing areas in low- and middle-income countries that lack data, planning, and essential services for sustainable development. Their rapid, informal growth patterns mean secondary cities are often data-poor and under-resourced, impacting the ability of governments to target development efforts, respond to emergencies, and design sustainable futures. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 focuses on inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable cities and human settlements. SDG Indicator (SDGI) 11.3.1 calculates the ratio of land consumption rate to population growth rate to enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization. Our paper compares three cities—Denpasar, Indonesia; Kharkiv, Ukraine; and Mekelle, Ethiopia—that were part of the Secondary Cities (2C) Initiative of the U.S. Department of State, Office of the Geographer and Global Issues to assess SDGI 11.3.1. The 2C Initiative focused on field-based participatory mapping for data generation to assist city planning. Urban form and population data are critical for calculating and visually representing this ratio. We examine the spatial extent of each city to assess land use efficiency (LUE) and track changes in urban form over time. With limited demographic and spatial data for secondary cities, we speculate whether SDGI 11.3.1 is useful for small- and medium-sized cities.

Land Consumption of Delivery Robots and Bicycle Couriers for On-Demand Meal Delivery Using GPS Data and Simulations Based on the Time-Area Concept

Regulating the curbside usage of delivery vehicles and ride-hailing services as well as micromobility has been a challenge in the last years, a challenge which might worsen with the increase of autonomous vehicles. The contribution of the research outlined in this paper is an evaluation method of the land use of on-demand meal delivery services such as Deliveroo and UberEats. It evaluates the effect parking policies, operating strategy changes, and scheduling options have on the land consumption of bicycle couriers and sidewalk automated delivery robots (SADRs). Various operating strategies (i.e., shared fleets and fleets operated by restaurants), parking policies (i.e., parking at the restaurant, parking at the customer or no parking) and scheduling options (i.e., one meal per vehicle, multiple meals per vehicle) are simulated and applied to New York City (NYC). Additionally, the time-area requirements of on-demand meal delivery services are calculated based on GPS traces of Deliveroo and UberEats riders in two UK cities. The simulation in the paper shows that SADRs can reduce the time-area requirements by half compared with bicycle couriers. The effect of operating strategy changes and forbidding vehicles to park at the customer’s home is small. Delivering multiple meals in one tour halves the time-area requirements. The time-area requirements based on GPS traces is around 300 m2·min per order. The study allows policymakers to learn more about the land use of on-demand meal delivery services and how these can be influenced. Hence, they can adjust their policy strategies to ensure that on-demand meal delivery services are provided in a way that they use land effectively, reduce external costs, improve sustainability and benefit everyone.

Industrial Activity Land Suitability Assessment Using Delphi and AHP to Control Land Consumption¨: The Case Study of Bordj Bouarreridj, Algeria

Studies and research on land suitability for the localization of economic and industrial activities in cities are attracting academics and local policies concerned with urban planning and organization in order to make urban areas more accommodating. The current paper aims to demonstrate the ability of visualization and simulation techniques to assist planners in preserving urban real estate by combining the Delphi method with one of the multi-criteria hierarchical analysis decision-making techniques. The city of Bordj Bouarreridj in Algeria was chosen as the case study and, with the participation of experts, a set of criteria were adopted to determine land suitability. Three criteria were selected in the first phase with the use of the Delphi method. In the second phase, we applied the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AH, a hierarchical analysis method. During the third stage, the obtained results were translated into the GIS program to derive the spatial suitability map. The following are among the most important achieved results: 13.38% (521.793 km2) of the area was regarded to be of high suitability, 67.54% (2,634.758 km2), achieved moderate suitability, 12.94% (504,794 km2) attained low suitability, and 6.14% (239,685 km2) were found to be not suitable at all.

Цифровізація розвитку міст: Urban Atlas на основі відкритих даних для міст України

Ukraine is an associate member of the European Union and in the coming years it is expected that all data and services already used by EU countries will be available to Ukraine. The lack of quality national products for assessing the development and planning of urban growth makes it impossible to assess the impact of cities on the environment and human health. The first steps to create such products for the cities of Ukraine were initiated within the European project "SMart URBan Solutions for air quality, disasters and city growth" (SMURBS), in which specialists from the Space Research Institute of NAS of Ukraine and SSA of Ukraine received the first city atlas for the Kyiv city, which was similar to the European one. However, the resulting product had significantly fewer types of land use than the European one and therefore the question of improving the developed technology arose. The main purpose of the work is to analyze the existing technology of European service Urban Atlas creation and its improvement by developing a unified algorithm for building an urban atlas using all available open geospatial and satellite data for the cities of Ukraine. The development of such technology is based on our own technology for classifying satellite time series with a spatial resolution of 10 meters to build a land cover map, as well as an algorithm for unifying open geospatial data to urban atlases Copernicus. The technology of construction of the city atlas developed in work, based on the intellectual model of classification of a land cover, can be extended to other cities of Ukraine. In the future, the creation of such a product on the basis of data for different years will allow to assess changes in land use and make a forecast for further urban expansion. The proposed information technology for constructing the city atlas will be useful for assessing the dynamics of urban growth and closely related social and economic indicators of their development. Based on it, it is also possible to assess indicators of achieving the goals of sustainable development, such as 11.3.1 "The ratio of land consumption and population growth." The study shows that the city atlas obtained for the Kyiv city has a high level of quality and has comparable land use classes with European products. It indicates that such a product can be used in government decision-making services.

Urban Development and the (Re)use of the Communist-Built Industrial and Agricultural Sites after 1990. The Showcase of Bucharest–Ilfov Development Region

Urban development and changing the patterns of industry and agriculture had caused the foremost spatial and functional transformations of the post-communist period in Romania. These changes have resulted in increased land consumption, often including the reuse of abandoned or non-residential built-up areas (e.g., industrial, agricultural). By integrating spatial and statistical data, the current analysis has revealed as key features: spatial shrinkage, fragmentation, functional diversification, tertiarization and change of patterns. Using a functional change matrix, five main (re)use types have been identified and quantified: maintenance, conversion, replacement, abandonment, and demolition. Overall, between 1990 and 2018, over 50% functional losses have been recorded.

Spatio-Temporal Evaluation of Urban Growth of Zuru Metropolis, Nigeria

The pattern of development in a city is mostly governed by urban dynamics, with population increase being the primary driving force. Built-up cover is the most important predictor of urban expansion. Zuru metropolis in Kebbi State has witnessed remarkable developmental activities caused by human influences such as buildings, road constructions, and population growth for over decades. Urban growth was ascertained for a period of 30 years through the analysis of Landsat imagery of 1988, 1998, 2008 and 2018. The datasets were classified into five (5) land covers, namely, built-up, water body, rocky surface, vegetation, and others. Quantitative assessment of the urban growth was ascertained by computing post-classification LC dynamics and Land Consumption Rate/Land Absorption Coefficient (LCR/LAC). The results showed that the built-up cover (urban area) conspicuously increased with area of 693.35 ha, 728.74 ha, 5210.5 ha and 6845.75 ha respectively for the period of study (1988 – 2018). The increment in built-up area was indicative of population growth from 1988 to 2018. The study revealed that between 1988 to 2018 showed that built-up increased by 11.78%, while rocky surface and water body have shrunk by 16.44% and 0.02% respectively, which can be attributed to anthropogenic activities in which rocky surface and waterbody have been transformed into built-up cover. It further revealed that the urban area experienced crowdedness in the years 2008 and 2018 respectively due to high LCR values of 2.71% compared to LCR values of 0.0714% and 0.0558% in 1988 and 1998. Land transformation into urban area and spread of the population to the outskirts of the study area was prominent between 1998 and 2008 due to high LAC value of 0.0998. The study concluded that there was transformation of rocky surface and waterbody into urban area, which was caused by population growth, human and agricultural activities in Zuru metropolis.

Geospatial Assessment of the Consumption and Absorption of Residential and Educational Land Uses of Zaria and Sabon Gari Area of Kaduna State, Nigeria

Human variables such as population increase and distribution, as well as economic expansion, have a strong impact on land usage. Zaria and Sabon Gari local government areas are endowed with various types of institutions that attract people from far and near to its space for studies and employments. This in turn leads to increase in population growth and the expansion of residential land use (LU). Thus, this study assessed the Land Consumption Rate (LCR) and Land Absorption Coefficient (LAC) of the residential and educational LUs using geospatial technique. The study analyzed Landsat imagery of 1987, 1999, 2006, and 2018. The study utilized a combination of quantitative (pixel-based) and qualitative (digitizing) methods of image classification for classifying the residential and educational LUs and biophysical covers. Quantitative assessment of the LU dynamics was achieved by the post-classification computation of LU dynamics, LCR, and LAC. The results revealed that residential LU occupied an area of 2594.25ha in 1987, 2815.15ha in 1999, 4042.54ha in 2006, and 8033.19ha in 2018. In the same vein, the educational LU occupied area of 2623.41ha in 1987, 2991.87ha in 1999, 3021.10ha in 2006, and 3093.75ha in 2018. The LCR values for residential LU were 0.555%, 0.468%, 0.579%, and 0.803% for the years 1987, 1999, 2006, and 2018 respectively. The LCR reduced from 1987 to 1999 and then increased from 1999 to 2018. The LAC values for the residential LU increased across the period of the study. The study concluded that the exploitation of the new lands for residential and educational LUs could be as a result of the demographic and institutional drivers of LU. The study suggested that the urban planning authority should develop planning measures that will regulate the already crowded residential LU in the study area.was transformation of rocky surface and waterbody into urban area, which was caused by population growth, human and agricultural activities in Zuru metropolis.

Global agricultural responses to interannual climate and biophysical variability

Most studies assessing climate impacts on agriculture have focused on average changes in market-mediated responses (e.g. changes in land use, production, and consumption). However, the response of global agricultural markets to interannual variability (IAV) in climate and biophysical shocks is poorly understood and not well represented in global economic models. Here we show a strong transmission of IAVs in climate-induced biophysical yield shocks to agriculture markets, which is further magnified by endogenous market fluctuations generated due to producers’ imperfect expectations of market and weather conditions. We demonstrate that the volatility of crop prices and consumption could be significantly underestimated (i.e. on average by 55% and 41%, respectively) by assuming perfect foresight, a standard assumption in the economic equilibrium modeling, compared with the relatively more realistic adaptive expectations. We also find heterogeneity in IAV across crops and regions, which is considerably mediated by international trade. Studying IAV provides fundamentally new insights on measuring and understanding climate impacts on global agriculture, and our framework lays the foundation for further investigating the full range of climate impacts on biophysical and human systems.

A reactivation project of a district of the historical centre of Genova

Many of the recovery and renovation interventions of the existing heritage conducted today in Europe are the result of urban policies careful to reduce land consumption and improve safety, comfort, and quality according to the needs of users. A substantial historical building heritage characterizes the Italian territory. Historical centres’ regeneration is one of the constant and recurring themes of extreme complexity and importance due to the extension, the peculiarities, and the conformation in some cities. The contribution presented deals with the redevelopment and reactivation of a historic district of Genoa, which has one of the largest historical centres in Europe. Innovation, together with the three pillars of sustainability (environmental, social, and economic), are the engines of this pilot project to trigger virtuous processes for the district’s reactivation. It is an area of the historic centre with high potential in its proximity to essential activities of the city, the port, and infrastructure. The proposed plan for the regeneration of the area resulted from an in-depth analysis of the territory’s state and existing practices and was carried out in close collaboration with the reference bodies and actors involved. This preliminary analysis made it possible to identify the strengths and weaknesses that were the starting point for the pilot project. The article then focuses on two specific aspects. Some of the university’s buildings are in the district, and this is the starting strength for creating a “diffuse” university campus with areas to serve students. On the other hand, the open spaces are the point of weakness on which we have worked with outdoor lighting to increase the degree of security of the neighbourhood and enhance the peculiarities and value of existing spaces.

Urbanization and urban land use efficiency: Evidence from regional and Addis Ababa satellite cities, Ethiopia

Ethiopia has experienced rapid urbanization over the past three decades. Several cities expanded rapidly and many satellite towns sprung up around the major cities. The high rate of urbanization and urban growth resulted in high demand for urban land, mainly for industrial, commercial, and residential purposes. In order to meet the demand, an enormous amount of land has been made available for urban use, mainly through land conversion. However, we know very little about how efficiently cities use urban land. This paper investigated the urban land use efficiency (ULUE) of sixteen cities in Ethiopia. Remote sensing data (Landsat 7/8) was analysed with ArcGIS to assess spatiotemporal land use changes between 2007 and 2019. Built-up environment footprints were computed from Google Earth imagery. The ratio of land consumption to population growth rate, and the rate of urban infill were assessed. The findings revealed a prevalence of urban land use inefficiencies in all cities. In most cities, the rate of land consumption far exceeds the population growth rate. Densification (urban infill) is low and slow. A considerable part of the converted agricultural land sits idle within the built-up area for many years. Low ULUE is what fuels urban sprawl, fragmentation and informal settlements. This study emphasised the need to implement urban policies and practices aimed at improving ULUE. Improving ULUE is imperative to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals; ensuring sustainable urban land use; addressing land prices and housing shortages; protecting farmland and ecosystems; tackling land hoarding, urban sprawl and informal settlements.

Guilds and Competition: A Response to Objections of Laissez Faire

This paper offers a critique of laissez-faire objections to the guild system from the perspective of Catholic social teaching a presents the economic reasons for a restoration of the guild system as a functional economic model. The laissez-faire argument is that 1) the free competition on the supply side is in the best interest of the consumer, 2) each member of the society is a consumer, 3) ergo: free competition on the supply side is a common good, i. e. a goal which the state should follow. The author argues that 1) unlike majority of goods and services, two goods are becoming scarcer as a result of free competition on the supply side: time and land, 2) consumers which prefer consumption of leisure time and land are worse off as a result of free competition on the supply side, 3) ergo: the conclusion that free competition on the supply side is always a common good is invalid. According to the author, leisure time and land are essential for a good operation of a well-functioning family which is essential for a well-functioning state. In this connection, the author contends that the primary goal and raison d’etre of the guilds is control of the entrance of new producers to the industry, so that the incumbents who want to pay just (family) wages and/or prefer leisure time necessary for operation of a well-functioning family are not forced to change their behavior by the competitive pressure of the newcomers. Besides, a control of the entrance will limit the pressure to lowering wages below the level of the just (family) wage. To the objection of “no free lunch” the author responds: yes, the employers are facing a trade-off. In exchange for a possibly high but uncertain profit margin they will receive a lower but certain profit margin. To the objection of allocational inefficiency and economic stagnation resulting from suppressing external innovations, the author responds: 1) an external innovator can have his discovery patented and instead of the transitory entrepreneurial profit enjoy the incomes from the licenses; 2) the competitive pressure is only one possible drive of the economic growth, another drive is the human laziness which is constant across the economic systems.