Disposition Of Land Research Articles

How Migration Behavior Affects the Contracted Land Disposal Methods of Rural Migrants in China: An Analysis Based on the Perspective of Geographical Differences

Migration leads to the separation of rural people from their contracted land and, thus, affects the human–land relationship, agricultural production, and food security in China’s rural areas. Using spatial autocorrelation analysis, GeoDetector analysis, and geographical weighted regression, the mechanism by which the migration behavior of the rural population impacts their contracted land disposal methods was analyzed in this study, and the spatial heterogeneity of this mechanism was further revealed from the perspective of geographical differentiation. The results of this study show that: (1) Chinese rural migrants exhibit pronounced geographical differences in the disposition of contracted land. The spatial distribution patterns of family operation, subleasing, and abandonment are different. (2) Migration behavior contributes to the differences in contracted land disposal methods across regions. Educational attainment, the number of cities migrated to, and the house purchase rate significantly contribute to the geographical differences among all three contracted land disposal methods. (3) The mechanisms by which migration behavior influences rural migrants’ land disposal decisions vary. The direction and degree of the influence of each factor on family operation are relatively consistent across regions. However, regarding the subleasing and abandonment of contracted land, the mechanisms by which migration behavior influences land disposal decision-making exhibit significant regional heterogeneity. The results of this study provide a useful reference for many countries to solve the problems of the human–land relationship and rural development.

Little brown bat activity patterns and conservation implications in agricultural landscapes in boreal Yukon, Canada

AbstractAgriculture can threaten the persistence of bat populations by removing forests and wetlands and by intensifying production. Both processes are underway in expanding agricultural landscapes of boreal North America. To inform land planning and agricultural practices aimed at maintaining a viable population of the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus), we assessed the use by bats of human‐modified (open fields, forest‐field edges, and cleared edges of ponds) and unmodified (forest ponds and forest interior) habitat features in agricultural landscapes in southern Yukon, Canada (60° N–61° N), using acoustic recordings. We summarized bat activity (number of 3‐s acoustic files with ≥1 pass/night) and bat feeding (files with >1 feeding buzz/night) at grouped sets of habitat features (sites) and used generalized linear mixed models to test predictions about relative use of habitats. The active season for bats was late April to early October. Little brown bat feeding was strongly correlated with general activity, but feeding comprised a significantly higher proportion of all activity at forest ponds and forest interiors compared to field edges, open fields, and ponds in fields. Total bat activity was highest at forest ponds, followed by field edges, and substantially less in forest interiors and open fields. Forest ponds were used more than the edges of nearby ponds with some riparian clearing for fields. Bats increased use of forest interiors and decreased use of fields as duration of darkness decreased close to summer solstice. We recommend exclusion of ponds, lakes, and other wetlands from future agricultural land disposition, and retention of a riparian forested buffer of ≥40 m around current water bodies on farms. We also recommend retention of strips or patches of forest bordering fields and connected to riparian areas and to more extensive forests on public lands. A relatively young agricultural landscape can avoid some of the risks of intensive agriculture with proactive planning and stewardship.

Enfeoffment to Use, Legalism, and Humanism in Gower's Mirour de l'Omme

Enfeoffment to Use, Legalism, and Humanism in Gower's <i>Mirour de l'Omme</i>

The Influence of Land Disposition Derived from Land Finance on Urban Innovation in China: Mechanism Discussion and Empirical Evidence.

As China’s economy advances into a new stage of high-quality development driven by scientific and technological innovation, it is of great practical importance to probe what effects land disposition, which underpinned the previous round of rapid economic growth, and may have an exertion on developing innovation. Based on a deep exploration of the potential positive and negative influences of land disposition in relation to the effects of land finance on urban innovation, we employed a dynamic spatial Durbin model, along with panel data from 266 Chinese prefecture-level cities over the period 2004–2017. The empirical results show that the development of China’s urban innovation has had significant path dependence, spatial agglomeration, and inhibiting effects on neighboring cities, and these effects are attributed to inter-governmental competition and the Matthew effect. Overall, the combined impacts of land disposition modes on urban innovation have changed, from facilitative in the early stage to inhibitory at present. In the developed cities of east China, the facilitative effect of land disposition has weakened gradually, and tends to disappear entirely, while the change in impact over time in less developed mid-western cities is consistent with the national sample. This study broadens our understanding of the role of land disposition in China’s urban innovative development and has meaningful direct implications for policymakers.

Drawing up the missing link: State-society relations and the remaking of urban landscapes in Chinese cities

Studies of China’s urban transformation are characterized by diverse interpretations of the relevance of the theory of neoliberalism and continuing tension of epistemology vis-à-vis ontology. This research foregrounds state-society interplay as an alternative lens and analytical tool to understand China’s urban transformation in the context of neoliberalization and global urbanism. The remaking of the Chinese urban landscape is found to be shaped not simply by forces of agglomeration economies or bid-rent dynamism but more by the contestation and negotiation between a fragmented authoritarian state and a rapidly changing society. Existing land users are motivated by a decentralized power of decision-making and a share of the land conveyance income previously monopolized by the state. Contrary to normal expectation, urban redevelopment plays a role of greater significance in the local land supply of those cities in some less advanced regions than in the demographically dense and economically advanced regions. Administratively, urban redevelopment tends to prevail in those modes of land disposition that are either monopolized by the state or subject to close-door negotiation. Redevelopment is less contentious in a “village-in-the-city” where decisions are made by the collective organization internally than the other involving developers externally. Land use intensity and efficiency have been improved along with intensified social exclusion and marginalization. Drawing up the missing link concerning state-society relations may provide new insights to solve the myth of an urban China so ambivalent when seen in the lens of neoliberalism and help reconcile methodological tension in the studies of comparative urbanism involving China.

The Trials of Thomas Morton: An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England by Peter C. Mancall

Reviewed by: The Trials of Thomas Morton: An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England by Peter C. Mancall Matt Cohen (bio) The Trials of Thomas Morton: An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England peter c. mancall Yale University Press, 2019 278 pp. Thomas Morton is one of the most notorious figures in early colonial American literature. Repeatedly deported from New England for crimes ranging from arms-dealing with the region's Native people to [End Page 931] undermining the authority of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Morton is equally famous for his revels around a Maypole at the place he christened Ma-re Mount. Excerpts from his incomparable 1637 New English Canaan—with its harsh criticism of the Pilgrims and some of the earliest Western-style poetry known to have been composed in English North America—are widely taught in college classrooms. Yet comparatively little is known about the life of this provocateur, sympathizer with Native people, and baroque literary craftsman. It is not for lack of curiosity or scholarly elbow-grease, as Peter Mancall shows in his compelling biography The Trials of Thomas Morton. Morton's checkered career has attracted the attention of many a scholar and antiquarian. Most recently, Jack Dempsey's biography of the troublesome lawyer and critical edition of New English Canaan built on the rich trove of Charles Francis Adams Jr.'s 1883 edition. Interest in Morton has even run high into the ranks of US leadership. John Adams was so gripped by the story of Ma-re Mount and its lord of misrule that he wrote a history of the place, "Scraps of the History of Mount Wollaston, with Notes," which has remained unpublished to this day. Charles Francis Jr. based his edition on the copy of New English Canaan owned by his more famous Adams fore-bears; Mt. Wollaston (Ma-re Mount, and to the Pilgrims, "Merrymount") was on the family property. The Trials of Thomas Morton is a page-turner of the best kind. The titular trials were of three sorts: the literal trials that marked Morton's tumultuous legal life; the metaphorical ones he endured in a wandering existence between England and America; and the literary and historiographical ones that have ensued in the centuries since his death around 1647 in Acomenticus (today York, Maine). Mancall has new findings to offer about all three, and he weaves them seamlessly into his account, while humbly acknowledging the many gaps and contradictions that remain in our knowledge of Morton's life. The book moves chronologically, beginning with Morton's birth in England's West Country around 1575. Almost nothing is known of his early years, so Mancall gives us a sketch of the two "homelands" with which Morton is associated, in England old and new. We get a sense of the imperial mood in the country of his birth and of the lifeways and cosmology of the Natives of the northeastern woodlands to which he emigrated. Mancall's detailed account of Morton's relationship with Alice Miller, the Swallowfield widow he married after serving as solicitor in the [End Page 932] settlement of her husband's estate, is particularly striking. One gets the picture of a family torn apart by greed, with a new head of the household who more or less fit right in. Still, given the stakes—substantial English land holdings—Morton's abandonment of the Miller clan remains something of an enigma. Mancall's account of Morton's collaborations with Sir Ferdinando Gorges, veteran and member of the Council for New England, is equally rich and well contextualized. The council's scheme was, in effect, to suborn the charters of the colonies already established in New England, including Plymouth and eventually Massachusetts Bay, and thus to take control of governance, the disposition of land, and the flow of trade. "Morton posed a danger," he writes, "because he worked to undermine the legitimacy of the legal claim that gave colonists the authority from their monarch to establish and maintain villages on the homelands of others" (208). Those others play an important role in Mancall's account of the tensions between...

Does Discrimination Law Apply to Residential Strata Schemes?

Although strata title legislation is over 50 years old, a number of important questions about its intersection with other areas of law remain unanswered. One such question is whether discrimination law applies to residential strata schemes. Discrimination law was enacted to ensure all citizens’ equal civic participation, and although it regulates both private citizens and private land, it only does so to the extent that they affect others’ ability to participate in public life. Discrimination legislation typically captures the provision of goods and services, education, employment, clubs and associations, access to public space, accommodation and the disposition of land. Strata bodies corporate do not fit neatly into any of those categories. However, bodies corporate wield considerable power over residents’ properties and lives, and the capacity to use that power in discriminatory ways is real. As ever-increasing numbers of Australians choose or are compelled to live in strata schemes, the need to resolve this legal dilemma becomes more pressing.

Ejidos, Urbanization, and the Production of Inequality in Formerly Agricultural Lands, Guadalajara, Mexico, 1975–2020

The ejido is an institution of communal land tenure and governance administered by the Mexican government. This paper assesses the current visual appearance of landscapes and implicit land use in ejidal lands on the periphery of Guadalajara, Mexico, using Google Street View (GSV) images tagged for signs of urban distress. Distressed landscapes are associated with the temporal process of urban expansion—newer settlements tend to be more visibly impoverished. Concentrations of vulnerable housing are correlated with encroached-upon ejidal lands in a process that was underway by the 1970s, well before Mexico’s neoliberal turn. Ejidos on the urban periphery, created to support agricultural communities during Mexico’s radical period of agrarian reform, are now sites of urban sprawl and impoverishment. Nevertheless, these communities remain legally salient as federal entities with respect to the disposition of land. Their presence complicates the historical evolution of land use in the urban periphery in ways that do not fit into classical central place models. We conclude that the presence of ejidos is associated with rapid and chaotic urbanization by migrants and the loss of agricultural capacity in Guadalajara’s periphery.

What predicts the demand and sale of vacant public properties? Urban greening and gentrification in Chicago

Many post-industrial U.S. cities have developed programs to promote the greening of publicly-owned vacant lots, including initiatives in which homeowners can purchase nearby lots and turn them into yards or community gardens. These initiatives can result in greener landscapes in marginalized communities, but we know little about the spatial patterns of vacant land disposition and whether demand for and sale of publicly-owned lots are stronger in gentrifying neighborhoods. We examined the Chicago Large Lot Program and used neighborhood sociodemographic, environmental, and safety factors to predict the demand and sale of vacant lots. We found that the demand for Large Lots was significantly higher in tracts showing early signs of gentrification between 2000 and 2015 (those with higher increases of college graduates and White residents) and for tracts located closer to downtown. Also, the percentage of Large Lots sold was significantly larger in areas closer to downtown and farther from Lake Michigan but not associated with gentrification, which might be due to neighborhood political forces seeking to retain public control of vacant lots in gentrifying neighborhoods. Although other studies show that urban greening precedes gentrification, our findings suggest that the demand for urban greening might also follow early gentrification.

Breaking the land monopoly: Can collective land reform alleviate the housing shortage in China's mega-cities?

This paper engages with ongoing theoretical enquiries into the dynamism of housing shortage in many global cities. The research critically evaluates the recent Chinese practice of increasing the supply of the collectively owned land as a means to alleviate housing shortage in cities. Taking the four first-tier cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen as case studies, this paper analyzes their characteristics of land supply and housing price/rent change, and argues that increasing land supply through encouraging rental housing to be built upon collectively owned land did not contribute in any significant way the alleviation of housing shortage in China's megacities because of the manipulation and circumvention of the local governments that held strong vested interests in urban land monopoly. Findings of this research contribute new theoretical insights into the global dynamism of housing developments and call for special attention paid to the important effects of the land disposition regimes upon housing supply, the sophisticated central-local power relations internal to the state, and the spatiality of housing developments as well as their geographical contingency. The paper concludes with policy implications to facilitate the rental housing development on collectively owned land in Chinese cities.

Democracy and the (missing) politics in environmental education

Our work as educators does not match the scope, scale, and urgency of the challenges we presently face and that our descendants will confront through the centuries of the “long emergency.” There are many reasons for this, but most important is our tendency to overlook the hard reality that the use and disposition of land, air, water, forests, oceans, minerals, energy, and atmosphere are inevitably political having to do with “who gets what when and how.” In other words, we do not have an environmental crisis as much as massive failure of political institutions and governments to foresee and forestall what has grown into the “long emergency.”

Does Discrimination Law Apply to Residential Strata Schemes?

Although strata title legislation is over 50 years old, a number of important questions about its intersection with other areas of law remain unanswered. One such question is whether discrimination law applies to residential strata schemes. Discrimination law was enacted to ensure all citizens’ equal civic participation, and although it regulates both private citizens and private land, it only does so to the extent that they affect others’ ability to participate in public life. Discrimination legislation typically captures the provision of goods and services, education, employment, clubs and associations, access to public space, accommodation and the disposition of land. Strata bodies corporate do not fit neatly into any of those categories. However, bodies corporate wield considerable power over residents’ properties and lives, and the capacity to use that power in discriminatory ways is real. As ever-increasing numbers of Australians choose or are compelled to live in strata schemes, the need to resolve this legal dilemma becomes more pressing.

Capital accumulation and urban land development in China: (Re)making Expo Park in Shanghai

This study goes beyond the crisis-based understanding of spatial fix to consider a holistic exploration of capital accumulation and urban land development in association with a mega-event in China. Decoding the event-triggered land banking (tudi chubei) process in the (re)making of Expo Park, it shifts the focus of this land-based accumulation to pre-event relocation and post-event investment attraction. The contributions of this study are twofold. First, this study contributes to the mainstream literature by incorporating the place-based mega-event into the study of spatial fix. Spatial fix through mega-events is enacted through pre-Expo primary land development, which reshapes the built environment to articulate a “higher and better use,” followed by a post-Expo land disposition, which fixes investment to accomplish capital restructuring. Second, this study indicates that state entrepreneurialism offers a more accurate interpretation of the governance of land processes led by mega-events than urban entrepreneurialism, and enriches the literature on state entrepreneurialism by illuminating the ways in which capital accumulation is achieved through land development under this governance paradigm. In the pre-Expo phase, a state-owned urban development corporation (UDC) was established to take charge of land finance. An ad hoc quasi-government in proximity to the central state and on behalf of the municipal official mobilized administrative resources to aid land resumption—tailoring space to squeeze out inefficient accumulation modes. In the post-Expo phase, a restructured municipal state-owned enterprise (SOE) took over responsibilities for land disposition from the state-owned UDC and prioritized central state SOEs over other investors.

Resource extraction and education funding: nature and political economies of state formation in the United States

ABSTRACTThe economic and environmental significance of school land policy in the United States has yet to be imagined, let alone systematically studied, by scholars. Although the fact that Congress allocated shares of public lands to the support of schools beginning in the 1780s is well known, historians have not adequately assessed the impacts of that policy. No one has seriously posed the question of how such policies figured in the history of resource extraction, capital accumulation, and economic development. What difference did it make that federal policy tied school funding to the sale of billions of acres of public land or to the direct lease of such lands to timber, mining, and livestock interests--historical arrangements that survive today through much of the U.S. West? Drawing on state-by-state accounts of the terms of school land disposition and the record of Congressional debates over school land policies, this article advances an argument about the relationship between nature, education, and political economies of U.S. state formation, laying the groundwork for assessing more fully the consequences of that relationship.

The Metropolitan Waterworks Museum at Chestnut Hill pumping station, Boston, USA

The Metropolitan Waterworks Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, occupies the engine room of the former Chestnut Hill high-service pumping station. This paper begins with an overview of the development of metropolitan Boston’s water system, which has always emphasised clean controlled sources and minimal processing. It describes the evolution of this architecturally significant building and its equally significant steam pumping engines over its 92-year operating life from 1888 to 1980. The subsequent approximately 30-year-long stakeholder process that led to the site’s preservation and the museum’s creation is reviewed, including the multilayered web of legislation, land-use agreements and particularly an underlying land disposition agreement, together with restrictions, easements, physical constraints, realpolitik considerations and the multiple operating-fund provisions that have made the museum’s successful creation and operation possible. Lastly, this paper cites some ongoing challenges.

Agricultural intensification, ownership, and landscape change in the Mackenzie Basin

This article investigates the role of shifting land ownership in landscape change in New Zealand’s Mackenzie Basin. It was hypothesised that ownership patterns influence landscape transformation; and changes in ownership lead to landscape changes. Satellite imagery was used to trace recent landscape changes quantifying a change from brown extensive pastoralism to green irrigated pasture. It was concluded that the change in land ownership following land reform allowed for about half of this agricultural intensification since 2003. Aggregating intensification on new freehold land with that on current pastoral lease changes the story; Crown decisions about disposition or intensification of Crown land account for two-thirds of intensification since 2003. Hence, if current trends in the Mackenzie are to change, the Crown must examine its decision patterns. Change in some form seems likely. The results presented speak to who has the power to make change. The choice and the power reside somewhere in the space between the Commissioner of Crown Lands and the Minister of Land Information.

Change detection algorithm for multi-temporal satellite images: a review

Change detection (CD) is the process of detecting changes from multitemporal satellite images that have undergone spatial changes due to natural and man-made disaster. The objective is to analyse different change detection techniques, in order to use appropriately in various applications with the help of image processing. Techniques that are used in current researches are Image Differencing, Image Regression, Change Vector Analysis (CVA),Principal Component Analysis(PCA), Tasselled Cap, Gramm-Schmidt(GS), Post Classification Comparison, EM Detection, Unsupervised Change Detection, Li-Strahler Reflectance Model, Spectral Mixture Model, Biophysical Parameter Method, Integrated GIS and Remote Sensing Method, GIS Approach, Visual Interpretation and so on. Effective change detection is required for various applications such as rate of deforestation, costal changes, urban developments, damage evaluation, resource monitoring and land disposition.

Vacant land disposition for agriculture in Cleveland, Ohio: Is community development a mixed blessing?

ABSTRACTRedevelopment and food sustainability advocates both support urban agriculture as a productive use of vacant land in Rustbelt cities, where vacancy is endemic. However, the first group typically envisions agriculture only as temporary, whereas the second seeks to harness vacancy to establish an enduring agriculture that supplies fresh produce to underserved neighborhoods and strengthens local food systems. In this article, I investigate whether and how vacant land policies support agriculture in Cleveland, a city that adopted a sustainability strategy in 2008 and whose governance is notable for balancing growth and equity concerns. Agriculture was embraced as community development in the wake of the foreclosure crisis and fostered with policies, programs, and resources. However, paradoxically for a sustainability agenda, land is transferred for agriculture for only short periods at a time. Despite claims of food system benefits for neighborhoods, agriculture is organized primarily to serve other purposes such as land stabilization and social service provision. Sustaining agriculture over the long term in neighborhoods experiencing abandonment will require an acknowledgment of the significant value created by the activity and new strategies that interlink land, planning, organizing, and resources.

Khat Production and Consumption; Its Implication on Land Area Used for Crop Production and Crop Variety Production among Rural Household of Ethiopia

Khat (Catha edulis Forsk), is a stimulant plant grown mainly in Ethiopia, Yemen and Kenya. Currently it is a ubiquitous commodity cultivated and chewed; imbedded in Ethiopian culture and agriculture. In a circumstance of land degradation and scarcity farmers consider Khat as a better small-scale faming alternative; however land disposition for Khat-mono-cropping can be a disadvantage. Adjusting for the sets of alternatives on the land area to be used for crop production and on-farm crop variety is a factor that determines Khat farmers’ household sustainable agriculture and livelihood. The dynamics in relation with rural households Khat production/consumption is not well explored. This study sets out to document the implication of farmers’ choice of Khat production and / or consumption on land use for crop production and crop variety production in rural households of Ethiopia. A panel survey using quantitative method was adopted. Data were collected in two regions of Ethiopia using pre-tested interviewer-administered questionnaire using Open Data Kit (ODK). Data were exported to STATA version SE 12(Stata Corp LP, College Station, Texas, USA). Multivariable linear regression model was run. A significantly higher proportion of Khat consumers were producers (P<0.001). Land size used for crop production increased by 0.2 units (hectares) for Khat consumers and producers as compared with No-Khat consumers and no-Khat producers’ households (β=0.20, p<0.001). The likely hood of having variety of crops is two times higher for Khat consumer and Khat producer households as compared with no-Khat consumers and no-Khat producers households (AOR: 2.00 [95%CI: 1.38, 2.91], p<0.001). Land tenure system and agricultural policy and interventions should consider this Khat cropping effect among households in Khat producing areas of the country. Khat cultivation and use should be understood in a proper context in association with economical; social, cultural and environmental reality.

“To allow farming is to give up on the city”: Political anxieties related to the disposition of vacant land for urban agriculture in Detroit

ABSTRACTDetroit has a vibrant urban agriculture movement as well as an abundance of vacant land, much of which has come into city ownership through foreclosure. Despite the presence of a land bank and a supportive agricultural ordinance, growers struggle to gain long-term access to and ownership of land on which to farm. Using in-depth interviews with growers and their advocates, community development experts, and city and land bank officials, I discuss the specific challenges that urban growers face and related anxieties communicated by city and land bank officials. Anxieties include commonly held perceptions of the polarity between “urban” and “agriculture,” as well as a fear that agriculture may not last. In the absence of an updated master plan, another anxiety relates to land disposition serving as the de facto vision for the city’s future. These anxieties reflect the dominance of growth regime frameworks in current governance. I outline the elements of an alternative framework that weaves together agriculture and redevelopment and discuss its prospects at least for the near term.