Effective Regional Planning Research Articles

The morphology of urban tourism space (case: Malioboro Main Street as cosmological Axis of Yogyakarta city, Indonesia)

Purpose This study aims to analyze the morphological landscape of the urban tourism spaces in the Malioboro Main Street area to predict its future development and to assist in creating effective regional planning policies. Design/methodology/approach This study uses qualitative grounded theory, typo morphological analysis and place-centered mapping techniques. Findings From the observation, it was found that each element of the city image area has different components of the urban tourism space’s morphology. The urban tourism spaces in Malioboro Main Street are distributed in a centered, linear and scattered pattern, with zones dedicated to shopping, cultural experiences and cuisine. The specific elements of each zone, such as attractions, accommodations or amenities, determine the type of tourism offered, such as cultural, shopping and culinary tourism. Research limitations/implications The study presented here may serve as a helpful guide for regulating and organizing policies that can form a sound basis for policy formulation. It mainly pertains to planning and structuring the Malioboro Main Street area, which currently needs a well-conceived urban tourism landscape development concept. Practical implications This study will have practical implications in projecting tourism development in the area through planning and structuring. The study can also be used as a basis and guideline for controlling, organizing and determining regulations and policies, ultimately serving as a wise foundation for policy formulation, particularly in planning and structuring the Cosmological Axis area, especially the Malioboro area. Originality/value The discussion of morphology is mainly limited to macro or micro scales, while the discussion of tourism space is generally limited to conceptual development. Conversely, this study aims to explore the unique landscape morphology of the Malioboro Main Street area, which serves as evidence of a productive space for urban tourism by typomorphological analysis through the approach of urban landscape elements, tourism elements and its activities. Thus, it may complement previous studies in urban areas dominated by tourism.

Geographic information system based combined compromise solution (CoCoSo) method for exploring the spatial justice of accessing urban green spaces, a comparative study of district 22 of Tehran

The present study investigated the spatial distribution and accessibility of parks and urban green spaces in Tehran using the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) and the Geographical Information System (GIS) with an emphasis on the approach of spatial justice. For the purpose of analyzing the spatial distribution pattern of urban green spaces in Tehran, the nearest neighbor method and multi-distance spatial cluster analysis were applied. As a result, the spatial distribution pattern of this land use strongly resembled a clustered pattern, and the accessibility and distribution of green spaces in Tehran were unequal. Also, based on the Cocoso method as well, which was used to analyze access to green spaces and parks, districts 10 and 11 are by far Tehran's most deprived districts. Distribution of services in the city based on per capita in the form of comprehensive and detailed plans, financial and technical problems of municipalities, lack of approach to planning and sustainable development on a national, regional and local scale in Iran's planning system, lack of integrated urban management in the Tehran's city management system, the emphasis of most urban planning theories in Iran on planning processes and ignoring social and spatial structures are some of the main reasons for this inequality. To reduce inequality between the districts of Tehran, it is essential to devise effective regional planning and adopt balanced and impartial policies for providing equal accessibility of resources in all urban districts. The findings enhance our understanding of the level of urban inequity and the potential causes of inequality with respect to accessibility to green spaces in metropolitan areas. This study also sheds light on the critical role of policy-making in this process. These findings have implications for urban managers in terms of the accessibility, allocation, and distribution of urban services in different cities of Iran and the world.

Regional socioeconomic factors and length of hospital stay: a case study in Appalachia

The role of socioeconomic status (SES) of patients in health care outcomes has been investigated in many health care systems. The health care literature suggests that there is a relationship between patients’ socioeconomic status and their health care outcomes. Most research has investigated this relation using individual SES, rather than exploring the regional socioeconomic characteristics of a population on patients’ outcomes. This study explores the correlation between regional socioeconomic characteristics of a population and patients’ hospital length of stay (LOS). Assuming the demographic characteristics of patients in a region are relatively consistent, this will enable more effective regional planning and a customized decision-making process considering characteristics of the population that a health care system serves. We use a weighted clustering algorithm to exploit the relationship between regional socioeconomic characteristics and patients’ LOS. To do so, the demographic attributes and regional socioeconomic factors of patients are obtained using their ZIP Codes. The results suggest that regional characteristics have a direct impact on LOS, and patients of the same medical status may experience longer LOS if they live in a more disadvantaged community. Our findings indicate that regional demographic characteristics of the population a health care system serves can have an impact on surgical patient outcomes, specifically length of stay, and therefore can be considered by hospital administrators to enable more efficient and effective resource and operational planning. In optimizing care delivery, to achieve the best possible value for individual patients and populations, it is important to understand all factors that contribute to the outcomes in order to focus resources to mitigate those that reduce value.

Spatio-temporal urban growth dynamics of Lagos Metropolitan Region of Nigeria based on Hybrid methods for LULC modeling and prediction

ABSTRACTAn accurate information on the amount and location of Land use and land cover (LULC) changes is necessary to develop and implement a sustainable-urban planning.This research investigates the potential of an integrated Multi-Layer Perceptron and Markov Chain Analysis (MLP-MCA) to map and accurately predict the future LULC change scenarios in Lagos Metropolitan Region of Nigeria. Multi-temporal LULC datasets derived from remotely sensed Landsat images from 1984, 2000 and 2015 were used for modeling, validation and prediction. Predicted LULC changes for 2030 and 2050 were performed based on the LULC map of 2015 using MLP-MCA method. The result reveals a significant expansion of built-up areas during the whole study period. Analysis of LULC distribution in Lagos metropolitan region shows that about 50% of urban land expansion happened beyond the administrative boundary of Lagos State during the period of 2000–2015. It is predicted that more than 75% of future urban growth will occur across the border of Lagos State, in the neighbouring Ogun State by 2050. These results imply that a strong and consistent collaboration between different states is crucial to establish an effective regional planning framework and ensure a proper planned growth of the metropolitan region.

Lasting regional gains from non-renewable resource extraction: The role of sustainability-based cumulative effects assessment and regional planning for mining development in Canada

If mining proposals are to receive more positive reception in host communities and regions, they will need to be planned, reviewed and approved in ways that ensure they contribute to more sustainable regional futures. That transition will require improvements in individual project assessment practice–especially a shift from a focus on mitigating “significant adverse effects” to requiring “positive contributions to sustainability” as well as avoidance of adverse effects. It will also demand more effective regional planning and other strategic level efforts to provide attention to the cumulative regional effects of multiple mining projects, associated infrastructure and other past, current and anticipated activities. Such broader work would provide a better examined context and more authoritative guidance for individual project planning and development. Regional scale planning and assessment are largely a responsibility of governments, not something that individual mine proponents can reasonably be expected to deliver adequately in project-based assessment and approval processes. This paper reviews the current status of assessment regimes, identifies deficiencies and suggests where best practice opportunities exist. The implications are summarized as recommendations for assessment regime design that addresses cumulative effects, largely through regional processes linked to project-level assessments, and that incorporate the following five characteristics:(i) Multi-dimensional: covers the full suite of cumulative effects of multiple undertakings, past, present and reasonably foreseeable in the relevant regional future (well beyond the individual project level), in light of contribution to sustainability objectives;(ii) Long term: uses scenarios or some equivalent to explore and illuminate the nature and potential implications of plausible and desirable futures, to identify alternative pathways and plan options to examine;(iii) Credible: establishes explicit open processes for elaborating and evaluating regional alternatives and justifying decisions in light of context-specified sustainability-based criteria and trade-off rules;(iv) Authoritative: integrates regional assessment conclusions as decisions in legislatively authoritative regional plans or the equivalent with provisions for ensuring compliance in project level planning and assessment; and(v) Accountable: ensures clear and accountable assignment of cumulative effects management responsibilities and expectations, including provisions for engaged monitoring, effective responses and public reporting.Special attention to legacy effects is also emphasized because orebodies are non-renewable resources.For illustrative purposes, the paper considers approaches to anticipated mining development in the Ring of Fire region, 500km of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, where reliance on individual project assessments is problematic given the regional cumulative effects issues and the range of alternative response options.

Evaluating the Potential for Conservation Development: Biophysical, Economic, and Institutional Perspectives

The widespread conversion of rural land to low-density residential development poses an immediate threat to biodiversity and to the provision of ecosystem services. Given that development will continue and environmental stakes are high, analyzing alternative growth strategies is critical. Conservation development is one such strategy that has the potential to benefit ecosystems and diverse stakeholders including developers, homebuyers, governments, and society as a whole. Conservation development clusters homes on one part of a property to manage the most ecologically important land for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services. We draw on lessons learned from landscape ecology, open-space development, and regional planning to weigh the biophysical, economic, and institutional evidence for and against conservation development. Conservation development offers many potential environmental and economic advantages: relatively high home values and appreciation rates, lower development costs, and social and ecological benefits to society including landscape connectivity, protection and active stewardship of important ecological assets, and the maintenance of ecosystem services. But this approach also has shortcomings: it may require enlightened institutional regulations and regional planning (and/or ecologically aware developers), it is not always more profitable than conventional development and thus may require subsidies or incentives, and additional research is required to fully understand its benefits and drawbacks. With more information on the effects of clustering, the development of flexible zoning laws, and effective regional planning, conservation development could be a viable strategy for sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem services in changing landscapes.

Enabling Exclusion

This article examines the impact of regional institutions and a regional planning framework on low- and moderate-income housing efforts in a metropolitan area. The Minnesota Land Use Planning Act (LUPA), enacted in 1976, sets forth the requirement for communities in the Twin Cities metropolitan area to plan for their share of the metro area's need for low- and moderate-income housing. After a period of effective regional planning for low-mod housing, changing political and institutional environments have led to significant decline in the willingness of the Metropolitan Council to implement the law.

Landcare Networks in Australia: State-sponsored Participation Through Local Organizations

Landcare is an Australian success story and an important example of the potential of state-sponsored community participation. An important trend encouraged by the lead agencies is for Landcare groups to be linked through so-called networks. Linking together may appeal to groups as a way of increasing their capacity to compete for scarce resources and enhance their impact on agencies, regional catchment committees and government. Network formation is also driven by government and agency demands for efficiency, accountability and effective regional planning. In this paper the authors draw on their 1997 study of the Ovens Valley Landcare Network in Victoria. This research suggested networks are important local organisations and enhance the impact of groups by improving inter-group communication and 'pulling down' resources. Network processes also contributed to robust, productive, agency-community partnerships and suggested participation can increase community influence on decision making and be compatible with adaptive management.

Regional planning in Western Europe: The contemporary context

Abstract A number of changes over the past decade have transformed the context and hence the prospects for effective regional planning in Western Europe. These include the changes in economic dynamics, the shifts in political ideologies, the emergence of initiatives at EU level, the growing strength of regionalism and sub‐state nationalisms. Probably most important has been the spread of neo‐liberalism; here most emphasis is placed on this dimension. These changes have generated a variety of new forms of regional planning, ranging in strength, functions and significance. The trajectories of change have differed considerably from one country to another, but there have been shifts in practice in several EU states. In particular the relationship to other levels and kinds of planning or state action has been changing—to economic strategies and policies, to urban and local planning processes and to planning of transport and energy infrastructure. The analysis concentrates on the relationship between regional p...

Measuring urban sustainability

The present study investigated the spatial distribution and accessibility of parks and urban green spaces in Tehran using the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) and the Geographical Information System (GIS) with an emphasis on the approach of spatial justice. For the purpose of analyzing the spatial distribution pattern of urban green spaces in Tehran, the nearest neighbor method and multi-distance spatial cluster analysis were applied. As a result, the spatial distribution pattern of this land use strongly resembled a clustered pattern, and the accessibility and distribution of green spaces in Tehran were unequal. Also, based on the Cocoso method as well, which was used to analyze access to green spaces and parks, districts 10 and 11 are by far Tehran's most deprived districts. Distribution of services in the city based on per capita in the form of comprehensive and detailed plans, financial and technical problems of municipalities, lack of approach to planning and sustainable development on a national, regional and local scale in Iran's planning system, lack of integrated urban management in the Tehran's city management system, the emphasis of most urban planning theories in Iran on planning processes and ignoring social and spatial structures are some of the main reasons for this inequality. To reduce inequality between the districts of Tehran, it is essential to devise effective regional planning and adopt balanced and impartial policies for providing equal accessibility of resources in all urban districts. The findings enhance our understanding of the level of urban inequity and the potential causes of inequality with respect to accessibility to green spaces in metropolitan areas. This study also sheds light on the critical role of policy-making in this process. These findings have implications for urban managers in terms of the accessibility, allocation, and distribution of urban services in different cities of Iran and the world.

Comprehensive What? Coordination of Whom? Rural AAA's and the Planning Mandate

The rural area agency on aging does not (and cannot) engage in effective social planning. It is overwhelmed by responsibility for sub-state decision making. Several characteristics of present AAA planning are identified, including plan preparation, rationalized decision making, sub-state decision making and needs meeting. Widespread acceptance of the legitimacy of AAA plan ning goals has generated three alternative approaches which are termed the "case-management, " "interorganizational" and "community structure" approaches. Effective rural planning for the aged might combine elements of these approaches in an effective regional planning strategy.

Politics and Planning Rhetoric in Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea (PNG) (fig. 1) came to political independence in September 1975. In the following year there was an explosion of political rhetoric concerning the need for adequate national and regional level planning. This paper argues that, beneath the rhetoric, the present political process militates against effective national planning and even against effective regional planning. The most that can be expected, given the present pattern of interests, is a movement toward more effective project planning. Thus, the technical problems of planning are to be seen as secondary to the political processes.

Regional development and regional planning in the countries of the Third World

Acceleration of socio-economic progress and the achievement of self-reliant economy by the developing countries are closely linked with transformation of sectoral and spatial structure of colonial type economy, which is characterized by nonintegration, extreme inequalities in resources and land utilization, and regional disparities in the levels of socio-economic development. The State plays the leading role in this process through elaboration and realization of long-term regional policy and regional planning, the necessity of which is admitted in the majority of the developing countries. Their scientific substantiation is connected with investigation of objective process of formation of the spatial structure of the new type economy. The latter is formed in the process of interaction of the major regionalization systems: natural-resources, demography-ethnic, socio-economic (systems of special sector-wise and integral-complex regions are embedded in these systems). The systems of socio-economic regionalization are the most dynamic and manageable. But the modern stage of the development of the Third World countries is characterized by the essential changes of other regionalization systems as well. Evaluation of disproportional correlations in their interaction and elaboration of measures to reduce them constistute one of the most important objects of modern geography. Specialization of economic regions in the productions, which have favourable regional combinations of resources results in acceleration of economic growth because of the benefits of spatial division of labour. At the same time regional specialization and increase of inter-regional linkages strengthens the integration on all-national scale, which is of vital importance for the developing countries. The acute, not only economic but also socio-political problem of rapid backward areas advancement can and must be solved not separately (although such attempts have been undertaken often enough) but as a part of the general strategy of regional development. Scientific substantiation of the effective regional planning in the developing countries is an object of interdisciplinary research, where geographers are called to play the leading role.

Feasibility of Regional Administration in Tokyo Metropolitan Region

The New National Comprehensive Development Plan announced by Economic Plan Agency in 1969, pointed the necessity of Regional Administration of Inter-Prefectural problems.The social and economic change of Tokyo Metropolitan Region has brought the needs of various inter-prefectural exchanges and cooperations which would include Bed-Town, Commutation and Housing Construction Circumstances, and therefore, the present prefectural system has become too narrow for effective area development planning which should cover at least 50Km diameter areas. This should be the reason why Regionalism has been insisted by various scholars.I pointed some urgent needs of regional basis administration, especially related with Water Supply, Tokyo Bay Port Administration and Housing of course, which are only some typical cases of Regional Administration.My exprolation was made, compared with Nagoya Port Co-operative, New York Port Authority, and Water Resources Development Corporation and Water Supply Bureau of Tokyo Metropolitan Government. I do hope to promote this kind of functional regionalism for effective regional planning as a first step of regional government.