tools4MCDA: An R-Package to estimate spatial fishing effort, weight and value of landings using multi-criteria decision analysis

Neighborhoods are critical arenas where urban form, accessibility, and daily life intersect, yet most megacities rely on coarse administrative boundaries that obscure local spatial and social dynamics. There is a persistent gap in objective, multicriteria, and data-driven methods for defining neighborhoods and supporting local planning. This paper proposes a transferable, data-light framework that clusters urban blocks into contiguous neighborhood units, contributing to a consistent socioterritorial definition. The framework incorporates barrier-aware adjacency constraints, PCA and multi-index/ARI-stability evidence based protocol to enable urban delineation. The method integrates three key planning dimensions: (A) built environment, (B) accessibility, and (C) sociodemographic context. After standardization and dimensionality reduction via Principal PCA, clustering is performed using three different algorithms. The algorithm dynamically adjusts the k-optimal value for each case. Applied to São Paulo, a 11.4-million–inhabitant city in Brazil, results indicate distance to high-capacity public transit as the most influential factor, correlating strongly with land value and commercial-service concentration. Population density remains relevant but not deterministic, underscoring the importance of a multi-criteria approach to neighborhood analysis. The clustering reveals socio-spatially cohesive areas that cut across formal administrative boundaries, exposing neighborhood-scale structures often obscured in conventional planning units. Core transit-rich clusters concentrate up to 75% of built area in commercial or service use, while peripheral zones remain underserved. The framework identifies neighborhood areas of influence that can support the delineation of reference perimeters for guiding the public policies, and offers planners a flexible tool for neighborhood-scale policy design, inclusive urban governance, and equitable spatial interventions. • Delimits objectively neighborhoods through unsupervised learning method • Replicable clustering approach strengthens neighborhood delineation in cities • Multi-metric clustering and validation method to analyse urban dynamics • São Paulo application evidences clustering’s relevance to neighborhood planning • Results showed strong alignment between cluster patterns and transit accessibility

Reforming land valuation and taxation in Ukraine: A path towards greater sustainability, fairness, and transparency

Quantifying zonal interdependencies in Urban Land Valuation: A novel geospatial model of infrastructure density and road network synergies

Planning for road network development in swampy areas is inseparable from determining road trace to obtain a suitable road network layout. The suitability of geological, topographic, soil, hydrological and land use conditions is a matter that must be considered, coupled with other issues such as land value, land ownership, social and economic impacts, and identification of environmentally sensitive areas. There are nine components that are considered in determining road trace in swamp areas in order to obtain environmentally sound road construction, namely: soil texture, puddle, CBR value, peat soil, land use, average daily traffic, tonnage, accessibility, and sociogeography. This study aims to obtain a road trace in an environmentally friendly swamp area using a road trace model in swamp areas developed by Indrayani, et al in 2019. The application was carried out in the swamp area of Banyuasin district, South Sumatra province, by taking the 9 components in the recommendation. The method used in this research is remote sensing in the introduction of the physical environment, while the scoring and weighting methods use multicriteria spatial analysis in determining the suitability of the area.. From the modeling results, it is found that the suitable area for road alignment is 136.66 km2, which is quite suitable for 3151.66 km2, and which is very inappropriate is 39.71 km2. Meanwhile, the road alignment that connects between districts in the study area is obtained in the form of a thematic map.

ABSTRACT This article examines the relationship between tourism development and rising land prices in Yogyakarta, highlighting its impact on social inequality and spatial exclusion. Drawing on rent gap theory, the study explores how tourism accelerates land commodification, driven by growing demand for housing, second homes, and infrastructure. Through multiple qualitative and documentary source reviews, including scholarly literatures accessed through local university libraries, combined with the authors’ long-term experiences in doing regional tourism research since 2015, this paper argues that the promotion of tourism as the most profitable land use results in the escalation of hotels, resorts, and commercial zones development. This escalation has inflated real estate values, making homeownership increasingly inaccessible for local residents. This shift has also led to land use conversion, resulting in water scarcity and the cultural displacement of communities. Beyond documenting urban inequality, this article contributes to debates on land, tourism, and urban political economy by conceptualising tourism as a dominant land regime that actively reshapes and restructures land valuation, governance, and socio-ecological access. This study demonstrates that inequality in Yogyakarta is not merely an unintended consequence of market dynamics per se, but a governance effect produced through anticipatory land speculation, selective intervention of the state, and the ideological framing of tourism as the highest and best use of land use. By foregrounding slow displacement and patrimonial governance entanglements, the study extends rent gap theory and advances a processual understanding of tourism-led urban restructuring.

ABSTRACT Our paper explores the informative power of artificial brightness, derived from meteorological satellites, in determining land values at the city-level from 1997 to 2012 in the Philippines. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to do so, thereby, contributing to the literature and to the real estate development in the country. We construct innovative longitudinal data, which captures both the temporal and spatial effects of night-time lights (NTL) intensity on zonal values. Our fixed effects panel estimates support the findings in the existing literature with caveats. The relationship between NTL and land values is nuanced and heterogenous conditional on the level of brightness and the type of land. NTL has a quadratic concave-downward effect on residential land values while a linear positive effect on commercial zonal values. The results could be attributed to the diminishing returns to urbanization, which NTL intensity is proxying for, light pollution, and signal saturation. Our results highlight the relevance of incorporating remotely sensed earth observations into the country’s cadastral and land tax systems. This process has the potential to contribute to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) such as building resilient communities and infrastructures, and reducing inequality (SDGs 9, 10 and 11).

Land presents an interesting site for examining inheritance, given its complex intertwining with kinship and its contested relationship with gender. In Indian society, land has been a resource owned in common, belonging jointly to family and kinship networks. Drawing on this imagination, customary institutions and legal regulations either permit or deny women's right to access, increasingly influencing their livelihoods in a capitalist economy. Recognising the complex relationship between land and gender, this article focuses on the inheritance experiences among rural pahāḍi women in Uttarakhand. Building on ethnographic fieldwork in rural Uttarakhand, we examine the meaning of inheritance in the context of an asset that holds multiple meanings and values in the everyday lives of these communities. We raise the questions: How do these communities perceive and engage with the inheritance of land? How these practices and imaginations of inheritance sit alongside the changing value of land in the free market.

This paper investigates the potential for community land trust (CLT) adoption in two Latin American contexts: Bahía Blanca, Argentina, and Temuco, Chile, where housing systems are shaped by neoliberal legacies, legal centralism, and cultural attachments to individual ownership. Drawing on two multi-stakeholder focus groups where participants were largely unfamiliar with the CLT model, the findings capture a crucial early stage of sense-making in which stakeholders interpret, negotiate, and localize the concept of collective landholding. Applying a multi-theoretical framework combining structuration theory, institutional planning, and agency typologies, the paper reveals how institutional constraints, discursive imaginaries, and actor strategies shape the (im)possibility of CLTs. While Argentine stakeholders identified pragmatic opportunities to adapt legal and financial instruments for collective tenure, Chilean participants expressed cultural and institutional skepticism rooted in strong individualist land values. The findings highlight the importance of context-sensitive policy imaginaries and institutional agency in advancing tenure innovation. The paper contributes to housing debates by revealing how cultural norms and actor strategies shape the initial buy-in and translation of CLTs within existing understandings of land, housing, and ownership.

Jordan is witnessing a growing market trend of retrofitting existing buildings. The annual construction work on existing buildings in Amman, based on building consents, increased by approximately 46% between 2007 and 2017, while the annual newly built areas decreased by around 33%. This paper aims to establish a solid understanding of the current shift towards existing building adaptation in Jordan by exploring the drivers for this trend and the Government’s role in regulating and, possibly, encouraging it. Ten local experts with extensive experience in retrofitting projects in Jordan and around the region were interviewed. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of experts’ answers was performed using the software NVivo. Findings highlight nine main drivers for retrofitting existing buildings in Jordan, namely: (1) land value and location; (2) reducing capital costs compared to new builds; (3) architectural heritage conservation; (4) social and cultural considerations; (5) adapting to population increase; (6) reusing, adapting, and retrofitting to extend the life of buildings; (7) increasing tourism capacity; (8) improving building performance and resource efficiency; and (9) municipal incentives. Not all these drivers have the same value as they depend on the client and the project context. The experts’ ranking of drivers in terms of priority showed higher consideration for land value and location benefits, social–cultural aspects, and population increase, while municipal incentives emerged as low priority. Further research is needed to design context-specific effective retrofit policies, contributing to the literature in this emerging field in Jordan and beyond.

The cost of ecological protection and restoration: Evidence from the impact of the Shan-shui project on land values

Spatio-temporal dynamics and drivers of carbon storage in arid ecosystems: Integrated analysis using InVEST and PLUS models with machine learning.

ABSTRACT This paper provides the first causal estimates of the impact of the U.S. ethanol boom on farmland values in the Midwest. Using county‐level data from the Census of Agriculture (1997–2022) and a difference‐in‐differences strategy that exploits variation in soil productivity, we find that farmland values in high corn‐suitability counties increased by $1147 per acre after 2005, equivalent to a 44% gain relative to pre‐ethanol boom levels. The effects are even larger in the most productive counties, where land values more than doubled. We also identify two reinforcing mechanisms: a short‐run response to higher corn prices and a longer‐run increase in farmland demand. These findings highlight how large‐scale energy policies can reshape rural land markets in ways that extend well beyond their intended objectives. JEL Classifications: Q11, Q24, Q28

ABSTRACT This study investigates the disconnect between upzoning policy and redevelopment feasibility, focusing on the role of minimum lot size requirements in Brisbane, Australia. A detailed analysis of zoning and lot size data reveals that most upzoned parcels fall below the threshold required for apartment or townhouse construction, implying an often-overlooked reliance on land assembly to achieve densification goals. This implicit dependence poses barriers to redevelopment, especially in established urban areas with fragmented lot patterns. To understand the origins of these constraints, the study traces the genealogy of minimum lot size regulations, dating back to 1885, highlighting the path-dependent nature of planning frameworks. This paper proposes a morphology-led approach to planning policy implementation, one that considers the physical structure, historical layering, and lot configurations of the urban fabric. By aligning densification strategies with existing morphology, planners can better identify areas where redevelopment is feasible and avoid inflating land values in areas unlikely to be developed. The findings support a shift toward more context-sensitive planning, including incremental densification and small-scale infill, as a practical alternative to large-scale redevelopment reliant on land assembly.

ABSTRACT This study investigates the spatial heterogeneity of land value tax capitalization and its implications for housing affordability in Loja, Ecuador, using a novel dataset of 1419 repeat land sales (2010–2017). Employing instrumental variable approaches within both parametric (Spatial Error Models) and semi‐parametric (Generalized Additive Models) frameworks, we document significant spatial variation in tax capitalization effects. Properties located in the urban core experience a 2.5% reduction in land prices for each 1% point increase in the effective tax rate, with this effect diminishing by approximately 0.6% for every additional kilometer from the city center. This gradient reflects differences in land supply elasticity, proxied by proximity to the urban core. Although tax capitalization results in lower nominal prices near the center, it does not necessarily enhance affordability, as buyers face higher long‐term tax burdens. Moreover, institutional practices, such as systematic underassessment in rapidly appreciating areas and the shifting of fiscal burdens to slower‐growing areas, undermine the intended price‐stabilizing effects of the tax and exacerbate equity concerns. The findings emphasize the importance of complementary policies aimed at curbing land market financialization and implementing administrative reforms to better align value capture mechanisms with rapidly rising land values, particularly at the urban fringe. As the first empirical analysis of land tax capitalization in Latin America, this research contributes to the methodological understanding of spatial heterogeneity and provides critical insights for the design of equitable and effective urban fiscal policy.

Sustainable farming in pastoral and agro-pastoral systems is shaped not only by ecological and economic factors but also by farmers’ attitudes and perceptions. This study assessed the extent to which attitudes and perceptions influence sustainable farming practices among the Maasai community in Kajiado County, Kenya. A mixed-methods research design was employed, involving a household survey of 320 respondents, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis, while qualitative data were analysed thematically. The results indicate that environmental stewardship attitudes, cultural valuation of land, perceived benefits of sustainable farming, perception of land degradation risk, and trust in indigenous knowledge systems significantly influence sustainable farming practices (R² = 0.54, p < .05). The study concludes that attitudes and perceptions play a substantial role in shaping sustainability-oriented behaviour among the Maasai and recommends that agricultural policies and extension programs integrate socio-cultural and cognitive dimensions alongside technical and economic interventions to enhance the adoption of sustainable farming practices. technical interventions.

Urban renewal is essentially a process of redefining land property rights, restructuring land use functions and redistributing land value increment, which is of great significance for improving the efficiency of land resource allocation and realizing sustainable land management. This study investigates the urban renewal practice of 21 pilot cities in China, and focuses on the policy frameworks, implementation models and financing mechanisms of urban renewal in four first-tier cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, through comparative analysis of policy documents and typical case studies. The results show that: (1) the current system for revitalizing land value through urban renewal remains exploratory in China, and the top-level design of land-related systems requires improvement; (2) there are obvious differences in land value distribution mechanisms under different renewal models, and the multi-stakeholder collaborative value sharing mechanism is insufficient; (3) the single financing model leads to blocked land value realization paths, and it is difficult to balance investment and return. Based on the findings, this study proposes targeted optimization paths for sustainable land value revitalization in urban renewal, which provides empirical evidence for land policy innovation and land resource value realization.

ABSTRACT ‘Finding potentialities’ has become a central obsession in colonial and state-driven efforts to identify latent value in land and life forms. It functions as a primary mechanism through which multispecies colonialism operates in Papua’s wetlands. Drawing on Dutch colonial reports and the early work of Indonesian agrarian reform scholar Gunawan Wiradi, this analysis traces how an ideology rooted in technocratic and racialized logics has reshaped Papuan landscapes over time. The argument proceeds in three parts. First , ‘finding potentiality’ has a clear historical genealogy in the Dutch colonial project of converting wetlands into sites of large-scale agricultural production. Wetlands were framed as idle, invisible, and unproductive – a view later adopted by the Indonesian state after 1963, enabling interventions such as transmigration. Second , this logic operates as a form of multispecies colonialism. Settler colonialism projects under the Indonesian government in Papua extend beyond the control of human populations to include the deliberate introduction and management of non-native plants and animals. Third , a fundamental tension emerges between the future-oriented, extractive vision of potentiality and the present-oriented realities of Indigenous Papuans. For colonial and state actors, potential is tied to projected economic value and is used to justify the transformation of existing ecologies in the name of future gains. This perspective reduces the biodiverse regions to a measurable and exploitable resource, often framed as a ‘pool of genes’, while not only disregarding subsistence practices but also produce land dispossession and disrupt Papuan relationships to their ecological time and place.

Rapid urban expansion and land-use changes have increasingly encroached upon wetland ecosystems, leading to their degradation and loss, particularly in developing regions where planning control is limited. In cities like Port Harcourt, this has resulted in a transition from informal wetland settlements to more structured residential developments, raising critical concerns for sustainable urban planning and environmental management. This study examines the emergence and expansion of wetland neighbourhoods in Port Harcourt, focusing on their spatial patterns, socio-economic characteristics, underlying drivers, and implications for urban planning. Rapid urbanization, rising land values, and increasing housing costs within the formal urban core have intensified pressure on marginal lands, leading to settlement growth in environmentally sensitive wetland areas. A mixed-method approach was adopted, combining 131 structured questionnaires across six purposively selected neighbourhoods with field observations and geospatial analysis. Spatial techniques, including a distance matrix, were used to assess the relationship between settlement location and proximity to major road infrastructure. Findings reveal that wetland neighbourhoods are increasingly occupied by middle-income residents, indicating a transition from traditional low-income informal settlements to more hybrid development forms. Key drivers include housing affordability constraints, accessibility to transport corridors, availability of low-cost land, and weak development control mechanisms. Despite their accessibility, these neighbourhoods exhibit planning deficiencies such as irregular layouts, inadequate infrastructure, encroachment into drainage channels, and heightened flood vulnerability. The study concludes that wetland urbanization reflects structural housing and governance challenges and underscores the need for integrated, risk-sensitive planning approaches supported by geospatial technologies.

Abstract Scottish historiography often describes late medieval Scotland as experiencing socio-economic stagnation while at the same time witnessing a shift from feudal to post-feudal lordship. This paper reevaluates that interpretation through a case study of the Abbey of Arbroath’s estate management in northeast Scotland in the late 15 th and early 16 th centuries. Drawing on previously underused cartularies and leases, the study demonstrates that rising lordly demand for cash – particularly the need to meet papal financial requirements – triggered active estate management, increased leasing, and partial commercialisation. Contrary to the narrative of stagnation, rents and land values improved earlier than assumed, and rural commercialisation was underway in the 15 th century. The continued collection of labour and in-kind dues nevertheless shows the persistence of feudal economic structures, which were shaped and limited by lordly demand. This bottom-up, regional perspective calls for a revision of conventional assumptions, arguing that late medieval Scotland’s feudal economy was more dynamic, adaptive, and commercially engaged than previously recognised.