Participatory GIS Research Articles

A Reciprocal Triangulation Process For Identifying And Mapping Potential Land Use Conflict.

Land use in many areas is highly contested. An understanding of the nature of such conflicts, and of spatial variation in their intensity, is required to develop planning solutions. We present a novel process for attaining these outcomes which involves mapping of values and potential conflict between stakeholders determined using participatory GIS (PGIS) processes. Our starting point was an a priori identification of the values that were potentially in conflict. We produced quantitative and qualitative maps of each of the values that formed a basis for workshop discussion among small stakeholder groups. Each participant was asked to complete a questionnaire to determine their values and their attitudes to land use and to map the places that they would not be prepared to lose. Principal components analysis was used to identify the major independent axes in values and attitudes among all participants. We then used repeatable descriptive quantitative procedures to identify attitude groups. These analyses allowed us to identify potential conflicts between values that could be expressed in land use, spatial variation in attachment of groups and the intensity of potential conflict. In our test of the process in the Tarkine region of Tasmania, Australia, we found that land use conflict was multidimensional, involving incompatible recreational activities and incompatibility between nature conservation and economic production. Two-fifths of the area was shown to be not in contest, with considerable spatial variation in the intensity of conflict potential in the remainder. This latter variation could facilitate a process of land use compromise.

Participatory Mapping as an Approach to Identify Grazing Pressure in the Altay Mountains, Mongolia

Sustainable rangeland management is crucial for maintaining forage resources in pastoral systems, globally. However, pastoral regions are often remote and therefore data poor when it comes to resource monitoring. We tested participatory mapping as a means to rapidly assess rangeland use to identify areas with high grazing pressure. Participatory geographic information system data and herbaceous biomass production data were collected and georeferenced to establish a grazing pressure index for a summer pasture in the Mongolian Altay; simultaneously, a survey on herder perceptions and their recommended rangeland management measures was conducted. Areas with intense use, such as campsites and small and bovine ruminant grazing areas, corresponded with low biomass production and were found to be unsustainably grazed, likely prone to rangeland degradation. Participatory mapping was well received by herders and proved to be an effective method to appraise their herds’ impact on rangeland resources. The process incited discussion and awareness regarding not only spatial, but also temporal aspects of rangeland management. Participatory mapping is thus a valuable tool that should be incorporated into local management initiatives in order to quickly monitor rangeland use for creating feasible management plans.

Rewilding cultural landscape potentially puts both avian diversity and endemism at risk: A Tibetan Plateau case study

Ecological restoration is becoming a primary strategy to increase provisions of ecosystem services and reverse biodiversity losses. In cultural landscapes undergoing land use extensification, rewilding has been proposed as a viable approach to reverse biodiversity loss through reducing human impacts. The world's largest ecological restoration campaign is taking place on the eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) to combat grassland degradation and enhance the upper stream region's water retention capacity. However, little is known about whether the large-scale rewilding also benefits the unique bird assemblage of the eastern QTP. Our study aims to make science-based conservation recommendations for the Tibetan avifauna by detecting their diversity and endemism distribution patterns at the local scale. In the breeding seasons of 2014 and 2015, we carried out bird surveys and conducted a habitat mapping using three Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). We developed a comprehensive set of 2D and 3D habitat feature parameters from the high-resolution (10 cm level) UAV-derived images. Meanwhile, we employed the participatory GIS approach to acquire farm-scale human land-use data. Our results indicate that the distributions of avian diversity, endemism and abundance are not congruent across the eastern QTP, which calls for the conservation of different habitat types. Vertical and horizontal habitat heterogeneity maintain the local bird diversity with anthropogenic elements significantly enriching the overall bird abundance. Degraded pastures provided key habitats for two highly abundant endemic passerines—the White-rumped Snowfinch Onychostruthus taczanowskii and the Ground Tit Pseudopodoces humilis. At the landscape scale, historical human-nature interactions between Tibetan nomads and the alpine environment formed the landscape's patchy vegetation structure. Our results reveal that the Tibetan cultural landscape maintains the structural heterogeneity needed to achieve multiple bird conservation objectives on the eastern QTP. Restoring the cultural landscape to a ‘natural’ tall-grass or dense-shrubland state of high water-retention capacity may result in the loss of both high-abundance avian communities and endemic species diversity. Our empirical study also indicated that rewilding abandoned agricultural landscape will not necessarily lead to a desired conservation outcome, especially when the requirements of habitat specialists and endemics are not taken into account. Moreover, ecological restoration projects should evaluate the divergences between their ecosystem service and biodiversity objectives.

Integrating participatory GIS into spatial planning regulation: the case of Merauke District, Papua, Indonesia

In many cases, government institutions lack to consider community areas as a part of their traditional land use in spatial planning policy. The results of numerous investigations into participatory mapping have been insufficiently adopted by Spatial Planning Regulation (SPR). In Indonesia, Spatial Planning Regulation (Rencana Tata Ruang Wilayah / RTRW) is an instrument to guide sectors related to land uses both development and protection. Using a case study for the Merauke district of Papua province in Indonesia, we demonstrate how participatory mapping results can be integrated into SPR. To our knowledge, this is the first successful attempt to integrate important community areas into the regulation of district spatial planning. Participatory GIS (PGIS) was used to map important community areas. There are three phases to the process of combining PGIS with Spatial Planning Regulation. The first phase was to develop a shared vision between the communities and district government and commitment from both parties to accept the final mapping results for use in the further planning process. The second was to facilitate the community to conduct the participatory GIS process and the final phase was to integrate the important community areas into the spatial planning regulation at a scale of 1:50.000 by the RTRW of Merauke district. The total area adopted by the RTRW was about 69% of cultural preservation areas under protected areas. The rest of the important community areas merged into land use allocations within both categories of protected areas (22%) and development areas (9%). In this case, 91% of the community areas were secured from other land use purposes for agriculture, mining, forestry and infrastructure. The PGIS approach can be applied to other districts across Indonesia for mapping the community land use practices in Spatial Planning Regulation.

Vulnerability mapping in kelud volcano based on village information

Kelud Volcano is a basaltic andesitic stratovolcano, situated at 27 km to the east of Kediri, Indonesia. Historically, Kelud Volcano has erupted with return period of 9-75 years, had caused nearly 160,000 people living in Tulungagung, Blitar and Kediri District to be in high-risk areas. This study aims to map vulnerability towards lava flows in Kediri and Malang using detailed scale. There are four major variables, namely demography, asset, hazard, and land use variables. PGIS (Participatory Geographic Information System) is employed to collect data, while ancillary data is derived from statistics information, interpretation of high resolution satellite imagery and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Data were obtained from field checks and some from high resolution satellite imagery and UAVs. The output of this research is village-based vulnerability information that becomes a valuable input for local stakeholders to improve local preparedness in areas prone to improved disaster resilience. The results indicated that the highest vulnerability to lava flood disaster in Kelud Volcano is owned by Kandangan Hamlet, Pandean Hamlet and Kacangan Hamlet, because these two hamlets are in the dominant high vulnerability position of 3 out of 4 scenarios (economic, social and equal).

The Landscape Inventory of Galicia (NW Spain): GIS-web and public participation for landscape planning

The European Landscape Convention recognises the importance of public participation for landscape planning in order to capture local knowledge, sensitive issues and conflicts, boost exchanges of information and democratise the process. However, traditional public participation methods are frequently restricted to public exposure at the final stage of the planning process. New public participation movements call for a greater role for the people at all stages. The growing development of ICT and geospatial information technologies provides new means of improving the participation process. This paper describes the public participation procedure and the participation geographic information system used to develop the Landscape Inventory of Galicia, whose results were used for the characterisation of landscape types, the delimitation of special interest areas from the locations identified by citizens and the definition of special attention areas from the degraded areas located by population.

Five classes of geospatial data and the barriers to using them

AbstractGeospatial technologies implemented through the World Wide Web (Geoweb) have improved steadily over the last decade. This Geoweb has the potential to allow citizens to collect and use geospatial data in an effort to influence urban planning in a bottom‐up manner—a stark departure from traditional top‐down public consultation in urban planning. This article reviews five classes of geospatial data available to citizens trying to influence urban planning.These classes have been reviewed in the academic literature before, but not at the same time and not with respect to urban planning. Looking at them together allows for examination of the interconnection as well as the boundaries between them. This paper establishes an understanding of these Geoweb data classes and examines the main barriers citizens face when trying to use geospatial data—with a focus on technological and financial barriers. Despite improvements in the Geoweb that help in reducing these barriers, preliminary evidence suggests that the voices of citizens are still not being fully heard in urban planning.This article tells the story of a Geoweb project by Paths for People, a biking and walking advocacy group in Edmonton, Canada. Paths for People initiated a Public Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) project to inform the development of biking infrastructure in Edmonton, but this was largely ignored by city council, which adopted a top‐down cycling plan. This paper highlights the large gap between the promises of the Geoweb, the current practice of urban planning, and grassroots capabilities of this form of community engagement.

FLOOD VULNERABILITY REDUCTION, USING A PARTIAL PARTICIPATORY GIS APPROACH. A STUDY CASE IN BAJA CALIFORNIA SUR, MEXICO.

Abstract. A partial participatory GIS approach was implemented in a community in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico to reduce vulnerability of floods caused by cyclones. A workshop was held to locate areas susceptible to floods, and understand measures already taken by the community as well as actions proposed towards vulnerability reduction. We used printed high-resolution satellite images and generative tools to gather data of workshops attendees. Then all information was transferred into a GIS. In addition, we conducted a survey to collect socioeconomic and adaptation data on 490 households (each one identified and spatially located). We analyzed through “chi square” and “gamma tests” the relationship between survey data and houses affected by floods. The map generated was reviewed by risk management experts and used as an input for map validation/refinement from the workshop. The final map was returned to the community and used as an instrument for communication, negotiation, risk management and vulnerability reduction, making spatially explicit areas affected by floods and proposed measures to reduce vulnerability. Despite not finding a statistical (co-relation) between the participants education and socio-economic levels or preparedness for risk and the affectations (impacts) by floods. The majority of people showed to be used to local knowledge preventive measures in their household under a cyclone alert and answered to feel prepared to a cyclone arrival. This cyclone awareness could be explained since in this community 40 % of the people had at least 12 years of education. Which is relatively high for a developing country as Mexico where the average of years of study is 9.1. Besides 87 % of the people get a medium to high value in a socioeconomic index created in this study.

Participatory GIS as a Tool for Stakeholder Engagement in Building Resilience to Sea Level Rise: A Demonstration Project

AbstractThis article describes a participatory geographical information system (PGIS) demonstration project used as part of the stakeholder engagement efforts undertaken by the Citizen Engagement Working Group of the Hampton Roads Sea Level Rise Preparedness and Resilience Intergovernmental Planning Pilot Project. The PGIS demonstration project was conducted in the Little Creek/Pretty Lake case study area in the Hampton Roads region of southeastern coastal Virginia. PGIS served as a deliberative and participatory mechanism to obtain local knowledge from residents about the location of valued assets within the community and locations challenged by increased flooding and sea level rise. The PGIS application, using the weTable tool, was found to be useful for soliciting and documenting local knowledge, such as by highlighting community assets and identifying community challenges. It was also found to be useful for facilitating community-wide discussion, visualizing the problem, and understanding the severity of sea level rise and flooding. The PGIS demonstration project showed how participatory mapping can directly engage residents in creating sociospatial data, build knowledge, and foster learning and deliberation in a complex issue such as resilience to flooding and sea level rise.

Electrification as development for sustainable livelihoods at Mt. Kasigau, Kenya

Kenya’s Vision 2030 is expanding the electric grid as a national development initiative. We examine its introduction since 2009 to three rural villages at Mt. Kasigau, using participatory GIS (PGIS) to map the infrastructural development process and semi-structured interviews to gain local perspectives on community and household-level effects. The study mapped eight transformers, 164 connections and 11,607 m of power lines, servicing 18% of the settled land area and 38–71% of village populations. Respondents highlight distinctions among availability, accessibility, and reliability for homes and in their communities but emphasize positive contributions to diverse capabilities and local livelihoods from this intervention.

Spatial analysis for site selection in marine aquaculture: An ecosystem approach applied to Baía Sul, Santa Catarina, Brazil

The aim of this research was to propose and evaluate a methodological approach to integration and spatial data analysis in order to generate information towards a participatory site selection for bivalve marine aquaculture in the Baía Sul, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil. For this purpose, the Baía Sul was investigated considering an ecosystem approach for aquaculture leading to an assessment of its potential for marine aquaculture. The planning of the aquaculture parks was made through a participatory process to incorporate both environmental carrying capacity and social carrying capacity. Experts and modellers developed a GIS model to assess the potential for marine aquaculture in Baía Sul. Continuous (unclassified) maps were used to provide spatial information about the variation of the potential for marine aquaculture in the Baía Sul. The maps were used to plan 53 aquaculture parks over the Baía Sul. The site selection of the parks was made in six public hearings attended by 403 stakeholders from 38 institutions representing different sectors with diverse interests in coastal zone. The results showed that although the Baía Sul is suitable for the growth of bivalve molluscs, some hydrodynamic characteristics and the influence of urbanization constitute a sanitary risk for the activity. Experts, modellers and stakeholders had a different perception about the importance of criteria in the aquaculture parks site selection. While the experts and modellers considered the environmental criteria as the most important aspect to locate the aquaculture parks, the stakeholders took into account mainly the logistics. The final result of the aquaculture parks location, approved by the Brazilian Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture (MPA), adopted the site selection by the stakeholders, providing aquaculture parks in areas with sanitary risk for the bivalve cultivation. The main advantage of the adopted assessment strategy was to identify the divergence between experts, modellers and the stakeholders and the distance that still exist between scientist and decision makers in Brazil. Statement of relevanceThis is the first article about a participatory GIS for aquaculture in Brazil. The method was developed to be according to Ecological Approach to Aquaculture. The results highlight the importance of the participatory GIS in suitability study and site selection because the decision making process is different over the view of researchers, technicians and other social stakeholders.

Rethinking PGIS: Participatory or (post)political GIS?

Participatory GIS (PGIS) emerged from the contentious GIS debates of the 1990s as a means of political intervention in issues of social and environmental justice. PGIS has since matured into a distinct subfield in which GIS is used to enhance the political engagement of historically marginalized people and to shape political outcomes through mapping. However, this has proven to be difficult work. We suggest that this is because PGIS, particularly in its community development incarnations, though well-intentioned in endeavoring to enhance the voices of the excluded, is inherently limited because it primarily aims to enhance the inclusion and participation of the historically marginalized by working within established frameworks of institutionalized governance in particular places. This, we suggest, has left this mode of PGIS ill-equipped to truly challenge the political-economic structures responsible for (re)producing the very conditions of socio-economic inequality it strives to ameliorate. As a result, we argue that PGIS has become de-politicized, operating within, rather than disrupting, existing spheres of political-economic power. Moving forward, we suggest that PGIS is in need of being retheorized by engaging with the emergent post-politics literature and related areas of critical social and political theory. We argue that by adopting a more radical conception of democracy, justice, and ‘the political’, PGIS praxis can be recentered around disruption rather than participation and, ultimately, brought closer to its self-proclaimed goal of supporting progressive change for the historically marginalized.

Tracing Toxic Legacies: GIS and the Dispersed Violence of Agent Orange

This article will discuss the U.S. military’s spraying of toxic defoliants over Vietnam from 1961 to 1971. It will first frame these attacks’ diffuse material and cultural legacies through the concept of dispersed violence. By incorporating multiple spatiotemporal scales that encompass a range of forces, this notion seeks to recognize both the long-term consequences of war and the challenges of grasping these impacts decades later. This article will then address geographic information systems (GIS) and public participatory geographic information systems (PPGIS), and examine how these technologies can newly register the tolls of Agent Orange and other herbicides. It will consider the potentialities and limitations of these visualizations, as well as analyze some extant examples. Ultimately, it will argue that resituating the violence of Agent Orange through GIS can mark one significant step towards reconceiving the toxic residues of remote warfare.

Managing customary land conflicts and demarcations using mobile applications tools: a case study of Zambia

Zambia has witnessed domestic and international customary land boundary conflicts due to improper land demarcation mechanism and partial documentation of customary land parcels. In this study we recommend utilisation and integration of Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools such as the Participatory Geographical Information System (PGIS) and the mobile application to be used in the implementation of the customary land management system. This will enable families and community groups to properly demarcate customary land boundaries thereby reducing land conflicts and providing security of tenure for customary land.

Managing customary land conflicts and demarcations using mobile applications tools: a case study of Zambia

Zambia has witnessed domestic and international customary land boundary conflicts due to improper land demarcation mechanism and partial documentation of customary land parcels. In this study we recommend utilisation and integration of Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools such as the Participatory Geographical Information System (PGIS) and the mobile application to be used in the implementation of the customary land management system. This will enable families and community groups to properly demarcate customary land boundaries thereby reducing land conflicts and providing security of tenure for customary land.

Participatory GIS in design of the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology campus web map and spatial analysis of campus area quality

Public participation geographic information system (GIS) and participatory mapping data collection methods are means that enhance capacity in generating, managing, and communicating spatial information in various fields ranging from local planning to environmental management. In this study these methods have been used in two ways. The first one, to gather information on the additional functionality of campus web map expected by its potential users, i.e. students, staff and visitors, through web based survey. The second, to collect geographically referenced information on campus areas that are liked and disliked in a geo-survey carried out with ArcGIS Online GeoForm Application. The results of the first survey were used to map facilities such as: bicycle infrastructure, building entrances, wheelchair accessible infrastructure and benches. The results of the second one, to analyse the most and the least attractive parts of the campus with heat and hot spot analyses in GIS. In addition, the answers have been studied with regard to the visual and functional aspects of campus area raised in the survey. The thematic layers developed in the results of field mapping and geoprocessing of geosurvey data were included in the campus web map project. The paper describes the applied methodology of data collection, processing, analysis, interpretation and geovisualisation.

Engaging Community and Spatial Humanities for Postindustrial Heritage: The Keweenaw Time Traveler

Engaging Community and Spatial Humanities for Postindustrial Heritage:The Keweenaw Time Traveler Sarah Fayen Scarlett (bio), Don Lafreniere (bio), Daniel J. Trepal (bio), John D. M. Arnold (bio), and Robert Pastel (bio) The Keweenaw Time Traveler www.keweenawhistory.com The Keweenaw Time Traveler is an interactive, online historical atlas that creates a comprehensive spatial representation of the social and built environments of one of the country's first and largest extractive landscapes. Launched to the public in the summer of 2017, it combines deep mapping with digital public humanities to create a mutually beneficial online tool for researchers and community stakeholders alike. On Michigan's southern shore of Lake Superior, the Keweenaw Peninsula has an abundant built heritage that includes abandoned mine shaft buildings, former company towns, and ethnic community halls. Such sites recall the region's copper mining industry, active between 1860 and 1950, and demonstrate to tourists and residents alike the need to address the social and environmental impacts of deindustrialization. Our interdisciplinary team of researchers at Michigan Technological University is building the Keweenaw Time Traveler to empower citizens, municipal officials, and tourists, as well as academic researchers, to gain and share knowledge about this region's changing built and social environments, and to help a postindustrial community leverage its own past toward a healthier, more prosperous future. The Keweenaw Time Traveler project combines approaches from the spatial humanities, public history, and American studies. It answers the call of scholars such as David Bodenhamer to leverage the power of geospatial technologies and information to investigate the contingent and discursive relationships between people through space and time that drive American studies scholarship today.1 The project builds on foundational work in digital spatial humanities and facilitates what Anne Kelly Knowles has called "inductive visualization," [End Page 619] which promotes the discovery and interpretation of new spatial relationships.2 These relationships, analyzed using GIS technologies and methods, can drive critical inquiry about immigration, technological change, ethnic and class identities, environmental degradation, and more.3 Moreover, the Keweenaw Time Traveler's community-engaged process of development promotes access, inclusivity, and empowerment for diverse heritage constituencies.4 Following Sheila Brennan's call for public humanities projects to foster grassroots collaboration, the Keweenaw Time Traveler's platform and in situ public programming encourage a reflexive discussion about the impacts of deindustrialization and about the opportunities that the rich heritage landscape offers visitors and residents alike.5 To integrate contemporary humanities research with community-engaged practice, this project uses the concept of deep mapping, which is defined by five core principles. The map must be flexible, inviting exploration; open to accepting new sources or data; user-centric, supporting different pathways or views; and immersive, evoking experiences. The final principle, path-traceable, or supporting spatial storytelling, will be the focus of later platform developments.6 To build a deep map, the foundation of the Keweenaw Time Traveler is hundreds of georeferenced and digitized historical maps whose individual buildings and landscape features are represented in a spatiotemporal geodata-base.7 The maps and data reveal details about the region's built environments including the location, size, construction material, ownership, occupants, and civic address of over 125,000 residential, commercial, civic, and industrial structures over seventy years. The back end of this deep map is a historical spatial data infrastructure that allows for the rapid geolocation and relational linking of historical records to facilitate longitudinal research.8 Researchers have just begun using the Keweenaw Time Traveler to investigate connections between the region's built environment and children's health, to explore the role of neighborhood development in changing social power, and to model how urban watersheds and the built environment change over time.9 Public participatory initiatives at the core of this deep map facilitate the co-production of knowledge and dialogue that are vital to our public humanities goals. Three "Citizen Historian" apps offer a game-like setting where users transcribe handwritten notations on maps, categorize buildings by use, and identify building materials by matching colors. These apps were developed using open design charrettes in the winter of 2017, and draw on research in crowd-sourced heritage projects and public participatory GIS practices.10 Users have...

Participatory Mapping in Browns Canyon National Monument, Colorado (USA)

Natural resource managers need up-to-date information about how people interact with public lands and the meanings these places hold for use in planning and decision-making. This case study explains the use of public participatory Geographic Information System (GIS) to generate and analyze spatial patterns of the uses and values people hold for the Browns Canyon National Monument in Colorado. Participants drew on maps and answered questions at both live community meetings and online sessions to develop a series of maps showing detailed responses to different types of resource uses and landscape values. Results can be disaggregated by interaction types, different meaningful values, respondent characteristics, seasonality, or frequency of visit. The study was a test for the Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service, who jointly manage the monument as they prepare their land management plan. If the information generated is as helpful throughout the entire planning process as initial responses seem, this protocol could become a component of the Bureau’s planning tool kit.

Transforming Pervasive into Collaborative: Engaging Youth as Leaders with GIS through a Framework that Integrates Technologies, Storytelling, and Action

This paper presents the methods and preliminary results gained in geographic information systems (GIS)-based participatory activities designed to engage youth in urban planning. We describe our engagement framework that integrates such pervasive IT tools as GIS, online serious games, agent-based modeling, and mobile participatory GIS into engagement strategies that tap into what we see as the storytelling capabilities of these tools. We show how these methods help citizens, in our case youth, assume leadership roles and take positive, tangible actions in their communities. This paper summarizes the elements of our framework and the initial results of a program called “Community Growers” that we created between our Iowa State University research team and a chapter of the Boys & Girls Club of Central Iowa. Participants included middle school-age youth from three resource-vulnerable neighborhoods in Des Moines, the capital city of Iowa, USA. We conclude the paper with a discussion and further research directions.

Rural restructuring at village level under rapid urbanization in metropolitan suburbs of China and its implications for innovations in land use policy

Currently, the functions of rural territories in metropolitan suburbs have been gradually evolved under rapid urbanization since the turn of the new millennium. Meanwhile, the socio-economic morphology and spatial pattern in the rural areas are undergoing dramatic restructuring. This paper takes the Huangshandian village in the suburb of Beijing as a case study area to carry out an empirical study on the process of rural restructuring by adopting the method of participatory rural assessment (PRA) and GIS technology. The results show that since 2000, the Huangshandian village has experienced different industrial transformations from traditional agriculture to the industries of primary processing and eco-tourism. The function of traditional agricultural production is declining gradually, and the industrial production, ecological culture and other multi-functional value of the rural territory have successively appeared. With the evolution and restructuring of socio-economic morphology, there are significant changes in the quantity, structure, and pattern of rural living, production and ecological space accordingly. The mutually reinforced and restrictive relationships among economic restructuring, spatial restructuring, and social restructuring have jointly driven the systematic development of the “natural-ecological-economic-social” systems and the comprehensive promotion of the “production-living-ecology-culture” functions. Based on the analysis of the process of rural restructuring of the Huangshandian village in the aspects of economic restructuring, spatial restructuring, and social restructuring, this paper puts forward some suggestions on land use policy and institutional innovations aiming at optimally allocating the land resources and promoting the rural restructuring in metropolitan suburbs, including accelerating the institutional framework design of rural land transfer, exploring the tourism land management system adapting to the new pattern of rural economy and pushing forward the re-use mechanism of abandoned industrial and mining land.