Public Land Use Research Articles

Assessing impacts of PPGIS on urban land use planning: evidence from Finland and Poland

ABSTRACT Knowledge on when, where and how Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) influence planning decisions has been spotty and incomplete. To fill the gap, we assessed the influence of public land use preferences, obtained through PPGIS, on selected land use planning cases in Finland and Poland. The selected cases ranged in scale from a neighbourhood to an entire city and involved two types of online PPGIS tools: an interactive map-based questionnaire and a map-based discussion platform. The assessment was based on a qualitative framework organizing potential drivers of the planning process into convening, process and outcome aspects. The assessments results show high number and diversity of participants, the use of PPGIS in the beginning of the planning process, and the quality of PPGIS data representing public land use preferences may influence the content of planning documents. Conversely, a mismatch between plan scope and citizen concerns, legal framework constraints, lack of coordination between overlapping participatory and decision-making processes, and low representativeness of PPGIS data diminish the influence of PPGIS on planning decisions.

Conservation Rights-of-Way on Public Lands

The Biden–Harris Administration’s ambitious America the Beautiful Campaign to protect thirty percent of the United States’ lands and waters by 2030 will require a comprehensive inventory of conservation tools. This Article contributes to that inventory by identifying and evaluating a novel use of the authority of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to issue rights-of-way under Title V of the Federal Land Management & Policy Act (FLPMA) over the vast public lands managed by the agency, which account for roughly ten percent of the surface area of the United States. It contends that the BLM could issue a “conservation right-of-way” to a state, tribe, local government, or private party seeking to restore and protect ecological systems. Creating private rights to conservation in appropriate circumstances could address persistent asymmetries between active use of public lands — which tends to occur through private rights — and conservation use of public lands — which tends to occur through public policy. The BLM could plausibly deploy conservation rights-of-way in an array of circumstances, for example, to authorize the construction and maintenance of mitigation banks for wetlands or wildlife habitat or to monitor and maintain wildlife corridors. Conservation rights-of-way could be small in scale, nuanced and context dependent, and they could be issued in a distributed fashion at BLM field offices throughout the United States. These features suggest that conservation rights-of-way could serve as an important supplement to other conservation tools.

Medidas de Acessibilidade a Oportunidades em Estudos Urbanos

Este estudo tem como objetivo identificar as abordagens de mensuração da acessibilidade, seus indicadores e principais temas de aplicação nos sistemas de uso do solo e transportes. Por meio de método híbrido de revisão sistemática da literatura e análise bibliométrica de redes de acoplamento bibliográfico, foram selecionadas 54 publicações e identificados 7 temas de aplicações (transporte público, sistemas de transporte, planejamento urbano, uso do solo, ambiente construído, análises econômicas e novas tecnologias). Verificou-se a versatilidade das medidas de acessibilidade em estudos urbanos e observou-se maior oportunidade de contribuição científica em temas emergentes relacionados a novas tecnologias e suas implicações no planejamento urbano e de transportes.

Distribución e indicadores de cobertura y accesibilidad del espacio público en Manizales, Colombia

La cantidad de espacios públicos urbanos ha sido valorada de acuerdo con estándares internacionales establecidos como metas para las ciudades. En el contexto colombiano las investigaciones sobre indicadores de calidad del espacio público a escala de barrio no son comunes por razones que incluyen la falta de datos detallados. Este artículo presenta una valoración cuantitativa del espacio público basada en un análisis espacial intraurbano, mediante el uso de un sistema de información geográfica según cuatro variables: espacios públicos, zonas verdes, árboles urbanos y habitantes. El cumplimiento de indicadores se entorpece cuando el ordenamiento territorial municipal no utiliza instrumentos de gestión urbana para proveer, ordenar, diseñar, construir y mantener los espacios públicos. Asimismo, su gestión se dificulta cuando la planificación no corresponde con la distribución poblacional y las nuevas densidades según cambios de los parámetros de ocupación y aprovechamiento, usos o incremento de habitantes; incluso cuando hay nuevos usuarios, necesidades y actividades en el espacio público. En consecuencia, los procesos de planeación emprendidos no logran superar el déficit de espacios públicos ni mejorar la calidad de vida urbana, y persisten desigualdades ambientales en barrios con cobertura mínima o sin cobertura.

Impact of income on urban commute across major cities in US

Commuting could be costly, while acceptable costs vary across populations. This way, it might be easier for high-income commuters to accept a longer-distance commute having more flexibility in transportation choices and costs. Previous researches provided a statistical description of the gap in the commuting distance in different groups and modelled transportation choices based socioeco-nomic characteristics, but lacks experiments in measuring the capability of distance in discouraging commuting in different income groups. This paper quantifies the heterogeneity of distance’s sensitivity on urban commuting networks by modelling flow volume among different income groups. We analyze the gravity models of the commute flows in 12 major US cities and describe the inconsistency in high-income and low-income workers’ commute behavior. By comparing coefficients in the best fit models, we find that commute decay with distance in 11 out of 12 cities is significantly slower for high-income groups than for low-income groups. Results could help urban planners and transportation engineers to assess equitability in planning public transit and land use.

Electric pulse treatment of trees as an environmentally friendly mechanism for protection of orchards

This article explains the main diseases of horticultural trees and almonds, which are grown in mountainous and hilly areas. At present, the protection of the environment, especially land and water resources from the effects of various chemical toxins are one of the main problems of world civilization. During the global financial and economic crisis, our country is currently using high-quality land resources, introducing advanced scientific and technical agricultural technologies and growing low-quality crops. Some of the important problems are management and control of land use, improvement of land relations and efficient use of public lands in general. For the cultivation of almond fruit products should use the method of electric pulse processing. Diseases of nematodes attach and settle on the root system of almonds. In the roots of the almond tree, nematodes form swells and bumps, feeding the young seedlings with mineral nutrients and eventually destroying the seedlings. We propose an electric pulse treatment method against nematode diseases of almond roots and obtain the results of electrotechnical experiments. To get the results of this experiment faster, we can clearly see the results of the experiment in the scientific laboratory of the Institute of Plant Protection in the data obtained using an electron microscope when processing the root stems of almond trees infested with nematodes. The use of an electrical impulse device in the cultivation of almond trees and in the fight against nematode diseases arising from its roots has been considered and the results of preliminary studies have been presented.

The Moral Hazard of Lax FCC Land Use Oversight for Advanced Network Infrastructure

This paper discusses issues that arise when service providers place network equipment on publicly owned lands. Based on land use policy at the FCC, this paper theorizes that the use of public lands for 5G network development will create a moral hazard, as service providers may be tempted to take risks in the way they use public lands. Per economic theory the firm could behave recklessly when knowing that the costs will be borne by someone else – in this case local citizens. This is an example of the moral hazard problem in economics.

Stale Real Estate Covenants

Since the 1970s, covenants running with the land have tethered a large majority of the new housing units produced in the United States. These private restraints usually continue for generations, until a majority or super-majority of covenant beneficiaries affirmatively vote to amend or terminate them. Covenants interact with public land use controls, particularly zoning ordinances. Zoning politics tends to freeze land uses in urban America, particularly in existing neighborhoods of single-family homes. This article investigates to what extent covenants exacerbate the zoning freeze. It provides a history of the use of private covenants, and suggests how drafters, judges, and legislators might address the risk that covenants will become obsolete.

Who Has the Right-of-Way?: Negotiating Environmental and Economic Impacts of Off-Highway Vehicle Use in Eastern Kentucky

Abstract Outdoor recreation entails a careful balance between environmental impact and economic impact, particularly in rural Appalachian transitional economies. Outdoor recreation annually brings millions of dollars into rural areas in Central Appalachia by utilizing the natural features of the region for recreation. However, uneven development has fomented long-standing environmental injustices as extraction industries utilize unparalleled control over the natural environment and its use. In this article, the researchers examine Kentucky off-highway vehicle (OHV) use patterns as they pertain to the environment alongside their generalized household economic expenditures per trip. Off-highway vehicle users represent a legitimate claim to public land use, and thus findings of this article reinforce the need for caution in balancing the economic impacts and environmental costs of outdoor recreation, including OHV use.

Acoustic Footprint of Snowmobile Noise and Natural Quiet Refugia in an Alaskan Wilderness

ABSTRACT: Snowmobiling in Congressionally designated Wilderness (CW) in Alaska is a contentious issue in the arena of appropriate use of public lands. The 1980 Alaska National Interests Lands Conservation Act allows snowmobiling in CW for traditional activities. Conversely, the 1964 Wilderness Act prohibits motor vehicles in CW to preserve its naturalness and opportunities for solitude. These conflicting mandates challenge the ability of managers to preserve CW character. The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge (KENWR) manages 534,300 ha of CW, where 253,200 ha are open to snowmobiling. Snowmobile noise degrades CW character whereas natural quiet is indicative of naturalness and offers opportunities for solitude. We determined the acoustic footprint of snowmobile noise and areas of natural quiet refugia in CW by recording the soundscape at 27 locations inside, and 37 locations outside, KENWR CW. We calculated soundscape power (normalized watts/kHz) from 59,598 sound recordings and generated spatially explicit ...

Outdoor Recreation at the Wildland–Urban Interface: Examining Human Activity Patterns and Compliance with Dog Management Policies

Recreational use of public land is high and rising. Thus, it is critical to understand the dynamics of land use at the wildland–urban interface so managers can simultaneously meet varying human needs while mitigating environmental impacts caused by recreationists and their canine companions. Using motion-activated camera surveys along official trails near the urban edge of Boulder, Colorado, we quantified daily patterns and the relative frequency of human recreational activities, with particular focus on activities involving domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) and human compliance with dog regulations. We also tested hypotheses regarding potential predictors of human activity as well as predictors of human accompaniment by dogs, both on-leash and off, and user compliance with leash laws. Pedestrians used the trail system most frequently, followed by dog-walkers, mountain bikers, and recreationists of other types, with activity peaking in the mornings and evenings. Use of open space lands was primarily, and positively, predicted by the presence of scenic vistas or trails on which users could be accompanied by their dogs. Compliance with dog regulations depended on the type of policy imposed, with stricter and more consistent restrictions resulting in fewer violations. This study suggests that to maximize compliance with leash laws, consistent policies may be more effective than temporally varying leash laws. Additionally, it may be beneficial to increase enforcement at peak times for all trails, and at all times on trails where violations are more likely, such as those with seasonal leash laws.Annie Kellner, Scott Carver, Ashley Gramza, Jesse S. Lewis, Sue VandeWoude, and Kevin R. Crooks. 2017. “Outdoor Recreation at the Wildland–Urban Interface: Examining Human Activity Patterns and Compliance with Dog Management Policies.” Natural Areas Journal 37(4):515-529.

Tourism, transport, and land use: a dynamic impact assessment for Kaohsiung’s Asia New Bay Area

ABSTRACT This paper proposes a hybrid methodology for analysing the causal relations between public transportation development, tourism and land use by combining System Dynamics (SD) with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and agent-based modelling (ABM). It is applied to illustrate the quantitative and spatial effect of the two phases Light Rail Transit (LRT) development in Asia New Bay Area, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. This paper also furthers the application of the ABM spatial information as interactive variables in the stocks-flow model. The simulation results support that development policies of LRT are significant to the future tourism in Asia New Bay Area, while the under debate second phase of LRT is estimated to raise the number of visitors in long term by alleviating the deteriorating road traffic congestion. This policy-oriented simulation can serve as a reference to the decision-makers towards the future management of LRT.

Electrotechnological treatment against diseases found in almond trees grown in arid lands

This article explains the main diseases of horticulture trees and almonds, grown on the slopes of the hills. Currently, the protection of the environment, especially the protection of land and water resources from the effects of various toxic substances, is one of the main problems of world civilization. During the financial and economic crisis in the world, the Republic of our country is currently using high-quality land resources, introducing advanced scientific and technical agricultural technologies, producing low-quality and high-quality crops. One of the important problems. Management and control of the use of the land Fund, improvement of land relations, and effective use of public land in General. Application of electrical techniques for growing almonds, pistachios, nuts, and fruit-bearing products in the foothills. The root system of almonds clings to fungal diseases, that is. nematodes. When nematodes swell and become inflamed in the passages of tubers, they destroy the tree, especially young seedlings. We offer electrotechnical treatment for the treatment of nematode diseases of almond roots and get the results of electrotechnical experiments. To get the results of this experiment faster, we get the results by comparing photon measurements with the remote infrared spectrum. The use of electrical techniques for growing almond trees and fighting nematode diseases caused by its roots is considered, and the results of preliminary research are presented. It also provides a brief overview of the use and control of photogeometric methods.

An Assessment of the Potential to Produce Commercially Valuable Lipids on Highway Right-of-Way Land Areas Located Within the Southeastern United States

Right-of-way (ROW) land areas are required for all publicly owned transportation roadways representing over 40 million acres within the US alone. These relatively unused land assets could support potential farming land for plants and algae that contain high levels of lipids that could be used in the energy industry as an alternative fuel source. This process would offer many benefits including more efficient use of public land, eliminating mowing maintenance, increasing the bioenergy use in the US, providing visually appealing viewscapes, and helping to naturally reduce localized carbon dioxide. This paper analyzed the feasibility and potential optimization strategies of using this concept in the South-Eastern United States by scaling and comparing many of the benefits and risks associated with the selected lipid sources (soybeans, flax, sunflowers, Tung trees, Chinese tallow tree, and microalgae). Based on this assessment, the most attractive option appears to be growing flax in the winter and sunflowers in the summer with Tung Trees grown year-round as an alternative option. This would maximize lipids output while preserving and enhancing right-of-way land areas.

Outdoor Programs for Veterans: Public Land Policies and Practices to Support Therapeutic Opportunities

Abstract Many veterans returning from military deployment experience stress- or trauma-related symptoms that make reintegration with civilian society difficult. Nature exposure and outdoor recreation can be important parts of alternative and complementary approaches to reduce symptoms and build on veterans’ pre-existing strengths. Multiple outdoor programs now exist for veterans; many of these occur on federal public lands and present a variety of needs, opportunities, and challenges. This paper relies on interviews (n = 36) with public land managers, program providers and participants, health professionals, and veterans to enhance understanding about outdoor programs for veterans (OPVs). We develop a typology of OPVs to help land managers understand current and potential programs, and then describe programs’ varying dimensions. We examine opportunities and challenges for land managers in their interactions with OPVs. Results inform policymakers and public officials interested in developing more effective institutional partnerships and programs that engage and serve veterans and their communities. Study Implications: With growing scientific evidence of the benefits of nature-based therapy, nature exposure, and outdoor recreation for veterans, programming for veterans on public lands has proliferated. Public land-management agencies vary in the extent to which they have systematically organized to provide opportunities for veterans, developed partnerships to support veterans’ health, and explicitly acknowledged agency roles in serving veterans. We describe seven types of outdoor programs for veterans (OPVs) that currently serve this population: supported outdoor activity; guided outdoor activity; retreat; outdoor job training; stewardship or service; horticulture, farming or gardening; and animal-assisted therapy. Each OPV type has different needs for infrastructure, outdoor spaces, and administrative or programmatic engagement. OPVs occurring on public lands typically involve one or more partner organizations, such as commercial outfitters and guides, health providers, veterans’ associations, foundations, corporations, and research institutions. There is potential for public land-management agencies to expand their role as institutional leaders in support of veterans’ health by facilitating the use of public lands as therapeutic landscapes. By enhancing new and existing relations with OPV providers, health providers, and other government agencies, public land agencies could expand benefits to veterans and spur broader societal benefits.

The Changing Dynamic of Latinx Outdoor Recreation on National and State Public Lands

The Latinx population is the largest growing minority population in the United States and is estimated to comprise 28% of the U.S. population by 2050. This continued growth is no longer due to foreign-born immigration, which accounted for 34% of all Latinx people in 2015, but rather to those born in the U.S., who comprised 66% of all Latinxs that year. Therefore, the current and future Latinx population consists of second-, third-, and fourth-generation Americans who report being fluent in English and Spanish, have higher levels of education, and earn higher incomes. As the Latinx population becomes larger and more complex, their outdoor recreation preferences and perceptions are also changing. Our survey findings reveal three significant ways that this is happening. First, Latinxs are expanding their recreation activities beyond day-use activities to engage in overnight backpacking and camping—activities that enable participants to explore a broader array of forests and natural resources. Second, despite earlier research that found significant gaps in environmental awareness among “Hispanics,” recent polling data and this study show that today’s Latinxs overwhelmingly support protecting public lands. Third, while prior research identified overt racial discrimination as a significant barrier to public land use, our findings show that the Latinx population feels welcome on federal and state public lands. Staff and other visitors are generally perceived to be friendly, which suggests a shift in a Latinx sense of belonging when visiting national forests and parks. Nonetheless, there continue to be institutional barriers and low visitation rates to public lands amongst racial and ethnic minorities. Future research on Latinx outdoor recreation on public lands could examine how new generations draw meaning from their outdoor experiences and how they are combining traditional cultural traits with more diverse and active outdoor recreation activities. Subscribe to JPRA

Effectively Managing Connected Mobility Marketplaces

As new innovations in mobility have entered the marketplace, local government leaders have struggled to adapt their regulatory framework to adequately address new challenges or the needs of the consumers of these new services. The good news is that the technology driving this rapid change also provides the means for regulating it: real-time data. It is the responsibility of cities to establish rules and incentives that ensure proper behavior on the part of mobility providers while steering service delivery towards creating better public outcomes. Cities must use the levers at their disposal to ensure an equitable mobility marketplace and utilize real-time data sharing to enforce compliance. These include investing in and leveraging physical and digital infrastructure, regulating and licensing business conducted in public space, establishing and enforcing rules around public safety, rethinking zoning and land use planning to be transit-oriented, and regulating the digital realm to protect data integrity.

ACCESS: An agent-based model to explore job accessibility inequalities

This paper presents ACCESS, an agent-based model for exploring job accessibility inequalities among different social groups. ACCESS allows for investigation on the impact of public transport and land use policies on the residential location of the working population and their accessibility to job opportunities. ACCESS can be adapted to different realities, allowing to represent societies with diverse socioeconomic disparities. A utility function composed of job accessibility and neighborhood status is maximized by agents during the residential location choice process. The model outputs include Lorenz curves considering the accessibility dimension, as well as Gini metrics to support the analysis of interventions impacts on accessibility inequalities. An empirical case study is performed on the municipality of Sao Paulo, which is characterized by high levels of inequality. Five experiments were simulated considering three different socio-occupational groups. The first experiment includes (i) new public mass rail transport lines, and the other four experiments consider the new transport infrastructure from the first experiment and add (ii) new social housing location strategies; (iii) new job locations; (iv) new jobs and different social housing supplies and location strategies; and (v) provision of social housing based on a government housing program. The results show that ACCESS allowed the residential location of different social status groups to be depicted with a high correlation to the observed situation. Regarding the case study, the results indicate that only having interventions on transport system is insufficient to provide a significant change in terms of inequality. Better results that impact inequality are reached with public mass rail transport interventions associated with land use policies with different social housing and job location programs.

Assessments on the impact of high-resolution-sensor pixel sizes for common agricultural policy and smart farming services in European regions

High-resolution (5–50 m) remote sensing satellite sensors provide a reliable, free and open data infrastructure for public and private agriculture and land use services. The further market penetration of these services critically depends on the fraction of agricultural fields and area that the services can cover. EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and smart farming services require a minimum of spectrally pure measurements per agricultural field. The impact of pixel size on the coverage of agriculture is studied in this paper considering present free and open optical sensors (Sentinel-2 and LANDSAT). It further studies the implications of the selection of spatial resolution of planned extensions of these sensors, i.e. the next generation of Sentinel-2, as well as Copernicus’s hyperspectral CHIME and thermal LSTM future candidate missions.The paper analyzes the 2018 vector boundaries and crop types of 3.6 million agricultural fields in the German States of Bavaria and Lower Saxony and the Netherlands. The fields were rasterized using Sentinel-2 flight geometry and a pixel spacing of 5, 10, 20, 30 and 50 m. The study specifically considered: (1) fields with no pure pixel inside where no CAP services can be provided and (2) fields with less than 50 pure pixels inside, which is estimated to be the critical number for site-specific smart farming. The percentage of agricultural fields and agricultural area was determined for the main crop types. It shows, that with 10 m pixel spacing 2–4% and 20 m pixel spacing 12–22% of the agricultural fields in the study area do not contain a single pure spectral sample (Sentinel-2 case). This fraction decreases to 1–3% at 5 m spacing and increases to 25–40% for 30 m (LANDSAT and CHIME) and 50–70% for 50 m (LSTM) spacing. The percentage of fields with less than 50 pure pixels is 20–50% at 10 m and 70–85% at 20 m spacing (Sentinel-2). This fraction decreases to 5–12% for 5 m spacing and reaches the level of 92–97% for 30 m (LANDSAT) and 99% for 50 m spacing (LSTM). Our analysis shows, that with a pixel spacing of 5 m the Sentinel-2-based site-specific smart farming services could increase their potential customer base from ~50% to ~90% of the agricultural fields and could potentially cover 99% of the regions’ agricultural area. A 20 m pixel spacing would increase the agriculture area from 23% to 56% in the Central and Western European study regions on which the Copernicus hyperspectral candidate mission CHIME is capable to measure pure and full spectra for highly advanced future site-specific management services. LSTM would also profit from a spatial resolution of 30 m, which would raise coverage of the agricultural area in Central Europe with pure thermal measurements from 3% at 50 m to 23% at 30 m.

Evaluating sustainability and land use integration of BRT stations via extended node place model, an application on BRT stations of Tehran

Modern transportation planners and urban designers are looking for a practical solution toward sustainable, accessible, and cost-effective development of public transportation. Achieving a well-balanced transit-oriented development (TOD) requires a clear illustration of the existing public transportation, land use, and correlations between them. Bus rapid transit (BRT) is a well-known strategy toward developing high-quality transit networks and would be a reasonable transportation choice if allied with a suitable walkable design in surrounding areas. In this paper, the node-place model is developed and applied on BRT stations in Tehran to be analyzed and clustered using three extended TOD indicators. The design index, representing the accessibility and walking potential, is further improved by measuring spatial specifications and walkway density parameters. Furthermore, the place index, representing demand and land use specifications of the area, is investigated through the calculation of possible destination points (PDPs) in the vicinity of stations. The model is reapplied after correlation analyses on input data to find stations' behavior by using more effective parameters. The results indicate that appropriate access to the stations requires a tight network of walkways that offers multiple routes to the stations. Meanwhile, a dense and sophisticated pedestrian area needs to offer short routes with minimum turns required to reach the station. Moreover, in each station, some factors are found to be more dominating. Changes in these factors have more profound effects than other factors. This paper aims to identify these factors and help planners develop TOD areas sustainably.