Recently, Dr. Shen Xiaoqiang has published two papers on Land Use Policy and Habitat International (JCR Q1) respectively, titled “Evaluating the effectiveness of land use plans in containing urban expansion: An integrated view” and “Interpreting non-conforming urban expansion from the perspective of stakeholders’ decision-making behavior”.

Here are abstracts of the two papers mentioned above.

1. Evaluating the effectiveness of land use plans in containing urban expansion: An integrated view

- Journal: Land Use Policy

- Author: Xiaoqiang Shen, Xiangdong Wang, Zhou Zhang, Zhangwei Lu, Tiangui Lv

- Abstract: Knowledge of the actual usage and impact of spatial plans remains deficient due to defective evaluation methods and scarce empirical studies. By integrating and widening the conformance and performance criteria, this study builds a framework for assessing the effectiveness of land use plans (LUPs), which provides a comprehensive overview allowing the different roles played by LUPs and the corresponding degrees of planning effectiveness to be distinguished. We examine the effectiveness of a Chinese county-level LUP in governing urban sprawl in the context of rapid urbanization with the devised framework. The results show that the plan failed to control the scale and spatial distribution of urban development, and stimulated fragmented urban expansion and large-scale farmland conversion inside the zone for urban area. While non-conforming urban development decisions tended to minimize possible damage to planning effectiveness. The findings indicate that conforming decisions/outcomes do not necessarily imply the achievement of planning goals, while non-conforming decisions may be guided by planning goals and hence contribute to realizing them.

- Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.10.001

2. Interpreting non-conforming urban expansion from the perspective of stakeholders’ decision-making behavior

- Journal: Habitat International

- Author: Xiaoqiang Shen, Liping Wang, Xiangdong Wang, Zhou Zhang, Zhangwei Lu

- Abstract: Non-conformances between outcomes and plans are widely considered inevitable. However, interpretation of non-conformances is still deficient. Since non-conforming urban development is a direct result of land-use decision-making, this study seeks to explain non-conforming urban expansion by exploring stakeholders’ decision-making behavior. We develop an interpreting framework that combines state and market forces, and use it to investigate the drivers of non-conforming decisions. The results of a Chinese case study indicate that local governments played multiple roles in non-conforming urban expansion, through which they increased financial revenue, sited large-scale development projects, and provided public goods. Manufacturing investors mainly based location decisions on development conditions and policies, rather than on zoning maps. Their influence on land supply decision-making was positively correlated with their investment scale, whereas commercial and housing developers had more limited influence. Most collective land owners supported land expropriation and some carried out informal development to generate economic returns. We suggest that non-conformances resulted from both government-led and bottom-up urbanization, and that the local government played a key role based on the market mechanism.

- Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2019.102007