This book explores the changing land relations in the peri-urban villages of Blantyre in Malawi. It questions and debates how and why the peri-urban villages have become the locus of the selling and buying of customary land, the practices and also the relations involved. The book provides rich ethnographic insights on the commodification of land relations, custom, practices, disputes and social relations between land sellers, land buyers, traditional leaders, and intermediaries. The transactions draw strength from the growing peri-urbanization and monetization of social relations, both of which push towards land decisions at family and individual levels. Bigger groups like the village, clan or extended family have minimal, if not symbolic role only. Village headmen benefit materially by taking gifts (signing fee) rationalized by custom on reciprocity, while estate agents claim commission. Numerous constraints are negotiated about the ownership, rights to sale, multiple selling and the use and sharing of land money. Peri-urban land transactions offer scope for examining a wider range of social and economic relations, and the subtle ways in which the state infiltrates the everyday lives of actors. Overtime, the practices reproduce but also transform land relations in significant but less appreciated ways.

Presently, peri-urbanisation is one of the most pervasive processes of land use change in Europe with strong impacts on both the environment and quality of life. It is a matter of great urgency to determine strategies and tools in support of sustainable development. The book synthesizes the results of PLUREL, a large European Commission funded research project (2007-2010). Tools and strategies of PLUREL address main challenges of managing land use in peri-urban areas. These results are presented and illustrated by means of 7 case studies which are at the core of the book. This volume presents a novel, future oriented approach to the planning and management of peri-urban areas with a main focus on scenarios and sustainability impact analysis. The research is unique in that it focuses on the future by linking quantitative scenario modeling and sustainability impact analysis with qualitative and in-depth analysis of regional strategies, as well as including a study at European level with case study work also involving a Chinese case study.

This book proposes a new approach for a systemic and dynamic analysis of urban and peri-urban land markets in West Africa and applies it to Bamako, Mali. Based on a description of 'land delivery' processes, it sheds light on the challenges faced by the urban poor in accessing secure land.

Increasing urbanisation and industrial development are occurring at the expense of shrinking forest cover and agricultural land in South Asia. Various land uses compete with each other, reducing forests and farmlands. This book addresses urbanisation and peri-urban land markets, with a special focus on Bangalore, one of the fastest growing cities in South Asia. It contributes to historic perspectives on the spatial transformation of peri-urban locales, as well as providing much-needed empirical evidence. The book discusses issues related to the context of peri-urban land use, land transactions, demand supply relationships and land prices in the peri-urban land market. The steep rise in land prices of the periphery, rapid changes in land use patterns, active land transactions, growth of the real estate market and the challenge to implement efficient land use regulations are explored with the help of field evidence. Insights and challenges to land administration addressed in this book are common to other metropolitan cities, and the key message is that a separate peri-urban land policy is required for the major metropolitan cities of India and other developing countries. The book contributes to the understanding of how these spatial markets function in order to work towards an improved implementation of land policy in the context of dynamic rural-urban periphery. As such, it will appeal to researchers, scholars and students of regional, urban and agricultural economics, economic geography, urban and regional planning and environmental science. It will also be of great interest to city planners and policy makers, action-based think tanks focused on urban governance.

The urban-rural relationship in China is key to a sustainable global future. This book is particularly interested in peri-urbanization in China, the process by which fringe areas of cities develop. Recent institutional change has helped clarify property rights over collective land, facilitating peri-urban area development. Chapters in this book explore how rural industrialization has changed the landscape and rules about land use in peri-urban areas. It looks at the role of rural industrialization and provides a detailed exploration of peri-urbanization theory, policy, and its evolution in China. Leading discussions find out how fragmented bottom-up industrialization, urbanization, and lax governance have led to a series of social and environmental problems. The progress in redevelopment of peri-urban areas was initially slow due to the spatial lock-in effect. This book offers practical solutions to environmental issues and explains how policymakers have the potential to redevelop a future collaborative, inclusive, and sustainable approach to peri-urban areas. This in-depth approach to urbanization will be useful to academics in urban planning and governmental organizations. It will also be advantageous to NGOs and professionals involved in urban planning, public administration, as well as land-use work in China and other developing countries.

Built on 'the bend in the Red River', Hà Nội is among Southeast Asia's most ancient capitals. Over the centuries, it took shape in part from a dense substratum of villages. With the economic liberalisation of the 1980s, it encountered several obstacles to its expansion: absence of a real land market, high population densities, the government's food self-suffciency policy that limits expropriations of land and the water management constraints of this very vulnerable delta. Since the beginning of the new millennium, the change in speed brought about by the state and by property developers in the construction and urban planning of the province-capital poses the problem of integration of in situ urbanised villages, the importance of preserving a green belt around Hà Nội and the necessity of protection from flooding. The harmonious fusion of city and countryside, which has always constituted the Red River Delta's defining feature, appears to be in jeopardy. Working from a rich body of maps and field studies, this collective work reveals how this grass-roots urbanisation encounters 'top-down' urbanisation, or metropolisation. By combining a variety of disciplinary approaches on several different scales, through a study of spatial issues and social dynamics, this atlas not only enables the reader to gauge the impact of major projects on the lives of villages integrated into the city's fabric but also to re-establish the peri-urban village stratum as a fully-fledged actor in the diversity of this emerging metropolis.

Today, India still remains a rural agricultural country although the share of urban population has also increased but these figures do not tell the whole story. There are evidences that urban growth is dispersed and urban sprawl promotes the spread of urban land use into the rural-urban fringe. Here the attempt is to investigate the land transformation and the driving forces which were influencing the land transformation. The present study was done on peri urban interface of Aligarh city, a relatively small city, but as other north Indian cities, it is also expanding rapidly. Moreover, it too is surrounded by a populous rural area with productive and rich agricultural hinterland. Such conditions give rise to many conflicts and mutually beneficial complementarities in the rural and urban spheres. The result shows that the demand for land is high which results in informal urban development fulfilling the requirements of many of the city’s residents. Every piece of land is a tradable commodity, and the pursuit of short-term profits is the predominant ethic. The actors in PUI are strong because it is characterized by intermixing of rural and urban activities and interests as well as the number of actors are greater than in any other area. .

Sub-Saharan Africa faces many development challenges, such as its size and diversity, rapid urban population growth, history of colonial exploitation, fragile states and conflicts over land and natural resources. This collection, contributed from different academic disciplines and professions, seeks to support the UN Habitat New Urban Agenda passed at Habitat III in Quito, Ecuador, in 2016. It will attract readers from urban specialisms in law, geography and other social sciences, and from professionals and policy-makers concerned with land use planning, surveying and governance. Among the topics addressed by the book are challenges to governance institutions: how international development is delivered, building land management capacity, funding for urban infrastructure, land-based finance, ineffective planning regulation, and the role of alternatives to courts in resolving boundary and other land disputes. Issues of rights and land titling are explored from perspectives of human rights law (the right to development, and women's rights of access to land), and land tenure regularization. Particular challenges of housing, planning and informality are addressed through contributions on international real estate investment, community participation in urban settlement upgrading, housing delivery as a partly failing project to remedy apartheid's legacy, and complex interactions between political power, money and land. Infrastructure challenges are approached in studies of food security and food systems, urban resilience against natural and man-made disasters, and informal public transport.

This book discusses aspects of land use change and sustainability in ways that may generate further research ideas. It brings together discussions from leading researchers and scholars in the field of land use change and sustainability from five different countries including the USA, Ethiopia, Guyana, Taiwan, and Indonesia. Based on empirical research and case studies, the book is divided into two sections. The first section is subdivided into four chapters and discusses land use sustainability in the Northern Great Plains of the USA; effects of rural land use and tenure on sustainable management of mangroves in Corentyne, Guyana; the property formation process in peri-urban areas of Ethiopia; and the effects of green energy production on farmlands in the Yulin County of Taiwan. The second section of the book is subdivided into two chapters and discusses cases pertaining to land use mapping and sustainability including land cover/land use mapping using soft computing techniques with optimized features; and applying systems analysis to evaluate Jelutung as option for sustainable use of peat lands in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. The book is insightful, thought provoking, concise, and easy to understand. It could serve as an important reference material on land use change and sustainability.

Moving in Circles draws on Walter Rodney's treatise on underdevelopment. Underdevelopment is to be associated with various factors contributing to the uncertainties that lack of progress begets, regardless of its genesis. Some of the indicators of this condition are pervasive poverty, liquidation of productive assets, and precarious livelihoods. Uncertainty stands out as a cost as it is also a catalyst for low investment in agriculture, low returns non-agricultural activities, inconsistent approach to planning and rule of law and more generally socio-economic backwardness. Development should in a broad sense entail meeting human needs, actualization of local and domestic potential and liberation from uncertainty. In the long term, for 'development' talk to be meaningful, there is a need for progressive transformation of underlying structures, improvement in productive capacity and general adherence to principles of good governance: openness and transparency, accountability and meaningful popular engagement.