Background: Land use for settlements is a main driver of loss of fertile soils and agricultural land. Land consumption, however, is itself driven by a range of different motives: changing life-style patterns, demographic change, economic developments (e.g. e-commerce, logistics), infrastructure development, trends in property and financial markets, housing policy, regional planning, building codes as well as agricultural and nature conservation policies. In turn, efforts to promote compact city development, revitalize inner-city brownfields and abandoned sites and reduce consumption of fertile soils for settlements and related infrastructure often fail due to a lack of policies and regulations effectively addressing the drivers of land consumption.
Goal: A better understanding what drives land consumption for settlement development and what constitutes incentives or obstacles for the enforcement of planning and policies to reduce land consumption will help to create policy interventions in property markets and settlement development more effective.
Rationale from the themes: Demand: On the one hand, there is a demand for conserving fertile soils for agriculture production and other non-urban land uses, such as forestry, biodiversity conservation or tourism & recreation. Moreover, there is a demand for revitalizing inner-city brownfields and abandoned sites as well as for maintaining historical buildings and cultural heritage to enhance the livability of urban areas and to utilize the capacity of existing infrastructure. On the other hand, there is a demand to provide proper housing conditions. Land developers are often not willing to take on the risk of dealing with contaminated sites. Lastly, retaining property rights and rights of ownership constitute strong societal demands that restrict the impact of policies on mobilizing inner-city land and increasing density of housing. Thus, there is a need to identify policies, planning approaches and regulations that balance these trade-offs legitimately, transparently and effectively.
Natural Capital: Land consumption for settlement development and associated infrastructure (e.g. transportation, powerlines etc.) is one of the main drivers for the loss of biodiversity, soil degradation, and landscape fragmentation. As city development historically took place at naturally favored sites (e.g. in regions with fertile soils), land consumption reduces the provision of highly demanded agricultural goods and services. For the containment of land development as well as the implementation of green infrastructures in rural and urban landscapes solid policy tools and planning approaches are needed to mobilize inner-city land.
Land Management: There is a need to understand the drivers of land consumption, the impacts of settlement development on natural capital and the provision of ecosystem services as well as on the sometimes conflicting societal demands with regard to housing conditions and livability of municipalities and cities to develop policies tools and planning solutions. Urban planning is often focusing on above-ground impacts of urban development, while impacts on the soil-water-sediment nexus is taking place on another time scale.
Net Impact: There is a need to better understand policies’ and planning solutions’ impacts on land consumption, ecosystem service provision and society to get insights whether to further develop or promote policies and regulations. What methods should be developed for analysis of social, natural and economic consequences of plan implementation? How can policy pilots be used to avoid mismatches between policy and practice?
So what? Spatial planning and soil management is often not hampered by a lack of scientific knowledge on the benefits of reduced land consumption for settlement development but by a lack of understanding what actually drives land consumption and how to address these drivers. In turn, existing legislation and planning to steer land development is often failing to address these drivers and moreover characterized by lose implementation and enforcement. Knowledge on how to design effective policies given the institutional constraints of their implementation and enforcement will be necessary to realize the benefits of reduced land consumption in rural and urban areas.
Links to other fields: Steering urban development is but one societal challenge where information about how to design effective policy responses would be beneficial. Other areas include e.g. the implementation of sustainable agriculture, the regulation of pollutants, or incentives to promote the re-use of revitalized brownfields.