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Abstract
The management of land resources, particularly the role of planning regulations, is critical in defining what land can be used in urban development – and this throws up certain key questions: How can one best manage land resources available? How can one address future urban development needs on the basis of existing land from a sustainable perspective? In this article we propose to question the extent of planning theories in the light of concrete urban development using land availability information. By using comprehensive national data we explore the case of Luxembourg, a small European country facing exacerbated pressures for metropolitanization. We use scenarios that go from a lesser to a greater degree of sustainability in order to project and articulate different configurations of land consumption based on a critical literature review (Smart Growth, New Urbanism, and transit oriented development (TOD)). We explore how modelling might be used to help inform spatial planning for urban growth. This framework is intended as an approach that would be applicable to other urban settings by using data that can be found in any typical municipal authority along with implementation in a geographical information system (GIS). The results create a tool which is useful for planning, monitoring or forecasting land consumption. The results also clearly show the limited impact of planning practices in terms of sustainability using land availability.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank LISER members involved in the MOEBIUS Project, especially Reine-Maria Basse, Samuel Carpentier, Omar Charif, Sylvain Klein, Hichem Omrani, Frédéric Schmitz and Marc Schneider. We also thank the Observatoire de l’Habitat, which allowed us to use their data. Finally, we would like to thank Ellie Phillips for the final English edition of our manuscript as well as the journal reviewers for their comments, which allowed us to improve the quality of our work.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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Notes on contributors
Sébastien Lord
Sébastien Lord is an assistant professor at the School of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Montréal. He has multidisciplinary expertise ranging from urban planning to architecture and regional planning. His research interests focus on the relationships between daily mobility, residential choices and lifestyles, and the impacts of demographic changes such as ageing and immigration, on the evolution of territories, habitats, land uses, and urban policies.
Maxime Frémond
Maxime Frémond is a doctoral fellow in geography and planning. His thesis is based between the Laboratoire ThéMA and the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research. The main subject of his work is to use simulation as a way to measure the impact of urban growth on accessibility to amenities and daily mobility.
Rojda Bilgin
Rojda Bilgin holds a master’s degree in Geography and Spatial Planning from the University of Luxembourg. She is interested in sustainable development, planning practices, and territorial governance.
Philippe Gerber
Philippe Gerber is a research fellow in human geography, with an expertise in daily and residential mobility. He is developing several research projects in the Public Research Centre LISER (Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research). His main research focuses on modelling and simulating mobility behaviours in considering urban constraints, especially in the context of cross-border regions. He is also a lecturer at the universities of Luxembourg, Lorraine and Aix-Marseille (France), and an associate member of the Laboratory “Image, Ville, Environnement” (CNRS) at the University of Strasbourg.