Exploring patterns and consequences of land consumption in a coastal city-region

Background:The rapid expansion of built-up areas and land consumption with unsustainable spatial patterns in coastal urban areas has become a global major concern due to its far-reaching consequences for human daily life,environmental sustainability,and living organisms.However,the research on this phenomenon in these areas has received less attention.To fill this gap,we conducted a study to explore the spatial patterns of land consumption at both micro-and macro-levels and to evaluate its consequences in terms of sustainable development in a coastal city-region of Mazandaran Province in northern Iran.To achieve these two goals,we combined two methods of urban land density function and landscape expansion index(LEI)to explore spatial patterns of land consumption and also evaluated the sustainability of the region with two methods of the hierarchical analytical process(AHP)and urban sustainability index(USI).Results:The spatial patterns of land consumption in the city-region of Mazandaran from 1996 to 2016 at the macro-level changed from a decentralized-sprawl to a centralized-sprawl pattern.At the micro-level,the dominant spatial pattern of land consumption in the city-region changed gradually from the outlying pattern towards the edge expansion and infilling patterns.Also,the spatial pattern of the built-up patches in the majority of the urban areas had conformity with the dominant pattern of the region.Besides,the spatial patterns of land consumption in the region were in an unsustainable state and were changing towards more unsustainability.The absence of urban containment policies and plans could lead to further destruction of the natural environment and increase its unsustainability.Conclusions:Our results indicate that the urban areas of the coastal Mazandaran have the same behavior in the spatial pattern of land consumption at the macro-and micro-levels and all are in the same direction and follow the dominant pattern of the region.

Trade-offs between prosperity and urban land per capita in major world cities

Globally,urban land expands at a faster rate than the corresponding urban population,which comes at a cost of agricultural and natural land.Wealth has been identified as an underlying driver of this trend,but it is unclear whether more prosperous cities inevitably have a greater urban land consumption.Here,we map urban pros-perity indicators to their relevant Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs)for 64 major world cities and relate these to the corresponding urban land consumption(defined here as built-up land per capita).Results indicate a moderately-weak but significant correlation between overall prosperity and urban land consumption(Spear-man’s correlation,𝜌ρ=0.47,p<0.001),suggesting a trade-offbetween both.In addition,we find a regional clustering,with for example cities with relatively low prosperity and low urban land consumption in Africa,and cities with high prosperity and low-to-medium urban land consumption in Europe.The moderately-weak correlation in combination with these regional differences suggests that the observed trade-offis avertable and that other drivers moderate this relation.Consequently,cities can increase their prosperity without additional environmental consequences entailing land take and the conversion of natural and agricultural land.

Ecological footprint of food consumption in China:1982-2004

This paper calculates the land (including water area) requirement for food consumption in both balanced andactual diet in China by ecological footprint analysis. To determine whether logical and actual food demands are withinnatural regenerative ability, carrying capacity (excluding forestry production) is also calculated. Results show that actualdiet patterns were ecologically friendly in the period of 1982-2004 in China, mainly because of the rural moderate dietpatterns. But actual per capita footprint already overran its corresponding logic value of 0.976ha in urban areas in 2002.Productive areas for food production can satisfy the land requirement for actual diet patterns during the researchingperiod in China, nevertheless cannot satisfy that for balanced diet pattern or solve the problem of unbalanced ecologicalfootprint. The continual rising ecological footprint of food consumption in both rural and urban areas indicates that percapita footprint will keep on increasing in China and even may be more than the suggested logic value if no relevantcountermeasures are made to regulate diet patterns. Strictly speaking, China is facing food shortage, both in quality andin quantity.