The Governance of Land Use: A Conceptual Framework

: How land is used is connected to some of the most important issues of our time: sustainable development, economic development, reducing territorial inequalities and the rights of future generations, to name but a few. There is growing recognition that a wide range of policies shape how land is used and managed beyond that of land use and environmental planning systems. From ﬁscal and tax incentives to industry subsidies and infrastructure or transportation program design, a myriad of incentives and disincentives shape the decisions and interventions that play out across our land, often leading to adverse outcomes, such as a loss of agricultural land, environmental degradation, high housing prices or costlier services. This paper shares a conceptual framework for the governance of land use encompassing a range of policies and other factors across scales that shape how land is used and managed. This framework encourages consideration of the incentives, disincentives and complementarities across a range of policies and practices and the need for stronger alignment to meet land management goals.


Introduction
How land is used is connected to some of the most important issues of our time: sustainable development, economic development, reduced territorial inequalities and the rights of future generations, to name but a few.There is an urgency to ensure land is managed efficiently, equitably and responsively.A question is whether the existing mechanisms within spatial and land use planning systems are adequate in that regard or whether a broader array of policies that are connected to, and may influence, how land is used, managed and governed are needed.In convening this Special Issue on the Governance of Land Use, we sought scholarship that illustrates the encompassing range of policies and practices across scales that shape how land is used, managed and governed-from fiscal and tax incentives to industry subsidies and infrastructure or transportation program design.This framing encourages consideration of the incentives, disincentives and complementarities that policies and practices create alongside the need for a stronger alignment to meet land management goals spanning initiatives that are part of land use, spatial planning and environmental management systems alongside those that are not.It further encourages a broad view on governance across scales and the inter-and multi-disciplinary nature of research and practice on how land is used and managed.
This contribution draws on the collection of research contributions forming this Special Issue collection in Land, together with the authors' past and present programs of research, in order to form a conceptual framework for the governance of land use.Conceptual frameworks outline a "researcher's map of the territory being investigated" [1].Such frameworks highlight a way of thinking about phenomena in conversation with the existing literature on the subject.A conceptual framework is neither rigid nor static-it can change as research unfolds [2].While the conceptual framework shared here draws on our own research and practice, it is meant to evolve, hopefully in useful conversation with that of other researchers.This Editorial proceeds in three parts: (i) it discusses emerging themes in land use governance literature; (ii) outlines the conceptual framework and its four main components spanning institutional/regulatory factors, cultural/social factors, environmental factors and structural factors and; (iii) offers conclusions on how the framework might inform inter-and multi-disciplinary research and practice.

Concepts and Themes in Land Use Governance
The governance of land use encompasses the rules, interventions and institutions employed to manage land.The term land use planning-which intentionally directs how land is used-is most commonly considered a cornerstone of land use governance.Our use of the term governance appears less frequently in the literature and encompasses a broader range of initiatives, spanning rural and urban areas.It includes the planning system, alongside interventions that are less intentional, yet often equally consequential, such as fiscal policy and the tax system.In its most basic meaning, governance is a system by which entities are directed and controlled.A more elaborate and well-known definition by Lynn, Heinrich and Hill defines governance as "regimes, laws, rules, judicial decisions, and administrative practices that constrain, prescribe, and enable the provision of publicly supported goals and services" [3].Governance is also connected to the notion of 'good governance' or 'democratic governance'; thus, it can be interpreted as having normative underpinnings in terms of how things ought to be managed.Within public administration, the term governance is variously associated with: (i) the contextual influences that shape the practices of public administration; (ii) the study of inter-jurisdictional relations and third-party policy implementation in public administration and; (iii) study of the influence or power of non-state and non-jurisdictional public collectives [4].In choosing the term 'governance', we wade into sometimes-murky conceptual waters.As it relates to land use, our interpretation stresses elements of those definitions listed above, such as the importance of rules and practices for public decision making for how land is used, alongside the recognition that governance encompasses actions beyond formal levels of government and operates across scales (multi-level governance).The governance of land use is, therefore, about understanding the multiple ways in which land is governed and the tensions and contradictions therein.
Just as the term governance deserves interrogation, what constitutes land, its attributes and value differs across cultures and disciplines.The United Nations defines land as "a delineable area of the earth's terrestrial surface, encompassing all attributes of the biosphere immediately above or below this surface including those of the near-surface climate, the soil and terrain forms, the surface hydrology (including shallow lakes, rivers, marshes and swamps), the near-surface sedimentary layers and associated groundwater reserve, the plant and animal populations, the human settlement pattern and physical results of past and present human activities" [5].This definition emphasizes biophysical processes and connections between the animal and social world, spanning space and time.In classical economics, land was considered to be "the original and inexhaustible gift of nature" and one of the three basic factors of production, along with labour and capital [6].From such framing, land is important for its productive uses and its management is concerned with efficient allocation.This is a very different framing than social justice lenses that consider the right to land and how land use governance produces and perpetuates inequalities and injustices or, alternately, reduces them [7].For example, Indigenous worldviews are generally absent from formal land use planning systems [8].As the two contributions to this Special Issue related to Indigenous land governance note, the meaning of land for diverse Indigenous peoples is vastly different from that that of settler governments and societies [9,10].Atleo and Boron describe the colossal harm that colonial land governance regimes have brought to the Nisga'a nation and the fundamental incompatibility of settler colonial laws with that of how the nation views land " . . .as much a part of us as our own flesh and blood" [11].Instrumental views of lands-land as a use function-contrast across more encompassing views that see land as connected to broader environmental and social considerations, from soil biology to wellbeing.Within the governance of land use, the meaning of land and the values societies attribute to land use are not static.
Two themes that stand out among the contributors to this Special Issue are: (i) how to design inclusive and democratic processes and manage conflicts; and (ii) how to govern and coordinate across scales.We are now asking more of our land than perhaps ever before.How can decision makers consider diverse needs and interests, manage conflicts and design more inclusive processes for the governance of land use?For example, in urban environments, the traditional zoning distinctions by usage overlap with the need to address climate considerations, such as investments in sustainable modes of travel, expanded tree canopies to reduce heat islands and expanded storm water management, all of which require space.Urban spatial planning strategies typically list multiple values, goals and concerns, and not always with a clear hierarchy of prioritization, e.g., social equity, environmental sustainability and economic development, each with their own connections to public and private interests.Deliberative democracy and public engagement are now fundamental to planning processes, yet how those are interpreted and applied across diverse contexts differs considerably, as Gorzym-Wilkowski and Trykacz note in their study contrasting Poland and Portugal [12].There are long-held critiques of the deficiencies in planning engagement practices, and the scope of these has ballooned as we come to consider not just whose voices are included today but also the rights and needs of future generations.As the article by Guo et al. illustrates on the key stakeholders and risk factors for the cultivation of protected land in Hubei province, China, the need to mediate across diverse interests is equally a concern for rural land use governance [13].In countries with Indigenous populations that have faced colonialism, dispossession and displacement, land use governance must address the rights to land and the self-determination of Indigenous peoples.This is being carried out in uneven ways [10].The 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was formative in encouraging signatories to address key rights, such as the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent [14].For example, in Canada, UNDRIP legislation was adopted in 2021 to support and strengthen implementation and ensure that all government laws and policies are consistent with its aims.The recognition of these rights and their implementation is an ongoing process that has the potential to dramatically shape land use governance in these and other countries.However, as Atleo and Boron note, there remains a lack of free, prior and informed consent from Indigenous peoples and we thus need to question the real commitment to the implementation of UNDRIP and changes from the status quo [9].
The second and related theme relates to questions of scalar governance.How should decisions about how land is used and managed be coordinated across functionally connected jurisdictions (e.g., metropolitan areas) and across scales (national, regional local)?Connected to the first theme, each of these scales bound different interests and there can be tensions within how multiple objectives are negotiated, from climate action to housing affordability.Across OECD countries, there are spatial policies and land use plans at multiple scales-national, regional and, most importantly, local-that set out how land use should be decided and acted upon.Upper-level governments generally provide the framework laws that set out the planning system and enact environmental legislation, while local governments make decisions about detailed land uses [15].In practice, the governance of land use can vary greatly, even within countries, let alone across them.Much depends on how local governments co-operate or compete with one another on land use issues, the types of pressures cities and communities face due to such factors as population growth or decline, the types of actors involved in land use governance and even the levels of social trust in a society, which affects relationships between and among residents, businesses, governments and non-governmental groups.In some places, there is a wide range of informal partnerships between the many actors involved in the governance of land use, while in others, there is a distinct hierarchy between levels of planning, and the institutions involved operate on the basis of statutorily defined roles [16].At present, the management of land use change is often fragmented, with different governance arrangements for different sectors.It commonly involves decisions taken at different levels, which, together, do not reflect a coherent strategic approach based on clear national objectives.Several contributions to this Special Issue explored tensions in scalar governance, including a case study of Germany's interstate Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region by Yan and Growe and an expansive international review of metropolitanisation, metropolitan governance and the relationship with sustainable land management by Moore-Cherry et al. [14,15].The governance of land use since the 1980s has also increasingly combined market mechanisms and regulation in ways which are often in conflict, generating severe pressures in some sectors.Contributors to this Special Issue have explored the impact of carbon emission trading systems on land use [17], the impact of tax reforms on land prices [18] and the consequences of farmland market regulations [19].Interventions can sometimes deliver outcomes that are hard to reconcile with evidence on the full range of values of the land for different uses.
These are just a few of the key themes and concepts for the governance of land use.As the contributors to this Special Issue have highlighted, there are a wide range of other considerations.Our conceptual framework aims to discuss some of the main elements and bring some conceptual clarity to this sometimes encompassing and fuzzy concept.

The Governance of Land Use: A Conceptual Framework
The following framework is informed by both our own research in this area as well as the contributions to this Special Issue and the broader literature.Formatively, it is informed by a program of research undertaken by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development since 2015 on the governance of land use, which was co-led by Tamara Krawchenko and Abel Schuman (2015-2019) and included in-depth studies in several countries (Israel, the Netherlands, Poland, France, the Czech Republic) alongside a thematic report and overview of land use planning systems [15,16,[20][21][22][23][24].As noted in the introduction, this conceptual framework is grounded in an understanding of land use governance as multi-actor and multi scalar and inclusive of policies, practices and instruments that both intentionally and unintentionally impact how land is used.It is important to note that while this is an encompassing framework, it is not meant to represent diverse Indigenous views on the governance of land use, which tend to be framed in a manner that is holistic and includes spiritual elements.
The central concentric circles of the framework in Figure 1 represent scalar governance spanning international to local forms and are inclusive of civic/public and private engagement and interests.This is a mediated and nested space.Our conceptual framework identifies four major factors that impact the governance of land use: (i) institutional, (ii) social/cultural, (iii) environmental and (iv) structural.Within strategic spatial planning, socio-cultural, environmental and structural factors are all common elements impacting land and its uses [25].Institutional and regulatory factors focus on rules, interventions and even the logic of appropriateness that shape how land is used.All factors shape and impact one another and can be thought of as a web.The interests and interactions of public, private and civic actors all inform and shape land use governance across multiple scales.The remainder of this section describes the four factors in greater detail.

Institutional Factors
Borrowing a well-used definition from March and Olsen, institutions can be understood as "a relatively enduring collection of rules and organized practices, embedded in structures of meaning and resources that are relatively invariant in the face of turnover of individuals and relatively resilient to the idiosyncratic preferences and expectations of individuals and changing external circumstances" [26].This interpretation stresses that institutional rules and practices inform and guide actor behaviour while 'structures of meaning' or common purposes "explain, justify and legitimate behavioural codes" [26].
Actions are further structured through institutional resources, whereby only certain actions are feasible given institutional constraints.Institutions themselves can "empower and constrain actors differently and make them more or less capable of acting according to prescriptive rules of appropriateness"-in this way, there is an element of institutional socialization [26].This historical institutionalist definition highlights the 'stickiness'-there is stability to them and where change does occur, it does so within existing institutional contexts through processes, such as layering, conversion, drift and displacement.It offers an in-between from that of sociological variants that emphasize the logic of appropriateness and rational choice variants that emphasize rules and laws.Within the design of institutions, inclusion or privileging of certain actors is not value neutral, but rather something that is carried by institutional frameworks.Among institutional and regulatory factors, those factors that are highlighted (in italics)-the spatial and land use planning systems, building code regulations and environmental regulations-intentionally shape the governance of land use.These are the most visible interventions that shape land use governance today.They generally allocate public investments across space and restrict how individuals and businesses are permitted to use land.Planning primarily uses restrictions on land use as instruments because it has few tools to influence how individuals and businesses want to use land.Despite this, other public policies can, and many of the so-called market forces that the planning system takes as given are, in fact, caused by public policies to which individuals and businesses respond.For example, sectoral policies include housing, transportation, energy, water, agriculture, tourism and economic development.Therefore, a wide range of other policies and interventions also impact how land is used.Among these, tax policies are particularly important.
Tax policies influence both costs and benefits of land use and have varying effects on land use in different locations, even if they are not explicit in their spatial impacts.For example, high fuel taxes make commuting more expensive and incentivize more compact and transport-oriented patterns of development.In many cases, tax-related incentives are misaligned to spatial and land use planning goals.For example, almost all OECD countries aim for compact urban development, but some countries tax ownership of single-family homes preferentially compared to other residential property, encouraging low-density single-family home development.Removing such perverse incentives should, thus, be a first step in making better use of the tax system to achieve land use objectives.Another key area is transport policies, such as taxing transport and especially car use more heavily to reflect its true costs (including externalities from driving, such as carbon emissions, local air pollution, congestion and noise) and property taxation structured to differentiate between land use that is desirable and land use that is undesirable.Beyond this, taxation and the structure of public finance itself impact modes of collaboration or competition and define interests within the governance of land use.For example, the higher the fiscal net benefits that local governments receive from development, the more likely they are to favour extensive patterns of development such as sprawl [27].Similarly, if local governments do not receive benefits from more development or even face net costs, they may not permit sufficient development [28].The very structure of public finance can encourage or discourage integrated and coordinated land use across jurisdictions-it can be set up as a system of competition or mutual benefit.Regulatory governance encompasses the policies, tools and processes that are used to design, administer and enforce rules and decisions, for example, identification and recording of land tenure types (cadaster) and the creation of land markets.Overall, institutions are a key and visible element of governance, which are the dynamics within the broader system.As such, they differ from some of the other factors within the conceptual framework, which shape governance but are not necessarily part of it.

Cultural and Social Factors
Land looms large in cultural identities, often providing their foundations.Assertions about land and its ownership figure prominently in expressions of national identity.For instance, the 'Great American Songbook' contains many patriotic songs that define the territory.Irving Berlin's 'God Bless America', written in 1918 and revised in 1938, lays claim to a land, 'From the mountains to the prairies/To the oceans white with foam'.The lyrics to 'America the Beautiful', written by Katharine Lee Bates in 1895, evoke a nation 'From sea to shining sea!'.On the other hand, Wille Guthrie's lyrical riposte to Berlin, 'This Land is Your Land' (1940, revised 1944), contests these patriotic claims: 'Was a big high wall there that tried to stop me/A sign was painted said: Private Property,/But on the back side it didn't say nothing-God blessed America for me.' Land is a cultural battlefield.Moreover, as Atleo and Boron show in this Special Issue, in some cultures, especially for Indigenous Peoples, land can embody sacred qualities that place severe limits on how it can be used [9].When these endowments of land are overlooked, as they have been in countries, such as Australia and Canada, this can have far-reaching social consequences and generate political conflict.
The geographer Carl Sauer proffers the concept of 'cultural landscape', which concerns how cultural groups shape and change the natural landscape to produce a cultural image that symbolises, represents and structures our understanding of land and its uses [29].Land use planning takes place within cultural landscapes that shape its politics.Planning is used politically to envision the territory at a range of spatial scales, often using cultural symbols [30].In England, the politics of land use revolves, to an extraordinary degree, around defense of the Green Belt, the urban growth boundaries that surround major cities, notably London.The Green Belt has its origins in efforts to deal with the consequences of the rapid industrialisation and urbanisation that transformed Britain in the nineteenth century, exemplified by Ebenezer Howard's Garden City movement.Green Belts symbolise the preservation of the English countryside, which, for some, embodies the essence of national identity-'England's green & pleasant Land', according to William Blake in his poem, 'And did those feet in ancient time' (1804).
Today, however, for some economists, the limits that Green Belts place on urban growth are the source of a crisis of housing affordability, which has dire consequences for the British economy [31].Certainly, existing property owners mobilise the supposed qualities of the Green Belt to prevent new housebuilding, in ways that generate intergenerational conflict between older homeowners and younger people locked out of home ownership.Efforts to reform the Green Belt are one of the most contentious issues in English politics, mobilising powerful vested interests and forming a terrain on which politics, economics, public attitudes and land use planning collide.Similar conflicts are visible in other societies, such as Ireland [32] and Canada [33].The cultural politics of land and its implications for the governance of land use planning, though, vary between and within countries.At the very least, land use planners require an understanding of the cultural field within which they are operating if their actions are to be effective and gain wide support.
While social and cultural constructions of ideal landscapes shape how we view the governance of land use in the present and future, the very fabric of social connectedness and social trust impacts the structure of these institutions.In high-trust societies, where there is common understanding of what ought to be done and a willingness to work together and seek comprise among social actors, institutions of land governance can have more informal features [16].Where there is lower social trust and greater potential conflict, regulatory governance and formal institutions play a much greater role.Cultural and social factors are, thus, intertwined with land use governance and the potential for institutional change.

Environmental Factors
Land is, itself, a biophysical and environmental factor and, thus, an inseparable part of the governance of land use.Biophysical processes, such as soil, water, air and topography and wind, combine to shape land and its endowments, creating site-specific conditions that change over time [34].Land and its potential uses have always played a central role in human development, and environmental factors shape the governance of land use and vice versa.For example, environmental factors may create the very conditions and need for cooperation-the Dutch 'polder model' (cooperation in search of best compromise) of water management to preserve/manage land serves as one example [35].The legacies of the built environment reveal a physical and very revealing manifestation of individual and collective decisions about how land is used.
A growing range of data on environmental indicators and land cover have expanded our knowledge of these connections.New models that combine knowledge and tools from biophysical and socio-economic sciences illustrate the dynamic feedbacks between changing land use and changing environmental conditions and vice versa, and these models can support decision making [36].A large body of research demonstrates these linkages, for example, research by Reydon, Fernandes and Telles finds that improvements in land governance in Brazil, and especially in the Amazon region, have been the main pre-condition enabling reductions in deforestation of the Amazon rainforest [37].As the costs of sensors and other forms of environmental monitoring decline and land use cover data become more available, there is growing potential for this to inform and improve the governance of land use.There is also an increasing awareness of the value of Indigenous knowledge and the potential of 'two-eyed seeing' approaches that combine traditional Western and Indigenous knowledge of the environment [38].New forms of analytical, methodological and epistemic framing bring a diversity of perspectives and understanding to the governance of land use.
While environmental factors impacting land use have always been changeable, the pace and scale of this change have intensified due to climate change.As noted by Dale, "Land-use change is related to climate change as both a causal factor and a major way in which the effects of climate change are expressed.As a causal factor, land use influences the flux of mass and energy, and as land-cover patterns change, these fluxes are altered.Projected climate alterations will produce changes in land-cover patterns at a variety of temporal and spatial scales, although human uses of the land are expected to override many effects" [39].
Are existing institutions of land use governance able to adequately adapt to this challenge?As noted previously, institutions are inherently rigid and have a stability to them.What, then, are the implications for our present institutions to adapt to and address growing environmental and biodiversity challenges?The lack of land rights and tenure of Indigenous peoples in many parts of the world serves as a case in point.It is estimated that Indigenous lands comprise around 20% of the Earth's territory and contain 80% of the world's remaining biodiversity [40], and yet, Indigenous peoples are commonly excluded from decisions about how land is used, and land rights are insecure in many places [10].New forms of governance are evolving to address these issues, for example, the collaboratively governed forests and lands on Haida Gwaii through the creation of the Haida Gwaii Management Council and the Solutions Table [41].However, it remains to be seen if institutional responses are adequate and on a scale to have meaningful impact to address the multiple crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation connected to how land is used.

Structural Factors
Land use planning is embedded in, shaped by and seeks to govern structural changes in the economy and society.Social and economic change is driven by the myriad decisions of private and public actors that affect, among other things, the structure of industries, development of new technologies and the formation of households and movement of people, plus the interaction between these.The public or private provision of infrastructure (such as water and sanitation, power networks, flood defenses, etc.), the development of transport networks and other public services (such as health and education) provide the frameworks within which development occurs.All of these activities consume land, which requires management and governance.Even critics of planning, such as Friedrich Hayek [42], made exceptions for government intervention as a means of managing the obvious externalities that arise from the use of land [43].
The first task of planning is to address the externalities that arise from private decisions about the use of land and the built environment.Faced with incessant social and economic change, planners seek to coordinate and integrate the provision of infrastructure and services by taking a comprehensive view of the development of a territory based on engagement with stakeholders [44].This ambition takes its fullest expression in the spatial planning approach.The European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), promoted by the European Commission in 1999, advanced a view of planning that moved beyond purely sectoral policy measures (e.g., allocating land for housing, employment, infrastructure, etc.), to focus on the overall territorial situation and provide visions of sustainable development opportunities.The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe describes the features and promise of this approach: "Spatial planning is largely a public sector function to influence the future spatial distribution of activities.It aims to create a more rational territorial organization of land uses and the linkages between them, to balance demands for development with the need to protect the environment, and to achieve social and economic objectives.Spatial planning comprises measures to coordinate and improve the spatial impacts of other sectoral policies so as to achieve a more even distribution of economic development within a given territory than would otherwise be created by market forces.Spatial planning is therefore an important lever for promoting sustainable development and improving the quality of life" [45].
In this approach, planning is not just as a regulator of land and property use but a proactive and strategic coordinator of all policy and actions that influence spatial development, typically involving a range of stakeholders-an approach which has been adopted, to some degree or other, in many European countries [46].Here, public, private and civic actors-'stakeholders'-cooperate in the governance of land use around agreed social and economic priorities.
The governance of land use is shaped by and responds to structural factors, such as population growth and decline, but it also seeks to shape them.Common goals among different levels of government include supporting the shift to net-zero industry in GHG emissions, reducing social inequalities, decarbonizing the transport sector and strengthening economic resilience.How can these objectives be navigated across multi-level governance of land use, and outside of the planning profession and practice, is there intentionality in terms of how land connects to these broader structural factors?

Conclusions
This Special Issue on the Governance of Land Use has presented a conceptual framework and taken stock of some of the key trends in the field.The framework emphasizes the multiple factors that impact upon and interact with the governance of land use and stresses that spatial and land use planning systems are only one part of this governance framework.Given the nature of the challenges connected to land use facing our societies today-poverty and income inequality, biodiversity loss, climate change, etc.-are we intentional enough about how a wide range of other interventions have the potential to impact how land is used?Are our present-day institutions designed to tackle the scale and pace of changes needed-are they flexible and responsive enough?How does the landscape of multi-level governance balance the need for sub-national self-determination alongside the need for strategic direction and political vision spanning communities, regions, national governments and even international structures and obligations?
The idea that land use planning systems in diverse countries are failing to address key challenges is not new.For example, the literature, going back decades, asks why planning is failing to cope with change [47], create resilient cities [48], engage residents [49], communicate [50] and pursue integrated approaches [51] across diverse contexts.Beyond this consternation, "there is general acceptance that historical boundaries, administrative delineations and professional silos will not deliver the type of spatial planning and governance in the future that is, politically, being expected" [16].The concept of 'soft spaces' has emerged as one potential response, representing "multilayered, fluid, and sometimes fuzzy scales" outside of the statutory planning system [52].However, this too has its critiques.Informal and semi-formal governance arrangements may be agile; they can lack democratic accountability, transparency and enforcement through legally binding outcomes [53].Connected to social trust, such governance approaches may work in the places where they can be expected to work-places where there is existing institutional capacity and trust among key actors-but what of those places where there is distrust, conflict and a need to manage change?The themes of multi-scalar governance and democratic and deliberative democracy continuously arise.What forms of organization and governance facilitate such practices?
While we consider future configurations of institutional design, we should also think of institutions at the working level-as the constituent professions, experts and knowledge keepers connected to the multiple factors spanning governance of land use framework.The interdisciplinary breadth and learning across multiple connected fields, critical for integrated planning and effective land use governance, present yet another co-ordination challenge, requiring multi-and interdisciplinary understanding.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The governance of land use: conceptual framework.