Participatory Land Planning: Theory, Methods, and Case Studies—Second Edition

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Land Planning and Landscape Architecture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 18 November 2026 | Viewed by 690

Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Geography, University of Valladolid, 47011 Valladolid, Spain
Interests: urban geography; tourism geography; urban and land planning; governance; social network analysis
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Guest Editor
Department of Sociology, Pablo de Olavide University, 41013 Seville, Spain
Interests: urban and metropolitan policy; strategic urban planning; public policy and governance
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce a Special Issue of Land titled ”Participatory Land Planning: Theory, Methods, and Case Studies—Second Edition”.

In recent years, participation in land and urban planning processes has received growing interest in both academia and public administration. Following the era of the “designed plan”, on expert knowledge and legitimized by disciplinary knowledge, planning approaches have emerged that pay greater attention to participation in territorial decision making and question the more conventional hierarchical nature. Different methods and instruments have been designed and implemented to channel participation in planning (action planning event, community planning forum, prioritising, etc.), although there is still some way to go. In this sense, there is debate about the role of participation in planning, its advantages and disadvantages, who should participate, the relationship between the actors, what methods to implement, etc. There are still questions to be resolved, including the following: How should this be done? What is the appropriate spatial scale for participation? How can professionals best take advantage of local knowledge and resources? How can we change the way we understand space? Who should decide?

We hope that this Special Issue will contribute to improving the understanding of participation in territorial and urban planning and facilitate international exchange. Thus, we are interested in contributions that link participation with territorial and urban planning, whether through theoretical, methodological work or empirical research through case studies.

The goal of this Special Issue is to present papers (original research articles and review papers) that provide insights into participation in land and urban planning.

This Special Issue will welcome manuscripts that link the following themes:

  • Theory of land and urban planning;
  • Land and urban policy;
  • Collaborative planning;
  • Strategic planning;
  • Territorial governance;
  • Actor networks.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Oswaldo González Ledesma
Dr. Rafael Merinero Rodríguez
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • collaborative planning
  • governance
  • land management
  • network management
  • participation
  • strategic planning
  • town planning
  • urban agenda
  • urban and land planning
  • urban and land policy

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Related Special Issue

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

14 pages, 1173 KB  
Article
Beyond Compliance: A Whole-Life-Cycle Governance Framework for Public Service Facilities in Urban Regeneration—An Exploratory Longitudinal Case Study of Guangzhou, China
by Jianjun Li, Guangxian Lu and He Jin
Land 2026, 15(5), 834; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15050834 - 13 May 2026
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Abstract
In the context of the global urban transition towards stock-based regeneration (a shift from outward urban expansion to the redevelopment of existing built environments), the provision of public service facilities is facing a paradigm shift from mere physical spatial implementation to sustainable long-term [...] Read more.
In the context of the global urban transition towards stock-based regeneration (a shift from outward urban expansion to the redevelopment of existing built environments), the provision of public service facilities is facing a paradigm shift from mere physical spatial implementation to sustainable long-term operation. Traditional planning pathways heavily rely on static spatial allocation policies and upfront indicator compliance, yet systematically neglect the dynamic adaptability of facilities throughout their entire life cycles. Taking the megacity of Guangzhou, China, as a longitudinal case study, this paper reveals a typical compliance versus failure paradox—a situation where facilities strictly meet technical planning standards on paper but fail to deliver intended social welfare outcomes in practice. Using early comprehensive redevelopment projects like Liede Village as examples, the public service facilities strictly met the statutory allocation standard (5.7%) during the construction phase. However, after more than a decade of operation, these facilities have exhibited severe structural supply–demand mismatches and long-term operational dilemmas. To address this issue, this study proposes a four-dimensional governance framework—Value, Actor, Space, Institution (VASI)—that transcends traditional spatial perspectives. Through an in-depth analysis of the Guangzhou case using this framework, the research confirms that the root causes of the compliance failure lie in the absence of life-cycle costing (a method of assessing the total financial cost of facility ownership over its entire lifespan), the severe structural misalignment of rights and responsibilities between construction and operation actors, and the long-term void in post-occupancy evaluation feedback mechanisms. This paper argues that the planning of public service facilities in high-density megacities must achieve a theoretical leap from rigid upfront technical allocation to adaptive whole-life-cycle systemic governance, providing theoretical references and a practical guide for global cities facing similar stock-based regeneration challenges as they move towards equitable and socio-economically sustainable urban regeneration. Full article
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