Many land use systems in Mediterranean sloping areas risk abandonment because of nonprofitability, while their hydro-geological stability depends on an appropriate management. However, who are the land managers? What are their practices? Our research on the traditional olive groves of the Monte Pisano (Tuscany, Italy) reveals for the first time the quantitatively important role of hobby farmers as land managers in the area.

As the transitional area between urban and rural areas, land-use change in suburbs is drastic, which generates negative effects on the ecological environment. However, the identification of the suburbs remains controversial. Usually, the density of the population and residential land is referenced, and the close spatial interactions between urban areas and suburbs are generally neglected. To fill this research gap, this study adopts a case study method to map the suburbs of Jiangsu based on estimating the spatial interactions.

Effective planning at the landscape scale is a difficult but crucial task. Modern landscape planning requires economic success, ecological resilience, and environmental justice. Thus, planners and designers must learn to use a deliberative approach in planning: an approach in which decisions are made with the common understanding of stakeholders. This notwithstanding, there is a lack of localized and site-specific design examples for deliberative planning. One of the lacking examples is agricultural research station, which is unique because it balances economic, academic, and public uses.