Peri-urban agriculture (PUA) has been widely regarded as a sub-field of multifunctional agriculture for improving the sustainability of urban environments. However, urban sprawl has both negative and positive effects on peri-urban farming, and the research on this issue in Japan is insufficient.

The rapid growth of China’s economy since the reform in 1978 should be largely attributed to urbanization. Nonetheless, in terms of farmland productivity, urbanization may lead to perverse incentives and thus threaten food security. On the one hand, the requisition–compensation balance of farmland (RCBF) policy could reduce farmland productivity because of a “superior occupation and inferior compensation”; on the other hand, urbanization promotes the transfer of the younger labor force and thus reduces the productivity of the agricultural labor force.

The research presented in the paper intends to overcome an information gap on the evolution of urbanized surfaces in Italy which in the studies carried out so far have never been available. The only historical data on this form of land use date back to the 1950s, and were extracted from a national cartography created by the Military Geographic Institute. The next chronological section available was then that of the noughties, already digital.

The land privatization process in Mongolia mainly concerns residential land. The process is considered to perform slowly. The deadline for free allocation of residential land was extended from 2005 to 2013. Still, the number of families that have acquired private landownership during that period is low. This paper aims to take a closer look at the operational process in Ulaanbaatar. The paper finds that, when citizens apply, in a majority of cases the legal deadline to be granted a land-ownership right is actually met.

This study explores urbanization and flood events in the northern coast of Central Java with river basin as its unit of analysis. Two types of analysis were applied (i.e., spatial data and non-spatial data analysis) at four river basin areas in Central Java—Indonesia. The spatial analysis is focused on the assessment of LULC change in 2009–2018 based on Landsat Imagery. The non-spatial data (i.e., rural-urban classification and flood events) were overlaid with results of spatial data analyses.

The present study analyzes population redistribution across metropolitan regions considering together changes over time in the spatial distribution of resident and present population from census data. Considering population dynamics in Athens, Greece, between 1991 and 2011, the results of this study evidenced how the ratio of present to resident population increases more rapidly in urban than rural areas along the last twenty years.

Innovation is an inevitable way to enhance regional competitiveness, promote urbanization and achieve sustainable development. The sci-tech park is one of the main land use types in the construction of a new town and the critical space carriers of urbanization. This study focuses on the correlation between higher education institutions (HEIs) innovation and sci-tech enterprises (STEs) development, and the Hangzhou West Hi-tech Corridor as a case study.

Urbanization of the countryside affects rural areas, especially in the immediate surroundings of large cities. Normally, this occurs as an unpromoted process, but in Chile, it is driven by the legal framework. This research focuses on rural residential plots (RRPs) around the capital city, Santiago. The analysis seeks to understand the significance and consequences of RRPs during the last four decades and the role of a favorable legal framework in affecting their development.

This paper investigates the phenomenon of spatial chaos in Poland resulting from urban sprawl. The phenomenon is particularly visible in the case of suburban small cities which, in contrast to cities in the EU-15 countries with similar populations, are expanding excessively, causing a growth of urbanized areas exceeding several times the growth of their population. Suburbs of these cities increasingly resemble a badly played Tetris game. The selected study area consists of several cities in the Warsaw suburban zone where an increased dynamic of these processes can be observed.

Chinese metropolitan areas have been experiencing urbanization over the past decades, impacting biodiversity, carbon emissions, urban heat islands, and food security. Yet, systematic research on spatio-temporal urbanization patterns and drivers along the urban–rural gradient is rarely reported for northwest China. Here, we use land-use data from 1980 to 2015 to explore land-use change, urbanization intensity, and drivers in northwest China.

Rapid urbanisation in China has led to massive outmigration in rural regions, which has changed the regional labour force structure and can have various profound impacts as a result. This research used a case study in Southwest China to investigate how regional land use patterns have been changed in the context of rural outmigration and assessed the resulting dynamics on local ecological environment.

The narrative of rapid urbanisation in relation to inadequate planning, governance and management regimes in Nigeria is well-rehearsed. The combination of customary and colonial practices, outdated policies and plans and entrenched attitudes is typically regarded as a problem without clear or universal solutions. The aim of this report is to elucidate the urban land administration and planning debate in the country by examining the issues based on literature review and views of key urban sector stakeholders from six cities obtained through interviews.