The webinar Land Rights for Slum Dwellers in the East Indian State Odisha: Making technology work for the urban poor took place on 14 February, 2018. 

The webinar discussed anecdotes of the land rights policy in the state, application of innovative technology, processes and partnerships in the project execution and best practices followed in gaining rights for slum dwellers. 

This report provides a brief summary of the webinar dialogue and the main points that emerged.

Periurban areas of growing cities in developing countries have been conceptualised as highly dynamic landscapes characterised by a mixture of socioeconomic structures, land uses and functions. While the body of conceptual literature on periurban areas has significantly increased over the past two decades, methods for operationalising these multi-dimensional concepts are rather limited. Yet, information about the location and areal extent of periurban areas is needed for integrated planning in the urban–rural interface.

In recent years, a new era of interventionism has emerged targeting the development of African cities, manifested in ‘fantasy’ urban plans, surging infrastructure investments and global policy agendas. What the implications of this new era will be for specific urban contexts is still poorly understood however. Taking this research agenda as a starting point, this article presents findings of in-depth empirical research on urban development in Beira city, Mozambique, which has recently become the recipient of massive donor investments targeting the built environment.

This paper examines two periods of renewal in Washington, DC, USA’s southwest quadrant and their relationship with displacement. The paper situates this discussion within both the local historical continuum and globally-recognized paradigms, such as “the right to the city”. This article primarily serves as an overview of urban planning consequences in Southwest Washington DC based on extant academic literature and policy briefs.

Urbanization is a rapid global trend, leading to consequences such as urban heat islands and local flooding. Imminent climate change is predicted to intensify these consequences, forcing cities to rethink common infrastructure practices. One popular method of adaptation is green infrastructure implementation, which has been found to reduce local temperatures and alleviate excess runoff when installed effectively. As cities continue to change and adapt, land use/landcover modeling becomes an important tool for city officials in planning future land usage.

Urbanization is a rapid global trend, leading to consequences such as urban heat islands and local flooding. Imminent climate change is predicted to intensify these consequences, forcing cities to rethink common infrastructure practices. One popular method of adaptation is green infrastructure implementation, which has been found to reduce local temperatures and alleviate excess runoff when installed effectively. As cities continue to change and adapt, land use/landcover modeling becomes an important tool for city officials in planning future land usage.

The Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) produces new global spatial information, evidence-based analytics describing the human presence on the planet that is based mainly on two quantitative factors: (i) the spatial distribution (density) of built-up structures and (ii) the spatial distribution (density) of resident people. Both of the factors are observed in the long-term temporal domain and per unit area, in order to support the analysis of the trends and indicators for monitoring the implementation of the 2030 Development Agenda and the related thematic agreements.

In this article, we first summarise trends of land use changes and urbanisation in Ireland since 1990 using data from the Corine Land Cover program. In doing so, we compare the developments in Ireland with other European countries. Second, we propose a statistical test for the presence of sprawl using conditional and unconditional convergence tests. The two-part empirical analysis allows us to establish that Ireland has experienced a substantial loss of non-urban land in recent decades.

The key question in this article is the extent to which current real property expropriation practices in Kigali city promote spatial justice. Current studies focus on the ambiguous manner in which real property valuation had been regulated by the expropriation law of 2007, leading to unfair compensation and various conflicts between expropriating agencies and expropriated people. Following its amendment in 2015, the law currently provides clearer procedures for valuation and fair compensation, based on the market prices.

Land use and land cover change is a critical factor of ecosystem services, while water yield plays a vital role in sustainable development. The impact of urban expansion on water yield has long been discussed, but water yield change resulting from cropland protection is seldom concerned. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the impacts of cropland protection on water yield by comparing the water yield in two cropland protection scenarios (i.e., Strict Cropland Protection scenario and No Cropland Protection scenario).

The integration of food into urban planning is a crucial and emerging topic. Urban planners, alongside the local and regional authorities that have traditionally been less engaged in food-related issues, are now asked to take a central and active part in understanding the way food is produced, processed, packaged, transported, marketed, consumed, disposed of and recycled in our cities.

The territorial planning and the management of urban surfaces force the decrease of green spaces in urban landscapes. As the urbanization process during past decades of the last century was quite intensive not only in Europe but also in Lithuania, findings describing changes of forest cover as well as spatial structure of the forest land are requested.