Greenbelts are the best-known growth management policies in Germany. As part of its regional plans, they attempt to keep undeveloped areas permanently open, thus avoiding sprawling, i.e., land consumptive forms of urban development. However, the effectiveness of such land use designations in terms of guiding and limiting urban growth has rarely been the subject of in-depth research. This is the first study to present a GIS-based analysis of the restrictiveness of greenbelt designations in Germany and their impact on urban spatial structure and land use.

We assessed bird diversity and nesting activity in 54 urban parks in the core of a highly populated East-Asian tropical city to investigate the effects of area, isolation, habitat heterogeneity, and human disturbances on avifauna. Tree density and heterogeneity were lower while isolation was greater in small than in large or medium-sized parks.

Tropical mangrove forests can play an important role in the functioning of adjacent marine ecosystems, by protecting them from an excess in land‐derived sediment and nutrients. The strength of this interaction may however depend on the nutrient status of the mangrove forest. This study related the nutrient status of eight mangrove forests in Phang Nga Bay (Thailand) to the land‐cover distributions in the upstream catchment areas.

CONTEXT: With rapidly expanding urban regions, the effects of land cover changes on urban surface temperatures and the consequences of these changes for human health are becoming progressively larger problems. OBJECTIVES: We investigated residential parcel and neighborhood scale variations in urban land surface temperature, land cover, and residents’ perceptions of landscapes and heat illnesses in the subtropical desert city of Phoenix, AZ USA.

On-site sanitation systems, such as septic tanks and pit latrines, are the predominant feature across rural and urban areas in most developing countries. However, their management is one of the most neglected sanitation challenges. While under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the set-up of toilet systems received the most attention, business models for the sanitation service chain, including pit desludging, sludge transport, treatment and disposal or resource recovery, are only emerging.

As in other cities of Sri Lanka, solid waste management has been a key problem in and concern for Balangoda Urban Council. Waste accumulations in the city have caused many problems, including unpleasant odours, contamination of water bodies, and contamination of paddy fields, giving rise to epidemic diseases such as Salmonella, typhoid fever, and diarrhoea. A Balangoda compost plant has been set up to process municipal solid waste into compost. The project started in 1999 as a city service to provide a solution to the solid waste problem, but converted into a business in later years.

Recycling and reuse of treated wastewater are an important part of the sanitation cycle and critical in an environment such as urban India with decreasing freshwater availability and increasing costs for delivering acceptable quality water, often from far distance. This report has been developed as a possible guidance document for the Indian government and gives substantial focus to the financial and economic benefits of wastewater recycling from the perspective of public spending.

Recycling and reuse of treated wastewater are an important part of the sanitation cycle and critical in an environment such as urban India with decreasing freshwater availability and increasing costs for delivering acceptable quality water, often from far distance. This report has been developed as a possible guidance document for the Indian government and gives substantial focus to the financial and economic benefits of wastewater recycling from the perspective of public spending.

Land tenure in Vietnam is becoming increasingly contested in the context of rapid economic development and growing inequality. Agricultural land in and around cities is targeted by developers for conversion to commercial uses. In rural areas, farmers' access to productive land is restricted by the prevalence of state-owned farms and forest enterprises. As a result, the number of complaints filed over land issues has increased dramatically in the last decade, and the revision of the Land Law in 2013 led to an unprecedented level of public participation in land policy formation.

This is an empirical study of economic measurement of the optimal size of
seven cities in West Sumatra region, Indonesia. The empirical findings are quite interesting
since the calculated optimal city size does not result in a single measure as mostly
previous studies found, but they vary in accordance with the economic approaches used.
The optimal city size measured by using the maximum profit approach would have been
larger in size compared to those measured by the minimum cost and maximum net benefit

Este documento es el resultado final de ese proceso. Dirigido a una audiencia mundial – que comprende las instancias decisorias urbanas, funcionarios públicos, asesores políticos y demás partes interesadas – contribuirá al desarrollo de bosques urbanos y periurbanos que ayuden a las ciudades a resolver sus exigencias actuales y futuras de productos forestales y servicios del ecosistema.