This study aims to clarify how changes in the legal system combined with changing social, economic, and environmental pressures have affected approaches taken for land use control. Our emphasis is on how historical transitions in the legal system, particularly in the use of local government ordinances (Development Permission Ordinances and voluntary ordinances concerning land use management) have contributed to land use control in suburban areas. Our results show that because of the revision of the City Planning Law in 2000, more municipalities are introducing planned land use control in suburban areas. These are local efforts that consider the local situation. However, planned lands use has also been used to relax regulations, thereby promoting traditional growth and expansion trends. This has been especially true in the Kanto region, where development pressure is high. Therefore, it is necessary to design land use control systems that are consistent with the goals of making compact urban areas and a stable society. To do so, it is critical to clarify planning goals through public participation, evaluate the municipality’s administrative abilities and applicant responsibilities, identify those developments that are to be regulated, and guide development with flexibility. It is also recommended that financial and technical support should be provided for public participation.

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The growth of the main built-up area of Beijing is characterised by a pancake like expansion, from 100 km² in 1950 to 1210 km² in 2005 in successive waves. The approach to future urban expansion will require careful consideration, as economic, environmental and social conflicts at the urban fringe have intensified. Two successive greenbelts have been designated to contain expansion and engender more compact growth. However, the first greenbelt has not been achieved successfully and many areas designated as the second greenbelt is facing implementation challenges. This paper builds on existing research into greenbelt policy implementation and investigates the impacts of alternative urban growth boundary proposals under a systematic modelling framework. It reviews the theoretical insights into growth at the urban fringe, and puts forward a methodology that links development at the urban fringe to the functioning of the entire metropolitan area. It outlines six alternative development scenarios that encompass the existing planning proposals for the urban fringe: trend growth, densification, stringent greenbelt, loose greenbelt, hybrid controls, and green wedges. We use a prototypical spatial equilibrium model to quantify the performance of the development scenarios in terms of production costs, consumer welfare, wages, floorspace rents, and commuting times. The analyses suggest that the physical forms of fringe area development do significantly affect the economic performance of the whole municipality.Alternative proposals, including those that have rarely considered in the past, should be investigated carefully in this light, in conjunction with related studies on social and environmental impacts of urban fringe development.

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The earthquake vulnerability is one of the main problems of Iranian cities. Thisproblem is going to be considered because of neglecting updated techniques for vulnerability assessment. There are numerous analytical techniques, in which some of them are useful to reach the responsive solution in software aspects. It is assumed that using techniques such as Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) supplementary by Fuzzy Logic can be helpful in this regard. This research is going to experience this technique in a case study in the 6th district of Tehran municipality. AHP is used in order to achieve the importance factor for each criterion which involved in the earthquake vulnerability and the Fuzzy Logic is used to normalize them. At last the consequent vulnerability function due to the criteria has been acquired. As a result, the purposed vulnerability model and map can become a significant software tool for confronting crises resulting from future earthquakes incidences and reduce the probable damages and vulnerabilities.

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Capital city of the region of Burgundy, Dijon has embarked into a strategy of eco-development, putting sustainability in the center the public discourse of urban planning. As a mid-size city in France, Dijon appears as a good example of the current trends in city greening around Western Europe. The label of « green city » has become essential in the promotion of urban areas for tourism and job creations, as is shown by the city rankings published in mainstream magazines. City planning, as in other cities of the same size (about 250,000 residents), is run by the Communauté d’agglomération Dijonnaise, « Grand Dijon », with competencies in transportation, housing and land use planning. According to French laws, a greater emphasis is now given to « solidarity » in the governance of urban areas (= social housing in all municipalities, and also to sustainability and « green » urban policies. Dijon, after about 20 other French cities, is rediscovering the virtues of streetcars (tramways), considered as a cleaner way to carry population than automobiles or fossil fuel-powered city buses. The implementation of a 2-line streetcar scheme means a reorganization of urban centralities in the Dijon area. The main downtown commercial street, where only buses are allowed now, will be fully pedestrianized at the start of tramway service. Only an electric shuttle will be able to run through the inner heart of the city. The train station will be a major hub for multimodal transfer. Spaces devoted to automobiles around the train terminal have been reduced, but areas reserved for public transportation (buses and the future tramway), pedestrians and bicycles have increased. The tramway route has been designed to link all major activity centers of the city (shopping centers, train station, university, administrative center, soccer stadium, entertainment venues …), in order to maximize ridership and minimize the need to use individual vehicles. The city is also encouraging the use of bicycles, with bike-rental programs, in the downtown area and around the university campus. European countries and cities are promoting its use as an environmentally-friendly way to move around cities. Bicycle is part of the daily-life culture of nations such as the Netherlands or Denmark. It is also making a noticeable comeback in French cities. After a few pioneering cities in the 1990’s, many cities have embarked into self-service public bike rental programs, following the 2005 example of Vélov’ in Lyon and the powerful impact of the deployment of Vélib in Paris (2007). In most cases, the cities have contracted with a major announcer, JC Decaux for the “Cyclocity” or Clear Channel for the “SmartBike”. This early model is evolving, with public transport conglomerates (Transdev, Keolis, Veolia) now getting in the bicycle providing game. The city of Dijon has gone further to enhance the appeal of bicycles with the implementation of a metro area wide network of bicycle lanes. Plans are underway on campus to establish new patterns of circulation within the university domain, encourage green mobilities and reduce the use of cars.

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Introducing urban public transportation facilities into a region often creates a significant opportunity to accelerate the process of development through affecting on the property values. Better access, more mobility options, and lower transportation costs are important factors that increase the land values of such regions, especially in blighted and poor neighbourhoods. This issue is important in Tehran Metropolis, because during the past decades an obvious kind of spatial segregation has been formed between the rich north (with high spatial quality) and the poor south (with low spatial quality) due to unequal distribution of opportunities and resources. On the other side, according to the population demand, Metro System is being developed rapidly in the city. Thus a comparative field study on the impacts of metro stations on property values in Tehran can represent not only the various impacts of metro station establishing on different urban textures, but also its consequences on reducing the spatial segregation in the city. We presume that the poor areas under discussion (southern regions) have received more benefits than the rich areas in terms of residential property values. So, establishing of metro stations in the poor and blighted regions of the city can improve the development potentials at these areas. Such improvement in spatial quality of the southern neighbourhoods of the city can reduce the spatial segregation in Tehran Metropolis. The hypothesis has been tested with a field study around Shari'ati Street Metro Station (in the northern part of Tehran) and Shohada Square Metro Station (in the southern part) with considering the quantitative (polynomial regression) and qualitative (personal interview) methods of impact assessment. The results show that establishing of metro stations has a consistently higher positive impact on the residential property values at the poor regions compared with the rich areas. Therefore, by means of acceleration in the values of the poor southern regions, Tehran's long-standing segregation will gradually diminish and subsequently the spatial urban integration will show itself, though in a rather long time.

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