As population increases worldwide, urban centres are projected to keep expanding at the expense of other land uses in the peripheries of cities. A key issue in spatial planning and urban development is associated with the implementation of effective mechanisms to control changes in land uses and consumption of land as a non-renewable resource. At the same time, reconciliation of interests and negotiation should take place at the local level to integrate the values and interests of all stakeholders in the planning process. Disputes over land comprise political, social, ecologic and economic factors, as well as their interactions. Therefore, successful strategies for sustainable land management rely also on the full understanding of the thematic context.The aim of this study was to propose a conceptual framework for the investigation of land-use conflicts that provided in-depth understanding of the context where they take place (actors, relations, drivers, location), and allowed to recognize potential leverage points for conflict anticipation and resolution to support sustainable urban development. This research work adopted the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) framework, developed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development with the purpose of organizing indicators for sustainable development in a causal sequence, as conceptual model for the analysis of land-use conflicts in the case study of Cholula, Mexico. Recently, the urban growth of Puebla occurred to a large extend at the expense of the rural territories of Cholula, reconfiguring the social dynamics of the local communities that were once exclusively rural. The pressure component focused on the identification of the competing interests over the utilization of land and incompatibilities. The state component investigated the configuration and composition of the current land uses and identified the land-units under dispute. The response component focused on the analysis of policies and regulations for urban development, as well as on the way that different actors react to the emergence of conflict. One of the main contributions of this research is that the composition and configuration of the land uses were investigated through the implementation of a land-use survey supported by the GIS application for mobile devices called Collector for ArcGIS. The cartographic basis was drafted from georeferenced satellite images, whilst the updating of the land-uses to identify the different land conflicts was carried out through the programmed application for mobile devices. The selected area for the survey covered 451 hectares, comprised the city blocks around the Great Pyramid of Cholula, and consisted in updating land use classes at parcel level. The field work was carried out by a team of collaborators in Mexico, and coordinated remotely from Munich, Germany. Incompatible interests regarding the utilization of the land were identified based on the analysis of three key aspects of the case study area: agriculture, cultural heritage, and urban sprawl. The land-use survey identified 15 land-use classes. Key patterns identified in the landscape composition were the concentration of agricultural parcels south of the pyramid, parks and sporting facilities along its east border, and most of the vacant land dispersed in the south part of the surveyed area. Three main aspects instigating disputes over land came together in the surveyed area: preservation of the rural landscape and agriculture, protection of the cultural heritage, and expansion of the urban infrastructure to boost tourism and support the growth of the city of Puebla. The findings from the analysis of the case study indicated that the logic of the PSR framework facilitates the identification of cause-effect relations, and enables the contextualization of land-use conflicts and identification of opportunities for improving the spatial planning process. The main challenge is to design a conceptual and comprehensive approach that breaks down the complexity of land-use conflicts into manageable components, without neglecting the interconnections among them. A better understanding of the emergence of land-use conflicts can help to avoid disturbances that deviate from the sustainability principles: ensuring economic progress, while maintaining the quality of the natural environment and safeguarding the human well-being.
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As population increases worldwide, urban centres are projected to keep expanding at the expense of other land uses in the peripheries of cities. A key issue in spatial planning and urban development is associated with the implementation of effective mechanisms to control changes in land uses and consumption of land as a non-renewable resource. At the same time, reconciliation of interests and negotiation should take place at t...
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