This study compares outcomes of tourism-led, street-level regeneration within two World Heritage Cities (WHCs): Grodzka in the Historic Centre of Kraków, Poland, and Masjed Jame in the Historic City of Yazd, Iran. Focusing on local stakeholders, the comparison is based on the declared outcomes of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach, introduced by UNESCO in 2011. A Mann–Whitney U test and effect-size analysis are employed, utilising data obtained through purposive and convenience sampling. Findings reveal that differing tourism maturity levels shape distinct outcomes; therefore, we propose a staged HUL framework to provide context-sensitive planning for emerging and mature WHCs.
This study critically reassesses the relevance of compact city models within ecologically fragile and spatially discontinuous contexts, using El Kala National Park in north-eastern Algeria as a case study. Despite moderate demographic pressure, the park’s environmental sensitivity challenges standardised sustainability frameworks. The research adopts an integrated methodology, combining the identification of environmental issues, analysis of urbanisation dynamics, spatial indicators, and land use land cover assessment. Findings indicate that compact urban planning can exacerbate land artificialisation and disrupt natural systems in protected areas. In response, the study introduces the concept of ‘gentle urbanisation’, advocating for dispersed, low-impact urban forms that respect ecological thresholds and landscape characteristics. Positioned between a conceptual reflection and empirical investigation, the article underscores the need for flexible, context-sensitive planning strategies to mitigate ecological disruption. While grounded in a specific territorial context, the study offers a conceptual basis for extending ‘gentle urbanisation’ principles to other environmentally sensitive protected areas.
Exactly 100 years ago, Town Planning Review published Abercrombie’s seminal paper on planning for rural places – ‘The Preservation of Rural England’. To mark the centenary of its publication, in this commentary we revisit Abercrombie’s work on rural planning. In doing so, we hope to reflect on the significance of Abercrombie’s ideas while contributing to contemporary rural planning debates. This commentary focuses on three dimensions: 1) Abercrombie’s analysis of the rural condition at the start of the twentieth century; 2) Abercrombie’s thoughts on rural planning practice, skills and knowledge; and 3) the limitations of geography and policy transfer.
This article explores the performance, motivations and geopolitical context of a 1942 British Council-organised lecture tour of Sweden by the British architect-planner William Holford. It engages with the policy mobilities literature - in particular studies on 1) the learning/educating within policy circulation and 2) the temporalities of policy circulation. It uses Holford's tour and lectures - which projected a bright future for the UK to Swedish audiences as a covert means of countering German influence in Sweden - to make the case for closer academic attention to the political dimensions of learning/educating and the role of the future within policy circulation.
In this response to Davies and Lai’s (2025) commentary ‘Is “Island Study” but a Form of Land Study?’ we advance the case for attentiveness to islandness within planning studies. Even though islands possess diverse characteristics, and it is impossible to formulate a universal definition for island or set of universal characteristics of islandness, perceptions surrounding islandness remain important for how people think about and engage with space. Because people often treat islands as distinctive spaces requiring special planning and management solutions, a sense of islandness can profoundly impact the development of human settlements.
Urban sprawl is a critical issue for people's lives, our economies, our cities and our natural environments. This article explores urban development patterns as they are manifested in spatio-structural urban models in metropolitan areas (cluster, linear or dispersed) vis-& agrave;-vis evidence of sprawl. We focus on four metropolitan regions in southern Poland: the Wroclaw metropolitan area, the Gornoslasko-Zaglebiowska metropolis, the Krakow metropolitan area and the Rzeszow metropolitan area. We use the GIS heat map tool to identify spatial models in our study areas and we isolate clusters of continuous compact development (and the spatial relationship of these clusters to urban boundaries) using the DBSCAN (density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise) algorithm. Findings suggest that most buildings (60 per cent to 65 per cent) tend to form clusters outside city boundaries across the four metropolitan areas studied; however, an exception is the Gornoslasko-Zaglebiowska metropolis, where clustering predominantly occurs within city limits. In addition, 20 per cent to 35 per cent of buildings in metropolitan areas across our study areas are not part of clusters, but the Gornoslasko-Zaglebiowska metropolis is again an exception, with only 5 per cent of buildings outside clusters. The research leads to four recommendations: promote cluster models for sustainable development, taking into account historical and policy influences; limitsprawl by adopting cluster model strategies in suitable urban zones; and pursue monocentric agglomerations, with the goal of sustainable urbanisation; cluster analysis with the DBSCAN algorithm determines more realistic urban development boundaries than the heat map tool. We propose action-oriented implementation strategies to reach these aims.
Registered providers (RPs) of social housing struggle to build genuinely affordable homes in rural England’s private land market. Land allocated for market development commands a high price in amenity areas. Since 1991, RPs have developed homes on unallocated ‘rural exception sites’ (RESs) in villages, seeking affordable land on which to build homes for local need. However, landowner expectations of the price achievable for these sites have risen, largely because the government has sought to substitute public grants with market mechanisms to achieve project viability. Drawing on research into local practices on RESs, this article explores evolving viability challenges and solutions, concluding with a call to fix land price for affordable housing on rural exception sites.
This article examines how neighbourhood plan-making influences the capacity of citizens and communities to shape places beyond the plans themselves. Based on interviews with planners and community activists, we contribute to very-local planning knowledge by extending frameworks for evaluating how plan-making impacts future place-making capacities. These include intangible - human, social, cultural and political - assets and financial, physical and natural assets. Additionally, we highlight how planners as intermediaries can 'galvanise' the development of such capacities, emphasising their motivations and the value of hybrid public-private roles in such processes. This underscores the pivotal role of intermediaries in fostering sustainable local planning efforts.
The main purpose of this study is to analyse current land uses in Samarra (Salahuddin Governorate, Iraq) according to the zoning criteria, to identify the changes that occurred in the 2010-2025 master plan and to pinpoint violations in land uses such as type, area and percentage of illegal uses. The GIS analysis finds that residential use dominates Samarra (37.4 per cent), agricultural use in the master plan has shifted to residential, and congestion has worsened because of a lack of parking spaces (0.1 per cent). Recommendations prioritise strategic expansion in the north-east, redevelopment of slums, and improvement of tourism infrastructure to support sustainable growth.
This short article presents a sociocultural practices framework that we feel is useful for better understanding the provenance of niche or ‘grassroots’ housing models in the specific sociocultural conditions of a given locality. Drawing on Davis’s Culture of Building concept, the framework connects grassroots housing development practices and responses with the sociocultural system formed from the land management practices of a bioregion. By using the development of the Swiss housing cooperative model to illustrate links between today’s urban housing model and the collaborative farming practices that preceded it, we contend that the sociocultural practices framework is useful for exploring the occurrence of specific grassroots housing models. Borrowing the terms ‘rootstock’ and ‘grafting’ from arboriculture, we further suggest that a deeply ingrained familiarity with collaborative development in cities such as Zürich is likely to make the inward development of newer housing models such as Cohousing that much more successful.
Policy documents increasingly identify energy-efficient housing renovation as a global priority that requires implementation at the local level. This article examines the challenges of implementing such energy-efficient renovation strategies in dense, low-income neighbourhoods characterised by a high degree of ownership fragmentation. Focusing on Dortmund–Nordstadt, Germany, the study combines spatial data analysis, policy review, and in-depth engagement with private owners and municipal stakeholders. It explores the specific perspectives of private actors while drawing broader implications for urban planning. The findings highlight the importance of context-sensitive approaches and point to the potential of neighbourhood-specific, low-threshold engagement formats to facilitate action.
This article examines developer contributions as a planning policy instrument for capturing land value for communities. Drawing on existing literature, it synthesises theory and develops analytical frameworks to classify land value capture mechanisms, ranging from incidental to explicitly designed. Developer contributions are categorised by their effects on land values and provision of public or merit goods, as enabling, commercial, compensatory, supplementary, redistributive or subsidised. The analysis highlights challenges in determining who ultimately bears the cost – site owners, nearby landowners, developers or end users, whether that is through unrealised economic rent, subsidies or combinations thereof – making assessment of value capture complex.
Few older people move each year, yet many are open to moving if it improves their quality of life and enables them to live independently. Residential park homes, manufactured homes typically owned by the resident but sited on rented land, are marketed as a relatively luxurious affordable downsizing option for older people who wish to maintain their independence. A notable characteristic of the sector is a 10 per cent commission on the resale value of a dwelling. We utilise unique data from a large-scale survey (N = 1521) of park home residents to investigate how the provision and clarity of information regarding this commission at the time of purchase influences the subjective well-being of park home owners. Our empirical analysis reveals that clear, fully understood information about the commission significantly enhances owners’ subjective life satisfaction, whereas mere awareness of this commission does not have a statistically significant effect. Our findings extend the understanding of the effect of (asymmetrical) information in housing decision-making and provide specific insights for promoting residential mobility that extend beyond this niche housing sector.
