Implementing the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) requires integrating biodiversity considerations across sectors and governance levels. Because land-use decisions are made locally, municipal land-use planning plays a pivotal role in shaping green, climate-resilient and ecologically functional settlement areas. In Switzerland, municipalities use building and zoning regulations to determine where development occurs, which blue and green areas are preserved, and which ecological standards apply to the construction sector. Yet little is known about how biodiversity-friendly standards are negotiated, institutionalized, and translated into binding rules during land-use plan revisions. We examined how biodiversity-friendly standards are incorporated into municipal regulations based on a qualitative assessment of six Swiss municipalities. We analysed ecological measures such as the protection of trees, watercourses, and urban green spaces, requirements for compensating lost green areas or trees, and strategies for increasing habitats through measures like plantings, daylighting streams, and promoting connectivity. These measures reflect a three-part urban ecology logic of preserving, compensating for construction, and expanding urban green, operationalized across seven areas of biodiversity promotion in settlement areas: green spaces, ecological quality, trees and hedgerows, water, soil and permeability, light/darkness, and animal-friendly construction.Using document analysis and semi-structured interviews with planners, local politicians, and stakeholders, the study identified enablers and barriers influencing the uptake of biodiversity-friendly standards. Findings indicate that the latter varies across different stages of the revision process and is driven by expert inputs, local advocacy and public demands for liveable environments. At the same time, development pressures, feasibility concerns, and political opposition often constrain the ambition or consistency of ecological measures.By situating these insights within the GBF Target 1 on spatial planning, the study shows how land-use plan revisions serve as a crucial arena where protection and use of urban green spaces are negotiated, and locally tailored solutions emerge. The analysis bridges urban ecology and biodiversity governance perspectives by unpacking how ecological principles are considered and contested within political processes. Overall, a trend towards stronger anchoring of biodiversity-friendly regulations can be observed, highlighting the potential of municipal planning as a lever for resilient, multifunctional, and biodiverse urban and peri-urban landscapes.

Land-use planning is widely recognized as a key tool for biodiversity conservation amid growing urbanization pressures. Yet, the extent to which biodiversity is considered in local land-use regulations remains insufficiently understood. In this study, we investigated land-use plan revisions in six Swiss municipalities, analyzing whether and how biodiversity-friendly standards are integrated into building and zoning ordinances. We compared the old and new ordinances and examined key stages of the revision process through qualitative content analysis of documents and interviews. We identified when and how biodiversity-friendly provisions are introduced, altered, or removed, as well as the barriers and enablers that shape their integration. Our findings show that biodiversity-friendly provisions are increasingly being adopted in building and zoning ordinances, despite political opposition and feasibility concerns. Common measures include preserving existing urban greenery, greening rooftops, and applying green area ratios to building surroundings. The drafting stage emerged as a crucial entry point for biodiversity-friendly provisions. Participatory procedures, using synergies, and advocacy were critical enablers for integrating biodiversity into land-use regulations.

The adoption of the historic urban landscape (HUL) approach to bridging cultural heritage and urban management practice has been facilitated by the dissemination of implementation experiences in scientific and grey literature. While the Swiss legal framework for historic sites resonates with the HUL approach, the extent to which practice reflects its six steps, a set of strategies designed to inform local action, remains unclear. This study examines interventions in sites listed in the Federal Inventory of Heritage Sites (ISOS) to identify evidence of practices aligned with these steps, with particular attention to Steps 2 (participation), 4 (integration into planning frameworks), and 6 (partnerships), which remain underrepresented in existing literature. The analysis of 10 case reports suggests prevalence of HUL-aligned practices, particularly in the early integration of heritage values into planning processes, the adaptation of design solutions to contextual constraints, and the involvement of multiple stakeholders in project development. This work recognises the importance of Swiss institutional conditions, including the legal status of ISOS, established planning cultures, and participatory mechanisms, in shaping these outcomes. Rather than offering a universally applicable model, this study provides insights into how HUL-aligned practices may emerge within specific governance contexts and identifies conditions for their transferability.

The rapid growth and increasing complexity of European cities highlight the need for urban planning and governance in creating sustainable urban environments. Specifically, regulations on building form and location are key to designing efficient and equitable cities. However, these regulations vary widely among municipalities across European countries and are not well understood. Notably, there is no comprehensive overview of the prevailing regulations and their objectives. This study fills this gap by analysing how European countries prioritise local building regulations and whether they pursue efficiency, i.e. making the best use of space, or equity, i.e. promoting fair and inclusive distribution of urban benefits. We examine regulations related to building height, volume, density, outlook, design coherence, value capacity, and hazard prevention. Through an online survey of planning experts in 30 countries, we found that regulations on height and density are prioritised the most and are primarily efficiency-oriented. While some regulations of lesser priority exhibited a more balanced pursuit of both goals, overall, building regulations in Europe pursue efficiency more than equity. The findings from this study are expected to enhance knowledge exchange in planning practice and foster better cooperation between countries. Furthermore, they provide an important empirical basis for much-needed theory development and future comparative research in spatial planning and land-use regulation.

There is a broad scientific and societal consensus that cities worldwide must become more ecological and climate-resilient. Land-use planning has various instruments for leverage, including conventional zoning at the municipal level and planned unit developments (PUDs) at the neighbourhood level. While they differ in their local characteristics, both instruments are used in many countries. However, their use and efficacy in facilitating sustainable urban transformation (such as the preservation and enhancement of urban trees) have been challenged. This study considered the parts of urban land parcels that are not covered by main buildings as 'tree area potentials' (TAPs) and quantitatively compared conventional zones with PUDs in the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland, developed before 2000. We analysed the different ground cover types (such as subsidiary buildings or traffic areas) in the TAP areas and the proportion of each TAP area comprising tree canopy - referred to as 'realised tree area potential' (rTAP). In addition, planning documents of PUDs were qualitatively assessed to determine their regulations regarding urban trees and how these regulations related to the rTAP. In general, the assessed PUDs and conventional zones could not be distinguished based on their rTAP values despite PUDs having greater flexibility to regulate open spaces. Exceptions with higher rTAP tended to have clear regulation of trees. Further research is needed to determine why the early PUDs were not more successful in preserving and enhancing trees and how this can be improved in the future.

The field of urban planning is currently undergoing a profound transformation driven by digital technologies. These are increasingly used to support and automate the planning process, and have the potential to reshape the nature of planning itself and impact the core planning values of equity, transparency, efficiency, and legitimacy. One pressing issue is the growing use of standards, not only in data formats, but also in the categories that describe and regulate the built environment. While standards have been around for centuries, they have recently gained heightened importance because they are necessary for leveraging digital technologies. However, the impact of standardization on urban planning and land-use regulation remains poorly understood and under-researched. In this conceptual paper, we provide a way forward for understanding the effects of digitalization-driven standardization. The work draws from a broad range of literature to discuss the drivers of standardization and identify the pathways through which standardization unfolds. It then presents an analytical framework as a conceptual basis for studying the impact of standardization. The framework is based on a research process that links technologies, standardization pathways, regulatory practices, and core planning values. Jointly, these four aspects are viewed as the means for expanding the way we think about how digitization-driven standards are influencing core planning values.

Although national urban policies are implemented to steer urbanization processes, the systematic evaluation of these measures continues to pose a methodological challenge. We developed an innovative methodology for assessing policy outcomes based on a multi-dimensional set of indicators considering socio-economic and land change factors and applied it to Brazil. We evaluated the conformance of urban change with two cornerstone policies of Brazil's urban agenda: the Federal Constitution, which lays the legal and political foundation for driving urban reform in Brazil and marks the start of the country's re-democratisation phase, and the subsequent City Statute, which regulates the guidelines established by the former. Our evaluation spans 27 Brazilian state capitals from 1990 to 2020. We used content analysis to identify five main goals outlined by the policies: economic development (1), basic service provision (2), housing provision (3), urban compactness (4), and green and sustainable cities (5). Through a conformance-based assessment we compared the intended and observed changes for each goal in each city. We observed advancements towards attaining the goals, stipulated in both policies, for provisioning housing, basic services, and economic. However, a significant shortfall emerged in the realm of controlling urban expansion. We attribute the discrepancy between attaining built-up land change and socio-economic goals to the insufficient coordination between planning-engaged sectors and the influence of land market revenues. The conformance-based policy evaluation framework proved effective in our research and is expected to be beneficial for evaluations in other countries.

Open and green (O&G) spaces are central to sustainable, liveable and safe urban environments. As they are able to deliver many interconnected benefits within city constraints, O&G spaces are commonly used to promote public well-being, protect natural habitats, control pollution, mitigate natural hazards, and more. Despite their importance, O&G spaces are increasingly under pressure in densifying areas with growing urban populations. This calls for a better understanding of the land-use regulations responsible for their provision, protection and management. As a cornerstone of local planning in Europe, these regulations are crucial for sustainable urban management, which can benefit from the systematic analysis of their importance and objectives. Here, we use an online expert survey across 30 European countries to analyse the importance of local land-use regulations in the planning and permission-granting process and the extent to which they pursue efficiency and equity objectives. We form six groups of O&G space regulations for the study, based on their focus: (1) nature preservation, (2) pollution, (3) hazard mitigation, (4) safety, (5) availability and (6) access. Results show a clear order of importance among the groups, with nature preservation being the main regulatory concern. We observe an overall balanced pursuit of efficiency and equity in Europe, with some regulation groups focusing on efficiency over equity and vice versa. Nonetheless, significant variation in this balance emerges among countries. These findings are expected to provide an empirical basis for much-needed theory development and future comparative research on land-use regulations and O&G spaces.

Divergent perspectives on future land-use changes, known as land-use conflicts (LUCs), significantly affect the local environment, human well-being, and sustainable development goals. However, the accurate identification and resolution of LUCs remain challenging. This study proposed a framework for LUC identification by integrating the land characteristics obtained from expert analyses with local stakeholder preferences. It outlined four types of LUCs and ten conflict combinations. The results indicated that 44.64% of the land plots exhibited at least one type of conflict. Among these, 896, 324, 115, 15, and 12 plots encountered suitability, preference-current use, preference-evaluation, and preference-preference conflicts, respectively. These findings validated the feasibility of the proposed framework and methods. Furthermore, different types of conflict combinations require different coordination rules, which indirectly reflect the complexity of conflict resolution. This framework aids the classification and identification of LUCs; offers targeted conflict resolution strategies; and contributes to informed and inclusive land-use and spatial planning.

Spatial planning is conducive to guiding urban growth to efficiently achieve urban sustainability. However, assessing the causal effects of planning practices on three-dimensional (3-D) urban growth at the local level is empirically challenging. In this study, Austin, Texas was selected to evaluate the causal effects of plans on the 3-D urban growth, measured by impervious surface fraction, building surface fraction, and building height. The propensity score matching method was applied to construct an artificial control group of land use pixels and subsequently evaluate the effects of the two planning intentions, i.e., planned development centers and planned protected areas, on the 3-D urban growth respectively over two plan periods. Results show that the growth rates of three urban morphology components were significantly lower in the second period. The causal effect analysis provides empirical evidence of the success of spatial planning practice in guiding urban growth to the centers and away from parks and open space during the second plan period. The study proved that detailed 3-D urban dynamic monitoring and propensity score matching ultimately helps to understand how planning intentions affect different aspects of urban growth, which further contributes to a deeper understanding of spatial heterogeneity in complex urbanization processes.

The negative effects of habitat loss on biodiversity are undisputed, while the effect of habitat configuration, i.e., the spatial arrangement of habitat area, has been debated for decades. To develop a more comprehensive understanding, it is important to know when and how configuration matters. In this study, we tested whether forest configuration influences the richness of species in groups characterized by varying shade tolerance in different ways and how such effects are related to habitat amount (i.e., the percentage of forest cover) at the landscape scale. Based on 104 survey plots (each measuring 1 ​km2) of vascular plants on the Swiss Plateau, and using two statistical approaches (i.e., multiple regression and path analysis), we modeled the effects of habitat amount and configuration (measured as number of forest patches, total edge length, and proximity index) across all the plots and separately for three habitat amount classes: <10%, 10%–30%, and >30% forest cover. When we modeled all plots together, we found that, after controlling for habitat amount, the forest configuration significantly affected species richness. When we considered the different habitat amount classes separately, most of the significant effects of habitat configuration on species richness occurred only for habitat amounts of <10% forest cover. Additionally, the response to forest configuration differed among species with different shade tolerances. When forest area was <10%, the effects of the number of patches and the total edge length on the species richness of light-demanding forest species were greater than the effect of habitat amount, whereas neither configuration metric affected the richness of shade-tolerant species. In conclusion, our findings highlight the importance of configuration in landscapes with a small amount of habitat. At the same time, they demonstrate that considering the confounding factors (e.g. species traits) is important for understanding the effects of forest configuration on biodiversity and that generalizations remain a challenge for landscape ecology.

As our environment becomes increasingly urban, the governance of urban regions faces multifaceted challenges. There is growing recognition that studying the governance of urban regions requires looking beyond individual plans and examining networks of plans. Existing work on plan networks focuses on documents, neglecting the agency of the people and governments who create and implement the plans. To help fill this gap, we develop and test an analytical framework for assessing urban governance within a network of plans, focusing on the alignment of plan content, interactions, and the relative efficacy of the plans. We apply this framework in metropolitan Austin, Texas (USA), studying five strategic plans that address the region's built environments, transportation systems, and natural areas over a 20 year-period. The analysis reveals how voluntary regional scenario-planning conducted decades earlier continues to shape city and regional development goals; how alignment between plans on paper can belie poor cross-jurisdictional coordination in practice; and how plans addressing transportation and natural areas are more efficacious for implementation than plans for the built environment. In addition to making plan dynamics visible, the framework thus allows for rigorous, empirical assessment of regional governance through a network of plans.

While urban growth management has shown varying degrees of success in curbing urban land expansion, their effects over time and across urban land uses remain largely unexplored. We used nationwide longitudinal data and difference-in-difference models to assess the effect of construction land quotas on changes in residential, industrial, commercial, public service, and aggregate land uses in 274 Chinese cities between 2010 and 2019. Results show that more stringent quotas were initially effective in containing urban land expansion but lost their effectiveness later. Over the entire period, however, the quotas had no significant effect. Such ineffective quota led to a higher percentage of residential land at the expense of industrial land, but unaffected commercial and public service land. Our findings highlight that these effects were driven by strong revenue incentives favoring profitable residential construction. This underscores the crucial importance of considering the roles various urban land uses play in local revenue and economic development when enforcing urban growth management.

Sustainable urban development requires not only dense and land-saving construction, but also a large share of urban vegetation. A planned unit development (PUD) is a land-use planning instrument that is often used to improve urban quality in urban renewal and densification worldwide. In this study, we analyse the influence of PUDs on urban vegetation in the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland, by contrasting them with conventional zoning. We modelled the share of shrub and tree canopy cover per neighbourhood block using generalized linear mixed effect models (GLMM), with the type of planning instrument as the focal predictor amongst other control variables known from the literature to be influential on urban vegetation. Results show that PUDs are associated with significantly less urban vegetation cover than conventional zoning. This is unexpected and raises concerns. Given how important PUDs are as levers for improving urban quality, their observed inability to promote valuable shrub and tree structures leads us to recommend that good landscape planning and long-term management of (existing and new) urban vegetation be included as an additional standard criterion of high priority in the assessment of future PUDs.

Mehrjährige Forschungsarbeiten der WSL zu erneuerbaren Energien können Antworten liefern auf Fragen wie die folgenden: Wovon hängt die Akzeptanz von Anlagen für die Erzeugung erneuerbarer Energie ab und wie lässt sich die Akzeptanz steigern? Was vereinfacht die Planung solcher Anlagen und wie fördert der Einbezug der Bevölkerung ihren Ausbau? Was können Gemeinden tun? Welche Rahmenbedingungen auf nationaler und kantonaler Ebene sind förderlich? Insbesondere angesprochen von diesen Ergebnissen sind Energie- und Planungsbeauftragte von Gemeinden, Regionalverbänden, Kantonen und Bund, Energieund Umweltverbände, Ingenieur- und Planungsbüros sowie die interessierte Öffentlichkeit.

The global nuclear industry is entering a phase of widespread decommissioning of aging nuclear power plants (NPPs). New planning approaches are needed to prevent these sites from turning into persistent brownfields by transforming them into meaningful post-nuclear spaces. As a prerequisite for any widely applicable NPP transformation strategy, this paper presents a global typological investigation of the spatial expression of NPPs based on a systematic analysis of aerial and online imagery. The investigation reveals the compositional and configurational complexity of NPPs as a key challenge for redevelopment, questioning if conventional transformation approaches focusing on the reuse of individual buildings or site assets are suitable for NPP sites. Instead, the results show that a 'landscape reading' of NPPs-looking beyond site boundaries at the wider landscape context-is crucial to understanding these spaces in their full complexity and spatial form.

Les travaux de recherche que mène le WSL sur plusieurs années peuvent fournir des réponses à diverses questions, par exemple: de quoi dépend l'acceptation des installations d'énergie renouvelable et comment peutelle être améliorée? Quels sont les facteurs qui simplifient la planification de telles installations et comment la participation de la population favorise-t-elle leur déploiement? Que peuvent faire les communes? Quelles sont les conditions-cadres favorables aux niveaux national et cantonal? Ces résultats s'adressent en particulier aux responsables de l'énergie et de la planification dans les communes, aux associations régionales, aux cantons et à la Confédération, aux associations dans les domaines de l'énergie et de l’environnement, aux bureaux d'études ainsi qu’au public intéressé.

Three-dimensional urban form has a considerable influence on urban sustainability, being the reason spatial planning regulate it. Yet, we know very little about the development of building density and building height over time. In this study, we characterize the horizontal and vertical patterns of urban development in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, and Zaragoza between 1965 and 2015. Our analysis is based on a unique combination of cadastral data and LiDAR point clouds, which we use to characterize building footprint, height, and volume, at decadal intervals. Subsequently, we characterize urban expansion and densification processes using building volume and Urban Form Types. We find that height of new buildings shows a significant downward trend during the 70 & PRIME;s for the four urban areas and a decreasing trend after the 2008 real estate bubble for the cases of Barcelona and Valencia. Over the analyzed period a decrease of 116, 313, 217 and 157 cm in average building height was observed for Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, and Zaragoza, respectively. Urbanized volume of all cities together has expanded by roughly 350% between 1950 and 2015. Sparse built-up form showed the largest absolute increase, although it contains only a low fraction of new built-up volume. A clear trend towards expansion is observed in city outskirts and the development of new urban clusters in municipalities closer to the main city. At the same time, settlements have followed incremental steps towards densification of the city-cores over time. This study provides a first step towards comprehensive understanding of long-term changes in 3D urban form, which can inform the development of policies that target the third dimension in urban form to steer sustainable urban growth.

Urban policies play a role in guiding urban growth towards more sustainable and efficient cities. We aimed to understand the role of the national urban agenda in driving land-use and socio-economic changes in all 27 Brazilian state capitals from 1990 to 2020. We identified five main goals established by the 1988 Federal Constitution (FC) and the 2001 City Statute (CS): G1 economic development; G2 basic service provision; G3 housing; G4 urban compactness development; G5 green and sustainable cities. FC and CS led to several programmes to reduce socio-economic inequalities among citizens, and most cities showed improvements in socio-economic conditions after 2000. Policies led to financial investments in massive electrification, sanitation and water services, and housing programmes, and several cities conformed well with G2 and 3. Conformance with G4 was low during both periods. Fast urban growth occurred mainly at the edges of the studied cities, and several cities had a high percentage of new built-up areas classified as outlying. Cities conformed well with G5, although several cities lost forest cover. Political articulation between the local and federal levels and increased autonomy of municipalities in land taxation and land market control could increase the effectiveness of urban policies in Brazilian cities.