Resumen de Conformance in land-use planning: The determinants of decision, conversion and transgression
Over recent decades, urban areas have expanded into agricultural areas. To contain outward spatial expansion and regulate urbanisation, policy-makers should continually review and evaluate their plans. Planners may use conformance-based approaches in which they examine the relationships between plans and physical outcomes.
This paper analyses land-use changes and their links to seventeen municipal master plans approved during the 1990s in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. We evaluated the conformity of land-use changes to municipal master plans and identified the major measurable factors conducive to land allocation, conforming changes, and nonconforming changes. We created three logistic-regression models to estimate the probabilities of plot development in three different land-use pathways: (i) intended for development within municipal plans (conversion decision path); (ii) subsequently converted in conformity with the plan (conforming conversion path); (iii) converted in disagreement with the plan which had assumed the land plot could not be developed (transgression path).
Results show that previous urban dynamics and distances from Lisbon are the main drivers of all models. Transport networks affect policy decisions−as well as conforming and transgressive conversions. The political orientations of local governments significantly influence land-use evolution. Land-preservation policies and municipal decisions do not reduce transgression.
This study is a contribution to the body of research literature regarding the evaluation of plan implementation. It is shown how regression models can be used to refine conformance-based analyses. More than simply quantifying nonconformity, its determinants are identified.
