Strategic land-use allocation: dealing with spatial relationships and fragmentation of agriculture

In The Netherlands. a debate continues to take place on how to allocate the available space among several types of land use. The rural area is under constant pressure from urban developments. Multi-purpose land use is becoming more and more important. Land-use allocation problems can be identified as complex planning problems, with a large number of stakeholders involved. Therefore the decisions made with respect to land use must be clear and transparent to these stakeholders. Various methods have been developed to support land allocation issues. Typically, however. the analysis of topological relationships, initiated by biophysical and socio-economic processes, and the spatial configuration of different land uses, is often neglected, especially for agricultural planning. Neglecting the spatial configuration and these relationships can result in spatial fragmentation of land use, thus endangering sustainable land use. This paper focuses on a method to address land-use allocation issues where the topological relationships are taken into account. The method is implemented in a Geographical Information System (GIS). Two cases for Dutch agriculture are discussed. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.