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The movement of population from rural to urban areas has been accompanied in North America by the explosive dispersal of the urban population into suburban areas. Much of the resulting low-density suburban residential growth has developed in an uncoordinated, inefficient pattern destroying the amenities and appearance of, and interfering with, the agricultural and recreational use of the countryside, yet not providing adequate urban amenities. This phenomenon of "urban sprawl" is undesirable since it devours vast areas of land in an uneconomic pattern, creates problems for both the residential and agricultural use of the land in urbanizing areas, and compromises future urban development. The most direct means of minimizing urban sprawl and promoting better land use is the strict enforcement of rational land-use controls. It is essential to examine the applicability of specific land-use controls to the urban sprawl problem, and to test the effectiveness of these controls in specific situations in order to arrive at a municipal policy for curbing urban sprawl. Since social and economic circumstances influence the use of and development on land, a comprehensive view must be taken of the function and application of land-use controls, and their inter-relationships to combat urban sprawl. Although controls directly applicable to the use of land appear to influence the pattern of its development most significantly, a number of "indirect" controls may be -of use in guiding the pattern of development and the use of land. Although the causes of urban sprawl and their relationships are many and still under discussion and study, it is generally acknowledged that the lack of control over land use and development is the most significant, permissive, cause of urban sprawl. The hypothesis is advanced "that the responsibility for curbing urban sprawl lies with the Provincial Government, which should ensure that its municipalities implement a comprehensive land development policy". Following a general review of land-use controls and urban sprawl, direct land-use controls, such as residential and agricultural zoning, subdivision regulations, and municipal servicing policies, are examined with the intention of incorporating them in a municipal policy aimed at curbing urban sprawl. To arrive at a method for evaluating the effectiveness of selected land-use controls for their normal, designed purpose, potential indicators of the incidence of and changes in the character and location of urban sprawl are discussed. A simplified method is then proposed and applied to an urbanizing area to evaluate the effectiveness of its land-use controls in curbing urban sprawl. It is found that the waste of land and the pattern of land uses characteristic of urban sprawl have serious implications for the future as well as for the present. Urban sprawl, a regional phenomenon, requires a regional, coordinated land development policy; zoning subdivision regulations and servicing policies can be used to curb urban sprawl on a local scale. The complex interrelationships found to exist between controls directly and indirectly influencing the use of land make further study necessary and, to a degree, frustrate the attempt to devise a methodology for investigating the effectiveness of direct land-use controls in curbing urban sprawl. It is concluded that remedial provincial and municipal legislation can be drawn up immediately on the basis of experience gained so far with urban sprawl. However, a policy directed at curbing urban sprawl ought to be a component part of a larger policy having the objective of promoting desirable forms of urban development. The Provincial Government is fully and solely responsible for provincial affairs and therefore has the solemn duty to ensure that urban sprawl is curbed effectively and immediately. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Developing countries are experiencing social and economic transformation which many countries have already experienced at some periods during the course of their history. In the rural areas of developing countries this transformation has taken the form of 'community development.' Community development is a process and a method by which the government mobilizes the initiative and energy of especially rural communities to improve their living conditions, through its financial and technical assistance. Up to date, over thirty countries have full-fledged community development programmes. As a result of different cultural practices of these countries, the diversity of their political and administrative organizations, their economic conditions, and, a multiplicity of other factors, the programmes have been tailored to suit the particular needs of each country. The programmes can be classified into three main types: integrative, adaptive, and project types. The extent to which the programmes are contributing to the development of rural areas constitutes the central problem which this paper seeks to examine. An assumption made is that, provided the programmes are well designed and administered, they can contribute substantially to rural development. Four important areas of activity of community development programmes; namely, agriculture, land reform, cottage and small-scale industries, and capital or physical facilities, such as roads, schools, health centres, and land reclamation, have critically been examined against the background of community and regional planning. In examining these contributions, it has been discovered that they are on the whole unsatisfactory because of the following reasons: (a) administrative difficulties created by the lack of co-ordination of activities between community development agencies and other government agencies; (b) ineffective community development techniques, such as, 'planning from below' and voluntary contribution of labour. Since the programmes are not making satisfactory contribution to rural development it is suggested that the government should play a dominant role in the planning of programmes. In essence, community development techniques should be integrated with community and regional planning techniques. Using Ghana as a test-case, it is also considered that community and regional planning can be useful, provided administrative difficulties are removed by establishing one central agency for community development under the highest administrator. In conclusion, it is determined that community development, through its multi-purpose programmes, attempts to solve socio-economic problems of rural communities, but its techniques are ineffective to solve these problems. Hence community development techniques must be integrated with the more effective techniques of community and regional planning. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

One of the main concerns of the urban planner should be to establish an efficient pattern of locations for the goods and services that serve the population of the city and metropolitan region. Efficiency in the layout of a city should be sought as an objective, in keeping with aesthetic and sociological considerations, to provide a pleasing urban environment. To achieve efficiency in the distribution of establishments providing goods and services there must be a basis for making locational decisions. One method of analysis on which to base decisions is the Central Place System. This is a method of explaining the geographic distribution of centres which serve the surrounding population. The theory behind the Central Place System developed from observations on the distances people would travel to fulfil certain needs which could only be satisfied from a central place. A hierarchy of needs was recognized, some of which had to be satisfied frequently by everyone, such as the need for food. This need people would want satisfied at little cost of time and effort. For other less frequently required needs, people would be willing to travel further. A hierarchy of centres would thus develop, the smallest unit having only a grocery store and the largest unit possessing the complete range of functions to satisfy every need. The ideal pattern for such a hierarchy was postulated as a system of hexagons. This system was tested and found to be substantially valid in an area of equal distribution of disposable income and equal ease of travel in all directions. Before a hierarchical pattern can be established, however, the centrality of the centres must be measured. Presumably, the Central Business District is the highest order of centre in any urban region, in that it possesses the functions which people in the urban area are willing to travel the greatest distance to reach. The corner grocery store is the lowest order of centre. The measurement of the ranks that should be ascribed to centres between these two extremes involves concepts of the threshold and relative specialization of functions. The study of central places in Vancouver, British Columbia, revealed a hierarchy of functions and a resultant hierarchy of centres. Experimentation with the pattern suggested that certain tentative conclusions could be made based upon the observed hierarchy. The Central Place System is a way of synthetizing geographic and economic information into a coherent statement. It is useful to the urban planner as a basis for making policy decisions on locations of urban activities. Using the system, inefficiencies in the present layout of the city can be determined and plans made to counterbalance the existing inefficiencies. The hierarchical pattern of centres can serve as a basis for deciding where expressway interchanges should be located to combine local and through traffic needs. It is useful to determine where service centres should be in redevelopment areas. In areas being subjected to intensive development for the first time the Central Place System can be used to predetermine the best locations for service centres to serve the new area in co-ordination with the existing centres. The Central Place System provides a framework for study and analysis of the pattern of urban service centres in relation to each other and to the surrounding region. As well as being useful for making decisions with regard to specific location problems, it provides an understanding and a perspective for urban spatial relationships. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

The human race exists and progresses by virtue of a sum of knowledge, with which it is able to maintain a measure of control over the physical world. The real wealth of any region, race or nation is drawn from the land and today much of this land is bankrupt. Through overpopulation and misuse of his natural resources, man is rapidly backing himself into an ecological trap. The solution to this problem is to increase what may be termed the "carrying capacity" of the land. The only way this may be done is by national land use planning and development of resources on a regional basis. In developing land for any purpose, man faces certain physical limitations. The two most obvious and important are climate and land forms. Throughout history these fields have been studied and today are large and complex branches of science - they have remained, however, largely separate fields. Only very recently have some advances been made in the field of climatic geomorphology. The investigators in this field have tried to show some of the complex interrelationships that exist between climate and geomorphology. Unfortunately, although it shows great promise, most work to date has been on a highly academic level and its practical application has been piecemeal at best. This thesis is a modest attempt to define, on one hand, some fundamental interrelationships between climatology and geomorphology and then, on the other hand, to apply these defined principles to selected types of resource development regions. In this presentation, it is recognized that other factors, economic, political, administrative, technological, etc. may be equally, if not more important, in determining the patterns and nature of regional resource development; these factors, however, are only referred to in passing. The overall presentation is as follows: firstly, the need for regional resource planning is discussed in the light of pertinent physical factors. This is followed by two chapters which present an introduction into climatology and land forms. In these chapters the basic concepts and terms of these fields are explained and provide the essential background for the discussion to follow. To conclude the discussion of the physical elements, the two fields are interrelated and fundamental principles applicable to regional resource development, are developed. In the next section of the paper these principles are applied to selected types of resource development regions. In this connection, two major areas of development are examined as "case studies". These areas include: (1) the Kitimat-Kemano region as an example of the development of one resource; (2) the Lower Mainland region as an example of complex resource development which is influenced by a large urban area. Finally, the general applications of climatic and geomorphic principles to regional resource development which emerge from the examination of the two case studies are discussed. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

In the planning profession there is increasing recognition of the complex relationship of variables in an urban region which impede rational decision-making. In order to cope with this problem, quantitative models have been developed in recent years. It is the purpose of this study to investigate and evaluate the present stage of model-building as it applies to regional planning. It is hypothesized that the application of land use allocation models is a desirable aid for rational decisionmaking in regional planning. The study begins with an outline of the theoretical basis for building land use allocation models: economic location theory and social physics. Economic location theory is mainly concerned with finding criteria for a rational choice of the location for a firm or a household. In this context, the concept of economic rent is discussed. In order to give explanations of the land use patterns within a region the basic notion in respect to agricultural production is developed and then extended to the urban land uses. The second approach to land use allocation models, social physics, is mainly based on statistical regularities in explaining human mass behavior. The most commonly employed concept is the gravity principle, which is an attempt to apply Newton's physical law of gravitation to social, mass behavior. This concept is very often applied in community and regional planning and has yielded acceptable results in a great number of studies. In part three the most important elements and steps in the process of model-building are discussed, including rules or standards which should be considered by a model-builder. First of all, a wide range of types of models are examined in order that the proper model may be selected for an actual regional planning problem. The design process is also discussed in some detail and it is shown that there is evidence of fundamental criteria for model building. Part four is concerned with three selected existing regional land use allocation models. The model of the Pittsburgh Region was the first operational model on a regional level and its ingenuity influenced numerous model-builders. One of the most salient findings of this model, which is mainly based on social physics, relates to the fact that the gravity principle seems to have enough flexibility to comprehend the spatial pattern of land uses within an urban region. The model of the State of Connecticut is based on the shift-analysis framework and distributes three population and six employment groups to the 169 towns of the State of Connecticut. Its basic feature is the ability to replicate the structure of a region as large as a state and it is therefore of great interest as a macro-approach. The structure of the model is relatively simple and the data requirements are not intensive. Hence, it seems that such a model framework could serve as a sound basis for models in other study areas. The Bay Area Simulation Study is one of the most recent models. It introduces a high level of disaggregation and assumptions which are based, to some extent, on economic location theory. Hence, it can be said that its basic concept relates to the working mechanism of the market process. The structure of the model is based on a number of interrelated submodels, including a set of employment allocation models and a set of residential allocation models. The final part of this study relates the findings of the preceding parts to regional planning. It is shown that regional planning is fundamentally a locational problem. In addition, some experiences of model application by planning agencies are discussed. These experiences emphasize the fact that, the essential feature of land use allocation models is to improve the rationality of decision-making. By comparing the advantages of models with the principal difficulties in application it is then possible to derive the final conclusion that land use allocation models are a desirable aid for rational decision-making in regional planning. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

This thesis is about regional development in the new global economy. Changes in the world economy, notably the trend toward multinational big business and an international division of labour, are affecting, in various ways and in varying degrees, those people and places that are part of this interdependent system. Nevertheless, one constant theme is becoming discernable: the operating rules of global capitalism are antagonistic to attempts by regions to develop a self-sustaining, self-reliant economy. The resulting crisis of development is an aspect of the new economic order that mainstream development paradigms of industrial society are ill-equipped to explain, let alone resolve. In an effort to come to grips with this crisis of development there has been a growing interest in the possibility of social and economic reconstruction at the regional and community level. This bottom-up approach, referred to here as Communal Cooperation, is being advocated as a more socially responsive and economically viable alternative to the dependence and underdevelopment that follow in the wake of functional integration into the international network of economic relations. However, as this thesis argues, Communal Cooperative strategies of self-management must be complemented with the kind of overall management and coordination that has become necessary in today's interdependent economy. The purpose of this thesis is to translate these general principles into practical terms by presenting a development strategy for the province of British Columbia. British Columbia is a resource economy, exporting its raw materials to the industrial centres of the world and, given the dynamics of economic globalism, there is little opportunity to break out of this mold and develop a self-sustaining, diversified economic base. The development options outlined in this thesis are designed to counteract this trend and ensure that international trade serves regional and community interests. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Includes bibliographic references.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 97-100).

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2004. / Includes bibliography.