Evaluating the effectiveness of land use plans in containing urban expansion: An integrated view

Knowledge of the actual usage and impact of spatial plans remains deficient due to defective evaluation methods and scarce empirical studies. By integrating and widening the conformance and performance criteria, this study builds a framework for assessing the effectiveness of land use plans (LUPs), which provides a comprehensive overview allowing the different roles played by LUPs and the corresponding degrees of planning effectiveness to be distinguished. We examine the effectiveness of a Chinese county-level LUP in governing urban sprawl in the context of rapid urbanization with the devised framework. The results show that the plan failed to control the scale and spatial distribution of urban development, and stimulated fragmented urban expansion and large-scale farmland conversion inside the zone for urban area. While non-conforming urban development decisions tended to minimize possible damage to planning effectiveness. The findings indicate that conforming decisions/outcomes do not necessarily imply the achievement of planning goals, while non-conforming decisions may be guided by planning goals and hence contribute to realizing them.