Conference: Dortmund Conference - DOKORP 2022
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Place and date: Dortmund, Germany, 14. - 15. February 2022 (cancelled)

Authors: Boyko Dmitry

Abstract:
Land use management as one of spatial planning traditions [1] exists in Russia (known as “zemleustroistvo”) since the 19th century. Due to several overhelming land reforms, which took place in Russia in the 20th century, land use management was formed as a science and practice of significant increase of socio-economic effectiveness of land use, of big improvements. During the Soviet period (1917-1991) within the paradigm of centralized planning, land use management was formed as a specific set of measures, developed and implemented by the responsible state authorities. While the private property for land as an institution has been absent in Russia, it was possible to increase the effectiveness of land use mostly on agricultural land using methods of spatial organization. Land use management in USSR had less professional interest in urban land, situated inside the settlement, where the planning tradition of urbanism has been empowered.
After the turn to the land market in 1991, land use management had to re-establish it’s approaches to spatial planning in Russia and own influence on market processes. When private property rights became very important in planning system, state (and municipal, often seen as equivalent) land use management received reputation of “old-fashioned”, socialist way of unnecessary control. It led to a decline of land use planning’ influence in Russia. Then most of issues, related to urban land use regulation, were solved not in Land Use Code (2001), but in Urban Planning Code (2004). This structure of planning system brought actual urban land use to a less controlled state, when negative market externalities are not being confronted for the public good.
After 30 years after the start of transition to the land market in Russia, we quantitatively assessed trends of urban land use in growing and declining settlements. Based on the available remote sensing data [2], we concluded that urban land use in Russia transformed to a less sustainable pattern (namely, urban sprawl [3]). Then in these areas we studied influence made by the Rules of land use and development [4] (in Russian “PZZ”), which is the often seen as the main legally binding spatial instrument. We came up to conclusion, that these zoning plans were not able to prevent undesirable land changes. In order to achieve sustainable land use in urban areas in Russia, new methods of land use monitoring and control must be introduced.

[1] Shaw D, Nadin V, Westlike T (1995) The Compendium of European Spatial Planning Systems. (European Planning Studies)
[2] Siedentop S (2005) Urban Sprawl—verstehen, messen, steuern. (IOER)
[3] Corbane C et al (2018): GHS built-up grid, derived from Landsat, multitemporal (1975-1990-2000-2014), R2018A. (JRC)
[4] Gudz T, Karaselnikova I, Kosolapov N (2020) Urban Development Regulation in Russia. The Case of Perm (in Russian only). (HSE)