Land Use Planning

LAND USE PLANNING

by Anton Antonio

March 20, 2015

Why is land use planning important?  Land is a finite resource even when man has developed the technology to reclaim land from the sea.  Dredging (meaning: the process of cleaning out the bed of a harbour, river, or other area of water by scooping out mud, weeds, and rubbish with a dredge; and, bring up or clean something from a river, harbour, or other area of water with a dredge), however, is a human intervention that has serious marine habitat consequences.  Land reclamation may not be the right direction in solving land limitation.  It is therefore important to manage existing land areas through land use planning.

Land use planning is the process of determining the ideal combination of protection, preservation and conservation as opposed to utilization of land resources in a particular area.  The aim of land use planning is the sustainable development of goods and services as to guarantee the long-term availability of the resources akin to this specific area.  Included in the identification of the right land use strategy, the following activities are involved:

1. LAND CAPABILITY CLASSIFICATION – Land capability is the ability to accept a type and intensity of land use permanently, or for a specific period under a certain management without long term degradation (Houghton and Charman, 1986).  Land capability classification is a process that determines the bearing capacity of the land identified for a particular land use.  The process includes the subdivision of an area into homogenous units based principally on these units’ biophysical features.  Although there are several ways to assess land capability, the main purpose of these classification methods is to group all units of land areas that have similar ability to sustain protection and production strategies.
2. IDENTIFICATION AND ASSESSMENT OF POTENTIAL LAND USES – This activity is aimed at establishing the suitability of each land use option to a particular area and identify alternative land use strategies if the initially identified land use will not support long-term land use goals.
3. SELECTION AND ALLOCATION OF THE BEST LAND USES – After identifying the best (therefore, having passed the initial and alternative land use selection process) land uses, a consensus must be secured from all the stakeholders in adherence to the concept of participatory approach.  Actual selection and allocation of the best land uses can ideally made by the actual stakeholders who will be involved and benefitted by the project.

This, in a nutshell, is the importance of land use planning.

Just my little thoughts…

Note:  Today, April 11, 2015, there is an on-going conference of Planners (provincial, municipality and city) at the Benguet State University in La Trinidad, Benguet tackling the land use problem of Baguio City.  Hopefully, a framework on how to address this problem without compromising the landscape ecology of the summer capital of the Philippines can be agreed upon.

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