Integrating strategic land use planning in the construction of future land use scenarios and its performance: the Maipo River Basin, Chile

Abstract

The integration of urban, rural, and environmental systems is fundamental for resource management. Strategicland use planning attempts to balance these systems to reach sustainability by incorporating future scenarioanalyses. However, long-term implications of these strategic land use plans are not easily understood, norspatially visualized, due to their multidimensional effects. This paper illustrates the integration of politicalconditionings obtained from a strategic land use plan, into a land change model (LCM) to assess long-term policyimpacts using landscape metrics. Guided by participatory instances with a group of public, private, and civilstakeholders called the Scenario Building Team (SBT), the Dyna-CLUE LCM was implemented. Two policy fra-meworks (a trending business-as-usual and a strategic land use plan) were assessed under high and low urbandemands up to year 2050 for the Maipo River basin, where the capital of Chile is located. The participatoryapproach proved to be a useful tool for scenario development and assessment, as the SBT provided valuableinformation and result’s feasibility analysis. Under all scenarios, peri-urban municipalities would concentratemost urban growth, and those located in the North-West part of the capital would face the largest urban ex-pansion. However, strategic planning implementation would restrict urban areas within the actual urban limitsenhancing small town growth. Agricultural areas remain in the best places for production, but still are thegreatest contributors to urban expansion. The strategic plan is less effective in diminishing flood risk zones orprotecting ecosystems that support the SBT’s perception about the relevance of stronger environmental legis-lation in the region