The discussions about urban growth boundaries in the United States have paid little attention to Korea's Greenbelt policy. Established in 1971, Seoul's massive Greenbelt has been rigidly maintained, although there have been some minor exceptions over the years. The liberalization of the Korean economy and the democratization of Korean society have been accompanied by deregulation in many spheres. However, land use planning remains tightly constrained, and there has only been minimal relaxation of the land laws; in fact, on balance they have become tougher. Some scholars have begun to question whether the Greenbelt might have restricted economic growth in Korea and significantly raised the costs of development. Others argue that the environmental benefits of the Greenbelt are substantial. There has also been some pressure from landowners and "natives" within the Greenbelt who argue that continued Greenbelt regulations represent a "takings" which deprives them of land value appreciation. This Article focuses on three alternatives: maintain the Greenbelt in its current form; modify the law by allowing significant development to occur, perhaps with the introduction of a cross-subsidy scheme; or abandon the Greenbelt altogether. The Article also examines the potential conflicts between the central government's control over the Greenbelts and local autonomy.

INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES AND FINANCING IN CHINESE CITIES, Kam Wing Chan

As urbanization accelerates and cities expand their role in the Chinese economy, expensive urban infrastructural facilities and financing have become major policy issues. Drawing on fieldwork in five cities in 1994 as well as national statistics, this Article analyzes the provision of urban infrastructure services and financing. As marketization proceeds, an overhaul of the urban public finance system, along with a redefinition of the role of local government in China, is urgently required.

“THE BEST LAID SCHEMES…”: LAND-USE PLANNING AND HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN CAMBODIA, William Chapman

This Article examines existing land use laws and proposed historic preservation-related legislation in Cambodia and offers a critical appraisal of their applicability and hopes for success. Cambodia is a small country that faces (and has faced) numerous political and economic difficulties. It possesses a rich architectural and archaeological heritage that is threatened by proposed land-use changes and future development. Initiated primarily by outsiders, principally planners and archaeologists from Europe and the United States, Cambodia's newly formulated land-use laws attempt to take irreplaceable cultural resources into account. However, plans such as those proposed by UNESCO and consultants to the government appear to be inadequate for protection and do not realistically take into account the pressing needs of the country nor predict adequately the course of future development.

LAND LAW SUBSYTEMS? URBAN VIETNAM AS A CASE STUDY, John Gillespie

Throughout Vietnam's long history, the central elite and peripheral farming communities have been legally and culturally divided. This dichotomy was never as complete as the famous injunction that "the emperor's writ stops at the village gate" infers. Initially, during the period of French colonisation and more recently since the introduction of doi moi (renovation) economic reforms, central authorities have attempted to unify land management with universal normative law. This experiment has stimulated widespread non-compliance with land laws in urban centres; in some areas compliance is a fringe phenomenon. In this divided legal geography, pockets of non-compliance give the appearance of autonomy from state legality - suggesting the existence of plural land law sub-systems. But an analysis of case studies concerning land use right applications, squatting, court decisions and compulsory acquisition reveals complex relationships between land occupiers and the state. A myriad of formal and relational connections blurs the interface between state and society, suggesting that the official and unofficial aspects of land management are best understood as two components of the same system. Urban case studies suggest officials and the public share a common culture that sustains relational networks binding state land management and local land practices. In this relational matrix, the legal pluralistic concept of "non-state legal sub-systems' is difficult to substantiate. Where relational networks are weak, such as between hill tribes and the central state, non-state legal subsytems continue to flourish.

MANAGING URBAN LAND IN CHINA: THE EMERGING LEGAL FRAMEWORK AND ITS ROLE IN DEVELOPMENT, Mark T. Kremzner

This Article examines the emerging legal framework for urban land management in China with reference to several perspectives on the role of the state in economic development: modernization, dependency, and statism. A key function of the urban land management and planning regime in the People's Republic of China is to promote economic development. Similarly, law and legal institutions in the reform era are used as an instrument to secure development policies. China's urban land use laws have the purpose and effect of channeling capital into land development and urban renewal projects through the commodification of land use rights. While the central state has achieved some of its development objectives, it has also experienced setbacks and witnessed an erosion of its control over land uses.

AN OVERVIEW OF WASHINGTON’S GROWTH MANAGEMENT ACT, Eric S. Laschever

Beginning in the 1970s, a number of states began adopting state wide growth management statutes. In response to increasing population pressures, Washington State enacted its Growth Management Act ("GMA") in 1990. This article examines the GMA's requirements for comprehensive plans, its enforcement and appeals provisions, and the relationship of the GMA to other Washington State laws, including the State Environmental Policy Act and the Shoreline Management Act. The GMA has significantly changed the land use planning process in Washington, and its effects can already be seen in wide spread protection of critical areas, the designation of urban growth policies, and local plans to focus growth.

LISTING OF TANGIBLE CULTURAL PROPERTIES: EXPANDED RECOGNITION FOR HISTORIC BUILDINGS IN JAPAN, Chester H. Liebs

Since the late 19th century, Japan has enacted a series of measures to protect its cultural heritage, most importantly the 1950 Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties. With subsequent amendments, the law today provides for the protection of both individual and groups of historical structures, landscapes, traditional crafts and skills, as well as national treasures. While these laws have saved many of the nation's foremost cultural resources, a substantial number of important historic structures, especially from the Meiji Period (1868) onward, have fallen through this legal safety net. This Article summarizes the evolution of Japan's cultural properties protection legislation, and details some of the recent losses of important properties and challenges facing the current legal protection system. It then examines the 1996 amendment to the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, which authorized the registration of tangible cultural properties. This new initiative is intended as a fast-track means of providing recognition and limited protection to a greater number of historic structures. The Article ends by acknowledging the benefits and critiquing the weaknesses of the current state of legal protection for cultural properties in Japan, due to a lack of coordination among governmental agencies with conflicting interests.

SQUARE PEGS & ROUND HOLES: FITTING MODERN TITLE INTO TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES IN INDONESIA, Timothy Lindsey

In Indonesia, diverse interests in land recognised by dozens, maybe hundreds, of different adat (traditional customary legal systems) coexist with a Dutch-derived system of land title. The most problematic adat interest is traditional communal title, or hak ulayat. Indonesia's New Order government sees adat rightsCand hak ulayat in particularCas incompatible with the demands of economic development. Although some adat rights are recognised in the key statute regulating interests in land, the Basic Agrarian Law, the New Order government has systematically subverted the standing of adat. Likewise, the land registration system has become a corrupt failure, with the consequence that only around ten percent of all rural land is registered. Generally speaking, adat title is vulnerable to arbitrary confiscation by the state and land disputes have become highly politicised. While the Land Administration Project, funded by foreign donors, aims to encourage increased registration and protect adat landholders, it does not take into account the reality of political exploitation of traditional rights in Indonesia. There is a real danger that it will compound the problems of these landholders and hasten the demise of traditional land laws that are well suited to a plural society with diverse traditional communities.

TESTING THE PARTNERSHIP MODEL OF GROWTH MANAGEMENT, Jeffrey Patterson

Three major events can be expected to influence land use and tenure in British Columbia, Canada well into the future. A new Forest Practices Code and harvesting regulations and settlement of aboriginal land claims will profoundly affect B.C.'s rural and wilderness landscape. A third initiative, a growth management strategy act adopted by the B.C. legislature in 1995 will, however, potentially have a major impact on the urban landscape that most British Columbians experience in their daily lives. Its objective is the promotion of human settlements that are socially, economically and environmentally healthy. This paper explores the particular geographic and political characteristics that provide the context for managing development in B.C.'s Lower Mainland, which contains Greater Vancouver and fifty-five percent of the province's population. It focuses extensively on the details of the Livable Region Strategy Plan and the companion transportation plan. The primary means by which the regional planning authority influences planning actions and decisions of constituent municipalities is by imposing specific expectations on local Official Community Plans ("OCPs"). The Article concludes by questioning whether OCPs or the specific criteria imposed are the best ones for realizing the objectives of growth management. Provincial agricultural zoning and protected spaces policies and reservations will remain the most effective levers for controlling urban development.

CUSTOMARY TITLE, HERITAGE PROTECTION, AND PROPERTY RIGHTS IN AUSTRALIA: EMERGING PATTERNS OF LAND USE IN THE POST-MABO ERA, Maureen Tehan

The Mabo decision represented a major doctrinal change in the relationship between Indigenous people and the settler legal system. However, significant legislative developments in land use and management recognizing some Indigenous interests in land had already laid the groundwork for joint land management schemes and concurrent land uses. These developments have formed the basis for ongoing expansion of coexistent land uses with the negotiation of formal and informal agreements for co-management of land. A range of factors influence these agreements, including the existence of enforceable property rights and non-property based heritage protection legislation. These regimes are currently in a state of flux. In an uncertain political environment there are possibilities for further recognition of Indigenous involvement in land management. There are also real possibilities for contraction of the limited rights of Indigenous people over land. Either development will impact the significant involvement of Indigenous people in resource and environmental management.

Comments

GETTING A SEAT AT THE TABLE: GIVING THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST CONTROL OVER LOCAL GOVERNMENT, Stephen R. King

The traditional homelands of the indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Russian Far East harbor vast wealth in the form of timber, minerals, oil, and gas. Throughout much of the 20th Century, the Soviet Union used forced relocation of native peoples, expropriation of native lands, and other harsh means to gain access to these resources. The native peoples received little or no compensation for the vast natural wealth that the Soviet government took from their lands, and the government often left the land so polluted that it could no longer support the native people's hunting and herding ways-of-life. The Russian Federation currently has sovereignty over these native lands, and continues to extract resources as a way of supporting its distressed economy. Russian environmental laws are poorly enforced, and Russia's fluid political structure makes it difficult to determine which level of government controls these lands. To protect native lands and the indigenous peoples whose livelihoods and cultures depend on them, the Russian Federation must create native-controlled local governments.

A LESSON IN INGENUITY: CHINESE FARMERS, THE STATE, AND THE RECLAMATION OF FARMLAND FOR MOST ANY USE, Kari Madrene Larson

Since 1978, China has achieved significant improvements in the rural sector through the adoption of the baogan daohu system, which effectively dismantled the communal farming system and created individual family farms. However, meaningful measures must be taken to ensure that farmers have continued use of their farmland and that illegal land reclamation by local governments is halted. Because farmers' rights are not clearly articulated and cannot be readily enforced, local governments appear to be beyond central government control. Furthermore, due to the state's right to reclaim land under any logic, farmers' rights may ultimately be non-existent. Though developing a meaningful system of dispute resolution and enforcement in rural China will be difficult and require systematic changes in the relationship between the central and local governments, ignoring the rising problems could prove disastrous. The underlying conflict between central and local governments and state and Party policies must be resolved in order for Chinese farming to truly operate "according to the law."

THE RHETORIC AND REALITY OF WATER QUALITY PROTECTION IN CHINA, W. Scott Railton

With the majority of its freshwater sources polluted, and the pursuant incurrence of significant economic losses, and substantial health risks, China has reached a critical stage in its water resource management. Past efforts to legislate for water quality protection, although promising in content, have been less than effective. Four modes of enforcement - administrative controls, economic incentives, legal responsibility, and campaigns - have achieved only moderate success. This Comment examines the statutory and regulatory framework for water pollution control in China and suggests that if China's water pollution controls are ever to be more than mere rhetoric, China must focus on eliminating conflicts of interest amongst regulators; take an absolutist rather than economic incentive based approach to pollution control; and provide sufficient funding for remedial actions while limiting future costs through increased conservation and public participation in water resource protection.