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As the world rapidly urbanizes, cities are expanding to provide space for growing populations. The predominant growth pattern for the last several decades - continued outward expansion, or “urban sprawl” - is helping to lock in carbon expenditure for generations. By contrast, and perhaps counterintuitively, densification of cities can contribute both to CO2 emissions reductions and biodiversity protection. This chapter argues that environmental law should go beyond addressing negative externalities of activities within the city, to engage with the built form of the city. Legal and land use planning tools such as greenbelts and planning/zoning reform, and practices such as city building, placemaking, and nature-based urban solutions provide avenues for building cities in a way that promises climate mitigation and biodiversity protection in their very structure.
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This chapter presents a theoretical perspective on the roles of law in the evolution of planning systems. Three main roles of law in planning are distinguished: law can enable, delimit and codify planning. How these roles play out and relate to each other in the evolution of a planning system, will differ by community. In four scenario’s we discern key points regarding the relation between the roles of law in evolving spatial governance. Understanding the different roles of law in planning, and their interplay in the evolution of the planning system, adds to the scientific and societal debates on planning and law, where hitherto polarizing discourses (planning vs law) dominated the discussion. More broadly, our perspective on the enabling, codifying and delimiting functions of law in planning sheds a new light on the potential and limitation of both law and planning to shape the future of communities.
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The approach of both domestic Georgian authorities and international organisations to solving the displacement crisis created by the 2008 Russia–Georgia conflict charted a new path.1 It was radically different than approaches taken in the early 1990s when Georgia was faced with mass displacements following the secessionist conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In particular, the expectation that a prompt return to homes of origin would be the preferred durable solution to the displacement was quickly abandoned for a sizeable number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) forced to leave their homes during the 2008 conflict. In its place, the two other theoretically accepted – but much less widely used – durable solutions to displacement (local integration and resettlement) have been embraced with unprecedented speed and vigour, with both funding and logistical support in place to implement such plans.
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This chapter begins with overview of international law protections of a displaced person’s right to return to his or her home of origin. It focuses on the case studies of Kosovo and Georgia and considers the international community’s approach ‘on the ground’. The chapter addresses some of the weaknesses of an approach which relies to too great an extent on property restitution mechanisms as vehicles by which to encourage refugee and internally displaced persons (IDP) returns and protect such individuals’ rights to housing and the enjoyment of their property. IDPs’ lack of willingness to return may be related not only to political uncertainty in their area of origin, but also to ways in which they have adapted over time to circumstances in the place where they have taken refuge. The right to return to one’s home of origin, and the corresponding right to housing and property restitution for displaced persons, has been increasingly articulated in peace agreements and UN documents.
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This chapter will focus on the protection of housing and property rights of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Georgia.1 Georgia suffered two ethnic conflicts shortly following its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 — one in Abkhazia in western Georgia and one in South Ossetia on the Russian border. Both conflicts produced large numbers of displaced persons and left the regions administered by secessionist governments; however this chapter will focus mainly on the South Ossetian context.