Land degradation is becoming a serious environmental issue threatening fertile agricultural soils and other natural resources. There are many driving forces behind land degradation. The expansion of artificial surfaces due to various economic activities, such as housing, industry, and transport infrastructure, known as soil sealing, constitutes one of the most intensive forms of land degradation in urban regions. Measures to halt and reverse land degradation require both strong land-use management policies, as well as effective spatial planning mechanisms. In this regard, strategic spatial planning has been increasingly practised in many urban regions worldwide, as a means to achieve sustainable land-use patterns and to guide the location of development and physical infrastructures. It is reasonable, therefore, to expect that strategic spatial planning can counteract the outlined undesired land degradation effects, specifically those resulting from soil sealing. In this paper, we review strategic spatial planning literature published between 1992 and 2017. The focus is on the phenomena causing land degradation that are addressed by strategic spatial planning literature, as well as on the mechanisms describing the role of strategic spatial planning in land degradation reduction. Results show that sustainable development and environmental concerns have become core objectives of strategic planning in recent years, yet references to the drivers of land degradation are rare. The mechanisms that exist are mainly intended to address environmental issues in general, and are not aimed at reducing particular forms of land degradation. The paper concludes by sketching future research directions, intended to support strategic spatial planning and land-use policymaking related to coping with the global phenomenon of land degradation.

Digital transformation is shaping our lives and altering planning. Digitalization is closely linked to smart governance, through which administrative units such as cities and regions increasingly offer digital services related to spatial planning. However, the increasing digitalization of spatial planning has received little attention in academic planning literature, and few studies have analysed how digitalization affects planning practice. The aim of this study was to help fill this gap by developing an analytical framework based on efficiency, transparency and innovation, to explore how digital plan data affect land-use planning. The framework was applied in a multi-case study analysis of Austria, Germany and Switzerland. In this study, which is one of the first to shed empirical light on the digital transformation of land-use planning, we found changes in planning practice mainly in terms of efficiency and transparency, less in terms of innovation. We have identified a great need for further research to attend critically to digital transformation of planning in order to optimize the benefits for planning practice and to avoid an unreflective shift towards technocratic planning practices.