African cities remain little known. As a result, they are outside the global intellectual arena on urban issues, which justifies the need for more productive research. This article aims to empirically analyze the evolution of urban planning studies in Africa, by identifying the trends that characterize scientific production, through a systematic literature review over the last four decades. The study is organized around four different analysis: temporal, thematic, methodological, and geographical, based on 268 journal articles. It highlights major trends in the evolution of this literature. The paper finally discusses important challenges and areas of improvement in African cities research.

Integrating the concept of ecosystem services (ES) into spatial planning is an opportunity to make land use and management choices that maximize the delivery of multiple ES. The assessment of social demand can be useful for the identification of priority areas or potential conflicts among stakeholders. We used Q-methodology to understand stakeholder perspectives on ES to facilitate their integration into spatial planning in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. Three perspectives, utilitarian, cultural and protective, were analyzed and used to discuss potential implications for spatial planning. First, ecosystem multifunctionality and synergies among ES should be emphasized. Second, the food production system should move away from a productive-only approach, to a system that protects soils and their functions. Providing a paradigm change, arable land could be protected to the same level as forests and farmers could be incentivized further to change their practices. Finally, our findings show a potential over-interpretation of the importance of cultural ES in current planning policies, as most participants would be ready to change their behaviors to preserve biological functions. It would be useful to conduct a similar study in other cantons to ensure that the results are fully representative of the current situation in Switzerland.

The concept of ecosystem services (ES) is regarded as an increasingly important framework and tool to support spatial planning. A limited understanding of how ES knowledge is used in spatial plans constrains our ability to learn from, replicate, and convey an ES approach. This study examined how ES were integrated into spatial planning at the regional scale in Western Switzerland. A directed content analysis of cantonal structural plans was used to assess how ES were covered in various sections of the plans and to explore the differences in the level of ES integration across cantons. First, the results showed that ES were found in each section of the plans but were not equally distributed. Provisioning ES were always the most mentioned while regulating ES were the least considered. Second, strong discrepancies existed between cantons may demonstrate the lack of cantonal coordination to integrate ES. Finally, the concept of ES was more embedded in nonbinding than in binding parts. Promoting the concept at the national level may facilitate the integration of ES at lower planning scales. Further work could focus on other cantons to ensure that the results are fully representative of the current situation in Switzerland.