Received: 18-04-2013 / Accepted: 20-06-2013
Land Use Planning (LUP) is a potential solution for sustainable use of land in the long term by optimizing the effective use land resources. In addition, the vital role of Land Use Planning in socio-economic development needs to be analysed in a specific area. This is an important background task: In a transition country and emerging economy, such as Vietnam, it is a priori not clear, which force LUP actually exerts on actual development. Because of the high priority that the Vietnamese government places upon economic development, for example, it is conceivable that economic forces exert a much stronger influence that a plan. If there is strong indication that actual development is not correlated to plans, LUP was a lost cause from an economic point of view: More complex LUP would only generate more costs without possibly resulting in any positive change. If, in contrast, a strong influence can be documented, confidence in the entire LUP process would be strengthened.