His new powers extend beyond relief and reconstruction to cover areas including infrastructure, banking and finance, rural and urban land use, telecommunications, defence and security.

BBC: Venezuela parliament gives Hugo Chavez more powers

"Baby boomers are downsizing and getting tired of mowing the lawn, and many are looking for a place where they don't have to drive for everything, " said Christopher Leinberger, a Washington urban land-use strategist and partner in developer Arcadia Land Co.

WSJ: Toll Brothers Goes Condo

And restricting land seizures could help push up the price of land on the periphery of urban areas and encourage a more rational use of existing urban land.

ECONOMIST: But only for a select few

Unlike soy or other meat-surrogates, in vitro meat could shift the economic playing field entirely from a land use issue to the non-effluent based urban indoors.

FORBES: The Murky Future of Conservation

"We're going to make better use of land that's already in the urban growth boundary, " Bragdon says.

CNN: Polluted rivers stain Portland's image

If the Department of the Environment's estimate that, under current land-use patterns, 169, 400 hectares will go from rural to urban use by 2016 is correct, the proportion of England that is considered urban would increase 1.3 percentage points, to 11.9%.

ECONOMIST: Housing

The Housing Executive said it intended to use its land assembly powers to work with private developers to target investment towards urban areas.

BBC: Rise in NI homelessness

On most urban roads, one can be tricked into thinking that the ribbon of grey we see reflects the land use for miles around.

BBC: The great myth of urban Britain

Also show are agricultural land use and land surfaces with little or no plant cover - such as bare ground, urban areas and permanent snow and ice.

BBC: How Earth's land is used