Effective ownership, management and access to land are central for sustainable development and can impact significantly on the opportunities for local enterprise. In 1998, Scotland’s Land Reform Policy Group concluded that ‘Land reform is needed on the grounds of fairness and to secure the public good’ Consequently, Scotland has introduced various schemes that facilitate or compel the transfer of land from an existing landowner to a community body.

Mallorca keeps an age-old biocultural heritage embodied in their appealing landscapes, largely exploited as an intangible tourist asset. Although hotel and real estate investors ignore or despise the peasant families who still persevere in farming amidst this worldwide-known tourist hotspot, the Balearic Autonomous Government has recently started a pay-for-ecosystem-services scheme based on the tourist eco-tax collection that offers grants to farmers that keep the Majorcan cultural landscapes alive, while a growing number of them have turned organic.

Economic efficiency is the key issue of sustainable development in urban agglomerations. To date, more attention has been paid to the estimates of productivity gains from urban agglomerations. Differing from the previous studies, this paper focuses on the influencing factors and mechanisms of the economic efficiency of urban agglomerations, and check the effects of three different externalities (industrial specialization, industrial diversity and industrial competition) on the economic efficiency of urban agglomerations.