3D Cadastre in China - a Case Study in Shenzhen City

Abstract

A rapid urban growth in China urges to extend land use to land space use in three dimensions due to limited land resource in cities. 3D cadastre is emerging as an effective means to support such a demands for using urban land in a way of three dimensions. Shenzhen, located in the south-eastern coastal region of China, as one of the most economically developed cities in China, has experienced a sustainably rapid economic growth and demands more urban space and more precise management of rights of land and property in order to meet such a fast development in social and economic reform. The typical land space use in Shenzhen includes underground parking lots and commercial streets and over-ground arching buildings where their surface parcels have a different ownership or are used by other parties. The vertical heterogeneity of land rights challenges the capacity of parcel-based cadastre systems in description of spatial nature of land space and of the rights pertaining to the land space. Management of the three-dimension urban land space adds some complexity to the current convention of land administration, which requires some change in the procedures of land administration such as land planning, cadastre surveying and land registration. The practice of a 3D cadastre in Shenzhen shows a good example of effectively managing limited urban land resource and accumulates a lot of available technology and experience for introducing 3D cadastre in land administrations. In this paper, a brief introduction about Shenzhen city is given regarding to land use and economic growth, which account for emerging vertical use of urban land. Such a vertical use of land space raised some problems in the current parcel-based management of urban land use, which is shown by a few of examples of use of land space above- or under-ground. Those examples indicate the necessity of applying 3D cadastres in urban land administrations. As a cadastre is associated with social and administrative issues, the current context regarding to legislation and administration for applying 3D cadastre in Shenzhen is outlined. The practice of a 3D cadastre in Shenzhen is briefly described in terms of technology such as basic hypotheses, data model and 3D data generating. A real case of applying the 3D cadastre is introduced and shows the functions of the 3D cadastre system in representation of spatial extent of a 3D property. Our practice shows that there is some gap in the current administrative procedures when installing a 3D cadastre on the one hand, but an effective 3D cadastre technology also provides a good means to bridge the gap on the other hand.