**Preface to "Land Perspectives: People, Tenure, Planning, Tools, Space, and Health"**

Efficient land (including water and forest) administration practices and spatial enablement is required to achieve numerous items of various global development agendas—e.g., related to land degradation neutrality, New Urban Agenda, COP21, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and COVID-19 or coronavirus pandemic challenges. Achieving these goals requires understanding how land administration practices and spatial decisions can impact people, property tenure, and health or wellbeing. Also helpful is creating a peaceful environment by eliminating social conflicts caused by poor land administration practices. Hence, there is a need to probe natural resources administration theories and tools. Good land administration and spatial enablement help improve people's living conditions in urban, peri-urban, and rural areas. They protect people's land rights (including individuals, communities, and the state) through good governance principles and practices. This makes research concerning land administration practices and geographic (spatial) sciences—whether in developed or developing countries—essential to developing tools or methods for securing natural resource rights for people. In the time of COVID-19, understanding the land and health or wellbeing nexus is also crucial for adequate living conditions for people in living urban, peri-urban, and rural areas. This Special Issue comprises 15 articles (including the editorial) that present insights on theories and practices on land administration and geographic (spatial) sciences in the context of the land/water/forest–people–health–wellbeing nexus.

The urban-to-rural dimension of land studies is crucial because it embodies streams of knowledge that support rural-urban co-governance and development. The focus of the Special Issue is essential for understanding the influence of planning on people through its tools, space, tenure, and health. It also provides a multi-faceted lens of these issues—from urban, peri-urban, and rural lenses. These topical issues are covered at various scales (local, national, and global). The Special Issue was curated to investigate three critical questions. First, it answers the question: What exactly do people, tenure, planning, tools, space, and health imply? Second, it responds to the question: What relationships do people, tenure, planning, tools, space, and health share? Third, it uses empirical and literature evidence to present the land perspectives of these issues worldwide. We encourage all interested individuals or groups—including academics and practitioners within the discipline of land administration and geographic (spatial) sciences—to read the collection of articles in this book. These articles represent the latest research from around the world.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to some of the agencies that provided both financial and in-kind support that led to the success of this Special Issue. We would particularly like to express our gratitude to the Major Program of National Social Science Foundation of China (19ZDA086), the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Shadong, China, and the Global Land Tool Network at the UN-Habitat in Nairobi, Kenya.

> **Uchendu Eugene Chigbu, Ruishan Chen, and Chao Ye** *Editors*
