‘Fit-for-purpose’ spatial justice: Diffusion of European land consolidation and global reflection

This study reconstructs the programmatic core of land consolidation as a technology–governance composite grounded in spatial justice, organized through a three-stage sequence of entry diagnostics, process assembly, and institutional safeguards. Within this framework we identify four institutional pillars that render works, rights, and ecology commensurable: transparent valuation and equivalence, registration of rights with write-through, public disclosure with graduated remedies, and legally binding ecological safeguards, the last constituting a hard floor rather than an optional add-on. On this basis we develop a typology and a nine-module assembly grammar. Methodologically we combine realist synthesis (Context–Mechanism–Outcome) with structured focused comparison across global cases, formalizing decision nodes and milestones. Findings: A-type (European prototype) is the minimal complete set combining the four pillars with the three-stage sequence; B-type (institutional assembly) stabilizes delivery under fiscal and organizational constraints via land banks, compensation scaffolding, and phased rollout; C-type (platform synthesis) adds multi-objective coordination and stage-gate cadence to the pillar stack; D-type (foundational reform) appears in thin-capacity settings as pilot consolidation on customary substrate (D-narrow) or substrate-building through statutory scaffolding, cadastral modernization, and customary-tenure recognition (D-broad). Types are diagnostic outcomes determined by P-module operational status rather than country labels; the full diagnostic is formalized as a decision tree that takes statutory substrate, administrative capacity, stakeholder base, and ecological exposure as inputs, applies four sequential pillar checks, and routes each case to one of five exits with explicit conversion rules between types. The paper's contributions are threefold: (1) it reframes land consolidation as a technology–governance composite with ecological safeguards as a hard floor; (2) it supplies a nine-module assembly grammar and a decision tree that constitutes a design-oriented diagnostic rather than a descriptive typology; and (3) it substitutes a module-status diagnostic for country-label classification, making feasible conversion trajectories explicit.