Abstract
During the last decade, several authors have supported the need to integrate protected areas (PAs) with land use planning (LUP) policies to improve nature conservation and promote sustainable and just cities and territories. However, this process presents multiple challenges in different parts of the world. This article introduces and develops a method of analysis for the articulation between protected areas (PAs) and land use planning (LUP) policies from the perspective of social sciences. This combines a diagnostic first stage of content analysis of land use plans at a provincial/regional/statal scale, with a second stage of an in-depth political analysis in some study cases at municipal scale. The first stage involve the spatial identification of all the municipal districts of a selected study area with provincial, national or international PAs and land use plans. Seven questions guide the analysis of those plans in terms of the degree and quality of PAs nominal articulation. This information, in addition to previous normative data, allows for the development of a formula for the comparative analysis and mapping of the institutional vulnerability and risk of those municipal districts. In the second stage, a synchronous substantive (content) and institutional (network of stakeholders) analysis of land use policies in selected municipal cases is carried out. To this end, interviews, surveys, media analysis and public documents are conducted. Thus, this method combined different focus scales and quali-quantitative techniques to advance the knowledge of key variables intended for improving political coordination in the promotion of nature conservation. This model was tested in the case of the province of Buenos Aires (Argentina).•A social sciences' method for studying land use planning and protected areas coordination is introduced.•The method combines two stages and scales: diagnostic content analysis of land use plans in a provincial/regional/statal scale plus an in-depth political analysis in study cases at a municipal scale.•This method is useful for estimating normative vulnerability and risk, identifying key political variables for coordination, and making public policy recommendations according to the current conservation paradigm.