In 2009 the European Faculty of Land Use and Development has launched a new book series published by vdf Hochschulverlag AG Zürich. The present peer reviewed collection of papers is the second volume in this series. Most of the contributions now published go back on presentations that were held during the 36th Symposium and the 37th Symposium of the faculty. Their general theme was “Core Problems of Sustainable Land Management” and “Balance between the public and private interests”, respectively. Special thanks go to the Swiss Federal Office for Spatial Development for its financial support of the Symposium in Zurich. As a peculiarity of the Symposia, the faculty languages include English and German and consequently papers in this volume are also presented in both languages. Contributions come from different disciplines and cover a range of subjects that one can divide roughly into three parts. The first group of papers deals in a general way with problems of sustainable land use, its regulation and requirements for priority setting. The second group puts a special focus on planning processes in different states. The third is treating special issues of high practical relevance such as natural hazards or rural development. However, the topics are interrelated across the scope of subject areas. The book finishes with two articles giving an overview and debating on the current situation of land market in Russia. The editors express their gratitude to the authors for their special effort converting their presentations into scientific papers. The meetings showed that the regularly cross-disciplinary scientific exchange, as it is practiced by our association, is becoming more and more important since although the finite nature of land and soil ecosystem services are recognized throughout Europe in practice, they are not sufficiently concerned. It is the idea of the new book series not only to disseminate the information on recent and ongoing developments among experts but also to give impulse and raw material for scientists working in other areas.