In Chiba, Miss Domoto wants to cancel a land-reclamation project that Tokyo's bureaucrats have been pushing for nearly 30 years.

ECONOMIST: Japan

In the past, the principality has eased its property shortage with land-reclamation projects, including a major program led by Prince Rainier in the 1960s and 1970s.

WSJ: Monaco Turns a Corner - WSJ Mansion

Referendums have prompted public hearings on controversial decisions, a procedure that the construction ministry this week made mandatory for land-reclamation projects, which may have an effect on the wider environment.

ECONOMIST: Reclaiming Japan from the bureaucrats

His government also hauled Singapore before two different international tribunals, over both Pedra Blanca and a Singaporean land-reclamation scheme along the Johor strait, the narrow channel separating the two countries.

ECONOMIST: A truce across the Johor strait

Prince Albert II, the reigning monarch, has flirted with the idea of another land-reclamation project, inviting bids and briefly giving his support in 2010 to a design by Daniel Libeskind, the architect who drew up the master plan for the reconstruction of New York's World Trade Center.

WSJ: Monaco Turns a Corner - WSJ Mansion

Tensions over the battle of the ports have been running high - exacerbated by a land reclamation project just off the coast of Singapore which Malaysia says is affecting the flow and depth of the shipping channel.

BBC: Port of Singapore faces new rival

The government itself accelerated the trend, releasing huge tracts of land to private developers while pouring tax revenues into expensive desert-reclamation projects.

ECONOMIST: Egypt's economic misfortunes, miseries and mistakes