Non‐statutory sites of importance for nature conservation in the West Midlands

Many counties in England have systems of non‐statutory sites of importance for nature conservation in addition to the statutory National Nature Reserves, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and Local Nature Reserves. The paper describes the evolution of such a system over the past 20 years in the metropolitan county of the West Midlands. The system has been recognized by the local planning authorities who have included appropriate policies for the conservation of these sites in statutory development plans. The authority of such a system derives from the use of published criteria for the selection of sites, consensus over the application of these criteria, and consultation with the owners and occupiers of the sites.     

Economic planning for depressed regions in the United Kingdom

This paper attempts five tasks. First, it briefly traces the collapse of regional economic planning since the mid 1970s. Second, it re‐assesses the case for regional economic planning. Third it asks whether a statutory economic development role for local authorities is the way forward. Fourthly, it critically evaluates current practice in economic development in a depressed area using the Newcastle City region as an example. Finally the paper concludes by outlining the nature of the applied research necessary to underpin a more rational approach to regional economic development planning, referring to the example of the Regional Industrial Research Unit established in the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.     

Regional reports or structure plans? Opportunities for strategic planning in England and Wales

The British Government is proposing a new system of single‐tier development plans for England and Wales, with clear implications for the strategic level of planning. This paper considers a proposal by the Committee of Inquiry into Town and Country Planning set up by the Nuffield Foundation, for a revised strategic planning network which includes a ‘local strategy’. The paper considers the lessons to be drawn from the use of regional reports in Scotland since the early 1970s and concludes on a note of caution for the Government's proposals.     

High technology firms and planning policy: a case study of research machines limited,Oxford

This article reviews planning issues relating to “high‐tech” industry in Britain, and uses a case study of a manufacturer of micro‐computers in Oxford, England as a focus for a discussion. It concludes that town planning categories are not, in themselves, a constraint on high technology firms, and suggests that the provision of sites and premises by local authorities is a useful and undervalued task.     

Theory in practice: the anatomy of a borough plan

This paper focuses on the development plan activities of the London Boroughs and simply seeks to explain the relatively limited progress that has been made in the preparation and adoption of statutory local plans, by showing how production was constrained as local planners were caught up in the shifting ground of contemporary planning theory. The author suggests that uncertainty about the acceptable scope and content of local plans, at a time when planners were being encouraged to extend the emphasis of their work beyond the purely physical, led to serious problems as planners began to experiment with new approaches to local planning but failed to appreciate the operational implications of each approach.     

The town and country planning act 1947

The 1947 Town & Country Planning Act is regarded as the statutory foundation of physical planning in post‐war Britain. This paper looks at the Act in context and assesses its effectiveness from the vantage point of forty years since its implementation.     

Regional Variations in the Implementation of the Local Air Quality Management Process within Great Britain

The UK National Air Quality Strategy has required local authorities to review and assess air quality in their area of jurisdiction and determine locations in their areas where concentrations of specific air quality pollutants are predicted to exceed national air quality objectives in the future. Statutory air quality management areas (AQMAs) are designated where air quality is predicted to be above specified objective concentrations by specific target dates, and statutory air quality action plans will be necessary to improve the local air quality within these areas. Over 124 local authorities in England (including London), Wales and Scotland anticipate declaring AQMAs following the conclusion of the statutory air quality review and assessment process. However, other influences are being exerted on the local air quality management process and AQMA decision-making processes. Such influences include regional and sub- regional collaborative working between local authorities and government agencies and wider political decision-making processes. Some regions of Great Britain (encompassing England (including London), Scotland and Wales) anticipate many AQMA designations, whilst other regions are not anticipating any such designations despite apparently similar air quality circumstances. Evidence for regional or sub-regional variations in the locations of anticipated AQMAs are examined through an evaluation of the outcomes of the scientific review and assessment process undertaken by local authorities declaring AQMAs, and through a local authority survey to identify influences on decision-making processes at a level above that of the local authority. Regional variation is reported in the type of pollutant causing AQMAs to be declared, in the numbers of AQMAs in regions and in the spatial distribution of AQMAs across Great Britain.     

Nature conservation,countryside strategies and strategic planning

Countryside strategies, particularly for nature conservation, are part of a growth in non‐statutory strategic planning. They are largely integrative, and set the context for, and are able to cover subjects normally beyond the scope of, statutory development plans. Specifically for nature conservation, this paper summarizes the limitations of policies in structure plans and reviews four countryside strategies to assess the extent to which they overcome these limitations. Whilst providing a renewed focus for nature conservation, such strategies lack information and guidance in assisting plan formulation, are not accountable, have problems in their adoptability and lack the resources for implementation.     

PLANNING FOR DROUGHT: MOVING FROM CRISIS TO RISK MANAGEMENT1

ABSTRACT: Severe drought is a recurring problem for the United States, as illustrated by widespread economic, social, and environmental impacts. Recent drought episodes and the widespread drought conditions in 1996, 1998, and 1999 emphasized this vulnerability and the need for a more proactive, risk management approach to drought management that would place greater emphasis on preparedness planning and mitigation actions. Drought planning has become a principal tool of states and other levels of government to improve their response to droughts. For example, since 1982, the number of states with drought plans has increased from 3 to 29. Many local governments have also adopted drought or water shortage plans. Unfortunately, most state drought plans were established during the 1980s and early 1990s and emphasize emergency response or crisis management rather than risk management. This paper presents a substantive revision of a 10‐step drought planning process that has been applied widely in the United States and elsewhere. The revised planning process places more weight on risk assessment and the development and implementation of mitigation actions and programs. The goal of this paper is to encourage states to adopt this planning process in the revision of existing drought plans or, for states without plans, in the development of new plans.     

The relevance of physical forces on land-use change and planning process

This study analysed the importance of physical forces on land-use change, on the planning framework in a Portuguese periurban area. A temporal matrix showing the trajectories of land transformation was obtained. A multivariate redundancy analysis explored the importance of physical parameters on temporal and spatial land-use change. A content analysis on urban or municipal master plans was made framing the importance of physical parameters on the planning process. The results highlighted a consistent trajectory of profound land-use changes with distinctive trajectories, with increasingly complex patterns with a limited dependence on physical variables. The trajectories were more related to the planning framework, where political actors and planning managers seemed to be most important. A theoretical model balancing three main components – physical forces, actors, and land transformation (DFA-C model) is proposed, reflecting the informal relationships between physical parameters and actors during the planning process.     

Systematizing the production of environmental plans: an Australian example

Environmental planning legislation in New South Wales now requires local government authorities to draw up statutory plans that take into account, among other concerns, both the biophysical and the social environmental issues within their jurisdictions. The SIRO-PLAN method of plan production provides a systematic mechanism for fulfilling this requirement. This article describes the application of the method by planning researchers over 18 months to the production of a Local Environmental Plan for a rural local government in New South Wales. The policy formulation, the purposive data collection, and the deliberate adjustment of plans in order to recognize interest group requirements were all found to be valuable features of the method, while the translation of the ultimately chosen land-use plan into the explicit regulatory controls available to the local government authority was found to require further refinement. The capacity of SIRO-PLAN to quantify the resolution of competing environmental concerns in the final plan, although of value to planning researchers, proved too arcane for traditionally trained planners.     

Sustainability Appraisal in neighbourhood planning in England

The preparation of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) inclusive sustainability appraisals (SAs) for neighbourhood plans (NPs) in England may be required when significant environmental effects are expected to arise from an NP. In this paper, we report on the result of a Ph.D. project, conducted between 2012 and 2015, in which all 15 NP SEA inclusive SAs that had been completed at the time were evaluated. In this context, the quality of SA practice was found to differ substantially. SAs were prepared either ‘in-house’ (i.e. by neighbourhood planning steering groups) or by consultants. The quality of SAs was found to be associated with their overall perceived degree of influence on the underlying NPs. Whilst the focus of this paper is on practice in England, findings are expected to be of interest to a wider international audience, in particular to those experimenting with voluntary neighbourhood/local level plan SA/SEA.     

Aspects of planning in Scotland: an introductory paper

This paper provides an outline of the development planning and development control systems which operate in Scotland, illustrating that while they share common principles and objectives with the equivalent systems in England and Wales there are a number of important differences both in law and more especially in practice to be appreciated. Future changes are outlined both in relation to the statutory planning system as well as in the broader fields of housing, economic development and the countryside.     

Collaborative approaches to local climate change and clean energy initiatives in the USA and England

This paper analyses how 10 localities in the USA and England, recognised as leaders in clean energy and climate action, have used collaborative approaches to develop local climate change plans and energy conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy initiatives. It examines these planning and policy-making processes in the context of Margerum's [2008. A typology of collaboration efforts in environmental management. Environmental Management, 41 (4), 487–500] typology of “action”, “organizational”, and “policy-level” collaborations, as well as Gray's [1989. Collaborating: finding common ground for multiparty problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass] classification of collaboration in the “problem-setting”, “direction-setting”, and “implementation” phases. We conducted interviews with local elected officials, municipal staff, energy professionals, and citizen volunteers in each community, supplemented with an analysis of their adopted energy, climate change, and land-use plans. We find that despite the different government structures and political contexts between the two countries, there was a surprising amount of commonality in how the case study localities used collaborative planning to develop local climate plans and clean energy initiatives. These processes were most often initiated by local elected officials and/or high-level staff members, and then carried out in collaboration with local third-sector organisations and other community stakeholders. In the USA, collaboration was strongest at the policy level and in the direction-setting phase, with the distinguishing feature that citizen advisory boards or stakeholder working groups often took a more active role in shaping local plans and policies. The English localities had some of those same types of collaborations, but were more likely to also employ action collaboration, in the implementation phase, in which third-sector organisations coordinated with the locality to directly provide clean energy services.     

The good,the bad,and the statutory: are statutory or non-statutory natural resource management plans higher in quality?

Numerous governments around the world have adopted statutory mandates on plan content based on the assumption that they lead to greater consistency and higher quality of plans. While a number of studies have examined the relationship between mandates to develop plans and plan quality, there has been limited study of the influence of state mandates for plan content on plan quality in a regional natural resource management (NRM) planning context. This paper explores the relationship between the quality of regional NRM plans between statutory and non-statutory NRM regions in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia. An analysis of 22 regional NRM plans indicates that there is no evidence of a relationship between plan quality and the presence of statutory mandates for regional NRM plans in New South Wales and Queensland. However, the paper identifies and discusses several other factors with unexpected relationships with an impact on the quality of NRM plans in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia.     

Economic instruments for sustainable community development

Abstract

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the use of so‐called ‘economic instruments’ in environmental policy. Economic instruments influence the behaviour of economic agents by providing financial incentives for environmentally improved behaviour, or disincentives for damaging behaviour. This paper explores the use of economic instruments in the field of sustainable community planning and development. It does so in the wider context of how environmental economic policy is made. The focus of this paper is to examine the role of policy instruments in community planning, and to review the different types of instruments that are available to policy‐makers. Numerous examples of the various instruments at the community level are described. It is widely believed that policy making should occur at the lowest or most local level possible while maintaining effectiveness. A system of government that does not give adequate legal power to local governments, and does not allow local governments considerable flexibility in the use of funds, cannot be expected to achieve all community objectives. Central governments must give local governments permission to take measures towards sustainable community planning, even though that requires giving them power to address broader issues. At the same time, when issues that should be addressed at national and international levels are not addressed, local governments may be able to take action individually. Given the general reluctance (and perhaps inability) of governments at all levels today to consider non‐economic and, particularly, non‐market policy instruments, it is pragmatic as well as timely to improve our understanding of economic instruments for sustainable community development.     

Flood risk management in Dutch local spatial planning practices

Spatial planning is increasingly regarded as an important instrument to reduce flood consequences. Nevertheless, there are very few studies that show why local planning authorities do or do not systematically use spatial planning in advance to mitigate flood risks. This paper explores flood reduction strategies in local planning practices in the Netherlands. It also explores why spatial planning was or was not used to reduce flood consequences. The arguments for the use or non-use of planning mainly referred to requirements from other governmental bodies and the perceived role and the related responsibility of local planning authorities, previous disaster experience, and previous experience with spatial planning for flood risk management.     

The use of computer models in planning upland land use

The British Ecological Society has suggested that computer‐based techniques could be used in the coordination of policies across different land uses in upland planning. This paper looks briefly at one such technique — a linear programming model — and describes its use at a regional scale for the Sedburgh area in north‐west England. The paper concludes with consideration of why such models are not in more common use.     

CLIMATE CHANGE AND WATERSHED PLANNING IN WASHINGTON STATE1

ABSTRACT: This paper draws on interviews with Washington State Watershed Planning Leads (Planning Leads) and interactions with local watershed planning units to identify factors that may influence the inclusion of climate change in watershed planning efforts in Washington State. These factors include the interest of individual planning unit members in climate change; Planning Lead familiarity with climate impacts; the influence of trust, leadership, and “genetic knowledge” on planning units; and perceptions of strategic gain. The research also identifies aspects of the planning process that may create opportunities for addressing climate impacts in future planning. These aspects include continuation of watershed planning units after plans are developed; commitment to updating watershed plans; recognition of climate impacts in planning documentation; dedicated incentive funding; and the availability of hydrologic modeling tools for assessing hydrologic impacts. Additional types of technical assistance that could support integration of climate impacts are also identified. It is hoped that the insight provided by this analysis will help individuals involved in stakeholder‐based watershed planning recognize the various dynamics potentially affecting the inclusion of climate change in watershed planning and in doing so, contribute to the development of planning approaches and tools that will support local efforts to adapt to climate impacts.