Practice of environmental assessment for transport and land-use policies, plans and programmes

Abstract

Even though strategic environmental assessment has generated a large amount of professional and general interest for about two decades, the extent of its application and its overall quality have largely remained unidentified. Furthermore, the understanding of how assessments from different countries compare has been poor. Whilst a number of publications listed case studies from different countries, it was usually unclear why certain cases were (repeatedly) chosen and how these cases compared. Also there is a lack of a common understanding of what makes an assessment a strategic environmental assessment. To help understand recent practice better, this paper presents systematic research results for assessments of spatial/land-use and transport policies, plans and programmes in North West England, Noord-Holland and EVR Brandenburg-Berlin. © 2001 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.