Spatial planning: Principles, practices and cultures

Abstract

Planning practice in the UK is currently attempting to make sense of the move towards spatial planning processes, as part of the context for and reforms contained within the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill. Three sets of changes have occurred over the last five years to promote spatial planning. First, there has been an enhanced European dimension to the British planning system-created by the European Spatial Development Perspective of 1999-that has led to a much broader framework for assessing the spatial implications of a range of social, economic and environmental issues across various layers of policy-making and territories. Secondly, there have been moves to establish a regional dimension of both government and spatial strategy-making, particularly in England, that have also increased the desire for a coordinating institutional framework that mediates between conflicting policy priorities and sectoral problems. And finally, new duties awarded to local authorities under the requirements of the Local Government Act 2000 in relation to well-being and for the preparation of Community Strategies have led to the call for new spatial consequences of community problems to be expressed through the planning system. In combination, these three sets of contexts have led to the establishment and development of spatial planning in Britain alongside the existing town and country planning system. The introduction of the term "spatial planning" into the British town and country planning process is causing a mix of optimism-for its apparent broadening out of planning into financial, resource, managerial and non-land use issues-and concern over its potential embracement of non-planning issues and its concomitant relationship to the statutory land use planning system. This paper attempts to pin down the meaning of spatial planning, outlines the differences in planning for professionals and users of planning, and assesses the opportunities for spatial planning in planning practice. It is very much a polemical paper and unashamedly positive. It intends to further debate on the meaning, value and purpose of spatial planning amongst practitioners, users of planning, and analysts. © SWEET and MAXWELL AND CONTRIBUTORS.