The SustainUs Group has always acknowledged sustainable development as a dynamic process. The term 'development' implies change, progress, the potential for improvement. 'Sustainability' adds to that concept the idea of durability. And that in turn implies that the change must not only be economically viable but also environmentally and socially successful. Our paper this month considers our view on how sustainable development can be achieved by and influenced through the land use planning system in the future. The principles outlined apply to many types of planning regimes but, for the purposes of illustration, the examples used are largely drawn from the UK and Australia.
The land use planning system has a crucial part to play in securing sustainable development. The creation of new buildings and changes in the use of land shape the physical world of the future and influence the way people will live their lives in it. The planning system is one of the few current mechanisms which clearly links national / State goals with local ones; which gives an opportunity for issues to be examined 'in the round'; and which allows, indeed encourages, public participation in decision making. These positive existing traits of the system reflect the concept and process of sustainable development. It is important that they are retained and developed further, and are transferred into other planning regimes.
The planning system has always had two main processes:
- the creation of development plans, in which planning authorities (councils, Development agencies) set out the vision and proposals for the future development of their areas, including managing growth and change (and latterly seeking to ensure a more sustainable pattern of development), while taking into account the views of local people, landowners, developers, infrastructure providers and bodies offering specialist advice; and
- development control, through which planning authorities ensure that for individual proposed development and changes in the use of land the private interests of developers (usually the economic leg of sustainable development) do not prevail unreasonably over the public interest (where the focus is more often on social and environmental considerations).
To operate effectively, these two processes should be interdependent. Development plans should be a framework for a positive and proactive approach to managing development for delivering the planning authority's vision for its area, and as the touchstone for development control. Put another way, development control decisions should not be arbitrary; the development plan is the policy that provides for consistency in decision taking. Expenditure priorities should be closely linked with development plans.
In theory, therefore, the planning system has the potential to be a fundamental instrument in the achievement of sustainable development - not least because of its role in setting a long term vision for our world, and controlling development that does not fit that vision.
Three major constraints
In practice, however, the picture is rather more complicated. For a start, local planning authorities are not masters of their own destiny. The national / state governments play a significant role in the preparation of plans by local authorities (for example with respect to how much new housing is to be provided for). They also decide individual applications in cases they call in (often economically significant applications) and in cases that aggrieved applicants bring on appeal against the local planning authorities' decisions. Just as at the local level, these interventions in the process should not be arbitrary either. National / state planning policy guidance should have sustainable development at its heart (as should the planning system as a whole), not as a bolt on extra.
A second complication is that the vision set out by planning authorities cannot be delivered by private sector investment alone. However much development control helps to ensure that individual, private sector-led developments contribute to sustainable development objectives, much development that society needs (eg sufficient social housing) does not happen without public investment. Yet, public investment is managed through almost unrelated processes, at both the national and local levels. Some Government funded developments in fact can also run counter to sustainable development goals.
A third complication is the existence of other controls, often operated by bodies other than planning authorities. One of the most powerful strengths of planning, as a deliverer of sustainable development, is the discretion in the hands of decision takers to weigh all the aspects of the development - social, economic and environmental - in reaching a decision. That discretion can be constrained by other more detailed codes and regulatory regimes. The building regulations, for example, warrant investigation to examine whether they can be further revised to force the pace of change towards truly sustainable building construction.
Those who seek to reform the planning system to secure more sustainable development need to bear in mind these critical relationships with the systems for allocating public investment and with other development control regimes, at the national / state and local level.
Positive plans or incremental control?
Within the planning system, the relative importance of development plans and development control has varied over the last fifty years. During much of the 1970s and 1980s, the regulatory emphasis of the system seemed to become dominant; planning authorities became more reactive (as their scope to make public investments became constrained) while governments appeared to undermine the local role through its decisions on appeals and the introduction of a raft of planning guidelines which local authorities could ignore only at peril of having costs awarded against them by the courts.
The positive planning element was regarded as somewhat suspect, and likely to be less successful in shaping the future than allowing market forces to take more of the lead. Market forces are very good at identifying and delivering relatively short-term economic benefits (hence the repeated complaints when decisions take a long time). But they cannot be relied upon to deliver the social and environmental components of sustainable development, except where those components contribute to the profitability of the development itself. Nor do they necessarily deliver the best long-term outcomes - realisation of the community's vision.
One should also note that it is not the plan that engages the public most today, but development control decisions. Greater public concern about the impacts of individual developments, case by case, makes it ever harder for the planning system to fulfil its potential as a major shaper of sustainable development - facilitating a better society ten or twenty years in the future.
SustainUs welcomes the attempts that have been made to secure a longer term vision to guide decisions on where and how to develop, but notes that those who manage the system often find it hard to look beyond the immediate planning application. The system remains reactive and fails to inspire people and developers to work together for a sustainable society. Politicians say they are not motivated by the development plan system because they don't feel 'ownership' of it. The business community says it is frustrated about the planning process because the development plan process can seem impenetrable and it fails to engage them as stakeholders, and because development control decisions are often slow and appear to be capricious.
A new vision for planning
Overall, I believe that it is time to develop a new approach to planning, which would start from a process of rigorous consultation. Decisions need to be taken at the most appropriate level of competence (eg Major national developments by the national government; location of major housing development by regional planning authorities; minor changes, local development by local councils). At regional and national levels new ways of engaging the interest of the public will be needed. At local government level, the planning process can use active community-led processes to identify the kind of community (and its physical manifestation) that people want to see evolve in the next twenty years. It would go on to guide, encourage and incentivise communities and developers to work within the spirit of this plan, rather than seeking to drive ahead on their own lines against the spirit of sustainable development or the plan.
A more inclusive approach is just one way to help local authorities set out a vision for their communities in their plans. Various techniques have been developed for community involvement in generating visions for their area, including as part of the Local Agenda 21 process; these deserve encouragement and more explicit linkage with the development plan process. The proposed community planning process could provide a powerful local mandate for the land use planning system.
To date, many development plans have tended to lack vision, merely extrapolating past trends. The possible real gains that can be made through land use change and development have often been ignored or marginalised. A more inclusive approach could help to rectify these shortcomings.
The guiding instrument for these approaches should be a new duty for local authorities in respect of sustainable development. But we have urged Governments and Politicians to go further, and to:
- give local authorities the principal purpose of promoting the long term economic, social and environmental well being of their areas in an integrated way, thereby contributing to the achievement of sustainable development as a whole;
- require authorities to prepare sustainable development strategies for promoting the long term economic, social and environmental well being of their areas;
- give authorities a broad power to do anything necessary to promote the economic, social or environmental well-being of their areas, having regard to sustainable development;
- require authorities to report on the effectiveness of their sustainable development strategies and the exercise of their power.
How these powers and strategy should be integrated with the planning system is a key issue. I believe that sustainable development/action plan should not be a replacement or substitute for planning guidance, regional planning guidance, or development plans. It should inform and guide them at the appropriate level. It should also guide and influence all the other relevant functional and spending plans of local and national government.
I believe that a sustainable development strategy should be the central strategy, and the focus around which political leaders seek to establish consensus on key actions which can be taken forward with major developers as drivers for change in their areas.
A stronger role for positive land use planning will also require some stronger tools to deliver positive results - tools for land assembly and decontamination, tools to ensure that developments address all the local social and environmental impacts they impose, economic instruments to discourage greenfield development where suitable brownfield sites could be made available, and more imaginative building regulations to force the pace of change towards truly sustainable buildings.
Issues for consideration
I invite readers to join us on our on-line Forum to discuss these matters further and consider the following questions / problems and ways of addressing them:
