Ecological Rationality In Spatial Planning

Spatial planning defines how men use one of the most important and scarce resources on Earth: land. Planners therefore play a key role in countering or deepening the current ecological crisis. To foster ecological transitions, planning scholars and practitioners need to be equipped with sound theories and practical tools. To this end, this book advocates a re-foundation of spatial planning under the paradigm of “ecological rationality”, based on the revaluation of early pioneers of ecological planning and mutual fertilization with different disciplines, including decision-making science, ecology, (eco)system theory, land use science and political ecology. The key principles of ecological rationality and its application to spatial planning are discussed and this conceptual framework is used to explain the main underlying drivers of ecological degradation and their spatial manifestations at the local level. Current policy instruments in the European context, which can be used to underpin ecological planning, such as Green Infrastructure and the Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystem Service (MAES) initiative, are also examined.

Spatial planning defines how men use one of the most important and scarce resources on Earth: land. Planners therefore play a key role in countering or deepening the current ecological crisis. To foster ecological transitions, planning scholars and practitioners need to be equipped with sound theories and practical tools. To this end, this book advocates a re-foundation of spatial planning under the paradigm of "ecological rationality", based on the revaluation of early pioneers of ecological planning and mutual fertilization with different disciplines, including decision-making science, ecology, (eco)system theory, land use science and political ecology. The key principles of ecological rationality and its application to spatial planning are discussed and this conceptual framework is used to explain the main underlying drivers of ecological degradation and their spatial manifestations at the local level. Current policy instruments in the European context, which can be used to underpin ecological planning, such as Green Infrastructure and the Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystem Service (MAES) initiative, are also examined.

This book takes a Lacanian, and related post-structuralist perspective to demythologize ten of the most heavily utilised terms in spatial planning: rationality, the good, certainty, risk, growth, globalization, multi-culturalism, sustainability, responsibility and 'planning' itself. It highlights that these terms, and others, are mere 'empty signifiers', meaning everything and nothing. Based on international examples of planning practice and process, Planning in Ten Words or Less suggests that spatial and urban planning is largely based on the construction and deployment of ideological knowledge claims.

The book investigates the relationship between ecosystem services (ES) and spatial planning, and explores potential means of integrating the two concepts to support the decision-making process. In addition, it presents case studies demonstrating the outcomes, limitations, opportunities and further new developments in ES assessment/mapping for planning support. Then it describes the “Restart from Ecosystem Services” (RES) methodology, which is aimed at integrating ES into the planning process using an ecological balance, and at promoting new planning parameters for the transformation areas. RES ensures the inclusion of ES in planning processes using the incremental measures of limiting, mitigating and compensating soil sealing and land take process promoting operational strategies in applying it. The implementation of RES is associated with strategic environmental assessment and provides valuable support in the definition of strategies across the entire planning process, especially for the evaluation of alternative scenarios.

This provocative collection of essays challenges traditional ideas of strategic s- tial planning and opens up new avenues of analysis and research. The diversity of contributions here suggests that we need to rethink spatial planning in several f- reaching ways. Let me suggest several avenues of such rethinking that can have both theoretical and practical consequences. First, we need to overcome simplistic bifurcations or dichotomies of assessing outcomes and processes separately from one another. To lapse into the nostalgia of imagining that outcome analysis can exhaust strategic planners’ work might appeal to academics content to study ‘what should be’, but it will doom itself to further irrelevance, ignorance of politics, and rationalistic, technocratic fantasies. But to lapse into an optimism that ‘good process’ is all that strategic planning requires, similarly, rests upon a ction that no credible planning analyst believes: that enough talk will miraculously transcend con ict and produce agreement. Neither sing- minded approach can work, for both avoid dealing with con ict and power, and both too easily avoid dealing with the messiness and the practicalities of negotiating out con icting interests and values – and doing so in ethically and politically critical ways, far from resting content with mere ‘compromise’. Second, we must rethink the sanctity of expertise. By considering analyses of planning outcomes as inseparable from planning processes, these accounts help us to see expertise and substantive analysis as being ‘on tap’, ready to put into use, rather than being particularly and technocratically ‘on top’.

This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the second workshop on Evaluation and Planning held at Centre International de Hautes Etudes Agronomiques Mediterraneennes (CIHEAM) in Valenzano (Bari) in November 1993. The workshop was financially and otherwise supported by the School of Engineering, Bari Polytechnic; the School of Agriculture, University of Bari; and CIHEAM. The publication of this book was made possible by to the efforts of the contributing authors. Several other persons have provided invaluable support for the workshop or the preparation of this volume. One of these is Patsy Healey for her fascinating challenge to Andreas Faludi's most recent arguments about rational planning theory. Another is John Friedmann whose lecture at the workshop presented world future scenarios depicting interaction between economic growth, social justice and ecological balance. Angela Barbanente provided marvelous support in organizing the workshop and editorial advice in the preparation of this volume. Jeremy Franks carefully improved the English and the clarity of all the papers. Carmelo Torre made a final editing of texts and images. We owe thanks to Maurizio Raeli for providing all the support services during the workshop and Claudia Baublys for her excellent help with various administrative issues with regard to the workshop and publication of this book. This book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Giovanni Grittani, Professor of Land Economics, University of Bari.

We all now recognize the importance of talk today. In policy settings, there are more and more calls for consultation, collaboration, and deliberation. This is particularly the case in environmental planning, with its disputes over genetically modified organisms, power plants, and new roads. Rydin provides an in-depth and fully theorized account of the role of talk or discourse within environmental planning, combining theory, reported research, and original empirical case studies. She highlights the problem that planners and others face when trying to expand the space for talk within planning situations and provides a detailed assessment of the prospects for consensus-building and deliberative democracy. She also highlights the role that discourse plays in legitimizing institutions of planning and discusses how a rationality of sustainable development may be embedded within new institutional arrangements.

This book is the result of a three day workshop on "Evaluation in theory and practice in spatial planning" held in Ramsey Hall, University College London, in September 1996. Some 30 people from 8 different countries attended and 20 papers were presented. The majority of them now form the basis for this book. This occasion was the third on the topic, the two preceding having taken place in Umea in June 1992 and in Bari in 1994. Following these three meetings, we can now say that this small, industrious, international family really enjoy meeting up from time to time at each others places, in the presence of older members and new children, each one presenting his/her own recent experiences. It particularly enjoys exchanging views and arguing about the current state and the future of evaluation in spatial planning (all families have their vices ... ). It is also pleasing to see these experiences and discussions resulting in a book for those who could not attend and for the broader clan in the field. Not long time ago, but ages in the accelerated academic time scale, evaluation in planning established its own role and distinct features as an instrument for helping the decision-making process. Now this role and these features are exposed to major challenges. First, the evolution of planning theory has lead to the conception of new planning paradigms, based on theories of complexity and communicative rationality.