Below is the table of contents and first section of this chapter. You can download the full chapter as a pdf file by clicking here or as a eBook (ePub) file by clicking here.
Table of Contents
1.1 Planning
1.2 The problem with planning – values vs interests
1.3 What is environmental planning?
1.4 The scope of environmental protection
1.5 What is sustainability and sustainable development?
1.6 Distinguishing between environmental planning and sustainability planning
1.7 Summarising environmental planning
1.7 References
Planning
There are three keys words that need to be defined, or at least have their meaning refined: environmental, sustainability and planning. I’ll start with ‘planning’.
‘Planning’ for the purposes of this book is land use planning. As Thompson and Maginn (2012) note, planning is about making decisions which facilitate future actions. It is mostly seen as applying to cities, to allow for the orderly development of residential areas, employment centres, supporting infrastructure and services. These future actions can either be long-term plan making, in some cases up to 50 years, more short-term decision making like zoning, or more immediate decision making like development approval (for example approval to construct a house).
Planning can be legally binding, that is, statutory, where decision making specifically allows or dis-allows certain land uses. These include zoning of land, subdivision and development approval. Planning also has non-statutory elements: for example, most strategic plans and policies are used to guide statutory planning but are, for the most part, not legally binding.
Planning is not just done by the traditional land use planning agencies (in WA it is the Western Australian Planning Commission and the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage). National Parks and Nature Reserves are usually vested in, and managed by, conservation or environmental agencies, and these agencies usually have statutory powers to plan and control land uses of these lands.
Some agencies have special powers in relation to certain resources, which enables them to apply special land use control over land affected by those resources. For example, the WA Department of Water and Environmental Regulation can declare water reserves on land within the catchments of important public water supplies (dams and groundwater), and set controls on land uses within these reserves.
In summary, planning can be described as decision making that facilities and set controls on the future use of land.