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The EU's European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) and subsequent documents on spatial planning and territorial cohesion provide a framework for decision making about land use and development in the European Union. This chapter focuses on the origins of the ESDP and some of its key elements: sustainable development, territory, mobility, environment, and cohesion. Its main critique of the ESDP, and later spatial planning initiatives, is the absence of concern with environmental justice — a matter attributed to the fact that the ESDP been overridden by concerns about the acceleration of economic growth in the regions and in rural areas, firmly in keeping with the original economic aims and objectives of the Union, but distanced from a more progressive environmental and social justice agenda.

Flanders is a densely populated, highly urbanized region, with widespread urban sprawl threatening remaining agricultural and natural areas. Consequently spatial planning has recently become a pressing concern. A version of the integrated land use – regional activity model described in chapter 7 was adopted by the Flemish government to aid in formulating and assessing policies and plans. With 37 land uses in the CA and 22 Arrondissements in the regional activity model, it has been used to show the likely state of the region in 2030 and 2050 under Business as Usual and Land Take Neutral scenarios. The utility of the results is enhanced by means of a number of dynamic indicators. In order to handle specific immediate planning problems, the model was modified and embedded in a genetic algorithm based optimizing routine. In this form it was used to identify locations for new business parks in the province of Limburg; and in an interactive setting, it was used to assist stakeholder groups to locate nature protection sites as required under the EU Natura 2000 legislation.

This chapter provides an overview of the processes and recent trends of strategic planning in Europe. It re-examines strategic planning by highlighting the differences between it and traditional land-use planning. It discusses the “new” strategic spatial planning, the four-track operationalized framework, and the type of governance suitable for transformative practices. Finally, it introduces four types of strategic projects which provide a key to an action-oriented approach: urban projects, rural projects, new innovative development, and network-like projects.

After being hit by a tsunami in 2004, the socio-political situation in Aceh became more complicated, since this region had been ravaged by conflict for 32 years. Given the socio-political background, the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency (BRR) tends to avoid conflict with the society. Although initially the Government of Indonesia had formulated a master plan for the rehabilitation and reconstruction in Aceh, the BRR ultimately decided to use the village plan - a community-based spatial plan at village level - as a basis to rebuild settlements that were destroyed by the tsunami - Village plans were being implemented throughout the entire affected areas. The authors argue that despite the participation of the community, mitigation efforts after the disaster in Aceh have not met the target to build a resilient community. Politicization affected the implementation of the spatial plan.

Extensive flooding, the increasing frequency and intensity of local floods, as well as extremely dry periods and geodynamic phenomena, mainly landslides, have during the last decade caused significant damage in Slovakia. In most cases, these events were caused by human activities. Knowledge and risk assessment of floods and landslides could minimize and or predict the potential scale of damage. The aim of this chapter is to point out the importance of spatial/territorial planning as one of the most crucial determinants of area development. Territorial planning documentation in Slovakia should comprehensively design spatial arrangement and functional use of the territory, harmonize interests and activities determining territorial development, ensure ecological stability and lay down regulations of spatial arrangement and functional use. To reach, or at least to come close to, sustainable development is an obvious challenge. In this respect, strategic environmental assessment can play a vital role.

The chapter is about flood risk management through spatial planning in Germany. The first part introduces the concept of spatial planning in Germany. Section two discusses the role of spatial planning for the assessment and management of (flood) risks. The role of the Strategic Environmental Assessment for risk assessment is explained by section three. Section four discusses a severe flood event, specifically the flood in June 2013 that affected large parts of Southern and Eastern Germany. Particular emphasis will be placed on options to retreat from flood prone areas. Here, the disaster is seen as a window of opportunity to reorganize the settlement structures in sparsely populated rural areas in a more sustainable way that supports the maintenance of services of general interest. The chapter concludes with some thoughts on strength and weaknesses of spatial planning in the field of disaster risk response.

Currently, in all countries, a fragmentation in responsibilities for disaster risk assessment and management deteriorates efficiency and effectiveness of independent actions taken by different institutions. The mostly parallel work of sectoral planning only pursues sectoral interests. A comprehensive planning approach where sectoral interests are harmonized is missing. By developing binding standards and indicators for spatial development, comprehensive spatial planning could take over the role of a harmonizer in building spatial resilience. This chapter identifies access points for a strengthened coordination between the different vertical levels of spatial planning and a more efficient interplay between spatial planning, sectoral planning divisions and emergency response throughout the different stages of the disaster risk cycle.

This chapter explores the relationship between modernisation, space and photography in contemporary France, and the privileged role acquired by photography as a means of portraying a sense of national identity through spatial forms. It focuses in particular on Paysages Photographies (1989), the substantial photo-book which emerged out of the work of the Mission photographique de la DATAR between 1983 and 1988. The Mission photographique was commissioned in the early 1980s by the government’s spatial planning agency, the DATAR (Délégation à l’aménagement du territoire et à l’action régionale), which had been founded in 1963 to drive forward the modernisation of French territory. Its aim was to record the consequences of two decades of spatial transformation and production in France, and by implication marking the end of a triumphant phase of activity. The chapter considers how Paysages Photographies frames and presents the spatial transformations brought about by modernisation; how it captures the impact of spatial planning on the French landscape; and the visual forms taken by planned and modernised space. It explores how different photographers responded to the environments they encountered and, like Walter Benjamin’s angel of history, create an ambivalent sense of spatial transformation as both historical wreckage and half-realised dream.

This chapter explores reaction to the spatial planning agenda, primarily within planning policy. This is primarily considered in relation to New Labour’s introduction of the Local Development Framework system in England. Empirical data show that planners broadly supported these reforms but felt that, in practice, the Government’s own aims were not being met. Comparing empirical material in this study to that from Labour Government commissioned reports, it is demonstrated that planners were most likely to blame external factors for problems associated with reforms, whilst the Government tended to highlight the role of the planning profession itself and the claimed need for a culture change in the profession. Whilst further reforms to planning processes have been introduced by the Coalition government, a more spatial approach to planning appears to have become embedded in local government.

The application of the resource-oriented approach used in this book confirms the prominent role of the resource Property in the resource portfolios of each of the three policy actors. Property consists of the ownership of property and use rights to material and immaterial (natural, manufactured, social and/or human) resources and the various bundles of goods and/or services they provide to the owner. One of the prominent services of such resources involves their role as policy resource (abstract use of such resources as opposed to concrete uses). The most prominent material resource is the ownership of (strategic) land, which enables both public and private actors to play a predominant role in policy formulation and, especially, implementation processes. The chapter illustrates the mobilization and use modes of the resource Property in the areas of spatial planning, institutional policies (creation of a Swiss canton) , public accounting and state infrastructural policies (land acquisition policies for communal land use policy). It stresses the role of legal appeals by target groups or beneficiary organizations and the privileged position occupied landowners in the planning and implementation of large urban projects.

This introduction will give a general overview of the role of spatial planning for disaster response and the related key challenges that spatial planning needs to deal with in this respect. Moreover, it will discuss the variety of the national planning cultures and related concepts and instruments. It will also introduce key terminology to the reader (e.g. spatial resilience, resilience of space) and explain the dominant methodological frameworks for disaster risk assessment and management.

This chapter analyses the content of all chapters in Part A and develops the basis for Part B. It determines similarities and differences in the legal frameworks for spatial planning and disaster risk assessment and management. Moreover, the chapter identifies characteristic problems and bottlenecks in the practice of disaster risk management through spatial planning. A particular focus is on the recovery phase. The identified problems serve as starting points for Part B of this book.

The conclusion draws up a list of points that could possibly improve the way spatial planning deals with disasters. In this context, the chapter discusses the opportunities and limitations of transferring lessons learned in one country to others. Thus, emphasis is placed on opportunities that can be jointly implemented in each of the participating countries as well as others that are tailor-made for a specific legal administrative context and offer a source of improvements for practitioners around the world. On this basis, this chapter develops elements of a new concept for change-proof cities and regions.

The frequency of tragic major-accident hazards around the world reveals the importance to address this topic. Especially due to the fact that major-accidents are able to occur independently, but can also be triggered by natural hazards (so-called NaTech hazards) makes them hard to predict. After several major-accidents in the 1970s, the European Union issued the Seveso Directive in 1982, which was repeatedly amended and replaced. The main aim of the Seveso Directive is to prevent major-accidents that include dangerous substances and reduce the threat of such accidents if they still occur. This chapter gives an overview about the intention and content of the Seveso Directive and discusses its relevance for the field of spatial planning. It explains the implementation of the directive in Germany and illustrates its application with a practical example. The chapter finally draws a conclusion with possible points of transferability.

This chapter compares simple and complex models of ecosystem service provision and spatial distribution for carbon storage and sequestration and crop pollination. Carbon stock estimates from the two models agreed well across multiple scenarios of land use in the Willamette Basin, Oregon. Estimates diverged much farther into the future, with the simpler model providing a more conservative estimate. The results also showed good agreement between estimates of pollination levels of watermelon in the California Central Valley (R² = 0.99). Some divergence between estimates in the tails of the pollinator index distribution suggest that the simple model is most appropriate in landscapes where the pollinator community is not very diverse or where pollinators have similar habitat preferences. Managers selecting priority areas (represented by areas within the top quartile of service provision) for carbon or pollination investments would likely make the same decisions with either the simple or complex model, as the spatial patterns predicted by both simple and complex models aligned well. The question of whether simple or complex models better represent reality cannot be answered until ecosystem services become widely and regularly monitored.