Territorial Ambitions

Published by Planning, 1 May 2009

Europe provides the starting point for moving from localised concerns with land-use regulation to a genuinely spatial approach, advises Cliff Hague.

The attempt to shift planning away from its traditional culture of micro-scale land-use management remains a work in progress. After the next general election, action may be stymied by a Conservative government beholden to localism, civic engagement and a rule of law perspective that ties planning into protecting property owners from their neighbours' development aspirations.

Meanwhile, regional development agencies, councils, economists and environmentalists spar over the form of integrated regional strategies and an infrastructure planning commission is set up to circumvent local objections to major projects. Yet we still have no really coherent way of evaluating the spatial impacts of projects or policies. Perhaps the nearest we have is the idea of rural-proofing policies, but the notion is something of a tease. Why can't we see urban-proofing or region-proofing as well?

In a parallel universe not far away across the North Sea and the Channel, a similar attritional process is now yielding interesting outcomes. Spatial planning, of course, is about being alert to how transport, environment, agriculture or other policies conceived in isolation will have different impacts on different places.

The spatial planner's dream is to bring about a harmonious and mutually reinforcing integration of these effects on places, all in the cause of sustainability and balance. The Dutch, for example, have long espoused co-ordination as a key rationale for planning at national and regional scales, a notion that would be regarded as heresy across most of Whitehall.

As all planners know, we now have to juggle sometimes contradictory directives from the EU that are embedded in legislation in the UK, where they may not mesh with national policy. A study carried out last year by RTPI head of research Jenny Crawford, research assistant Kendra Gracie and myself readily found examples of the grief that this can cause practising planners.

To cite just one case, national planning guidance requires Scottish authorities to make positive provision for renewable energy developments. But they also have to work within the EU habitats directive. The Western Isles, swept by Atlantic and Arctic gusts, also have extensive special protection area (SPA) designations. So when a 243-turbine, 702MW wind farm was proposed on Lewis in 2004, it encompassed three SPAs and encroached on important bird habitats.

Reduced carbon emissions, local jobs and economic benefits were on offer, but at the same time peatlands, birds and fisheries were under threat. As well as the various quangos and pressure groups opposing the scheme, almost 11,000 objections were lodged by members of the public. A scaled-down version of the scheme was refused by the Scottish Government last year on the grounds that the development would adversely affect the integrity of a protected European site (Planning, 25 April 2008, p5).

Similar clashes between separate strands of policy are being experienced throughout Europe, from Lisbon to Bucharest and from Aalborg to Athens. For more than a decade, the EU's spatial planning community has been exerting constant pressure for some form of territorial impact assessment (TIA) to be applied to European directives before they are enacted.

However, the political centre of gravity in Europe has shifted and jobs and growth have become the priority. Ironically, the appeal of spatial planning has waned in Brussels, precisely because the term has been largely equated with the kind of localised land-use control that the UK system is seeking to supersede. Instead of planning, polite Eurocrats talk of territorial development and cohesion.

While the semantics can be bewildering, the substance is more important. No separate system of TIA is going to be imposed on or by the EU. No doubt many will breathe a soft sigh of relief at being spared yet more top-down tasks and box-ticking. Even so, the EU has written a substantial measure of territorial regulation into its own impact assessment procedures.

In January, it updated its impact assessment guidelines. One of the crucial steps in the revised procedure is to analyse the economic, social and environmental effects of any policy option and examine who will be affected. It is here that likely territorial impacts should be picked up.

By way of illustration, here is a sample of the questions that those preparing EU-level impact assessments are now being asked to look at: 

• Will the option have a specific impact on certain regions, such as in terms of jobs created or lost?
• Does the option affect specific groups of individuals - such as the most vulnerable or most at risk of poverty, children, women, elderly, disabled or unemployed people, ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities, asylum seekers, firms or other organisations - or some localities more than others?
• Does it affect health due to changes in noise levels or air, water or soil quality?
• Will it increase or decrease the demand for passenger or freight transport or influence its modal split?
• Does the proposal have an impact on the preservation of cultural heritage?
• Does the option have the effect of bringing areas of land into use for the first time?
• Does it affect land designated as sensitive for ecological reasons?
• Does it lead to a change in land use in terms of the divide between rural and urban or type of agriculture?

This list is by no means exhaustive. Neither will it solve all the problems. For example, hard decisions between birds and wind turbines will still need to be made. However, it should mean that conflicts are better anticipated and allow spatially blind policies to be more easily challenged. Crucially, the guidelines prompt the question of how a stronger territorial dimension might be built into existing procedures such as strategic environmental assessments, health impact assessments or equalities assessments in the UK.

The spatial planning project needs to have the buy-in of disparate stakeholders who have scant understanding of spatial dynamics and show strong orientation towards their own sectoral goals and performance indicators. The more that we can develop a set of easily understood, largely qualitative questions that can be embedded in impact assessment procedures, the more likely we are to get our message across.

The EU's lead provides us with a legitimate and necessary starting point for such an endeavour. Here in the UK with its devolved administrations, policy analysts and researchers should be putting legislation and allocative policies under territorial scrutiny. There is just a chance that we might have time before the election to get the message across to the Conservatives that planning is more than simply a matter of regulating spats between neighbours.

Cliff Hague is professor emeritus at Heriot-Watt University's school of the built environment. The updated EU Impact Assessment Guidelines are available at PlanningResource.co.uk/doc. For further information, please visit www.espon.org.uk

DUTCH ASSESS IMPACT OF COHESION POLICY

Following an EU consultation on territorial cohesion, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency carried out an analysis of how the concept will affect Dutch regions and development policies.
The report identifies five interpretations:

• A traditional regional policy approach to socio-economic disparities by provision of support to lagging regions.
• A means of improving Europe's economic competitiveness by encouraging regions to make best use of their indigenous assets or "territorial capital".
• A "rescue plan" to deal with economic decline and population loss in rural areas.
• A spatial planning interpretation in which territorial cohesion means balanced development and counters urban sprawl.
• Improved integration of sectoral policies and their effects through the use of territorial impact assessment methods.

The Dutch team developed hypothetical policy options for each and assessed their consequences for the Netherlands. Under the traditional regional policy interpretation, the solution would be to intensify EU support for regions facing the most severe problems.

While this would run counter to current Dutch policies, it would not have much impact because regional disparities are much lower than in countries such as the UK. Even if there were EU pressure to implement the policy nationally, no major shift in spending patterns would be needed. However, some regions might benefit if problem areas were defined by measures other than gross domestic product.

The UK is a more diverse country and the way that EU cohesion policy develops is likely to have different implications for south-east England and north-west Northern Ireland. Yet we have no equivalent to the document that the Dutch have produced to shape debate and policy responses.

A Territorial Impact Assessment of Territorial Cohesion for the Netherlands is available at PlanningResource.co.uk/doc

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