Spatial plans have a key role to play in the assessment of how policies for sectors such as transport or environment impact on territorial cohesion. This was the key conclusion from a one-day conference of European planners in Edinburgh on May 21.
Jan Vogelij, a Past President of ECTP-CEU (the European Council of Spatial Planners), stressed that the idea of territorial cohesion implied realising regional potential based on endogenous assets. Planners have a key role in this. Planners identify spatial qualities and synergies which reinforce territorial potentials for development, he said. However Jan Vogelij recognised that strategic spatial planning requires methods which co-ordinate sectors, levels of governance and consider long-term effects. He argued that today strategic planning should be based on functional areas not administrative units, and intensive stakeholder involvement. In a key part of his speech Jan Vogelij argued that the extensive reliance on environmental impact assessments was inappropriate. Such assessment typically excludes other important qualities, or makes them secondary to environmental matters. As a result, environmental sector aspects dominate the weighing of interests in spatial plans, he said.
Territorial Impact Assessment
Prof. Cliff Hague, part of the UK ESPON Contact Point team, developed a similar theme. He challenged planners to explain how they can produce spatial plans but not have explicit procedures and methods for territorial impact assessment (TIA). Is it possible to make spatial plans without being able to anticipate the spatial impacts of policies and proposals? he asked.
He summarised the findings of recent research by the UK ESPON Contact Point which explored ideas about territorial impact assessment in ten European countries. This showed that while the term itself was usually only used in the context of EU level analysis, in fact some countries do have procedures and methods in their planning systems that try to anticipate territorial impacts and integrate them into plans. He confirmed Jan Vogelijs view that environmental impacts tend to dominate in assessment regimes used by planners, and that this can mean that the economic, cultural and social impacts are at risk of being under-valued when decisions are being made.
Cliff Hague emphasised that practising planners do not want to have further impact assessment regimes imposed upon them, but would welcome the development and sharing of qualitative methods that could work with existing data and be efficient to operate. Existing plans could be the yardstick against which to measure anticipated impacts. He drew attention to the new ESPON project on TIA, for which tenders are invited by 28 June 2010. Details of this Targeted Analysis project can be downloaded from www.espon.eu.
Scotlands National Planning Framework
Scotlands Assistant Chief Planner, Dr. Graeme Purves, explained how he and his team had developed Scotlands national-scale spatial planning framework. The first such document was agreed in 2004 and then it was modified and updated in 2009. This latest version is particularly strong in identifying major infrastructure developments, and is truly strategic in approach. Graeme Purves cited examples of how the Framework takes the concept of territorial cohesion and translates it into strategic proposals for Scotland. Thus the Central Scotland Green Framework is a project that will stretch from coast to coast across the traditional industrial Central Belt and make places more attractive while also helping Scotland move towards its ambitious carbon reduction aims.
Conclusions
Summarising the days presentations and discussions, Vincent Goodstadt, a member of the ECTP-CEU Territorial Cohesion Working Group, saw Scotlands National Planning Framework as an example of good practice. He stressed the need to see territorial cohesion as being about linking across spatial scales, and that there are often gaps at the national scale and these inhibit this process. He was critical of the use of subsidiarity as an excuse for inaction. Sometimes the right level for intervention is upwards not downwards he said. In particular he underlines a point made earlier by João Teixeira, President of ECTP-CEU, who had argued that it was nonsense for the EU to deny that it has a spatial planning role.
Some key points emerged from discussion in breakout groups. There were calls for researchers to demystify the possible approaches to doing territorial impact assessment, and for the European dimension of planning to be made a more central element in planners continuing professional development. Amongst other things, this requires demonstrating what territorial cohesion adds to economic and social cohesion. Similarly, there was some enthusiasm for challenging the heavy reliance placed on forms of environmental assessment. Just because an EIA comes out against a development, it should not mean that the development is automatically rejected, as one commentator noted. We need a change in the culture and values of many planners argued another. Too often they only deliver what the system asks from them: instead they should be asking Whats affecting the future of our community?
All photos courtesy of Charles Strang
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