What Is This Thing Called Spatial Planning - Nigel Taylor

What is this thing called spatial planning?
An analysis of the British government's view

Author(s): Nigel Taylor
Source: The Town Planning Review, Vol. 81, No. 2 (2010), pp. 193-208
Published by: Liverpool University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40660677
Accessed: 14-02-2018 05:15 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Liverpool University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The Town Planning Review
This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Wed, 14 Feb 2018 05:15:46 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
TPR, 81 (2| 2010 doi:10.3828/tpr.2009.26
Nigel Taylor
Commentary
What is this thing called spatial planning?

An analysis of the British governments view
Unlike most other disciplines concerned with the built environment, town planning has been given various
titles and re-brandings in its history, of which the most recent example is the term 'spatial' planning.
Focusing on the British government's view of spatial planning, as spelt out in the 2004 Planning and
Compulsory Purchase Act and its accompanying planning policy statements, this Commentary describes
what spatial planning is said to be and then analyses whether, as its proponents claim, it is a different
kind of planning from town or land use (etc.] planning. The Commentary argues that, with the possible
exception of the aspiration to integrate and plan the spatial dimension of all government policy, there is
no significant difference between spatial planning and town/land use (etc.] planning, and, hence, that
this latest term is nothing more than a re-branding of an old activity, albeit one that has itself changed
and evolved significantly over the last half century.
Over the last 20 years the term 'spatial planning' has increasingly come to be used,
especially in the European Union, to describe what was formerly termed 'town and
country', 'city and regional', 'land use', etc., planning. This new term has not just
gained currency in academic discourse, it has also been adopted in legislative acts
of member states of the European Union. For example, since 2000 a new 'Spatial
Planning Act' has been introduced in the Netherlands (see e.g. Needham, 2005) to
supersede what was formerly termed 'physical' planning in Dutch planning legis-
lation, while in Britain1 in 2004, Parliament passed a 'Planning and Compulsory
Purchase Act', which, together with accompanying government 'planning policy
statements', introduced a new 'spatial planning approach' to add to or even supersede
what was formerly termed 'land use' or 'town and country' planning. What then is this
supposedly new 'spatial' planning and how does it differ from what has hitherto been
termed 'town and country', 'city and regional', "land use', etc., planning? These are
the questions to be addressed in this Commentary.
Before turning to these questions, however, it is worth noting that, long before
the advent of 'spatial' planning, the nature of the planning with which we are here
concerned has always attracted different titles to describe it, so that there has long
Nigel Taylor is Principal Lecturer in the theory and philosophy of planning, urban design and architecture in the
Department of Planning and Architecture, School of the Built and Natural Environment, University of the West of
England, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 iQY, UK; email: Nigel.Taylor@uwe.ac.uk
1 In speaking of the 'British' government's view it needs to be noted that, following the devolution of some powers
to Scotland and Wales, a number of differences have emerged between the respective planning systems of
England, Scotland, and Wales. Some might therefore insist that the primary focus of this paper is on the English
planning system and view of spatial planning.
194 Nigel Taylor
been a measure of ambiguity about the discipline of 'planning' compared with

related built environment disciplines such as architecture and civil engineering, whose
terms of description have remained stable. Thus in the UK, the professional body
responsible for planning is the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), from which one
could infer that the kind of planning over which the RTPI presides is town planning,
as indeed it was in 19 13 when the Institute was founded. However, the term town and
country planning was soon adopted in Britain (in 1932) to indicate, presumably, that the
countryside needed planning as well as towns, and until recently most of the major
pieces of planning legislation were termed 'Town and Country Planning' acts, as in,
for example, the 1947 and 1968 Acts.
The term 'town and country' planning, however, came to have a rather quaint,
dated ring to it, especially when the settlements whose planning is being considered
are major (and sometimes 'mega') cities. In virtue of this, some prefer the terms 'city'
or 'urban' planning, and for similar reasons some prefer the term 'rural' planning
as being more appropriately up-to-date than 'country' planning. A number of these
variations in terminology are associated with different national and cultural tradi-
tions. Thus in the USA, the term 'city planning' has almost always been used instead
of 'town planning', while in Europe different terms are used in different nation states,
such as urbanisme in France, Städtebau in Germany, and 'physical planning' in the
Netherlands (see Williams, 1996, 58-59).
Whichever of the foregoing terms for the 'urban' aspect is preferred, the inclusion
of 'country' or 'rural' planning is significant. It not only indicates an extension of
the idea of town/urban/city planning to encompass the planning of adjacent rural
areas, or the countryside, in their own right, but is also an acknowledgment that the
proper planning of urban settlements involves more than just the planning of the
outward physical form and appearance of settlements; it has to encompass how such
settlements function, which in turn requires an understanding of the relationships and
mutual inter-dependencies between urban settlements and their surrounding rural
hinterlands, together with the wider region. Since proper town/urban/city planning
has this wider spatial remit, the terms 'city and regional' (or 'city-regional', or just
'regional') planning have sometimes been employed to emphasise this consideration.
Again, in the USA, the activity under discussion is typically termed 'city and regional'
planning, and even in Britain 'town and country' planning was once widely viewed
as including 'regional' planning. In fact, in Europe, some nation-states (e.g. Germany,
France, Italy and the Netherlands) long ago established a statutory hierarchy of
planning that included, below the level of the nation-state itself, a level of regional
planning designed to establish a broader 'strategic' spatial framework for the more
local level of town /urban /city planning [aménagement du territoire and Raumplanung were
the terms used in France and Germany, respectively, to describe this broader, more
strategic scale of regional planning).
Commentary 195
In recognising that the proper planning of urban settlements involves an under-

standing of how such settlements function, urban planners soon came to attend to
the land use activities that underlie the outward physical form and appearance of
settlements and the way different land uses are interconnected by various modes of
transportation or other means of communication. Accordingly, some have preferred
the generic term 'land use', or 'land use /transportation' planning to describe town/
urban/city planning. Still others have preferred the term 'environmental' planning
to describe this activity, partly to draw attention to the fact that town and country
(or urban and rural, city and regional, etc.) planning is essentially concerned with
planning the overall physical environment we inhabit and partly to emphasise that
this discipline should encompass the planning and management of the 'environment'
in all its aspects including, especially, the natural environment with its delicate ecology
and pattern of habitats.
The kind of planning that is the subject of this Commentary has thus been
described under several different titles, and that all these terms have acquired some
legitimacy at different times and places is demonstrated by the fact that different
text books about planning have employed all of these terms. Thus there have been
books entitled Town and Country Planning (e.g. Keeble 1952), Urban Land Use Planning (e.g.
Chapin, 1965), Urban and Regional Planning (e.g. McLoughlin, 1969; Hall, 1974), Environ-
mental Planning (Allison, 1975), and so on. A perusal of the contents of these differently
titled books shows that the kind of activity - the kind of planning - they describe is
essentially similar. It is what has been variously called 'town and country', or 'urban
and rural', or 'city and regional', or 'land use', or 'environmental', etc., planning. But
now, as if the foregoing proliferation of terms was not enough, yet another term has
been introduced - 'spatial' planning.
As noted at the beginning of this Commentary, the term 'spatial planning' has been
used for some time in the European Union and when, in its 2004 planning reforms,
the British government also adopted this term, it claimed that 'spatial' planning was a
new kind of planning which went 'beyond' what it described as 'traditional land use'
planning. That the British government considered this to be a significant departure
from the kind of planning that had previously occurred was confirmed by its talk
of the need for a 'culture change' in planning if the shift from old-style 'land use'
planning to the new-style 'spatial' planning was to take place (see Shaw and Lord,
2007). What, then, is this new kind of 'spatial' planning, and is it, in fact, different from
land use planning, or the other kinds of planning described above?
This Commentary is in two main sections. First, in the following section, I
summarise what spatial planning is said to be, focusing especially on what the British
government says in the Planning Policy Statements that accompanied the 2004
Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act. Then I examine whether, against the alleg-
edly distinctive qualities identified by the government, spatial planning is as distinctive
196 Nigel Taylor
from town and country, land use (etc.), planning as the government and other propo-
nents of spatial planning suggest. To save words, I shall henceforth use just the terms
'urban' or 'land use' planning to cover all the 'traditional' types of planning described
earlier in this introduction.
Two further points are made to clarify the nature of the analysis offered here.
First, as just noted, in examining the alleged nature and distinctiveness of spatial
planning, while I shall touch on some of the relevant academic literature on spatial
planning, I shall focus on the British government's conception of spatial planning
as revealed in the 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act and its accompa-
nying Planning Policy Statements. In particular, I shall concentrate on the original
Planning Policy Statement No. 12 of 2004, which set out the government's policy on
local spatial planning, together with its accompanying Companion Guide, since these
provide the fullest statement of the government's conception of spatial planning.
Second, my approach is that of an analytical philosopher paying careful attention
to both the meaning of the concepts used to describe planning and the language
employed to advance claims and arguments about the distinctiveness of spatial
planning. To some readers, this kind of conceptual and 'linguistic' analysis might
seem merely pedantic, but these forms of philosophical analysis should not be so
lightly dismissed, for the language we employ to describe and discuss social practices
such as planning reflects how we conceive of those practices, and hence an analysis
of the terms and language deployed to describe and advance arguments about the
distinctiveness of spatial planning is central to the task of improving the quality of
our thinking about the nature of planning in general and of spatial planning in
particular.
Spatial planning: the official British view

The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act of 2004 was introduced supposedly
to 'reform' the British planning system that, in its essentials, had been in place since
January 1948, when the seminal 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, which estab-
lished a comprehensive system of land use and development planning, came into
effect. The 2004 Act established a new, three-tier hierarchy of statutory planning at
national, regional, and local levels of planning as follows.
• National spatial planning

This, obviously, is the highest, most centralised level of planning, and is the respon-
sibility of (at the time of writing) the Department of Communities and Local
Government (DCLG) (the relevant department at the time of the 2004 Act was the
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister). The DCLG is responsible for introducing
and administering the statutory framework for planning and for preparing and
Commentary 197
publishing government circulars expressing central government planning policy

which, post-2004, are termed 'Planning Policy Statements' (PPSs), replacing what
previously were termed 'Planning Policy Guidance' notes (PPGs).
• Regional spatial planning
At the intermediate level of regions there were to be regional planning bodies
(RPBs), which would prepare, monitor and update 'Regional Spatial Strategies'
(RSSs). This rejuvenated level of regional planning was described in Part 1 of the
2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act and, in the words of the Act (s. 1 [2]),
any Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) 'must set out the Secretary of State's policies
(however expressed) in relation to the development and use of land within the
region'. At the time of writing, in late 2009, the government is proposing to merge
RSSs with the Regional Economic Strategies prepared by Regional Development
Authorities.
• Local spatial planning

Part 2 of the 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act deals with planning
at the local level, under the heading 'Local Development'. Here the relevant
government authorities remain the existing local authorities, and specifically local
planning authorities (LPAs). Under the 2004 Act, LPAs are charged with preparing
a new kind of development plan - the 'local development framework' (LDF) -
which in fact is to be a portfolio of planning documents termed 'local development
documents' (LDDs), whose core purpose is, in the words of the Act (s. 17 [3]), to 'set
out the authority's policies (however expressed) relating to the development and
use of land in their area'
Since, prior to the 2004 Act, national planning guidance and local development
planning were already in place, the main institutional innovation of the 2004 Act
was the introduction of a formal tier of regional planning, in the form of Regional
Planning Bodies, charged with the preparation of a new kind of strategic develop-
ment plan - the regional spatial strategy. As for the system of development plans, the
main innovation of the 2004 Act was the introduction of RSSs and, at the local level,
the LDF - a portfolio of plans of varying specificity - to replace former local plans.
With respect to both these new types of regional and local development plan, the
main idea seems to have been to create more flexible development plans at the local
as well as strategic levels.
Now, it is not part of this article to examine the efficacy of these new institutional
arrangements for planning or the new system of development plans ushered in by the
2004 Act, except in so far as these things bear upon the idea of spatial planning, for
it is only the supposedly new style of spatial planning that is the subject of this paper.
But certainly, alongside the legislative changes to the planning system introduced by
the 2004 Act itself, the government made it clear that their planning reforms were
to be realised by spatial planning and that this represented a new kind of, or new
198 Nigel Taylor
approach to, planning, so much so that the shift to spatial planning would require a
'culture change' among existing land use planners.
The idea of spatial planning as a new approach to planning was first set out by the
government in its draft Planning Policy Statement No, i, Creating Sustainable Communi-
ties, published in February 2004, where it was said that:
The new system of regional spatial strategies and local development documents should
take a spatial planning approach. Spatial planning goes beyond traditional land use
planning to bring together and integrate policies for the development and use of land
with other policies and programmes which influence the nature of places and how they
function. (ODPM, 2004a, para. 30)
However, it was in the initial 2004 version of Planning Policy Statement No. 12
(PPS12), which set out the government's policy on the new LDFs, and even more so
in the Companion Guide to PPS12, that the government spelled out in more detail what
it meant by spatial planning (ODPM, 2004b; 2004c).2 Before turning to consider what
PPS12 and its Companion Guide say about spatial planning, it is worth noting what these
publications say about the nature of LDFs. They are described in the 2004 Companion
Guide to PPS12 as providing can opportunity to develop a clear spatial vision for an
area, together with a realistic implementation strategy' (ODPM, 2004c, para. 2.4).
The Guide went on to state that:
The local development framework should identify sufficient land for new develop-
ment to meet needs identified through the relevant regional spatial strategy ... as well
as taking account of community and other stakeholder aspirations in terms of the
location of development. (ODPM, 2004c, para. 2.4)
The original 2004 PPS12 itself indicated that:
The local development framework should contain within its documents, an integrated
set of policies which are based on a clear understanding of the economic, social and
environmental needs of the area and any constraints on meeting those needs. (ODPM,
2004b, para. 2.1)
The 2004 PPS12 further stated that:
The local development framework should include the following development plan
documents:
i. core strategy;
ii. site specific allocations of land; and
iii. area action plans (where needed) ... (ODPM, 2004b, para. 2.4)
2 The 2004 version of PPS12 has since been updated and, significantly, re-titled âl Spatial Planning. See DCLG,
2008.
Commentary I99
Crucially (for our pu

tively 'local developm
'land use' plans. As th
Local development fram

tionally, the land use p
the use of land. The aim
of other agencies not t
impact on spatial deve
The Companion Guid

following.
Whilst there is no single definition of spatial planning, it is possible to identify six

principles in relation to local development frameworks. Spatial planning can instill an
approach to plan-making that is:
• Visionary - setting out a clear, distinctive and realistic vision of how an area will
develop and change;
• Wide-ranging - going beyond a narrow land use focus to provide a mechanism for
delivering sustainable development objectives by addressing social, environmental
and economic issues and relating them to the use of land;
• Participative - based on strengthening mechanisms for community involvement to
consider the needs, issues and aspirations of communities and stakeholders within
an area, to provide a basis for making difficult choices and to build commitment to
delivery;
• Integrating - an integrated approach which informs, takes account of and helps
deliver other strategies and policy;
• Responsive - a flexible approach, informed by monitoring, that can respond to
developments in wider policy, degree of progress with implementation, develop-
ment pressures and changes on the ground; and
• Deliverable - focusing on implementation, setting out delivery mechanisms,
including development control, and identifying how the plan will be delivered with
and through other organizations with the powers and resources to make a differ-
ence. (ODPM, 2004c, para 2.3)
It is in these various respects, then, that - according to the British government's 2004
PPS12 and its Companion Guide - spatial planning differs from what was previously
termed 'town and country' or 'land use' planning. If, then, we accept the above six
characteristics as definitive of spatial planning, the question to be addressed here
reduces to this: to what extent is spatial planning, as defined above, distinctive from
the kind of ('land use', 'town and country', etc.) planning it is supposed to supersede?
Section three of the Commentary now turns to examine this question.
200 Nigel Taylor
To provide a conceptual foundation for this analysis, I shall first summarise more
succinctly what seems to be claimed in the above statements from PPS12 and its
Companion Guide as distinctive about spatial planning. There would appear to be thre
main qualities which, the British government claims, distinguish spatial planning from
land use (etc.) planning, and these are as follows.
(i) Spatial planning as 'wider' than land use planning, because it

encompasses social, economic and environmental issues, as well as land
use.
One way in which PPS12 and the Companion Guide suggest that spa
distinct from traditional land use planning is that (local) spatial pla
the 'regulation and control of the use of land' to address wider soc
and environmental issues. As the PPS says, local development fram
contain ... an integrated set of policies which are based on a clear u
the economic, social and environmental needs of the area' (ODPM, 2
The inclusion of 'environmental' matters is significant here, for the
spatial planning is also often connected with the government's missi
'sustainable' development, although it should be noted that the gover
tion of sustainable development (like that of many other comment
wide-ranging concept that encompasses social and economic, as
mental or ecological, sustainability.
(ii) Spatial planning as horizontally integrative cross-sector plan
Another allegedly distinctive feature of spatial, as compared with la

is that the former is concerned with the spatial dimension of govern
general, across all departments or sectors of government, and not on
'land use' policies that have been the traditional preserve of the plann
idea can be viewed as another aspect of (i) above, in that it is again e
spatial planning is wider than traditional land use planning, becaus
beyond the traditional remit of land use planning to 'integrate' the s
of policy-making and planning throughout government, encompassi
government policy for health care, education, energy production an
agriculture, transport, defence, and so on. To quote again the Compan
Traditionally, the land use planning system has focused upon the regulation
of the use of land. The aim is to go beyond this, to take account of the s
plans of other agencies not traditionally involved in land use planning
have an impact on spatial development. (ODPM, 2004c, para 2.3)
Commentary 201
The 2004 PPS12, echoing the earlier draft PPSi {Creating Sustainable Communities),
puts the same point as follows:
Spatial planning goes beyond traditional land use planning to bring together and
integrate policies for the use and development of land with other policies and
programmes which influence the nature of places and how they function. (ODPM,
2004b, para 1.8)
(iii) Spatial planning as vertically integrative across a hierarchy of different

spatial levels of government planning.
A third and further integrative feature of spatial planning is that it seeks to integrate
government policy 'vertically', as well as 'horizontally', by means of a hierarchy of
spatial planning policies from the national level of planning (PPSs), through planning
at the regional level (the RSSs) down to planning at the local level (LDFs). Again,
this vertical integration of government policy could be viewed as another aspect of
the greater scope or breadth of spatial planning: spatial planning is not only wider
horizontally (as described in (i) and (ii) above), but also wider vertically through
different tiers or levels of government.
With this understanding of spatial planning in place, the discussion in the following
section turns to a critical analysis of whether there is any real difference between
spatial planning and the related forms of planning that preceded it.
A critical analysis of difference: is 'spatial planning7 really

new?
In spite of the claims made for its distinctiveness, I shall argue that spatial planning,
at least as it is conceived by the British government, is not as different from traditional
urban or land use planning as its protagonists proclaim. Indeed, although I shall not
myself go quite as far as this here, I shall show how it could be argued that spatial
planning is not distinguishable from traditional urban or land use planning at all.
(i) Spatial planning, traditional urban/land use planning, and 'social,

economic, and environmental7 issues.
Whether or not spatial planning is different from traditional urban planning obviously
depends on what traditional urban planning is taken to be. And, as regards this, how
urban planning has been conceived and defined has itself been a matter of contro-
versy over the last half-century, resulting in different conceptions of urban planning.3
3 For an account of the recent history of these changing conceptions see: Taylor (1998; 1999).
202 Nigel Taylor
Thus, if we go back 60 years to the idea of urban planning that predominated during
and immediately after the Second World War, we find that many planning theorists
and practitioners conceived of urban planning in rather narrow 'physicalist' terms,
as if it was an extension of architectural - or at least urban - design, although on the
larger scale of towns, cities, and even regions (see e.g. Keeble, 1952). However, this
physical design conception of urban planning came to be heavily criticised in the
late 1950s and 1960s, and precisely for its failure to take into account the wider social
and economic (and political) functioning of urban settlements. Thus, in her seminal
critique of orthodox post-Second World War urban planning, Jane Jacobs argued that
the urban planners of that era, most of whom were architect-planners, were guided
in their plan-making by Utopian architectural visions of towns and cities, rather than
by an understanding how real towns and cities actually worked socially, economically,
culturally and politically (Jacobs, 1964 [1961]). This need to understand better how
urban settlements functioned was also central to the systems view of urban planning
that emerged in the 1960s, with the systems theorists explicitly acknowledging that
urban planning had to encompass 'social and economic' aspects of planning as well
as just the physical and aesthetic aspects that urban planning had hitherto empha-
sised (see e.g. McLoughlin, 1969; Chadwick, 1971). In this respect, the systems view
of urban planning advocated precisely the 'wider' approach to urban planning that is
supposed to be one of the distinguishing marks of spatial planning.
To be sure, contemporary spatial planning also emphasises the importance of
'environmental' considerations, and hence environmentally 'sustainable' develop-
ment, alongside social and economic matters. However, this additional environmental
concern is also neither unique nor new to spatial planning, for so-called 'environ-
mental' matters have long been a concern of urban and rural planning, while the
challenge of encouraging what has come to be termed 'sustainable development' has
been part of modern urban planning since the 1980s. The systems theorists of the
1960s also envisaged this wider environmental concern. Thus the opening chapter of
Brian McLoughlin's seminal book on the systems approach to urban planning focused
on the example of natural systems, and on the need to understand the functioning
of these systems, if our interventions in and attempts to plan environments were to
avoid what he termed the negative 'kick-backs' of unforeseen and unwanted effects
of human actions on the natural environment. So again, a concern with 'environ-
mental' issues, and with 'sustainable development', is not a distinguishing mark of
spatial planning.
Commentary 203
(ii) Spatial planning as 'wider' than 'narrow' traditional urban/land use

planning.
As we have seen, the 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act and its attendant
Planning Policy Statement No. 12 and Companion Guide claim that the new spatial
planning 'goes beyond' land use planning, which, by contrast, is sometimes described
as 'narrow'. Thus PPS12 says that: ' [sjpatial planning goes beyond traditional land use
planning' (ODPM, 2004b, para. 1.8), while the Companion Guide says that: ' [t] radition-
ally, the land use planning system has focused upon the regulation and control of the
use of land. The aim is to go beyond this ...' (ODPM, 2004c, para. 2.3). In speaking
of the 'wide-ranging' nature of spatial planning as being one of its six distinguishing
principles, the Companion Guide to PPS12 says that spatial planning is ' [w] ide-ranging
- going beyond a narrow land use focus ...' (ODPM, 2004c, para. 2.3).
However, this talk of 'going beyond' the 'narrow' focus of 'traditional land use'
planning is pejorative rhetoric, and it is always important to distinguish between
rhetorical language and reason. For what is necessarily 'narrow' about 'traditional'
land use planning? Again, it depends on what period and conception of land use
planning is being referred to (and the statements made about this matter in PPS12
and its Companion Guide are never clear on this point). Certainly, since the demise of
the physical design view of urban planning in the 1960s, most mature views of urban
land use planning have not seen it as 'narrow', but rather as encompassing the under-
standing and planning of potentially all the (land use) activities in urban and rural
areas and regions. Nor has this 'wider' conception of land use planning simply been
an idea in the heads of some planning theorists divorced from planning practice.
The idea that proper land use planning should be widened to encompass the
transport links between land uses, so that it would in effect be 'land use-transporta-
tion' planning, was acknowledged by the first British government report into road
traffic in towns - the Buchanan Report - as early as 1963 (Buchanan, 1964), while the
idea of land use-transportation planning was well recognised in the US before this.
Further, in British planning practice, 'structure plans' - which were first proposed in
the 1965 Report of the British Government's Planning Advisory Group and subse-
quently introduced into planning practice by the 1968 Town and Country Planning
Act - were always viewed as wide-ranging documents encompassing the social and
economic functioning of settlements and, hence too, the social and economic dimen-
sions of land use (see PAG, 1965, Ch. 2). Moreover, structure plans were also seen
as vehicles for more flexible planning, which the Companion Guide claims is a further
distinctive feature or principle of spatial planning.
While on the matter of the alleged distinctiveness of spatial planning from 'land
use' planning, it is worth noting that, when the relevant legislation and government
policy statements actually come to describe the kinds of plans that the new spatial
plans will be, they invariably describe these plans as being plans for 'land use' and/
204 Nigel Taylor
or 'development'. Thus the new regional spatial strategies are described in Part i,
section 1(2) of the 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act as documents that
'must set out the Secretary of State's policies (however expressed) in relation to the
development and use of land within the region' (italics added). Similarly at the level of
'local development', the relevant section of the 2004 Act (s. 17 [2]) describes local
development documents as documents that 'set out the authority's policies (however
expressed) relating to the development and use of land in their area' (italics added). So,
when it comes to actual spatial plans, it would appear that spatial plans are, after all,
still land use plans!
(iii) Spatial planning as Visionary', 'participative' and 'deliverable'.

The 2004 Companion Guide to PPS12 itemises a number of other allegedly distinctive
qualities or principles of the new spatial planning which have so far not been consid-
ered. First, that it is 'visionary' - 'setting out a clear, distinctive and realistic vision
of how an area will develop and change'; second, that it is 'participative' - 'based
on strengthening mechanisms for community involvement to consider the needs,
issues and aspirations of communities and stakeholders within an area, to provide
a basis for making difficult choices and to build commitment to delivery'; and third,
that it is also 'deliverable' - 'focusing on implementation, setting out delivery mecha-
nisms, including development control, and identifying how the plan will be deliv-
ered with and through other organizations with the powers and resources to make
a difference'(ODPM, 2004c, para 2.3). None of these qualities, however, is new to
spatial planning or absent from contemporary urban land use planning.
Nearly 50 years ago, in her seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities,
Jane Jacobs (1964 [1961]) observed that early modern urban planning had been much
guided by visionary statements and schemes for new urban futures, such as Ebenezer
Howard's garden cities, Le Corbusier's radiant city and Frank Lloyd Wright's Broad-
acre City. So traditional urban planning has not lacked visionary ideas or schemes. In
fact, in the 1960s, it was precisely an over-reliance on visionary utopias that led Jane
Jacobs and others to criticise urban planning for its lack of attention to and under-
standing of existing, real-life towns and cities.
As for 'participative' planning, the need for public participation has been enshrined
in British planning law (and in the planning law of most other developed nation-
states) since the late 1960s. Indeed, 'traditional' urban planning was one of the first
areas where the wider participation of the public was sought and introduced into
British government policy and plan-making, and this partly because of the failure of
the 'visionary' Utopian planning just mentioned (see DOE et al., 1969). So the idea
that participative planning is a distinctive feature of spatial planning, as compared
with traditional land use planning, is hardly tenable.
Commentary 205
Finally in this trio of qualities, the concern with 'deliverability', or 'implementa-

tion' became a central concern of urban planning theorists and practitioners from
the 1970s onwards, and once again, arguably, because urban planners' plans were
sometimes so Visionary' that insufficient attention was paid to their practicality, deliv-
erability or implementation (see e.g. Barrett and Fudge, 1981; Pressman and Wildavsky,
1973). To be sure, the issue of effective implementation or 'deliverability' of urban
plans has remained a problem in urban planning, but it is certainly not a new problem
which has only come to be realised by the 'new' spatial planning. Moreover, one of
the central problems of implementation for urban planning has been, and remains,
the powers that public planning authorities possess effectively to realise public plans.
This same problem may beset the deliverability of spatial planning just as much as
it has beset traditional urban planning, for the new British planning legislation does
not grant new powers to the new spatial planning authorities. This last point brings
us appropriately to perhaps the most important claim to distinctiveness that is often
made for spatial planning.
(iv) Spatial planning as cross-sector planning.

Many advocates of spatial planning would claim that the most distinctive feature
of spatial planning is the project to integrate and plan the spatial dimension of
government policies right across the different departments or sectors of government,
thereby to ensure that government policy as a whole is carefully thought through
and coordinated spatially, and not just that sector or part of government that has
hitherto been labelled 'town and country' or 'land use' planning (e.g. Nadin, 2007,
53). Thus, in speaking of the greater breadth of spatial planning, the 2004 Companion
Guide emphasised that
[traditionally, the land use planning system has focused upon the regulation and
control of the use of land. The aim is to go beyond this, to take account of the strate-
gies and plans of other agencies not traditionally involved in land use planning but who
also have an impact on spatial development. (ODPM, 2004c, para. 2.3)
It is perhaps here that the strongest claim for the distinctiveness of spatial planning
can be found. Spatial planning is, literally, the spatial planning of all government
policy, including policy for health, education, defence, etc., not only that policy for
land use change and physical development which has traditionally been the preserve
of the British planning system and planning in practice. Even if the distinctiveness
of spatial planning is defined in terms of this broader, more integrative kind of cross-
sector planning, there are two caveats worth making about this supposedly innovative
type of planning.
First, the idea of 'rational comprehensive' planning in the 1960s, and more
206 Nigel Taylor
especially the idea of 'corporate' planning in local government in the 1970s, which
was proposed by the government's 1972 Bains Report, was also designed to be a
form of planning that transcended different departmental or 'sectoral' boundaries,
albeit at that time in local government in order to integrate the land use planning
of local planning authorities with the planning undertaken by other local authority
departments, such as highways, housing, social services, parks and recreation, etc. As
Tewdwr-Jones (2008) has observed, British governments have long used the planning
system to accommodate a wide range of political agendas and policy concerns (of
which 'sustainable development' is just the most recent). More particularly, 'the idea
of spatial planning . . . may ... be recognised as bearing some of the hallmarks of the
1960s model of planning as a comprehensive, well-managed, corporate governance
process' (Tewdwr-Jones, 2008, 683). In this regard, it is interesting to recall that, in this
earlier experiment with cross-sector planning in the 1970s, most of the people who
stepped into the roles of chief executives in local authority corporate planning were
land use planners, and this precisely because their discipline of planning was found
to equip them with the broader, more integrative thinking about policy and planning
that corporate planning required. Therefore, not only is the idea of integrative, cross-
sector planning not entirely new, but also land use planning has not always been
regarded as the 'narrow' activity that protagonists of spatial planning pejoratively
make it out to be.
However, even if spatially integrative planning is new, there is a second caveat to

make about it. In order to deliver cross-sector planning effectively across the whole of
government (and, as we saw earlier, 'deliverability' and 'implementation' are empha-
sised in PPS12 and its Companion Guide as important ingredients of the new spatial
planning), any spatial planning system must be in possession of sufficient powers
effectively to realise integrative cross-sector planning in practice. For without such
powers, some government departments or sectors of government policy-making
may resist or simply refuse to comply with spatial strategies designed to achieve (for
example) sustainable development, or other worthy and publicly desirable objectives.
Indeed, it was precisely this difficulty which faced the idea of integrative local govern-
ment corporate planning in Britain in the 1970s and which contributed to its demise.
However, there is no evidence in the recent government legislation or policy state-
ments to suggest that the new spatial planning has been or will be given more powers
to realise the ideal of holistic, truly integrative spatial planning. Besides, as even Nadin
(2007, 56) has acknowledged, some government policy sectors are already engaged
in cross-sector collaborative working without the need to involve or engage with the
planning system. So even if the idea or 'theory' of spatial planning as integrative
planning were new, without the powers to require different government departments
or sectors spatially to coordinate their various policies, integrative spatial planning in
practice may remain a chimera. As Eric Reade (1987) was always at pains to point out,
Commentary 207
the widening of the

price of vagueness,
up being about - or
(2008, 685) has writt
that c [the] increased
it deals with everyth
References
Allison, L. (1975), Environmental Planning: A Political and Philosophical Analysis, London, Allen &
Unwin.
bains report (1972), The New âl Authorities: Management and Structures (Report of the Study
Group on Local Authority Management Structures), London, HMSO.
Barrett, s. and fudge, g. (eds) (1981), Policy and Action: Essays on the Implementation of Public Policy,
London, Methuen.
Buchanan, G. d. (1964), Traffic in Towns (The Specially Shortened Edition of the Buchanan
Report with a Preface by Sir G. Crowther), Harmondsworth, Penguin in association with
HMSO. (Original: Traffic in Towns: A Study of the L·^ Term Probkms of Traffic in Urban Areas
(Reports of the Steering Group and Working Group appointed by the Minister of Trans-
port), London, HMSO, 1963.)
GHADwiGK, G. f. (1971), A Systems View of Planning, Oxford, Pergamon Press.
GHAPiN, f. stuart (1965), Urban Land Use Planning (2nd edn), Urbana, IL, University of Illinois
Press.
DGLG (department for COMMUNITIES and LOCAL government) (2008), Planning Policy Statement
12: Ucal Spatial Planning, Norwich, TSO/HMSO.
DOE (DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT), SCOTTISH DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT and THE WELSH
office (1969), People and Planning: Report of the Committee on Public Participation in Planning
(Chairman, Mr A. Skeffington), London, HMSO.
hall, peter (1974), Urban and Regional Planning, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Jacobs, j. (1964 [1961]), The Death and Life of Great Amencan Cities: The Failure of Town Planning,
Harmondsworth, Penguin.
KEEBLE, L. β. (1952), Principles and Practice of Town and County Planning, London, The Estates
Gazette.
MCLOUGHLiN, j. β. (1969), Urban and Regional Planning: A Systems Approach, London, Faber & Faber.
NADiN, v. (2007), 'The emergence of the spatial planning approach in England', Planning Practice
and Research, 22, 43-62.
NEEDHAM, β. (2005), 'The new Dutch Spatial Planning Act: continuity and change in the way
in which the Dutch regulate the practice of spatial planning', Planning Practice and Research,
20, 327-40.
ODPM (office of the deputy prime minister) (2004a), Draft Planning Policy Statement i: Creating
Sustainable Communities, Norwich, TSO/HMSO.
ODPM (office of the deputy prime minister) (2004b), Planning Policy Statement 12: âl Develop-
ment Frameworks, Norwich, TSO/HMSO.
208 Nigel Taylor
ODPM (office of the de

Companion Guide to P
Pag (planning advisory
London, HMSO.
pressman, j. L. and wiLD
of California Press.
READE, E. (1987), Bntish Town and Country Planning, Milton Keynes, Open University Press.
Shaw, D. and lord, a. (2007), 'The cultural turn? Culture change and what it means for spatial
planning in England', Planning Practice and Research, 22, 63-78.
Taylor, N. (1998), Urban Planning Theory since ig^, London, Sage.
Taylor, N. (1999), Anglo-American town planning theory since 1945: three significant develop-
ments but no paradigm shifts', Planning Perspectives, 14, 327-45.
TEWDWR-jONES, m. (2008), 'The complexity of planning reform: a search for the spirit and
purpose of planning', Town Planning Review, 79, 673-88.
Williams, R. h. (1996), European Union Spatial Policy and Planning, London, Paul Chapman
Publishing.

What Is This Thing Called Spatial Planning - Nigel Taylor

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

What Is This Thing Called Spatial Planning - Nigel Taylor

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What is this thing called spatial planning?

An analysis of the British government's view

What is this thing called spatial planning?

and evolved significantly over the last half century.

been a measure of ambiguity about the discipline of 'planning' compared with

In recognising that the proper planning of urban settlements involves an under-

Spatial planning: the official British view

• National spatial planning

publishing government circulars expressing central government planning policy

• Local spatial planning

The original 2004 PPS12 itself indicated that:

The 2004 PPS12 further stated that:

Crucially (for our pu

Local development fram

The Companion Guid

Whilst there is no single definition of spatial planning, it is possible to identify six

(i) Spatial planning as 'wider' than land use planning, because it

(ii) Spatial planning as horizontally integrative cross-sector plan

Another allegedly distinctive feature of spatial, as compared with la

(iii) Spatial planning as vertically integrative across a hierarchy of different

A critical analysis of difference: is 'spatial planning7 really

(i) Spatial planning, traditional urban/land use planning, and 'social,

(ii) Spatial planning as 'wider' than 'narrow' traditional urban/land use

(iii) Spatial planning as Visionary', 'participative' and 'deliverable'.

Finally in this trio of qualities, the concern with 'deliverability', or 'implementa-

(iv) Spatial planning as cross-sector planning.

However, even if spatially integrative planning is new, there is a second caveat to

the widening of the

ODPM (office of the de

You might also like