REGIONAL PLANNING

Planning for sustainable development

Spatial or land use planning plays a key role in shaping and directing
resource use and in the resulting impacts of carbon emissions (among
other externalities

valuable environmental and recreational assets in both town and countryside

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and the Club
of Rome’s Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972), were entwined with
environmental agitation, protest and organisation

sustainable development, a number of key principles
can be identified and outlined
1.Environmentalism
Environmentalism incorporates the idea that the full environmental
costs and benefits should be considered in any decision-making process.
2.Development
The two words ‘sustainable’ and ‘development’ (see also Chapter 19) are
put together to stress a process of change and improvement
3. Equity
4.Participation


At the heart
of sustainable development is the simple idea of ensuring a better quality
of life for everyone, now and for future generations’

Urban planning
sustainable
patterns of development as (DETR, 2000, para. 21):
•• concentrating most additional housing development within urban
areas;
•• making more efficient use of land by maximising the reuse of previously
developed land and the conversion and reuse of existing buildings;
•• assessing the capacity of urban areas to accommodate more housing;
•• adopting a sequential approach to the allocation of land for housing
development;
•• managing the release of housing land;
•• reviewing existing allocations of housing land in plans, and planning
permissions when they come up for renewal.

Delineation Of Functional Regions

This method involves the grouping together of units which display a considerable degree of interdependence.

Two basic approaches: (i) Flow analysis- based on actual observations of what people do.   (ii) Gravitational analysis- based on theoretical observations of what they might do.

The two approaches are explained below in detail.

A. Flow Analysis Method

Builds up flows on the basis of the direction and intensity flows between the dominant center and surrounding satellites.

Flows may be of several types: economic (road, rail, shopping or commuting); social (such as flow of students or patients); political (flow of govt. expenditure); information (newspapers, telephone calls), etc.

Graph theory: measures the relationship (economic, social, etc) between selected group of centers on the basis of flows between the centers. The no. of telephone calls is the usual flow criteria.

The flows are plotted in matrix form, from which primary and secondary flows into and out of each center can be identified.

B. Gravitational Analysis Method

It is concerned with the theoretical forces of attraction between centers rather than the actual flows.

This model assumes that the interaction between two centers is directly proportional to the ‘mass’ of centers and inversely proportional to the ‘distance’ between them.

‘Mass’ is represented by variables like population, employment, income, expenditure and retail turnover.

‘Distance’ is represented in physical terms (miles), time, price and intervening opportunities.

Mathematically

By calculating the potential for the centers, lines illustrating relative attractiveness, spheres of influence of various centers can be plotted on a map.

From such lines, functional regions can be identified.

Questions

1. S e z is a tool for Regional development comment