Integrating City Planning and Environmental Improvement

Practicable Strategies for Sustainable Urban Development

Gert de Roo, Donald Miller, Donald Miller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351927222
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since Integrating City Planning and Environmental Improvement was originally published in 1999, the practice of integrating urban physical planning and environmental quality management has been widely adopted by governments worldwide. Fully revised and updated with a new preface by editors Donald Miller and Gert de Roo and new figures throughout, this second edition reports on the experience of 23 innovative programmes from 11 countries. Mostly written by practicing planners and government officials, the book looks at a wide range of integrated approaches which have been implemented and the critical assessment of these provides lessons for local and national governments interested in setting up similar schemes and suggesting ways of further innovation. While the Rio Earth summit, Habitat II and Kyoto have been a source of global principles for improving the environmental quality of human settlements, this book explores approaches to implement these policy positions and to make these calls for action operational. Consequently, the presentation of these cases deals not only with the technical aspects of measuring and controlling environmental spillovers, but also with the institutional, political and financial aspects of these programmes.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Integrating Environmental Quality Improvement and City Planning

D. Miller¹ and G. de Roo²

1.1 Introduction

Citizens in cities around the world are expressing greater interest in and are lobbying for improved environmental conditions (Werna and Harpham, 1995). They want clean air, clean water, reduced noise, more vegetation and protection of habitat areas, and safety from dangers from contaminated and unstable soil conditions (Dobson, 1995). These are all seen as contributing not only to their health but to their quality of life (Mega, 1996).

Modem urban planning has addressed some of these concerns since its origins in the early twentieth century. Through the decades, the agenda of planning programs carried out at the local level have added access to sunlight, separation of conflicting land uses, industrial location downwind of residential areas, and traffic control through neighbourhoods. But it was not until the early 1970s that major attention has become focused on environmental conditions by national and local governments (Daly and Cobb, 1989). These initiatives began with environmental legislation establishing programs to improve air and water quality, control noise, and regulate exposure to toxic and carcinogenic chemicals (Chivian et al., 1993). In some instances, these programs have been co-ordinated to streamline regulatory requirements, and to account for the combined effects of several forms of pollution (de Roo, 1993). In most cases, these environmental management programs have taken a sectoral approach, involving separate and unrelated regulation of some of these impacts (Dasgupta et al., 1995).

This book addresses a newly emerging approach by governments to deal with various forms of pollution and threat: the integration of urban physical planning and environmental quality management. While there are as yet no comprehensive models for this integration (Corley et al., 1991), there are numerous cases from around the world that represent progress toward accomplishing this. These innovative programs serve as sources of ideas and provide lessons which can inform similar efforts in other localities. Each of the following chapters report on the experiences of an actual program and on the strengths and shortcomings which have been observed. Most of these contributions are by practising planners and governmental officials who have been close to these programs, thus providing a perspective and sensibility sometimes missing from third-party accounts. The purposes in selecting these contributions are to record and share descriptions of these efforts to integrate urban planning and environmental quality improvement, to provide a critical assessment of these programs based on first-hand experience, and through this to encourage development of similar programs by national and local governments, including further innovation.

Global principles for improving the environmental quality of human settlements in urban areas have resulted from several major international conferences, including the Rio Earth Summit (UN, 1992), and Habitat II in Istanbul (UN, 1996). This book explores a broad set of approaches to implement these policy positions; to make these calls for action operational. Consequently, the presentation of these cases deal not only with the technical aspects of measuring and controlling environmental spillovers, but the institutional, political, and financial aspects of these programs as well.

1.2 Increasing Focus on Environmental Quality

City planning and land use regulation became a widespread responsibility of local governments in many countries in the first decades of the 1900s (Breheny, 1992). The major purposes of these efforts have been to minimise what economists call externalities: those effects by one party which impact another party, usually negatively (Pinch, 1985). Thus the planning and control of urban growth focused on the density and use of land in a manner which would not overtax available infrastructure or create traffic and crowding which would impose on neighbours. In most localities, incompatible land uses such as manufacturing and residential areas were separated in order that the undesirable effects generated by one activity did not burden a more sensitive activity.

This emphasis on orderly urban development was, from the beginning, concerned with avoiding environmental problems m order to improve the quality of life of residents and to protect property values. However, both planning and development controls were for many years narrow in scope (Jennings, 1989). They ignored other issues such as storm water drainage, environmentally sensitive areas, noise, or air and water quality. In large part this was because reliable information concerning the nature and effects of these issues was not available, and responsible governmental agencies did not have staff with the background to apply what was known (Stren et al., 1992). Similarly, there was fear that localities which pursued these issues unilaterally would be at an economic disadvantage in attracting and retaining economic activity, and so such action was politically opposed (Pezzey, 1992).

When acute environmental problems or threats emerged, these were often addressed with specific regulations (Conway and Pretty, 1991). These include protection of water resources, conservation of agricultural and forest lands, siting of sanitary landfills and other facilities which are locationally undesirable, and management of shorelines, floodplains, and wetlands. Few of these specific regulations date further back than about fifty years, and most have not been included as parts of a comprehensive program of planning for the development of cities and urban regions (Ostrom et al., 1993).

Increased public support for addressing a wider range of environmental issues resulted in national water quality and other pollution control acts, and in national environmental policy acts, which began to be adopted in a number of countries in the early 1970s (Douglas, 1983). The broader environmental policy acts require that before any major project or legislation is approved, detailed analysis of its impacts is undertaken, alternatives are considered and comparatively evaluated, and any irreversible and irretrievable commitments of resources which are involved in the proposed action be assessed (White, 1994; Marsh, 1978). This investigation is usually reported in a draft environmental impact statement (EIS), which must be open to review and comment by the public and by other governmental agencies, and these responses considered before a final EIS is prepared and published (McAllister, 1982; Morris and Therivel, 1994). The evidence and findings resulting from this process must be taken into account in reaching a decision on the project or program, regardless of the environmental protection requirements which are included in the approval (Westman, 1985; Cuff, 1994).

In many countries, national governments have required or encouraged local governments to adopt this environmental impact assessment process (Bartone et al., 1994). While this process is usually separate from local plan making and land use regulation, local planning agencies often have responsibility for preparing the EIS for public sector projects and for reviewing the EIS for major private sector development proposals. This has both given rise to developing knowledge about environmental systems and methods for analysing environmental effects, and resulted in planning agencies bringing to their staffs people who have the background to undertake this work. These recent developments facilitate planning programs taking a more active and informed role in dealing with the environmental dimensions of urban growth and change (White, 1992), and position them to integrate these concerns in the preparation of plans which are more comprehensive than they were in the past.

The heightened role of environmental quality as a public policy concern is linked with growing interest in sustainable urban development (Ecologist, 1992; Rees and Roseland, 1991; Mitlin, 1992). Sustainability seeks to guide growth in a manner which does not foreclose options in the long-term future, commonly generations hence (WCED, 1987). It includes economic and social aspects of change in addition to environmental features (Barrow, 1995; Beatley, 1995).

The economic dimension calls for increasing employment opportunities through expansion and attraction of firms which complement rather than have negative implications for social and environmental improvements. The social dimension includes contributing to a sense of community and to social justice among groups within the population. The environmental dimension seeks to conserve bio-diversity for economic, ethical and aesthetic reasons, and to pursue stewardship of environmental services which provide both valuable resources and absorb wastes in a continuing manner (Rees, 1992).

Sustainable development has become one of the major items in planning programs at a variety of stages of economic development (Adams, 1990). Its requirement that long term urban growth balance the three dimensions – economic, social, and environmental–demands knowledge and commitment greater than city planning has involved in the past (Atkinson, 1994). It calls for a systematic treatment of these three dimensions in a manner which we only partly understand: we must supplement scientifically-based approaches with judgement where knowledge is still only partial. While the goal of sustainable development and means to accomplish it are still being explored, this important agenda for local governments is yet another incentive for seeking to integrate the traditional concerns of city planning for the future of the built environment with improvement in our use of natural resources and cleanup of environmental conditions.

1.3 Principles for Integrating Urban Planning and Environmental Quality Improvement

How can we meet the challenge of finding a workable way to integrate physical planning and environmental management? While partial models are being considered and tried, a useful strategy for advancing this development is to begin discussion of a number of principles which can be used to design and evaluate these models. Among these principles are expanded comprehensiveness, developing a reliable and meaningful evidence base, securing broad public participation, including a broad range of alternatives, and carefully balancing objectives. The following elaboration and examination of these principles is intended to initiate this discussion.

Expand Comprehensiveness

For any program to be successful in integrating physical and environmental planning, it needs to include a broad range of the features of urban development. In addition to the traditional concerns of city planning such as density, location and infrastructure, it should address a full range of environmental quality features, but especially those likely to have acute impacts on health and quality of life (Houghton and Hunter, 1994). One tactic is to start with a short list of those environmental features which previously have been covered by legislative programs since these have received some degree of political acceptance. This set of issues can then be expanded, both on the basis of adding those known to have impacts on health and well being, representing irreversible commitment of natural resources, and responding to public expression of interest. In the early stages, a feasible list of environmental issues to be incorporated into planning programs may be limited by staff resources and the ability to communicate a complex set of ideas in a way that is widely understandable. Treating a number of environmental features, along with more familiar physical planning issues, encourages viewing and analysing these effects of urban development in a cumulative manner, and even for the synergistic effects of multiple forms of impact.

Develop a Sound and Appealing Evidence Base

The environmental issues, as with more traditional concerns of urban planning, need to be treated in a convincing manner (Brugman, 1994). This requires that the evidence be reliable, and preferably measurable. The cause and effect relationships of how environmental problems occur, and of their impact on health and well being, are important to keep in mind when designing these measures. Similarly, it is important to make sure that the evidence is valid: that it is a meaningful way to measure the environmental issue of interest. Focusing on outputs rather than inputs commonly contributes to validity. Ideally, the information to be included in this evidence base is already being collected by some agency or organisation, since this will be less expensive than generating new data. Finally, care should be taken in designing or selecting items of evidence so that they are understandable by the public and by decision makers and, where this is not the case, that ways to improve the communication of this evidence are pursued. This may mean that direct measures of environmental features will be preferred, and that indexes which combine these measures be avoided.

As with the principle of comprehensiveness, the most promising planning strategy for designing a sound and appealing evidence base may be to start with a modest set of measures which are then expanded as experience is gained. This first approximation, even if limited, gives people something to review for weaknesses and encourages suggestions for improvements. Such a learning-by-doing process not only stimulates critical reasoning by participants, but increases understanding of the issues and the methods for assessing, as well as a sense of joint authorship of the measures which are adopted. Developing these measures early in the planning process not only will influence the agenda of that process, but will provide a base point for assessing changes which occur as the resulting plan is implemented and increases accountability.

Inclusive Public Involvement

An open participation process is an important feature of initiatives to integrate urban and environmental planning, for several reasons (Leitmann, 1993). Citizens are a source of information and ideas which result from engaging them in designing and pursuing this planning. We do not yet fully understand how to best accomplish this integration, nor have we success-fully sorted out what constitutes desirable physical development and environmental stewardship. Cons...