Advancing Sustainability at the Sub-National Level

The Potential and Limitations of Planning

Eran Feitelson, Eran Feitelson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351960649
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Projections et prévisions

Sustainability notions have been widely embraced by planners. However, the question of what can planners contribute to the advancement of such notions has not received much attention until now. This volume examines the potential contribution of planning to the advancement of sustainability at sub-national level, and the limitations it faces in doing so. Bringing together case studies from the US, UK, Poland, Israel, South Africa, The Netherlands and Italy, it covers a wide range of issues and contexts, ranging from the metropolitan to the community level. On the basis of these case studies, the book shows that planners do indeed have a variety of options to advance sustainability notions at these levels, and appear to be doing so. The book proposes that planners should operate at two levels: firstly to change institutional structures, and secondly to advance sustainability notions incrementally in the meantime, within the existing institutional constraints.

Chapter 1
The Potential and Limitations of Planning in Advancing Sustainability Notions at the Sub-National Level: An Introduction

Eran Feitelson

Introduction

Since the publication of the World Commission on Environment and Development report in 1987 (widely known as the Brundtland Report) and the promulgation of Agenda 21 at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro five years later, notions of ‘sustainability’ have been at the forefront of the environmental policy discourse. Not surprisingly, most of the efforts to advance these notions originated at the supranational level. Indeed, since the publication of the Brundtland Report many programmes advancing sustainability, or sustainable development, were formulated, first at the supra-national level and later at the national level (Dalal-Clayton, 1996; O’Riordan and Voisey, 1998). Planning and planners, however, played hardly any role in the formulation of these programmes.

The absence of planners from the mainstream sustainability discourse is something of a paradox, as a long-term vision is a central theme of planning. The explanation for this paradox is one of scale. In market-based societies national and regional planning are quite rare and have largely been abandoned in recent decades, not least because centralized planning fell into disrepute (Alterman, 2002; Bromley, 2001). Thus, planning was relegated almost exclusively to the local level.

The need for action on the local level has been recognized in supra-national- and national-level sustainability programmes, as many issues that are part of the sustainability agenda can be addressed only at the local level. Thus, in Agenda 21 the call went out (in chapter 28) for local authorities to formulate local versions of that agenda in dialogue with their citizens. This call was widely heeded (Morphet and Hams, 1994; Cartwright, 1997). The attempt to advance sustainability notions at the local level offers planners an opportunity to reconcile, to some extent, their keenness to advance such notions with practice (Blowers, 1993; Ravetz, 2000).

However, the application of sustainability notions at the local level is problematic. As Satterthwaite (1997) argues, the impact of locales, particularly cities, in a globalizing world is widespread, affecting areas far beyond their geographical boundaries. Hence, while there is a logical coherence in seeking a sustainable future for the world, the same cannot be said for a spatially-bounded locale. In contrast to the not-too-distant past, most locales are no longer self-sustainable, as they are dependent on inputs from other parts of the world,¹ and export their outputs worldwide.

A closely related problem in the call for local-level sustainability is that of spatial scale. The issues that pertain to the sustainability agenda do not fit neatly into the global, national, local typology. Many issues, such as NOx emissions from transport, fall between these levels. Moreover, the spatial size of countries varies widely. Therefore, what may be viewed as being national in scope in one country will be seen in a larger country as a local or regional issue. Moreover, the measures that can be used are defined in part by institutional structures, which operate within spatial constraints. That is, decisions to enact a given measure usually pertain only to a limited area delineated by administrative boundaries. These do not necessarily match the scope of the problems. These problems are particularly significant within metropolitan areas that are fragmented into multiple jurisdictions. And yet, the sub-national city-region or metropolitan level has received only scant attention in the sustainability discourse.

Another institutional barrier is between agencies that deal with land and planning and those that deal with other environmental, social and economic issues. In the UK, for example, pollution control is mostly beyond the realm of planning, which is largely restricted to land use issues, and hence attempts to address pollution control in plans have been opposed (Owens, 1994). Yet, development controls, which are among the major regulative tools available to planners, are insufficient for advancing sustainability notions, even at the local level (Rydin, 1998). In practice, therefore, planners often find themselves restricted both in terms of the scope of issues they can effectively tackle and the scope of measures available to them. This raises questions regarding the potential effectiveness of their endeavours.

Moreover, even when discussing the issues that are within the purview of most plans, it is not clear what planners should actually seek. This stems, in part, from the ambiguity of the sustainability concept that is inherent in the current interpretation of sustainability as the need to balance three contradictory meta-goals: environmental protection (inter-generation equity), social justice (intra-generation equity) and overall economic growth and efficiency (Campbell, 1996). This allows different parties with very different agendas and beliefs to commit themselves to a plan, but does not reduce the inherent tensions between these meta-goals. While such ambiguity can be useful for bringing different parties to the table, and can be maintained as long as the discourse is general, it may prove detrimental when decisions are sought with regard to specific local issues.

If we accept Faludi’s (1987) stance that the purpose of environmental planning is to affect decisions that pertain to the environment and society within a market context, then it is necessary to translate the general concepts into concrete measures that can be enacted in a way that will influence actors in the market. However, the attempts to make concepts such as ‘critical natural capital’, or the ‘precautionary principle’ into meaningful planning actions are fraught with difficulties (Owens, 1994; Counsell, 2002). For example, widespread adoption of the precautionary principle in plans may be used to postpone the siting of unwanted uses, widely known as NIMBYism. As the siting of such facilities becomes increasingly more difficult (Feitelson, 1997) such postponements may have detrimental equity ramifications because the undesirable facilities will remain or be expanded in areas where opposition is weakest (Blowers and Leroy, 1994), thereby exacerbating environmental inequities and clearly contradicting the social justice meta-goal.

The one issue raised so far at the metropolitan level, from a sustainability perspective, that has direct implications for planning is that of urban form: It has been argued that urban form has important implications for energy use, particularly in the area of transport (Newman and Kenworthy, 1989; van der Waals, 2000). However, in the last decade there has been growing skepticism regarding the viability and purported benefits of compact city forms, promulgated to reduce total energy use (Anderson et al., 1996; Breheny, 1992; Gordon and Richardson, 1997; Maat, 2001). Essentially, it is questioned whether changes in travel behaviour are indeed a function of urban form, or perhaps of neighbourhood design, and whether urban form is indeed a viable policy option given the longevity of urban structures (particularly in developed countries).

All this raises the question of whether and how planning can contribute to the advancement of sustainability notions. Clearly, there is a need to act at the sub-national level, especially as there is a growing devolution of authority to this level (resulting from the growing acceptance of the subsidiarity principle, as it is termed in the EU, or New Federalism in its American guise). So which actions should and can be advanced at this level, and what role can planners play in this process? These are the questions the present volume comes to address.

There are two directions that can be taken to examine these questions. The first focuses on theoretical and conceptual analyses of the ways in which the contradictory meta-goals can be addressed, and the role of planning and planners in doing so. This route has been traveled quite extensively by planners and academics alike over the past decade. A second route is to see what planners are actually doing in a wide variety of settings, and to assess to what degree they have been successful in dealing with sustainability concerns. This is, essentially, the route this book takes.

The Book’s Structure

The first two chapters highlight the challenges and constraints faced by planning in the sustainability context. Romanoff and Gloria discuss the challenge of very long-term trends for planning, focusing on climate change. They note that climate change and subsequent sea level rises require planning responses, but the time scale is longer than the ‘regular’ planning horizon, thereby requiring planners to take into account greater uncertainty. They suggest that plans to address such very long-term issues will focus on several extreme scenarios, but will allow for mid-course adjustments. While Romanoff and Gloria focus on the challenges to planning, Alexander discusses the impediments, focusing on the Israeli case. He argues that national-level institutional structure leaves only little scope for effective planning. Therefore, he suggests, the institutional structure has to be changed if plans for sustainable development are to be effective; he suggests several directions for such changes in the Israeli case.

Planners working at the local level often have to implement programmes promulgated at the state level. The next two chapters address such situations. Don Miller analyzes the way local authorities in Washington State, particularly the Seattle region, implement the Washington State Growth Management Act in their decentralized planning. In particular, he focuses on the level of discretion that local jurisdictions and planners can exercise in implementing the state’s programme - an issue of general concern for planning (e.g., Booth, 1996). Dalia Lichfield then explores the evolution of integrated planning for air quality in the UK in response to regulations enacted by the UK Department of Environment, Transport and Regions on the basis of the 1995 Environmental Act, so as to meet EU directives. She outlines the difficulties faced in local implementation of these regulations, and presents an interactive computer programme that is designed to facilitate a new way of working with stakeholders from different backgrounds in the formulation of the air-quality action plans mandated by the regulations. This enables implementing a communicative planning process in this field.

As noted above, the metropolitan level has been largely overlooked in discussions of sustainability, despite the economic and environmental centrality of metropolitan regions. The planning of such regions is particularly problematic, given their fragmentation between jurisdictions and the influence of localities and citizens’ groups, on the one hand, and capital with often a global reach, on the other (Filion, 1996). The next two chapters focus on the possible contribution of metropolitan planning to the advancement of the sustainability agenda. First, Feitelson analyzes the contribution of the Tel Aviv metropolitan strategic plan to the environmental field. To this end, both the effect this plan had on the statutory district plans covering the same area and its contribution to the policy discourse are discussed. This chapter suggests that strategic plans can help go beyond the constraints imposed by planning legislation, but their actual effect is a function of the ability to find a ‘customer’ for their recommendations. As there is usually no single ‘customer’ the adoption of the plan’s recommendations can be expected to be erratic. Shepherd and Wiseman then discuss the impact of metropolitan planning in Cape Town, South Africa. They find that its effectiveness in the environmental field is compromised by institutional factors - the separation of spatial planning and EIA-approval processes and unequal implementation across the Cape Town metropolitan region.

Local Agenda 21s have been introduced in many localities. Most of the discussion of such programmes has been limited, however, to a small number of countries. Marszał widens the scope of cases studied by analyzing the implementation of one such programme in Lodz, Poland, which can be viewed as largely representative of cities in the restructuring Eastern European economies. He suggests that the level of environmental awareness and of institutional capacity in many localities in Poland is relatively low, and consequently he questions the amount of discretion that should be allowed at the local level in the formulation of these programmes.

While planning is often viewed as delineating the way in which different uses can be integrated, much of the planning actually done concentrates on a single sector. The next three chapters analyze how sustainability is advanced in plans focusing on a single sector. Eric Louw begins by reviewing how principles of sustainability are applied in the development of business estates in the Netherlands. He finds that as municipalities are the main developers of such estates, and due to the incentives municipalities face, green field sites are preferred over re-development of existing sites and they are developed in ways that have only little to do with ecological considerations. He questions, therefore, whether the business estate level is appropriate for introducing sustainability concerns, and posits that a wider regional approach is needed. Frans Osté and Gert de Roo then discuss the application of an ‘actor consulting’ model for sustainable development to the housing sector in the Groningen-Assen region in the northern Netherlands. The model differentiates between the present, potential and desired contributions of different actors to sustainability goals. The application of the model shows too that the present contributions of various actors differ from the desired contributions, which are driven by sustainability goals, as the incentives faced by local jurisdictions do not conform to those necessary to promote sustainability in this sector and region. They suggest that the regional authorities apply indirect regulations, particularly through economic incentives, to overcome this discrepancy. The planning of open spaces, and particularly parks, has long been seen as a central tenet of planning with particular importance from a sustainability perspective. Luisa Pedrazzini reviews the potential of public-private partnerships in promoting the redevelopment of former industrial and derelict sites into parks in the Milan metropolitan area. In this she moves beyond the questions of plan preparation to those of implementation, and the ability to muster coalitions of interests to promote plans that are important from an environmental perspective - in this case the Monza Villa and historical park.

The main point emphasized in chapter 28 of Agenda 21 is the need for local authorities to enter into a consultative process leading to the promulgation and adoption of local Agenda 21s (Selman, 1998). Such dialogues between local authorities and local organisations, citizens and enterprises may yield additional benefits by bringing in local knowledge to environmental decision making and resolutions of environmental conflicts, thereby helping address locally the inherent tension between the three meta-goals of sustainability. The last three chapters of the book focus, therefore, on the interactions between authorities, citizens and local enterprises.

Jason Corburn explores how one poor ethnically mixed community, in Brooklyn, New York, mobilized local knowledge to make expert assessments of environmental and health hazards more responsive to their needs, and incorporated this knowledge into the planning process. He shows that local residents can contribute substantially to scientific assessments of hazards, regardless of their formal education or ability to speak the dominant language. It is important, therefore, that planners find ways to tap into this specific knowledge in the preparation and implementation of environmental programmes. Deborah Shmueli and Michal Ben-Gal then analyze the potential of framing, the interpretation of environmental conflicts by stakeholders and the media, in resolving environmental disputes. On the basis of four cases in Israel they outline how planners can analyze the framing process as part of the conflict assessment that is a pre-requisite for facilitation or mediation of such conflicts. Finally, Karel Martens studies the role of environmental organizations in fostering participatory planning practices and whether these can indeed promote sustainability. T...