Regional Planning for Open Space

Arnold van der Valk, Terry van Dijk, Arnold van der Valk, Terry van Dijk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415480031
• eBook ISBN: 9781134019496
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Reviewing the limitations of various planning options, this book addresses the debate on how to preserve open space in the context of a growing metropolis.

The importance of open spaces for well-being in urban life is well-established. With case studies on internalization and valuation methods, this book critically examines the liberal discourse that urges the transfer of responsibility for open space from government to the market.

European and American expert authors confront political rhetoric with grounded analysis and conclude that the market needs to be combined with governmental efforts. They scrutinize the connection between open space and the planning institutions designed to implement its policy. The book provides practical pieces of insight in how to structure an open space problem, information on what to expect from instruments, and new ideas on alternative approaches.

CHAPTER 1
RETHINKING OPEN SPACE PLANNING IN METROPOLITAN AREAS

ARNOLD VAN DER VALK AND TERRY VAN DIJK (WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY)

WHY THIS BOOK

Open space matters. It provides people the opportunity to enjoy fresh air, to get away from the restlessness of the city, to be comforted by the vision of a still present arcadian life style, to see how the earth delivers our basic food and fresh water and to contemplate one’s life in the face of the solemn beauty of nature. Open space allows people to retreat from the artificial and return to the genuine.

This book is about the mechanisms that explain the presence or loss of open space as a resource for people. This book seeks to understand the vitality of open space, exploring the linkages between geography, economy and policy making. How can societal processes affecting land conversion be changed in favour of open space preservation? There are assumptions included here that open space is such a resource and that there is a necessity for some form of intervention, however subtle and unintrusive interventions may be. The need for actively pursuing open space preservation is inherent to open space; in our view, being a natural resource, it eventually faces systematic over-exploitation due to underpricing of its true value, low harvesting costs and low growth potential. In absence of proper market conditions so far, some policy has to be applied.

We aim to create understanding on processes that affect open space availability, irrespective of normative inclinations to its form or appearance. This scope differs from descriptive geographical studies, because we explain dynamics, critically reflect on policies and explore innovative ideas as well, and conceptualise processes we observe. It thus complements the line set out by, for instance, Albers and Boyer (1997) and Gailing (2005), who, as we do, try to understand the processes and meanings pertaining open space and how they can be transformed in favour of its preservation. Our book in its focus on process will also bear resemblance to books on American studies, such as Daniels’s (1999) account of the systemic institutional drivers of sprawl and the inability to change it, and chapters from Furuseth and Lapping’s (1999) collection of studies on America’s urban fringes. By highlighting the planning issues involved, we complement the existing and emerging literature with a planner’s view on the societal value of open spaces and quality of life.

There were three main questions we set out to answer in the research presented in this edited volume:

• What are the limits to the effectiveness of conventional regional plans on urbanisation patterns?

• Can open space be treated as a commodity that will find a socially optimal equilibrium in a market setting, and replace conventional governmental regulation? Can funds flowing from those enjoying the amenities of open space be expected to provide a sustained basis for those producing these amenities?

• Can any system for open space (whether regulation by government of supply and demand between producer and consumer) be truly responsive to people’s beliefs about what open spaces and what qualities in them deserve to be preserved?

OUR FRAME OF CONCEPTS FOR PLANNING REGIONAL OPEN SPACE

For a proper understanding of the messages the contributors to this book convey, the reader needs to appreciate the main concepts used throughout the chapters, because, however straightforward some of them may seem, missing the right nuance would blur the arguments in which they sit.

OPEN SPACE

The key concept linking all chapters obviously is the concept of ‘open space’. This book uses it mostly in its physical sense; its social and economic significance is associated to its physical presence. Open space is an outdoor environment, undeveloped land with agricultural, natural or recreational types of land use, often having a scenic quality to it. It is sitting within reach of urbanites and measures up to approximately 30 kilometres in diameter.

Although we choose the regional level, we do want to emphasize that open space is in fact a fractal (Frankhauser, 2004; Batty and Longley, 1994; Benguigui et al., 2000; Mandelbrot, 1977) present on many nested levels of scale that are mutually interdependent. In terms of people’s quality of life, for instance, the lack of city parks may be compensated for by large and lush private plots, a relationship that Bright (1993) as well as Barbosa et al. (2007) back up statistically. The importance and interrelatedness of scales is particularly relevant to Chapters 4 and 6.

Open space is more encompassing than the often encountered ‘green space’ – the latter is typically used for parks and public spaces in cities (diameters up to approximately 2 kilometres). Open space, as understood in this book, is related but not synonymous, as it refers to the spaces outside the city that are not specifically acquired or designed to serve the public. It is partly accessible and its amenities are an externality of its land use rather than its main purpose.

Landscape is the aesthetic, ecological, cultural and thus normatively charged total picture of a region. Open space is here understood as a specific component of a landscape, that together with villages, towns, rivers and infrastructure composes a region’s living environment. The patchworks of urban land uses and open spaces around large dynamic cities are metropolitan landscapes.

We explicitly want to address the open spaces in a blended metropolitan landscape, being neither rural nor urban, in their own right, therefore refraining from adding qualifiers such as ‘peri’, ‘edge’ or ‘in between’. Studies that do are typically less concerned with the open space in itself, but address the zone between urban land use and open space, being a unique landscape in itself where urban uses, which are at the same time unwanted and essential to the city, constitute a hybrid fringe landscape pattern (Figure 1.1; see Gallent et al., 2006; Sieverts, 2003). We instead want to understand the processes of the open spaces that still exist just beyond the physical fringe.

Figure 1.1 Regional open spaces are vital to metropolitan areas.

PLANNING

The process of analysing, envisioning, deciding and implementing plans for adapting spatial organisation to meet society’s needs – that is planning. Planning is instrumental in its eventual ambition to intervene in the present situation. In its instrumental impetus, the practices and theories range between two extremes: technical rationality and communicative rationality. Both have to acknowledge that all intervention, and therefore all preparation of intervention, is done in interdependency with the stakeholders in society. Plans are just temporary agreements on future spatial structures, which have to be flexible to cope with unforeseen opportunities and threats, but they must also have the legitimacy and commitment to effectively make a difference.

The interdependency between planner and stakeholders requires the combination of knowledge from a variety of disciplines. This book principally combines geography, economy and administrative sciences. Because we try to understand the mechanisms of open space itself, a less well known stakeholder is introduced: the steward of the landscape. Stewards of the landscape are the people that live in close physical interaction with open spaces: the farmers, the organisations managing landscape and scenery.

The level of scale is not only a geographical and psychological factor, but is particularly crucial in an implementational sense, as it affects the type of actors you have to deal with, and therefore the intervention strategies to use. For instance, the provision of pocket parks may be adopted in building codes, stipulating that land developers are expected to allocate a minimum share of the site for public space. City parks are sometimes developed by private parties, but typically are owned by municipalities, counties and states. On a regional scale, however, that strategy would not work as the costs for acquisition and maintenance would be too high. Regulation of land use by individuals holding the rights to that land is the common strategy.

Regional planning at large, and metropolitan planning in particular, is complicated because it overarches multiple scales of places, identities and governments. To be effective, it needs to link up a range of ideas and administrative flows, and spatial concepts have provided a way to do this. This book is about understanding these mechanisms.

SPATIAL QUALITY

What is the quality of the environment surrounding people depends on the scale you look at. In terms of met...

Table of contents

• THE RTPI Library Series
• CONTENTS
• FIGURES
• TABLES
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• CHAPTER 1 RETHINKING OPEN SPACE PLANNING IN METROPOLITAN AREAS
• CHAPTER 2 PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRINGE LANDSCAPES
• CHAPTER 3 THREATS TO METROPOLITAN OPEN SPACE
• CHAPTER 4 DEVELOPMENT CONSTRAINTS REDUCE URBAN OPEN SPACE
• CHAPTER 5 THE VIABILITY OF CROSS-SUBSIDY STRATEGIES
• CHAPTER 6 DOES PROXIMITY TO OPEN SPACE INCREASE THE VALUES OF DWELLINGS?
• CHAPTER 7 GOVERNMENT OR MARKET
• CHAPTER 8 MAINTAINING THE WORKING LANDSCAPE
• CHAPTER 9 THE IMPACT OF OPEN SPACE PRESERVATION POLICIES
• CHAPTER 10 SPACES OF ENGAGEMENT FOR OPEN SPACE ADVOCACY
• CHAPTER 11 FORMALISATION OF ‘OPEN SPACE AS PUBLIC SPACE’ IN ZONING
• CHAPTER 12 AESTHETIC APPROACHES TO ACTIVE URBAN LANDSCAPE PLANNING
• CHAPTER 13 FLÄCHENHAUSHALT RECONSIDERED
• CHAPTER 14 PLANNING OPEN SPACES
• INDEX