The debate on sustainable development emphasizes the importance of integrating environmental policy into all policy sectors. It is increasingly recognized that this integration is needed at both the national and the local levels of governance. The Environmental Policy Integration (EPI) principle agreed upon in a number of international and EU commitments is receiving the attention of more urban planning scholars. The EPI phenomenon is underresearched, and in many countries, its implementation, particularly subnationally as in urban planning, is hindered by organizational and administrative weaknesses. This article seeks to show how a communicative approach can be used to improve EPI in the urban planning context, based on a literature review of organization theory and communicative planning. The review sheds light on the relevance of the communicative approach to EPI by comparing it with existing EPI approaches. The authors conclude that a communicative approach to EPI is potentially illuminating in changing organizational structures and how individual actors interact in urban planning processes.
The article deals with the issue of spatial plans at the local level. The aims of this paper are (1) extracting the characteristics of local spatial plans that can be compared more broadly (2) identifying, on this basis, the role of spatial plans at the local level in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In achieving these aims, the authors have critically examined spatial plans and their performance, as well as the planning systems they belong to. Hence, they have investigated the types of local plans in each country, their legal features, and the layout of their content. This examination has revealed a host of problems in the workings of the CEE planning systems. The article highlights those spatial planning issues that could be the subject of more in-depth international comparisons. The study provides additional evidence that in countries where spatial plans are legislated, there are more (mutually differentiated) legal problems in their application. Such problems have been analyzed. Besides procedural problems, discrepancies between the contents of different types of plans (e.g., general plans and detailed plans) are very often a problem. The paper also proposes a novel method for detailed comparisons of selected aspects of spatial plans. It can be applied to a large number of countries and also to other aspects of spatial planning. Last but not least, the paper emphasizes the need for a detailed multi-stage consultation of each aspect to be compared.
An integrated approach to spatial planning and environmental policy has not yet been adopted by many national, regional or local administrations. However, such integration is likely to provide a better streamlined planning process incorporating the environmental improvements and the physical developments in the urban areas. Within Europe some attempts to integrate spatial and environmental planning can be found in western countries like the Netherlands. In this paper we review the local policy concerning spatial and environmental planning on the experience of the city of Rotterdam. We discuss two methods for an area-oriented planning approach which have been applied in Rotterdam.
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