Land Use Planning Topics
Policy: Collaboration, Planning, & Instruments
References that have links are freely available on the internet.
Bengston, D. N., Fletcher, J. O., & Nelson, K. C. (2004). Public policies for managing urban growth and protecting open space: Policy instruments and lessons learned in the United States. Landscape and Urban Planning, 69(2), 271-286.
The public sector in the United States has responded to growing concern about the social and environmental costs of sprawling development patterns by creating a wide range of policy instruments designed to manage urban growth and protect open space. These techniques have been implemented at the local, regional, state and, to a limited extent, national levels. This paper provides a systematic review of the extensive literatu re that describes these public policies and their implementation. The main public policy instruments for managing urban growth and protecting open space at various governmental levels are identified and briefly described, including public acquisition of land, regulatory approaches, and incentive-based approaches. Key lessons are gleaned from the literature on the implementation of growth management policies. Our assessment of lessons found: (1) a lack of empirical evaluations of growth management policies, (2) administrative efficiency and other details of policy implementation—rather than the general type of policy—are critical in determining their effectiveness, (3) the use of multiple policy instruments that reinforce and complement each other is needed to increase effectiveness and avoid unintended consequences, (4) vertical and horizontal coordination are critical for successful growth management but are often inadequate or lacking, and (5) meaningful stakeholder participation throughout the planning process and implementation is a cornerstone of effective growth management. Faced with a growing population and increasingly land consumptive development patterns, more effective policies and programs will be required to stem the tide of urban sprawl in the United States. We conclude with a discussion of potential federal roles in managing development and coordinating state, regional, and local growth management efforts.
Feiock, R. C., Tavares, A. F., & Lubell, M. (2008). Policy instrument choices for growth management and land use regulation. Policy Studies Journal, 36(3), 461-480.
What factors account for local government land use practices and their choices among specific growth management policy instruments? We apply the political market framework to examine how land use policy choices in Florida are shaped by institutional features of county governments and the demands of organizations and interests in a community. Local policy decisions reflect a balance of the conflicting interests and responses to economic and political pressures. The results demonstrate that county government structure and election rules play critical roles in the adoption of urban service boundaries, incentive zoning, and transfer of development rights programs. We report evidence consistent with the argument that these “second-generation” growth management policies are motivated by exclusionary goals.
Geerlings, H., & Stead, D. (2003). The integration of land use planning, transport and environment in European policy and research. Transport Policy, 10(3), 187-196.
There are increasing calls for greater policy integration within European policy documents and research programmes. In the area of land use planning, transport and environment policy, there is widespread acceptance that integrating decisions across these sectors is crucial for sustainable development. Despite this, relatively little European research has been (or is being) carried out on the issue of policy integration, particularly in relation to transport, land use planning and environment policies. Most of the research is mainly technical and mainly focuses on policy options, instruments or assessment methods, rather than on decision-making processes and/or implementation issues; little attention has been given to organisational and/or institutional aspects of policy integration and how this relates to theories from organisational, policy or political sciences. This paper provides a review of policy integration in academic literature, European policy documents and research activities
Keskitalo, E. C. H., Juhola, S., Baron, N., Fyhn, H., & Klein, J. (2016). Implementing local climate change adaptation and mitigation actions: The role of various policy instruments in a multi-level governance context. Climate, 4(1), 7.
Recently, considerable focus, e.g., in the fifth IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Assessment Report (2014) has been trained on why adaptation and mitigation have not been developed more than at present, with relatively few local government actions taken compared with, for example, more discursive policy agreement on the importance of the issue of climate change. Going beyond a focus on general limits and barriers, this comment suggests that one important issue is that climate change has not yet been sufficiently integrated into the state regulative structure of legislation and policy-making. A comparison between three cases suggests that local developments that are not supported in particular by binding regulation are unlikely to achieve the same general level of implementation as issues for which such regulative demands (and thereby also requirements for prioritization) exist. This constitutes an important consideration for the development of adaptation and mitigation as policy areas, including on the local level.
Kloss, C. (2008). Managing wet weather with green infrastructure- Municipal handbook: Rainwater harvesting policies. United States Environmental Protection Agency
Rainwater harvesting has significant potential to provide environmental and economic benefits by reducing stormwater runoff and conserving potable water, though several barriers exist that limit its application. The U.S. uses more water per capita than any other country, with potable water delivered for the majority of domestic and commercial applications. Typical domestic indoor per capita water use, shown in Table 1, is 70 gallons per day (gpd); however outdoor water use can constitute 25% to 58% of overall domestic demand, increasing per capita domestic use up to 165 gpd.
Koontz, T. M. (2005). We finished the plan, so now what? Impacts of collaborative stakeholder participation on land use policy. Policy Studies Journal, 33(3), 459-481.
There is a growing movement toward collaborative stakeholder participation in environmental policy. Rather than calling for a reliance on government officials to solve environmental problems, this approach calls for empowering a community of stakeholders to contribute meaningfully. Scholars examining citizen participation have investigated the performance of such efforts. This study examines one important aspect of performance, the impact of stakeholder participation on policymaking at the local level. A multiple-case analysis of county-level, community-based task forces working on farmland preservation planning in Ohio, U.S., reveals patterns of policymaking processes and the near-term impacts of collaborative planning. These patterns are linked to scholarship using prior empirical studies as well as the Institutional Analysis and Development framework, which integrates physical, social, and institutional variables to examine collective decision-making related to natural resources. Results indicate that the degree of policy change is associated closely with local contextual factors, rather than internal group factors often emphasized in studies of citizen advisory committees and collaborative groups.
McLeod, F., Viswanathan, L., Whitelaw, G. S., Macbeth, J., King, C., McCarthy, D. D., & Alexiuk, E. (2015). Finding common ground: A critical review of land use and resource management policies in Ontario, Canada and their intersection with First Nations. International Indigenous Policy Journal, 6(1).
This article provides an in-depth analysis of selective land use and resource management policies in the Province of Ontario, Canada. It examines their relative capacity to recognize the rights of First Nations and Aboriginal peoples and their treaty rights, as well as their embodiment of past Crown–First Nations relationships. An analytical framework was developed to evaluate the manifest and latent content of 337 provincial texts, including 32 provincial acts, 269 regulatory documents, 16 policy statements, and 5 provincial plans. This comprehensive document analysis classified and assessed how current provincial policies address First Nation issues and identified common trends and areas of improvement. The authors conclude that there is an immediate need for guidance on how provincial authorities can improve policy to make relationship-building a priority to enhance and sustain relationships between First Nations and other jurisdictions.
Mukherjee, I., & Howlett, M. (2016). An Asian perspective on policy instruments: policy styles, governance modes and critical capacity challenges. Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 38(1), 24-42.
Does Asia have a distinct policy style? If so, what does it look like, and why does it take the shape it does? This article argues that in the newly reinvigorated emphasis of policy studies on policy instruments and their design lies the basis of an analysis of a dominant policy style in the Asian region, with significant implications for understanding the roles played by specific kinds of policy capacities. There is a distinctly Asian policy style based on a specific pattern of policy capacities and governance modes. In this style, a failure to garner initial policy legitimacy in the articulation of instrument norms often results in later mismatches between instrument objectives and specific mechanisms for their achievement. The formulation of payments for ecosystem services policy is used to illustrate the capacities required for policy designs and action to meet policy goals effectively.
Paracchini, M. L., Pacini, C., Jones, M. L. M., & Perez-Soba, M. (2011). An aggregation framework to link indicators associated with multifunctional land use to the stakeholder evaluation of policy options. Ecological Indicators, 11(1), 71-80.
The aggregation framework can be used to evaluate the impact that policy options have on the sustainability of multifunctional land use systems with competing demands. A conceptual envelope, called the “trade-off evaluation space”, delineates all possible developments in the functions of the land. The sustainability limits identify the subset of ‘acceptable’ policy options within the trade-off evaluation space, so that the distance of each land use function from sustainability limits can be estimated and trade-offs between the different functions of the multifunctional land use system can be identified. The proposed methodology is adaptable to different contexts: if the assumption is taken that all land use functions are equally weighted the framework can be used to analyse policy cases and take decisions on policy options at the European or regional level. However, at the local-scale the framework can also be applied through a participatory approach and the distribution of weights can be rediscussed with local stakeholders. In both cases the proposed system can be used as a tool for discussion among all interested parties.
Silva, E. A., & Acheampong, R. A. (2015). Developing an Inventory and Typology of Land-Use Planning Systems and Policy Instruments in OECD Countries. OECD Environment Working Papers, 94, OECD Publishing, Paris. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5jrp6wgxp09s-en
This report provides an overview of spatial and land-use planning systems in OECD countries1 focusing on: (i) the governance systems across countries, (ii) the institutional and legal frameworks for spatial planning, and (iii) the various policy instruments used at different levels of territorial governance to articulate spatial development objectives, manage physical development and protect the environment. The report draws on available academic literature and policy documents. The analysis shows a strong relationship between governance models and authority and competences for spatial planning. Spatial plans at various spatial scales are used to create the preconditions for harmonising socio-economic development goals with environmental protection imperatives. Environmental assessment constitutes another key regulatory instrument. National plans, programmes, regional development and land-use plans as well as sector plans and policies are subjected to Strategic Environmental Assessment. Individual projects resulting from these policy instruments are subjected to Environmental Impact Assessment in most countries. In all countries, environmentally-related permits work together with environmental assessments to ensure that environmental considerations are taken into account in the siting of industrial installations and megainfrastructure projects that would have significant impacts on the environment. The main challenges associated with environmental assessment in most countries include the political nature of the assessment process, the cost (time and money) of assessment particularly to businesses, limited consultation periods, limited technical capacity of institutions, the endeavour for independence and quality of the assessment and the absence of robust legislative frameworks.
Vedung, E.. (1998). Policy instruments: typologies and theories. In Bemelmans-Videc, M-L., Rist, R.C., & Vedung, E. (Eds.). Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons: Policy Instruments and Their Evaluation. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. 21-58.
No abstract for this book chapter.
