Green Planning: From Sectoral to Integrative Planning Arrangements?

Abstract

The notion of green planning is used in various ways in international literature. An influential definition of green planning is ‘plans developed, mainly in industrial countries, to address escalating environmental problems’ (DalalClayton, 1996). In this definition green planning and environmental planning are considered synonyms. More recently, however, the notion of green planning has begun to incorporate a range of initiatives, including a variety of plans and strategies concerned with broader issues of sustainable development. In his study Dalal-Clayton concludes that although green planning is introduced in eighteen countries it has been done in eighteen different ways. However, most green plans produced in the industrialised countries remain focused on environmental issues; ‘very few (mainly those undertaken independently of governments) have yet attempted to balance environmental, social and economic concerns — a central requirement of moving towards sustainable development’ (Dalal-Clayton, 1996: 3). Every country shows different policy arrangements and practices of policy making to realise sustainable development. Green planning therefore seems to be a generic term; it embraces several (institutionalised) policy domains, which have the physical environment as their planning objective. Its material object is the sustainable development of society in its broadest sense, referring not only to ecological sustainability, but also to socially desirable and economically viable ways of sustainability. To realise such sustainable development the thus far fragmented policy initiatives have to be integrated. The formal objective of green planning involves its institutional dimension, which is the ability of governmental and other agencies to interfere and realise sustainable development (compare Zonneveld, 1991).