Long term comprehensive evaluation strategies for spatial planning, design and management

Abstract

The planning, design and management of the countryside increasingly demand a careful balancing between two extremes. One extreme is the aim for full economic development of rural areas, predominantly by maximizing food production and minimizing costs. The other extreme is full conservation of the natural resource base, including habitats and landscapes. While the first extreme affects the environment through use of soil, water and air, as well as through the loss of native ecosystems and landscapes, the second condition puts pressure on socio-economic values and other competing social demands. The result is that societies face the choice of paying early on to sustain both conditions, or to postpone costs by choosing one condition over the other. Several quantitative and qualitative approaches are being used to find the right balance between the two extremes. In open space planning and design (including their related management systems) the development and use of spatial concepts have increased over the last quarter century. Examples of such spatial concepts — often measured quantitatively — are integration versus segregation, and the framework or spatial network concepts such as ecological networking or ecological infrastructure development. The application of such concepts, among other things, demands an evaluation system capable of being widely used. This evaluation system should originate at the outset of the planning process, when the idea of a spatial plan first germinates. To do so can make sensitive, advanced thinking an integral part of planning, design and management. Wide and early use of such a system can enable the monitoring of planning objectives for an area and can assure the on-going evaluation of conditions after a plan is executed. Quantitative attempts are made through so called evaluative design procedures (such as the HELP method or the BEL method). This chapter assesses the efficacy of these strategies and concepts, and urges a better balancing of human needs with those of the physical environment.