The Need for a Communicative Approach to Improve Environmental Policy Integration in Urban Land Use Planning

Abstract

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.