Municipal Comprehensive Plans Research Articles

The Effectiveness of Municipal Comprehensive Planning in Mitigating Forest Fragmentation

To mitigate forest fragmentation, it is critical to investigate the factors that contribute to it. Considerable research examines various factors shaping forest fragmentation, but these studies have not typically identified land use planning as an important factor. Our study helps fill this gap in the literature. To examine the influence of land use planning on forest fragmentation, we assessed the quality of 29 municipal comprehensive plans with respect to forest protection in Wisconsin, U.S.A., a sample drawn from a spatial analysis of forest fragmentation dynamics from 2001 to 2011. We found that the comprehensive plans of communities that have experienced lower-than-expected forest fragmentation change were, on average, of significantly higher quality than those of the communities that have experienced higher-than-expected forest fragmentation change during this period. We conclude that the quality of community-based comprehensive plans, especially the strength and breadth of policies addressing forestland, matters in mitigating the fragmentation of forestland.

Readiness and planning for more wind power: Municipalities as key actors implementing national strategies

In the global context of rapidly developing wind-power technology, local governments have to balance local interests with larger scale targets when implementing national and international strategies. An implication of a new Swedish national strategy for wind-power development is considerable intrusion into natural resource-rich northern landscapes, where municipalities already strive to manage diverse surface demanding and legally valued land-use interests. Municipalities will thus play a key role in wind-power development. Results of our survey suggest that most municipalities have functioning wind-power plans, linked to their municipal comprehensive planning (MCP). However, so far, relatively few wind-power farms have been established, and municipalities have rarely used their right to veto, suggesting that most have not yet experienced significant problems linked to wind-power development. The municipalities rely on their right to veto, and only a third highlighted planning as a tool for handling the increasing demand for wind-power developments. Legislative changes regarding the right to veto and the status of MCP could affect local self-government considerably. Wind-power development could have major consequences for local landscapes and governments, and a municipal-wide policy regarding future wind-power development and MCP as a mediating tool must be secured to balance local interests with national ambitions.

Issues of Municipal Comprehensive Plans Found in Contrast to Pioneering Plans: From the Contrast between Pioneering Plan of Nago or Yomitan and Recent Plans in Okinawa Prefecture

Issues of Municipal Comprehensive Plans Found in Contrast to Pioneering Plans: From the Contrast between Pioneering Plan of Nago or Yomitan and Recent Plans in Okinawa Prefecture

Participatory comprehensive planning to handle competing land-use priorities in the sparsely populated rural context

Rural areas supply the planet's natural resources while simultaneously harbor refuges for most of the world's remaining biodiversity and intact, resilient ecosystems. Since traditional extractive activities must increasingly co-exist with non-exploitative activities such as tourism and conservation, sustainable land use planning is essential for managing trade-offs between incompatible interests in rural areas. With "communicative planning" being promoted since decades, participation is considered crucial for reconciling different planning interests. However, the implementation of participation remains patchy and uneven, not least in sparsely populated regions with low capacity where participation could be a game-changer. Here, we consider municipal comprehensive planning as an existing arena to explore participatory planning approaches potentially capable of simultaneously managing competing land uses and promoting sustainable development in sparsely populated rural contexts. Collaborative work between researchers and public managers resulted in the co-development of an approach based on qualitative village- and interest-based focus groups that facilitated the formulation, negotiation, and legitimization of concrete and detailed local guidelines that prioritize between different land uses. Consequently, the resulting comprehensive plan draft was more readily adopted than the output of a traditional planning process. We found that citizens in sparsely populated municipalities seem willing to actively contribute to rural development processes if they have significant influence.

Moving from vision to action- integrating ecosystem services in the Swedish local planning context

Policies and planning processes related to land use play an important role in maintaining and developing ecosystem services. The incorporation of ecosystem services into local plans is considered an indicator of the plan’s capacity to implement strategic action. This study provides a national overview of the incorporation of the ecosystem service concept in current municipal comprehensive plans in Sweden and explores the actions taken by three municipalities in Stockholm County to implement the ecosystem service concept in practice. A multi-method design was employed including a qualitative content analysis of 231 municipal comprehensive plans, a statistical analysis analyzing temporal changes from 2005 – 2017, and dialogue meetings with municipal practitioners from the three municipalities. We divided the level of integration to four categories, A (Advanced) - D (Not included). Overall, the integration of the ecosystem service concept has significantly increased in municipal comprehensive plans during the last decade. At national level, 23% of municipalities have explicitly mentioned ecosystem services, and within Stockholm County, 42%. The dialogue meetings with municipal practitioners revealed that the municipalities were at different stages of implementing the ecosystem service concept, with diverse actions being implemented for advancing practice. These included capacity building, participatory processes and development of thematic plans and operational documents. To support the future implementation of the ecosystem service concept from vision to action, both local and national initiatives are needed.

The significance of different realms of value for agricultural land in Sweden

The demand for additional agricultural land is expected to rise by approximately 50 per cent by 2050 on a global level, and agricultural land of high quality needs to be preserved to ensure future food security. However, agricultural land per capita is decreasing. One of the main reasons for this in the EU and globally is the building of houses or infrastructure on agricultural land. There is a possibility that the Swedish agricultural sector will grow in the future and supply more regions than its own territory with food due to, e.g., climate change. Although appropriate regulations exist to support local decision makers in protecting agricultural land in Sweden, the potential to provide such protection is not fully utilised. This paper aims to contribute to explaining why Swedish municipalities build on agricultural land through an analysis of the values behind the arguments for preserving and exploiting agricultural land at the municipal level and the implications of these values for the preservation of agricultural land in Sweden. Assuming value pluralism, we analyse 30 municipal comprehensive plans through a framework of nine realms of value. We find that municipalities deploy at least eight of the nine realms of value to motivate the preservation of agricultural land, but the economic realm is more dominant among arguments to exploit agricultural land. Most plans do not consider food security. Municipalities could become better prepared to handle unexpected events if they worked with longer-term future scenarios. Further research is needed regarding how different values are weighed against each other in actual exploitation issues.

The Institutionalisation of Sami Interest in Municipal Comprehensive Planning: A Comparison Between Norway and Sweden

The Sami are recognized as an Indigenous people and a national minority in both Norway and Sweden, and their involvement in any planning concerning their traditional territories is required. The aim of this article is to examine how Sami interests are secured and institutionalized in municipal comprehensive planning (MCP). We use two case study areas: Sortland municipality in Norway and Vilhelmina municipality in Sweden. Analysis of various qualitative materials indicates that, despite contextual and institutional differences, the planning processes in the case study areas have similar outcomes. We conclude that formal rights of the Sami are not always acknowledged by the politicians who make the final decision. Rather, the Sami depend on the politicians’ willingness to consider their needs.

Uniting geospatial assessment of neighborhood urban tree canopy with plan and ordinance evaluation for environmental justice

Trees are not evenly distributed across urbanized areas and there is evidence that Black, Hispanic, and low-income residents have lower proximal tree canopy coverage. The complex interplay between social policy and the built/physical environment contributes to these outcomes, but much of the research on environmental justice focuses on either producing evidence of inequity or assessing policy to determine its effect on the physical environment. This paper attempts to unite those two approaches by 1) measuring the urban tree canopy (UTC) at a scale that reflects local socio-political decision making and 2) assessing how the local policy documents regulating UTC acknowledge and attempt to remediate disparity. A maximum likelihood supervised classification of 1-m resolution imagery for a purposive sample of twelve historically racially segregated neighborhoods in two North Carolina cities estimated UTC at the block level. Using a spatial autoregressive model, we found a statistically significant negative association between UTC coverage, percentage of non-White population, the presence of nonresidential zoning, and percentage of parcel within the right-of-way. Content analysis found the municipal comprehensive plans and development management ordinances lack city-wide canopy coverage goals, do not utilize neighborhood geographies to target action and evaluation, and do not account for, or attempt to reduce, the potential inequitable distribution of urban trees. Existing policies could further contribute to disparate UTC outcomes by allowing neighborhoods to create their own UTC coverage standards and by crafting ordinances with variable standards for neighborhoods with non-residential zones. As a result, communities unable to counteract intensive zoning and/or advocate for enhanced tree canopy provisions are at a disadvantage in the remediation of UTC disparities. These findings highlight the need for analytical approaches that integrate the identification of disparities with the evaluation of present-day policy frameworks that may perpetuate and/or exacerbate inequitable outcomes.

Strategic environmental assessment in Swedish municipal planning. Trends and challenges

More than a decade after the implementation of the EU Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) into Swedish legislation, a comprehensive study has been conducted to analyze the development of SEA practice in municipal planning. The analysis was based on a nationwide mapping of SEA in Swedish municipal comprehensive plans and municipal sector plans, such as energy plans and waste plans, which were adopted in the period 2004–2014. The mapping was used for obtaining evidence of, and explanations for, the extent to which SEAs have been carried out and to enable an identification of the presence of alternatives and specified purposes of the plan. In this paper, the result of the analysis of the development of SEA practice is presented, which shows that municipal comprehensive plans had an SEA to an increasingly greater extent, up to on average 90% for the period 2010–2014. For waste plans and energy plans, corresponding figures for the same period were significantly lower. In addition, the result shows a decreasing trend between 2006 and 2014 regarding the proportion of SEAs that included more than one plan alternative. The use of a zero alternative, however, increased from 2006 to 2014. A regression analysis was conducted to identify determinants that explain the variation in the degree to which screening and SEAs were conducted. The findings of the study show that a systematic mapping of SEA practice provides empirical basis for the development of policy measures to enhance the use of SEAs in municipal planning. Furthermore, it is argued that strengthening the link between alternatives and the purposes of the plan may foster a more strategic thinking when identifying reasonable alternatives on how to promote sustainable development within the planning. Moreover, it is argued that mandatory SEA should be considered in municipal comprehensive and sector planning.

Methods for assessing future scenarios from a sustainability perspective

Future scenarios are often used to address long-term challenges characterised by uncertainty and complexity, as they can help explore different alternative future pathways. Scenarios can therefore be a useful tool to support policy and guide action towards sustainability. But what sustainability aspects are put forward in scenarios and how are they assessed? This paper aims to explore how to assess future scenarios, categorised according to Börjeson et al. (Futures 38:723–739, 2006) i.e. predictive, explorative and normative scenarios. By conducting a literature review and a document analysis, we map tools and methods that are currently used to assess environmental and social sustainability aspects in scenarios. We also draw on experiences from methods for impact assessments of Swedish municipal comprehensive plans, which can be considered as future scenarios. We identify whether some sustainability aspects are less recurrent than others in the reviewed assessments or even left out. We find that there is no single tool that can be used to assess scenarios. Some quantitative tools based on databases may be more suitable for assessing scenarios within a shorter time horizon, whereas qualitative assessment methods might better fit the purpose of long-term transformative scenarios. We also find that assessment frameworks may be useful to guide the assessment, as to what its intended purpose is and which sustainability aspects to include. Finally we discuss whether further assessment tools are needed in order to include a wider array of potential environmental or social consequences of the content of scenarios.

Uses of the word ‘landskap’ in Swedish municipalities’ comprehensive plans: Does the European Landscape Convention require a modified understanding?

This paper examines the potential of Swedish comprehensive plans and thematic additions to such plans in the implementation of the European Landscape Convention (ELC): specifically by comparing how the word landscape is used. First, we reviewed a selection of Swedish municipal comprehensive plans by recording the use of variations of the term landscape. Second, we studied the contextual usage of these recorded variations to see if it was compatible with the seemingly holistic approach in the ELC. Third, we discuss whether our sample of comprehensive plans presented obstacles to the implementation of the ELC. We carried out this research by identifying the Swedish word 'landskap' (Eng. landscape) in a sample of comprehensive plans published prior to the implementation of the ELC in Sweden. A requirement for the study was that the meanings of landscape in English are not necessarily equivalent to the meanings of ‘landskap’ in Swedish. In the reviewed plans 119 different terms originating from the word landscape were detected although no clear definitions of the terms were given in the plans. The authors of the plans used the word 'landskap' in multiple ways in order to specify a wide range of aspects related to landscape. The absence of definitions entails a risk that planners and decision-makers incorrectly assume that the concepts are familiar to potential readers of the documents. Many different uses of the word indicate that the word itself was considered to be useful in planning processes, but hardly connected to an explicit theoretical framework as intended in the ELC. Based on the usage in our sample, we discuss classifications of the word landscape and distinguish three main categories for its use: policy, process, and characterisation. The results contribute to an understanding of the introductory guidelines that need to be developed if the comprehensive plans would operate as effective instruments for comparable implementation of the ELC across the country. Nevertheless, this study indicates that the comprehensive planning in Sweden is suited for the implementation of ELC. An appropriate approach in planning may be to arrange negotiations between the parties concerned in the process regarding the local landscape in terms of values that people associate with the particular landscape and its roles at a current location. The comprehensive planning processes are suggested as natural arenas for such negotiations.

How Do Healthy Eating and Active Living Policies Influence the Potential for A Community's Healthy Behavior? The Case of Mississippi State

A community's health can be enhanced through access to healthy eating and active living which, in turn, can be supported through the built environment. While local and state governments have taken active steps toward promoting healthy communities, efforts of encouraging healthy eating and active living have not reached their full potential. The state of Mississippi is known as “the fattest state” in the United States and one of the factors that has led to such a classification is related to the way development occurs throughout the state. Drawing on a case study approach, the purpose of this study is to describe how local policy efforts can influence the potential for healthy eating and active living in the state of Mississippi. The paper examines the content of existing municipal comprehensive plans in terms of goals, objectives and policies related to healthy eating and active living over a 15-year time-frame (2000 - 2015).

Between protocol and reality – Swedish municipal comprehensive planning

ABSTRACTSpatial planning using a landscape approach has been recognized as being essential for reconciling ecological, cultural and socio-economic dimensions in sustainable development (SuD). Although embraced as a concept, there is a lack of planning tools capable of incorporating multi-level, multifunctional and multi-sectoral perspectives, especially in a rural context. The departure point in this paper is the legal requirements for municipal comprehensive planning (MCP) in Sweden and an e-mail survey about incentives, stakeholder involvement, policy integration and implementation in MCP in all 15 Swedish mountain municipalities. The purpose of this explorative study is to examine whether MCP could be a tool in planning for SuD. Results indicate a general lack of resources and a low status of MCP that affect, and even limit, stakeholder involvement, policy integration and implementation. However, legal requirements for MCP are targeted at SuD, and municipal personnel responsible for planning appreciate the potential of MCP. Therefore, there is potential to develop the MCP into an effective landscape planning tool. To accomplish this, the status of an active planning process has to be raised, the mandate of the local planning agency has to be secured, and residents and land users have to be involved throughout the planning process.

Visualizing the Forest in a Boreal Forest Landscape—The Perspective of Swedish Municipal Comprehensive Planning

At the international policy level, there is a clear link between access to information about forests and the work towards sustainable land use. However, involving forests in planning for sustainable development (SuD) at the Swedish local level, by means of municipal comprehensive planning (MCP), is complicated by sector structure and legislation. Currently, there is a gap or hole in the MCP process when it comes to use and access to knowledge about forest conditions and forest land use. This hole limits the possibilities to formulate well-informed municipal visions and goals for sustainable forest land use as well as for overall SuD. Here we introduce an approach for compilation and presentation of geographic information to increase the preconditions for integrating forest information into Swedish MCP. We produce information about forest ownership patterns and forest conditions in terms of age and significant ecological and social values in forests for a case study municipality. We conclude that it is possible to effectively compile geographic and forest-related information to fill the hole in the municipal land use map. Through our approach, MCP could be strengthened as a tool for overall land use planning and hence as a base in SuD planning.

The (Somewhat) False Hope of Comprehensive Planning

Some commentators suggest that comprehensive planning is indispensable for smart growth (that is, less auto-centric development). This paper argues that municipal comprehensive plans, like zoning, are merely a tool that can be used to support sprawl as easily as smart growth. Thus, planning, although desirable for a variety of reasons, is not absolutely sufficient or necessary for smart growth.

“Sometimes Climate Adaptation is Politically Correct”: A Case Study of Planners and Politicians Negotiating Climate Adaptation in Waterfront Spatial Planning

Today, spatial planning is expected to deliver climate adaptation and to manage, merge and balance various societal interests and priorities. To what extent proactive shaping of change is enabled by spatial planning practice is less explored. This paper illustrates how the ideals and ambitions of climate adaptation are manifested in waterfront spatial planning via a case study of Norrköping, Sweden. Based on interviews with spatial planners and politicians responsible for strategic urban development planning, our study identifies a divergence in ambitions, approaches and positions. In local development plans, the position taken has less to do with climate risk severity than with an area's perceived political and economic attractiveness. When perceived attractiveness is low, precautionary climate adaptation serves as a pretext not to develop, whereas high perceived attractiveness leads to negotiated pragmatism allowing continued waterfront exploitation. We also identify a fragmentation in spatial planning, with weak interplay between municipal comprehensive planning and local development plans, resulting in ad hoc, case-by-case planning. Furthermore, different planning actors are organizationally compartmentalized, creating unfortunate intra-sectoral silos. We conclude that the integrative, proactive and reflexive potentials of spatial planning to deliver climate adaptation have yet to be realized.

Deliberation or doctrine? Land use and spatial planning for sustainable development in Sweden

Spatial planning has been earmarked as an important tool for achieving sustainable development. In Sweden the important task of planning for sustainable spatial development and land use falls largely to the local authorities, since there is no official institute for spatial planning at a national or regional level. This article investigates local planning for sustainable development by analysing recent municipal comprehensive plans, which it is argued are a major instrument for this purpose. Although comprehensive plans are statutory, their design and content is very much at local discretion, and for the most part, not a rigid process governed from above. For this reason, a template analysis was used, where the template was built from the contents of the comprehensive plans, and not from a predefined understanding of what sustainability is or how planning for sustainable development should be done. What the findings reveal, however, is that there is not much deliberation concerning the meaning(s) of sustainable development, and, further, that the planning principles considered necessary to bring about sustainable development were not exclusively regarded as sustainable as such, but rather as part of a general ‘belief system’ about prudent planning—sustainable or not. It is suggested that, rather than rethinking planning, planners have internalized the concept of sustainable planning into the existing ‘belief system,’ and thus, the planning principles have become ‘sustainable’ by default.

Public participation in the danish planning system —or who decides the contents of the agenda?

Public participation was introduced in the period 1970–1975 at all planning levels of the Danish planning system, i.e. for regional and municipal comprehensive planning and for local district plans and urban renewal plans. This article focuses upon why public participation was introduced at all planning levels, how it was introduced, the distribution and quality of participation, and the progress in quality. Special emphasis is given to the handling of the “agenda problem”, i.e. who decides what is on the agenda when a planning proposal is discussed in public. In conclusion, some prevailing problems and perspectives are outlined.