Local Government Spatial Plans: A Comparative Study Of The South West Of England And The Brandenburg-Berlin Region Germany
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Date
1999
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AESOP
Abstract
As a scientific, educational and democratic basis for environmental planning, state of the environment reporting is recognised within the European Union as a key tool for realising sustainable development and Local Agenda 21. State of the environment reports (SoERs) assimilate disparate sources of data about local environmental conditions into a unified document and have been produced by local authorities in the UK on a voluntary basis since 1989(Jacobs 1991). If updated on a regular basis, the reports facilitate spatial and temporal identification and monitoring of the areas of serious environmental concern within a local authority's jurisdiction. This provides a basis for environmental planning, evaluating local authority environmental management policies and if appropriately designed can also be an accessible and educational source of public information regarding the local environment. The German equivalent of the SoER is the Landschaftsplan (Landscapeplan). This is produced with the same intention of monitoring and reporting on the condition of the local environment over time and determining the capacities and limits of natural resources so that these can be used as the basis of land-use decisions in the Flächennutzungsplan (development plan)(Gruehn & Kenneweg 1998). Although local government interest and involvement in environmental reporting is high, there is evidence both in the UK and German literature that environmental reports are failing to make any significant impact on the plan-making process. According to Counsell (1998) for example, whilst 64.8% of planning authorities in England and Wales had undertaken a strategic environmental assessment of their structure plan, only 29.6% had based this on a state of the environment report.
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Book of abstracts : AESOP PhD workshop 1999, Finse, Depertment of Geography Univeristy of Bergen, Norway
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