Re-imagining Rural Land Use Policy: Perspectives from the ‘Edge’

Professor Alister Scott BA PhD MRTPI Working Party on Territorial Development

Policies in Rural AreasOECD Paris 6th December 2012

An Interdisciplinary Perspective

Focus on ‘edge’ spaces working across rural and urban land uses where they intersect and connect

Applied academic with a focus on proportionate evidence-based research and policy leading to deliverable outcomes.

• Concern with the process by which policy, practice and decisions are enabled as much as outcome.

4 Quick Narratives of Land Use Problematics

• Fire Breathing dragon

• The Urban-Rural divide

• Rural fringe gentrification

• Illegal Low Impact Development

Fire Breathing Lessons

Lack of vision within which solution fitted. Expert-led solution imposed without evidence. Beware any expert (especially academics) offering

gifts or solutions. Lack of human and physical responses to manage

solution. Lack of translation and application of solution to

the local context

reluRural Economy andLand Use Programme

Natural Environment lens Incentives Natural Environment White Paper Habitat and Landscape ScaleDEFRA Government department Ecosystem Approach Classifying and ValuingNational Ecosystem Assessment Catchment Management Plans Nature Improvement Areas Local Nature Partnerships

Built Environment lens Control National Planning Policy Framework Local Scale DCLG Government Department Spatial Planning Zoning and Ordering Sustainability Assessments Development/Neighbourhood Plans Enterprise Zones / Green BeltsLocal Enterprise Partnerships

Rural-Urban Divide Lessons

Forgotten space as place in its own right. No body with strategic oversight across urban and

rural domains. Separate institutional frameworks, goals, tools and

designations. create disjointed and contradictory responses.

Separate spatial foci and institutional silos limit response to connected problems; e.g. Climate change, flooding, energy & transport.

Jamestown

Lessons

• Gentrification conflicts with post-apartheid vision. • Investment of foreign capital and wealthy migrants. • Gated communities versus informal settlements (Highest

Gini index coefficient in the world). • Loss/Sale of farmland due to inflated land market

pressures and price. • Impotence of plans for rural planning due to inward

investment on golf courses, business parks and vineyards. • Loss of trust with large investors not delivering

community benefits

Brithdir Mawr

Lessons Both sides (National Park Authority and Brithdir Mawr) claim

sustainable development is on their side. Planning system seen s negative obstacle to low impact

lifestyle resulting in a ‘let’s just do it attitude ’. Planning quest for order inhibits new ideas that do not fit in. Planners have tools to encourage the new and the bold but

their use is limited by risk averse attitudes. Contradiction in scales of decision making: national exemplar

(Welsh Assembly Government vs. Demolish order (National Park/Local Authority)

Out of date (1987) development plan for decision making Out of date (1947/1990) definitions of productivist agriculture

Disintegrated Development

Different lenses

Common Response Fallacies

• Develop new academic concept

• Creeping incrementalism • More evidence • More Regulation • More Localism • More Free market • Institutional reform• Behaviour change • Black and white ‘media’issues

‘Journey’ to land use integration

• Path to success is littered with failures

• Path to success is illuminated by individuals going beyond convention in spite of the system (Scott, 2011)

• Path to success is enabled through using improved interdisciplinary glasses

New Jargon-free Lenses

3 Journeys into Land Use Experiments

• TAYPLAN land use plan • Rewilding• Garden Cities

Ingredients

• Engaging local communities in high level plan at earliest stages and thereafter.

• Local Authority planners from each area working on joint strategic plan reinforces scalar connections.

• 8 policies and 24 pages ensures maximum exposure and engagement (people read it!)

• Indicators identified for each of the plan policies • Action plan developed along clear lines of

accountability, priority and timing.

Approach

•

Ingredients

• NGOs/charities have the capacity and agenda to instigate land use experiments.

• It may not be popular, but it is possible to develop a bold vision underpinned by robust evidence.

• Exploit new markets to finance & justify managing land for public goods e.g. emerging markets for carbon and clean water.

• Traditional forms of land management may lose out; is managing the land for carbon and wildlife compatible with farmer’s identity and motives?

Garden City

Schenzhen Garden City China

Ingredients

• Set within a national spatial plan and vision for growth rather than an isolated idea.

• 21st century re-interpretation of Ebenezer Howards ideals incorporating climate change.

• Town Countryside integral to the model; not a bolt on extra.

• Stakeholders involved across built and natural environment (from idea to evaluation).

• New models of community governance and private public partnerships.

• New Financial tools e.g. Tax Incremental Financing.

Concluding Recipe

• Learn by making mistakes• Experiment with new ideas collectively within

agreed visions • Use effective evidence to support ideas and

decisions • Use a mix of regulatory, incentive and

engagement tools within new models of land use governance.

• Do not overcook!

• Alister Scott • http://www.bcu.ac.uk/research/-centres-of-ex

cellence/centre-for-environment-and-society/projects/relu