The Rise and Fall of International Planning Systems: The dilemma of flexibility and certainty
Academic Paper
The way in which planning is shaping our public life had been always influenced by different planning systems. It’s believed that the planning systems have significant impact on how urban actors are legislate, processing and implement their plans. However, there are many debates around the impacts of different planning systems as they are very in term of design principles. The main approaches of planning system are the discretionary, regularity and hybrid planning systems. The most fundamental issue that shape the features of the each system is the degree of certainty/flexibility embedded in the system, as consequence, each system can have a degree of regulatory or/and a discretionary power. In this essay, I will critically discuss the strengths and weaknesses emerged as consequence of the degree of flexibility/certainty within different planning system from different countries, mainly, UAE, UK, French and Hong Kong. In general, the ultimate goal of planning systems is vary, as it implicates many social, environmental, political and economic objectives, from managing economic growth, to control population density, and from identify territories borders to facilitate public services for the well-being of community sectors. As well, purpose and process of planning systems is differing according to the type of planning. While the regularity planning aim is to manage land use through a collection of rules and legislations to deliver systematic pre-designed land use zonings, outlined by a broad master plan, the discretionary planning system purpose is about a coordination of frame works where proactive organizations deliver spatial planning proposals through a structural strategic, national and local guide lines. On the other hand the hybrid planning system is about a simple administration system alongside with simple regulatory zoning includes “white zones” to allow more a room for discretionary within the regulatory master plan. The forms and methods which shaped the process of planning system have different shapes. In regulatory planning system which adopted in many countries such as U.S. and France, the form of planning reflected a rational comprehensive policy to manage and controls the land use in specific designated area and sites for the sake of development and protection. The policy statement in such system is processed through mapping the land use, maps in regulatory planning system is pre-agreed by different urban actors and officials, and checked SEA/SA. While the discretionary planning system is formed through strategic national and local developments goals in order to identify critical spatial development issues assist by SEA/SA, this form is obviously adopted in UK. The hybrid planning system, which implemented in many countries such as Hong Kong and Singapore in that sense is a combination of the two above mentioned forms; mapping the land use through master plan making alongside with broad discretionary system.
KHALAFALLA OMER 