NEW DIRECTIONS IN AUSTRALIAN ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING: SOME POINTERS FROM THE UK STRUCTURE PLANNING EXPERIENCE

Abstract: Environmental planning legislation in Australia has been primarily concerned with the formulation of detailed land-use allocation plans. Changing circumstances are leading to a more broadly-based view of the planning process centred around the delineation of development principles and the broad structure of land uses. The United Kingdom's experience with structure plans during the past decade is of value in reshaping environmental planning in Australia. Within the United Kingdom both the slow speed of structure plan preparation and its very broad scope have posed problems. By merging land-use issues with the development plans of other government instrumentalities structure plans have exceeded the responsibility of the central planning agency. Simultaneously they have been seized upon by the public as the only formal means of dissent against governmental decisions in such areas as social service and housing. Reactions have been twofold. In Scotland regional reports have imposed an additional corporate plan which provides guidelines for subsequent control of land use. In England and Wales structure plans have become increasingly general, long-term and land-use orientated, thereby side-stepping the problems their introduction created. To be effective in Australia, structure plans must achieve corporate liaison with other government departments and statutory undertakings. This will be achieved not by copying the English structure planning model, but by working towards regional reports prepared by a combination of State government agencies and reconciled through decisions at parliamentary level. Local, detailed land-use plans, based upon written reports as in the United Kingdom, can fit readily into such a framework, supplemented where necessary by State-wide guidelines pertaining to critical land-use considerations. The coordination of development will be facilitated by the liberalization and increased availability of professionally recognized qualifications.     

POLITICS, PLANNING, AND CAPITALISM: NATIONAL ECONOMIC PLANNING IN FRANCE AND BRITAIN

Abstract. This study examines explanations for the success or failure of planning efforts of the 1945 British Labour Government and the French Government ofthe Fourth Republic. Most conventional views of British postwar planning depict it as hopelessly weak and disorganized while French planningisseen as reasonably well-armed and effectively organized. However, these views reflect excessive attention on purely administrative as well as political-cultural explanations and tend to ignore the critical underlying role of domestic politics and power. The French planning effort was only one element of a broader, relatively uncoordinated collaborative process. carried on among bureaucratic state elites and large industry, which effectively accelerated industrial investment and economic growth. Its success hinged on the inability of organized labour effectively to defend its wage interests within the political structure. In the British case, manipulation of capital markets was only marginally productive given the power and autonomy of the finance sector while the alternative attempt to plan through manpower direction failed due to the ability of organized labour to defend its wage interests in the face of chronic inflation. In each case. the structure of political power was most important in determining the success of the divergent technical approaches to planning.     

PARTICIPATION AND PERFORMANCE: DECENTRALISED PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTATION IN ETHIOPIA

This article discusses how decentralisation policies are enacted in the planning and implementation of natural resource management interventions in rural Ethiopia. A key element of decentralisation policy is the emphasis on greater participation by local communities. Drawing on qualitative research conducted with government staff and farmers, this paper illustrates how different actors perceive and implement national policy and how these actions affect the longer‐term sustainability of land management interventions. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.