Foreword. Nature and scope. Overview of the planning process. Steps in land-use planning. Methods and sources.

This book provides an overview of recent developments and applications of the Land Use Scanner model, which has been used in spatial planning for well over a decade. Internationally recognized as among the best of its kind, this versatile model can be applied at a national level for trend extrapolation, scenario studies and optimization, yet can also be employed in a smaller-scale regional context, as demonstrated by the assortment of regional case studies included in the book. Alongside these practical examples from the Netherlands, readers will find discussion of more theoretical aspects of land-use models as well as an assessment of various studies that aim to develop the Land-Use Scanner model further. Spanning the divide between the abstractions of land-use modelling and the imperatives of policy making, this is a cutting-edge account of the way in which the Land-Use Scanner approach is able to interrogate a spectrum of issues that range from climate change to transportation efficiency. Aimed at planners, researchers and policy makers who need to stay abreast of the latest advances in land-use modelling techniques in the context of planning practice, the book guides the reader through the applications supported by current instrumentation. It affords the opportunity for a wide readership to benefit from the extensive and acknowledged expertise of Dutch planners, who have originated a host of much-used models.

This report is one of a series of reviews, commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to accompany the pre-Budget report 2006 (to be published 6 December 2006, Cm. 6984, ISBN 0101698429). It sets out recommendations to reform the planning system in England in support of sustainable economic growth and prosperity, whilst securing delivery of wider objectives including promoting community involvement, supporting local democracy and enhancing the environment. Key issues identified include the need: to ensure the planning system is more responsive to the market whilst delivering sustainable development; to ensure the appropriate use of land and to better manage the growing demand for development land; to streamline the planning system to increase certainty, reduce complexity and costs; to enhance the speed and quality of local authority decision-making; and to improve the appeals system to reduce delays. Recommendations include: the introduction of a new system for dealing with major infrastructure projects, based around national Statements of Strategic Objectives, and with a new independent Planning Commission to determine applications; the promotion of a positive planning culture within the plan-led system so that applications should be approved unless there is good reason to believe that the environmental, social or economic costs will exceed respective benefits; encouraging planning bodies to review their green belt boundaries to promote sustainable new development beyond towns and cities; and removal of the need for minor commercial developments that have little wider impact to require planning permission.

Dutch planning is widely known and admired for its ambitions and its achievements. This book provides, for the first time, a comprehensive description and analysis in English of its full range of policies and practices. It gives an up-to-date account of the principles - written and unwritten - behind the planning, and in addition shows how the practice sometimes ignores those principles in order to achieve better results. It describes the content of the policies, the measures taken to realise them, and the successes and failures. The book is not uncritical of Dutch land-use planning, but the author values its strengths and believes that planning in other countries could learn from them. These strengths arise in the continuing tension between the high ambitions of the Dutch planning, and the ingenuity and pragmatism exercised in order to realise those ambitions.