Changing Contexts in Spatial Planning

Book excerpt: This book considers the major forces that have emerged to reshape planning following 2010, including national infrastructure project delivery, the Localism Act (2011) and neighbourhood planning. This period also saw the introduction of the replacement of regional plans by new strategic sub-regional approaches in combined local authorities for functional economic areas. All of this is set within the UN’s New Urban Agenda, Brexit, the changing programme for the EU post 2021 and the likely effects that these will have on UK planning practice. There is also a discussion on the evolving planning policies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the ways in which the UK nations are beginning to work together more closely and with Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man through the spatial planning group in the British–Irish Council. Although primarily focused on the UK, the text sets some of the policy discussions in a wider international context including agreements on the environment and the emerging alignment of governance and economies in newly recognised sub-regional spaces. It follows Effective Practice in Spatial Planning (2011), which addressed the developments in planning in the UK between 2004 and 2010, and discusses the major changes in all aspects of planning policy in the following period.