2 Planning land
How much of the land should be planned and how much designed? I would say
that remote areas dominated by natural processes should only be subjected to
thebroadest-scale planning, and certainly should escape any fine-scale design.
The rest of the world needs broad-scale planning to identify, protect, and develop
best land uses. In contrast, fine-scale design that protects and creates inspiring
places for people is extremely valuable in scattered spots, especially in urban
regions where people concentrate. How would you answer the question?
Land planning is now considered from three broad perspectives: (1) plan-
ning and land management; (2) conservation planning; and (3) urban planning
focused on urban regions.
Planning and land management
Leading off the chapter with land management highlights the relatively
short-term issues of planning, where adaptively managing existing land and its
resources, particularly protected land, is the goal. We begin with some perspec-
tives on the role of planning, and then focus on land management.
The role of planning
Physical planning is the prime concern here, rather than the relatively
non-spatial political, economic, social, and policy planning. Both urban plan-
ning and conservation planning focus on space. Place is more important in
urban planning, and habitat in conservation planning. Both place and habi-
tat have deep ties and meaning to space.Placeincludes the natural and the
built, but expresses the human affinity for a space (Norberg-Schulz1980,Seddon
1997).Habitatincludes the natural and sometimes the built, but highlights the