Sustainable Urban Planning

be also added the conformity costs, those add-on costs of
meeting the previously disregarded environmental and social
provisions now considered to be part and parcel of socially
acceptable sustainable development projects and conservation
practice.

Considering that the broad aim of risk assessment is manage-
ment of direct impacts and adverse effects for abatement, mit-
igation and possibly project denial, it necessarily involves the
collation of a wide spectrum of economic, environmental and
socio-political information. This subject is treated admirably
in Neil Orloff’s (1988) Environmental Impact Process, and is a
matter continually under re-evaluation and up for re-
expression at the Resources for the Future risk management
centre (www.rff.org).
The RIA process should be both purposeful and facilitative,
with no dispiriting time lags. The assessment panel is expected,
on the one hand, to be firm and consistent about the style and
content of the base-line studies they require; yet on the other hand
to be sponsor-friendly and generative in attitude. This matter of
attitude is an important part of ‘seed bed support’, particularly
in regard to being facilitative to project initiatives. Most Panels
become stalled at Decision Node 12 ‘Collation’ (the mitigating
and monitoring measures), and Decision Node 14 ‘Resolution’
(involving dispute negotiation and securing acceptable alterna-
tives). Relative to the resolution-resolving process there is
available the American-derived account by McCreary and
Gamman (1990) ‘Finding Solutions to Disputes’.^13 Impact abate-
ment often comes down to ‘who’ can lay ‘how much’ abatement
and enforcement on the line, which returns to the need to
identify a regulated, in other words locked-on, set of socially
acceptable policies for monitoring the progression, intervention,
stop-notice engagement, mitigation enforcement and eventually
the auditing and remedying of adverse outcomes. It is important to keep in
mind that, locally ameliorative as Risk Impact Assessment procedures may claim
to be, they are only a part of wider community impact, and are at best suspect,
and at worst faulty, being, from my possibly cynical perspective, about 30 per cent
sound science, 30 per cent economic speculation, and 40 per cent public relations
hype!

AWork and jobs checklistof the kind cobbled together in figure 4.2 can also be
usefully incorporated into the RIA process, for employment is the outcome most
sought from growth patterning in both the realms of conservancy and develop-
ment. Such an array can reliably inform impact abatement policy; yet very
often such an exercise does little more than audit an investment recommen-
dation for private enterprise investors. For Kelman (1981: see also Otway and

Growth Pattern Management 145

KINDS OF RISK

Insurance

Entrepreneurial

Construction

Technical

Environmental

Sociopolitical

Situation [Cultural-

Racial]

Gender and Age

Actual and Perceived

Acceptable

Tolerable

Necessary

Breaking the Impasse,

Susskind and Cruikshank,

1987

Inducements,

sweeteners, softeners,

come-ons and bribes!

Anything ‘under the

table’ accepted by an

official at any level of

public service in a an

open democracy, is

criminal. All bribes are

off. Yet ‘understandings’

are often entered into;

and for operational

personnel it is important

to ensure that these are

recorded and passed on

for politicians to handle,

advisedly.