Elizabeth Wilson

Public Urban Open Space and Human Thermal Comfort: The Implications of Alternative Climate Change and Socio-economic Scenarios

Abstract Climate change adaptation presents particular challenges in urban areas, where historic and current investment in fixed stock and infrastructure might constrain adaptation. This paper explores how two elements of adaptive capacity—building that capacity and delivering adaptation actions—are likely to be constrained by wider social and economic factors affecting urban societies. Public open space in urban areas, although having a vital role to play under conditions of climate change, is already a contested policy area. Using the field of outdoor thermal comfort as an example of current adaptive behaviour, the paper reports on a study that examined the perceptions of thermal comfort of different users of public spaces in Manchester. It considers the implications of climate change scenarios for the ability to maintain thermal comfort in open spaces and examines the scope for physical intervention, such as through urban and built form design, to build adaptive capacity. However, it also explores possible scenarios of urban life under conditions of climate change and concludes that socio-economic determinants of access to and management of open space are likely to be of critical significance in delivering adaptation options, which are accessible to all and meet objectives of social justice.

Developing UK spatial planning policy to respond to climate change

Abstract In 2004, the UK government published advice to planning authorities on ways in which the planning system might respond to climate change. This paper provides an account of the process of the formulation of that advice and the subsequent policy guidance, analysing the tensions revealed and offering an explanation of why the process took some time. It argues that the story can be understood in institutionalist terms, which recognize the different perspectives of planning policy communities and climate change policy communities. The decision to publish advice provided a policy arena in which these different interests sought to influence the agenda, employing competing policy discourses of discretionary enablement and more urgent prescription. These discourses partly reflected different approaches to the role of government, but also revealed the complexities of climate change as a new and uncharted issue facing the planning system.

Cities’ low-carbon plans in an ‘age of austerity’: an analysis of UK local authority actions, attitudes and responses

Background: Cities play a significant role globally in creating carbon emissions but, as centers of major population, innovation and social practice, they also offer important opportunities to tackle climate change. The new challenges faced by cities in an ‘age of austerity’ and decentralist agendas present substantial challenges for coordinated multilevel governance. Results: Based on research carried out in 2011–2012, this paper examines the attitudes and responses of sustainability and climate change officers in UK cities that have prepared low carbon and climate change plans, in the context of these challenges. Using a conceptual framework that analyses ‘awareness’, ‘analysis’ and ‘actions’ (in the context of spending cuts and a new ‘decentralized’ policy agenda) this research suggests that progress on low-carbon futures for cities continues to be fragmented, with increased funding constraints, short-termism and lack of leadership acting as key barriers to progress. Conclusion: Recent UK national policies (including localism, austerity measures and new economic incentives) have not only created further uncertainties, but also scope for cities’ local innovation through policy leverage and self-governing actions.

Environmental statements, environmental information, environmental assessment and the UK planning process

Since 1988 and the introduction into UK planning of the requirement for formal environmental impact assessment (EIA) of major projects, there has been much research on the quality of the environmental statements (ESs) submitted with planning applications. Yet the ES is only one part of the total environmental information (EI); its quality does not necessarily reflect the overall quality of the EIA process or of the decisions which flow from it. Ten case studies demonstrate this point, the complex process of gathering environmental information, and its relationship to the ES and decisionmaking. While the ES remains a key feature of EIA, it is often far less significant than the mass of other information assessed by local planning authorities in making decisions on major projects.

Governance of climate change adaptation: introduction to the Special Issue

The international conference on Deltas in Times of Climate Change: Connecting World Science and Deltas was held in Rotterdam over three days in September and October 2010, drawing some one thousand participants from sixty countries. It soon became apparent that there was considerable interest in the governance part of that theme, and so two sessions were held on governance: one on international comparisons, the other on regional strategies focusing particularly on Dutch examples. This special issue is devoted to five papers from these governance-themed sessions.

Comment: Response to Planning Theory and Practice 2006, 7(2), Interface: Is the Issue of Climate Change too Big for Spatial Planning?

Your Interface section was a timely contribution to the curiously neglected area of the response of spatial planning to climate change. Your contributors rightly drew attention to the multi-level scope of the responsibilities and relationships involved, to the issues of the gap between rhetoric and practical implementation, and to the tensions between actions to reduce the causes of climate change, and actions to adapt to it. The articles usefully explained the complex responses of central and local government in Europe and Canada. However, there are two dimensions which I thought your contributors underplayed: the inter-generational aspect of climate change, and the impact of shorter-term political horizons. These have powerfully influenced the planning response to climate change, and yet give some pointers to the scope for shifting practice more fully or robustly in future. Your contributors, especially Campbell, Bulkeley and Robinson, emphasise the perception of climate change as an aspect of sustainable development conventionally interpreted as the need to reconcile or fulfil all social, economic and environmental objectives. They argue that spatial planning’s response to climate change, both from central and local government, has been to place climate change as one further element in this apparent balancing act. But, quite apart from the debate over whether this undermines the environmental dimensions of sustainability, this also overlooks the essential temporal dimension of sustaining into the future, and the implications this has for intergenerational justice (Page, 1999). Climate change is one area where the tools of futures-thinking such as scenarios, visioning and story-telling (Couclelis, 2005) can offer a means of constructing consistent and coherent story-lines in order to highlight and explore policy-choices and decisions. In climate change contexts, these scenarios can extend to the horizons of centuries, such as UKCIP’s scenarios of 2020s, 2050s and 2080s (Hulme et al., 2002), or millennia (Lenton et al., 2006). In these contexts, asking spatial planning to take the long-term view means thinking through the issues of equity between generations. Extending the planning horizon beyond the 20-year horizon of the English Regional Spatial Strategies (however admirable this shift from former shorter-term horizons is) to encompass at least the life-time of the developments being now planned (usually 60–100 years) requires us to consider our obligations to future generations. It means recognising the conditions under which the occupants and users of those developments will be living and working. Scenarios and other futures tools can be used here, for example, the alternative climate change scenarios based on different emission Planning Theory & Practice, Vol. 8, No. 1, 125–127, March 2007

The Role of Local Government in Environmental Action in Slovakia

In the period of transition from communism, the countries of central and eastern Europe have made considerable efforts to adopt new environmental legislation and to create new institutions. However, the implementation of these powers, particularly at the level of local government, remains problematic. This article reviews the arguments for developing capacity for taking environmental action at the municipal level, and then examines the actual experience of one such country, the Slovak Republic. While Slovakia displays many of the features of policy making familiar to other transitional countries, it has faced some particular political problems. Recent legislation has given formal competencies in the field of environmental protection to local government, but it remains fragmented and relatively poorly resourced. Nevertheless, there is evidence that, through a combination of mutual support through national associations and the establishment of international links, local authorities are adopting a number of innovative approaches and strategies which should be better able to address the changing character of environmental problems.

Capacity for Environmental Action in Slovakia

Capacity for environmental protection is important in developed and transitional countries, but the latter sometimes present a paradox where capacity has been created at the same time as public pressure and awareness has diminished. Slovakia presents a particular paradox, as its new democratic institutions have proved especially fragile. This paper adopts a framework developed by Janicke and Weidner in crossnational studies which implies that the use made of environmental capacity is a function of institutional, informational and structural conditions. By analysing the key features of the Slovakian environmental policy process in the context of these conditions, the paper confirms the utility of the model, and points to the prospects for future policy implementation.

Implementing new EU environmental law: the short life of the UK Site Waste Management Plan Regulations

Using an analytical framework based on current implementation theory, this research examines the transposition of the EU Waste Framework Directive into UK law and local government development control procedures. The study which forms the basis of this paper was commissioned by the UK Government to evaluate the effectiveness of the construction Waste Management Plans introduced as a legal requirement in 2008. It was found that its implementation had largely failed and that these new laws had been ineffective. Subsequently, in March 2012 the UK Government announced its intention to withdraw these Regulations. In the context of current deregulatory pressures, but with the continuing need to minimise construction waste, this research concludes that more attention should be paid by central government to their current ‘top-down’ implementation procedures in order to better roll-out new environmental legislation in the future.

More Than Local Impacts: Aggregate Quarrying In The National Parks Of England And Wales

Aggregate quarrying plays an important role in the local economy of the UKs national parks, providing local jobs and expenditure on local services. There are also adverse local impacts from traffic, dust, noise and blasting. However, it is the status of the parks as crucial features of the nations landscape capital that increases the significance of localised landscape impacts to a level which outweighs any benefits that quarrying provides. This article is based upon commissioned research into the impact of quarrying on the national parks and assesses those impacts against the functions of the parks as nationally important designated landscapes.