Professor Alister Scott presented perspectives on reimagining rural land use policy from the edge spaces where rural and urban uses intersect. He discussed four narratives of problematic land uses: uncontrolled development causing conflicts; the disconnect between urban and rural governance; gentrification displacing rural communities; and illegal development challenging regulations. Common policy failures include lack of evidence, top-down solutions, separate treatment of natural/built environments, and outdated definitions. Successful approaches engage communities, use interdisciplinary teams across scales, experiment collectively under shared visions, and apply mixed tools within new governance models.

1. Re-imagining Rural Land Use Policy:
Perspectives from the ‘Edge’
Professor Alister Scott BA PhD MRTPI
Working Party on Territorial
Development Policies in Rural Areas
OECD Paris 6th December 2012

2. An Interdisciplinary Perspective
Focus on ‘edge’ spaces working across rural and
urban land uses where they intersect and
connect
Applied academic with a focus on proportionate
evidence-based research and policy leading to
deliverable outcomes.
• Concern with the process by which policy,
practice and decisions are enabled as much as
outcome.

3. 4 Quick Narratives of Land Use
Problematics
• Fire Breathing dragon
• The Urban-Rural divide
• Rural fringe
gentrification
• Illegal Low Impact
Development

4. Fire Breathing Lessons
Lack of vision within which solution fitted.
Expert-led solution imposed without evidence.
Beware any expert (especially academics) offering
gifts or solutions.
Lack of human and physical responses to manage
solution.
Lack of translation and application of solution to
the local context

5. Natural Environment lens Built Environment lens
Incentives Control
Natural Environment White Paper National Planning Policy Framework
Habitat and Landscape Scale Local Scale
DEFRA Government department DCLG Government Department
Ecosystem Approach Spatial Planning
Classifying and Valuing Zoning and Ordering
National Ecosystem Assessment Sustainability Assessments
Catchment Management Plans Development/Neighbourhood Plans
Nature Improvement Areas Enterprise Zones / Green Belts
Local Nature Partnerships Local Enterprise Partnerships
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Rural Economy and
Land Use Programme

6. Rural-Urban Divide Lessons
Forgotten space as place in its own right.
No body with strategic oversight across urban
and rural domains.
Separate institutional frameworks, goals, tools
and designations. create disjointed and
contradictory responses.
Separate spatial foci and institutional silos limit
response to connected problems; e.g. Climate
change, flooding, energy & transport.

7. Jamestown

11. Lessons
• Gentrification conflicts with post-apartheid vision.
• Investment of foreign capital and wealthy migrants.
• Gated communities versus informal settlements
(Highest Gini index coefficient in the world).
• Loss/Sale of farmland due to inflated land market
pressures and price.
• Impotence of plans for rural planning due to inward
investment on golf courses, business parks and
vineyards.
• Loss of trust with large investors not delivering
community benefits

12. Brithdir Mawr

13. Lessons
Both sides (National Park Authority and Brithdir Mawr) claim
sustainable development is on their side.
Planning system seen s negative obstacle to low impact
lifestyle resulting in a ‘let’s just do it attitude ’.
Planning quest for order inhibits new ideas that do not fit in.
Planners have tools to encourage the new and the bold but
their use is limited by risk averse attitudes.
Contradiction in scales of decision making: national exemplar
(Welsh Assembly Government vs. Demolish order (National
Park/Local Authority)
Out of date (1987) development plan for decision making
Out of date (1947/1990) definitions of productivist agriculture

14. Disintegrated Development

15. Different lenses

16. Common Response Fallacies
• Develop new academic
concept
• Creeping incrementalism
• More evidence
• More Regulation
• More Localism
• More Free market
• Institutional reform
• Behaviour change
• Black and white ‘media’issues

17. ‘Journey’ to land use integration
• Path to success is littered
with failures
• Path to success is
illuminated by individuals
going beyond convention
in spite of the system
(Scott, 2011)
• Path to success is enabled
through using improved
interdisciplinary glasses

18. New Jargon-free Lenses

19. 3 Journeys into Land Use
Experiments
• TAYPLAN land use plan
• Rewilding
• Garden Cities

22. Ingredients
• Engaging local communities in high level plan at
earliest stages and thereafter.
• Local Authority planners from each area working
on joint strategic plan reinforces scalar
connections.
• 8 policies and 24 pages ensures maximum
exposure and engagement (people read it!)
• Indicators identified for each of the plan policies
• Action plan developed along clear lines of
accountability, priority and timing.

24. Approach
•

25. Ingredients
• NGOs/charities have the capacity and agenda to
instigate land use experiments.
• It may not be popular, but it is possible to
develop a bold vision underpinned by robust
evidence.
• Exploit new markets to finance & justify
managing land for public goods e.g. emerging
markets for carbon and clean water.
• Traditional forms of land management may lose
out; is managing the land for carbon and wildlife
compatible with farmer’s identity and motives?

26. Garden City

27. Schenzhen Garden City
China

28. Ingredients
• Set within a national spatial plan and vision for growth
rather than an isolated idea.
• 21st century re-interpretation of Ebenezer Howards
ideals incorporating climate change.
• Town Countryside integral to the model; not a bolt on
extra.
• Stakeholders involved across built and natural
environment (from idea to evaluation).
• New models of community governance and private
public partnerships.
• New Financial tools e.g. Tax Incremental Financing.

29. Concluding Recipe
• Learn by making mistakes
• Experiment with new ideas collectively within
agreed visions
• Use effective evidence to support ideas and
decisions
• Use a mix of regulatory, incentive and
engagement tools within new models of land
use governance.
• Do not overcook!

30. • Alister Scott
• http://www.bcu.ac.uk/research/-centres-of-
excellence/centre-for-environment-and-
society/projects/relu