14 June 1993 New Book Stirs Environmental Planning Debate

Despair about the future fabric of social and cultural urban life in New Zealand has been expressed by two university academics in a book they have edited on environmental planning.

Dr Ali Memon of Otago University and Dr Harvey Perkins of Lincoln University say that while the new environmental management regime, epitomized by the likes of the Resource Management Act, gives local and regional communities the chance to enhance the natural and built environments of urban New Zealand that the fact is that the golden opportunity to do something has been relegated to the status of a "non-issue".

Dr Memon and Dr Perkins say there is a legislative vacuum as far as any mandatory requirement is concerned for local authorities to pursue a broad approach to community and bio-physical planning.

"The history of planning in New Zealand is characterized by a reluctance by most local authority politicians to engage in community planning," they say.

"Now, with the demise of the NZ Planning Council, there is no agency outside Government to act as a public advocate for research and debate on urban planning issues.

"This contrasts with the many non-governmental agencies concerned with natural and physical environmental issues."

"Without such non-governmental agencies planning is doomed to remain fundamentally political."

Urban planning is, however, only one topic in this wide ranging book in which the editors have assembled contributed essays from 15 different academics and professionals with backgrounds in planning and environmental issues.

Other areas examined are transportation  (Dr Chris Kissling of Lincoln and Malcolm Douglas of Porirua City Council), water resources (Dr Jonet Ward of Lincoln and Frank Scarf of Canterbury Regional Council), mineral and energy resources (Bruce Chapman of Carter Holt Harvey Ltd), indigenous forests (Dr Memon and Dr Geoff Wilson of King's College, London), rural and mountain land use (Emeritus Professor Kevin O'Connor of Lincoln), the coastal environment (Hamish Rennie of the Department of Conservation), and recreation and tourism (Dr Perkins, Dr Pat Devlin and Dr David Simmons all of Lincoln and Richard Batty of Pennsylvania State University). The opening essay, on the urban environment, is authored by Dr Perkins, Dr Memon and Dr Simon Swaffield all of Lincoln and Lisa Gelfand formerly of Lincoln and now of the San Francisco Housing Authority.

The book's aim is to stimulate discussion about the effects of legislative measures in all of these areas.

"The 1990s will be an important and interesting decade for people concerned about environmental planning in New Zealand," say the editors.

"The Environmental Act 1986, the Conservation Act 1987, the Resource Management Act 1991 and related legislation are seen by many as signalling the start of a new approach to environmental issues.

"The decade we are now in will be the testing time to see if expectations are realised in maintaining and improving environmental quality in New Zealand's urban, rural, wilderness and coastal areas."

The editors admit that the choice of planning issues discussed in the book is selective but they believe it is representative of the concerns in currently in the arena of public debate in New Zealand.

Each of the topics is dealt with in a similar format which includes the historical perspective and the changes which have taken place since the mid-1980s when the legislative overhaul began.

The book is targeted at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate university students and planning practitioners, and it had its origins in discussions at the annual conference of the New Zealand Planning Institute held in Dunedin in 1990. The editors see it as a contribution to the critical literature on environmental planning in New Zealand which they describe as "limited". The book is strong on the theme of sustainability. The editors point out that sustainable development is a centrally important concept in New Zealand's new resource and environmental legislation.

"Given the acceptance of sustainability as a policy goal, the central role of decision-making agencies is to ensure that the actions of current generations do not substantially limit options available to future generations and that the reasonable needs of all humans are met"

A key question examined by several of the book's contributors is the extent to which attempts to incorporate the ideals of sustainability are likely to be effective, given the nature of New Zealand's environment and society.

"After all," say the editors, "an important requirement of sustainable development proposals is that they have a wide degree of social acceptability."

The importance of attention to the sustainability ideal is typified in the book by the comments of Emeritus Professor Kevin O'Connor in his essay on Rural and Mountain Land Use: "The special planning challenge presented by the deforested, frequently steep and even mountainous terrain of the New Zealand rural scene is to give real meaning to the concept of 'land use sustainability'. The planning has to be for survival of a rurally based way of life. Planning for both economic and ecological sustainability of land use in rural New Zealand represents a worthy challenge for skilled and imaginative planning professionals but they cannot do it on their own."

The key to the dilemma identified by Professor O'Connor is perhaps best expressed by Dr Perkins, Dr Pat Devlin, Dr David Simmons and Richard Batty in the book's concluding essay, "Recreation and Tourism".

While Dr Perkins opens the book with concern about the politicizing of planning in the urban context, he and the final essay's co-authors conclude by stating that, at least in reference to recreation and tourism planning, the solution to many of that sector's problems lies not with planners but with politicians, the leaders of recreation and tourism organisations and members of the public.

"In this situation," they say, "planners and scholars have a responsibility to examine critically the issues and stimulate informed debate about them."

Overall that is in fact the very aim of the book - to stimulate informed debate.

Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand