ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the new ethos of planning widely labelled as spatial planning and the emergence of spatial planning as a new ethos in 2002-04. It shows that how it sought to shift planning from a public mechanism concerned with trade-offs and antagonisms between growth, environmental protection and social objectives to an approach that eschewed trade-offs and instead sought 'win-win' outcomes in classic New Labour ways. Constant criticism and reforms, however ineffective, had led to an embattled, inward-looking and residualized practice largely concerned with regulating land and property in an ill-defined and variable public interest. The ambiguity about the nature of reform and the notion of spatial planning reflected deeper tensions within the heart of the Labour government about the role of the state, regulations and markets. Spatial planning was originally 'an uneasy combination of different aspirations' but its ambiguity and vacuity became its major strength in the eyes of the government.
