ABSTRACT
When travelling across cities, suburbs and countryside, you might ask yourself: “Why is this factory located over here?” or “Why are they building this new suburb left of the highway instead of on the right side?” Historically, much of the development of human-related land use was unplanned. Cities started as small settlements along strategically located areas (e.g. close to fertile land often located in delta areas) based on a loose organisation. This organisation became rationalised by both strategic defence considerations (fortified camps/cities) and commercial development (trade). The rapid
formal planning process of activities. Issues like sanitation, water supply and solid waste management transformed urban development from short term ‘organic’ planning into a rationalised process with a long-term horizon. This transformation took place on various scale levels, ultimately resulting in a spatial planning discipline in which land-use planning became the dominant means for organising society within spatiotemporal dimensions. Consequently, land-use planning is a catch-all term focusing on the strategy and methodology for the organisation of human-related activities in space and time.
