ABSTRACT
Land use and land use policy are absolutely central themes in the sustainability debate. This can be demonstrated in two broad ways. First, land is an essential ingredient of all human activity and a fundamental requirement for any form of production or development. There is almost universal evidence from recent history that population growth and the patterns of development and wealth creation that Western nations have pursued have created massively increased demands for space. Additionally the transport and telecommunications advances of recent years have resulted in a loosening of the constraints of distance, allowing both a dispersal and an increase in the scale of human landusing activities. These increased space demands, and the land use changes that have accompanied them, together with the risk of social polarisation between rich and poor over access to land, have had profound implications for environmental protection and management. Second, in Britain perhaps even more than elsewhere, the system and institutions of planning that promote and regulate both economic development and environmental protection have always been firmly based upon land use. Planning is centrally concerned with allocating land between competing uses and it is clear that when growing demands upon a fixed amount of land exist alongside increased environmental awareness and heightened concerns (however imprecisely formulated) about sustainability, it is a field where the potential for conflict is becoming more acute.
