ABSTRACT

One of the classic themes for planning evaluation has been the ability of evaluation tools to help planners (and others involved in planning) to structure and arrange large amounts of otherwise complex information relevant to decision-making. Clearly, well-structured evaluation can assist planners to create clarity about impacts, make proposals more legitimate and useful given societal needs (e.g., Oliveira and Pinho, 2010), and, therefore contribute to sustainable and participatory planning. The aspect of information use and structure has received particular attention in the light of recent efforts to include ecological aspects into planning evaluation. The chapters in this section discuss the question of information usage

relevant to ecological issues, and they propose some ways to increase the utility of planning evaluation work itself. All contributions here address the implications of ecological values to sustainable and participatory planning efforts. The emphasis, however, lies with the practice of doing evaluation itself: using eco-information, providing decision-support, suggesting tools for measuring biodiversity attributes or bringing ecological effects into play, and, finally, to understand the usage of sustainability objectives in practice. The chapters in this section show this focus in a variety of ways.