ABSTRACT
This chapter explains different meanings of "the environment" in the English planning system in the context of changing assumptions about human-nature relationships. The changing meanings of the environment are both reflected in and constituted through environmental discourses in planning. The rise of the planning movement in the late nineteenth century in England and elsewhere in the UK as a response to urban industrialization was both socially and environmentally motivated. Tradition has broken down Urban influences neutralize the country. Seeing the environment as a storehouse of resources and functions that can be exploited at will for human benefits has been a powerful and enduring conception of the environment in industrial societies. Climate change has introduced two new concepts, mitigation and adaptation, each with distinctly different implications for environmental discourses in planning. The most explicit manifestation of this human-centred view is the persistent utilitarian treatment of the environment as a storehouse of resources and functions for human exploitation.
