ABSTRACT
The way in which land is used is important for people: where they live, in what kind of house, where they go to work, how they get there, where their children go to school and play, where and how their food is produced and so on. And the way in which one person uses land can affect how others use land. So land-use is a matter of shared concern. Systematic efforts by government bodies to infl uence how people use land so that land-use becomes better-in one way or another-we call land-use planning. It is sometimes called spatial planning, especially when applied at a scale larger than cities. But at all scales the “object” is how land in particular locations is used, so I prefer the concrete term “land-use planning”. It is this activity which fascinates me and which has occupied me professionally for the last 50 years. The reason why I concentrate on this activity, although many other complementary activities are often placed under the term “spatial planning”, is given later. I have tried to develop a coherent framework for talking about that activity systematically and for improving the practice, and I have paid particular attention to the way in which development processes are organised and managed. Initially I did this using economic theories. Now my approach is more humanistic, for I want to prevent planning thought and practice being taken over by economics.
