ABSTRACT
In 1971, the Swedish government initiated a national development project, ‘Den fysiska riksplaneringen’, which aimed to incorporate ecological factors into municipal land use planning. A government proposal concerning the integration of environmental issues into land use planning was issued in the following year. Since 1972, there have been considerable municipal and governmental efforts to incorporate environmental (and more recently sustainable development) issues into municipal land use planning. The government has gradually increased the role of the municipalities in implementing national environmental goals and in promoting sustainable development, notably through Government Bill 2000/01:130 1 and by introducing measurable sustainability indicators. The result is that environmental issues are now established as part of the land use planning agenda at municipal level. Municipalities have quickly become engaged in new developments in the field. This has also been the case with SEA. 2 As a result, therefore, SEA had entered the Swedish land use planning arena by the end of the 1980s through voluntary initiatives in a number of municipalities (Hilding-Rydevik, 1987, 1990; Asplund and Hilding-Rydevik, 1996).
