ABSTRACT
Spatial policy and planning are fundamentally about locating facilities, services, industry, housing, utilities and other land uses that are required by society and the state in such a way that benefits are justified against the foreseen costs. Many policies have a spatial dimension in that economic activities tend to cluster, and similar social groups exist in proximity to each other, so benefits and costs, for instance through the collapse of heavy industry, are unevenly distributed in space. However, spatial policies and land-use plans are much more explicitly about where things should be. There are ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, with NIMBYism representing one response when the ‘losers’ are proposed to be ‘here’ rather than ‘there’. If policy is premised on achieving the greatest good (taking a wholly apolitical perspective!) and minimizing harm, we are left with the problem that Locally Unwanted Land Uses (LULUs) have to go somewhere and there can be opposition in almost every direction. Alternatively, environmental decision-making may be concerned with the allocation of scarce resources that are desired in a number of places. Public funding for regeneration, amenity or conservation associated investments such as woodland planting, access enhancement, wetland creation or ‘re-wilding’ schemes1 may be subject to what is in effect a bidding process, attempting to ‘win’ the proposed development or other measures. This might be described as NIMBYism without the N. In neither case of course are positions going to be universally held within any given community or locality, for instance in the case of wind farms where the landowner and development company may be united in their support, against the wishes of other local stakeholders. Determining which options are ‘best’ lies at the core of environmental decision-making. This chapter draws on research and consultancy experience for a range of organizations in the UK. These include projects on wind energy, community forests and the mapping of tranquillity2-7. The experience spans what might be simplistically identified as a divide between ‘development’ and ‘conservation’ interests, enabling us to offer a commentary on some of the values that are often implicit, and sometimes explicit, in what may generally be termed environmental decision-making.
