ABSTRACT
Planning power has been substantially devolved to the regional tier of government in Italy and Spain – countries with a Napoleonic legal and administrative background. This has led since the Second World War to fragmentation and complexity in the case of Italy, while in Spain devolution has been the direct result of more recent pressures for constitutional reform, with a move to federalism and associated changes in planning powers and responsibilities. In both countries, but to a different extent, there is a combination of centralised control and a responsiveness to regional aspirations, which in planning has been reflected by ‘the tendency to prepare a national code of . . . regulations and to create a hierarchy of plans based on a zoning approach’ (Newman and Thornley, 1996: 72).
