ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the making of a new structure plan for the county of Lancashire in the North West Region of England. It aims to illustrate the continuing tensions between the economic development objectives and the concern for environmental sustainability within the planning system. This account focuses on the process of strategic spatial planning, with regards to its institutional relations and its substantive issues, and the ways in which the process is shaped by the wider socio-economic and environmental context in an urban region. It attempts to examine how far the new environmental agenda has achieved a real leverage over economic discourse at the level of planning policies and practices.
