ABSTRACT
The practice of landscape scale planning has generally been undermined by the lack of a clear and robust set of policy instruments – in effect, we have often been faced with the prospect of having to plan without effective planning powers. Over the decades, ‘development planning’ has had weighty legislation and rafts of policy measures at its disposal, and even so has found difficulty in achieving its objectives. New legislation and policy guidance for spatial planning is being introduced, but its emphasis is still firmly on conventional definitions of ‘development’, related to construction, civil engineering works, minerals and associated changes of use. Influencing the drivers of landscape change continues to rely on far weaker and more fragmented provisions. Nevertheless, across different national legislatures, there is a recurrent repertoire of legal and policy instruments that can be deployed to effect landscape scale strategies.
