ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the effectiveness of New Zealand's new environmental planning regime to the year 2000 by evaluating the quality of policies and plans prepared by councils under the Resource Management Act. It also examines the organizational capability of local government for plan-making, which is essential to carrying out the technically and politically complex tasks required for effects-based plan preparation. The book focuses on how local government decision-makers can enhance local capability to prepare high-quality plans. It also focuses on four local cases, chosen for the relatively good quality of their district plans. They are the Far North District; Queenstown Lakes District; Tauranga District; and Tasman District, which is a unitary authority with regional and district functions. Around the time of Rio de Janeiro, some countries, like the Netherlands and New Zealand, were already leading the way with quite innovative approaches to environmental planning.