Views on planning and expectations of SEA: the case of transport planning [An article from: Environmental Impact Assessment Review]

Views on planning and expectations of SEA: the case of transport planning [An article from: Environmental Impact Assessment Review] Review

This digital document is a journal article from Environmental Impact Assessment Review, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
This paper examines the effectiveness of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in transport planning in the light of different views of planning: synoptic optimising planning, communicative planning and planning as a social struggle. The analysis uses empirical materials from 17 case studies collected by survey from Member Countries of the United Nation's Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE) and further processed in a practitioners' workshop, and also a detailed case study carried out in Finland. The case studies and the workshop identified a set of necessary conditions and facilitating factors that contribute to the effectiveness of strategic environmental assessments in transport planning. Our findings suggest that transport planning can often best be characterised as a social struggle over problem definitions and future choices. Thus, the effectiveness of SEA will depend on how well the assessment fits into the planning context and on its actual contribution to debates on problem definitions. Specific procedural steps may improve the effectiveness but explicit requirements to recognise SEA in decision making are likely to be a key condition.