Saturday, November 4, 2017

Regional Planning





It concerns planning for a sub-national territory with known scale (size) and extent (scope), normally a contiguous area whose parts have common or complementary characteristics and are linked by intensive interaction or flows. The whole region is set apart from neighboring territories by its distinctive economic and social characteristics, continuities and discontinuities, opportunities and problems, even though it may not have defined local authority structures and clear administrative boundaries.

It is intermediate between national and urban levels and straddles the gap between national and grassroots levels.

Region is always extended urban space – it has urban as well as rural components.

-       as cited in Regions: Regional Planning and Development, Concepts, Principles, and Strategies
           Oshean Lee C. Garonita, EnP., PIEP

-         

Urban and Regional Planning
URP is the unified development of urban communities and their environs and of states, regions and the nation as a whole, as expressed through determination of the comprehensive arrangement of land uses and land occupancy and their regulation

Spatial planning was defined as ‘the methods used largely by the public sector to influence the future distribution of activities in space’ (CEC 1997b p. 24). This definition, from the EU compendium of spatial planning systems and policies, is developed further: spatial planning embraces measures to coordinate the spatial impacts of other sectoral policies, to achieve a more even distribution of economic development between regions than would otherwise be created by market forces, and to regulate the conversion of land and property uses.

-       American Institute of Certified Planners




URP refers to the scientific, orderly and aesthetic disposition of land, buildings, resources, facilities and communication routes, in use and in development, with a view to obviating congestion and securing the maximum practicable degree of economy, efficiency, convenience, sound environment.


-       Canadian Institute of Planners


Encyclopedia of Urban Studies
1. American – urban & regional planning
2. British – town & country planning
3. French – “ amanagement du territoire” or environmental planning
4. United Nations – human settlements planning


Importance of Regional Planning

The importance of regional development policy for national development cannot be overemphasized. On one hand, it is especially important in countries where regional disparities are fairly marked that these imbalances cannot just be overlooked both from the point of view of attaining equity as well as maintaining social cohesion. On the other, the development of regions considering their growth potentials would help promote sustainable growth of the national economy through a more rational population distribution, increased employment opportunities and enhanced productivity.

-       httpdirp3.pids.gov.phrisdpspidsdps0203.pdf



Focus of Regional Planning

1.    Decentralization policies
2.    Distribution of population
3.    Reduction of economic disparities among regions – versus economic polarization
4.    Inter-regional allocation or redistribution of resources (regional convergence)
5.    Institutional capacitation (e.g. reorganization of local governments
6.    Regional planning as networking


The new paradigm of Regional Planning since the 1990s:
1. The real assets of a region are the actors within the region, their resources and the specific regional culture of cooperation, communication and competition.
2. The core of spatial planning is no longer the elaboration of plans and programs. Regional development must promote the realization of planning goals by supporting the cooperation between different stakeholders, both frompublic administration and the private sector.
3. Planning and acting in networks is especially important at the regional level.
4. the role of space becomes different and planners need special knowledge (ex. international marketing)

Aspects of Regional Planning
Physical
Economic
Social
Cultural
Environmental

The Purposes of Regional Planning

The primary purpose is deciding on the general distribution of new activities and developments. This is necessarily indicated on some map base, but the scale of regional planning and other considerations will dictate the level of detail given in showing, for example, new settlements, areas of commercial and economic development, placing of linear or other major infrastructure.


REGIONAL PLANNING THEORIES
 Agricultural Location Theory
The von Thunen model of agricultural land use was developed in the pre-Industrialization era, and was a representation of the most efficient and economical use of land surrounding a metropolitan center, designed to maximize industry profit.
The model is based on many limiting assumptions – that the soil composition surrounding a city 360-degrees is uniform, that there are no geological anomalies such as mountains or rivers to disrupt the structure, that the city is indeed centrally, compactly located…there are many obvious shortcomings.  And in our post-industrial society the shortcoming are even more manifold, due to the redistribution of jobs away from the agricultural sector and the emergence of the “suburb,” among other obvious differences.  It is easy to imagine that von Thunen’s model would be obsolete in this day and age.
The von Thunen model is most relevant today in less developed countries.  There, the development of transportation and food preservation is much less than in rich countries and von Thunen's model still applies to a greater degree.  In the rich world, the model is also applicable in that it emphasizes that land near to cities is more expensive and therefore cannot really be used for uses that do not bring in a great deal of money per unit of land area.

Weakness
The von Thunen model has weaknesses because it does not allow for things like roads or railroads that make it easier to transport goods over long distances.  He also does not anticipate things like refrigerated transport that would allow even perishable things to be transported over long distances.
AGROPOLITAN MODEL

Agropolitan approach of Friedmann and Douglass (1975, 1978) posited that rural development could be best pursued by linking it to urban development at the local level. The rural town was seen as the principal site for non-agricultural and political-administrative functions rather than as a growth pole; local knowledge should be incorporated into planning processes at the local level, and the district scale was seen as the appropriate unit for development. Thus, decentralisation, democratization and participation were key factors (Douglass, 1998a).

Starting such processes of development required at least three factors;
access to agricultural land and water;
the devolution of the political authority to the local level (decentralisation);
a shift in national development policies in favour of a diversified agricultural production
(Douglass, 1998 a)


GROWTH POLE (Francois Perroux)

       “Growth does not appear everywhere and all at once; it manifests itself in points or ‘poles’ of growth, with variable intensities; it spreads by different channels with variable terminal effects for the economy as a whole.”
Growth Pole - A spatial agglomeration of related industries which contains a growing number of propulsive firms, which, through their expansion, induce growth in the surrounding hinterland.
Propulsive firm/industry - dominant economic unit which when it grows or innovates, induces growth in the other economic units. It may be a firm, a cluster of firms within the same sector (i.e., an industry), or a collection of firms which have shared agreement (industrial estate).
The growth pole theory is based on the belief that governments of developing countries can induce economic growth and welfare by investing heavily in capital-intensive industries in large
urban centres or regional capitals. This growth is supposed to spread to the rural areas in a process of regional development (Rondinelli, 1985; Unwin, 1989).

  1. Attractive as a policy tool for the following reasons:
            - owing to the various agglomeration economies it tends to be a very efficient way of generating development;
            - the concentration of investment in specific growth points costs less in terms of public expenditure than whole sale grants to large areas;
  - the spread effects out of the growth point will help to solve the problems of depressed regions.

Weaknesses
But experiences from Latin America and Africa have proved difficult to achieve success, specially because of the failure of the expected “trickle down effects”. These have been replaced instead by adverse “backwash effects” that have maintained or even increased inequality between urban and rural areas (Unwin, 1989)4. Lipton’s basic argument of “urban bias” is that the urban dwellers, having far more power than the rural ones, are able to divert a disproportionate share of resources towards their own interests and against the rural sector. In this process, the more efficient and labor-intensive small and poor farmers are forced either to sell their produce to the bigger farmers in disadvantageous conditions, to turn out to subsistence production or to finish joining the ranges of rural-urban migrants.



GROWTH CENTER THEORY (Jacques R. Boudeville)

       “Transformed ‘Growth Pole’ into a specific place within a region that is heterogeneous, continuous, and not specialized.”
Growth Center (geographic space) - is a propulsive urban center of a region possessing a complex of expanding industries where the agglomeration of activities induces growth in its surrounding hinterland. The growth center has growth rate of population or employment that is greater than that of total region.
“Regional growth center” refers to “a set of expanding industries located in an urban area and inducing further development of economic activity throughout its zone of influence” with complex activities around a propulsive center.


INDUSTRIAL LOCATION THEORY
u Location of Industry
The location of the unit of production, the firm, is determined in relation to the source of the inputs and the market for the output.
The primary determinants of location:
            - Factors of production: land, labor, capital and enterprise
            - Market factor
Three approaches:
o        Least cost approach – attempts to explain location in   terms of the minimization of factor costs (Alfred Weber);
o        Market area analysis – emphasizes the demand, or market factors (Losch);
o        Profit maximization approach – is the logical outcome of the other two. Industrialists seek locations that will bring maximum profits, considering both markets and costs.

Spatial Linkages
1.    Forward Linkage -  outputs or sales from one intermediate firm/industry is maximally utilize by another firm/industry
2.    Backward Linkage - factors of production or intermediary inputs from one firm/industry is maximally utilized by another firm/industry.




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