Land Use Plans: Long Live the Crocodiles.

Abstract

Some would say that land use plans are the dinosaurs of planning policy. And indeed, in almost every country in continental Europe land use plans emerged as main instruments in the earliest/almost prehistoric periods of organic planning legislation. But unlike the dinosaurs, land use plans have managed to survive in most of these countries and they have adapted successfully until now as some kind of living fossils. That is why we prefer to see them as crocodiles. Like crocodiles, land use plans appear quite frightening because of their non contemporary unattractive look and their lethal/legal power. Unfortunately, similar to the gradual extinction of crocodiles because of climate change, land use plans seem to become endangered and mainly too because of drastic changes in contextual factors. Since their features seem rather unappealing at first sight, acolytes of crocodiles as well as land use plans rarely raise their voices in the debate about their survival. However, this contribution wants to change strategy. It consciously ignores the characteristics of land use plans that might make them vulnerable. Instead, it addresses three main contextual aspects of its questionable survival. In other words it focuses on the destructive ways in which planners, policy makers and citizens more and more position land use plans as planning instruments.