Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning: Concepts and Tools for Sustainable Land-Use Decisions (Cities and Nature) 3030330265, 9783030330262

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Cities and Nature

Carlo Rega

Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning Concepts and Tools for Sustainable Land-Use Decisions

Cities and Nature Series Editors Peter Newman, Sustainability Policy Institute, Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia Cheryl Desha, School of Engineering and Built Environment, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, Australia

Cities and Nature fosters high-quality multi-disciplinary research addressing the interface between cities and the natural environment. It provides a valuable source of relevant knowledge for researchers, planners and policy-makers. The series welcomes empirically based, cutting-edge and theoretical research in urban geography, urban planning, environmental planning, urban ecology, regional science and economics. It publishes peer-reviewed edited and authored volumes on topics dealing with the urban and the environment nexus, including: spatial dynamics of urban built areas, urban and peri-urban agriculture, urban greening and green infrastructure, environmental planning, urban forests, urban ecology, regional dynamics and landscape fragmentation.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10068

Carlo Rega

Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning Concepts and Tools for Sustainable Land-Use Decisions

123

Carlo Rega ITERAS – Research Centre for Sustainability and Territorial Innovation Bari, Italy

ISSN 2520-8306 ISSN 2520-8314 (electronic) Cities and Nature ISBN 978-3-030-33026-2 ISBN 978-3-030-33027-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33027-9 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Disclaimer: The author currently works at the European Commission Joint Research Centre (Ispra, VA, Italy). The views expressed in this book are purely those of the writer and may not be regarded under any circumstances as stating an official position of the European Commission. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This goes to Silvia, Francesco and Anna. For all the love, laughs, fun, cries, sleepless nights, messy days, endless tales.

Acknowledgements

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it. Voltaire

Writing this book would not have been possible—not even thinkable—without the support I constantly receive from my beloved ones: my wife Silvia (who has already written a much better book), my children Francesco and Anna (who will write much better books when they are grown up—probably they are already doing so), my parents Grazia and Michele, my brother Eugenio; and Conci and Bruna. Thanks to my lifelong friends, wherever circumstances, jobs, love, passions, vocation, good or bad luck may have brought you. Thanks to the Springer team for its support during the publication process. Over the last years, I had the privilege to interact and work with many top-level researchers and practitioners in different contexts and highly stimulating environments. They are too many to be mentioned here, and there is always the risk to unintentionally forget someone, so I thank them collectively for their inspiration and the work they constantly carry out—you know who you are. Of course, over the years, I have also come upon so-so, alleged/definitelynot-top-level researchers. In a way, I have to thank them too for having allowed me to appreciate the difference with the previous ones.

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Prologue

1969 was undoubtedly one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable years. Richard Nixon was inaugurated as the 37th President of the United States of America on the 20th January. He was soon to become the first US president to ever resign, in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Student protests were rampaging in university campuses all across the US, demanding improved civil liberties and opposing the escalating war in Vietnam. On 15th November, half a million people marched in Washington DC in what is deemed to be the largest anti-war demonstration in US history. Regardless, the first draft lottery since World War II was held in the US to call citizens to military service on the 1st December. Europe was far from immune to the discontent. In May of the previous year, France had experienced massive demonstrations and strikes, including the occupation of factories and universities, which were of such intensity that many felt feared the imminent outset of revolution. President De Gaulle was forced to leave the country for some hours. The so-called Hot Autumn in Italy was the climax of a social movement that had started in 1968, again with massive strikes, occupations and joint demonstrations by students and workers. On the 21st July, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the Moon, making what went down in history as: “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. It is estimated that around 500 million people watched the event worldwide. The Woodstock festival took place between the 15th and the 18th August near the, previously unknown, town of Bethel, New York State. Over 400,000 people attended what was subsequently acknowledged as one of the most important events in modern popular culture. Another fact seemed to escape the attention of the mass media at the time, but can, in retrospect, be considered equally significant; on the 29th October, a message was sent from one computer, at UCLA University, to another, at the Stanford Research Institute, for the first time in history. This was done using the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), a packet switching network developed for military purposes that was the forerunner of what we call now the Internet. However important these events may be, and they certainly are for people of the past and current generation, perhaps they will be considered more as epiphenomena ix

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than history-defining moments by historians of future generations, and, maybe, the year 1969 of the Gregorian calendar will be remembered for another reason. According to the most recent estimations, this was the last year in history to date in which the ratio between the global ecological footprint and global biocapacity was below 1. This may sound a bit technical but the concept is actually straightforward. The ecological footprint of a population (or an individual, a region, a state) is a measure of the area of biologically productive land and water required to produce all the resources that the population consumes and absorb the waste that it generates, using current technology and resource management practices. Biocapacity is the ecosystem’s capacity to produce the biological materials used by people and to absorb waste material generated by humans, using current management schemes and extraction technologies (Global Footprint Network, 2018). In 1969, this ratio was 0.95, and by 1970 it had reached 1.01. This means that humanity has been consuming more resources than the entire Earth system can regenerate, since that time, and the situation has only deteriorated further since: the figure was 1.19 in 1980, 1.29 in 1990, 1.37 in 2000 and 1.69 in 2014. In other words, we have been depleting our finite resource stock, the one upon which our very existence as a species depends, since 1969, and have been doing so at an increasing pace. Of course, the global average value for humanity as a whole may remind many of the famous chicken sonnet by Italian poet Trilussa,1 according to which, if someone has two chickens and another person has none, they still have one each on average. For instance, as of 2014, the Ecological Footprint per person in the US was 8.4 Gha, whereas it was 4.3 in Italy, 3.7 in China, 1.1 in India and 0.5 in Eritrea. If everyone in the world had the same consumption patterns as the “average” person in the US, humanity would need more than four Earths to sustain itself. Yet more than 43 million people in the US are estimated to live in poverty. The fact that current global development patterns are not sustainable in the long (and perhaps even in the short) term is no longer just the opinion of a handful of environmentalist academics or radical militants. It is a matter of fact, based on the laws of thermodynamics that we cannot escape. Homo Sapiens, after some 300,000 years of existence (a drop in the ocean compared to the time scale on which living organisms have been evolving on Earth), is possibly leading itself to the edge of self-destruction. Are we really the zenith of millions of years of evolution, or simply an unsuccessful experiment doomed to extinction? That entirely depends on the choices that we make now and in the near future. They, in turn, depend on our understanding of the deep causes underlying this current pattern of accelerating depletion of our biological base. A number of things must occur if we want to tackle this process: scholars will have to understand the dynamics that underpin production and consumption models, the way ecosystems work and how human activity affects their capacity to support our life; decision-makers will have to consider this growing body of knowledge and act accordingly; every one of us will have to 1

Italian poet, pseudonym of Carlo Alberto Salustri (Rome, 1871–1950), famous for his Roman dialect poems and sonnets that feature sharp language and satirical critiques of power and contemporary politics.

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question current production systems and patterns of consumption, and be aware of the interdependency of territories, peoples and nations and how it determines the current levels of material-resource-base exploitation. It is a big challenge, but we have no choice.

Contents

1 Standing on the Shoulders of Giants—Reviving Ecological Approaches in Planning Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Introduction and Outline of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Reviving and Renewing Ecological Approaches in Planning Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Concept of Ecological Rationality and Its Application to Spatial Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Definition(s) of Rationality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Different Forms of Rationality and the Current Primacy of Economic Rationality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 The Different Forms of Rationality and Spatial Planning . 2.4 Ecology, Ecosystems, and Landscapes—Definitions and Main Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 The Concept of Ecological Rationality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Bridging the Gaps: Connecting Spatial Planning with Land-Use Science and Political Ecology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Ecological Rationality Principles in Planning Structures and Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 The Inherent Incapacity of Current Decision-Making Systems to Pursue Ecological Rationality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Land-Use Science, Political Ecology, and the (Missing?) Link with Spatial Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Landscape Ecology and Spatial Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Wrap-Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Towards a Conceptual Framework for Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 The Proposed Conceptual Framework for Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Understanding the Drivers of Landscape Transformation (1): Social Metabolism and the Metabolic Rift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Understanding the Drivers of Landscape Transformation (2): Production and Overproduction of Space and the Spatial Fix 4.4 Towards a Unified Framework of Ecological Rationality and Reconfiguration of Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Processes of Landscapes’ Reconfiguration: Expansion, Intensification and Simplification in Urban and Rural Areas . 4.5.1 Urban and Suburban Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.2 Rural Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 A Closer Look to Processes of Territorial Transformations in Europe: Urbanization, Agricultural Intensification and Land Abandonment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Recent and Ongoing Macro-processes of Territorial Transformation in Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Urbanization in the EU in the Frame of Post-political Planning . 5.2.1 Agricultural Intensification and Land Abandonment . . . . 5.3 Wrap Up and Ways Forward—Bringing the Politics in Again . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Policies and Regulatory Frames in the EU and the Needed Link with Spatial Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 The EU Policy Frame and Spatial Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 The Habitat Directive and the Water Framework Directive . 6.2.1 The Habitat Directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 The Water Framework Directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 The European Biodiversity Strategy, MAES and Green Infrastructure as a Spatially Explicit Approach to Integrate Ecosystem Services and Spatial Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.1 Ecosystem Service and Spatial Planning: A Trendy Topic in Need of Some Critical Reflections . . . . . . . 6.3.2 Green Infrastructure in the EU—An Approach to Operationalize Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6.4 The Common Agricultural Policy and the Rural Development Policy: Towards a Possible Territorialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.1 CAP and Rural Development Policy: A Basic Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.2 CAP as an Hybrid Territorial Policy—Spaces of Integration with Spatial Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7 Conclusions and Ways Forward: Five Propositions for Bringing Back Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 7.1 The Ways Forward: What Do We Need to Equip Planning and Planners to Deliver Ecological Rationality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Chapter 1

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants—Reviving Ecological Approaches in Planning Traditions

Abstract In this chapter, we present the purpose of this book: contributing to a refoundation of spatial planning theories and practices on ecological basis, or framing planning into the paradigm of ecological rationality. We purposely use the term refoundation because deeply ecological thinking has been present in the planning tradition since its inception—thanks to the contribution of prominent scholars and polymath thinkers—but has largely been lost or disregarded in what developed as mainstream theory and practice. We, therefore, start by reviving the contributions of scholars such as Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford, Ian McHarg and others, who developed the ecological foundation of planning and elaborate in particular on Mumford’s engagement with historical materialism and other Marxian concepts. We will also discuss the need to advance ecological planning theorization in light of the more recent development of the ecological crisis and the new tools and knowledge we have at disposal. The chapter concludes by presenting an outline of the book. Keywords Patrick Geddes · Lewis Mumford · Ian McHarg · Historical materialism · Mega-machine, metabolism

1.1 Introduction and Outline of the Book When I was about to finalize the first draft of this book, I came across two distinct publications, quite different in their scope and reach, but both relevant for the arguments addressed here. The first one was the “Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)”. IPBES is a global intergovernmental organization (comprising 132 Member States) that assesses the state of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people and outlines options for the future based on different socio-economic choices. The summary for policymakers condenses the key message ensuing from the 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a massive research effort involving dozens of top scientists worldwide to assess the status of nature conservation evaluating changes over the past 50 years and assessing policy, technology, governance, behaviour changes, options and pathways to reach global conservation goals. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 C. Rega, Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning, Cities and Nature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33027-9_1

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Among the key messages, there is the fact that the rate of global change in nature during the past 50 years is unprecedented in human history and that land-use change has had the largest relative negative impact on nature since 1970; and that goals for conserving and sustainably using nature and achieving sustainability cannot be met by current trajectories (IPBES 2019). The report also summarizes approaches for sustainability and possible actions and pathways for achieving them; these include, among other things, “Promoting sustainable agricultural practices, such as good agricultural practices, agroecology, among others, multifunctional landscape planning” and “Using extensive, proactive participatory landscape-scale spatial planning to prioritize land uses that balance and further safeguard nature and to protect and manage key biodiversity areas […]” (IPBES 2019, pp. 32–33, emphasis added). The second document was much more local and less widespread, being an interview by a web-based magazine to the president of the Italian Institute of urbanism (as the spatial planning discipline is still referred to in this country), who was asked about the current developments in environmental issues and the role of planning. According to the representative of Italian planning scholars and practitioners, spatial planning has (my translation) “the task to define aims and behavioral limits in the use of resources and to identify prevention and adaptation measures [...], in order to preserve natural resources and the beneficial effects of their good status for human and animal wellbeing”. Furthermore, spatial planning legislation should be renewed by “abandoning models of urban transformation characterized by soil consumption which comprises large margins of rent and surplus grasping deriving from a pre-crisis urban market. A model wrongly deemed in continuous expansion from the late 90s and early 2000s […]. It is certain that urban diffusion and sprawl has caused loss of landscape and soils and the related ecosystem services, it proved energy consuming […]. Undoubtedly, the urban forms are one of the main factors for environmental sustainability and urban resilience […]. The shortcut of sectoral solutions, tasked to single specialist disciplines, has always produced an impoverishment of actions and an overall reduction of their effectiveness. To this regard, the centrality of spatial planning as an interpretative and planning field of convergence and technical-decisional integration constitutes an essential reference point and an unavoidable field of work […]. This, however, requires a substantial change of the discipline […] new interpretative frames shall be set up, as well as updated methods and tools […]” (Greenreport.it 2019). The IPBES report is produced from scientists from a wide array of disciplines, including biology, ecology, agronomy, geography, but none specifically dealing with spatial planning. Notwithstanding this, spatial planning is explicitly recognized as a field of practice that can give a key contribution to tackle the world ecological crisis. Increasingly, this is being recognised also by planning scholars and practitioners, as the reported interview demonstrates. But at the same time that all this is heralded, what is implicitly being acknowledged is that spatial planning has not being doing it so far. Not in its mainstream practice and theorization, at least. That is why in acknowledging the need to bring ecological thinking at the center of planning, some planning scholars and practitioners call for “a substantial change” in the discipline. What is clear, also from the statements reported above, is that such a change entails an opening-up of the

1.1 Introduction and Outline of the Book

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disciplines towards other fields of knowledge, a cross-contamination with different expertise, a mutual exchange of theories and practices. In brief, this book aims at contributing to this: it seeks to build bridges between planning, ecology and other knowledge fields that can provide insights towards more sustainable, ecologically rational courses of actions. I postulate that the exchange between planning and other disciplines shall be mutual: planners should incorporate knowledge and analytical tools from different sources but at the same time can and shall contribute with their own specific expertise. As Dramstad et al. (1996, p. 9, emphasis added) wrote: Land planners and landscape architects are uniquely poised to play key roles for society, to provide new solutions. These are professionals and scholars who focus on the land. Solve problems. Design and create plans. Look to the future. […] Are synthesizers who weave diverse needs together into a whole […] Know aesthetic or economics. Know that human culture is essential in a design or plan. And know that the ecological integrity of the land is critical.

Indeed, in its role to produce a synthesis of different expert knowledge lies a great deal of spatial planning’s potential to contribute to addressing the ecological crisis highlighted in the IPBES report. The purpose of this book is thus to contribute to a refoundation of the planning disciplines under an ecological paradigm, similarly to what other disciplines have already been doing, the two most notable examples being probably Ecological Economics and Agroecology. In Ecological Economics, the economic system is conceptualized as embedded in a biophysical base and economic processes are analysed from a biophysical perspective instead of solely from a monetary one, thus invoking the notion of socio-metabolism (Martínez-Alier and Muradian 2015). Agroecology is defined jointly as a science, a practice and a social movement: similarly to Ecological Economics, in agroecology the agricultural system is considered holistically as part of the broader ecosystem; it studies and promotes practices based on sustainable use of local renewable resources, local farmers’ knowledge and use of biodiversity (Agroecology Europe 2019; Altieri 2018; Wezel et al. 2009). Both disciplines also explicitly consider the social aspects of economic and agrarian systems in their interlink with the ecological ones and are actively engaged not only in analysis but also in research-action. Both are based on transdisciplinarity and cross-fertilization between specialized fields of study; both acknowledge that the whole is more than the sum of its parts and hence foster interactions between different actors in research, practices and movements, by facilitating knowledge sharing and action. In brief, what we propose here is to foster a similar advancement for spatial planning. To be able to solve problems, we need to gain a deep understanding of the underlying processes that cause them and why they occur. We will dedicate quite some effort to that in this book. We will endeavour to investigate the deeper causes of the ecological crises in general and their manifestation in major phenomena relevant from the planning perspective, i.e. the modification of the urban and rural landscape. This is part of the journey I propose to the readers, but this shall not be the departing point: first, we have to clearly define a guiding paradigm, that I term here Ecological Rationality, borrowing the expression from political science, as we will see in the next chapter. In the remainder of this chapter we will start by showing how the

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paradigm of ecological rationality, though without using this specific term, has been present in the planning tradition since its inception, and we will revisit the insights from prominent planning scholars and practitioners––in particular, Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford and Ian McHarg––who elaborated on the ecological foundations of planning. In Chap. 2, we will define and discuss ecological rationality, as a guiding concept that is both theoretically sound and actionable in real decision-making contexts and planning practice. We will revisit the genesis of the concept of rationality in the domain of political science discussing the different forms of rationality that determine the ways decisions are made and actions are pursued in our societies. We will dwell in particular on economic rationality as the current dominant form of rationality to bring out the problems it entails and its connection with the ecological crises. We will proceed by examining how these different rationalities coexist in spatial planning and determine planning outcomes. Subsequently, we will address ecological rationality more in detail, eliciting its constitutive principles and discussing the differences with the other forms of rationality. To do this, we will also recap some of the main principles of ecology and (eco)systems’ functioning, and discuss their relevance for and links to decision-making structures. This will enable us, in Chap. 3, to investigate whether current social decisionmaking systems (of which planning ones are a part) can lead to ecological rational choices and, if this is not the case, what the deep underlying causes are. While up to this point the argument will have proceeded drawing largely by insights not from (strictly speaking) the spatial planning scholarship, here, we will start to establish the connection between well-established planning topics and the organizing concepts of ecological rationality. After having drawn out these links and discussed their significance, we will get back to the original questions of whether current decisionmaking structures, in general, are conducive to ecologically rational courses of action and, in particular, if this is the case for spatial planning structures. As readers will have sensed, these questions are quite rhetoric and I will not be any spoiler by anticipating here that the answer to both is “no”. Therefore, the rest of the chapter will be dedicated not to the “if” question, but to investigate “why” . Here is where we will take the most advantage of the insights provided by Geddes, Mumford, McHarg and other scholars. One common characteristic of these “giants” that stands out when recalling their life and works is that they were all polymaths, with a clear interest in spatial and urban planning but constantly fed with insights from different disciplines. Their main methodological contribution lies in this, in their effort to reach out to the field of planning as a separate, specific academic discipline to embrace concepts from diverse domains and produce a powerful synthesis. We will follow their example; here is also where we will make an effort to address some of the limitations in their elaborations outlined above and try to advance our theorization. We will, therefore, establish links between planning theory and other scientific domains in the effort to elaborate that holistic frame Geddes, Mumford and McHarg advocated in their writings. Indeed, synthesis is what good spatial planners should always do: get knowledge from various disciplines focusing on different aspects (geology, pedology, demography, housing

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market, transport and so on) and put them together into the design of territory as a whole. In Chap. 4, we will engage with identifying the deep underlying causes of the ecological crisis and their manifestations at the territorial level: all the insights of the previous chapters will be condensed in an overall framework for ecological rationality in spatial planning. We will endeavour to investigate the deeper causes of environmental depletion in general and the form they take in phenomena relevant from the planning perspective, i.e. the modification of the urban and rural landscape. In this chapter, we will thus try to abstract from the specificities and the localisms we face on the ground to elicit some underlying, general processes, that we identify, interpret and analyse using the whole array of knowledge and tools provided by the cross-fertilization with the other disciplines we examined in Chap. 3. While in Chap. 4 the scope of the argument will remain general, in Chap. 5 we focus on how the underlying processes that we have identified, have manifested and deployed in the European Union, with a focus on the past three decades. In particular, we will provide evidence from statistical data and results from relevant literature on three key phenomena: urban growth, agricultural intensification and land abandonment. The latter is necessary but not sufficient: policies are a key element of our proposed framework, so in Chap. 6 we examine relevant policies in the EU for ecological rationality in spatial planning. The purpose is not only to analyse them as more or less stringent, top-down requirements to comply with at local level in planning, but more imaginatively as instruments that as planners, we can use to design plans that solve problems by securing and enhancing the ecological integrity of the landscape. Political scientists may have raised their eyebrows at this point as policies are not instruments, but I use this term only to clarify that we need to know the different policies that can hinder or foster ecological planning, and use them instrumentally, to underpin our choices. In particular, we will consider the Nature directives (Habitats and Bird Directives), the Water Framework Directive, the Biodiversity Strategy towards 2020 and the largest and more financially substantial EU policy, i.e. the Common Agricultural Policy. In each case, we will discuss the relevance of the policy for spatial planning at different scales and how they can be used to underpin, justify, implement and deliver more ecological courses of action in and through planning. Finally, Chap. 7 will wrap-up the argument of the book and put forward 5 propositions for ecological rationality in spatial planning, summarising the main theoretical requirements but also highlighting some practicalities concerning planning education, training and the role of academia.

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1.2 Reviving and Renewing Ecological Approaches in Planning Traditions Following CEMAT (1983), we intend spatial planning as a scientific discipline, an administrative technique and a policy developed as an interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach directed towards balanced regional development, and the physical organization of space, according to an overall strategy; as such, it gives geographical expression to the economic, social, cultural and ecological policies of society. In this book, we consider that the term encompasses other definitions such as landuse planning, urban planning, landscape planning, Integrated/Participated land-use planning, Regional planning and others (see Metternicht 2018 for an overview). The fact that spatial planning is a key human activity that concerns itself with the effect that humankind has on its natural resource base should be self-evident. More than 14 years ago, a widely cited paper by Foley et al. (2005), described the impact of land-use practices, which were mainly planned and carried out locally, on a global scale. These included changes in the carbon and hydrological cycles, alterations in the climate, loss of biodiversity and the propagation of infectious diseases. According to the authors: Land use thus presents us with a dilemma. On one hand, many land-use practices are absolutely essential for humanity, because they provide critical natural resources and ecosystem services, such as food, fiber, shelter, and freshwater. On the other hand, some forms of land use are degrading the ecosystems and services upon which we depend, so a natural question arises: Are land-use activities degrading the global environment in ways that may ultimately undermine ecosystem services, human welfare, and the long-term sustainability of human societies?

The conclusion was clear for the authors; current land-use practices, while increasing the short-term provision of material goods, have the capacity to undermine ecosystem services in the long run, and to do so at the global scales. Land-use policies must, therefore, assess and enhance the sustainability of different land-use practices. Policy actions are urgently needed, on a range of spatial and ecological scales, to counter ongoing degradation trends and, at the same time, maintain and possibly increase social and economic benefits (ibid.). Now, spatial planning is certainly not the only activity to determine land-use changes. Local land uses may be driven by global phenomena that, at least apparently, have little to do with spatial planning. Land use can vary locally in response to trade agreements negotiated at the global level, and follow shifts in the preferences of consumers who may be thousands of kilometres away from the land in question. For instance, the consumption of quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) has boomed worldwide over the past 10 years, mainly due to increased demand from vegetarians in Europe and North America. The rate of expansion of agricultural land being devoted to the production of quinoa in Peru, the largest producer, is thought to be 43% higher than the increase rate that would have occurred without the demand boom (BedoyaPerales et al. 2018). The phenomenon is relatively recent, meaning that a clear idea of its consequences will only become possible in the coming years. However, many

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effects have already been detected, such as pressure to convert land, the abandonment of traditional agricultural practices, impoverishment of genetic diversity, increased pest diffusion risk or increased use of pesticides (ibid.). Similar considerations also apply to Bolivia. Ironically, most people in rich countries that eat quinoa believe, in good faith, that they are encouraging more sustainable consumption patterns compared to meat-rich diets. This example provides a foretaste of the themes that will be addressed in this book. Land-use dynamics are inherently complex and present many interdependent and intertwined factors and driving forces; causal relationships act on various spatial and temporal scales in non-linear and difficult-to-foresee ways. All of these concerns are challenges for decision-makers and spatial planners. We shall return to these concepts in the following chapters. While it would be naïve to think that spatial planning is the only, or even the main, determinant of land-uses changes, it would be equally wrong to neglect it. Turning again to Foley et al. (2005), local land use provides real-world social and economic benefits, while potentially causing ecological degradation on a number of scales. The authors state that: “society faces the challenge of developing strategies that reduce the negative environmental impacts of land use across multiple services and scales while maintaining social and economic benefits” (ibid., p. 572). If this is the case, then spatial planning is certainly one of the domains in which such strategies are to be envisaged and implemented. This book is titled Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning but it could have been titled Spatial Planning in Ecological Rationality as well. Explaining the reason for that will help me explain the argument of this book and how this unfolds in the next chapters. When one sets him/herself with the task to write on a topic on which, apparently, much has already been written, it is always a good idea to start by acknowledging the works that have been already produced. I start by saying that, yes, the topic of the relation between ecology and spatial planning has been already addressed by eminent authors in the past: reviewing their insights will help us not only to build a firmer basis for our argument, but also to show that much of this knowledge has been lost, or at least disregarded, by mainstream planning theories and practice over more recent times—at that there is a need to revive and advance it. Identifying a starting point, a sort of Big Bang from which subsequent studies generated is not simple, especially in a field like spatial planning which lies, by definition, at the intersection of several disciplinary domains. But probably we can start by acknowledging that who wants to approach planning from an ecological perspective should devote some time to the work of Patrick Geddes (1854–1932). A biologist and botanist by formation, Geddes represented one of the highest examples of the Scottish tradition for interdisciplinary studies. He has been praised as “one of the outstanding thinkers of his generation” by his disciple Mumford (1934, p. 475); a most fascinating figure in the history of twentieth century urban planning (Goist 1974); a polymath who covered a remarkable number of disciplines and subjects (Law 2005). He travelled the world, studied and worked in his motherland, Scotland (Edinburgh and Dundee), as well as in London, Dublin, Paris, Montpellier, and outside Europe in Mexico, Palestine and Bombay. He was fiercely antimilitarist, opposed British imperialism in India and gave refuge to revolutionaries and anarchists (Reynolds 2004, as cited

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in Law 2005). He did not leave a single, coherent opus magnum, which has partially contributed to the critics he has received from within the discipline, but his thoughts are dispersed in a number of books, articles, surveys and planning documents. An essential role in synthesizing his legacy and stimulating a revival of his ideas in planning circles was played by British town planner, landscape architect, editor and educator Jaqueline Tyrwhitt (1905–1983) (Shoshkes 2017; Welter 2017). There are some key features of Geddes’ thoughts that are extremely relevant in the context of this book and that we shall treasure. Firstly, Geddes clearly conceptualized—in 1915—cities and landscapes as coupled socio-ecological systems (Crowe 2013) addressing urban, ecological and economic problems never in isolation, but always through the interrelationships of their parts (Young 2017). Secondly, he examined the metabolic component of the processes of urbanization and suburbanization, which he described in terms of the dissipation of energies and deterioration of life. We’ll see that the concept of metabolism (fluxes of energy and matter) has a central role in our argument. Thirdly, he adopted a progressive worldview: “Understanding the present as the development of the past, are we not preparing also to understand the future as the development of the present?” (Geddes 1904), which in more formal terms means that he understood the path-dependency of complex systems, i.e. that present and future evolution of a system is dependent of the past states (Eisenman and Murray 2017). This is now a central concept in Systems Theory and has profound implications in understanding and managing ecosystems, cities and landscapes. Fourthly, he proposed a method of analysis to inform spatial planning— termed Regional and Historical Survey—based on a structured exercise to collect information on the natural resources of a region, the way its inhabitants interacted with the environment and the way by which the physical and cultural landscape was shaped. He suggested that this survey be conducted in a participatory way, through the involvement of the local community and the collation of local knowledge. The theoretical foundations of this type of survey lie in the notion of “place, work and folk”, which Geddes had translated from lieu, travail and famille of the pioneering French sociologist Frédéric le Play (1806–1882) (Woudstra 2018) and which he also referred to as environment, function, and organism. This triad explained, in Geddes’s thoughts, the interdependence and interaction of the man–environment relationship. Geddes caustically criticized economic rationality on ecological bases (as recognized also by prominent ecological economist Martínez-Alier 1987) which we will do extensively in the next two chapters as well, pointing out the inherent contradictions between them. He stigmatized the role of the financial capital and its role in fostering the depletion of natural resources and the role of war as a constituency of his contemporary industrial society. He described the latter as Paleotechnic, and argued that its main material output in terms of production of urban space were the slums and superslums, of which he delivered detailed analyses and vivid descriptions. He postulated the need for a transition towards a more efficient Neotechnic era with a more subtle and economic mastery of the energy of nature. After this, he argued, humanity would evolve towards a Geotechnic era, in which the Neotechnic sciences would merge with the “vital sciences” (biology, forestry) to foster a development

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pattern based on the use of renewable energy, compact development and—we would say now—participatory governance. Geddes’ work is receiving renewed attention in the planning domain over the past decade, as testified by several papers in planning journals and book chapters (Batty and Marshall 2009; Khan 2011; Hysler-Rubin 2013; Woudstra 2018). This revival culminated with a special issue on Landscape and Urban Planning “Planning living cities: Patrick Geddes’ legacy in the new millennium” (Young and Clavel 2017), in which the significance of Geddes’ work for contemporary planning issues is praised. Here, Young (2017) highlights the newness of Geddes’ idea of democratic regionalism—a territorial organization built around skill-based, flexible production combined with more intimate and empowered workplace relations—and of the Regional and Civic Survey as the basis for the planning of more ecological and more democratic society. In fact, Geddes’ approach predates by several decades the current discourses on socio-ecological systems. He proposed “a comprehensive study of a locality in all its aspects and features, making use throughout of scientific methods, and presenting the results in relation to one another and, as far as possible, in graphic form […]. An adequate survey […] includes both elements, rural and urban, and in their correlation”. By proposing that such a survey be produced by professionals and citizens he anticipates the now lively debate on co-production of knowledge, citizens science and citizens’ empowerment. Furthermore, Young (2017) systematizes Geddes’s thoughts on “technics”, defined as cultures of production encompassing the technologies, materials, and energy sources, including the social and ecological implications of their use, and constituted within any particular historical phase of production and consumption. He then elegantly links Geddes’s Paleotechnics, Neotechnics, Geotechnics and Biotechnics typologies with past and current development patterns and environmental discourses, whereby Paleotechnic was associated to the devastating territorial development of the Industrial Revolution, based on coal, steam, slums and energy dissipation; Neotechnic is associated to improvement in technology and efficiency (electricity, waste recycling, public transport, conservation of valuable landscape); Geotechnic entails the synthesis of technological improvements of Neotechnic with the “organic sciences” (biology, forestry, agriculture), and can be associated to contemporary discourses on renewable energy, Green Infrastructure or compact urban development. Ultimately, this would lead us to a Biotechnics Age, in which life values should predominate over money or any other purely material valuation. Crowe and Foley (2017) show that key aspects of the works and ideas of Geddes— the importance to understand the main drivers of change acting on a territory before developing a plan; citizens’ involvement, the local/regional/global relationship— can enlighten the concept of “urban resilience” which seems now to be emerging as a new, trendy term in urban research. Woudstra (2018) emphasizes the role of Geddes’ approach in the formation of the discipline of Landscape Architecture and on influencing the work of prominent representatives of the discipline, like John Tillman Lyle (1934–1998), the author of such an important book as Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development (Lyle 1996). In brief, scholars and practitioners interesting in an ecological refoundation of planning should read at least Cities in

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Evolution and. You’ll have to struggle a little bit with Geddes’ writing style, his tendency to digress and, some say, his lack of focus, but you will be rewarded with highly inspiring insights. The most prominent disciple of Geddes was American urban planner, historian, sociologist, philosopher Lewis Mumford (1895–1990). Planners certainly already know him for his magisterial book The City in History (Mumford, 1961)—itself a must-read for planners—but his whole work was a fundamental contribution to ecological thinking, to the point that when British journalist Anne Chisholm wrote a book about the most influential thinkers whose theories were supporting the then nascent environmentalist movement, she mentioned Mumford in the first place (Chisholm 1972, as cited by Guha 1991). Mumford’s contribution to the development of ecological thinking has been widely neglected by mainstream scholarship but is indeed profound (Guha 1991). Actually, his historical account of the evolution of human societies—including the rise and development of cities—is deeply based on the identification of the ecology of such societies, i.e. the analysis of their reliance upon natural resources and their use or misuse. As Guha (1991, p. 74) pointed out, some of Mumford’s most famous books—Technology and Civilization (Mumford 1934), and The Culture of Cities (Mumford 1938)—“need to be read as essentially ecological histories of the rise of modern Western civilization” (emphasis in original). In Technology and Civilization, Mumford (1934) identifies three main stages in the development of the industrial society, namely the “eotechnic”, the “paleotechnic” and the “neotechnic,” the last two of which he drew from Geddes. The oetechnic designates the period (roughly from 1000 to 1800) in which most of the technical and social innovations of the modern world had been anticipated (Guha 1991). Each period is examined in the light of the deposits it left in society, the way it changed the landscape, altered the physical layout of cities, used certain resources instead of others, valued certain types of commodities and certain paths of activity and modified the common technical heritage. By adopting, as his master Geddes, a fundamentally metabolic approach, he characterized each period according to the prevailing fluxes of energy and matters underpinning human development: “the eotechnic is a water-andwood complex, the paleotechnic phase is a coal-and-iron complex, and the neotechnic phase is an electricity-and-iron complex” (Mumford 1934). So, while the impact of the eotechnic society on ecosystems functionality was very limited, as the resource base was mainly constituted by renewable resources, the following paleotechnic phase completely changed the picture: humankind was ever more reliant not on the constant flow of renewable resources provided by natural processes, but on the stock of finite, non-renewable ones—fossil fuels and ores. Perhaps even more importantly, Mumford clearly identified and elaborated on the nexus between the way society (as an aggregate) makes use of natural resources with the way relationships within people in societies are organized. In this sense, the most important invention in the paleotechnic period, he argues, is not the mill or the steam engine, but the clock, for it allows to measure and quantify time, thus to use it as the metric for human work and therefore to conceptualize it as an abstraction, not a creative activity but a commodity to be bought and sold, “measured without regard for its cultural, biophysical, and cooperative dimensions […] abstracted,

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averaged, deprived of all meaning but for one: value as the average labor-time making the average commodity” (Moore 2016). This is made explicit in a paper on Nature (Mumford, 1965) addressing the relationships between humans and technics in history. Here, Mumford de-emphasizes the role of tool making in the process of nature subjugation by homo sapiens in the prehistoric era and rather highlights the importance of the symbolic and immaterial components—language art, symbols and rituals. The real revolution, Mumford argues, did not take place with the invention of the ploughing or other similar tools, but with the establishment of the first complex, high-powered “Megamachine”, whose rest were never found in any archaeological diggings because it was made almost entirely by human parts: the hierarchical organization of human labour, the division of work in single, repeated tasks carried out under coercion, segregated by any other social or biological activity, occupying the entire day. This made possible the building of the Pyramids or of the sumptuous palaces of Egypt, Mesopotamia and, later, of space rockets and nuclear weapons. But, Mumford continues, the efficiency reached by the megamachine does not imply that its ultimate ends are rational or desirable: just like the megamachine in Egypt was not ultimately aimed at food production or liberation from scarcity for all, but to the construction of tombs, the current megamachine ignores that “organisms, societies and human persons are nothing less than delicate devices for regulating energies and putting it at the service of life” (ibid., p. 928). Instead of being at the service of men, the modern megamachine has subdued them. We, he concludes, have to dismantle it and redistribute power and authority to small units under human control, and further technical development shall aim at re-establishing autonomy—the proper end of organisms—at every stage of human growth. In City in History, Mumford (1961) offers us an outstanding historical account of the evolution of cities through human history: though the slant of this monumental work is historicist, the above described ecological frame is clearly recognizable, especially in the third volume of the book, where the author describes the rise of “Coketown”—the city of the Industrial Revolution, with its slums and its awful hygienic conditions—the expansion of “Suburbia”, the latest urban form of the capitalist society, and the future of “Megalopolis”. The description of the Industrial city, considered by Mumford less healthy than the medieval ones, is magisterial. But even more relevant for our purpose is the description of the rise and evolution of suburban areas. Envisaged, initially, as healthier, greener and less crowded neighbourhoods to escape the insalubrities of urban areas, suburbs quickly became homogenized places, made by a multitude of uniform houses inhabited by uniform people, lacking the advantages both of dense urban areas and the countryside. More explicitly than Geddes, Mumford clearly points out the link between the evolution of the urban form and the dynamics of capital accumulation. He did so by resorting extensively, though not always explicitly, as discussed below, to Marxian analytics. A detailed analysis of Mumford’s appropriation of Marxian concepts is provided by Green (2006), who starts by acknowledging that “The strong Marxian influence on his work is yet to be noted even though it forms a significant part of his analysis of technology and the city”. The first evident appropriation lies in the recognition that the material conditions and the environment (intended in a general sense: the working environment,

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the city, the residential neighbour) influences the consciousness of people. Marx’s materialist approach is evident in Mumford when he describes the conditions on the slums and their ill-omened effects on the workers, but also, in an exemplary way, when he examines how the physical structure of suburban areas give rise to a “suburban mentality”. “Beginning as a mechanism of escape [from the unhealthy conditions of cities], the suburb has turned into its very opposite. All that is left of the original impulse toward autonomy and initiative is the driving of the private motor car; but this itself is a compulsory and inescapable condition of suburban existence” (Mumford 1961, p. 493). The homogeneity of the built space in suburbs is mirrored by their homogeneity in class composition, a sort of middle-class ghetto, contrasting with the variety and heterogeneity of the city, its contradictions, clashes and cooperation, but also its attractions: museums, operas, universities, art galleries and so on. For all these things, the suburb depends on cities—and on private cars for displacement. So, while suburbs keep away the dirt and chaos of cities’ cores, they do the same with all the creative forces acting therein: “the genuine biological benefits of the suburb were undermined by its psychological and social defects: above all, the irreality of its retreat” (ibid., p. 494). The contradictions of society were kept apart, only illusionary indeed, from suburbs, where people could think to have the possibility of prospering without being obliged to see the negative sides of their prosperity: as a consequence, suburbs became not merely a child-centred environment, but were based “on a childish view of the world, in which reality was sacrificed to the principle of pleasure” (ibid., p. 494). Conformism, degradation of social interactions and consideration of the family—or even the single individual—as the main social group of reference were the consequence of the rise of the suburban way of life. The only rule that regulated the expansion of the suburbs is the accumulation of urban material— houses, motorways, shopping centres, parking—without any design or planning. The result was the maximization of the waste of space, the reliance upon a single mean of transport—the private car—and the desegregation of the urban form. The spatial dissociation of urban functions created extreme specializations of areas: thousands of buildings only for residential use, with no shops or service, and hyper-concentration of the retail function in huge shopping centres and large industrial agglomerates. The need to maximize the use of automobiles led to very low densities, which in turn prevented the establishment of functional urban regions. Another clear borrowing of a key Marxian analytical category by Mumford is the concept of alienation. The mechanic ideology, Mumford (1970) argues, needs that workers conform to the mechanical discipline of capitalism, whereby they “produce goods that have no human value” (ibid., p. 173), echoing the separation between the production process and its output—the product—that is at the core of Marx’s conceptualization of alienation. A key passage where the Marxist political-economic approach is evident in Mumford is when he argues that not only urban developers had a role in fostering the expansion of the railway to connect new suburbs, but that the opposite was as much true: new suburban areas were built to allow or justify the expansion of the electric grid or the means of transport—i.e. the industrial capital.

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This overturns the classical interpretation of capital expansion in response to increasing demand and highlights a concept that will be pivotal in this book to describe and interpret urban and landscape transformations: the inducement of demand to provide an outlet to capital expansion. In another enlightening passage describing the rise of the megalopolis, Mumford touches a key point, on which we’ll delve in Chap. 4, i.e. the evolution of the urban (and—we will see—also rural) space as a way of capital fixation (Mumford 1961, p. 538): […] mortgages on metropolitan real estate, whose values are ‘secured’ by the continued prosperity and growth of the metropolis, became a mainstay of savings banks and insurance companies. In order to protect their investments, these institutions must combat any attempt to lessen congestion; for this would also deflate the values that are based on congestion. Note how the program for slum replacement and suburban re-settlement mapped out by the Roosevelt administration after 1933 was undermined by the fact that the administration created at the same time another agency whose main purpose was to keep intact the existing structure of mortgages and interest rates.

Mumford summarizes the development of modern megalopolis as the outcome of a general process whereby, through coercion, mechanical processes had supplanted organic processes, displacing living forms and encouraging only those human needs and desires that could be profitably attached to the productive mechanism, whether for profit and power, as in early risk capitalism, or for security and luxury, as under welfare capitalism. Though almost 60 years have passed since the publication of City in History, this is an impressively modern book: above all, it indicates a key principle for an ecological refoundation of spatial planning: we shall examine more closely the drivers of urban (and rural) economy and we shall interpret them within a more general frame “Let us now view the situation of the metropolis in more general terms: what some have called the urban explosion is in fact a symptom of a more general state—the removal of quantitative limits. This marks the change from an organic system to a mechanical system, from purposeful growth to purposeless expansion” (Mumford 1961, p. 540). This allows us to recognize the deep, general processes underlying the specific, more visible process of territorial transformation—and their ecological implications. In 1968, Mumford received the draft of a manuscript from a Scottish landscape architect and spatial planner that had been trained by Geddes’s editor Jaqueline Tyrwhitt. The title of the manuscript was Design with Nature, and the author was Ian McHarg. He had sent the book to Mumford asking him to write the introduction, which he enthusiastically accepted. Here, Mumford claims that McHarg, while trained as a town planner, might better be described as an inspired “ecologist”, aware not only of the destructive role of men in changing the face of the earth, but also of the way in which unthinking application of technical knowledge has been defacing the environment. But, Mumford goes on, Design with Nature does not only recapitulate this in a detailed way: it describes, through concrete examples, how technic and scientific knowledge can, instead, be used in spatial planning to reconcile man and nature in an ecological way. When Mumford writes that “It is in this mixture of scientific insight and constructive environmental design, that this book makes its unique

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contribution” (Mumford 1961) he perfectly identifies the relevance of McHarg’s work and the reason why it is mentioned here as a milestone for ecological rational spatial planners. McHarg does not explicitly mention Geddes in his book, although the influences of his compatriot are recognizable, particularly in the regional approach McHarg adopts (Woudstra 2018). Mumford’s influence is instead much more explicit, and McHarg, too, is clear in denouncing men’s greed and capital accumulation as the main drivers of environmental depletion, and economic rationality as a too narrow, even blind form of knowledge, incapable of understanding the richness and complexity of ecological relationships, as testified for example by this passage (McHarg 1969) The economists, with a few exceptions, are the merchants’ minions and together they ask with the most barefaced effrontery that we accommodate our value system to theirs. Neither love nor compassion, health nor beauty, dignity nor freedom grace nor delight are important unless they can be priced […] The economic model proceeds inexorably towards its self-fulfillment of more and more despoliation, uglification and inhibition to life.

McHarg is therefore very much aware of the underlying causes of the ecological crises, and several deep philosophical and moral digressions are disseminated in its book, but I maintain that the main merit of Design with Nature lies in explaining in a clear, yet rigorous way, the main functioning principles of key ecosystems— wet areas, costal dunes, riparian areas and so on—to derive rules and directives for environmentally sound planning, not only in terms of mere conservation, but rather in terms of constructive design. He does so by emphasizing neither the human side (Design) nor the environmental one (Nature), but rather the linking term— “with”—which makes his approach really ecological. Importantly, McHarg shows how spatial planners shall have a deep knowledge of key ecological processes, such as the hydrological cycles, costal erosion and sediment accumulation, plant growth and habitat formation, to elaborate such constructive design. His methods of analysis of linear infrastructure move away from merely economistic cost–benefit analysis to incorporate the full range of social and economic values, demonstrating how public investment in infrastructure can be used as a policy to create new and productive land uses at appropriate locations—provided that a fully holistic planning approach guides their design. His methods of map overlays to synthesize environmental constraints of a territory—slope, surface and soil drainage, bedrock foundation, susceptibility to erosion—inform planning predated current Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analyses by more than two decades and represents a pivotal contribution to planning practice. The same applies to the elaboration of composite maps of ecological and social values accounting for land uses, scenic beauty, recreational potential, and so on. Design with Nature also largely derives prescriptions for ecological planning from system theory, highlighting the intrinsically variability of nature, the interdependence of its parts (“nature is a single interacting system and […] changes to any part will affect the operation of the whole”), and the importance of social metabolism, i.e. the fluxes of matter and energy that man can alter through the manipulation of space. Even if he did not use the specific term “Ecosystem services”, now so common, he clearly conceptualized it: “[it is] reasonable to suggest that nature performs

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work for man without his investment and that such work [do] represent a value” (McHarg 1969). Compare this statement with the current definition of ecosystem service, i.e. the benefits that men derive from the proper functioning of ecosystems, and think that McHarg’s book was published almost 30 years before the famous paper by Costanza et al. (1997). He indeed used what we would call today an ecosystem service approach for the characterization of planning areas and the identification of those more suitable for development, and the potential tradeoffs between different land uses: “a complete study would involve identifying natural processes that perform work for man, those which offered protection or were hostile, those which were unique […]. In the first category fall natural water purification, atmospheric pollution dispersal, climatic amelioration, water storage, flood, drought and erosion control, topsoil accumulation, forest and wildlife inventory increase” (Ibid., p. XX). To sum up, Design with Nature should be a compulsory text in any planning coursework. If you as a planner are not familiar with the ecological process and have been charged to provide advice on the environmental consequences of a planning proposal in a limited time, my first advice would be to get a copy and read it before any other book. There are surely other authors that should be mentioned here for having contributed to lay the theoretical and practical foundation of ecological planning: Kropotkin (1899), as acknowledged by Mumford himself, foresaw the potentials of decentralized urban development in small units made possible by the development of electric grids and faster means of transport, to counter the processes of uncontrolled urban expansion brought by the Industrial Revolution. Hebenezer Howard’s Garden City, influenced by Kropotkin, is also a relevant contribution, a proposition of a new path of urban development whereby the dichotomy between urban and the rural would be overcome by the creation of relatively small but autonomous urban centres, surrounded by agricultural greenbelt, and adopting, as Mumford noted, the guiding principle of limit—we might call it now carrying capacity—now so common in the sustainability discourse. In 1971, Mumford collected the main writings of his friends and colleague, planner and architect Artur Glikson and edited a book titled The Ecological Basis of Planning (Glikson 1971) which too contains very relevant material, particularly on regional planning. In discussing the relevance of Geddes and Mumford for Landscape Urbanism—a disciplinary realignment where landscape supplants architecture’s role as the basic building block of urban design—Fjord Levy (2011) puts them together with American planner, forester and conservationist Benton MacKaye, who studied in depth the relations between urban areas and surrounding landscapes in term of fluxes. The aim of this introductory chapter is not, however, to elaborate a comprehensive literature review, but to point out that there is a tradition of ecological thinking in planning theory upon which we should build. In doing so, we shall also regret that, overall, planning theory and practice has payed little attention to this tradition. As planning historian Hysler-Rubin (2009, 2013) has written about Geddes, the appreciation of his role and relevance in planning theory has been seesawing over the years. His Cities in Evolution was not received well by his contemporary planning scholars, who regarded him as an outsider, a genial man in many aspects but whose

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practical accomplishments were mostly failures (ibid.). In a much-cited quote, the prominent English architect and planner Patrick Abercrombie accused Geddes of torturing his crowds in “that nightmare of complexity, the Edinburgh Room”. After his death in 1932, his work was virtually obscured in mainstream planning scholarly for at least 20 years, but regained appreciation in the 70s: during this decade, his planning endeavours in India and Palestine were revalued as manifestations of high planning ideals, but more in the sociological circles than in planning ones. The recent revival of Geddes’ thought we referred to above, the very fact that he has been recently “rediscovered”, demonstrates that mainstream planning theory— let alone practice—have largely benn ignoring his insights; as Hall (1998) denounced, some of his most important insights “got muffled and more than half lost” (Hall 1998, as cited in Crowe and Foley 2017). A review of courses offered at the 15 top-rated university planning programs in the United States found that only in 5 courses original work by Geddes was included (Young 2017), mostly consistent in a single paper. Similar considerations apply to Mumford’s and McHarg’s work: not by chance, Guha’s (1991) cited paper was titled “Lewis Mumford: The forgotten American environmentalist: an essay in rehabilitation”. Green (2006), while applauding the breadth and importance of Mumford’s philosophical outlook, admits that he remains at present a relatively marginal figure. Fjord Levy (2011) complains that Geddes, Mumford and McKaye are “often dismissed by landscape urbanists—perhaps because the alarm these theorists express seems antiquated in a post-industrial urban realm”. In summary, we have a gold mine of thoughts, insights and elaborations we can take advantage of for a refoundation of planning ton an ecological basis. Yet, if this were sufficient, this book would not be anything else than a recapitulation of the elaborations of these key authors, a bulky “essay in rehabilitation”. But as we stand on the shoulders of these giants, we also have to acknowledge what might be the limits of their elaborations—which we can see precisely because from their shoulders we have gained a wider perspective. We need to bring out the aspects of their theories that need to be critically examined and refined. In brief, we have to keep walking on the road they indicated and try to reach further. The most immediate task would be to frame their elaborations in the current ecological crises. Many of the environmental problems we face today were already clearly identified by these authors, but they have reached today a magnitude that implies not only a quantitative, but also a qualitative change. Geddes was concerned by the unhealthy effects of Cocketown; Mumford was concerned by this too, but during his active life, as well as McHarg’s one, his main concern was a global nuclear war. It cannot be said that we are nowadays completely safe from this eventuality (at the time of writings this introduction, USA and Russia have just quitted the nuclear treaty signed by Reagan and Gorbachev in 1986), but climate changes and biodiversity loss are now even more pressing dangers to human survival. At the same time, we have now a better understanding of many phenomena and of the functioning of ecosystems. Fast computers, statistical models, GIS software and many other tools enable us to simulate the behaviour of complex (eco)systems in a way that was inconceivable 30–40 years ago. Satellite images and monitoring systems now provide us daily a quantity of environmental information that is several orders of magnitudes larger than what was processable in the 60s.

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But besides technical development, we have also a more extended knowledge of the evolution of the coupled socio-ecological systems: we have a larger set of data, measurements, statistical information on social, economic, demographic and ecological trends. We can use these records to verify or falsify theories, and refine them. All this knowledge should be used to advance our capacity of understanding and interpreting the complexity we face. So, what are the limits of the theories we are able to see from this vantage points? What needs to be further elaborated? The main weak point of Geddes’s theoretical framework is well discussed by Law (2005). As stated earlier, Geddes’ sociology builds on the Folk-Place-Work triad derived from Frederic Le Play’s triad of Lieu, Travaill, and Famille. Le Play had carried out a comparative study of the working-class families in Europe, taking family income as the main variable. Geddes was attracted and influenced by this work, but rejected Le Play’s conservative focus on family as the primary social group and replaced it with Folk “[…]an attempt by Geddes to situate the individual in culture and community. But as a concept it was a much less precise unit of analysis than Le Play’s ‘Family’. […]This had methodological disadvantages for establishing the distinctiveness of ‘Folk’ as individuals-in-community […]. While Geddes was vehement in his rejection of all abstract and metaphysical systems, his own evolutionary sociology tended towards explanatory closure, particularly his excessive reliance on the Le Playist triad of Folk, Work and Place and the tottering edifices he built upon them for grasping geographical, historical, anthropological, scientific and technological change” (Law 2005). While Geddes was, as said, very critical with his contemporary society, he always refused to engage with the division of labour and class struggle as key determinants of the mode of natural resource’s exploitation by mankind, nor did he engage with the Marxian frame and categories. As Law (2006) put it: “with his rejection of the idea of class, Geddes robbed himself of the opportunity to explain the shaping of a City—understood as a synonym for a human society—as rooted in the diverging and competing interests of the various classes… Rather than following a line of inquiry similar to Weber’s, Geddes focused on the individual’s interaction with the environment, arguing that the consonance between an individual’s action and that of a larger social group would cut across social classes, even going beyond them”. We can only add to this statement that its validity is not limited to the shaping of cities, but holds true for the whole territory. Geddes proposed a somehow vague notion of “Civics” as the main form of intervention of men in ameliorating their society at the local scale, but was always contemptuous about political engagement. This is blatant when we examine his thought on the role of women in society: in The Evolution of Sex, Geddes and Thompson (1889) argued that gender was biologically determined but that women’s nurturing role was of the utmost importance for shaping the whole environment for civilized cultural evolution, but they refused to admit any political role to women. In general, “Geddes […] felt that women were ‘naturally’ better suited to non-political civics” (Law 2005). Geddes and Thompson (1889, p. 267) notoriously argued that “What was decided among prehistoric protozoa cannot be annulled by acts of parliament”. In brief, Geddes did not elaborate on the link between

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the domination of man on man (and its most evident manifestation, that of one gender on another) and the domination/exploitation of nature. Similarly, Geddes believed that natural history of economic evolution could be traced starting from consumption rather than from production. “By proposing that consumption determines production Geddes gave an evolutionary twist to what would later become known as consumer sovereignty. Here again he deploys ontogenetic and phylogenetic analysis to arrive backwards at economic origins” (Law 2005, p. 9). This is in line with what we would call today the “sovereignty of the consumer”, a conception that does not take into consideration the powerful forces that influence consumption from the production side—a key argument in the context of this book. Conversely, the constitutive link between class domination and exploitation of natural resources was identified by Mumford, as the argument of the “megamachine” presented above demonstrates. Contrary to his master, Mumford engaged with Marxist concepts and, among other things, recognized how production could determine consumption at least as much as the other way around, and discussed the implications of this for the built and rural environment. In Technics and Civilization, Mumford counterpoises his idea of an “Organic ideology” and the “mechanic ideology” of the contemporary capitalist society that was “fostering the voracious expansion of industrialism and tempting humanity towards self-destructive consumption and control” (O’Gorman and Hill 2013). Importantly, this mechanic ideology was for Mumford at the same time a perspective and a power system (ibid.) Just like the construction of pyramids was made possible by the megamachine, i.e. the hierarchical and coercive organization of labour, the mechanic ideology presupposes the existence of a predetermined social relationship whereby men subjugates other men. This is exactly what Marx had affirmed some 70 years before in The Capital: any productive relationship under capitalist production is, first of all, a social relationship. And again, Mumford’s famous quote of the clock being the more important invention of modernity is a rephrasing of one of the main pillar of Marx’s law of value, i.e. the distinction between concrete labour-a specific, particular activity- and abstract labour as a commodity to be sold in the labour market. A tension arises between Marx’s and Mumford’s theorization, according to Green (2006), with respect to the role of ideas and symbols in the production of spaces: Mumford admitted that material conditions strongly influenced the production of culture and symbols, but also thought that the city—its institutions, its physical form—reflects the ideas of the mind that conceived it. The ideal city is mainly symbolic in Mumford’s conception, while Green (ibid.) argues that Marx would not have imbued these material conditions with the same symbolic fervor of Mumford. In this view, Mumford was in line with Marx in that changes in society would have been possible only through a substantial change in the social order, attainable only by hard struggles, but thought that changes in the inner consciousness of people was as much important, thus giving psyche—and the individual—an importance in social struggles that was not to be found in Marx. A second point of departure, Green (2006) continues, concerns the role of machines in a post-capitalist world: according to Mumford, Marx put too much emphasis on the role of the means of production in society. This is stated clearly by

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the American writer in the already cited paper on Nature (Mumford 1965, p. 924) when he claims that Marx “[…] was in error in giving the instrument of production a central place and a directive function in human development”. Mumford praised Marx’s idea of limiting production to necessary and useful products, but criticized the fact that his material Utopia “rested on the continued expansion of the machine” (Mumford 1970, as cited by Green 2006). Green’s (2006) account is accurate and compelling; I concur with him when he states that Mumford’s incorporation, modification and rejection of insights from Marx (and Jung) contributed to his critique of the present society more significantly than has so far been noted. Particularly relevant in the context of this book is the fact that Mumford “partially accepted Marx’s matter–psyche dynamic but extended it to architecture, technology and urban planning” (ibid., p. 60). In doing so, he rejected mono-causality and embraced the dialectic between mind and material conditions. At the same time, I shall argue here that there is a shortcoming in Mumford’s use of Marxian categories. The problem is that his engagement with Marx was always quite implicit and, at times, hidden. For example, Marx is cited only once, and very en passant, in the 657 pages of Cities in History. Engels’ The Condition of the WorkingClass in England in 1844 (Engels, 1887) is, too, mentioned only once, despite being probably the most incisive account of the housing conditions in Cocketown, a topic to which Mumford dedicates so many pages of his brilliant prose. In the already cited paper on Nature, Mumford (1965) starts his argument by criticizing Marx, but then no other reference to him are made in the rest of the paper, despite that he largely draws from his insights when describing the social division of labour and the construction of the megamachine. Overall, Mumford tends to be more explicit when he departs from Marx and implicit when he deploys his concepts. Not by chance Green (2006) uses the term “appropriation” of Marx by Mumford, instead of more neutral terms. The fact that Mumford lived in the USA in a period when the mere fact of citing Marx could imply an accusation of “communism” and destroy a career might partly explain this. While I agree with Green that Mumford has, in some aspects, incorporated Marxian and other (e.g. Jungian) concepts into a powerful, more advanced synthesis, I would argue that most of the critics to Marx are in reality to be addressed to the dogmatic interpretation of Marxism that Mumford certainly witnessed during his life rather than to Marx’s original elaboration. For instance, the mono-causality Mumford would have rejected with regard to material conditions determining human consciousness is a too simplistic interpretation of Marxism historical materialism, which in fact should be more precisely called historic dialectic materialism. Marx and Engels did recognize the importance of the symbolic dimension and the complex interactions between the matter and the psyche. Consider this passage from Engels (1890), written some years after Marx’s death: According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure—political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established

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1 Standing on the Shoulders of Giants … by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, […]—also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents, […] the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree.

Mumford’s critic should have been addressed to the “simple equation of the first degree” by which dialectical materialism have been vulgarized in the late twenty-first and early twentieth century. Turning to Engels (1890) again: Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasise the main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other elements involved in the interaction. But when it came to presenting a section of history, that is, to making a practical application, it was a different matter and there no error was permissible. Unfortunately, however, it happens only too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without more ado from the moment they have assimilated its main principles, and even those not always correctly. And I cannot exempt many of the more recent “Marxists” from this reproach, for the most amazing rubbish has been produced in this quarter, too…

Crystal clear. Concerning the allegedly excessive emphasis Marx put on the means of production, Mumford criticized it on the ground that Marx’s idea of post-capitalist society “rested on the continued expansion of the machine” (Mumford 1970, p. 210). As Green (2006) rightly notes, the whole underlying critic made by Mumford is that hidden in Marx’s utopia there remains the idea of domination of nature by man, of which the machine is the supreme expression. But again, it can be argued that this is an unsophisticated interpretation of a more complex elaboration by Marx and Engels on the relationships between man and its environment. The problem here lies in that Marx’s and Engel’s thoughts on nature—or rather on ecology, the human– nature relationship—are scattered in various writings and it’s not straightforward to systematize them. But once this effort is made, what results is, as Smith (1984) points out, a strong challenge to ontological dualism and a rejection of the simplistic view of the subjugation of nature by man: Marx consistently situated humans within nature, as one of its constituent parts: Nature is man’s inorganic body … Man lives from nature, i.e. nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself (Marx 1990).

This, and other passages, tell us that Marx’s analyses are way more complex that their simplistic reductions to formulas. It is not the aim of this introduction to elaborate on the ontological issue of whether the social realm and the natural one should be considered as separate ones, or as part of a dialectical relation that would anyway presuppose their existence as separate categories, or think instead that a single ontological plane exists. The point here is that any engagement with ecological rationality should be based on a deep understanding of the mutually constitutive relationships between man and its environment and that we can take advantage of Mumfors’s framework and the insights from the other cited "giants" for a critical

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(re)elaboration. What we have to do is to advance our interpretative and explanatory capacity on the way humanity shapes and is shaped by the environment and how this can inform an updated theorization of ecological rationality in spatial planning. In the next chapter, we shall thus elaborate on ecological rationality and the differences from other forms of rationality.

References Agroecology Europe (2019) Our understanding of agroecology. http://agroecology-europe.org/ourapproach/our-understanding-of-agroecology/ Altieri MA (2018) Agroecology: the science of sustainable agriculture. CRC Press Batty M, Marshall S (2009) The evolution of cities: Geddes, Abercrombie and the new physicalism. Town Plan Rev 80(6):551–574. https://doi.org/10.3828/tpr.2009.12 Bedoya-Perales N, Pumi G, Mujica A, Talamini E, Domingos Padula A (2018) Quinoa expansion in Peru and its implications for land use management. Sustainability 10(2):532 Chisholm A (1972) Philosophers of the earth: conversations with ecologists. Sidgwick and Jackson, London Conference of Ministers responsible for Regional Planning (CEMAT) Resolution No. 2 on the European regional/spatial planning charter (Torremolinos Charter). 6th European conference of ministers responsible for regional planning (CEMAT) (Torremolinos, Spain: 19–20 May 1983) on “Prospects of development and of spatial planning in maritime regions” Costanza R, D’Arge R, De Groot R, Farber S, Grasso M, Hannon B, Van Den Belt M (1997) The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature 387(6630):253–260. https:// doi.org/10.1038/387253a0 Crowe PR, Foley K (2017) Exploring urban resilience in practice: a century of vacant sites mapping in Dublin, Edinburgh and Philadelphia. J Urban Des 22 (2):208–228 Dramstad W, Olson JD, Forman RT (1996) Landscape ecology principles in landscape architecture and land-use planning. Island Press, Wasgington, DC Eisenman TS, Murray T (2017) An integral lens on Patrick Geddes. Landsc Urban Plan 166:43–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2017.05.011 Engels F (1887) The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844. Leipzig: 1845. Trans. London: 1887 Engels F (1890) Letter to J Bloch. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/ letters/90_09_21.htm Foley JA, DeFries R, Asner GP, Barford C, Bonan G, Carpenter SR, Chapin FS, Coe MT, Daily GC, Gibbs HK, Helkowski JH, Holloway T, Howard EA, Kucharik CJ, Monfreda C, Patz JA, Prentice IC, Ramankutty N, Snyder PK (2005) Global consequences of land use. Science 309(5734):570– 574 Fjord Levy S (2011) Grounding landscape urbanism. Scenario 01: Landscape Urbanism. https:// scenariojournal.com/article/grounding-landscape-urbanism/ Geddes P, Thompson JA (1889) The Evolution of Sex. London: Walter Scott Glikson A (1971) The ecological basis of planning. Springer, Dordrecht Green A (2006) Matter and psyche: Lewis Mumford’s appropriation of Marx and Jung in his appraisal of the condition of man in technological civilization. History Human Sci 19(3):33–64 Greenreport.it (2019) L’urbanistica come mezzo per una transizione ecologica e solidale in Italia. Interview to Silvia Viviani by Luca Aterini. http://www.greenreport.it/news/economia-ecologica/ lurbanistica-come-mezzo-per-una-transizione-ecologica-e-solidale-in-italia/ Goist PD (1974) Patrick Geddes and the city. J Am Plan Assoc 40(1):31–37. https://doi.org/10. 1080/01944367408977444

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Guha R (1991) Lewis Mumford: the forgotten American environmentalist: an essay in rehabilitation. Capitalism Nat Social 2(3):67–91 Hall, PG (1998, 2002). Cities of tomorrow, 3rd edn. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford Hysler-Rubin N (2009) The changing appreciation of Patrick Geddes: a case study in planning history. Plan Perspect 24(3):349–366 Hysler-Rubin N (2013) The celebration, condemnation and reinterpretation of the Geddes plan, 1925: the dynamic planning history of Tel Aviv. Urban Hist 40(1):114–135. https://doi.org/10. 1017/S0963926812000661 IPBES (2019) Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. https://www.ipbes.net/news/ipbes-global-assessment-summary-policymakers-pdf Khan N (2011) Geddes in India: town planning, plant sentience, and cooperative evolution. Environ Plan D: Soc Space 29(5):840–856. https://doi.org/10.1068/d5610 Kropotkin P (1899) Fields, factories, and workshops: or industry combined with agriculture, and brainwork with manual work, 1st edn. Boston: 1899. Revised Ed. London: 1919 Law A (2005) The ghost of Patrick Geddes: civics as applied sociology. Sociol Res Online 10(2). https://doi.org/10.5153/sro.1092 Lyle JT (1996) Regenerative design for sustainable development. Wiley Martínez-Alier J (1987) Ecological economics: energy, economics, society. Basil Blackwell, Oxford Martínez-Alier J, Muradian R (2015) (eds) Handbook of ecological economics. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781783471416 Marx K (1990, original ed. 1867) Capital: Vol. 1 Penguin, London McHarg IL (1969) Design with nature. New York: American Museum of Natural History Metternicht G (2018) Land use and spatial planning—enabling sustainable management of land resources. Springer briefs in earth sciences. Springer Nature, Switzerland, 116 p Mumford L (1934) Technics and civilization. Harcourt Brace, New York Mumford L (1938) The culture of cities. Harcourt, Brace and company Mumford L (1961) The city in history: Its origins, its transformations, and its prospects (Vol. 67). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Mumford L (1965) Technics and the nature of man. Nature 208(5014):923–928 Mumford L (1970). The Myth of the Machine II - The Pentagon of Power, New York, NY, Harcourt Brace Moore JW (2016) The rise of cheap nature. In: Moore JW (ed) Anthropocene or Capitalocene? PM Press, Oakland, pp 78–115 O’Gorman TE, Hill IE (2013) Burke, Mumford, and the Poetics of Technology: Marxism’s Influence on Burke’s Critique of Techno-logology. In Burke in the Archives: Using the Past to Transform the Future of Burkean Studies. University of South Carolina Press Reynolds S (2004) ‘Patrick Geddes’s French connections in academic and political life: networking from 1878 to the 1900s’. In: Fowle F, Thomson B (eds) Patrick Geddes: the French connection. White Cockade Publishing and The Scottish Society for Art History, Oxford Shoshkes E (2017) Jaqueline Tyrwhitt translates Patrick Geddes for post world war two planning. Landsc Urban Plan 166:15–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.09.011 Smith N (1984) Uneven development: nature, capital and the production of space. The University of Georgia Press, Athens Welter VM (2017) Commentary on “thinking organic, acting civic: the paradox of planning for cities in evolution” by Michael Batty and Stephen Marshall, and “Jaqueline Tyrwhitt translates Patrick Geddes for post world war two planning” by Ellen Shoshkes. Landsc Urban Plan 166:25–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2017.06.020 Wezel A, Bellon S, Doré T, Francis C, Vallod D, David C (2009) Agroecology as a science, a movement and a practice: a review. Agron Sustain Dev 29(4):503–515 Woudstra J (2018) Designing the garden of Geddes: the master gardener and the profession of landscape architecture. Landsc Urban Plan 178:198–207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan. 2018.05.023

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Young RF (2017) “Free cities and regions”—Patrick Geddes’s theory of planning. Landsc Urban Plan 166:27–36 Young RF, Clavel P (2017) Planning living cities: Patrick Geddes’ legacy in the new millennium. Landsc Urban Plan 166:1–3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2017.07.007

Chapter 2

The Concept of Ecological Rationality and Its Application to Spatial Planning

Abstract In this chapter, we address the different forms of rationality drawing from insights of political science. Five main forms of rationality are examined––technical, economic, legal, social and political—and their relevance for spatial planning is discussed. The main limitations of such forms of rationality are analysed. We then describe the main characteristics of ecosystems and landscapes drawing from system theory and identify their key emerging properties—interdependence, complexity, self-organization, openness, adaptation, homeostasis, resilience, diversity and creation of order. The concept of Ecological Rationality—informed by such principles—is introduced and discussed. This can be defined as a form of thinking about actions, organizations and ultimate ends or values with a solid foundation on the science of ecology. Holism is its epistemological principle at the very foundation of this form of rationality. Keywords Ecological Rationality · Holism · Ecosystems · Emerging properties · Homeostasis · Self-organization · Resilience

2.1 Definition(s) of Rationality The concept of rationality has received significant attention from social scientists, political scientists, philosophers and other scholars since the times of Hobbes (Bartlett 1986). In the twentieth century, Max Weber dedicated significant theoretical effort to its definition; he presented the important distinction between formal and substantive rationality, which was subsequently analysed and discussed by Giddens (1981). Nobel prize winning economist and political scientist Herbert Simon also devoted considerable time and effort to the concept of rationality. According to Simon (1964), rationality is primarily an attribute of functional behaviour. An agent’s behaviour is rational if it is appropriate to the achievement of determined goals, given the information that the agent has and can process. In turn, the perception of the environment of a decision for the agent is a function of, among other things, its information sources and computational capacity (ibid.). This means that an agent’s behaviour evolves over time, as its source of information and the ability to process it can vary. Think, for example, of the exponentially escalating levels of computational capacity that we © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 C. Rega, Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning, Cities and Nature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33027-9_2

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have achieved over the past 30 years with the use of computers and models to simulate complex systems in a number of fields, from chemistry to astronomy. Learning is thus a key process as it can modify functional behaviour via the accumulation of experience and the acquisition of new abilities to manage information. Agents can be individuals, small groups of people or complex organizations. Central to Simon’s conceptualization is the distinction between substantive and procedural rationality. Substantive rationality refers to the extent to which the courses of action that are chosen to achieve a determined goal are appropriate. Once the goals are established, the rationality of behaviour depends only upon the characteristics of the environment in which it takes place. Procedural rationality, on the other hand, concerns the effectiveness of the procedures used to choose the action, given the above-mentioned limitations of human cognitive power. Behaviour is procedurally rational when it is the result of appropriate deliberation, i.e. its procedural rationality depends on the process that led to it (Simon 1964). In classical decision theory, such as utility maximization by a rational economic agent under complete knowledge, the focus is on what decisions are made, rather than how. Conversely, as the complexity of the decision-making environment increases and the postulate of certainty is no longer valid, the way decisions are made, and thus the type of procedural rationality applied, becomes the prominent issue. Two keys constraints come into play here: firstly, the search for additional information is a costly activity; and secondly, the total amount of information that can be handled and managed by an agent is finite. The very nature of the problem of procedural rationality, as postulated by Simon, can therefore be effectively summarized as: “how we use limited information and limited computational capacity to deal with enormous problems whose shape we barely grasp” (Simon 1978, p. 13). A direct consequence is that we must solve complex problems using an amount of information that will, in most cases, be lower than the amount needed to make a “fully informed” decision. However, things are still worse; even if we could obtain more information, we probably would not know how much of it would be required to make, if not an optimal, at least a satisfying decision. We can now return to the quinoa example described in the introduction: should land-use planners and policymakers in Peru promote the expansion of quinoa cultivation in the coastal region and replace rice, traditionally cultivated in that area, given the increasing international demand for quinoa? A scrupulous agent, i.e. a policymaker or individual farmer, may rightly want to make such a decision with access to sufficient information on relevant economic and environmental issues. One of these would, of course, be a forecast of the selling prices of the two crops. Water scarcity is another major environmental concern in the area, and agriculture is the main source of water consumption. Thus, the irrigation requirements of the two crops are also a relevant piece of information. Our scrupulous agent would first find that quinoa prices paid to farmers and for export had increased by 21% and 26%, respectively, from 2013 to 2014, surpassing that of rice. Secondly, that, rice requires an average of 15,000 m3 /ha of water, while quinoa needs 6000 m3 /ha (figures from Bedoya-Perales et al. 2018). Our scrupulous decision-maker could, at this point, feel satisfied; relevant information has been collected and the expansion of quinoa is apparently a win-win

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solution as it increases farmer income, improves reserve currency revenues from export and decreases environmental pressure in terms of water consumption. Furthermore, it can be assumed that the prices and water-consumption data were obtained quickly and with limited effort. More detailed information on other aspects of the issue would likely be more difficult to obtain, would not be immediately available and come at some price, e.g. performing ad hoc research, surveys and collecting field data. However, as mentioned above, several negative impacts associated with the expansion of quinoa have been identified, and they have only become evident after some time. These include the increased use of pesticides, the disappearance of traditional farming systems, decreased food variety and, possibly, security. The problem here is that these issues are the results of a complex network of causal relationships whose identification would have required a holistic, system-thinking approach. Such a thing is easy to call for but more difficult to put into practice. We will discuss this point extensively later in the book. The main point here is that complex problems can be addressed in a number of ways. We might only be concerned with economic issues, be primarily interested in the social consequences of our actions, or even aim to achieve a balance between the two. The different players in complex decisionmaking contexts, such as modern governments and large companies, will look at the same problem through different lenses. In the words of decision-making scientists, they would apply different forms of rationality. We will present and discuss these in the following section.

2.2 Different Forms of Rationality and the Current Primacy of Economic Rationality Political scientist Paul Diesing exhaustively examined the different forms of rationality in his seminal book Reasons in Society—Five Types of Decisions and Their Social Conditions (1962). According to Diesing, rationality is defined in terms of its “effectiveness” in producing certain values. The evolution of systems of thinking and cultural traits resemble the evolution of species and gene transmission; the most effective (ecologists would say those with the highest fit) are transmitted through time and accumulate to shape contemporary societies. Diesing defines the concept of principle of order as the principle that underlies all concepts of rationality. The reason is order, or negative entropy. Rational norms are principles of order. Five main types of effectiveness are identified by Diesing, and hence embody the five forms of rationality: technical, economic, social, legal and political. All of these forms are applied by contemporary organizations and decision-making structures and all are relevant in the context of spatial planning. We shall examine each of them below. We shall begin with economic rationality and dedicate some space to it, as it is by far the most dominant form in contemporary societies. Indeed, classical micro and macroeconomic theory is rooted in the paradigm of economic rationality. Its main underlying principle is that the goal of rational actors or entities is the maximization of

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profits and/or utility. This can be applied at any level or organization, from individuals to firms, companies and even larger aggregates like nations. In this latter case, some forms of aggregation of different preferences are needed, but the underlying rationale remains the same. Other types of behaviour would not be considered rational and would invalidate all theories and results obtained by its application. To be maximized, profit or utility must be measured. A fundamental requisite for economic rationality to operate is that everything needs to be expressed in single metrics, i.e. in monetary terms. A second important point is that, under this paradigm, human labour, capital and natural resources are primarily conceptualized as factors of production. Equally important is the concept of substitution; production factors can, to some extent, be replaced, and more capital can substitute labour, and vice versa. The limit to the possibilities of replacement lies only in the technical process of production. When a natural resource becomes scarce, it will be substituted via the actions of technology and the price system; when a resource is in short supply, its price will increase to a point at which its use is no longer viable for producers, triggering technological advancements that will provide a substitute. Thus, under economic rationality, if something does not have a price, techniques have to be employed to derive one. At a certain point, the negative impact that production systems had on the environment became so evident that classical economics was forced to include them in its framework. This was done by introducing the concept of “externalities”, i.e. production-process costs that are not reflected in the final market price of the service/good and that are incurred by someone other than the producer. The typical example of this is pollution, e.g. discharge of chemical residues into a river or of pollutant gases into the atmosphere, caused by a manufacturer who does not pay for this in a monetary sense. A significant amount of effort has been spent by economists to find ways to “internalise the externalities”, i.e. to define prices or property rights that make it possible to consider externalities in economic calculations (see the work by Nobel prize winner economist J. Coase). The need to assign a price to non-marketed goods and services most often concerns environmental goods and services, such as clean air and water, landscape amenities and the recreational possibilities offered by ecosystems. Economists have developed a variety of techniques to put a value on nature and thus subsume ecology into economics. It is worth summarizing them here because, beyond actually being used in decision-making processes that are highly relevant in spatial planning (e.g. the conservation or creation of green areas), they offer a clear example of economic rationality at work. Readers already familiar with them can skip the following paragraphs. These methods are usually grouped into two main classes: revealed preference methods and stated reference methods. The first includes the productivity method, hedonic valuation, the travel cost method and the damage cost avoided/replacement method; the second involves contingent valuation, the contingent choice method and the benefit transfer method. The productivity method is based on the fact that, even if an ecosystem good or service is not directly traded on the market, some other goods/services that are marketed and that require that ecosystem good/service for their production can be identified. As economists would say, if an ecosystem good/service is a production

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factor for a certain (marketed) good, then variations in the quality/quantity of that good/service will affect total production costs, which would, in turn, be reflected in the final price. For example, nutrients in the soil must be available for plants to grow, mature and transform solar energy into biomass that can be consumed by humans—at least, that is how an ecologist would put it. In classical economics terms, soil is a fixed production factor for crop commodities grown by an (economically rational) farmer. Whereas the ecologist would be worried about overexploitation leading to the degradation of soil properties, the classical economist would not at all, since chemical fertilizers can be easily purchased by the profit-maximizing farmer on the market and do the same job. The chemical fertilizer, a production factor, is a perfect substitute for the natural nutrients supplied by healthy soil. The price of the fertilizers is known, therefore, once the function linking nutrient availability and crop production are known, the value of this production factor can be estimated by considering the amount of money spent on the required fertilizer and the increased revenues from higher crop production. The hedonic valuation method is used to estimate the monetary value of ecosystem goods/services and natural/environmental characteristics that are reflected in real estate prices. The assumption is that the price of a residential property is not only determined by its intrinsic characteristics (e.g. size and age), but also, to a significant extent, by the characteristics of the surrounding environment—a consideration that most spatial planners should be familiar with. Therefore, the “price” of an environmental good or service, e.g. a green area, can be determined by looking at variations in the prices of houses in relation to their proximity to it. “Other things being equal” (a must in classical economics) house prices increase with proximity to the green area so that the aggregate surplus price represents the monetary value of the area. The travel cost method is used to determine the value of ecosystems and natural areas that are used for recreational/leisure purposes by looking at the travel expenses incurred to reach them. Travel costs can be estimated from the price per km travelled in a car or the cost of public transport (if present). Information on how often people visit from different areas can be used to derive the “price” of the “purchased service”, i.e. the visit to the site, as a function of distance. This becomes the demand function required by economists to define prices and the total value of the site, which is given by the total area under the demand function. The method has also been refined to give more precise estimations and to calculate not just the value of the site as a whole, but that of some of its specific characteristics. These refined methods include the individual travel cost approach and the random utility approach, which introduce more factors, such as individual conditions (e.g. income), choice and preference to the analysis, while the underlying principle remains the same. The damage cost avoided and replacement/substitute cost methods estimate the value of an ecosystem that provides a specific service by looking at how much it would cost to provide the same service using available technology. For example, if a wetland supplies the service of water purification, its value would be equal to the cost that society would incur in building and operating a water treatment facility that purifies the same amount of water.

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Contingent valuation entails directly asking people, using surveys, questionnaires and interviews, how much they would be willing to pay for a certain ecosystem good or service, or how much they would wish to be compensated for its loss. This method is widely used because it is the only one that allows a price to be assigned to the non-use value of an environmental service, i.e. the value that people assign to its very existence, even if they do not directly use it (or think they don’t). All other described methods, in fact, assume that environmental goods/services are actually used by people. However, a series of observations have led to economists, even those that adhere to the economic rationality paradigm, acknowledging that occasionally, sometimes often, people are willing to pay for something that they do not directly use. These non-use values are typically classified in the following categories: (1) option value, assigned by people in order to maintain the possibility of benefiting from or using an environmental good/service in the future, even if they are currently not using or benefitting from it; (2) bequest value, the willingness to pay to maintain a good/service so as to render it available for future generations; (3) existence value, the value assigned to, or the benefit received from simply knowing that a certain good/service exists, even if the people that are willing to pay for its existence know (or suppose) that they will never use or see it. For example, one may want to ensure that the Great Barrier Reef continues to exist despite having no intention of ever visiting it and/or having no descendants that will do so. Contingent choice is similar to contingent valuation, the difference being that people are not directly asked how much money they would pay for the ecosystem good/service at stake. Instead, they are asked to choose between different options or scenarios and make trade-offs between them. This method is often is used to rank possible land-use options, e.g. the location of unwanted land use (incinerators, landfills), and natural-area protection options, rather than to derive a final monetary value. Finally, the benefit transfer method uses available information from studies or surveys on similar ecosystem goods/services carried out in different contexts, for instance, in other locations, for the good/service in question. The description of these methods helps us to elucidate three constitutive principles of economic rationality: (i) the commensurability of values, (ii) the reductionism of complexity and (iii) discounting the future. The first principle concerns the consideration that if everything has a price, then everything can be traded off with money. For example, harms from pollution can be compensated by applying the polluter-pays principle. A community can be compensated by a developer for the loss of habitat caused by a new residential or industrial development once the total monetary value of the ecosystem goods and services that the habitat provided has been estimated. Similar considerations apply to human health. Once a method to assign a value to human life has been established (e.g. by calculating expected income over the supposed remainder of a person’s life, or the insurance premium paid upon death), nothing prevents us from applying economic rationality to these types of considerations. Suppose a planner is asked to define the optimal location of a new incinerator for an urban area. Available data shows that the further it is located from the urban

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core, the higher waste delivery costs would be. In terms of human health, it is estimated that the incinerator would cause an increase in mortality of, let us say, 0.2% for people leaving within a certain radius. So, a larger distance from the urban area would lead to a lower proportion of the population being affected and fewer deaths. On the other hand, delivery costs increase with distance. Therefore, with all other factors being equal, the optimal distance is simply the one at which the marginal savings from fewer deaths equals the marginal increase in delivery costs. The second reductionist principle is, to some extent, a “technical” consequence of the first, but is also a deeper ontological constituency of modern societies, as we will see in this chapter. For the time being, the relevant consideration is that the intrinsic complexity of ecosystems must be reduced if nature’s contribution is to be measured and valued as precisely as possible and economically rational choices are to be made. For example, a healthy soil that is rich in nutrients and organic matter supplies a variety of ecological functions beyond simply enabling the growth of plants that are sold on the market. Even assuming an anthropocentric perspective, humans derive many benefits from the functioning of the nitrogen and carbon cycles in soils— from auto purification to the absorption of greenhouse gases. Similarly, a green area provides a variety of benefits that go beyond recreational opportunities; it may be a habitat for pollinators, a stepping stone for migrating birds or a sink for greenhouse gas emission and so on. The problem is that, as things become more complex and interlinked, it becomes more difficult to apply monetary valuation techniques. Too many variables must be considered, and uncertainties increase at each new addition. Things must, therefore, be kept simple and separate. In the production of wheat, the complexity of soil properties has to be reduced to the single production factor linked to wheat growth, otherwise, it would not be possible to incorporate it into the economic account for that specific production process. At most, economists would acknowledge that this is an underestimation of the total value of the asset and that a more accurate value would be achieved by summing all of the services. The third principle is the discounting of the future. The idea that future earnings or losses are less significant than present ones is common to all valuation techniques, and to classical economics in general. The discount rate is the weight that the economic agents assign to the present in relation to the future. The higher the discount rate, the higher the weight of earnings/costs that are incurred in the present or in the near future, compared to those incurred in the far future. This is also a well-known economic principle for non-specialists, and so we will not dwell on it. Suffice to say that the magnitude of the discount rate may vary in economic valuation and is, to a certain extent, a political choice. It will, in any case, be greater than 0. The time horizon of economic rationality is inherently limited. Having dedicated to the topic of economic rationality the space it deserves, given its prominence in our contemporary societies, we now proceed to the other forms of rationality. Technical rationality is concerned, just like its economic counterpart, with effectively achieving a single goal that entails a series of technical steps and tasks. Industrial production processes are prominent examples of systems that are organized according to technical rationality. The goal, in this case, is the most efficient

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production of a good from a set of inputs (raw materials, human labour, energy). Typically, this leads to each part of the system being specialized in a single task in order to optimize efficiency and productivity. “The operations are designed to avoid waste, that is, to achieve a maximum transformation of materials and operating parts into product. This is an impersonal sort of order which can occur both in human and non-human materials” (Diesing 1962, p. 236). This type of rationality extends beyond machines to include “factories, hospitals, school, one’s daily schedule, living quarters, planned cities, entertainment and religious exercises” (Ibid.). Legal rationality considers the primary determinant of rational behaviour to be the rules and norms in place in a given context, and is ensured by a legitimate authority that has the power to enforce these rules and punish their infringement. Under this paradigm, rational behaviour prevents, or minimizes, legal disputes and litigation. Importantly, as the legal system is constituted of formal rules, the concern of legally rational agents is the formal compliance with such rules, rather than the substantial outcomes that derive from them. According to Diesing (1962), legal rationality is an order of availability. It determines what resources are available to each legal person, which people can be counted on to perform which actions and what actions each person must perform. As in the case of economic rationality, some preconditions subsist for legal rationality to function. Firstly, the law system must be clear, consistent, detailed and technical (Bartlett 1986). Secondly, as mentioned above, there must be some form of authority behind this system (typically the state) to guarantee its functioning and enforcement. There must be also a minimal level of presumption of punishment for infringement. Ideally, all issues and circumstances must be covered by the law, although, in real societies, we can see that this is rarely the case, especially when a new technology becomes available. In such cases, legal systems typically lag behind advancements in technology, causing gaps in law that may take years to fill. Legal rationality may be the primary or sole source of rationality for some decision-makers and agents, e.g. judges, lawmakers and lawyers. In many cases, legal rationality will not conflict with economic rationality, but there are a number of situations in which this might happen—all large economic entities have a team of lawyers as well as one of the economists. In such cases, the legal system can act as a system of constraint for “unbound” economic rationality. The underlying question for rational behaviour then shifts from “how do I maximize my profit” to “how do I maximize my profit given the systems of laws and regulation in place?” In practice, this does not necessarily mean always respecting the law. Trade-offs can be made by balancing expected economic gains against losses from the infringement of laws. Large companies may decide not to respect antitrust regulations if they deem that paying a sanction is worthwhile, considering all the possible advantages. Similar situations have arisen frequently in recent years in Europe and the US and there can be little doubt that they were the result of deliberate (i.e. rational) choices. Social rationality is the rationality of “interpersonal relations and social action, the integration in social relations and social systems that makes possible and meaningful the completion of social action. […] [It] is an order of interdependence” (Bartlett 1986). Socially rational people “engage in joint action, when they share experiences and understand one another. People who constantly share actions and

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experience are interdependent […]; they are constantly adjusting to one another, constantly changing. The parts of an interdependent system fit together and complete each other” (Diesing 1962, pp. 236–237). Thus, socially rational behaviour is the most appropriate for the systems of social interdependency that exist in a given society. Society here is intended in its broader meaning—from small entities like families to entire nations. Returning to Diesing’s own words: The parts of an interdependent system fit together and complete each other. Conflict and disjunction are both absent since each would destroy mutuality. In addition, the people involved in such a system must each have the same cognitive map of the system, since divergences in maps would lead to conflict or separation in action. Because of the identity of the cognitive map, each action by a part of the system is understood and appreciated by the other parts; it is accepted, supported, and carried to completion (Ibid., p. 237).

The existence of a common mental framework is more likely in small societies, as is the prominence of social rationality as a determinant of behaviour and choice. In these cases, blood-based bonds and family membership may well be considered stronger than economic and legal ones. No common mental framework will exist in large societies, such as nations, meaning that socially rational behaviour (e.g. by governments) would tend to attempt to minimize social tension, or keep it within acceptable limits that do not give rise to social instability—strikes, riots, revolts and true revolutions. Once more, one can think of numerous examples of measures taken by governments that would be judged deeply irrational in strictly economic terms, but that were implemented for “social” reasons. Social rationality, as opposed to economic rationality, will obviously be based upon a plurality of values, meaning that there is no single function or metric that can be maximised. As with legal systems, social rationality should ideally be complete and consistent. There should be a socially acceptable way to behave and react to any given situation. In this case, too, there should be some presumption of the possible disadvantages of infringing social rules. Finally, political rationality is the rationality of decision-making structures—an order of discussion and decision. A politically rational system is one that is able to solve the collective problems that it is confronted with. Firstly, this requires that information be acquired and processed, which, in turn, produces suggestions for the actions to be implemented. These are then analysed, tested, modified and/or combined to produce a final choice, often in the form of compromise. The process is not linear, but rather involves loops and feedback, while checks and corrections are possible at various stages. A system is, therefore, rational if it is effective in “gathering and checking information, […] inventing and checking suggestions, and […] combining suggestions into a decision” (Ibid., pp. 237–238). In democratic countries, political arenas are usually articulated and a number of actors hold some share of power in the decision-making process. The consensus among the main political players is, therefore, a trait of politically rational systems (Dryzek 1987). At the same time, however, the degree of opposition to the system must be kept below a certain level if stability is to be maintained. According to Diesing (1962), the stronger the consensus towards the political system, the higher its capacity to solve the problems it faces. However, as Dryzek (1987) points out, achieving wide-ranging

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consensus or, similarly, avoiding too high a level of discontent would often imply resorting to mediation and compromise, at the expense of the substantive capacity to find effective and definitive solutions to complex problems. From the perspective of a structure (a party, a government) that holds political power, politically rational behaviour allows for this structure to increase and/or maintain its power over time. Depending on the context, this could be achieved via negotiation, bargaining, strict control, dictatorship as well as carrot-and-stick motivation. I concur with Hartwing (2006) when he says that Diesing’s conceptualization constitutes an overall framework of the social sciences, and has not received the consideration that it deserves. The explanatory power of this framework is notable, especially, as I will argue below, when it is used for spatial planning. The five forms of rationality identified by Diesing are obviously not separate or mutually exclusive. They all coexist within the decision-making realm, just in the same way as we recognize the existence of social, legal and economic systems in society. They are interconnected and intertwined, and may converge or conflict. A single agent, be it an individual or a complex organization, may act, and indeed will often act, according to different types of rationality in different situations. If a small, individual investor is trying to make money on the stock market, he or she will be exclusively interested in maximizing the difference between the selling price and the buying price, and will most probably not care about the legal system that makes the existence of the stock market possible, or about any possible social implications of their choices. They would probably do it online without caring about the technical system that makes this exchange possible. A large corporation that operates on the same market as our economically rational small investor and that is pursuing a takeover bid for a competing corporation would probably not resort to economic rationality alone. Laws are in place to regulate the concentration of capital and the acquisition of large shares in big companies, making legal rationality of some importance here. In some cases, these acquisitions will entail reorganization, displacement of the workforce, downsizing and layoffs which, if not properly managed, can cause unmanageable social tension. The company may operate in sectors that are considered “national strategic assets”, such as transportation and energy, and acquisition by a foreign company may be impeded, or backed, for political reasons. Its final course of action will be the resultant of the application of these different rationalities. All forms of rationality are relevant in the organization of human systems and in defining the courses of action of complex decision-making systems. This is, of course, also valid with regards to scientific disciplines and knowledge domains. While the relative importance of each form of rationality will vary from field to field, more than one form will be present in virtually every case. Only in a very few cases will technical rationality be the only organizing principle of a discipline, such as in pure hard science (physics, mathematics, theoretical chemistry). Even strictly technical disciplines, such as engineering, must deal with the economic and legal aspects of the technical process, and thus with economic and legal rationality. Legal rationality will naturally be the main form of rationality in law faculties, which will also usually include some political economy and sociology of law. Analogously,

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economic disciplines, while being rooted in economic rationality, must include some basic knowledge of legal norms and political science. A faculty of political science, in turn, will include economics in their coursework, and so on. However, it is unlikely that there exists a discipline in which all forms of rationality coexist, and are equally significant and interlinked, to such an extent as in spatial planning. We will elaborate upon this in the following subsection.

2.3 The Different Forms of Rationality and Spatial Planning A spatial plan is a technical document and its elaboration must undoubtedly conform to technical rationality. Cartographic representation, for example, is a key component of spatial plans, and maps are produced according to precise technical rules. Zoning is, in the first instance, a technical exercise, as are all of the preliminary analyses carried out to provide the background information that feed the plan: studies on population dynamics, surveys on the state and age of buildings, natural feature mapping, as well as the calculation of indices and parameters (e.g. availability of different types of services per capita). Transportation models are an increasingly key component of spatial plans and geologic surveys are needed to determine the suitability of new development areas. Urban design is regulated by a wide range of technicalities concerning, for example, the distances between buildings, the width of streets and so on. These are all technical processes and good planners will conduct them in the most effective and efficient way, that is, under a technical rationality approach. Economic forces are obviously one of the main drivers of land demand and landuse transformations. Land is, after all, a tradable asset. While economists do acknowledge that it possesses some specific peculiarities compared to other goods, it has a price and a market nonetheless. It can be sold, bought, and rented, confiscated and mortgaged. It tends to become scarcer and can generate rent. As already mentioned, it can be considered a fixed factor of production for economic activity. The role that profit expectation, rent, rent gap and land revenue play in determining planning choices has been the subject of so many studies that they are barely worth mentioning here. The preferred localization of retailing activities, factories and transport infrastructure by developers is primarily determined by economic considerations; they may then be interlaced with other considerations, but economic ones will always be present. Even under the paradigm of economic rationality, a spatial plan is too complex an object to be measured using a single metric of economic value. Even the most radical neoclassical Chicago Boy would find it difficult to derive a single function to be maximized from the land-use configuration established by a plan. Nonetheless, individual actors with economic interests in the land in question, landowners and developers, will indeed likely act in the interests of their own profit maximization and try to influence decision-making accordingly. We are not referring to shady

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business, collusion, bribery and so on, but rather the legitimate (at least according to legal rationality) demands of the stakeholders that are part of the set of interests and viewpoints of the community affected by the plan. Planners and decision-makers may pander to these interests, doing so only partially or perhaps opposing them, but they cannot ignore them. Thus, even if a plan cannot be conceived solely under the paradigm of economic rationality, it will be subject to the resulting combined forces of stakeholders that, individually, act according to economically rational aims. However, economic rationality may be also relevant in the planning process itself. It may be the main determinant, for instance, in planning decisions regarding public services. The example of the location of an incinerator that was made earlier was clearly provocative, but nonetheless gave a clear idea of how planning choices can be informed by economic rationality. The sizing and placing of public services, such as a library, for example, may well be influenced by economic calculations that consider building and maintenance costs and the number of potential users. The decision to plan a brownfield redevelopment and create a new public park can be taken by considering rehabilitation costs, on the one hand, and the monetary value of the new park, on the other, by resorting to one of the valuation methods described in the previous section—there are innumerable examples of this type of project. Spatial plans acquire relevance in societies because they have a strong legal component. Plans are made up of a set of norms, directives, prescriptions and directions. Land-use plans establish building rights and property rights for parcels, and a significant proportion of such plans is constituted of the set of norms and regulations on building codes, different degrees of transformation of land use, application of constraints and norms to preserve specific architectural, natural and landscape elements. Litigation and lawsuits by the people affected are never far away; the acquired rights of landowners must be taken into account and are not always easy to modify. Norms regulate a number of planning aspects in a great many ways: they can, for example, be relevant to the technical aspects of planning by establishing minimum distances with regards to the localization of certain types of land use (e.g. cemeteries, rivers); the minimum width of different classes of streets; the minimum provision of the per capita surface of public areas, and the number of inhabitants in new developments. The fact that planning approval is a procedure that is defined by law is another aspect of legal rationality in planning. This includes, for example, provision for the collection of public representation and adequate responses to it, as well as receiving authorization and other legally binding acts from public bodies (e.g. environmental agencies, cultural heritage agencies). A third important aspect of legal rationality is that planning processes are embedded within a system of governance with a hierarchy of planning instruments, meaning that lower level plans must conform to higher level or sectoral plans, which contain prescriptions that must be followed or implemented. Environmental regulations also play an important role in this regard. In Europe and, increasingly, in many countries worldwide, spatial plans are subject to Strategic Environmental Assessment—a process that identifies, evaluates and mitigates any possible environmental impact that may derive from the implementation of the plan—which, in many contexts, is itself an articulated procedure defined by

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law. In the European Union, spatial plans that affect Natura 2000 sites 1 are subject to another form of environmental assessment, named Appropriate Assessment, that may or may not be incorporated into the SEA, depending on the regulations in place. This set of norms, higher level plans, sectoral plans and procedural regulations can be so complex that legal rationality, i.e. the adoption of behavioural strategies aimed at ensuring compliance and minimizing the risk of non-compliance, can easily become the dominant form of rationality for civil servants in the public administration responsible for plan approval. In such cases, there is a shift in the focus of concern from the substantial outcomes of the plan to formal adherence to norms and procedures. Conversely, socially rational planners and policymakers will be interested in the substantial outcomes of the planning process, in terms of its social effects on the affected population. Again, the planning literature provides huge numbers of concepts, theoretical frameworks and empirical studies on how planning choices can affect, and in turn are affected by, social structure. Cities are very much the stage for class struggles and social inequality. As Lo Piccolo and Thomas (2012, p. 5) put it “The definition and use of space is bound up in social justice in the broader sense”. The provision and access to public services, and the right to housing and shelter have been the demands of social movements across the world. Social stratification almost always has a clear spatial component; we have all had some experience of the differences between various neighbourhoods in a city, the centre versus the periphery, high-standard residential areas versus ghettos, favelas or low-income dormitory suburban areas. As pointed out by Lo Piccolo in his famous quotation, there are three main variables that determine the price of a house: location, location, location. Furthermore, public goods and services are not distributed uniformly in space. This is true for both concrete public assets, such as green spaces, social services, schools, hospitals, etc., and immaterial ones that are, nonetheless, perceived as highly important public goods, such as beauty, safety and security. “Which is the nicest neighbourhood to visit?” and “Is this area safe enough for me to walk alone at night?” are typical questions one asks when going to a new city. Such considerations are, of course, not restricted to the urban environment and are valid for any area. The availability of public services and infrastructure determines, inter alia, the degree of marginalization or vitality in a rural territory as well. Planning choices can assign specific protection statuses to certain landscapes and natural areas and these decisions can impact the welfare of people living nearby. In the same fashion, the localization of certain types of land use, such as landfills, incinerators, pollution-producing factories and new transport infrastructure, can lead to high social tension and protest movements. Indeed, it is in these types of situations that some of the most combative and long-standing social movements have arisen and developed. They have sometimes been labelled as being affected by the NIMBY (not in my backyard) syndrome, but this is a superficial interpretation in many cases. There is indeed a spatial component in how the negative environmental impacts of human activities are produced and distributed across a territory and this is strictly linked to the social component. While the environmental justice movement in the US is quite 1 Established

by the so-called Habitat Directive of 1992, see Chap. 6.

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well known, similar movements are increasingly being seen in other parts of the world. These groups denounce the fact that the burden of unhealthy environmental impact is systematically borne by the poorest in society, and, sometimes, by a specific ethnic group. Social rationality thus has a prominent role in spatial planning and, indeed, may sometimes be the main form of rationality to influence planning choices. Planners, scholars and practitioners will often find themselves operating in contexts of social tensions and conflicts (Lo Piccolo and Thomas 2012) and may be primarily concerned with the distribution of the benefits that derive from planning choices, such as the siting and sizing of public services, green areas for recreation, localization of development sites for potentially unhealthy production activities and the provision of social housing. In this case, no single metric will be used to measure a social utility function that is to be maximized. There will be some norms to follow, for instance, the minimum provision of per capita public areas, but planners will not settle solely for formal compliance with minimum standards (averaged across an entire territory). Other indicators, such as the mean distance from public services and amenities, the per capita surface of such services in different areas, the presence of and distance to major public infrastructure (hospitals, schools), and population density, as well as the availability and frequency of public transport, will be used. Finally, planning is, of course, an inherently political process. Plans are the responsibility of public bodies and local governments that are, in many cases, elected. These structures operate according to a political vision and an electoral mandate. They typically aim to be reelected in the next electoral round. The elaboration of local land-use plans is one of the most important tasks for local administrations and is often a sensitive one. A range of concrete interests are in place and it should come as no surprise that the term politics derives from the Greek polis, i.e. city, the community of citizens (polit¯es). Thus, planning outcomes will always be determined by political rationality to a certain extent. It makes little difference whether planners are internal local government civil servants or external consultants, as they will nevertheless respond, to the political authority that employs them. Under political rationality, planning choices clearly technically or economically not rational can yet be considered advantageous for local governments for the most diverse of reasons: responding to the specific needs of the community, seeking consensus among specific stakeholders, maintenance (or disruption) of the power balance. Spatial plans, and especially local land-use plans, function to distribute rent opportunities and costs to the community, and establish building rights making them inherently political, particularly in a community that faces a lack of economic resources. Trade-offs must be made and, in most circumstances, these will determine who is better off and who is worse off; that is the essence of politics, after all. Now, as in the majority of decision-making processes, these different forms of rationality are interlinked and compete for influence in the spatial planning domain. They may well be in conflict with each other; again we can think of many examples of economically rational planning choices causing social tensions, and of public areas/services being planned and maintained for social and/or political reasons even if they do not pass the scrutiny of classical cost–benefit analysis. Furthermore, there

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are many examples of otherwise very rational plans being invalidated and rejected after citizens or associations have brought them to court for non-compliance with regulations or perhaps because of procedural flaws in the approval process. There is one pivotal question that arises at this point in our discourse: do we need another form of rationality at all? After all, if no single form of rationality is sufficient to determine what the most effective course of action is in complex situations, perhaps a mindful mix of all five forms can do so. More specifically, we may ask whether, supposing we need ecological rationality in decision-making in a broader sense, we need it in the specific case of spatial planning. To answer these questions, we shall first describe ecological rationality and discuss its main features and what makes it different from the other forms of rationality. This is done in the following subsection.

2.4 Ecology, Ecosystems, and Landscapes—Definitions and Main Concepts Having discussed what is meant by rationality, to define ecological rationality we now have to address “ecology”. The term ecology was coined by a German biologist, naturalist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel in 1866, who, 3 years later, defined it as: “the entire science of the relations of the organisms to the surrounding exterior world, to which relations we can count in the broader sense all the conditions of existence. These are partly of organic, partly of inorganic nature”. Three focuses for ecology have emerged over time leading to as many categories of definitions: the first category comprises definitions resembling Haeckel’s original one and emphasizes the relationship between organisms and the environment; the second stems from one originally proposed by Andrewartha and Birh (1954), “the scientific study of the distribution and abundance of organisms”; the third is rooted in Odum’s (1963), “the study of the structure and function of Nature” and has the study of ecosystems at its heart. More recent definitions attempt to embrace all three aspects, while accounting for the importance of flux between them, e.g.: “The scientific study of the processes influencing the distribution and abundance of organisms, the interactions among organisms, and the interactions between organisms and the transformation and flux of energy and matter” (Cary Institute 2018). Ecology is based on other sciences, including physics, chemistry and biology, which study the increasingly complex laws that regulate the organization of molecules and living organisms. Ecosystems are the basic unit of study in ecology and the environmental sciences in general. It can be stated that the recognition and identification of ecosystems are currently the principal means of ordering our perception of nature (Christian 2009). This is not strictly a book on ecology as a scientific discipline. There are many excellent texts and handbooks that the reader can refer to, e.g. Odum’s Ecological Systems (1994). We will nonetheless recap some basic principles of ecology which will facilitate later discussions on their relevance

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and implications for spatial planning and on the refounding of planning theory and practice upon the bedrock of ecological rationality. The basic unit of study in ecology is the ecosystem. Many definitions have been proposed since the term was coined in the mid-30s by Tansley (1935). These all, however, revolve around three main components: (i) biotic components; (ii) abiotic components, and (iii) their interactions. Odum and Barret (1971), one of the most influential ecologists of the past century, provides the following definition: “Any unit that includes all of the organisms (i.e. the “community”) in a given area interacting with the physical environment so that a flow of energy leads to clearly defined trophic structure, biotic diversity, and material cycles (i.e. exchange of materials between living and non-living parts) within the system is an ecological system or ecosystem”. In this definition, ecosystems thus have an explicitly spatial component, as they are geographically identifiable (Christian 2009). Some other authors have emphasized the conceptual, rather than spatial, component of ecosystems (e.g. Allen and Hoekstra 2015). In this work, however, we will stick to Odum’s definition as it is the most suitable in the spatial planning domain. Here comes a first point in need of clarification: planners are more accustomed to thinking in terms of landscape, rather than ecosystems. This difference in terminology should not discourage us, as a closer examination reveals that the distinction is not an obstacle. According to the famous definition by the European Landscape Convention, landscape is: “an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors” (ELC 2000). This definition is perfectly consistent with that of the ecosystem given above. In this case, the biotic component includes humans, so that the interactions between the biotic and abiotic components also include the interactions between humans and the environment. The additional element here is that the area is perceived by people, but again this does not contrast at all with the ecosystem definition. Indeed, all animal species have a perception of their surrounding landscape, and this determines their behaviour and their place in the network of interrelationships that make up the ecosystem/landscape. The defining characteristics of landscape, as compared to ecosystem, are then the explicit spatial dimension (less marked in some definition of the ecosystem) and the stronger focus on human agency and the human cultural mindset—hence, not only a material phenomenon (Bastian et al. 2014). So, the concept of landscapes and ecosystems can be reconciled once the spatial and the human components are duly taken into account: in practice, given the size and physiological characteristics of humans, in terms of size the landscape will usually comprise one or more ecosystems. Indeed, in classical ecology landscape is defined as a “heterogenous area composed of a cluster of interacting ecosystems that are repeated in a similar manner throughout” (Forman and Godron 1986). Therefore, a landscape can be considered as one or more ecosystems in which the biotic component includes humans. Under this concept, even a pristine portion of the territory is a landscape insofar humans are present (even if not in permanent form) and perceive it, as the very act of observation is already a form of interaction with the natural component. All of the properties that we will ascribe to ecosystems below can easily be applied to landscapes as well.

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The first important characteristic of ecosystems is interdependence. The three components of an ecosystem are connected to each other by a web of relationships. These relationships are primarily described in terms of the flow of energy, matter and information. In each ecosystem, different levels of organization, structured as an interlinked and nested hierarchy, are identifiable: cells, organism, populations, communities. Each level interacts with those above and below. Energy enters the system in the form of solar radiation, which is transformed into biomass by plants via photosynthesis (primary production). The exchange of matter and energy occurs between different trophic levels throughout the system, as herbivores eat plants and convert vegetal biomass into meat biomass (secondary production). Carnivores eat herbivores and convert part of their biomass into other biomass, and so on. The laws of thermodynamics determine that some energy is lost, via degradation to heat, at each passage of energy from one level to another. The same nested-hierarchical structures are identifiable in spatial terms (single → ecosystem → landscape → region → biome → ecosphere), so that different scales of analysis are identifiable. The relationships established between the different ecosystem components and levels of organizations are rarely linear or unidirectional. They tend to be: “nonlinear, reciprocal, indirect, circular, probabilistic, contingent, delayed, multiplicative, interactive and synergistic” (Bartlett 1986, p. 230). The complexity of the web of interrelationships in an ecosystem leads to the presence of what are referred to as emerging properties, i.e. properties or behaviours of the system in its entirety that are not observable if single components are examined singularly. This holds true both across scales and at any specific scale of analysis. Emergent properties of a certain level of organization—either functional or spatial—cannot be fully derived only by examining the properties of the below level. Ecosystems (and thus landscapes) obey the non-reducible property: the property of the whole is not reducible to the sum of the properties of the parts (Odum and Barret 1971). To explain non-reducibility across scales, we can think of an urban neighbourhood: this is composed by a certain number of buildings, but—even if we limit the analysis to our perception—the sense of place, the character of the neighbour in its entirety is not deducible only by the character of the individual buildings that constitute it. In explaining non-reducibility at a fixed scale of analysis, Jørgensen et al. (1992) make an analogy with mapping (appropriate in the context of this book). They state that providing details for all of the physical, biological and cultural features of a landscape in a single map is impossible because this is a constantly changing dynamic system. It is possible, however, to produce several maps of specific features or subsystems (geology, roads or land use), that each serves a different purpose. A comprehensive representation of the area is given by combining the single maps, each of which is holistic in that it represents the entire territory instead of a single part. Yet, the information provided by the different maps is still incomplete, since there will always be some particular feature that is not fully represented by them. With system ecology, we face a similar situation (ibid.). In summary, the reductionism approach fails when we study complex systems. Holism is, therefore, the epistemological paradigm of ecology and ecological rationality; a fact that has profound implications for any decision-making structure that is founded on ecological rationality. It implies that any description of a complex system

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must be pluralistic, i.e. embrace different points of view (ibid.). However, these different perspectives must then be fashioned into a coherent, if incomplete, picture, to enable an understanding of the whole systems. While modern science has achieved astonishing results with specialization and reductionism, ecological rationality calls for an anti-reductionist approach. Another key characteristic of ecosystems is that they manifest a certain level of self-organization and coordination. At first glance, this would seem to be in contrast with the second principle of thermodynamics, which clearly states that entropy will never decrease. Quoting the famous phrase by Sir Arthur Eddington (1882–1944): “if someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations—then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation—well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation”. Thermodynamic laws ultimately rule ecosystems. However, ecosystems do indeed show anti-entropic behaviour and create structural order (remember here the principle of order discussed by Diesing). The emergence of some form of structural order in animate and inanimate systems is: “natural, inevitable, and largely independent of the material substrate involved” (Jørgensen et al. 1992). The point here is that the second law of thermodynamics applies to isolated systems, i.e. systems that cannot exchange matter nor energy with the external environment. Ecosystems are open systems; they exchange both energy and matter with their surrounding environment. Openness is thus another fundamental characteristic of ecosystems; their emerging properties, their anti-entropic behaviour, the creation of order is only possible in open systems that constantly receive energy supply from the exterior. Put another way, isolated systems are doomed to lose their order and properties in the long run. (Social scientists at this point could have grasped the importance of this property and put it in relation to human systems and their degree of closure/openness, e.g. in relation to migration policies or autarchy). Ecosystems can adapt to changing conditions and external input, to a certain extent, through autoregulation mechanisms that grant them homeostatic behaviour. This can assume two forms: resistance (or robustness) and resilience. The first of these is the ability to oppose and contrast external stress, while the second is the capacity to return to the initial state after alterations in the system caused by stress has occurred. Resilience, in particular, has become a popular term in recent years, including in the spatial planning domain. A simple search for “resilient cities” in the title of articles in the Scopus database returns 164 hits (October 2019), a third of which were published in 2018 and 2019. However, resilience is sometimes confused with resistance (according to the definition given above) in this literature. Both resistance and resilience are, in any case, made possible by negative feedback, which functions in ecosystems thanks to diffused control mechanisms. A typical example is the predation mechanism; an excessive increase in the population of a prey animal will lead to an increase in the population of its predators, which will, in turn, keep the population of the prey animal under control. These ecosystem properties are evident when we think of anthropic landscapes, such as agricultural areas or cities. In

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these cases, the original ecosystems have clearly undergone heavy transformation processes and have experienced external stresses, but are still able to support life and, to some extent, key ecological processes. The adaptation capacity of ecosystems is, nonetheless, finite. A major problem here is that the non-linearity of ecosystem dynamics is also reflected in their pattern towards collapse. This rarely happens in a smooth, gradual way. More frequently, ecosystems will tend to maintain a certain equilibrium even in the presence of increasing stress, leading to abrupt collapse after a critical point is reached. This has important implications for management and decision-making, as it indicates that it may be too late to intervene once the signs of collapse become evident. A final important property of ecosystems is that they tend to be more stable, resistant and resilient with increased levels of internal diversification. In general, a greater diversity of genes, organisms, species and habitats within an ecosystem means that it can support a greater variety of ecological processes and have a greater capacity to contrast, adapt to and recover from external stress. From a more anthropocentric perspective, it can be said that biodiversity underpins the ecological processes and functions that can translate into ecosystem services for humans. This is, for example, on the basis of the conceptual framework of the MAES (Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystem Service) initiative run by the European Union (Maes et al. 2013). Furthermore, this concept is made explicit in the EU Biodiversity Strategy towards 2020, which states that: “Biodiversity—the extraordinary variety of ecosystems, species and genes that surround us—is our life insurance, giving us food, fresh water and clean air, shelter and medicine, mitigating natural disasters, pests and diseases and contributes to regulating the climate” (EU 2011) In summary, interdependence, complexity, non-reducibility, self-organization, openness, adaptation, homeostasis, resilience, diversity and creation of order (negative entropy) are the emerging properties of ecosystems, and thus the constitutive principles of ecological rationality. The epistemological principle at the very foundation of this form of rationality is holism; the acknowledgement that the whole is more than the sum of its parts and that reductionism, or the “retreat into simplicity” (Jørgensen et al. 1992), does not suffice to explain, let alone manage, complex ecological systems, notably, those relevant for spatial planning and related decision-making bodies, i.e. landscapes. With this in mind, we are now equipped to examine more in detail the concept of Ecological rationality as proposed in political science.

2.5 The Concept of Ecological Rationality The concept was first introduced by Commoner (1971, although he did not use this term), and was subsequently developed by other social and political scientists, notably Bartlett (1986) and Dryzek (1983, 1987). The latter of the two stated that an ecologically rational structure is one that consistently produces the good of life support for its components. Ecologically rational behaviour is consequently one

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that promotes or protects the functional rationality of ecosystems; their stability or homeostasis (Dryzek 1983). Along similar lines, Bartlett (1986), defines it as the rationality of ecosystems, an order of relationships between living systems and their environments. Ecological rationality thus has its foundation in the science of ecology but, as highlighted by Bartlett (1986), is not a synonym of it. It is rather: “a way of thinking about actions, about organizations, and about ultimate ends or values” (ibid., p. 229). The principle of holism is the main organizing principle of ecological rationality, which should consequently adopt an inclusive, synoptic and synthetic perspective. The time horizon of ecological rationality is long, as is coherent with the timeframe of the basic processes that are observed in ecosystems, which can stretch over centuries or millennia. These characteristics make ecological rationality much less anthropocentric than the other forms of rationality (ibid.). While it is still a human mindset, its principles and ends transcend the specificity of humankind, as they place the maintenance of the broad ecosystem (which includes, but is not limited to, humans) as the focus of concern. Bartlett maintains that ecological rationality has both a solid scientific foundation, and a moral and ethical dimension. Although he traces the principles of ecological rationality to some eastern philosophies, religions and organizations of preliterate peoples, he quotes Marx, who defines the “ecological ideal” as the maintenance of a healthy life-enhancing interaction between man and the environment, which calls for certain minimum requirements of the system to be understood. Ecological rationality is grounded in scientific reasoning, the collection of empirical evidence, prediction, explanation and validation. Building on Diesing’s definition, Bartlett states that ecological rationality “is exhibited when a decision or action takes account of the possibilities and limitations of a given situation and reorganizes it so as to produce, increase, or preserve a good, namely, the capacity, diversity, and resilience of the biotic community, its long-term life support capability” (Bartlett 1986, p. 234). The distinction between substantial and procedural rationality applies to ecological rationality as well; organizations that produce, increase, or preserve the long-term life-support capability of ecosystems are ecologically rational (ibid.). Now that we have outlined the principles and organizing concepts of ecological rationality, we can return to the question posed earlier: do we need ecological rationality as the primary source of rationality in decision-making, in general, and spatial planning, in particular? To address this, it can be asked if all forms of rationality described above should be considered to have equal value or whether one form of rationality has priority over the other ones. Diesing himself argued that political rationality is the primary underlying principle of rationality in complex political systems: Political rationality is the fundamental kind of reason, because it deals with the preservation and improvement of decision structures, and decision structures are the source of all decisions. […] There can be no conflict between political rationality and any other kind of rationality, because the solution of political problems makes possible an attack on any other problem while a serious political deficiency can prevent or undo all other problem solving (Diesing 1962, pp. 231–232).

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Accordingly, political rationality should be elected as the ultimate source of rational behaviour, and the other forms be considered as subordinate ones, used to solve specific problems within the broader frame of a rational political structure. In an interview conceded in 1985, Diesing affirmed that had he written the book a decade later, he would have included a sixth form or rationality, namely ecological rationality (Hartwing 2006). Both Bartlett (1986) and Dryzek (1983, 1987) argue that ecological rationality shall be the primary form of rationality and have prominence over the other rationalities. The argument adduced is quite straightforward: if, following Diesing (1962), political rationality is the most fundamental kind of rationality among the five he identified because it deals with the preservation and improvement of decision structures, and decision structures are the source of all decisions, then ecological rationality is even more fundamental, as “only the preservation and maintenance of ecological life support capability makes possible the preservation and improvement of decision structures and, hence, political rationality and all other forms of rationality” (Bartlett, 1986, p. 235). Very similarly, Dryzek (1983) argued that the preservation of the life-support systems upon which human beings depend is a precondition for the continuation of society itself and its institutions, ergo, the primacy of ecological rationality over the other forms. At a general level of abstraction, these arguments sound convincing: if all ecosystems collapse, humankind is doom to extinction—“at a very fundamental level man’s interests and those of ecosystem stability coincide” (Dryzek, 1983, p. 9). But do we need ecological rationality as the organizing principle at a less fundamental level of abstraction, like spatial planning? The question is not provocative nor rhetorical. For instance, Daniels (1988) put forward a clear argument concerning the role of ecology in spatial/landscape planning. His paper is significantly titled: “The Role of Ecology in Planning: Some Misconceptions”. First, he argues about the necessity to distinguish between ecology as a political stance and ecology as a scientific discipline. Only the latter has a role to play in spatial planning: “Existing planning laws and procedures impose certain conditions, and the ecologist may be called in, where necessary, to provide information which can be used in effecting these procedures or meeting the requirements of the laws” (Daniels 1988, p. 292). In this sense, he goes on, ecology may provide inputs to planning in three forms: survey, assessment and prediction. The objective of the survey is to collect information on the existing situation, as concerns, for instance, the existing communities of plants and animals, the presence of rare species and the land-use history that led to the currently observed situation. However, he argues, the presence of a rare species in a landscape has no special merit per se, unless it can be explained why the species is rare and why it should be present in a particular area. Similarly, the criterion of diversity cannot be used to make any evaluation of the comparative “ecological value” of the two sites. The concepts of representativeness, fragility or naturalness are often referred to by conservationists but they all entail a certain degree of subjectivity. Fragility is not an ecological concept and cannot be applied in a broad sense. Naturalness, especially in Europe, is not a pivotal concept as many ecosystems generally recognized as meriting preservation are actually the results of the interactions with the human agency (see e.g. Halada 2011).

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Ecologists can aid the planners by predicting the consequences of certain courses of action, this being “perhaps the most important role for the ecologist in the field of planning” (Daniels 1988, p. 296). Typically, predictions will concern the effects of new developments on existing communities. In this frame, an ecologist can offer a number of alternative management prescriptions “but it is not his role to determine which should be adopted” (ibid., p. 297). In this view, the role of ecology in planning cannot, therefore, be that of the advocate of nature conservation value, because the latter depends on a number of conflicting viewpoints, subjective judgements and alternatives. The appropriate role of ecology in planning should be to assess the viability of certain choices and their effects, but “it cannot be used to give quasiscientific answers to questions of policy and politics” (ibid., p. 297). In sum, ecology should provide factual information to the planners letting them make policy decisions. Ecologists should give “advice which is seen to be balanced and does not tailor its assessment procedures to desired ends” (ibid., p. 299). Daniels does not explicitly use the term “rationality” but his argument can be easily framed using the types of rationality described earlier. In his view, political rationality has primacy. The role of ecology is to provide technical information. Daniels (1988) stresses this concept in his paper: ecologists should be rigorous in collecting data and making assessments; they should clearly distinguish factual statements from subjective judgements; they should identify the most representative species in a site to characterize it and its status, as the compilation of complete lists of organisms is clearly not feasible. In this view, the role of ecology shall be the same as other specific disciplines that collect data and provide baseline information to planners like, say, geology that indicates which sites can be adequate to host new developments based on the geotechnical characteristics of the soil. When legal requirements are in place, ecology can provide information to support planners in defining courses of action that meet the requirements of the laws (i.e. in our conceptualization, operating under legal rationality). Daniels’ (1988) argument cannot be neglected. Yet, is this really the role ecology has to play in spatial planning—a technical discipline that shall refrain from interfering in the realm of politics? This would presume that once ecology has produced its (technical) contribution to spatial planning in the form of survey, assessment or prediction, existing decision-making structures and underlying rationalities are able to produce ecologically sound decisions, or make adequate trade-offs between ecological values and other ones. Is that the case? This question was tackled by Dryzek (1987) who examined the capacity of existing mechanisms of social choices in coping with ecological issues. Dryzek’s argument and conclusions are very relevant to make the case for this book, so it is worth summarizing them and elaborate on their implications. Social choice mechanisms are conceptualized by Dryzek as the collective instruments that humans have to solve problems; in turn, these instruments can be selected and evaluated against their capacity to do so, in this case addressing complex ecological problems. Dryzek’s arguments start with the elaboration of a set of criteria to guide this evaluation; interestingly, he derives them from the emerging properties of ecosystems outlined in the previous chapter. The underlying argument, which we fully share, is that the

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mechanism of social choices can cope with ecological problems if they have the same properties of ecosystems. In particular, he identifies the following five criteria: (1) negative feedback; (2) coordination; (3) robustness; (4) flexibility; (5) resilience. Negative feedback (which is a positive characteristic despite the name) is the presence of input signals able to adjust the deviations of the systems from its state of stability. It can assume two forms: in centralized system output signals are processed by a single “headquarter” that generates feedback signals: this is the case of the brain, for instance. In de-centralized systems, as ecosystems, no such central “hub” is present and the negative feedback is guaranteed by diffused control mechanisms. To be effective, negative feedbacks, particularly diffused ones, require coordination, both between agents within a single collective action and between different collective actions. To explain the coordination between agents, Dryzek resorts to the well-known prisoner’s dilemma: in the absence of coordination (in this case, communication between the prisoners) rational individual agents would defeat the others instead of cooperating, while each of them would be better off if they decided to cooperate. Put in another way, individually rational decisions lead to negative collective outcomes. The need for coordination between different social choices ensues directly from the non-reducibility and complexity of the ecological dimension of social choices (Dryzek 1987). Decision-making and social structures are complex entities made of different parts that must achieve coordination to be effective in pursuing determined courses of action. As in the case of negative feedback, coordination can be ensured by centralized or diffused mechanisms. Negative feedback and coordination are necessary but not sufficient conditions for ecological rationality—social choice mechanisms could use them to rationally and effectively pursue very unsustainable and deplorable actions, like wars or mass exterminations. Robustness and flexibility are needed to cope with spatial and temporal variability typical of ecological issues. As mentioned, robustness is the capacity of a system to continue to work properly under conditions of external stress or interference. The whole range of possible external stresses are seldom unknown a priori, hence a robust system is one that is able to maintain a suboptimal performance under different external interferences rather than one that is optimal only in favorable circumstances and poor performing in all other ones. Flexibility is complementary to robustness and entails the capacity of a system to adjust its structural parameters and functioning to respond to changes in the external environment. Flexible mechanisms of social choice should, therefore, be able, for example, to adopt new forms of negative feedback to receive and react to a new type of signal, or establish a new form of coordination to cope with unforeseen problems. Flexibility thus requires that a system can change rapidly its configuration, at least in part: any social mechanism that is resistant to change is, therefore, not flexible, though it might be robust. As seen in the previous chapter, resilience in ecosystems is the capacity to return to the initial status after an external disturbance or stress has acted upon the system. Analogously, resilience in systems of social choices is defined by Dryzek as their ability to pursue courses of action able to restore the functionality of ecological

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systems after any event that undermined it. Differently from the other identified criteria, resilience is a contingent criterion, applicable only in circumstances of extreme disequilibrium. To wrap up, negative feedback, coordination, robustness, flexibility and resilience are the five main criteria that should be used to evaluate the capacity of systems of social decision to cope with complex ecological problems. Again, not all criteria are at the same hierarchical level. Negative feedback and coordination are the two necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for an ecologically rational decision structure; the two of them, plus flexibility or robustness, are sufficient, unless the system is in an initial state of disequilibrium, in which case resilience is also needed. Flexibility and robustness are in fact interchangeable, at least to a certain extent, while resilience is a contingent criterion. While Dryzekwas examining decision-making systems in general, we shall know to deploy his insights more specifically to the field of planning and identifying what is missing in contemporary planning theory and practice to fully adhere to the paradigm of ecological rationality. To this, we turn to Chap. 3.

References Andrewartha HG, Birch LC (1954) The distribution and abundance of animals (No. Edn 1). University of Chicago press Allen TF, Hoekstra TW (2015) Toward a unified ecology. Columbia University Press Bartlett RV (1986) Ecological rationality: reason and environmental policy. Environ Ethics 8(3):221–239 Bastian O, Grunewald K, Syrbe R, Walz U, Wende W (2014) Landscape services: the concept and its practical relevance. Landsc Ecol 29(9):1463–1479. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-0140064-5 Bedoya-Perales N, Pumi G, Mujica A, Talamini E, Domingos Padula A (2018) Quinoa expansion in Peru and its implications for land use management. Sustainability 10(2):532 Cary Institute (2018) Our definition of ecology. Available online: https://www.caryinstitute.org/ news-insights/definition-ecology Christian RR (2009) Concepts of ecosystem, level and scale. Ecology-Volume I, 34. EOLSS Publications Commoner B (1971) The closing circle: man, nature and technology, vol 1, no 97. Knopf, New York, p 1 Daniels RE (1988) The role of ecology in planning: Some misconceptions. Landsc Urban Plan 15 (3–4):291–300 Diesing P (1962). Reason in society: Five types of decisions and their social conditions. Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press Dryzek JS (1983) Ecological rationality. Int J Environ Stud 21(1):5–10 Dryzek JS (1987) Rational ecology: the political economy of environmental choice. Basil Blackwell, Oxford EU Ministers Responsible for Spatial Planning and Territorial Development (2011) Territorial Agenda of the European Union 2020—towards an inclusive, smart and sustainable Europe of Diverse Regions. http://www.eu2011.hu/files/bveu/documents/TA2020.pdf Forman RTT, Godron M (1986) Landscape ecology. Wiley, New York, NY, USA

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Giddens A (1981). A contemporary critique of historical materialism (Vol. 1). Univ of California Press Hartwig R (2006). Rationality, social sciences and Paul Diesing. Texas A&M University Halada L, Evans D, Romão C, Petersen J-E (2011) Which habitats of European importance depend on agricultural practices?. Biodiver Conserv 20(11):2365–2378 Jørgensen SE, Patten BC, Straškraba M (1992) Ecosystems emerging: toward an ecology of complex systems in a complex future. Ecol Model 62(1–3):1–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/03043800(92)90080-x Lo Piccolo F, Thomas H (2012) Introduction. In: Lo Piccolo F, Thomas H (eds) Ethics and planning research. Routledge, pp 1–10 Maes J, Teller A, Erhard M, Liquete C, Braat L, Berry P, Egoh B, Puydarrieux P, Fiorina C, Santos F, Paracchini ML et al (2013) Mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services. An analytical framework for ecosystem assessments under action 5 of the EU biodiversity strategy to 2020. Publications office of the European Union, Luxembourg. https://doi.org/10.2779/12398 Odum HT (1994) Ecological and general systems: an introduction to systems ecology. Univ. Press of Colorado Simon HA (1964) Rationality. In: Gould J, Kolb WL (eds) A dictionary of the social sciences. Free Press of Glencoe, New York, pp 573–574 Simon HA (1978) Rationality as process and as product of thought. Am Econ Rev 68(2):1–16 Tansley AG (1935) The use and abuse of vegetational concepts and terms. Ecology 16(3):284–307

Chapter 3

Bridging the Gaps: Connecting Spatial Planning with Land-Use Science and Political Ecology

Abstract In this chapter, the concept and principles of ecological rationality are examined more specifically with regard to planning theory and practice. We discuss the inherent inability of current decision-making systems in general and planning systems, in particular, to effectively address complex ecological issues. To address this and to redefine planning under the paradigm of ecological rationality, we propose a deeper cross-fertilization between planning and two cognate disciplines: LandUse Science and Political Ecology. We illustrate and discuss the main principles and concepts of these disciplines and the potential interplays with spatial planning theory. We also discuss potentialities and limitations of Landscape Ecology and put forward possible novel lines of research for mutual enhancement of these different disciplinary areas towards a holistic conceptual frame.

3.1 Ecological Rationality Principles in Planning Structures and Processes We shall now elaborate on the significance of the principles of ecological rationality, more specifically in the field of spatial planning. To do this, we now turn to the disciplinary literature on planning. To start with, the issue of coordination (or lack of) between agents in the same structure or between different structures is well known to planners. Horizontal and vertical coordination—with sectoral plans and higher/lower plans—are long-standing themes in the spatial planning domain. Indeed, the pursuit of coordination at the territorial level is one of the purposes of spatial planning. Plans’ elaboration and, even further, implementation always requires a certain degree of coordination between different agents in the planning authorities, the lack of which is rarely the case of an achievement of stated planning objectives. This topic has been addressed extensively, amongst others, by Faludi (2014); as he puts it (ibid., p. 299): For planning to achieve [its objectives], it must make the various agents that are normally shaping development according to priorities of their own, fall into line. […] The government agency responsible for making the plan must be able to rein other actors in. ‘Other actors’

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3 Bridging the Gaps: Connecting Spatial Planning may refer to other government agencies, whether on the same level of government (horizontal coordination) or on other levels (vertical coordination). The need for control also applies to private actors.

In discussing the very fundamental purposes of planning, Faludi (2014) makes a distinction between two ideal types of spatial plans: the project plan and strategic plans. The former are blueprints of the intended end state of a material object and the measures needed to achieve that state. In these cases, interaction in the planning process mainly focuses on the adoption of the plan. Once in place, the plan is supposed to be an unambiguous guide to the achievement of a predetermined final outcome. The plans’ implementation entails phasing works in line with this. Of course, in the real world, project plans can be misread and/or implemented in unforeseen ways. In trying to avoid this, a lot of effort is put into plans on standardizing expressions and specifying prescriptions and directives (think to the legal–rational element in planning described in Chap. 1). Strategic plans “concern the coordination of projects and other measures taken by a multitude of actors” (ibid., p. 303, emphasis added). Such actors can be other bodies of government or private stakeholders. The object of planning is the set of decisions taken by these actors, the coordination of which is a continuous process. The strategic plan is, therefore, mainly a frame of reference for negotiations, a provisional record of reached agreements, always susceptible to changes and reconsiderations. These two forms of plans are ideal types and, in reality, both of them can coexist within a single plan, but their ultimate purposes are different. Project plans aim to achieve an intended future state through the implementation of the plan’s contents. The main purpose of strategic plans is to give guidance in uncertain and complex situations where there needs to be mutual learning. It is to allow decision-makers to learn about what their situation is and what they can do about it (planning-aslearning). Project plans address primarily inanimate objects, while strategic plans address primarily human agents. The latter have their own view of the world, which leads them to possibly interpret the plan in a different way from planners. It is worth noting that Faludi (2014) does not resort at all to the concepts of different rationalities described above, nor to any ecological notion: the terms “ecosystem”, “ecology/ecological” and even “environment” (in its physical meaning) do not occur in his paper. Yet—and this proves the power of the conceptualizations by Diesing, Dryzek and Bartlett—it is straightforward to link his argument to the conceptual frame presented before. More specifically, the two ideal forms of planning, strategic and project planning, are linked to the concepts of coordination and negative feedback, respectively. We have already seen the relevance of coordination for strategic planning. Concerning negative feedback, we can think of the definition provided by Faludi (2014) of strategic planning as a guidance for the implementation of specific projects. During the implementation phase, the realization of these projects may occur in a way that leads to a departure from the objectives originally envisaged by the plan. In this case, the presence of feedback mechanisms (e.g. monitoring schemes, inspections, environmental assessment procedures) would enable sending a signal to the planning authority to adopt adequate measures. If a project plan

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is expected to have a determinate effect, then a mechanism should be in place to identify possible departures from the intended outcomes and to implement corrective actions. As we will see more in detail in Chap. 4, this is, for example, one of the main objectives of the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive (2001/42/EC/) when establishing provisions for monitoring schemes to be put in place for any plan or programme that might have environmental impacts. The presence of diffused control mechanisms able to provide negative feedback is useful only if the planning authority can respond to them in an effective way. This implies that policymakers and planners should be able to rectify their initial decisions and amend the plans accordingly to address unforeseen circumstances or unexpected outcomes. This requires that a certain degree of flexibility exists in the planning structure. There is no doubt that the readers at this point can figure out a number of real situations where this can be the case. Sometimes change and adaptation are required by decisions and events occurring at a higher level in the decision structure: new hierarchic plans can enter into force, requiring revision of plans at lower tiers; national policies may change and funding lines that local players were counting on may be suddenly closed. The organization of mega-events (e.g. Olympic Games, international fairs) or the construction of megastructures (e.g. high-speed railways), impacting the local territory can be decided at national or international levels. In other cases, bottom-up drivers can require changes, following, e.g. new needs in the local community or problems with the implementation procedures originally envisaged to realize the plan’s objectives. All the above-mentioned general instances are still valid if ecological issues are concerned. New environmental protection policies can enter into force requiring actions at the local level (we will dwell on this in Chap. 6), and new large projects or events will inevitably apply additional pressures on the environment not initially considered. Implementation mechanisms may concern the requirements that provide for specific environmental measures in the realizations of new developments—like the use of specific materials or establishment of ecological compensation areas—which may cause friction between developers and the local authorities. Concerning resilience and robustness (in reality, a mix of them grouped under the resilience label), we have already seen (Chap. 1) that they are now recurrent keywords in the spatial planning domain. No doubt that mainstreaming resilience in planning is not only a technical challenge but also entails profound changes in the institutional mechanisms and planning structures. Sharifi and Yamagata (2018), for example, mention the need to reduce bureaucratic hierarchies, adopt co-design and co-production approaches, capitalize on social and community capital, and emphasize incremental approaches based on learning by doing. To sum up, the main five criteria of ecological rationality—negative feedback, coordination, robustness, flexibility and resilience—appear all relevant in the spatial planning domain and have attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners over the last years, although from a different perspective and not within a unique and comprehensive conceptual framework. They concern both the plan and the planning structure, as well as the broader decision-making structure in which the latter is embedded.

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3.2 The Inherent Incapacity of Current Decision-Making Systems to Pursue Ecological Rationality We can now turn back to the pivotal question posed at the outset of this section: are current decision-making structures and mechanisms able to function according to these principles? Dryzek (1987) examined in detail, against each of these criteria, the main mechanisms of social choices operating in our societies: markets, administrative systems, polyarchy, legal system, moral suasion and international relations. His conclusion is that none of them alone meet the five criteria of ecological rationality. It is useful to summarize his main arguments here below and establish the links with spatial planning. In the classical economic theory, markets should provide negative feedbacks through the system of prices and overall coordination between players through the law of offer and demand. However, an inherent characteristic of market is the need for constant growth, both in terms of profits and in demand for goods and services, which is a mechanism of positive feedback, and clearly in contrast with the recognition of physical and ecological limits. Another factor that undermines the capacity of markets to provide negative feedback is the short-sightedness of the markets. As seen in Chap. 1 when discussing economic rationality, the mere existence of an interest rate, thus the discount of future gains and loss, implies a substitution cost for economic agents. So, even if they receive the information that a certain course of action undermines the possibility of exploitation from an economic point of view in the future, this will emerge in the cost–benefit analysis only when the time horizon is close enough for these future losses to become numerically relevant. The coordination capacity of markets works well insofar private goods and service are concerned, but has proven to fail when public goods, especially environmental ones, are concerned. This has been the subject of so many studies in the literature since Hardin’s (1968) much-cited article “The tragedy of the commons” that it is not worth dwelling on it too much. But it is worth highlighting at least a critical issue here that is often the source of many misconceptions. The point is effectively explained by Martínez-Alier and Muradian (2015): Hardin’s paper (and its reviewers) mistook commons for open access; rules governing the commons have been in place for centuries in Europe and in other parts of the world to ensure the sustainable exploitation of commons, from grassland in England to common pastures in Mexico and coastal fisheries or irrigation water in Asia—Nobel prize winner Ostrom (1990) has studied them in detail. In conclusion, markets may be flexible in regards to the ability to produce new goods and services in response to consumers’ demand, or in creating a demand for new products through marketing and advertisement; their main features, however, need to be stable: private property, interest rates and the constant need for growth are irreplaceable elements of markets, which severely limit their overall flexibility. Contrary to markets, which are made by a multitude of individual agents pursuing their own ends, administrative structures (e.g. governments) should provide a higher level of coordination, which would allow them to address complex problems by

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subdividing them into simpler components and assign each of them to a subsection of the structure (e.g. different departments within one ministry). This is indeed how modern governments and administrative systems work. Through the establishment of adequate monitoring structures, administrative systems should also be able to generate negative feedbacks, and, in theory, their actions are not inherently afflicted by short-sightedness. Plus, administrations, especially public ones, show a significant degree of robustness and, in principle, are also flexible: offices can be reorganized, merged or suppressed, new competencies and tasks can be assigned, people can be moved among offices to work where they are more needed, and so on. In principle, administrative systems have thus the requisites to pursue ecologically rational courses of action. In practice, their failure in doing so is in the public eye. The main problems pointed out by Dryzek are the difficulty of vertical coordination (adherence of lower civil servants with the policies and objectives of the hierarchy) and the need for complex organizations to establish well-defined routines to work on a daily basis, which is at odds with the possibility of addressing new, non-standardized problems. The main mechanism administrations resort to for achieving coordination is the breakdown of complex problems into many simpler ones, but, as seen in Chap. 1, ecological problems can be addressed effectively only through holism and integrated approaches—the total is always more than the sum of the parts. Negative feedback is also hindered by the fact that it would imply acknowledging errors made earlier, but responsible officers would tend to hide, or minimize them, to avoid repercussions. As a consequence, these structures tend to perpetuate errors rather than correct them until they come out in catastrophic ways—but at that point is most often too late to remedy. Information is a source of power and a bargaining chip in complex organizations, so people are not prone to widespread and share it as effective negative feedback would require. Finally, hierarchy and authority—inherent features of complex organizations—impede the open dialogue and the exchange of information that would help to tackle and resolve ecological problems. Overall, administrative systems are effective in managing the routine and maybe so in accomplishing well-defined (even if technically difficult) tasks, but do not seem adequate to tackle ecological issues. The term polyarchy (“government by many”) was coined by the American political scientist Dahl (1973) to describe democratic systems in which a plurality of actors play a role in the decision-making systems. The elements of Polyarchy include the existence of basic liberties, free elections and the plurality of political parties, free information and the possibility for people to associate in different forms (organizations) that are entitled to exert an influence in the policy arena. Contemporary Western democracies can be considered polyarchies, as well as the European Union as a whole. In polyarchies, no single actor, even governments, has a preponderant share of power, and decisions are the results of the participation of and negotiation between a plurality of parties. In theory, the possibility of people to influence decision-making can provide timely and diffused negative feedback: whenever a resource or an ecosystem is too much exploited, people relying on it or concerned with it (e.g. environmental organization) can raise their voice and put the issue on

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the agenda. This has indeed happened and still happens in many parts of the world and has triggered reactions by governments and other decision-making bodies, as shown in the Prologue. An ideal polyarchy is close to the Popperian concept of an open society (Popper 2012) in that proposals and actions are subject to public scrutiny and improvements are achieved through a trial and error approach, whereby the outcomes of different policies and measures are evaluated primarily by people affected by them. In polyarchies, coordination is not assured by a centralized body, which most likely would fail do to so anyway, as seen previously, but rather the results of incremental actions and mutual adjustments that will smooth over the initial inconsistencies (Wildavsky 1966; Lindblom 1965, as cited in Dryzek 1987). Again, however, the reality is different from the ideal type. In contemporary democracies the possibility to exert influence is clearly not evenly distributed among all sectors of societies; a relatively restricted number of groups tend to have way more influence than others, and feedback signals are more effectively conveyed when they concern a particular issue that has high and specific importance for a precise stakeholder. Lobbies and influence groups are by definition more effective in pushing for particular interests, rather than general ones. All of these aspects seriously undermine the effectiveness of negative feedbacks in real polyarchies; furthermore, all existing polyarchies operate within a market system, so all the previously highlighted shortcomings apply. Even in polyarchies, the tendency is to pay more attention to short term rather than long-term problems, or to respond to emergencies rather than envisage forward-looking policies to prevent them. In addition to this, mutual adjustments may require a long time to achieve a universally accepted solution, which may well be at odds with the urgency of certain ecological problems. The inertia with which governments are responding to the climate-change issue is probably the most striking example of this. Dryzek (1987) concludes that polyarchies are better equipped than markets and administrative structures to address ecological problems, but not enough to effectively solve them. We have already seen in the previous chapter how the legal system is very relevant in the planning domain being that planning itself an activity with significant legal implications. One of the requisites of contemporary democracies is the independence of the legal systems from the political one, so it makes sense to examine the former as an autonomous decision mechanism. Legal systems may act as decision-making body, particularly in situations where the decision of judges concerns aspects not covered in detail by existing laws and thus leaves judges with some space for interpretation. With time, the corpus of previous verdicts on specific issues creates itself a set of rules, which is in any case ever-evolving. Since the 60s, environmentalist movements have resorted extensively to the legal system when their instances could not find an adequate response in the political arena. The attitude of the courts towards the resolution of environmental disputes may, of course, evolve over time as well, but overall the legal systems are more internally consistent, thus coordinated, than the political one, particularly in polyarchies. Legal systems are quite robust, too: changing them requires strict procedures, and established rights cannot be easily ignored. Of course, the degree to which this translates into robustness in ecological terms

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depends on the content of the norm and the established rights, but in principle, there are not inherent impediments within legal systems themselves for laws to be strict in guaranteeing the protection of the ecosystems. On the other hand, legislations are not immutably carved into stone and can be changed and adapted to new needs and circumstances. Plus, as seen, judges have always some leeway in interpreting laws, which add flexibility to the whole system. Negative feedback can be guaranteed by laws in three ways: first, people or organizations can resort to courts if they feel that they have been subject to a violation of their rights, and this, of course, applies to environmental rights as well. Class actions against damage produced by pollution or non-compliance with environmental and health regulations are ever more recurrent in contemporary democracies, and may act as powerful negative feedbacks towards producers and polluters. The main weapon that the environmental justice movement, particularly in the US, has used to improve the conditions of minorities and disadvantaged sectors of society is bringing cases to courts and adopting themselves a formal legal status (see, e.g. Perez et al. 2015, for a good report on the evolution of the environmental justice movement).1 Another pro is that during judicial debates the parties have the possibility to fully expose their arguments that can be evaluated more scrupulously than during political debates. Finally, courts are, if not immune, at least less susceptible than political actors to the influences of lobbies and particular interests. On the other hand, many political scientists would argue that legal systems, though formally autonomous, are in fact a superstructure of the economic systems, thus tend to formalize in laws mainly its needs, which as we have seen are in sharp contrast with ecological rationality. Furthermore, in practice, access to tribunals and lawyers is costly, which systematically tends to limit the possibilities of disadvantaged groups. In modern societies, the ever-evolving tangle of general laws, specific regulations, directives, administrative acts, and ruling by different tribunals undermine the whole coordination capacity of the legal system. Finally, legal systems do not take spontaneous actions but respond to appellation made by someone so they are, at most, reactive but not proactive in pursuing ecological rationality. For all these reasons, they are considered overall not fully adequate to achieve ecological rationality. Along similar lines, Dryzek’s argument proceeds to examine other mechanisms of social choices like moral suasion and international relations and, expectedly, concludes that they are inherently weaker than the previous ones and that none of the examined mechanisms are geared towards the pursuit of ecological rationality. Dryzek does not address spatial planning as a specific mechanism, but, as we have seen in the previous chapter, planning does contain, to some extent, all forms of rationalities underpinning the examined mechanisms, so we can safely deem that Dryzek’s conclusion is a fortiori valid for it. This does not mean that planners and decision-makers cannot put in place ecological planning measures, but that, overall and cumulatively, current planning systems will always tend to replicate the process 1 We

can note here that often, cases brought to court by environmental justice movements concern issues with a direct relevance for spatial planning, as the location of harmful facilities (dumps, source of pollution) and more in general the spatial distribution of negative environmental impacts.

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that leads to anti-ecological choices, or at the very least will have to fight against a combination of forces and the ongoing trend to counter them. Dryzek’s books concludes by proposing a new model of society based on two main elements: (1) practical reason, i.e. a form of social choices based on a logical consideration of the suitability of policies and strategies for achieving a desired end, and (2) radical decentralization in the government system (recalling the motto “small is beautiful”), in which relatively autonomous entities coordinate and cooperate through an open system of contract bargaining to ensure maintenance of the capacity of ecosystems to support human life. The analytical part of Dryzek’s argument is solid and very accurate in describing the shortcomings of contemporary mechanisms of social choices with respect to ecological rationality; more than 30 years have passed since the publication of Rational Ecology, but the events that have occurred meanwhile have only provided additional empirical support to its analysis. Conversely, the pars construens is, in my view, far less developed and it is only vaguely sketched out. However, the call for a decentralized system of autonomous entities in charge of territorial government is, of course, intriguing for spatial planners and deserves elaboration. We will get back to it in Chap. 5. What is to a large extent missing in Dryzek’s analysis is the link between the mechanisms of social choices and the deeper substructures of contemporary capitalist societies that underpin them––forces and relations of production. This is touched upon when discussing economic rationality and markets as social choice mechanisms, particularly when highlighting their need for constant growth, but this crucial aspect is not further delved into. Whichever interpretation of the relationship between the superstructures and the substructure (or base) one is inclined to, be it the classical Marxist one whereby the first is to a large extent determined by the second, or the Weberian one whereby the two reciprocally interact without one of the two being preponderant, we miss part of the story by examining only one element. Nonetheless, the identification of the factors that inherently oppose ecological rationality in contemporary decision-making structures—thus as well in those concerning planning choices—are an excellent point of departure for land-use managers and planners to bring the analysis forward and try to build a comprehensive conceptual frame for ecologically rational spatial planning. Many scholars, after the publication of Dryzek’s seminal work, have highlighted the failure of contemporary liberal democracies to cope with ecological problems (Plumwood 1995; Mathews 1995; Baber and Bartlett 2005; Naess 2005; see also Bonifazi 2009, Sect. 3.1, for an excellent synthesis). Dryzek himself enriched and refined his elaboration over the years and argued in favour of deliberative democracy as the most adequate form of social decision to address and solve the ecological issue, in line with a growing group of scholars advocating for a deliberative turn in contemporary democracies (Dryzek 2005, 2009; Baber and Bartlett 2005). In his latest works, he identifies reflexivity as another key requirement of decision structures, i.e. the self-critical capacity of a structure or process to change itself after scrutiny of its own failures (Dryzek 2016). Now we shall take a step forward and try to, firstly identify the deeper, underlying forces and substructures that are causing the ever more evident deterioration of the ecosystems’ capacity to support human life; and secondly, the recognition of how

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these forces and substructures manifest themselves in the terms that are most relevant for spatial planners, that is the identification and analysis of their spatial component and the influence on land-use trends and demands. My main argument here is that, to this end, planning scholars and practitioners, as well as all land managers, have much to learn from the converging theoretical insights of two different, though interlinked approaches, Land-Use Science and Political Ecology. We shall, therefore, embark ourselves on a voyage into the realm at the intersection of these two domains, which is, however, a quite vast one. Rendering the complexity and richness of the debate around it and sorting out from it some key, overarching principles to build the abovementioned conceptual frame, in the space of a few pages, appears very difficult. Unless, perhaps, we stand on the shoulder of the giants that have preceded us. To this, we turn to the next section.

3.3 Land-Use Science, Political Ecology, and the (Missing?) Link with Spatial Planning In Chap. 1, we have concisely described the main characteristics and emerging properties of ecosystems, namely interdependence, complexity, emerging properties, selforganization, openness, adaptation, homeostasis, resilience, diversity and creation of order (or negative entropy). These properties are increasingly disrupted by human activities, often to the point that ecosystems are not able to provide the basic functions and processes that sustain human life. Ecology, as a science (that we can term here Natural Ecology to distinguish it from Political Ecology), identifies and analyses these mechanisms, so we made the point that, given their relevance in spatial terms, spatial planners should become more and more familiar with them. Importantly, when illustrating the emerging properties mentioned above, we have not highlighted any specific ecosystem in particular; as a general rule they are, in fact, valid for every type of environment, from pristine tropical forests to mixed urban–agricultural mosaics in temperate regions, from deserts to dense urban areas. Of course, the degree to which such different ecosystems will perform different functions and the degree to which they will display the properties will vary, but we will always be able to identify these emerging patterns. In this lies the power and importance of natural ecology as discipline for and in planning, in allowing us to orient ourselves in the potentially huge diversity and particularity of local situations by providing us general interpretative guidance. In Chap. 2, we have warned land-use planners against the temptation of the retreat into simplicity, i.e. to refrain from adopting holistic frames and system thinking to analyse the complexity of land-use dynamics they are supposed to steer and govern. Analogously, when addressing the interface between the coupled natural–human systems, planners and land-use managers are at risk of what we define here as the retreat into specificity. Undoubtedly, land-use planners are confronted with an incredible degree of diversification in the object of their study and agency, i.e. the territory.

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Even in a single, relatively small continent like Europe, the variety of the environmental conditions and landscapes is astonishing; we can range from the wild, sparsely populated heathlands of Northern Europe to the Mediterranean scrub, from urban areas where the urban fabrics developed centuries, if not millennia ago, to recent suburban neighbourhoods. And this is only as far as the physical landscape is concerned: on top of that, there is the variety of national and regional institutions, legal mechanisms, planning cultures, local management practices, building styles, all of which intertwine with the no less diverse economic fabric and the specific historical development patterns of sites. Accordingly, the way in which the coupled human-ecological systems will interact is shaped by all these factors that in different areas can and will combine in innumerable ways. Let us avoid, however, any misunderstanding at this point: knowing the specificity of a place is not only desirable for spatial planners—it is essential. The more practitioners are familiar with the specific features of a place, its local history and the specific ongoing land-use trends, the more informed their actions will be and they will be able to find a locally adapted solution. But it is just as important that land managers are able to recognize the general trends and the underlying processes that determine specific patterns visible at the local level. This will enhance their capacity to critically interpret local phenomena and find adequate courses of actions, taking advantage of their knowledge of the local milieu. Political Ecology has been defined in a number of ways by different scholars; a classical and widely cited definition is the one by Blaikie and Brookfield (1987, p. 17) “[…] political ecology combines the concerns of ecology and a broadly defined political economy. Together this encompasses the constantly shifting dialectic between society and land-based resources, and also within classes and groups within society itself”. Excellent summaries of the genesis and development of Political Ecology as scientific disciplines are provided, among others, by Walker (2005), Paulson et al. (2003) and Turner II and Robbins (2008). Political Ecology shifts the focus from the analysis of the physical components of the ecosystems and the deriving emerging properties, to their interactions with the social (human) systems, and, in particular, with the production systems. Although different approaches have evolved within the discipline and the label itself has been contested (Walker 2005; Vayda and Walters 1999) the overarching question Political Ecology addresses is the relation between political and economic systems and the reduction/enhancements in human vulnerability and ecosystem functionality (Turner II and Robbins 2008); key issues ensuing from this can be summarized as follows (ibid.): • How do control over the environment and knowledge of the environment, along with the distribution of environmental access and authority, influence environmental conditions and change? • What are the implications for the sustainability of environmental management regimes and ecosystems? • How does environmental degradation differentially affect varying human communities (e.g. by income, race, gender, geographic location)?

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• What are the implications of environmental conditions and change for shifting environmental risk regimes, social justice, and sustainability of human use and socio-economic well-being? • Who defines environmental outcomes and conditions and to what political and ecological effect? Recommended readings for those who want to deepen their knowledge of the rich field of Political Ecology include, besides those already cited, Robbins (2011), Bryant (2015) and Perreault et al. (2015), but this list is far from exhaustive. Below, we will dwell on the work of another fundamental author, André Gorz. Land-Use Science or Land-Change Science is the study of changes in land at the interface of social and environmental systems and their implications for the global environment (Müller and Munroe 2014); it thus addresses land dynamics as a foundation of global environmental change and developed as a multidisciplinary research domain involving ecology, geography, resource economy, institutional governance, landscape ecology and other scientific disciplines. Central to this approach is the integration of the natural, social and geographic information sciences, including remote sensing (Lambin and Geist 2006; Turner II et al. 2007; Turner II and Robbins 2008). The four main components of Land-Change Science research include (Turner II et al. 2007): • • • •

Observation and monitoring of land changes underway throughout the world. Understanding of these changes as a coupled human–environment system. Spatially explicit modelling of land change. Assessment of system outcomes, such as vulnerability, resilience or sustainability.

Key texts on Land-Use/Change Science include Gutman et al. (2004), Turner et al. (2007), Turner II (2009), Rounsevell et al. (2012); Verburg et al. (2015). Again, this list is not meant to be exhaustive. A main common trait of Political Ecology and Land-Use Science is the conceptualization of land as a coupled human–environment system (or socio-ecological system) emphasizing the interdependencies of the two subsystems that make a single subsystem analysis insufficient. Convergences and divergences between these two disciplines have been examined in an influential paper by Turner II and Robbins (2008) and subsequently in Brannstrom and Vadjunec (2013); although they are autonomous research approaches with sometimes different interpretative frames, they share several objectives and foci that can lead to convergences around key sustainability themes. Political Ecology may address a broader set of issues than those related to land (e.g. the marine environment), but shares many, though not all, of the research interests of LCS (Turner II and Robbins 2008). Both conceptualize land dynamics as interactive processes of the coupled human–environmental systems; similarly, they both investigate key topics such as the ecological implications of economic activities, causes and remedies to the process of land degradation (e.g. desertification, deforestation), conservation, institutions and governance and environmental justice. In addition, a significant share of the studies in both subfields address “spatial themes, such as the efficacy of park or reserve boundaries […] the

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role of spatial connectedness to understand human-environment relationships […] and the use of spatial knowledge and information […]. Both approaches utilize geographic information technologies extensively […]” (ibid., p. 299, emphasis added). So, what distinguishes them is not the ultimate object of analysis, nor their underlying theoretic foundations, but rather the lenses through which these complex issues are looked at and the emphasis put on different elements. Whereas Land-Change scientists would focus on the structure and function of the environmental subsystem in its own right, Political Ecologists will look into the role of physical environmental processes in affecting land-use and social change—the human subsystem—rather than to their own inner dynamics. Land-Change Science investigates the different drivers affecting land management, including proximate and distal factors as informed by a wide range of social and environmental science theories and concepts, including household economics, governance, institutions, ecosystems and landscape. Political Ecology would analyse the same drivers more in terms of control, knowledge, production mechanisms and social justice. Both approaches, however, yield similar results when investigating human drivers and causes of land change and ecosystem degradation (ibid.). They converge in recognizing that: (i) a complex web of interactive factors drives land-use/-cover change which often leads to different land-use outcomes, even when starting from similar initial conditions; (ii) proximate factors of change linked to land managers’ decisions are influenced by distal factors; (iii) feedbacks as the emergent properties of systems have an important role in nonlinear dynamics (ibid.). Land-Change science resorts extensively to modelling and quantitative methods, while Political Ecology employs often a qualitative analysis of case studies and interactions with local actors and stakeholders to elucidate the underlying driving forces determining observed phenomena. The two approaches can, however, be used jointly and scholars are increasingly advocating for deeper integration between the two to contribute to sustainability science by including notions of power relationships in Land Change Sciences and incorporating geospatial techniques in Political Ecology studies (Brannstrom and Vadjunec 2014). The main element of interest for our argument at this point is whether insights from Land-Change Science and Political Ecology are relevant for spatial planning and, if they are, whether spatial planning theory and practice is taking advantage of them. The first part of the question is, admittedly, quite rhetorical: we have highlighted above how both disciplines are, in the words of their own proponents, concerned with spatial themes. That Land-Use Science should be relevant for Land-Use Planning appears almost tautological. Turner II et al. (2007, p. 20669, emphasis added) in their seminal paper on Land-Change Science, state that “the coupling of the human– environment subsystems and assessments of their spatially explicit outcomes leads to a number of major challenges for [Land-Change Science], perhaps none more important than the search for sustainable land architecture”. Moreover, they add that “the complete array of ecosystem services for a landscape or region can rarely be supplied by setting aside one piece of land, and lands optimal for human uses often coincide with those most critical for providing certain goods and services. […] These patterns constitute architecture in that most lands, including wildlands, are

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governed, and thus their use is designed, de facto or de jure. […] In a world fast approaching governance and de facto planning of the entire terrestrial surface, the question of deriving a sustainable land architecture constitutes a grand challenge.” (ibid., emphasis added). The need for integration of Land-Change Science and spatial planning seems thus to ensure from the very premises of the former. Given the abovementioned convergence between Land-Change Science and Political Ecology, this holds true for the latter and, all the more so, for hybrid approaches. One would then expect similar vibrant calls for the integration of Land-Change Science/Political Ecology with spatial planning from their respective research fields, and ongoing efforts to foster cross-contamination, reciprocal feedback and mutual learning. A quick look at how things are going in reality will leave the reader disappointed. Even in the most recent literature, scholars maintain that, to date, landchange science has devoted little attention to spatial planning despite the widely accepted premise that planning affects urban land change (Hersperger et al. 2018). It can be argued that the opposite is as much true. Hersperger et al. (2018) trace back this disconnectedness to the existence of two different paradigms underlying research in these two domains: for spatial planning scholars, they maintain, the space is primarily a social construct, while land-change scientists seek to identify correlation or causality between drivers and outcomes, and try to model them in quantitative ways. While, in our view, this explanation might be too straightforward, in that it does not acknowledge the full spectrum of paradigms underlying planning theories, the conclusions are fully sharable: “Research to bridge the two paradigms is sparse. Consequently, planning is not well integrated in quantitative land-change assessments” (ibid., p. 33). For Hersperger and colleagues, the aim is to better take into account spatial planning as a prominent driver of land-use change (in line with Lambin and Geist 2006) into land-change models. To this end, they identify a number of challenges and obstacles: some of them more technical, such as the difficulty to translate cartographic planning representations (often fuzzy and schematic) and narratives into modelling inputs; other ones concern the discrepancy between planning intentions, implementation and outcomes, and the role that territorial governance plays in this process. They put forward a research agenda aimed at elucidating clear links between territorial governance, plans, development projects and outcomes, i.e. land changes. Whether this is feasible or not remains an open question, but Hersperger and associates’ paper has the merit to recognize the need to bridge land-change science and spatial planning and to propose concrete actions to do so. They do it from the perspective of the research needs of land-change scientists, which is fair enough given that this is their research interest. The somewhat disheartening observation is that to the best of our knowledge, very few, if any, attempts in the same direction have been made so far from the side of spatial planning scholarship (an exception is Metternicht 2018, Sect. 1.2, but the issue is only touched upon therein). The problem is not only that planners are seldom consulted during the design and calibration of land-change models, which makes that spatial planning as a driver of land change is modelled through a “rather rough approximations of planning instruments and policies” (Hersperger et al. 2018, p. 34); it lies also in the fact that, in our view, land changes affect spatial planning choices as much as spatial planning affects land changes. It’s common knowledge that during

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the 80s and the 90s, large areas in European and North American cities once occupied by industrial establishments have been abandoned due to the transfer of production in developing countries. This was not a planning choice of local/regional authorities, but an outcome of the more general trends in capitalist production acting at a global level. Planners and policymakers had to cope with this phenomenon and envisage new solutions for the reconversion of these areas but had virtually no agency in determining the displacement of production. So, the relation between planning activity and land changes is bidirectional and is mediated by numerous endogenous and exogenous factors. Spatial planning literature acknowledges the importance of external factors on the local level, but this is often limited to loose statements for setting the context for the study of specific cases (Hersperger et al. 2018; Albrechts and Balducci 2017; Healey 2007). We again share Hersperger et al.’s (2018, p. 38) conclusion that “an explicit consideration of external conditions in affecting the formulation and implementation of spatial plans […] is, to our knowledge, left unexplored”. These authors call for a strong cooperation between the domains of planning and land-change science that would yield substantial benefits to both, pointing out that advancements are essential since land-change science “is moving towards designing sustainable land transformations and novel land systems while promoting the concept of land governance in order to co-design solutions for global sustainability” (ibid., p. 40). This is an opportunity that spatial planning scholars and practitioners should not miss and could open up much-needed research avenues in the next future. The situation is not better if we look at the integration between Political Ecology and Spatial Planning.2 A notable exception is the book edited by Taylor and Hurley (2016), where authors examine the processes of transformation and their drivers in exurban areas, defined as places characterized by very-low-density rural residential development, chosen by affluent people who left the city and its suburbs in search of a more rural lifestyle closer to natural amenities. Although the analysis is limited mainly to the United States, the approach of the authors is very much in line with the argument of this book, as they aim to provide land-use planners and decisionmakers with insights by identifying both the global drivers and the role of local political, planning, and regulatory processes that shape the landscapes of exurbia. Importantly, they put land-use planning at the core of their analysis, pointing out that the role it plays in these processes is not systematically acknowledged by current scholarship and state that “this lack of engagement by scholars with planning and territory represents a gap in research” (Taylor and Hurley 2016, p. 9). Overall, we consider that cross-fertilization between Spatial Planning, Land-Use Science and Political Ecology is urgently needed to advance theory and salience in each of these research domains and to improve practices. So far, the cognizance of this urgency seems to come more from the side of land science scientists and political ecologists than from planners. But the call for cooperation should be taken 2 As of October 2018, no papers are present in the Scopus database with “Political Ecology” and one

of the following word in the title: “spatial planning” or “land-use planning” or “urban planning” or “landscape planning”. If the search is extended to title, abstract and keywords, only some 23 documents were returned.

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on seriously by planning scholars and practitioners. Increasingly, scholarships from different fields are urged to contribute, with their tools and concepts, to tackle global sustainability issues. If spatial planning does not engage in this, it will be more and more marginalized as a scientific discipline and lose centrality in the process of knowledge transfer from science to policy. In this frame, the sub-discipline of ecology, where integration with spatial planning is perhaps a bit more advanced and practiced, is Landscape Ecology. We thus dwell on it in the next subsection.

3.4 Landscape Ecology and Spatial Planning Landscape Ecology can be defined as the study of how landscape structure affects the abundance and distribution of organisms (Fahrig 2005). The need for integration of Landscape Ecology and spatial planning has been highlighted in literature since two decades ago (see, e.g. Dramstad et al. 1996; Ahern 1999; Opdam et al. 2001). It is interesting to note how in these publications some of the shortcomings we highlight here on the (lack of) integration between Land-Use Science, political Ecology and spatial planning were similarly stigmatized with regard to Landscape Ecology. For instance, Opdam et al. (2001) pointed out that a major obstacle in this respect is the lack of methods to transfer studies on single species to generalized knowledge usable in spatial planning processes. To overcome this, these authors proposed a research strategy based on the following steps: (i) collection of information on species distribution patterns in a landscape network (e.g. habitat patch occupancy and correlation with landscape variables); (ii) process studies at the level of populations and individual movements, possibly related to patch and matrix characteristics of the planning area and taking into account dispersal abilities if selected species; (iii) translation of distribution patterns into persistence estimates as correlated with landscape structure (ibid.); (iv) generalization to other landscapes through e.g. repetition of case studies in different landscapes or use of metapopulation models; and finally (v) aggregation to multi species level, generating simple landscape indicators and design rules. Along similar lines, Botequilha Leitão and Ahern (2002) argued that the focus on the spatial dimension of ecological processes in landscape ecology constitutes a natural link with planning as it provides a common language between ecologists and planners. These authors identify landscape ecological metrics3 as a useful tool for integrating ecological knowledge into planning; in particular, they highlight the notions of structure and function in landscape, and their relation. They maintain that planners should acquire a basic understanding of the dynamic interactions between structure and functions, by identifying the main structural elements in the planned area and the main ecological functions they supply. Landscape structure has, in turn, 3 The

authors define landscape metrics and point out the difference with spatial statistics: the latter estimate the spatial structure of the value of a sampled variable, while landscape metrics characterize the geometric and spatial properties of a pact (a spatially homogeneous entity) or of a mosaic of patches (Fortin 1999, as cited in Botequilha Leitão and Ahern 2002).

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two components: composition and configuration. The first one is a non-spatially explicit characteristic of the landscape; it measures richness, proportion, evenness and dominance of patches. The Shannon and Simpson diversity indexes are an example of composition metrics (McGarigal and Marks 1995; Gustafson 1998). Configuration metrics, conversely, refer to the spatial arrangement of patches in the landscape and measure spatial characteristics as the perimeter/area ratio of patches or the type and amount of edges. Connectivity is another key concept in landscape ecology with high relevance and potential of application in spatial planning, as it is at the same time a measurable characteristic of landscape, a descriptor of its functionality for biodiversity conservation and a sensible indicator to landscape changes produced by planning choices (Botequilha Leitão and Ahern 2002). Based on the comparison of several studies examining the use and correlation of the many different landscape metrics developed over the years, these authors propose a core set of nine landscape metrics to be used in planning, namely, • Landscape composition metrics: – Patch richness (measures the number of classes present in the landscape) and class area proportion (measures the proportion of each class in the landscape). – Number of patches (measures the total number of patches of specified land-use or land cover class) and patch density. – Patch size: mean Patch size (measures the average patch size of a class of patches). • Landscape configuration metrics: – – – – – –

Patch shape: patch perimeter-to-area ratio. Edge contrast: total edge contrast index. Patch compaction: radius of gyration and correlation length I. Nearest neighbour distance: mean nearest neighbour distance. Mean proximity index. Contagion.

A detailed description of each of the above metrics is provided in Botequilha Leitão et al. (2012). Botequilha Leitão and Ahern (2002) link each metric to one or more fundamental ecological processes of concern to planners: landscape simplification can be measured by patch richness: at its lowest limit, there is only one land cover class and the landscape is oversimplified, whilst as the index increases the landscape features higher heterogeneity. The class area proportion provides a similar assessment: when one class dominates the landscape it will provide little support for multi-habitat species. Fragmentation can be captured by the Number of Patches and the Mean Patch Size: If the first one is too high, the patch class is highly fragmented; similar information is given by a low value of the second (the two indexes should be used in combination). The Mean Nearest Neighbour Distance can be used as a proxy for connectivity to assess the potential of landscape to allow the spread of disturbances such as disease and fire (higher when the index is low); similarly, high values of contagion may indicate a potential for disturbance spread. The authors also

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point out limitations and uncertainties related to the use of such indexes but maintain that they are valid as long as planners use them to rank different planning options in a qualitative way, rather than to make accurate predictions of landscape-related phenomena. Besides providing planners with useful tools for integrating landscape ecology metrics in their practice, another merit of the paper by Botequilha Leitão and Ahern (2002) is that it recognizes and advocates the need for an overall framework for the integration of ecological knowledge in planning beyond landscape ecology: “Unifying concepts into one framework applied to all planning activities, rather than a myriad of different approaches could help to build consensus around ecologicallybased planning for sustainability. Planners not used to applying ecological principles could certainly benefit a unified framework provides a common basis for planning applications […]. We believe that planners, and other practitioners in general, e.g. engineers, architects, etc., would be much more receptive to incorporate ecological knowledge in their activities if presented with a single, coherent, consistent methodology along with a toolbox for its application. This could also contribute to (scientific, philosophical) cohesiveness around ecological values and knowledge, enhancing communication between scientists and practitioners” (ibid., p. 79). This statement is very much in line with the contents and aims of the present book. Further relevant proposals for incorporating the principles of ecological sustainability into spatial planning are presented in Termorshuizen et al. (2007, p. 375) who acknowledge that landscape ecology “has not yet succeeded in developing procedures for the systematic integration of concepts into planning”. They propose a framework based on the persistence of some key species as the criteria to guide landscape design and the use of the “spatial cohesion” concept (Opdam et al. 2003), whereby a landscape is ecologically sustainable if the qualitative and quantitative conditions of the ecosystem pattern are in balance with a chosen target, expressed as a list of species. Despite the increasing efforts to bridge gaps between landscape ecology and spatial planning, almost a decade after the publication on the first studies explicitly urging it, literature reported that overall the impact on planning practice was still limited (Nassauer and Opdam 2008). The latter proposes an evolution of the landscape ecology paradigm from “pattern → process” to “pattern → process → design”, highlighting, again, the need for collaboration between scientists and practitioners and removing the gap between landscape ecology and planning. All of these are valuable contributions to advancing ecological approaches in spatial planning. However, a main limitation of landscape metrics is that they are, in the same words of Botequilha Leitão and Ahern (2002) “a surrogate for some landscape functions” (ibid., p. 86); furthermore “Landscape ecological science still needs to further invest on research to establish solid relationships between pattern and process, and at several scales; on the role of disturbance; and in the integration of ecological and socio-economic components.” (ibid., p. 89). In discussing the use of Landscape ecology in land-use planning, Jongman (2005) highlighted that detailed knowledge about the impacts of different land-use intensities and landscape configurations both in space (pattern) and time (change) was still lacking. Similar

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concerns on the lack of clearly documented relationships between landscape indices and ecological functions are expressed by Corry and Nassauer (2005). These authors investigated the accuracy of landscape metrics to compare alternative plans or designs for small mammal habitat quality and concluded that planners should use landscape indices only with great intellectual and methodological care and as one of many measures of landscape performance. More recent literature reiterates the need to expand the landscape ecology paradigm by integrating its key concepts and metrics with the conceptual frameworks of ecosystem services (Almenar et al. 2018). On the one hand, including ecosystem services (or rather landscape services) could help to better link landscape patterns and ecological processes. On the other, the use of landscape metrics could provide a better consideration of landscape configuration in the supply of services. The main limitation of landscape ecology within the framework of ecological rationality in spatial planning is well explained in the excellent book by González de Molina and Toledo (2014) on social metabolism (we will dwell on this concept in Chap. 4): the spatial configuration represents the immediately visible trace of the functioning of the landscape, but in addition to it, there is an invisible trace of the underlying fluxes of energy and matter that cannot be captured only by the use of landscape ecology metrics. Agricultural areas offer a typical example of this: the intensity of management is a key element in determining the overall ecological functionality of an agrarian landscape, but they are not fully grouped by spatial metrics. In this regard, extremely interesting and relevant are the study conducted by Enric Tello, Joan Marull and colleagues, who propose to integrate traditional landscape ecology analysis with the study of social metabolism under an environmental history perspective (see, e.g. Tello et al. 2016; Marull et al. 2019): we will get to this in the next chapter. In summary, landscape ecology metrics can be used in different phases of the planning process, from initial landscape analysis and prognosis to comparison of alternatives, actual landscape design and monitoring. However, a full understanding of the link between metrics and ecological functions is still missing and therefore their application should be guided by experts, especially when applied to new contexts and spatial planning issues (Almenar et al. 2018). They have, on the other hand, the advantage of being relatively easy to calculate with current GIS techniques and are not as data-demanding as other models, thus they should definitely be part of the toolbox of spatial planners. The literature on landscape ecology is extensive: again, we indicate here some key readings for planners wishing to improve their knowledge on this topic: references therein provide additional links to relevant literature. A concise book to start with, expressly addressed to spatial planners, is the one by Dramstad et al. (1996); the already mentioned book by Botequilha Leitão et al. (2012) provides an excellent overview of landscape ecology concepts and metrics usable in spatial planning. More experienced readers can deepen their knowledge on landscape pattern metrics with McGarigal (2014); expert readers can find the most recent advancements in this discipline in Gergel and Turner (2017).

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3.5 Wrap-Up We have shown in the first section of this chapter that, by nature, current mechanisms of social choices are inherently inadequate to address complex ecological problem, as other forms of rationality tend to prevail within them, all of which are, at best, insufficient to pursue ecological rationality, and, at worst, are openly contrasting it. Generally speaking, this includes current spatial planning structures and frameworks. We have illustrated a set of criteria that can form the basis for an overall framework of ecological rationality, derived from the main emerging principle of ecosystems. Ecosystem ecology, in turn, based on complex system theory, provides the knowledge base and the disciplinary foundation to evaluate the soundness of spatial planning choices in sustainability terms. Therefore, we argue in favour of a deeper integration between these two disciplinary fields, which implies that spatial planners engage with the basic theories and concepts of ecosystem ecology. Landscape Ecology, as a subdiscipline of Ecology, provides planners with useful, spatially explicit tools and metrics that can inform planning choices and contribute to foster ecological thinking in spatial planning. They are, however, not sufficient to fully grasp the ecological processes at stake and should be complemented by other tools and concepts. Whereas this would inform planning about the physical effect of land-use choices and the behaviour of ecosystems––and thus landscapes––guiding decision-making towards more ecological outcomes, it is not sufficient to identify, understand and interpret the underlying drivers and forces that operate at global or regional scales. However, we argue that this broader understanding is essential for fostering ecological rationality in spatial planning, and the nexus between changes in the land system and spatial planning should be made explicit and more deeply analysed, starting from the recognition that the latter can be, at the same time, both a driver of change, and a responses to the former (see also Metternicht 2018). To this end, we posit a cross-fertilization between spatial planning and the scientific domains of Land-Use Science and Political Ecology. From a concise overview of recent literature, we have seen there is an increasing, although still embryonic, recognition that such integration is needed to advance sustainability science and foster ecological decisions with spatial implications, although at the moment more from the side of land-use scientists/political ecologists than spatial planners. While on the one hand, insights from spatial planning theory and practice can prove useful in elucidating the ways it acts as a driver of change, or mediates the interplay between top-down drivers and bottom-up instances, spatial planning would definitely benefit from enhancing its scholarship with concepts, methods and findings from these disciplines. These elaborations constitute our starting point for the proposition of a general framework for ecologically rational spatial planning or, using a more sophisticated philosophical concept, the subsumption of spatial planning into ecological rationality. We outline it in the next chapter.

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Chapter 4

Towards a Conceptual Framework for Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning

Abstract In this chapter, the insights from the previous chapters are synthesized and systematized in a conceptual framework for ecological rationality in spatial planning. At the centre of the framework, there is the landscape, upon which different drivers act at different scales. At a higher level, there are some main driving forces that determine identifiable general trends (megatrends). Sectoral and territorial policies (including spatial planning) in turn act on the landscape by mediating and modulating the effects of such drivers (contrasting, pandering them or a mix of the two) and driving territorial transformation themselves. Other elements of this frameworks comprise a knowledge base constituted by the integration of planning theories and methods, Land-Use Science and Political Ecology, in turn based on contribution from sectoral disciplines such as Natural Ecology (including Landscape Ecology as a subdiscipline), System Theory and the sets of social sciences dealing with mechanisms of social choices, institutions and political sciences. This knowledge base serves to inform planning both through enabling a better identification and understanding of the driving forces and to derive a set of guiding principles and criteria for ecological rationality in spatial planning. Such criteria, in turn, needs to be operationalized in planning practice into specific analytical tools and methodologies. In this chapter the first part of the framework is examined, i.e. the main driving forces underlying the processes of territorial transformation that are manifested and measurable. Two main analytical concepts are deployed to analyse and interpret the latter, i.e. the metabolic rift and the spatial fix. These concepts are elaborated and discussed as powerful analytics to interpret the main phenomena of landscape transformation in urban and rural areas: urbanization and suburbanization, agricultural intensification and abandonment of marginal agricultural areas. Keywords Conceptual framework · Driving forces · Megatrends · Metabolic rift · Spatial fix

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4.1 The Proposed Conceptual Framework for Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning We can now synthesize the arguments and elaborations of the previous chapters in a general framework for the full inclusion of ecological rationality in spatial planning, or, better said, for the subsumption of spatial planning into ecological rationality. Here, the terms subsumption is used, according to the German idealist philosophy and the Marxian tradition, to indicate a process whereby universal and particular concepts are linked by defining a general/particular relationship: the argument is that the particularities or local specificities of the spatial planning processes can be addressed ecologically only if they are examined within a broader conceptual frame. At the same time, a dialectical relationship is acknowledged here: not only planning practice should conform to the principles of ecological rationality, but also ecologically rational courses of actions can be achieved through spatial planning. Figure 4.1 provides a schematic representation of the proposed framework. At its centre, there is the landscape, i.e. the object of the spatial planning process. As said in the previous chapter, the landscape can be defined as an ecosystem in which humans live and act, so as a coupled socio-ecological system. In the lower part of the framework lies the knowledge base underpinning it, constituted by three main elements: (i) Planning theories and methods, which are the “common” set of knowledge of spatial planners; (ii) Land-Use Science and (iii) Political Ecology. As seen, these three domains are not considered as separated, but can be integrated into a unified

Fig. 4.1 A conceptual framework for ecological rationality in spatial planning

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knowledge framework. These disciplines builds in turn on three main pillars that we have discussed in the previous chapters: (i) Natural Ecology (including Landscape Ecology as a sub-discipline), (ii) System Theory and (iii) the sets of social sciences dealing with mechanisms of social choices, institutions, political sciences and so on. Ecosystem Ecology and System Theory provide the concepts for the identification of the overarching principles and criteria guiding ecological spatial planning: in Chap. 2 we have identified the main ones as coordination, complexity, openness, adaptation, homeostasis (comprising resilience and robustness), diversity and creation of order/negative entropy (comprised in the self-organization label). We also showed that these principles hold validity both for ecosystems as physical, spatially determined entities, and for decision-making systems or mechanisms of social choices, encompassing spatial planning as an administrative process and policy. The landscape is subjected to a number of forces, deriving from a complex network of physical, economic, social and political drivers, acting at varying spatial scales, from the global to the local one, the latter potentially including spatial planning itself. Political Ecology and Land-Use Science allow identifying and interpreting such drivers and forces, which at the landscape level manifest themselves as megatrends. A further element of the proposed framework shall be introduced here. Both spatial planning and the landscape are affected by general and sectorial policies, usually established by higher levels of governments and decision-making structures. Such policies, of course, do not spring from anywhere, but ensue in turn as the resultants of the action of the above-mentioned driving forces and the mechanisms of social choices and people’s instances as mediated by different stakeholders’ groups. Again, a dialectical approach shall be adopted here, whereby policies at the same time affect (or respond to) these drivers and are affected by them (double-ended arrow in Fig. 4.1). Policymaking is also informed to a certain extent by the accumulation of knowledge provided by the above-mentioned disciplines. Policies influence spatial planning and, to some extent, maybe also influenced by it, i.e. by local instances. As seen, the principles derived from natural ecology and systems theory provide the evaluation frame against which to assess the degree of ecological rationality of the planning choices. The full integration of ecological rationality and spatial planning requires, however, that they are not just used ex-post, but are fully underlying planning in technical terms—i.e. they inform planning as a scientific disciplines—and in processual terms, i.e. they underlie planning as a mechanism of social choice. Such principles, however, are not yet operational instruments immediately usable by planners. It is very difficult, for example, to directly measure resilience, selforganization or homeostasis in landscapes, since these are, as explained, emerging properties rather than well-defined physical characteristics that can be measured and compared through indicators or defined spatial metric. Moreover, besides theoretical issues, this would require in any case considerable efforts in terms of surveys and measurements over long periods of time, which is obviously not feasible in the great majority of spatial planning processes. Therefore, it is needed that more viable tools and methods are available for planners, providing spatially explicit, measurable indicators, metrics and models that are usable in real planning practice and that approximate to the representation of the emerging principle of ecosystems.

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In Chaps. 2 and 3, we have examined the basic principles of ecosystem ecology and system theory and indicated appropriate references to readers willing to deepen their knowledge. We have elaborated on the social science part while exploring the different definitions of rationality and the way different mechanisms of social choices work under them. We only touched upon classical planning theories here as those are the topic planners should already be very familiar with. In Chap. 3, we covered the main principles of Political Ecology and Land-Use Science and hybrid approaches at the intersection of the two, again providing references to specialized publications on both topics for interested readers. In the remainder of the book we will elaborate on the other elements of the proposed frameworks: in particular, in the next section of this chapter we will examine—with the lenses of Political Ecology and Land-Use Science—the main driving forces relevant for spatial planning, and the way they manifest themselves as megatrends affecting the landscape. In Chaps. 5 and 6, we will zoom on Europe; in particular, in Chap. 5 we will have a closer look at the processes of landscape transformation occurring in the Old Continent and in Chap. 6 we will examine the main policies in the European Union with a significant spatial effect and relevant in ecological terms, with a focus on their (stated, implicit or desirable) nexus with spatial planning.

4.2 Understanding the Drivers of Landscape Transformation (1): Social Metabolism and the Metabolic Rift At the time of writing Rational Ecology (1987), Dryzek deemed necessary, to underpin his whole argument, to dedicate the entire second chapter to addressing the following question: does an ecological crisis exist? His answer was obviously affirmative, but the very fact of posing the question is indicative that at that time it was not probably so obvious and that the recognition of an ecological crisis was the first step for investigating how to address it. Thirty years after, the evidence of an ecological crisis is so widespread that is barely worth discussing it here. We shall provide only two key messages on climate change and biodiversity loss considered the two most critical environmental issues for our planet. (1) The last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that “Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems” (IPCC 2014, p. 56). The latest Global Biodiversity Outlook published by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2014) provides the mid-term assessment of progress made towards each of the 56 individual components of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets1 . to be reached by 1A

set of 20 global targets under the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 of the Convention on Biological Diversity. They are grouped under five strategic goals, see: https://www.cbd.int/sp/ targets/

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2020. Only in 5 cases, it is expected that under current trends the established target will be reached in 2020; in 34 cases progress are reported but at an insufficient rate to meet the target; in 10 cases no progress was made and in 5 cases the situation is even worsening. In particular, no progress has been made in relation to the target “The loss of all habitats is at least halved and where feasible brought close to zero” and a worsening trend is reported for “Degradation and fragmentation are significantly reduced”. A closer look at Europe shows that here loss of biodiversity and habitat degradation has reached unprecedented levels. According to the last report on the state of the environment in the EU (EEA 2019), assessments of protected species and habitats show predominantly unfavorable conservation status at 60 % for species and 77 % for habitats. Significant for the argument of this book, Target 2 of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets pursues the integration of biodiversity values into national and local planning processes, but insufficient progress have been reported to this regard (Leadley et al. 2014). Key suggested actions include “Reflecting the values of biodiversity in spatial planning and resource management exercises including through the mapping of biodiversity and related ecosystem services (Targets 5, 6 and 7) […] and making wider use of strategic environmental assessment” (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2014, p. 38, emphasis added). Concerning Target 5 (“Habitat loss halved or reduced”), it is recommended to develop “a clear legal or policy framework for land use or spatial planning that reflects national biodiversity objectives” and to facilitate “a sustainable increase or intensification in the productivity of existing agricultural land and rangeland, within a land use or spatial planning framework” (ibid., p. 54, emphasis added). Turning again to Europe, according to the European Environmental Agency, “[…] the main drivers of biodiversity loss [...] are land use change, including habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation, as well as climate change, extraction of natural resources, pollution and invasive alien species” ( EEA, 2020 p. 75). These are indeed calls for action for land-use managers and spatial planners! Key to our argument is also another passage of the above-mentioned Global Biodiversity Outlook stating that to contrast biodiversity loss, we have to address “the underlying causes […] often embedded deep within our systems of decision-making, financial incentives and patterns of production and consumption”. (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2014, p. 24). We can thus safely assume the existence of a deep ecological crisis and, in line with this last plea, we shall reformulate Dryzek’s original question as follows: what are the deep, underlying drivers of this persisting crisis? How are they embedded in current consumption and production patterns and how do they manifest spatially? We can synthesizing the main argument underpinning this section by borrowing the words of two planning scholars (Hersperger and Bürgi 2010, p. 260): In order to develop an effective planning strategy, knowledge about the driving forces of landscape change is helpful. […]. Knowledge about driving forces in general is necessary for an in-depth understanding of the processes of change, for the development of projections of future change, and for the design of policies to guide landscape change.

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In Chap. 1 we have seen that this question was tackled by Geddes and Mumford and that the latter largely drew from Marxian concepts to explain the relationships between the ecology of societies in history—their relation with the environment as a key element of civilization. Along these lines, we have elaborated on this and see how insight from Land-Use Science and Political Ecology can provide us power analytics to address this question. In Chap. 3 we have mentioned key texts from prominent contemporary scholars that readers might want to engage with to gain useful insights from recent advancements of the discipline. Other key readings are the corpus by O’Connor (1998), Forsyth (2004), Robbins (2011), but this list is by no means exhaustive. In incorporating key elements of Marxian analysis in his work, Mumford extended them to architecture, technology and urban planning. Here, we try to elaborate along similar lines, trying to overcome some of the limitations pointed out in Chap. 1 on Mumford’s appropriation of Marx. We will do it, again, by climbing on the shoulder of other giants that have already followed the same route and humbly trying to contribute with some further insights. Let us, therefore, get back to the work of Marx and Engels, who can be considered among the first political ecologists (De Molina and Toledo 2014). Despite successive attempts to downplay their contribution to the understanding of the human–environment relations (e.g. by Giddens 1981 and McLoughin 1990, to cite authors that may sound familiar to spatial planners), their central role has been widely acknowledged and re-elaborated more recently, following the influential work of Foster (1999). A key concept introduced by Marx in The Capital and elaborated by Foster (1999) is the metabolic rift. The term “metabolism” was used since the 1830s by German physiologists to indicate the exchange of matter inside the body of living beings. In 1842, a key essay by German chemist Justus von Liebig introduced the concept of metabolic process that was further extended and developed to describe the fluxes of energy and matter within living organisms and between them and their environment, from the level of cells to the whole ecosystem (Foster 1999; Odum 1969). Marx uses the term metabolism (stoffwechsel in German) to indicate the mutual matter and energy exchanges between men, society, nature and space, mainly mediated by human labour. In Chap. 1, we have discussed how Geddes, Mumford and McHarg, among others, fully adopted a metabolic frame to explain the dynamics of cities and landscape and as a metric to analyse the ecology of different periods of society in history. Social metabolism is now a pivotal conceptual brick in the scholarship of socio-ecological systems and Land-Use Science: it can be defined as the particular form in which societies establish and maintain their material input from and output to nature and as the way in which they organize the exchange of matter and energy with their natural environment (Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl 1997). A recommended reading on the topic is the book by de Molina and Toledo (2014), which also contains a detailed historical account on the use of the concept in Marx’s works. The metabolic rift in Marx is the process by which the methods of production and capital accumulation lead to an exacerbate alteration of the natural metabolic exchange, which he examines in particular with reference to exploitation of the soil beyond its capacity of regeneration. In the second half of the nineteenth century,

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one of the most pressing issues was the maintenance of soil fertility for agricultural production. Building on the work of Liebig, Marx notes how the maintenance of high levels of agricultural production in England had to rely more on more on external input, imported from distant sources, like guano from Peru and subsequently on nitrates from China. In Volume I of the Capital, he writes that capitalist agriculture: disturbs the metabolic interaction between men and the Earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by men in the form of food and clothing, hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural conditions for the lasting fertility of the soil […] All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of soil for a given time is a progress toward ruining the more long lasting source of that fertility (Marx 1970, pp. 637–638).

Current scholars and farmers engaged in agroecology would certainly endorse this statement! In his view, country-town dialectics and labour are the central elements in determining the human relation with nature, i.e. the constituent of the social– ecological metabolism, the universal condition of metabolic interactions. The labour process is the necessary condition for making the exchange of matter and energy between man and nature; it is the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence. However, under capitalism, “this relation is mediated by capitalists, who compel workers to sell their labour power as the primary vehicle through which to engage with nature” (Henderson 2009, p. 269, emphasis in original). So, despite claims from some critics , the importance of the ecological processes and the maintenance of the vital cycles of nature, what we would term now the ecosystem functions, were very well acknowledge by Marx and Engels and the concept of metabolic rift has a central role in their theoretic frame. In analysing the relationship between men and nature, Marx maintains that, once the capitalist mode of production is fully established, the productivity of the labour, i.e. the quantity of surplus-value generated, will depend, other things being equal, on the natural condition of the work and in particular on the fertility of the soil. However, as it is often the case with Marx, the whole concept is more complex and elaborated. Capitalism is based on the dominion of man over nature. Where nature is too lavish, she “keeps him in hand, like a child in leading-strings.” She does not impose upon him any necessity to develop himself. It is not the tropics with their luxuriant vegetation, but the temperate zone, that is the mother-country of capital. It is not the mere fertility of the soil, but the differentiation of the soil, the variety of its natural products, the changes of the seasons, which form the physical basis for the social division of labour, and which, by changes in the natural surroundings, spur man on to the multiplication of his wants, his capabilities, his means and modes of labour. […] Examples are, the irrigation works in Egypt, Lombardy, Holland, or in India and Persia where irrigation by means of artificial canals, not only supplies the soil with the water indispensable to it, but also carries down to it, in the shape of sediment from the hills, mineral fertilisers.

One can see here a clear link with Mumford’s concept of the megamachine described in Chap. 1. Marx goes beyond the naïve concept of natural input in production as a “gift of Nature”, common in classical economists of his period; instead, he conceptualises the human–ecosystem relationship as an evolving, dialectical and mutually

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constitutive one. If labour is the universal condition of metabolic interactions between humans and ecosystems, then the subsumption of labour into the capitalist mode of production entails that the whole metabolic interaction is subsumed into the logic of capital. A logic that, in its very essence, is accumulation for the sake of accumulation. As seen, agriculture and soil functionality were the main objects of the study of Marx and Engels, but they also considered other aspects, such as deforestation or waste recycling.2 This passage of the Capital is exemplary: […] the way that the cultivation of particular crops depends on fluctuations in market prices and the constant changes in cultivation associated with these prices fluctuations, as well as the entire spirit of the capitalist mode of production, which is directed towards the most immediate monetary profit, stands in contradiction to agriculture, which has to concern itself with the whole range of permanent conditions of life required by interconnected human generations.

So, Marx already extended the inherent trend to unsustainable depletion of natural resources (soil fertility in this case) from capitalist agriculture to “the entire spirit of the capitalist mode of production”; we can easily substitute the term “agriculture” in the passage above with “environment” and here we have the very definition of sustainable development stated more than a century before the publication of the Brundtland Report (WECD 1987). In another passage of The Capital, Marx provides an explanation of the transformation of the Irish agrarian landscape that current land-change scientists and political ecologists would found very much in line with their approaches. He shows that land dedicated to the production of food for human consumption significantly decreased in Ireland in the period 1841–1866. In parallel, the Irish population dropped from 8.2 million in 1841 to 5.5 million in 1866 (−32.9%!), contrary to what happened in virtually all other European countries in those years. Building on statistical data on agricultural production, he demonstrates that in the same period the profits for landowners and tenants increased thanks to land consolidation (merge of small properties into single large estate) and the conversion of cropland to pasture, so that the surplus-value increased even if absolute production decreased. In fact, most of the products of these newly converted pastures—meat and wool—did not serve to satisfy internal demand or the subsistence of the labour force, but to feed the English markets. The depopulation of Ireland following the famine of 1846, caused the death of approximately one million people and forced the displacement of another million, leaving the country even more prone to exploitation by England. The conversion of arable land to less labour-intensive pastureland for livestock grazing allowed a substantial increase of the rent from land along with a substantial decrease of population. In practice, these combined process led Ireland to be the “grazing district” of England, where the conversion of arable land to pastures—that had already occurred —was constrained by the need to maintain a high level of food production (i.e. cereals on arable land) for the growing population. Of course, such processes had direct 2 Key

works by Engels on these issues are the Dialectics of Nature (https://www.marxists.org/ archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm) Of course, a must-read for planners is also Engels’ The Housing Question (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/).

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and relevant effects on the Irish landscape and the conformation of its land use, as well as on the relationship between town and countryside, all topics of interest for what we refer nowadays to Land-Use Science and to spatial planning. The integration of Marx and Engels’ insights on the metabolic rift with the advancements in the comprehension of the functioning of ecosystems and political ecology have fuelled a whole school of thought, a major proponent of which was American sociologist and economist James O’Connor and a key suggested text for readers willing to engage with his corpus is his Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism (O’Connor 1998). The basic model of social metabolism theory is now well established and two main processes where the totalities of nature and society meet are identifiable: during the appropriation or extraction of resources (input), and during excretion or expulsion of wastes (output), thus giving place to a new system (natural–social or social–natural) with a resulting higher complexity (De Molina and Toledo 2014, this chapter). These fluxes occur at two main levels, that of single individuals for their existence as organisms (endosomatic energy) and at the level of societies (exosomatic energy) articulated through a diversity of relations or links by means of meta-individual structures or artefacts (ibid.) (Mumford’s megamachine). It is precisely how societies regulate the social metabolism that constitute the core of Political Ecology and other several research branches that have developed over the past decades : relevant insights are offered, for example, by the studies on the human appropriation of net primary production, an integrated socio-ecological indicator quantifying effects of human-induced changes in productivity and harvest on ecological biomass flows (see e.g. Haberl et al. 2014; Vitousek et al. 1986). The analysis of energetic and material fluxes is a key component of Ecological Economics (Martínez-Alier and Muradian 2015), agroecology (Cattaneo et al. 2018; González de Molina and Guzmán Casado 2017), geography and political ecology (Ekers and Prudham 2017; Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003). Approaches integrating social metabolism and landscape ecology are also being developed, such as the Energy-Landscape Integrated Analysis of agroecosystems and city networks by Marull et al. (2019a, b). A comprehensive framework to perform multi-scalar analyses has been developed and elaborated in the past two decades by Giampietro and colleagues, the Multi-Scale Integrated Assessment of Society and Ecosystem Metabolism (MUSIASEM) (Giampietro et al. 2012). Here, we want to draw from another author that may be considered one of the founders of political ecology, whose insights are fundamental for understanding the driving forces acting upon the landscape and their spatial consequences, namely Austrian-French social philosopher André Gorz. Many of the elaborations and explanations of subsequent scholars are already present in his work, particularly in its seminal Ecologie et politique (1978) containing the essay Ecologie et liberté in which he lucidly examines the deep causes of the ecological crisis by linking them to the modes of production. The whole argument requires that we recall first some other key Marxian concepts, before elaborating on them: this is done in the next section.

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4.3 Understanding the Drivers of Landscape Transformation (2): Production and Overproduction of Space and the Spatial Fix The synthetic formula of capital circulation proposed by Marx can be written as M → C → M capital (M = money) is put in circulation by those who own it to buy labour, machinery and other means of production to produce commodities (C) that are sold to make money (M ). But M needs to be >M, to generate a surplus-value: M is the aim of the whole process or, as Henderson (2009) put it: money is not traded for money, it is traded for more money: M → C → M + M The starting point of Gorz’s elaboration is the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as originally proposed by Marx. In essence, this foresees that as a general trend, the relative surplus-value rate generated within capitalist production (i.e. M/M) will decrease in the long run. This is due to the shift in the organic composition of capital, i.e. the increase of the share of constant capital (machinery, equipment, plants, etc.) and the concomitant decrease of the share of variable capital (labour) in the production process. Mathematically: M = K + L, meaning total capital (M) = Constant Capital (K) + Labour (L) The relative share of K and L is referred to as the organic composition of capital. Productivity is increased by investing in new production processes, i.e. new and more efficient machineries and equipment (constant capital). Increasing productivity is a compelling necessity for capitalists that have to maintain prices low (or not too high) to keep the pace in the competition with other producers. This holds true even in cases of monopoly or oligopoly, as they are based on unstable equilibrium, alway prone to change. Now, a key concept in the whole theory of value generation is that surplus value is extracted only from the workers’ labour and not from the machines, which simply transfer part of their value into the commodity’s final value through amortization. Therefore, the surplus-value rate, i.e. its ratio on invested capital decreases as the share of labour in the organic capital diminishes—not necessarily the absolute surplus-value, which is the relative surplus per output unit multiplied by the total output sold. A simple example will help us here. Let us suppose that the time needed on average by a worker under a given production system to produce e certain quantity of a commodity, say 10 blue jeans, is 2 days. Following the introduction of more advanced machines this time drops to 1 day. This means that in the composition of one blue jeans’ value, the share attributed to fixed capital (machinery) has doubled,

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whilst the share derived by labour has diminished accordingly. To keep constant the quantity of surplus-value extracted in the unit of time, it is, therefore, necessary that the volume of production doubles, the salary of the worker being equal, or that the salary of the worker is halved, the volume of production being constant. Of course, for capitalists, a combination of both things is possible: increase the volume of production and decrease the wage, in such a combination that the overall surplus-value is kept constant. The limits to the first process lie only in the technical structure of the production, whilst the second factor will be limited by the capacity of workers to defend their salaries, and cannot go anyway below a certain limit, i.e. the subsistence salary, the minimum for the worker to simply reproduce themselves. This is the classical Marxian formulation; now, during the second half of the twentieth century, new technologies and robotization have dramatically increased the organic composition of capital and the volume of commodities that can be produced with the same amount of labour. In fact, increase of production along with reduction in real salaries is exactly what has happened over the past 30 years, at least from the neoliberal turn in Western economies generally identified with the electoral victories of Thatcher and Reagan in UK and USA in 1979 and 1980, respectively (see, e.g. DeSliver 2018, for a comprehensive account on the US). The combined effect of these processes is thus a structural trend to overproduction: more commodities are produced, not to satisfy a demand, but only to keep the pace of surplus-value extraction. In parallel, workers have less money to purchase the commodities produced, so that the demand stagnates or decrease. When this process reaches a certain threshold, the overproduction crisis rises, and the capital devaluates. There are several things a capitalist can try to avoid, or better said to postpone this. In the past, the most common strategy was to expand the markets and to expand the production geographically, possibly through the expropriation of resources in less developed countries. This has been a major driving force for colonialism first (at least since 1492, see Moore 2015) and imperialism then. But what to do when virtually all markets have been conquered and all world regions exploited? One possibility is to decrease the turnover time of capital by intentionally diminish the lifetime of the products so that people are forced to buy new ones—the socalled “planned obsolescence”. This is now a popular term, the processes have been so extensive to have reached the mainstream media,3 but Gorz wrote it in 1975. A second possibility is to increase the amount of matter, energy and intermediate products needed in the production processes of other industrial branches, so to absorb part of the production itself . A number of examples are provided by Gorz: the substitution of cans with aluminium, requiring 15 times more energy per unit of production, the substitution of glass with plastic, of natural fibres with synthetic ones, the construction of objects difficult or impossible to repair (we got used to hear that it is not worth repairing a broken device, better to buy a new one) and so on. These objects, in most cases, have very little or no real advantages, for the users, compared

3 See

for example: https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2017/12/29/obsolescence-programmee-legrand-gachis_5235676_3232.html.

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to those they substituted. The use value is the same, or even lower: their main reason d’etre is not to better satisfy a need, but to absorb part of the overproduction. Another stopgap of the overproduction crisis is to move capital that cannot generate an immediate surplus from the production sphere to the financial one. This has occurred to such a large extent over the past three decades that the amount of financial capital is currently three times that of world GDP. The strategy is to loan workers the money they do not make with their wages so that they can buy more commodities. This is, again, what has happened in Western countries, particularly in the US but also elsewhere, at an astonishing rate. From 1990 to 2007, the year before the last crisis exploded, the ratio of debt to disposable income in US households rose from 77 to 127% (no typo here: one-hundred-twenty-seven percent) (Rao, 2013). But as Gorz (2008, my translation) put it: The capitalization of expected future profits and growth encourages increasing debts, fuels economy with liquidity deriving from banking recycling of fictitious capital and allows the United States an economic growth which, founded on domestic and foreign debt, is by far the main engine of world growth […]. The real economy becomes an appendix of speculative bubbles spurred by the financial sector. Until the moment in which inevitably the bubbles outbreak dragging banks to massive bankruptcy, threatening to collapse the world credit system and the real economy in a severe and prolonged depression.

Now, timing is important here: Gor passed away in September 2007, one year before the crack of Lehman Brothers and the subsequent world economic crises that persist a decade later, of which the above excerpt seems an accurate description made ex-post. In synthesis: the possibilities to valorise capital becomes scarcer and scarcer. The demand stagnates, masses of unsold products pile up. All these trends contribute to a systematic intensification of resource used for production: not only natural resources are being depleted more rapidly because the absolute volume of production expands and the lifetime of products decrease, but also because of the amount of resources per unit of product increases. It is increasingly difficult for capital to find an outlet to its own products, first to guarantee the return on investments and subsequently to merely reproduce itself. But it is not all. We have shown how all these processes act in a synergistic way: more production is needed to guarantee the same profits that tended to decrease due to…overproduction. The intensity of capital, energy and material input per unit of product increases. As production increases, not only the depletion of resources accelerate, but so do the “negative externalities” (as economists would say) generated by production—discharge of waste and pollutants in water, soil and atmosphere for instance. At a certain point, they reach such a level that they cannot be ignored anymore. But, in terms of the production process, this means that investments in new, typically capital-intensive, technologies are needed (e.g. water treatment facilities in factories). Whilst this can alleviate the specific problem locally, the overall effect is a further increase in the amount of capital/matter/energy needed to guarantee the same level of productions. From the point of view of the firm, no additional value is extracted from the water treatment facility, it is only additional capital needed to guarantee the same level of prior production. The search for new deposits or raw materials is, in turn, costly and capital intensive. So again,

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the resultant is a further shift in the organic composition of capital, and the vicious circle continues. Such a theoretic framework may look powerful indeed: if it holds true it means that the overproduction crisis and the ecological crisis are interlinked and fuelling each other. It would indicate a vicious circle that leads to maximizing the material and energetic throughput in production not as something undesirable but avoidable, but as a structural trend of the capitalist mode of production and consumption. So readers may want at this point some empirical evidence of this. After all, one may argue, factories and material production are something of the past: a large share of working people nowadays do not spend their time in factories but are employed in jobs with a large immaterial component: administration, research, tertiary activities, intellectual occupations, and so on—at least in the more economically developed countries. This is undoubtedly true, but the fact that a growing share of the workforce (thus of GDP produced) is not occupied in material production has, per se, little relevance in ecological terms. What matters in the ecological terms is the absolute rate of consumption of Earth’s material basis, so this is the first figure we need. Whilst this would provide us a relevant ecologic and metabolic information, it would be still of limited relevance to falsify the theory we have illustrated. A rise in the absolute rate of material consumption would need to be considered together with the trend in the human population to derive the per capita rate of consumption. The mode of production could in fact determine a decrease in the per capita use of matter and energy and the absolute increase be the result only of population growth, which would support the argument of the neo-malthusians, who identify the root of the ecological crisis in population growth and not in the production system that, on the contrary, could partly counter it by de-intensifying production. We would also need to know these trends over a relatively long period of time and for a large area, possibly the entire world, to confirm or falsify the theory, as regional/national figures or short time series may reflect contingencies and not the general trend. Admittedly, not an easy task. But we are lucky: such an analysis has been carried out by Krausmann et al. (2009) who compiled a quantitative estimate of annual global extraction of biomass, fossil energy carriers, metal ores, industrial minerals and construction minerals for the period 1900–2005—exactly what we were looking for. Their analysis shows that from 1900 to 2005, materials use per capita increased, indeed it more than doubled, from 4.6 to 10.3 t person−1 year−1 (Krausmann et al. 2009, Fig. 4.2). Importantly, we should highlight in Fig. 4.2 the increasing share of construction materials in the overall material consumption. We shall keep this in mind for later on. What about energy consumption? Maybe this somewhat upsetting trend in material consumption could have been offset, at least partially, by a decrease, if not in the absolute, at least in the per capita consumption of energy. Data on energy consumption can be easily accessed on the World Bank website, and are shown in Fig. 4.3, displaying the world per capita consumption expressed in tons of oil equivalent in the period 1971–2014. The graph shows some local ups and downs, but the overall trend is a clear, persistent, relentless increase in this figure as well: +44% over 43 years. To sum up, the overproduction crisis and the ecological crisis are interlinked and fuelling each other. It is a vicious loop that leads to maximizing the fluxes

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Fig. 4.2 Trends in world use of material per capita, 1900–2005. Source Krausmann et al. (2009)

Fig. 4.3 per capita energy consumption (all world,) 1971–2014 in kg of oil equivalent per year. Source Author’s elaboration from World Bank (2018)

of energy and material in production. This resonates with Dryzek’s notion of the positive feedback trend in markets, which we can now better conceptualize as a positive feedback of capital accumulation, shifting the focus from the system of social choice to the underlying system of production.

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Gorz (1977) accordingly maintains that there is no way by which economic rationality can be reconciled with, or subsumed by, ecological one under current mode of production, the two being inherently contradictory. Turning to consumers, we have seen that capitalism needs them to consume as much as possible to (partially) postpone the emergence of the crisis, but at the same time need workers to have less purchasing power to maintain profits. Moving production in countries with a lower level of salaries (and often less stringent environmental regulations) is a possible solution to the second problem, and again it has been applied so extensively over the year that has become a popular topic in mainstream media. It does not solve the second problem, however, indeed it worsens it. Again, it is at best a temporary solution. So, capitalist production is not driven in its essence by the objective to meet the demand, but has rather the problem to create new needs in consumers to have an outlet for the increasing production of commodities and their temporal turnover. Spatial planners may find all these arguments interesting but maybe missing a direct link with their specific activity. We are going to show how such links not only exist, but are very relevant. A clear exemplification of this is the analysis Gorz (1977) makes of phenomenon planners should be very familiar with, namely suburbanization or urban sprawl. He starts his argument with a social critique of private motorcars: they were conceived, originally, as luxury goods, marking the difference between an affluent minority of people able to displace at high speed and the mass of the population. But soon the oil industry sensed that great profits could be achieved by making cars a common good. If everyone travels by car, everyone is dependent on a single commercial source of energy. Automobile hence became the primary mean of mass transportation, with the obvious effect of congestion and loss of all the privileges of cars as luxury goods: in congested cities, the average speed dropped to that of horses shortly after. “The automobile is the paradoxical example of a luxury object that has been devalued by its own spread. […] The spread of the private car has displaced mass transportation and altered city planning and housing in such a way that it transfers to the car functions which its own spread has made necessary” (Gorz 1977, emphasis added). This resonates very much with Mumford’s description of the suburban expansion mentioned in Chap. 1. What were the spatial consequences of this process of massification of private transport by cars? The first was the construction of more roads, bypasses, elevated crossways, connectors, urban highways to alleviate congestion. But this did not help: the more roads are in service, the more traffic tends to become more congested. This phenomenon is so well-known that it has received three different names by as many disciplines: mathematicians call it Braess’ paradox,4 transport engineers refer to it as the Lewis–Mogridge Position and economists as the Downs–Thomson’s paradox. In all cases, it is acknowledged that new infrastructure generates an induced demand for traffic that soon leads to congestion again. Gorz’s caustic answer is that if dense city centres are not good for cars, there’s still one solution: get rid of them . That is, string 4 After

German mathematician Dietrich Braess, who studied the phenomenon that adding a road to a congested road traffic network could often increase the overall journey time. See Braess (1968, 2005).

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them out for hundreds of miles along enormous roads, making them into highway suburbs (ibid.). Compact cities pose major physical limits to widespread use of cars, whilst suburbs makes them compelling for virtually everything: to make room for the cars, distances have increased, people live far from their work, far from school, far from the shops. Here we can see strong assonance with Mumford’s discussion on the disadvantages of suburbia. With this example, we want to showthe types of thinking we should adopt when examining the underlying forces of spatial transformations, the relationships between capital accumulation and land-change processes. Reasoning along these lines helps us to present and describe another key concept for describing the driving forces that affect land-use transformations, elaborated by David Harvey—probably the most influential living geographer—who termed it “spatial fix” (Harvey 2001). The term has been widely used and sometimes misused, partly due to the ambivalence of the word “fix” in English. As Harvey explained, the first meaning of the word refers to the act of “attaching” or pin down something, securing it in space so that it cannot move. A second sense refers to the act of “repairing” something, bringing it back to normal functioning. A third meaning derived by the latter is the burning desire to relieve a chronic or pervasive problem, like in the sentence “the drug addict needs a fix”. This last meaning entails that the fix is only a temporary solution that does not eliminate the root cause of the problem, and Harvey primarily used it in this sense to describe capitalism’s necessity to resolve its inner crisis tendencies by geographical expansion and geographical restructuring (ibid.). But the other meanings are relevant too in Harvey’s argument and are linked to the overproduction crisis. Building on Marx’s theory of the circulation of capital, Harvey highlights a distinction between a primary and secondary circuit of capital circulation investment. The primary circuit involves capital investments in (and disinvestments) in/out of industrial production, while the secondary circuit refers to capital investment in land, real estate, housing and the built environment (Harvey 1978; Gotham 2009; Lefevre 2003 [1970]).5 Harvey posits that the displacement of capital from the primary to the secondary circuit has been often a way to fix the overproduction crisis and capital devaluation. The spatial fix is achieved through fixing investments spatially, embedding them in the land and in the built environment, creating a new landscape that is at the same time the consequence and the requisites for further capital accumulation. It also serves to develop the physical infrastructures needed for the circulation of capital and commodities in the first circuit. Now we get closer to the field of interest of planners: according to Harvey, one of the main ways by which the spatial fix has been put in practice to absorb capital surplus has been precisely suburbanization (Harvey 2001). Not by chance, as we have noted while commenting Fig. 4.2 , the increase of construction material (note again: not in absolute terms, but in relative, per capita unit) has been a major trailer 5 Harvey introduced a third circuit of capital in more recent writings, namely flows of capital into the

broad processes of social reproduction, e.g. scientific and technological research and development, education, health care, and so on.

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of the increase of world per capita material use over the past century. To this, we have to add all the consumption related to the massive use of motorcars as discussed above. But it is not all: as already argued by Mumford (1961, see Chap. 1) suburban areas entail a whole suburban way of living, which in turn requires the use of many products not needed in urban life, such as lawnmowers, anti-theft devices, and so on. By the second half of the first decade of the 2000s, a huge amount of new, detached houses in suburban areas had been built in the US. They needed to find an outlet not to devaluate the huge capital invested in their construction. They desperately needed it. But why would developers build myriads of new detached houses in suburban areas if there was not a demand for them? Again, because the driving force was not to fulfill existing needs, but to expand values. If the demand stagnates, it can be fostered, needs can be induced. Does this sound too abstract? Again, some empirical evidence can help here. Very much in line with Gorz, Harvey highlights the effort put into influencing the needs and desires of “consumers” to ensure an outlet for production, including the formation of large advertising industry. In 2005–2006, just before the crisis burst, a number of television programs across the US were promoting real estate investment and “flipping” (purchasing a revenue-generating asset and quickly reselling it for profit). Politics also played a major role: one of the main slogans of former President G. W. Bush was that of the “Ownership society” meant to persuade American to own their assets, in particular houses: “We’re creating… an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property” (Bush’s statement as cited in Sugrue 2006). In 2007, the Urban Land Institute, the largest trade group of real estate developers in the US, published a book titled Niagara of Capital, wrote by the economist Downs (2007). This publication “generally celebrated the flood of capital that was flowing into local real estate markets in the US and transforming cities and neighborhoods. This had been a view widely shared by the real estate industry, the financial sector and many associated regulators and policymakers in the US” (Immergluck 2011, p. 130). The financial capital acted as the link between the two circuits of capital. A huge amount of capital had been injected in the US credit systems in the early 2000s, coming from oil-producing countries of the Arab Gulf, and this needed to be valorized. To persuade families to buy new houses, banks were offering initial good condition for mortgages covering up to 120–130% of the houses’ market value. It should be, therefore, not surprising that the financial crisis of 2008 started, as said, as a subprime mortgage crisis, i.e. a crisis in the capacity of the working class to pay the debt it had incurred to buy the excess of houses produced as a way to valorize the great flow of financial capital. As Newman (2009, cited in Immergluck 2011) has put it with reference to the US, the subprime crisis there was the result of policies that, rather than providing homeowners and neighbourhoods with access to credit, was focused on providing global capital with access to neighbourhoods and homeowners. One year after the publication of Niagara of Capital, the worst world economic crisis since 1929 broke out, starting exactly from the collapse of the subprime mortgage systems.

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To synthesize, the construction of the built environment, and more, in general, the shaping of the landscape, is a central component of the overall dynamic of capitalist development (Gotham 2009). In this context, the state and other levels of governments play a crucial role in the processes of spatial fixation of capital through a variety of policies (including spatial planning), regulations and infrastructural investments that can enhance or hinder territorial coherence and promote flows between cities and regions (Gotham 2009; Immergluck 2011). The analysis of the secondary circuit of capital unveils another basic contradiction: the built environment is spatially fixed and immobile, relatively durable and costly, and defined by local particularities, specificities and idiosyncrasies. On the other hand, to be valorized in the most efficient way, capital needs to be abstract, volatile and able to displace without barriers. As far as possible, capital accumulation strives to eradicate local peculiarities and place distinctions that characterize, for example, the housing market (Gotham 2009; Immergluck 2011). Spatially fixed capital—e.g. transport infrastructure—is often also temporally fixed, in that it generates returns on the investment in the long run; so whilst the structure itself can facilitate the circulation of capital in terms of freights, at the same time it is a ‘locked’ capital, that cannot be easily mobilized (Harvey 1982). It is this inherent tension between immobile properties and mobile capital that defines modern capitalist urbanization and uneven development (Gotham 2009; Immergluck 2011). There is more, we add: this tension is precisely one of the forces that act upon local governments and hence spatial planners and land managers. For example, in analysing the housing sector in Norway, Orderud (2006, p. 384, as cited in Gotham 2009) suggests that “home building is a local business due to a capacity restraint regarding local market knowledge; the interaction with local planning authorities; face-to-face meetings; and social relations” (emphasis added). The subprime crisis was determined by global financial capital, but its consequences have been borne by local communities and neighbourhoods in the form of accumulation of vacant foreclosed homes, decrease of house values for remaining residents and overall degradation of entire communities (Immergluck 2011). Again, topics of direct relevance for spatial planners. We can see how production of space is affected by these phenomena even from a more sectorial planning perspective. Building brand new houses, all identical as they typically are in suburbia, is easier for a developer than designing, for example, an urban regeneration development on brownfield. Often, the latter would require prior remediation activity, more complex and elaborated (thus costly ) design. This would have the same effect as the water treatment facilities for the industry of the first circuit in the example provided above: not something out of which value can be extracted, but only an unwanted capital investment as a necessary preliminary activity to make the real business—the building of new houses. Whilst brownfield regeneration could, partially, act as a sink for spatially fixing some amount of capital, it will never do it as efficiently as the construction of brand-new houses on open space does: it would oblige capital to deal with the specificities and particular problems of that area, whereas, as we have argued earlier, to fully valorize itself capital needs to be able to displace without barriers and it is constrained by local peculiarities and place distinctions. Conversely, (sub)urban expansion on open land serves perfectly

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the needs of both circuits of capital involved: it acts as an outlet for the commodities produced in the first circuit (building materials, energy, fuel, machines, etc.) and it presents the most favourable conditions for the expansion of the capital that directly needs to be valorized, that of the developer (as we have seen, often this is, at its origin, financial capital). As depicted in Fig. 4.1, we argue that local policies and spatial planning can both facilitate or contrast such trends; again, not to sound too abstract, we shall provide empirical evidence : in a study on relationship between zoning in local land-use plans and the risk of foreclosure in six metropolitan areas in the United States, Chakraborty et al. (2013) found that there was a significant positive correlation between zoning restrictiveness, i.e. (allowing only a limited number of functions in a neighbourhood) and risk of foreclosure and that a diverse mix of housing stock for different income groups reduces the risk of foreclosure. The authors suggest that local spatial planning should promote a diverse housing stock through zoning. A direct call to spatial planners, which reminds us of the four ingredients of urban diversity championed by Jane Jacobs (1961) (another essential author for planners): mixed primary uses, short blocks, mixed building stock and high density. To sum up, we can say that the main economic/financial crisis the world has faced since 1929 is strictly linked to the way the urban and suburban landscape is shaped by capital forces and the way this is mediated, inter alia, by local spatial planning.

4.4 Towards a Unified Framework of Ecological Rationality and Reconfiguration of Space Metabolic rift and spatial fix are two key conceptual resources to be mobilized to analyse and interpret external forces and megatrends affecting land-use planning. As with Land-Use Science and Political Ecology, I maintain here that merging these two analytics into a unified framework would greatly enhance our explanatory power. Following Foster (1999), the notion of metabolic rift has been elaborated by scholars investigating the socio-ecological systems and the relation between the ecological crisis and the mode of production. However, only recently scholars have been trying to develop a comprehensive, unified framework and a rigorous exploration of the metabolism of spatial fixes in general terms is missing (Ekers and Prudham 2017). Further important insights towards the elaboration of the advocated framework can be drawn from the work of another influential geographer, Neil Smith. Smith’s (1984) thesis of capitalist production of nature and space is a fundamental theoretical contribution in this sense. In brief, Smith (in turn largely building on Marxian concepts and on the work of Henri Lefebvre) arguments that the alienation process typical of capitalist production does not only alienate the worker from the product of his/her work, but also from nature, as the worker–human relationship is subsumed under the production process and thus under the logic of capital. Starting from this, Smith elaborates on

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the concepts of first and second nature. Traditionally, first nature refers to unaltered environments (e.g. a pristine forest) whilst second nature refers to forms of nature that are historical products of human transformations (e.g. an agrarian landscape). As capitalism develops, this original conception of first nature makes less and less sense, as pristine environments are increasingly scarcer and not part of the daily experience of man. Therefore, Smith reworks these concepts and conceptualises first nature as the set of concrete, material natures produced as use values by capitalist labour processes, and second nature as the commodified nature or as an exchange value (Ekers and Prudham 2017). In this frame, space is intended as a subset of a produced first nature, one aspect of first nature’s use value. Again, does it sound too abstract? The example of suburbanization (or any urbanization process, i.e. increase of urbanized area) can aid us. The basic thing capital needs to develop new (sub)urban areas is obviously building land. But it does not simply need it as the concrete substrate upon which to build houses (i.e. to fix capital): spatial fix exploits land firstly as space, it puts into value its spatial extent, a lower density per capita and a certain amount of green space. The extension of the space is, from the point of view of capital’s spatial fixing through (sub)urbanization, a use value of the building land, as Smith argues. But we have already seen how this has profound ecological (negative) consequences. The production of space is a process that has a metabolic fundamental character. Linking Harvey’s spatial fix and Smith’s production of nature constitutes an important step towards the elaboration of a unified framework that Ekers and Prudham (2017, 2018) term socio-ecological fix. A fundamental advancement in the building of the advocated unified framework is constituted by the work of American environmental historian and historical geographer Jason W. Moore. He conceptualises each phase of world capitalist development at once as cause and consequence of a fundamental reorganization of world ecology. He terms these successive reorganizations “systemic cycles of agro-ecological transformation” (Moore 2000). Moore traces back the origin of the metabolic rift to the sixteenth century, thus well before the industrial second agrarian revolution, and suggests that “there is a metabolic rift in general and a succession of metabolic rifts specific to each successive phase of world capitalist development” (ibid., p. 128). The basic tendencies he identifies in each phase of capitalist development and its associated metabolic rift is towards increasingly intensive agriculture and increasingly intensive extraction. Drawing from the previous authors, among which Marx and Engels, Mumford, Arrighi (1994), Wallerstein (1974, 1989) an Worster (1990), Moore highlights how such agroecological transformation, under the thrust of capital accumulation, produced spatial processes of landscape simplifications (with the increase of monoculture) and land polarisation whereby in the modern era, there was a division of labour not only between agriculture and industry, thus between the country and the town, but among agricultural tasks as well, especially between cereals agriculture and pasturage (Wallerstein 1974, as cited in Moore 2000). Each new systemic cycle of accumulation marks a world transformation of the ecological relations of production on multiple geographical scales. The reorganization of world ecology was accompanied by a massive reorganization of the built

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environment, not only in the (well known to planners) expansion of urban areas, but also the increasing the amount of infrastructure (railways, canals, ports, etc.). The formation of this fixed capital goes hand in hand with the expansion, intensification, and transformation of material processes of resource flow and waste production, essential features for conceptualising capitalism as an “ecological regime” (Moore 2011). This is why Moore argues that what is now commonly referred to as “Anthropocene”—the era where humanity as an undifferentiated whole is the primary driver of the geological transformation of the Earth—should be replaced by the concept of “Capitalocene”, i.e. the geological era in which capital accumulation is the primary driver of biophysical perturbation. Capitalocene should, therefore, be understood as a system of power, profit and re/production in the web of life (Moore 2016, 2017). Recent literature has elaborated along these lines using the metabolic rift and spatial fix concepts in land-use related issues—and offers useful insights to this regard. McClintock (2010) resorted to the concept of the metabolic rift in an urban context to investigate urban agriculture in the Global North and South. He argues that the metabolic rift has three connected components: ecological, social and individual, and contended that much of the work on the metabolic rift has focused on the first one and less the other two. Napoletano et al. (2015), in elaborating on the relation between local land-change and global environmental degradation, argue that the concept of spatial fix can be used to place the notion of metabolic rift in a geographic context that can be used in land-change science to link the proximate drivers of land change to the geography of capitalism. Consistently with the arguments exposed above, they maintain that these two concepts indicate a systemic tendency to reconfigure space in a way that facilitates the perpetual expansion of the material and energetic throughput, superimposed on the geography of capitalism’s cycles of territorialization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization. They term this trend geographic rift and identify three moments of geographic expansion and reconfiguration by which this becomes physically evident: (1) land appropriation, (2) forced migration and (3) commodification, with spatial fix acting as an immediate driving force at each moment. They advocate for a deeper utilisation of these concepts in Land-Use Science for this discipline to be able to go beyond the proximate issues and address the underlying, systemic drivers of land change (ibid.). Importantly, they also suggest concrete ways to operationalize these concepts in Land-Use Science, by examining the three above mentioned moments with “quantifiable variables that are measured even in neoclassical economics, including land titling, concentration, and historical ownership; internal and external and rural and urban migration; commodity flows; and penetration by foreign capital. These variables could readily be incorporated into Geographic Information Systems and used in Land-Use Science model development” (ibid., p. 209). We add that by the same fashion this type of analysis can be incorporated in spatial planning processes as well. Ekers and Prudham (2017, 2018) are perhaps the authors who have stressed the more that spatial fix needs to be understood as an inherently metabolic process; that is, as a process where the production of space and nature happen together as differentiated but co-constituted unities. Building on O’Connor (1998), they also emphasise the need for considering the role of social struggles in determining how

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the socio-ecological fix (spatial fix + metabolism) is realized. Importantly, they point out the need to analyse how spatially fixed capital, understood as a metabolic process, leads not only to the production of space but also to the production of landscapes in a more holistic sense. This leads us to the subsequent question, salient for spatial planners: what types of landscapes are the results of the combined processes of spatial fix and metabolic (or socio-ecological or geographic) rift? What are the spatial configurations and the spatial fixes that best reflect the underlying forces of capital accumulation and their inherent socio-ecological contradictions? Concerning the urban landscape, we have already provided some partial answers throughout the chapter; as regards the rural landscape, Moore identifies the more tangible effects of the current cycle of agroecological transformation on landscapes configuration: (i) intensification of production, (ii) expansion of production on new areas, (iii) expansion of monoculture—landscape simplification. In the next subsection, we examine these trends of landscape transformation more closely using the analytics we have developed so far.

4.5 Processes of Landscapes’ Reconfiguration: Expansion, Intensification and Simplification in Urban and Rural Areas We discuss here first urban areas, covering suburbs as well, and subsequently rural areas, but this should not be intended as a dichotomy: the demarcation line between the two is blurred and both shall be conceptualised, following Geddes, Mumford and McHarg, as part of a single, interconnected system. The division is made only for expository reasons and to ease the reading. Also, spatial planners will be likely more familiar with processes concerning urban areas, so we will dwell more on rural ones that are much less covered by planning literature, though, as we shall see, they are of pivotal importance under an ecologically rational planning paradigm.

4.5.1 Urban and Suburban Areas We have seen that urban expansion has been and still is a major spatial fix and a preferred way to the valorization of financial capital, which explains the unarrestable increase of land take by urban areas over the past years in even in contexts, as Europe , with a stagnant population. The ecological implications of land take—how this widens the metabolic rift—are obvious and widely investigated. We have also seen that suburban development is a particularly effective way to achieve spatial fix of large amounts of capital with as much obvious negative ecological consequences. Countless studies have shown the huge amount of energy and matter that the suburban way of life necessitates, to the point that American social critic James Howard

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Kunstler (one of the most provocative and entertaining critic of suburbs in the US) has defined them “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world”. With reference to the three main processes of ecological transformations highlighted above, urbanization is clearly a manifestation of expansion, but what is its relation with intensification? If per capita artificial area increases, the residential density in new developed areas decreases: actually, when we describe suburbs we refer to them as low-density areas, with more green area per capita and less inhabitants per square km. At first sight, this seems quite the contrary of intensification. But we have now the analytical tools to fully interpret this process: we shall examine whether the amount of capital, energy and matter needed to obtain one unit of the service/product sold is increased. Here, the outcome of the production process is a space for people to reside. Therefore, we shall not look at the amount of capital (and matter/energy) consumed per hectare of land, but rather at how much input, overall, is needed to provide dwell for a certain number of residents. In this equation, the land is an input of the production process, one of the elements that give value to the service/commodity sold. In this way, we can fully understand that expansion and intensification are both features of urbanization and sub-urbanization. As Ekers and Prudham (2018, p. 6) argue, “both intensive and extensive processes are internal to any fix”. In the case of urbanization, a further element shall be considered: the construction company is just the last player in the whole process of capital valorization: from its point of view, building houses, especially dull, homogeneous detached suburban ones, is an activity very much prone to fall of the rate of profit. With modern construction techniques, the organic composition of capital is very much unbalanced towards fixed capital (building material, machinery and land), no substantial technology boost can be expected, and the replacement time rate is much longer—one usually do not buy a new home with the frequency he or she would replace his/her smartphone.6 Whilst building materials and machinery are—at present—abundant, land becomes increasingly the more important element of the fixed capital. Let’s get some empirical evidence here: in a study on the 46 main urban areas in the US, Davis and Palumbo (2008) found that from 1984 to 2004 the aggregate share of the value of the land on the total price of houses jumped from 32 to 50%. In this frame, we have to understand land not merely as “area” or “surface”, but, as the same authors explain, as “land, location, and amenities associated with an existing home” (ibid., p. 352) (i.e. Smith’s conceptualization of land’s use value). Again, there is a vicious loop here: the more capital is diverted from the first to the second circuit, the more products (houses and associated amenities) need to be produced and sold to valorize it: location increasingly determine the final value, thus the profit that can be realized, whichmakes the price of residential land to increase. This, in turn, generates speculative operation on land, i.e. great land acquisitions insight of quick, easy surplus gain: here we have all the ingredients for the creation of a speculative bubble and the subsequent devaluation process. 6 Which

also explains way in the construction sector working conditions are so poor, most of the labour force is constituted by immigrants, often paid under the counter, with extremely high injury (and death) rates.

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The additional problem here is that this devaluation has a specific territorial component as noted earlier (Immergluck 2011): entire neighbourhoods face abandonment and degradation of the building stock, foreclosures and thus haemorrhages of residents, closure of shops and service and so on. This highlights an important aspect in examining the dynamics of landscape configurations: expansion and intensification go hand in hand with abandonment: they are the two sides of the same coin, only apparently in contradiction, but in reality element of a single, dialectical dynamic. The fact that capital is fixed spatially makes such processes less abrupt compared, e.g. to shocks in the stock markets or in other sectors of the economy, but does not impede them. Spatial planners in Europe are mainly familiar with the effect of deindustrialization and the consequent increase of abandoned industrial areas to be redeveloped, but the same process affects also shopping centres, de-malling being a prominent issue since years in US urban planning (Parlette and Cowen 2011) and increasingly in Europe as well (e.g. Guimarães 2019). We can note how the search for appealing locations has fuelled what Taylor and Hurley (2016) refer to as the emergence of ‘exurbia’, as mentioned in Chap. 3: as suburban expansion began with the desire of the elites to escape the unhealthy city, the development of exurbia started with the desire of affluent people to escape the dull suburbs in search of houses in scenic, natural areas on relatively large acreages with low density. An ‘extensive’ process of capital fix sensu Ekers and Prudham (2018) with several important consequences on the creation of new material and symbolic landscapes, no longer rural but not either urban and on the socio-economic characteristics of the new communities. Space constraints do not allow us to dwell on this further, but Taylor and Hurley’s (2016) A Comparative Political Ecology of Exurbia is highly interesting reading, not least because it explicitly addresses how the new landscape is shaped by land-use planning.

4.5.2 Rural Areas Let us turn to rural areas now, and the main economic activity carried out therein— agriculture. The fact that the long-lasting process of expansion and intensification has occurred is manifest, but a couple of figures will allow us to grasp the magnitude of these phenomena. The area dedicated to agriculture has passed from 1.1 billion ha in 1750 to 4.9 in 2016; in 1750, at the eve of the industrial era, humanity used 1.49 ha of agricultural land (arable and pastures) per person to produce food; by 2016, the figure has dropped at 0.66, meaning that an exceptional rise in crop yields has occurred: in the same period, wheat yield in the UK passed from a bit more than 1 to more than 8 t/ha. Corn yields in the US jumped from approximately 1.6 t per ha in 1866 to about 10 in 2014; between 1850 and 2014 wheat yields in France raised from 0.7 to 7.5 t/ha; in Germany from 0.99 to 8.63. In other parts of the world, the increased has been less dramatic, but still remarkable: in Russia, in 1850 one ha of land produced 0.45 t of wheat; in 2014, 2.5. In Chile, barley’s yield s in the 1930s were around 1.5 t/ha, they reached 6 t/ha in 2014. Expansion and intensification are

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therefore two clear processes characterizing the agroecological transformation of the rural landscape since the XVII century . Let us have a deeper look at what happened in more recent times. As commonly known, the astonishing increase of the output from cropland has been possible thanks to advancements in technologies and knowledge of the functioning of agroecosystems, whose main manifestation was a huge increase in the input of chemicals in agricultural land. As we have discussed earlier, for at least two centuries the availability of fertilizers had been the main limiting factor of capitalist agricultural production: Marx reports how farmers searched battlefields to get bones of dead soldiers to be used as fertilizers . The so-called Second Agricultural Revolution in England, in the period 1840–1860, was made possible by the massive import of guano, accumulated excrement of seabirds rich in Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium, the three key elements for plant growth. The history of guano provides a paradigmatic example of Moore’s conception of agroecological regimes: guano was so crucial in the rise of modern capitalist agriculture that control over guano-rich Chincha Islands in Peru led to a war between Spain and Peru (1864–1866). Despite the guano import from Peru boosted from 1841, demand from farmers in Europe continued to increase and could never be fully met. British and US fleet were sent around the world to search for any island, rock and keys thought to contain guano deposits. At the same time, guano extraction from Peruan islands was made possible by massive imports of another factor of production, i.e. human labour in the form of “coolies” from China, and by organizing such labour force through coercion (remember Mumford’s mega machine here). Working conditions were so inhuman to resemble slavery, and many of the workers were to die in the following few years or even months (Foster and Clark 2018). By the end of the nineteenth-century guano deposits had been seriously impoverished, but a new technological boost would have fixed the persistent fertilizers need. At the beginning of the twentieth-century German chemist, G. Haber devised an industrial process to fix nitrogen from the air. This represented a real revolution for agriculture and the beginning of a new cycle of agroecological transformation (sensu Moore). Artificial nitrogen was available in unprecedented large quantities and could be manufactured in the same countries where it was needed. Of course, in ecological terms, this did not represent a solution to the metabolic rift, indeed it worsened it, as now all capitalist agricultural production was reliant upon a fossil fuel-based industrial process. Reliable statistics on the use of fertilizers are available only starting from approximately 1960, but they are telling anyway. Lu and Tian (2017) report that Nitrogen and Phosphorous fertilizer use rates per unit of the farmed area increased worldwide by approximately 8 times and 3 times, respectively, since 1961. Considering the concomitant expansion of cropland, the increase in total fertilizer consumption is even larger. Similar trends are reported for the use of tractors or pesticides. The process of spectacular increase of crop yields following the introduction of new breeds and the use of mineral fertilizers and chemical pesticides in developing countries is commonly known as the Green Revolution. Briefly examining it will allow us to appreciate the usefulness of the analytics we have discussed so far and to gain insights on what is perhaps the more impacting process in terms

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of spatial reconfiguration of landscapes since the invention of agriculture. We shall also see how this has practical relevance for spatial planning. Patel (2013) describes the Green Revolution as a biopolitical and a geopolitical process, a solution to a problem (feeding people) framed by the geopolitics and ideologies of the early twentieth century. Impressive increases in yields, particularly in cereal productions, were achieved in developing countries: for instance, in Asia food supply doubled in 25 years with only a 4% increase in net cropped area (Lipton 2007). The narrative describing the Green Revolution as a success is that it allowed to combat hunger by boosting yields and thus reducing the need for expansion of agricultural areas worldwide. In fact: (Patel 2013, p. 6) […] food production successfully outstripped population growth. The global population increased by 110% between 1950 and 1990 but global cereal production increased by 174% over the same period (Otero and Pechlaner 2008). In 2000, world food supplies were 20% higher per capita than in 1961 while the number of people going hungry decreased by 16% between 1970 and 1990, from 942 to 786 million (Borlaug and Dowswell 2003). [...] the Chairman and CEO of the food, agriculture and financial services giant Cargill, recently observed that ‘we live in a time where the world is the furthest it has ever been from caloric famine … the number of calories that the world’s farmers are producing per inhabitant of the world are at all time record levels’ (BBC 2011).

The Green Revolution was started by the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico in 1940 but really developed in Asia in the 1950–1960s, notably in India, Pakistan and the Philippines, and later on in South America. It brought new varieties of rice, corn and wheat, coupled with chemical fertilizers and plant protection products. But to succeed in that it had to import, as well, a knowledge system, a way of conceiving agriculture that was in line with the US capital-intensive, large scale, specialized agriculture. To import these technics—Patel explicitly draws this term from Mumford—supportive social system neede to be in place. As Mumford argues, centralized technics requires the use of force to be imposed and Patel caustically notes that the countries that are more often cited to show the success of the revolution—India, Pakistan, Philippines, Chile and Brazil—all were at some point dictatorships. Again, we have to see this phenomenon dialectically and not as mono-causal: it is not the Green Revolution per se that created dictatorships, Patel says, but the states played a crucial role, through coercion, in establishing the social conditions for the production model of the Green Revolution to be established, and the technics of the Green Revolutions were supportive of the state’s political objectives. The Green Revolution was called so in contrast with the Red Revolution, i.e. the possible uprising of other communist regimes in Asia after China. Increasing yields and food production was seen by recipient governments as a way to placate social tensions in poor rural areas without substantially changing property structures and resources’ distribution (Patel 2013). This was very much in line with the foreign policy of the US in that period. But it was not a smooth process: resistance from farmers had to be overcome, using what Patel (2013, p. 16) refers to as the “Green Revolution’s most potent tools: subsidies and violence”. Subsidies in the form of higher prices paid to farmers were necessary so that farmers could purchase all the input required by the new production systems: seeds,

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fertilizers and pesticides. Public money was spent to build large-scale infrastructures also needed, mainly irrigation facilities. Paddock (1970, as cited by Patel 2013) reports that in 1966 in the Philippines, price supports for rice increased by 50%; In Mexico, the state bought domestically grown wheat at 33% above world market prices; India and Pakistan paid 100% more for their wheat. Violence had to be used to quell labour protests and constraining increases in wages, as well as to secure property rights. Patel goes on in dismantling the narrative of the Green Revolution resorting on a great deal of statistical data and studies to show that it mainly benefitted the wealthier farmers who could access credit and had the best land, and that it can be considered a success only in terms of increased production but had no effect on decreasing the number of people in hunger. Providing a full account on the socioecological causes and consequences of the green revolution is outside the scope of this book, but the readers have now the conceptual tools to understand and interpret it in a more comprehensive way: first and foremost, it was a huge, world-scale process of socio-ecological fix. As Ekers and Prudham (2018, p. 6) put it “The history of the Green Revolution is nothing if not the relational fusion of intensive and extensive moments, facilitating more capital-intensive agriculture in place while also extending and integrating global agriculture into a productivist regime”. In the previous section, we have argued how these processes shall be analysed conjointly in their spatial fix and metabolic components. Any intensive fix is in fact also a metabolic process (ibid.). The environmental impacts of this immense re-configuration of a world production systems have been studied extensively and include loss of biodiversity due to pesticides, impact on farmers’ health, increased soil erosion rates, salinization of irrigated areas, surface and groundwater contamination by nitrates and various poisonous substances in pesticides. These effects are well known so we will not dwell on them here. But what about the metabolic component underlying the Green Revolution and immense spatial fixing of capital it represented? We need to resort to metabolic metrics to answer this question. After all, agriculture is the main activity by which humans get energy for living (endosomatic energy): it is thus relevant to analyses agricultural systems from an energetic perspective. One indicator used to this purpose is the Energy Return on Investment (EORI), simply defined as the ratio between energy contained in agricultural outputs (burnable calories) and the overall energy consumed to obtain it. Over millennia, humanity has prospered and grown in number precisely because through agriculture it could obtain a surplus of energy, i.e. the energy contained in the crops and livestock was higher than the energy (mainly labour) used to produce it. The balance was positive because the whole process included consistent energetic input from natural, renewable sources, such as wind, rainfall and, above all, solar energy. But an increase in artificial inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides—Marx’s shift in capital’s organic composition towards fixed capital—are obtained mainly through industrial processes requiring fossil fuels. The energetic output (i.e. yields), as seen, has dramatically increased, but so did the input: the ration between them—the EROI—tell us whether overall we are gaining or losing in efficiency.

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Leading ecological economist Joan Martinez-Alier explicitly addressed this theme and reported comparisons of the energy efficiency of traditional small farm agriculture and modern industrial agriculture (Martinez-Alier 2011). There is evidence since the 1970s that industrial agricultural systems––as the ones fostered by the Green Revolution––were less energy efficient than traditional small farm agriculture and traditional agriculture in large landholdings (Pimentel et al. 1973; Steinhart and Steinhart 1974; Leach 1975): i.e. their EROI is lower. In many cases, capitalintensive agriculture has passed from being a net producer to be a net consumer of energy. This argument is put forward by agroecological movements such as Via Campesina, supporting peasant and small farmer agriculture both in the South and in the North (Martinez-Alier 2011). As we claimed in the introduction, this and other movements are pursuing, in the field of agriculture, what we are advocating here for spatial planning: a re-foundation of research and practices based on ecological rationality. Incidentally, we note that Martinez-Alier enriches his argument by recalling the history of energetic analyses in agriculture, dating back to the seminal works of Ukrainian doctor and activist Podolinsky (1850–1891), arguing that his work was not fully understood by Engels, which would have enabled a more systematic account of energy flows in the Marxian corpus (although Martinez-Alier acknowledges that Marx was already a proto-ecological author, in particular with respect to how he described the metabolic rift). Other recent studies have used EORI to evaluate the sustainability (or lack of) current agricultural systems: Moore (2010) compared the energy efficiency of conventional onion production in the USA with organic, small-scale systems finding that the efficiency of the latter was 50 times higher than that of the former (51.5 vs. was 0.9). Schramski et al. (2011) demonstrate that a successfully designed farm can have a positive EROI by coupling products with negative EROI (e.g. vegetables) with other ones with positive EROI and point to small-scale farms as the “economic engine in an agroecological economy” (ibid. p. 94); Markussen and Østergård (2013) analysed the entire Danish food production system as of 2008 and report that the overall EORI is as low as 0.28, meaning that one unit of energy used in agriculture produces only 0.28 unit of energy in food ad conclude that the system is unsustainable, being based on fossil fuel and non-circular flow of nutrients. There is, therefore, increasing evidence that current agricultural systems are not sustainable due to their heavy reliance on external, artificial inputs. Yet, EROI is indicative but does not tell the full story. First, the energetic content of food is certainly of primary importance, humans cannot live without a minimum caloric intake, but it is not the only indicator that should be considered: fruits and vegetables have few calories, but contains essential elements such as vitamin and mineral salts. Secondly, simply considering the energy input does not account for the source of that input, particularly whether it comes from a renewable source (e.g. solar energy) or fossil fuels. To overcome these limitations, the concept of emergy (from embodied energy) was introduced by leading ecologist Odum (1996), who defined it as the total amount of available solar energy used up directly and indirectly to make a service or product. Solar energy is used as a unit of measure, as almost any other form of energy used by humans and ecosystems ultimately comes from solar radiation.

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Thus emergy accounts for all the embodied energy of a product, i.e. the sum of all the past energy consumed to obtain it. For example, the “energy” content of a liter of gasoline is its calorific power, but the emergy content is much higher as it includes all the work and energy consumed to extract the raw material, refine it, transport it and so on. Agricultural production requires both natural, renewable inputs (solar energy, wind, rain, evapotranspiration), natural non-renewable inputs (soil loss) and humanhandled, external inputs: labour, mineral fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, fuel and so on. By converting all these production factors into (solar equivalent) emergy it is possible to determine the total emergy of a product and its composition, i.e. the relative share of natural/renewable resources and of anthropic/nonrenewable ones. Emergy is thus a useful indicator to evaluate the sustainability of current agricultural production systems (actually, of any production system) and their evolution over time. The first studies using emergy to examine agricultural systems appeared in the 1990s (see e.g. the seminal work of, Ulgiati et al, 1993) and have markedly increased over the last decade. Also in this case evidence converges to indicate the unsustainability of current agriculture in industrialized countries. Ulgiati et al. (1994) estimated that at the beginning of the 90s Italian agriculture used 8 times more anthropic sources than natural ones, and accordingly that 91% of the total input came from non-renewable resources. A more recent study by Ghisellini et al. (2014) for the period 1985– 2010 for two Italian Regions, reported only a slight increasing in emergy efficiency. The authors link these positive trends, though limited in absolute terms, to recent EU policies on rural development, but claim that the share of renewable emergy is still very small in the two regions, arguing that urgent policy actions are needed. Gasparatos (2011) examined the evolution of the Japanese agricultural system over three decades, from 1975 to 2005, founding a strong rise in the emergetic share of purchased inputs (+57%) and linking it to dietary changes and macroeconomic trends as the collapse of the Japanese economic bubble at the end of the 1980s. Significantly, he emphasises how agricultural systems heavily depending upon external inputs are more vulnerable to market fluctuations and point to a link between energy security and food security. Pérez-Soba et al. (2019) carried out the first spatially detailed panEuropean study on emergy balances in arable land and grassland in the EU, showing that large shares of EU farmland are highly dependent on external energy inputs. What about so-called ‘developing’ countries, the target of the Green Revolution described above? Ferreyra (2006) examined the evolution of agriculture in the Pampaean Region of Argentine over a century (1900–2000). Whilst efficiency increased in this period, the share of renewable emergy decreased approximately by 50%, and the environmental load increased five times. Ferraro and Benzi (2015) extended the study to cover the period 1984–2010. They argue that these systems are more sustainable than similar ones in other countries (e.g. Italy), but that negative trends are ongoing. Significantly, the authors point out that these indexes improved in the period 1984–1993 but then declined following the introduction of new production technics, namely no-tillage, genetically modified organisms and the start of systematic fertilization. Ali et al. (2019) examined the entire crop production system of India and Pakistan from 2002 to 2011, thus providing a good taste of the outcome of

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the Green Revolution. In Pakistan, the share of non-renewable purchased emergy on total emergy was on average 81% and still increased by 4.3% and its absolute value by 29.3%. In India, non-renewable external inputs accounted on average for 75.6% of total emergy and the share decreased by 3.5%: this was, however, the results of a decrease in labour (considered by authors as purchased non-renewable), whilst the relative emergy contribution those of fertilizers, electricity, mechanical equipment, pesticides and fuels increased significantly. The authors conclude that “the trends for both India and Pakistan point towards an increasing load on the environment for crop production […]”. One of the main identified drivers was fertilizer consumption, markedly increased in both countries due to the availability of domestic natural gas for urea production, followed by mechanization and irrigation. Many emergy studies have been conducted in China, a country that was not directly targeted by the first Green Revolution in the 60s but that experienced, since the early 90s, a tremendous shift towards industrial agriculture. Chen et al. (2006) present a full analysis of Chinese agriculture from 1980 to 2000 and Jiang et al. (2007) complemented it by covering the period 2000–2004. Results indicate that in 24 years the emergetic efficiency of the system was stagnant, the proportion of anthropic input on natural ones rose by 36%, the stress on the non-renewable resources 70% and the overall sustainability of the system dropped by 44%. More recent trends are reported for the national level for the period 1997–2016 by Liu et al. (2018) and disaggregated at the Provincial level for the period 2006–2015 by Liu et al. (2019). In both cases, the analyses do not cover all the agricultural system but focus on crop production, which represents anyway the most relevant share of it, and corroborate the previous ones. Chinese scholars are consistent in their conclusions: “the Chinese agriculture increasingly depends on economic investment in terms of more consumption of resources such as soil, fuels and fertilizers, thus associated with a weakening sustainability along with the profound transition from a self-supporting tradition of intensive manure and labour force input to the modernized style with intensive consumption of industrial products” (Jiang et al. 2007, pp. 4716–4717). Similarly, “China’s rapid agricultural development is based upon a large consumption of nonrenewable inputs, resulting in many environmental issues” (Liu et al. 2019, p. 25); and “China’s crop production system is undergoing unsustainable development due to the ever-increasing environmental stress caused by a large consumption of nonrenewable resources” (Liu et al. 2018, p. 13). The drivers are clearly recognizable and are well summarized by Zhang et al. (2016) “the purchased non renewable input ascends greatly, which is mainly derived from increasing input of mechanical equipment, followed by nitrogen fertilizer, and then diesel and compound fertilizer”. We are now able to interpret these results with our conceptual frame. First, we can note that in terms of the organic composition of capital, they point to a massive shift towards fixed capital that, as seen, is associated with decreased rate of profit in the long run. This abstract formulation, in the context of developing countries - for instance, India- has a very concrete meaning. Farmers’ bankruptcy due to unsustainable indebtedness in India is such a spread phenomenon that it is known as the farmers suicide crisis: official statistics report that between 1995 and 2006, 166,304 farmers committed suicide in India (∼16,000 per year)—a suicide rate 50% higher

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than the country’s average (Merriott 2016). Sixteen-thousand people per year (officially recorded, thus probably more) means 43 people per day, almost one every 30 min. These farmers are so dependent on loans to purchase the fixed capital that the production process requires and their margin is so narrow that any fluctuation in market prices, bad wheatear conditions, personal health problems impeding work, or any other setback can literally ruin them. In countries were the processes of capital intensification of the agriculture have been occurring for longer period, like Europe and USA, the level of input has increased so much, and the rate of profit has decreased accordingly, that many production systems are not only unsustainable from an ecological point of view, but also in mere economic terms. The whole system is sustained by a huge, constant injection if subsides, i.e. public money used to support farmers. Without this support, many European and US farmers will be simply not make a living from their work It is the same situation Indian farmers face, the only difference being that Europe and the US have enough resourceto sustain production. More in general, a growing amount of evidence indicates that intensive agriculture is efficient in maximizing the agricultural output, but not in using ecological processes to convert the input in output for human use. Accordingly, agriculture in industrialized countries is increasingly being reshaped into a system geared to absorbs output from other sectors of production (recall Gorz’s argument on the increase of intermediate input): the agrarian landscape of intensive agriculture is an immense outlet for commodities from the industrial sector, in the form of mineral nitrogen fertilizers, urea, potassium, phosphorous, seeds, herbicides, insecticides, tractors, harvesters, tubes, sprinklers, combines, crop sprayers, slurry spreaders, rollers, caterpillars…the list could continue for long; behind them all, the major sources of energy underpinning the whole system—oil and carbon. Intensive agriculture can thus be seen—not exclusively, but certainly also as—a huge process of capital fixation, in all the senses intended by Harvey, but with a further element: whilst part of the capital is literally fixed to the soil (e.g. building, storages) or relatively fixed (machinery) with a slow replacement rate, a significant share is instead capital that needs to be put constantly into the soil (pesticide, fertilizers) at increasing rates to maintain yield levels once the “Green Revolution” mode of production is established. Here we see the process of positive feedback of the systems described in Chaps. 2 and 3: higher reliance on external input is the resultant of the use of external input. The new technologies are not at the service of the poor Indian farmers, it is rather the opposite: capital does not consist in accumulated labour serving living labour as a means for new production, it consists in living labour serving accumulated labour as a means of maintaining and multiplying the exchange value of the latter. The spatial fix in its most efficient form and the widening of the metabolic rift. This has had huge consequences on the shape of the landscape, not only the rural one, as the reconfiguration of the mode of production of food affects the urban–rural interaction, also in physical terms. Still in the nineteenth century, the Po Plain landscape in Italy was dominated by the system of “Piantata” whereby a single holding typically cultivated cereals along with vineyards and fruit trees in a complex, diversified system able to take advantage of the natural energetic flows and less vulnerable

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to external fluctuations (Sereni 1961, 1997). Let us avoid any naïve interpretations here: there is no idyllic “rural” past, rural areas have always been places of conflicts, of exploitation of human labour, of abuse of power. But evermore they are the place where the current cycle of capitalist shaping of space is more visible and underpins all other processes in urban and suburban areas. The transformation of the rural territory has been extensively cover by the literature, so it is not necessary to dwell on this : landscape simplification is how the whole process is synthetically labelled, meaning a strong decrease of the landscape heterogeneity in terms of patch diversity, namely different land uses, and crop diversity, i.e. number of different crops on the same landscape at the same time. Monoculture has supplanted mixed cropping, semi-natural elements once abundant in farmland (hedgerows, tree lines, small woodlots, ponds and so on) have been removed to ease the use of machineries . As mentioned earlier, for capital accumulation and circulation, and notably for spatial fixing, all local peculiarities are hindrances: it is true for the housing market and as much for agricultural land. Which means that full development of capital will tend to erase or minimize such peculiarities to (sometimes literally) level the landscape to make it more suitable to act as a sink of capital, to enable spatial fixing. But this also means that when the intrinsic conditions of a territory are so adverse that it is not possible to confirm it to the needs of the spatial fix, or it would require an excessive effort, then capital simply moves away: this is, in agriculture, land abandonment. Farming in marginal areas is not “less profitable” because yields are lower: in fact, mountain areas and other less favoured areas have always been farmed or used for livestock in ways that the emergetic flows could be exploited to human advantage. Relatively lower yields could well be ‘profitable’ if the cost of input is low as well: this is the raison d’être of extensive agriculture that has had so much importance in shaping some of the most valuable traditional landscapes in Europe, from dehesas and montados (traditional mixed livestock agroforestry systems) in Spain and Portugal, to extensive grazing on natural and semi-natural grasslands in the Alpine Regions, extensive olives plantations on terraces in the Mediterranean, the French bocages with clear hedgerows patterns, and more in general all the agricultural areas identified in Europe as High Nature Value farmland (for a description of such areas see Paracchini et al. 2008). Therefore, a reason of land abandonment is not that these area cannot produce in absolute terms, but because they do not offer the proper conditions of production required by industrial agriculture: As the average price of agricultural products is determined by massive production from intensive areas, farms in marginal areas ere ‘expulsed from the market’. As seen earlier, intensification and abandonment are thus two parts of the same process: the underlying drivers of land abandonment in industrialized countries are the same as brownfield increase and de-malling. The framework we have elaborated so far serves primarily to explain and interpret the underlying causes of the process spatial planners are more familiar with: expansion of urban areas, sub-urbanization, automobilization of the entire society and consequently of the landscape, and simplification of the rural landscape. We have shown that metabolic approaches and indicators are suited to address in quantitative, analytical terms the joint processes of spatial fix and metabolic rift in rural

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landscapes. This enables us to put forward a relevant point in the planning research agenda, one that directly calls upon spatial planners: what if we tackle these issues from the planning perspective? In other words, can landscape design and planning have a role in determining metabolic flows and possibly in steering them towards increased sustainability? This is a research field that could provide planners with novel analytical tools and policymakers with novel insights. As already mentioned, relevant in this regard is the work being carried out by the Barcelona school on Energy-Landscape Integrated Analysis (ELIA) (Marull et al. 2016) that explicitly links energy flows in landscapes with land-use heterogeneity. By acknowledging and studying in a spatially explicit way how energy and matter flows are managed through farmers’ labour across different land covers following a deliberate pattern, the authors show how specific landscape mosaics emerge that we recognize as cultural landscapes (ibid, p. 31). Their analyses show that traditional, mosaic agrarian landscape are less dissipative systems than contemporary, polarized ones and confirm the fact that intensification and abandonment are the two sides of the same coin “Land-use intensification and abandonment have been the joint outcome of giving up the former integrated multiple-use of farm systems” (Ibid., p. 43). Marull and colleagues’ focus is on agroecosystems and the role of farmers as land managers: an interesting development would be to address the role of land-use planning and the landscape as a whole. In a recent paper, for example, Lee and Huang (2018) studied landscape change dynamics in Taiwan in the period 1971– 2006 using emergy to assess the effects of land-use changes in agricultural lands. Traditional landscape metrics were calculated and correlated with emergy indicators. Findings show that landscape fragmentation tends to intensify the inflows of goods and services from the human economic system for farmland operations. Overall, these approaches indicate a clear link between actions and measures in the remit of planners and the metabolism of territories—something that Geddes, Mumford, McHarg and others had already understood—but it offers, in addition, a powerful analytics to be used in planning and assessment. The integration of landscape ecology with metabolic indexes is a promising research line to provide practical tools to assess the ecological functionality of different landscape configurations. Spatial planners could both use them and contribute to their development with specific disciplinary insights, for example, by providing a more fine-grained characterization of different types of urban areas, so far treated as an indistinct category in the examined approaches. Furthermore, planners can provide a more detailed knowledge of possible trends of land-use changes in a given area, depending for instance on existing building rights, spatial constraints imposed by plans, property regimes of different parcels or the different degree of (legal) protection from the transformation of certain plots or patches. In summary what is advocated, again, is a mutual enhancement of different research lines through disciplinary cross-fertilization. Having illustrated the proposed framework for ecological rationality in planning and used it to examine and interpret the main underlying phenomena of landscape transformation, it is time now look more in detail at how such trends are manifesting themselves in Europe, and how planning contributes to or is being affected by them. This is the topic of the next chapter.

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Lu C, Tian H (2017) Global nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer use for agriculture production in the past half century: shifted hot spots and nutrient imbalance. Earth Sys Sci Data 9 (1):181–192 Markussen M, Østergård H (2013) Energy analysis of the Danish food production system: foodEROI and fossil fuel dependency. Energies 6(8):4170–4186 Martinez-Alier J (2011) The EROI of agriculture and its use by the Via Campesina. J Peasant Stud 38(1):145–160 Martínez-Alier J, Muradian R (eds) (2015) Handbook of ecological economics. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781783471416 Marull J, Font C, Padró R, Tello E, Panazzolo A (2016) Energy-landscape integrated analysis: a proposal for measuring complexity in internal agroecosystem processes (Barcelona Metropolitan Region, 1860–2000). Ecol Ind 66:30–46 Marull J, Cattaneo C, Gingrich S, de Molina MG, Guzmán GI, Watson A, MacFadyen J, Pons M, Tello E (2019a) Comparative energy-landscape integrated analysis (ELIA) of past and present agroecosystems in North America and Europe from the 1830s to the 2010s. Agric Syst 175:46–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2019.05.011 Marull J, Herrando S, Brotons L, Melero Y, Pino J, Cattaneo C, Pons M, Llobet J, Tello E (2019b) Building on Margalef: Testing the links between landscape structure, energy and information flows driven by farming and biodiversity. Sci Total Environ 674:603–614 Marx K (1970, original ed. 1867). Capital, Volume I, New York, Vintage McLaughlin A (1990) Ecology, capitalism, and socialism. Social Democr 6(1):69–102 Merriott D (2016) Factors associated with the farmer suicide crisis in India. J Epidemiol Glob Health 6(4):217–227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jegh.2016.03.003 Moore SR (2010) Energy efficiency in small-scale biointensive organic onion production in Pennsylvania, USA. Renew Agric Food Syst 25(3):181–188 Moore JW (2015) Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso Books Moore JW (2016) The rise of cheap nature. In: Moore JW (eds) Anthropocene or capitalocene? PM Press, Oakland, pp 78–115 Mumford L (1961) The city in history: Its origins, its transformations, and its prospects (Vol. 67). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Napoletano BM, Paneque-Gálvez J, Vieyra A (2015) Spatial fix and metabolic rift as conceptual tools in land-change science. Capitalism Nat Soc 26(4):198–214. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752. 2015.1104706 Newman K (2009) Post-industrial widgets: capital flows and the production of the urban. Int J Urban Reg Res 33(2):314–331 O’Connor JR (ed) (1998) Natural causes: essays in ecological marxism. Guilford Press Odum EP (1969) The Strategy of Ecosystem Development. Science 164 (3877):262–270 Odum HT (1996) Environmental accounting. Emergy and environmental decision making, John Wiley & Sons, NY Otero G, Pechlaner G (2008) Latin American agriculture, food, and biotechnology: Temperate dietary pattern adoption and unsustainability. In: G. Otero, (ed) Food for the few: Neoliberal globalism and biotechnology in Latin America. University of Texas Press, Austin, pp 31–56 Orderud GI (2006) The Norwegian home-building industry—locally embedded or in the space of flows? Int J Urban Reg Res 30(2):384–402 Paddock WC (1970) How Green Is the Green Revolution?. BioScience 20(16):897–902 Paracchini ML, Petersen JE, Hoogeveen Y, Bamps C, Burfield I, van Swaay C (2008) High nature value farmland in Europe. An estimate of the distribution patterns on the basis of land cover and biodiversity data. JRC Report EUR 23480. Publication Office of the European Union, Luxemburg Parlette V, Cowen D, (2011) Dead Malls: Suburban Activism, Local Spaces, Global Logistics. Int J Urban Reg Res 35(4):794–811 Patel R (2013) The long green revolution. J Peasant Stud 40(1):1–63 Pérez-Soba M, Elbersen B, Braat L, Kempen M, van der Wijngaart R, Staritsky I, Rega C, Paracchini ML (2019) The emergy perspective: natural and anthropic energy flows in agricultural biomass

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production, EUR 29725 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, ISBN 978-92-76-02057-8. https://doi.org/10.2760/526985, JRC116274 Pimentel D, Hurd LE, Bellotti AC, Forster MJ, Oka IN, Sholes OD, et al. (1973) Food production and the energy crisis. Science 182(4111):443–449. Rao SL (2013) Ethical analysis of the global climate dilemma. In Nautyial S et al. (eds) Knowledge Systems of Societies for Adaptation and Mitigation of Impacts of Climate Change (pp. 39–55). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg Robbins P (2011) Political ecology: a critical introduction, vol 16. Wiley Schramski JR, Rutz ZJ, Gattie DK, Li K (2011) Trophically balanced sustainable agriculture. Ecol Econ 72:88–96 Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2014) Global biodiversity outlook 4. Montréal, 155 p. https://www.cbd.int/gbo4/ Sereni E (1961) Storia del paesaggio agrario italiano. Bari, Laterza. English edition (1997) History of the Italian agricultural landscape (Vol. 350). Princeton University Press Smith N (1984) Uneven development: nature, capital and the production of space. The University of Georgia Press, Athens Steinhart JS, Steinhart CE (1974) Energy use in the US food system. Science 184:307–316 Sugrue TS (2006) The right to a decent house. In: Conn S (ed) (2012) To promote the general welfare: the case for big government. Oxford University Press Swyngedouw E, Heynen N (2003) Urban political ecology, justice and the politics of scale. Antipode 35(5):898–918 Taylor LE, Hurley PT (2016) (eds) A comparative political ecology of exurbia: Planning, environmental management, and landscape change. Springer, pp 1–310. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3319-29462-9 Ulgiati S, Odum HT, Bastianoni S (1993) Emergy analysis of italian agricultural system. The role of energy quality and environmental inputs. In: Bonati L et al (eds), Trends in Ecological Physical Chemistry, Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp.187–215 Ulgiati S, Odum HT, Bastianoni S (1994) Emergy use, environmental loading and sustainability an emergy analysis of Italy. Ecol Model 73(3–4):215–268 Vitousek PM, Ehrlich PR, Ehrlich AH, Matson PA (1986) Human appropriationof the products of photosynthesis. Bioscience 36:368–373 Wallerstein I (1974) The modern world-system I: capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. Academic Press, New York Wallerstein I (1989) The modern world-system III: the second era of great expansion of the capitalist world-economy, 1730–1840s. Academic Press, San Diego, CA World Bank (2018) Energy use (kg of oil equivalent per capita). Available online: https://data. worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE Zhang X-, Zhang R, Wu J, Zhang Y-, Lin L-, Deng S-, et al (2016) An emergy evaluation of the sustainability of Chinese crop production system during 2000—2010. Ecol Indic 60:622–633

Chapter 5

A Closer Look to Processes of Territorial Transformations in Europe: Urbanization, Agricultural Intensification and Land Abandonment

Abstract Here we examine more in detail how the general processes described in the previous chapter have been developing in Europe and specifically in the European Union. Account is given of recent literature that has examined the main processes of landscape transformation in the EU: relentless urban expansion, agricultural intensification, and agricultural land abandonment. These processes are analysed and interpreted using the conceptual tools developed in the previous chapter. In Europe, urban growth rate exceeding population growth rate is linked to the ongoing processes of neo-liberalization of spatial planning, drawing from extensive empirical evidence from literature. Similarly, agricultural intensification and land abandonment are examined as two interlinked aspects of a joint process of reconfiguration of space under the contemporary dominating economic paradigm. The relevance for spatial planning of these processes is discussed and the necessity to bring back the politics in what has been termed the post-political planning is argued. Keywords Urbanization · Urban expansion · Suburbanization · Agricultural intensification · Land abandonment · Neo-liberalization of planning · Post-political planning

5.1 Recent and Ongoing Macro-processes of Territorial Transformation in Europe Europe, together with the US, is the cradle of capitalism and of modern agriculture: here, the processes of changes in the organic composition of capital, industrialization of agricultural production, spatial fix and metabolic rift have been going on since at least two centuries or, as postulated by Moore (2016), even since the early fifteenth century. Thus, we have a significant amount of longitudinal data to appreciate the conceptual robustness of the proposed framework and falsify it. At the same time, the EU has a strong tradition of environmental policies and is considered by many commenters as having the most advanced environmental legislation in the world: at the time of closing this book, the new President of the European Commission has just launched a new European Green Deal, an ambitious political document resetting the Commission’s commitment to tackling climate and environmental-related © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 C. Rega, Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning, Cities and Nature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33027-9_5

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challenges (EC, 2019). Understanding the dialectic between policies and macrotrends entails relevant consequences for our capacity to understand processes of landscape transformation and to act upon them. Recent studies in the Land-Use Science domain have explored the trends of landscape changes in Europe over the last decades and, importantly, their underlying drivers (Plieninger et al. 2016; van Vliet et al. 2016; Levers et al. 2018). An extensive meta-analysis carried out by Plieninger et al. (2016) on 144 cases in Europe found that while proximate drivers of landscape change were rigorously identified and examined in most cases, the underlying drivers of change were often simply identified through a personal interpretation by the authors. Similarly, Oliveira et al. (2018) examined the role of strategic spatial planning in contrasting soil sealing and report that while environmental concerns have become core objectives of strategic planning in recent years, references to the drivers of land degradation are rare. Not surprisingly for readers that have gone through the previous chapter, the main identified trends by Plieninger et al. (2016) are (i) urbanization (including infrastructure development); (ii) agricultural intensification; (iii) land abandonment; and (iv) forest expansion. Findings also indicate that multiple economic, social and political causes co-occur to determine these phenomena, which supports the overall conceptual framework proposed in the previous chapter. Expectedly, the relevance of the identified phenomena is not uniform across Europe: agriculture intensification was more often reported in Northern and Western Europe; in Eastern Europe, the expansion/intensification of forestry was the prevalent process, while land abandonment was more common in the Mediterranean region. Urbanization has been taking place across the entire continent, but more prominently in western and Eastern Europe, less so in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean. In the next subsections, we examine these megatrends separately for the sake of clarity in the exposition, but within the unified theoretic frame outlined in the previous chapter. Similarly, the distinction between processes in the urban and rural domains is purely functional to the organization of the exposition but does not imply at all that there two spaces should be considered as separate entities. Indeed, it is precisely this dichotomy that has too often characterized approaches to spatial planning that we want to bridge over by examining the interplays between the phenomena. Again, we will provide several references for readers willing to deepen their knowledge and interested in the outcomes of the megatrends in specific contexts or regions.

5.2 Urbanization in the EU in the Frame of Post-political Planning Some key figures may help to summarize the magnitude of the urbanization phenomenon in Europe. In the EU 28 in particular, urbanized has area increased since the mid-1950s to present by 78%, while the population has grown by 33% (EC 2013), meaning that the per capita urbanized surface has increased by 34%. More in detail,

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Fig. 5.1 Land take in the EU 28 in the perios 2000–2018, disaggregated per type of new artificial area and type of lost area. Source Own elaboration from EEA (2019)

the sealed area increased between 1990 and 2000 by 114,000 ha/year on average; the annual rate slightly decreased to 102,000 ha/year in the period 2000–2006 and in more recent years (2006–2012) to 98,500 ha/year. Overall, from 1990 to present approximately 3 m ha of land have been lost in the EU, an area as big as Belgium. More detailed data are available from the period 2000–2018. 1%. Figure 5.1 shows the amount of land taken per type of new artificial area and type of land lost, based on data from Corine Land Cover (EEA, 2019). It can be seen that diffuse urbanization, industrial and commercial sites and construction sites (i.e. areas with construction works in progress) are the most relevant categories in terms of area. It is also to be considered that Corine Land Cover underestimates the urbanized areas given that its minimum mapping unit is 25 ha, so for example an agricultural area of that dimension will not be classified as artificial land until the artificial cover reaches a certain share. While the gap between urbanized area and population dynamic if often emphasized in researches, the deep underlying causes are less investigated, besides some generic comments on behavioural changes and family composition. In the previous chapter, we have shown the relevance of (sub)urbanization as a process of spatial fix and capital circulation/shift between the three main circuits of production (commodities, built environment and financial capital). The literature of reference was mainly from the US, but, though the morphological characteristics of urban centres and suburbs in the old continent may be different, the underlying process in Europe is similar: according to a recent report of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, between 1960 and 2010 in Europe, the total population growth rate is the resultant of a slight decline in rural areas, an increase of about 20% in cities and of more than 40% in towns and

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suburbs. The strongest growth took place in the newly developed residential areas surrounding the existing cities (Nabielek et al. 2016). In Plieninger et al.’s (2016) meta-review, urbanization and infrastructure development were mentioned as a proximate driving force in 53% of the examined cases and appear linked to Political/institutional factors in 80% of the cases, to economic reasons in 60% of the cases, and to cultural factors in 73% of the cases. Hopefully, the arguments provided so far allow a better understanding of the phenomenon. Political/institution factors are probably the most immediately recognizable ones but are in turn driven by underlying process of capital dynamics that are acting in Europe not dissimilarly from what we have seen in the US. Population growth (even including immigration), and changes in family’s structure in Europe explain only a part of the increase in the built stock from the demand side: we shall shift our focus to the supply side and the relationship between the circuits of capital described in the previous chapter. In Europe, delocalization processes of the manufacturing industry have been particularly pronounced, so has been devaluation of capital invested therein and the possibility of surplus-value generation. Transfer from the first to the second circuit has served massively as temporal and spatial fix (Lefebvre 2003): as said in the previous chapter, physical expansion, i.e. increase in urbanized area through creation of new (sub)urban developments, is not the only process of spatial fix—reconfiguration of central areas through large investment projects and gentrification have also occurred extensively—but it is certainly the one with the most severe ecological implications. Within this process, an element acts as hinder: as seen, capital circulation needs to be abstract, volatile and able to displace without barriers (Gotham 2009; Immergluck 2011): this is very easy as long as capital circulates within the financial circuit, and relatively easy as long as capital circulates in the form of commodities. But the transfer from the first (commodities) and third (financial) circuits to the second one (the built environment) inevitably obliges capital to confront the local peculiarities and specificities, both as regards the physical elements of places (climate, topography, presence of infrastructure and so on) and the local political/institutional frameworks, the set of policies, laws and regulations in place, among which, importantly, planning ones. Traditionally, in advanced capitalist countries, “spatial planning played an important role in correcting market failures by distributing growth and economic development evenly across state territories, providing services for a reasonable quality of life” (Olesen 2014). Precisely because “markets” would not provide an even spatial development and equal access to services, planning was in charge to compensate, at least partially, for it and this was made possible by strong statutory planning laws and regulations, enforced by the State, clearly delineating land uses and possibilities of transformations (often referred to as spatial Keynesianism see, e.g. Brenner 2004). This set of laws and regulations that took a spatially explicit representation through zoning are clearly at odds with capital’s need to get rid of what Gotham (2009) refers to as local peculiarities and idiosyncrasies. It is in this frame that we should interpret what several planning scholars (many of which in Europe) have referred to as the “neoliberal turn” or the “neo-liberalization” of planning (Peck and Tickell 2002; Olesen and Richardson 2011; Allmendinger

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2011; Sager 2011; Haughton et al. 2013; Olesen 2014) and the terms that have accompanied it, such as the “communicative turn” (Healey 1992) “soft spaces”, “fuzzy maps” (Haughton et al. 2013) and the whole rhetoric about stakeholders involvement, coordination, consensus building and negotiation, usually associated to the “strategic spatial planning” label. As Cerreta et al. (2010), Haughton et al. (2013) and Olesen (2014) among others, critically point out, all these terms and concepts can be easily co-opted and used to support a “neoliberal agenda” which in our frame means to remove the obstacles to the process of capital circulation and spatial fix. “Communicative” and “collaborative” planning, for instance, were important concepts at the beginning of the nineties in influencing the theorizations of strategic spatial planning: this “new paradigm” entailed seeking consensus through negotiations, involvement of “stakeholders” to identify win-win solutions and creation of new governance arrangements that could bypass statutory planning regulations. According to some theorists of “strategic spatial planning” (see, e.g. Healey 2007) planning and planners needs at times to move away from formal/statutory planning frames in order to destabilize existing policy discourses and practices (Olesen 2014). This is what seems to characterize “soft spaces” of governance (Haughton et al. 2013; Olesen 2014) that may be defined as in-between spaces of governance that exist outside, alongside or in-between the formal statutory scales of government, from area masterplans to multiregional growth strategies (Allmendinger and Haughton 2009). Typically such spaces feature various forms of (usually non-elected) quasipublic organizations, public–private partnerships and private players. Often such “new spaces” of governance are advocated on functional grounds, i.e. that “traditional” government and planning units (Regions, municipalities, etc.) are forced to act within administrative boundaries that do not correspond to the real boundaries of the processes at stake (e.g. commuting within a metropolitan area, or ecological processes acting at landscape or watershed scales). But contrary to the intentions and expectations of some scholars, soft spaces of governance have indeed been “shadowy spaces for legitimating deals and understandings by a mix of elected and unelected actors, leading to a process of ‘validation creep’ between non statutory and statutory plans” (Olesen 2014, see also Allmendinger and Haughton 2009; Haughton et al. 2010) and have acted as “the vehicle for a series of narrowly conceived neoliberal experiments in promoting different forms of high economic growth” (Haughton et al. 2013 p. 231). Similar arguments can be put forward in relation to one of the “technical” instruments used in communicative planning and in soft spaces of governance, namely “fuzzy maps” (Davoudi and Strange 2009). Again, in the good intentions of many planning scholars, fuzzy map would represent the complex relational fluxes that characterize urban and regional, allegedly being a more up-to-date organizing principle for planning (Olesen 2014) compared to the traditional, sometimes dull geographical maps. In other words, they should have been used to give a better spatial representation of networks, webs, flows, nodes and hubs, but often they have been used instead for distancing spatial planning from its regulatory characteristics and to hide the potential winners and losers of a specific spatial configuration (ibid.).

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As Olesen (2014) put it, there were, until recently, few empirical studies that critically analyses how planning systems, spatial logics, and strategic spatial planning practices are changing and being transformed under neo-liberalism, and what the implications of such transformations are. Following Brenner and Theodore (2002) we shall look not just as the theorization of neo-liberalism, but at how it actually unfolds in the different contexts, i.e. at the “actually existing neo-liberalism”: this can manifest in variegated forms and nuances and, again, we shall identify underlying trends within such a variety, interpreting them using the analytics described in the previous chapter. More recent literature is filling this gap for Europe and increasing empirical evidence is available on how neo-liberalization of planning is implemented on the ground and on its consequences on the megatrend of urbanization and suburbanization. The European country where neo-liberalism has been unfolding and dominating for more time is the UK. Accordingly, a significant amount of evidence on the effect on (and the contribution by) spatial planning is available in the literature (Allmendinger and Thomas 1998; Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones 2000; Prior 2005; Allmendinger and Haughton 2012); an excellent synthesis covering the period 1997–2012 is provided by Lord and Tewdwr-Jones (2014). The “failure of planning”, they argue, emerged as a hegemonic discourse in the UK since the mid-90s and the New Labour implemented three planning reforms in 5 years (2004, 2008 and 2009). The authors link this attack to the planning system with the speculative real estate bubble which, not dissimilarly from the US one, was generated as a consequence of the processes of capital circulation, devaluation and shift among the three circuits described in the previous chapter. As we have already asserted, the desperate effort to avoid capital devaluation needs circulation to be fast and so the spatial fix: “At the height of the property boom, the clamour for real estate speculation created a new national bête noir: the planning system” (ibid., p. 347), described as slow, bureaucratic, rigid, a brake to economic development. The underlying structural problem was, actually, “The urgency, keenly felt by the central state, of invigorating demand for inner city property speculation” (ibid., p. 350, emphasis added), which, as described in detail in Chap. 4, we can link to the problem of finding an outlet for the mass of financial capital looking for valorization injected in the real estate market. We also know the end of the story and can quote directly from Lord and Tewdwr-Jones (2014, p. 347, in turn citing Hatherley 2010, p. 97): “the well-documented rescue packages for the British banking sector only occurred “after” a much less well-publicized £2.8 billion bailout of the British property industry”. The change of government that took place in 2011 entailed an apparent change in the political discourse on planning that emphasized localism as the new policy turn. This discourse was institutionalized in 2011 with the abolition of regional plans and the approval of the Localism Act which allows neighbourhood plans to be produced by nonstatutory, autonomous groups. Soon after its launch, the nature of the act was unravelled by “provision for companies to be involved in this process, spawning a number of pilot Business Neighbourhood frontrunners” in several cities (Lord and Tewdwr-Jones 2014, p. 353). Importantly, the Act established, as a general rule, that neighbourhood forums cannot set lower building rates than those already set out in Local Development Plans: they can eventually

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only increase them (ibid.). The British Property Federation (the body representing the development industry in the UK), welcomed this new piece of legislation with enthusiasm.1 The authors conclude their analysis by pointing out that the different reforms of the succeeded governments and the changing emphasis on the scale for planning (national, regional, city regions or local) is mainly contingent and reflects the need to produce ever new discourses to mark a difference with previous political coalitions: at a more profound level, “the almost perpetual whirl of spatial configurations, most of which remain in vogue for less than a year or two, illustrates the truth that preoccupation with the assembled logic for whatever spatial scale is currently “de rigueur” masks the more fundamental issue—the neoliberalizing nature of the policies that these spaces ultimately serve to accommodate” (ibid., p. 357). Available evidence on the latest development of the UK planning system and the use of Neighbourhood planning collected by Lord et al. (2017) confirms these trends and highlights the process of de-professionalization of planning that accompanied the localist turn. It seems also to confirm the prediction by Peter Hall that the spaces of public engagement will be occupied “largely by well-meaning, well-educated people living in nice places—mostly rural—with time on their hands” (Hall 2011, p. 60), as only 10% of the 433 applications from local groups to take on Neighbourhood Planning were in the 20% most deprived local authorities.2 Furthermore, evidence indicates that Neighbourhood Planning process may be open to domination by élite, or at least more vocal individuals and groups within communities and, secondly, that the focus of the plans may be short sighted, focussed on single issues or at least not covering the breadth of topics that might be expected of a local plan. Interestingly, they also found that in some instances Neighbourhood Planning was used by communities to maintain the status (i.e. not allowing further development). We will get back to this later on in this subsection. In a follow-up paper, Lord and Tewdwr-Jones (2018) deepen their analysis of the effects of the 2011 Local Act, now building on a longer time period this being into force, and conclude that it represents the culmination of a long political process that has fundamentally altered the system of urban and regional planning to one where decision-making power is increasingly located at spatial poles: with central government or local, unelected, actors. What remains of British planning, conclude the authors (p. 11), are “the remnants of a professional activity that has been caught between the twin impulses of roll-back and roll-out neo-liberalism, that has seen many of its core functions either vested in a small but intensely powerful central state or residualized within local authorities, to be gradually overtaken and replaced by the “jungle laws” (Peck and Tickell 2002) under which élites thrive”. 1 Statement

by Liz Peace, chief executive of the British Property Federation: “We are delighted to have worked closely with Government on this key initiative which heralds a new approach to local planning, enabling businesses as well as residents to take the lead in shaping their neighbourhoods in partnership with local planning authorities”. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ business-and-communities-to-unite-in-driving-neighbourhood-growth (accessed April 23, 2019). 2 According to a survey undertaken by the trade Journal Planning in March 2013, reported in Geoghegan 2013 and cited by Lord et al. (2017).

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We can now leave the UK and cross the Saint George’s Channel to have a look at recent developments in Irish planning. Lennon and Wardon (2019) provide a critical analysis of the institutionalization of a streamlined “Fast Track” process in Ireland that allowed planning applications for large-scale housing developments of 100 units or more to be made directly to the Irish planning appeals board. The authors remind us that, during the 2000s, Ireland experienced one of the most pronounced property market bubbles and busts in modern economic history as house prices contracted by over 50%, while housing output fell by over 90% between 2006 and 2013. The building sector was decimated as a consequence and nationalization of development assets through the State’s “bad bank,” the National Assets Management Agency, took place. Much similarly to what had happened in UK, this provoked an attack to the planning system for being—readers at this point would easily figure it out—a barrier to housing supply. The Irish planning system resembles the British one in several aspects and provides for development proposals to be submitted to and assessed by local planning authorities. It has a distinctive feature, though: the presence of an independent planning appeals board to which third parties may appeal to counter a planning decision. In practice, anybody can, by following an established procedure, appeal the decision of a local planning authority. However, the situation changed in July 2017, when the new Planning and Development (Strategic Housing Development) Regulations allowed applications for the development of more than 100 residential units and 200 or more student bed spaces to be made directly to the planning appeals board. This was justified as part of overall housing policy—tellingly named Rebuilding Ireland—to speed up the planning application process. This new procedure was commonly dubbed Fast Track and essentially allows developed to bypass the assessment process of the development proposal usually carried out by planning authorities. The Irish association Property Industry Ireland actively lobbied in favour of the new procedures. It describes itself as a common house for architect, engineers, planning consultants, real estate agents, developers, surveyors, builders funders who share the aim to “try and come up with innovative ideas to restore the property sector to a sustainable level of output” (ibid., p. 8, emphasis added).3 In their view, the planning system was one of the main barriers for investors, hindering the realization of development projects. Ironically, interviewees perceive this as a peculiarity of the Irish system, probably ignoring the transnational nature of such a claim. The third-party appeals process was also blamed for being a source of delays in the planning procedure and a generator of uncertainty and risk for developers. The new procedure is considered by Lennon and Wardon (2019) as a clear example of the operationalization of “actually existing neo-liberalism” that has significantly de-democratized spatial planning in two ways: not only third-party appeal has been removed, but so has been the role and relevance of local development plans that have traditionally formed the bedrock of democratically formulated planning policy in Ireland.

3 Quotation

from an interview to a developer, member of the Property Industry Ireland, reported in Lennon and Wardon (2019).

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We can continue our journey through Europe westbound to land in Norway. Strand and Naess (2017) describe the developments of the Norwegian planning systems after the election of a more neoliberal government in 2013. In Norway, a country where environmental concerns had traditionally been given high priority in the political agendas, national planning guidelines had indeed achieved to contrast urban sprawl (Næss et al. 2011). The subsequent “neoliberal turn” in spatial planning after 2013 produced, according to the authors, winners and losers: environmental concerns were the losers, whereby “the winners are the polluters and those who want to build in areas where their construction activity results in the conversion of nature into building sites” (Strand and Naess 2017, p. 162, emphasis added). More specifically, they examined the objection documents from technical bodies concerned with landuse planning and found that “farmland protection and the efforts in reducing the establishment of new built-up areas outside existing urban settlement demarcations have been weakened” (ibid., p. 163, emphasis added). Their account is an enjoyable reading as the authors stigmatize the contrived answers of ministries that, going against the recommendations of their own technical bodies, justify planning choices openly contrasting with national guidelines stating that although not optimal, planned developments shall be passed to “strengthen local democracy”. We remain in the Nordic countries and cross the border with Finland: Hytönen and Ahlqvist (2019) report that there the recent reform of the national Land Use and Building Act (Government Bill 251/2016) is the culmination of a process of transformation of planning culture from long-term welfare-centred planning towards local reactive practices, whereby planning focus shifts towards the aggregation of particular private interests (Puustinen et al. 2017). Presenting empirical findings from case studies, they point out how the increasing discretionality of municipalities in land-use planning and the paralleled erosion of the power of control by the State authorities is leading to short sighted, market-reactive local planning practices to the detriment of long term, sustainability-oriented planning visions. Not surprisingly they report that this process is featuring a weakening of tools to control dispersed housing and localization of large shopping structures and, more in general, is increasing spaces of manoeuvre for market actors. The changes in the planning legislation enacted in recent years (Government Bills 114/2015 and 251/2016) have limited the possibility of central authorities to appeal municipal planning decisions, causing a growing mismatch between non-legally binding plans at regional scale and binding zoning masterplan elaborated by municipalities. This is contributing to the formation of what the authors’ term “vacuums of strategic planning”, i.e. vacant spaces exploited by a variety of market actors who act on market-driven motivation—a concept that resonates with that of soft spaces discussed above. Their conclusion is that in the next future the Finnish planning system will be characterized ever more by a weak control power by the State, a more market-oriented legal frame for municipalities and a higher discretionality of the latter. One of the main consequences the authors foreseen is that “the control of housing sprawl will potentially loosen due to the state’s limited rights to appeal” (Hytönen and Ahlqvist 2019, p. 14). We now move southbound to Denmark, where a significant amount of information is available. Olesen and Richardson (2012) examined three strategic spatial planning

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experiments at subnational scales, initiated by the Ministry of the Environment, and showed how the traditional welfare-oriented Danish planning had undergone, especially after the planning reform of 2007, a reorientation as a consequence of an emerging neoliberal agenda, towards a growth-oriented approach following a spatial logic of growth centres in the major cities and urban regions. Importantly, the authors emphasize how such processes do not occur straightforwardly, but emerge from tensions between different planning rationalities and spatial scales. More recently, Olesen and Carter (2018) describe how since 2010 traditional planning has been accused by different angles to be a “barrier for growth”, mainly as regards development of rural areas. This overall discourse has been unfolding through three main storylines: the first one emphasizes the marginalization of the Outer Denmark (i.e. rural areas far from the main urban centres) and the fact that traditional planning, as incarnated into the Planning Act of 1992, is hindering development opportunities. The second one concerns protection of coastal areas, where any development was forbidden in a buffer strip of 300 m from the shores and any development within three Km required a special permission. The third storyline depicts traditional planning as being distorting retail development, putting limits to shopping centres outside major urban centres. The authors provide a detailed account of the framing of such a discourse in mass media and in professional circles, in the period 2010–2015. Interestingly, they point out how in the Danish case the neoliberal discourse has been promoted using as argument a critic to uneven development, which is precisely one of the main outcomes of neoliberal planning (Smith 1984; Harvey 2001). Starting from the recognition of Outer Denmark as a marginal region (moreover, particularly affected by economic recession after the 2008–2009 crisis), the dominating discourse has progressively identified traditional (i.e. welfarist, zoning-based) land-use planning as one of the main problems of such marginalization. This led to several revisions of the national Planning Act, the first one passed by the liberal led coalition government in 2011, introducing a number of relaxations to ease development in the 29 most rural municipalities, as well as deregulations for new development in coastal areas and for the localisation of malls in suburban or rural areas. In 2013 the new social democrat government cancelled many of the introduced deregulations, but in 2014 the National Association of Municipalities revived the discourse by publishing a document titled “Barriers for growth in spatial planning” (Local Government Denmark 2014) and actively lobbying for the revision of the Act with other reports in 2014–2015. This pressure led the social democratic government to establish and ad hoc commission to scrutinize the Planning Act. In spring 2015, the government further relaxed regulations for housing and retail developments in the countryside as part of the policy to foster local development in rural Denmark. Not much to the surprise of readers at this point, the authors report that one of the main provisions of the Planning Act more under attack for being too “rigid” and “bureaucratic” is the special permission (landzonetilladelse) required for new developments in rural areas, originally devised as a way to limit urban sprawl and uncontrolled suburbanization. A similar rhetoric was deployed against provisions protecting the coastal zones: as a consequence, in 2015 the Ministry of the Environment conceded a special planning

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permission to 10 trial major development projects4 to be realized in coastal areas, partly reintroducing the deregulation passed by the previous government in 2011. In the case of shopping centres, the rhetoric resembled more the typical neoliberal discourse, the slogan being that the planning act was distorting retail development (again, previous regulations were mainly aiming at preventing sprawl and car dependency). In late 2015, the government changed again and one of the first actions of the new liberal government was to move the competence on spatial planning from the Ministry of Environment to the Ministry of Business and Growth. New adjustments to the Planning Act were enacted in 2017 (Richner and Olesen 2019), allowing inter alia for the realization of out-of-town retail centres in order to “promote competition” and “well-functioning markets with an efficient retail structure”. A major amendment to the previous Planning Act regarded the overall objectives of spatial planning, which now include creating good conditions for business development and growth. (ibid.). In this frame, Richner and Olesen (2019) bring forward the analysis of the neo-liberalization of Danish planning by examining the implementation of business improvement districts (BID), namely geographically delimited areas, usually located in the central business district, in which the majority of retail property owners or business owners decide to impose a mandatory extra tax. They interpret it as a “neoliberal fix to a neoliberal problem”: BIDs in fact transfer service provision from the public to the private sphere, aim at promoting economic growth, entail private management of public space and feature several policing and surveillance mechanisms. They show how the BID model is promoted as a market-based planning tool to foster progressive planning to create vibrant town centres. They report that the BID concept is considered, by Danish practitioners, as a useful framework for the establishment of public–private partnerships ultimately able to enhance support from local communities. They, however, warn against the potential negative consequences of BIDs, currently poorly acknowledged and discussed, such as privatization and commodification of public space, which casts doubts about the uncritical uptake by planners of a policy concept from elsewhere, without examining how it should be adapted to the Danish context. Moving southward allows us to leave the Nordic countries and enter the heart of continental Europe in Germany. Here, Miessner (2018) analyses the spatial planning discourse in the German parliament after the economic crises started in 2007. Similarly to the Danish scholars, he argues that German planning shifted from a compensatory Keynesian approach, predominant since the post-World War II to the mid-70s, to a neoliberal one, with two distinct rounds, the first one in the 80s and the second one after the reunification. Consistently with the Danish case, this shift was characterized by concentrating development and investments in major European Metropolitan Regions to the detriment of more marginal areas. He describes how under the new planning framework the preferred strategy for the provision

4 Consisting

of 500 holiday homes, spa facilities and the largest water park in Northern Europe; a beach park on the west coast consisting of 50 luxury apartments, spa facilities and restaurants; and similar projects (Ministry of Business and Growth 2015, as cited in Olesen and Carter 2017).

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of minimum levels of public services was the establishment of public–private partnerships and stigmatizes how “collaborative planning” approaches were easily co-opted by the neoliberal discourse. His main conclusion is that the neo-liberalization process of German spatial planning was even deepened in response to the 2008 crisis and ongoing uneven spatial development patterns were intensified. Importantly, such patterns, described as fostering metropolitan and industrialized regions on one side, and stagnating development in peripheral and rural areas on the other, “offered a national spatial fix [sensu Harvey] again after the crisis” (ibid., p. 15). Moving eastbound allows us to cover a former socialist country, Poland, the second largest in the EU in terms of area. Niedziałkowski and Beunen (2019) explore the factors that explain why Poland lost many of its tools for coordinating the policies and practices affecting spatial planning at the local level. Their paper, based on the discourses of spatial planners, traces the institutionalization of planning in Poland since the 1920s identifying dominant policy paradigms and internal and external determinants leading to the reform in the early 1990s. They argue that the planning reform was driven by attempts to adapt planning institutions to changing political and legal environments after the collapse of socialism in 1989. However, they conclude that the new institutional framework failed to introduce alternative and effective forms of local spatial planning, since after options for planning were reduced, it became difficult to revive them. They warn against the fact that a revision of longterm planning institutions might have unexpected outcomes and point out that it is difficult to restore particular instruments and approaches once they have been removed from the toolbox of the planning system. We finally reach the southern part of the EU: Tulumello (2016) provides empirical evidence on the neo-liberalization of spatial planning in Lisbon, Portugal, in the context of the austerity policies implemented in the period 2010–2015.5 The author put the case study of the semi-central neighbourhood of Mouraria in Lisbon in the context of the general trends in recent Portuguese territorial and urban governance. Such trends can be described in terms of lack of regional planning, municipal competition, public–private partnerships for urban regeneration, and the prevalence of market-driven urban policies (Fernandes and Chamusca 2014, as cited by Tulumello 2016). In Lisbon in particular, these processes led to demographic contraction, suburbanization, socioeconomic polarization, and weaknesses in urban governance. The study interprets the processes of spatial transformation observed in Lisbon as the results of structural macro trends and micro-level contextual factors - among which there is planning practice itself - and the role of bottom-up organizations. In the examined case, the transformation of Mouraria from a semi-marginal area to a new urban centrality was apparently following the traditional patterns of gentrification (restoration of the urban fabric, installation of new types of commercial and professional activities followed by increase in house prices and rents, expulsion of less affluent segments of population). However, the presence of a dense network of civic associations and densely appropriated public spaces influenced the outcomes of the 5 Since

November 26, 2015 a new government is in place, which has significantly changed the political agenda.

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regeneration strategies, avoiding the most brutal social effects of traditional gentrification, so that Malheiros et al. (2013) qualify the whole process as “marginal gentrification”. Tulumello (2016) thus maintains that neo-liberalization remains a useful concept to understanding policymaking for urban planning on the condition that it be employed around three different, and interlinked, dimensions: a coherent (global) project, a set of ambiguous governmentalities, and contradictory policymaking at the local scale (ibid.). A transnational, comprehensive study is provided by Oliveira and Hersperger (2018), who conducted an analysis of recent strategic spatial plans in 14 urban regions across Europe6 to investigate the roles of governance arrangements and funding mechanisms, as shaped in by power configurations, in plan implementation. Despite the diversity of the situations examined, their results clearly show the power of the underlying processes of spatial fix through urbanization (in the following quotation, emphasis is added): in Cardiff, “findings reveal that housing builders possess a greater capacity to influence decision-making […] than environmental NGOs or citizenled movements” (p. 627); in Edinburgh the “bargaining” exercise often implies the commitment of public entities to facilitate certain development, such as the allocation of land for housing or commercial use […], private groups often have their claims fulfilled as far as they can meet, for example, the housing needs established in the strategic plan” (p. 628). Similarly in Dublin negotiations involved “private interest groups from the construction, industry and retail […] [that] pressure the regional council and municipalities to obtain building permits for a new housing development or the implementation of a project targeting the repurposing of an outdated industrial facility” (p. 628). In Nordic and German cities the governance arrangements were found to be more balanced, but overall, the authors conclude, they “are increasingly being co-opted into the dominant neoliberal agendas” (ibid., p. 630). Private interest groups provide the funding for infrastructure provision, but request in return the approval of building permits or specific allocation of land for housing, retail or industrial activity. Moreover, according to collected evidence, the recent economic and financial crises led to a greater interference of economic interests in spatial planning often through the establishment of soft spaces and zoning mechanisms that facilitate the implementation of the outcomes of negotiations. The authors explicitly state that their findings support the concerns expressed by Olesen (2014) and other authors on how concepts of the strategic planning paradigm have been easily used to transfer neo-liberalism principles into planning practice. We can wrap up some key points from this brief review both in order to synthesize the collected empirical evidence and to critically reflect on the role of planning as a discipline and practice. The first and perhaps easiest consideration is that neoliberalization of planning, indeed, manifests itself in a variety of guises, as already argued more than 16 years ago by Brenner and Theodore (2002). These different forms depend by the specific political and institutional settings of different countries and regions, their previous history, the succession of political coalitions in powers, 6 Barcelona,

Cardiff, Copenhagen, Dublin, Edinburgh, Hamburg, Hannover, Helsinki-Uusimaa, Lyon, Milan, Oslo-Akershus, Stockholm, Stuttgart, and Vienna.

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as well as their overall production structure. Nonetheless, and this is the second, more important point, common features can be recognized: these are effectively synthesized by Bricoccoli (2017) when examining the changes in welfare policies and their spatial and urban consequences. The first one concerns the overall process of rescaling of planning competences and practices, with a general trend of devolution towards the local level. The second one regards the exponential increased of the number and types of subjects involved in the provision of services, including those traditionally in the sphere of competence of spatial planning. Justified by the claim that local planning is intrinsically more democratic, the first trend in fact reflects the need of capital fix to address more quickly and effectively the above mentioned local specificities and idiosyncrasies. As already argued, in the spatial fix process lies a limit to the abstract form that capital accumulation and fixing would ideally aim to, which is represented at its purer form by financial capital. But by the same way that production of commodities is not the end of capitalist production, but the process through which it has to pass towards the aim of accumulation for the sake of accumulation, the spatial fix and accumulation within the second circuit of capital has to go circumvent the specificities entailed in the production of the built environment, which, even more than production of commodities, is mediated by a whole set of institutions and regulations. In the case of spatial planning, such institutions entail the comprehensive action of legal devices, administrative bodies and technical cultures have been described as complex institutional technologies (Janin Rivolin 2017). In our frame, such technologies can act as enablers or hinders to accumulation, but in any case they constitute an element of mediation between the abstract process of capital valorization and its actual implementation on the ground. The more complex this element of mediation is, the more the outcome of such mediation may depart from the foreseen one. “Deregulation”, certainly has been a key feature of neo-liberalization of planning, but it is also important that the level at which mediation takes place has been shifted towards the local level, i.e. to what is usually the weakest ring of chain of public institutions—municipalities, or even neighbourhoods. It is at this level of mediation and negotiation that the process of accumulation and fix can more easily absorb, subdue and adapt local specificities. By-passing intermediate levels (e.g. Regions, Provinces) is a way to decrease the complexity of the “institutional technologies”. Significant to this regard is also the Italian case: in 2012 the government passed the “spending review” act (Law 135/2012), a policy package aimed at reducing noneffective public expenditure as a response to the crisis of the Italian public debt. Among other things, it abolished elected Provincial governments and established 10 Metropolitan City governments that are not elected by voters but by the councillors of the municipalities belonging to each metropolitan territory. Provinces in Italy had a key steering and control role over municipal land-use plans, and the remodelling of the metropolitan tier of planning was implemented according to a plain rationale of cutting public spending (Ponzini 2016). It is therefore precisely by acting at the level where specificities and peculiarities are more manifest that the process of abstraction of valorization for the sake of valorization can more effectively take place. We do not need at all to “torture” the

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empirical evidence presented above to bring out, from the different perspectives and terminology used in the presented studies (neo-liberalization, soft spaces, vacuum of strategic planning and so on) the abstract processes of spatial fix through expansion of the built environment underlying the different epiphenomena; abstract in the sense of general, but absolutely concrete in its consequences. This is not to say that we should not consider and analyse the local specificities and the national or regional peculiar characteristics that such processes present: as already argued, the abstraction and identification of the general cannot be achieved without a deep knowledge of the particular: what we shall not do, however, is to limit our analysis to the scrutiny of the specific and conclude that observed phenomena are only due to the specific geographical and institutional configuration, complex and peculiar this might seem to our eyes. This point is effectively grasped by Olsen and Carter (2017, p. 15) when they describe with details the specificities on the Danish process of neo-liberalization of planning—and the way if differed, for instance, from the UK—concluding that “perhaps the differences from other cases of planning deregulation are not so great after all”. Again, we repeat that we shall examine the local as deeply as possible, but without falling in the retreat into specificity (see Chap. 3). The second trend (increase of subjects providing services) is linked to the discourse that has underpinned the attack to planning that emerges from all the cases reported above, i.e. the attack to traditional (Keynesian) planning as a form of partial redistribution of welfare and control over the production of space, based on its alleged inefficiency and a supposed higher efficiency of non-public actors. This of course does not imply that such form of planning is exempted from critical reflection (see, e.g. Flyvbjerg 2013; Ponzini 2016). Even if we recognize that, overall, such critics are a discursive apparatus of neo-liberalism, this should not prevent us from our own critic. We shall be aware of course that the problem of co-optation of new planning paradigms by neoliberal needs has already proved to be a fact and is always present, and that critics to some aspects of planning can be relatively easy be subsumed by the neoliberal discourse as a critic to planning tout court, namely to the need of having a planning system at all. But no critic at all impairs planning’s social and political contribution and relevance as well (Ponzini 2016). There is the necessity to investigate also how “urban planning contributed to the conditions for the mortgage and financial bubble to occur by seconding the real estate market and allowing great surpluses in different manners” (Ponzini 2016, p. 1239). A final and crucial take-home point from the analyses and the evidence presented above is that in confronting with the particular and the local, the abstract processes of valorization and fixing might have different outcomes from those pursued. In UK, some Neighbourhoods plans have been used by local residents to block further development, even though the capacity to do that is intrinsically weakened by the legal provisions that building rates cannot be lowered. It might it be that opposition to proposed development project reflects in some circumstances the aspiration of a close, upper middle class community, but the point here is that we should not assume any deterministic approach to the study of the phenomenon under scrutiny. Similarly, the case of Lisbon demonstrates that under some conditions (in that case, the existence of a dense network of associations a civic actors in the urban district), the

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processes can be, if not controlled, at least steered toward more socially sustainable outcomes. Again Bricoccoli (2017) reports on the case of Milan where a privatefounded project of welfare and housing achieved good results in terms of outreach and larger inclusion of sectors of population with housing needs, stressing as a key factor of success the fact that the lead of the project was taken by the municipality, i.e. a public actor, showing how social innovation can be pursued through the actions of public institution and not only “on the highly heterogeneous and changing field of private actors” (ibid., p. 73, my translation). We will get back to this in at the end of this chapter, but beforehand it is necessary to extend our analysis outside the urban territory to include the rural domain. The researches mentioned in this subsection had all a focus on urban areas, but in some cases the interlink between urban and rural development emerged (see, e.g. the case of the Outer Denmark). As land-use planners we shall dedicate the same level of analysis and attention to the whole landscape, otherwise our capability of understanding and, even most importantly, our agency on processes of landscape transformation will be seriously impaired. In line with Moore (2016), the modern economic system shall be interpreted as systemic cycle of agroecological transformation: the emphasis on the agro- prefix is intentional: it signals how any critical reflection of planning cannot leave out a deep analysis on the processes going on in agricultural areas. To this we therefore turn in the next subsection.

5.2.1 Agricultural Intensification and Land Abandonment We shall now have a closer look at the processes of transformation that are occurring in Europe in that vast share of the landscape that traditionally receive less attention from spatial planners, i.e. agricultural land. As said, agricultural intensification and land abandonment are the two concomitant, long-lasting processes that are actions of the European rural landscape since the post-war. As we did with urbanization processes, we shall examine such trends in terms of physical inputs and capital composition, thus interpreting them jointly as manifestations of metabolic rift and spatial fix. The public FAO database provides figures on several production items at country or aggregated level with time series starting from 1961 (or later for some items) (Fig. 5.2). In the EU, average cereal yields boosted by 160% from 1.99 ton/ha in 1961 to 5.17 in 2016; cattle meat increased from 6.29 to 7.85 Mt (+25%), pigs meat from 9.44 to 21.9 (+132%), sheep meat from 8.1 to 8.9 Mt (decreasing from peaks of more than 13 Mt in the early 90s). Concomitantly, agricultural land in EU dropped from 212 Mha in 1961 to 182 Mha in 2016, meaning that in 55 years 30 Mha have been lost—an area equivalent to the surface of Italy. We can thus calculate that the annual ratio of nitrogenous fertilizer input on total agricultural area (including grasslands) in EU boosted from around 20 kg/ha in 1961 to more than 70 in the late 80s. Since then, it has slightly decreased or stagnated around 55–60 kg/ha. Data on total energy consumption are available only from 1970 to 2012, but the trend they describe is similar: a robust

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Fig. 5.2 Clockwise from upper left panel: Trend in the EU for total agricultural area (1961–2016); Nitrogenous fertilizer consumption (1961–2016, EU, France, Italy, Poland and Romania); total energy consumption (1970–2012); total pesticide consumption (1990–2016). Source FAO public database (2019)

increased from until 1990 and a very slight decrease since then (the abrupt increases in agricultural land from 1991 to 1992 is due to a change in the way statistics were calculated and affects the energy figure as well). Official data on pesticides use from FAO are available only from 1990: from then to 2016, the input per ha (all types of pesticides) has been fluctuating around 3 kg/ha, the overall trend being flat. We already provided some key figures on the metabolic effects of these processes measured with energy-based indicators. Overall, case studies from literature and synthetic indicators as those provided in Fig. 5.2 tells us that a strong, long-lasting process of intensification has been going on in European Agriculture until the end of the 80s-beginning of the 90s, when the flow of input reached its peak, to slightly decline or stagnating since then, but at very slow rates. As argued in the previous chapters, when we examine aggregate data what we see is the resultant of different, sometimes diverging drivers. For instance, the EU aggregate figures on fertilizer use hide national trends, notably the effects on agricultural production determined by the collapse of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe. This is shown in the upper right panel of Fig. 5.2, where trend for two countries representative of Western Europe (France and Italy) and Eastern Europe (Poland and Romania) are shown along the EU figure. In France, the increase was marked until the end of the 80s and then the values fluctuated annually around a value of 75 kg/ha. In Italy the pattern was similar although the peak was reached a decade earlier and the absolute level is lower, with

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more fluctuations. In Poland and Romania, the effect of the collapse of the socialist regimes and their subsidies to agriculture are evident on the level of input, showing a sudden drop in 1990: in Poland the trend is increasing since then, while in Romania has been more stagnating with signs of increase in recent years. But the beginning of the 1990s marked another important change in the policy of the European Union (then not comprising Eastern Europe): the introduction of the so-called McSharry reform (after the European Commissioner for Agriculture, Ray MacSharry). Until then the CAP had been mainly supporting production, coupling subsidies payment to output: the reform reduced the level of subsidies and decoupled income support from production. Set aside was also introduced as well as a set of compulsory minimum environmental standards for agricultural activities, and subsequently, with Agenda 2000, support to more environmental friendly farming practices was established—the so-called second pillar of the CAP. Environmental legislation was also enacted: the Habitats Directive entered into force in 1992, establishing protection measures for designated areas of high ecological value. The Water Framework Directivewas adopted in October 2000 and imposed limits to Nitrate inputs in vulnerable zones. We will examines both directives in the next chapter. One year later, Directive 2001/42/EC was adopted and transposed by Member States staring from 2004: it established that all plans and programmes with potential impacts on the environment (intended in a broad sense, including landscape and cultural heritage) be subject to a prior environmental assessment. This applied to a large number of planning documents, including virtually all spatial and land-use plans as well as Rural Development Programmes funding the agri-environmental measures under the second pillar of the CAP. In late 2013, the new CAP regulations for the period 2014–2020 were approved, containing additional compulsory environmental requirements for farmers to receive income support under the first pillar—the so-called “Greening”. All these policies have a role in affecting the processes at stake and are relevant for planning practice as well. Again, we have to acknowledge the complexity of the system and the different driving forces, as any straightforward interpretation will not help us. Accordingly, we shall examine, as well, if the long-lasting processes of capital fixation through agriculture we described in Chap. 4 are still ongoing in recent years. The public available European Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) provides detailed information on the economics of European agriculture at aggregate level for the period 2004–2016: we are interested here in general trends, so we can look at EU aggregate indicators. Figure 5.3 shows trends of some key indicators: the time series is relatively limited (12 years), but trend lines (in red) are quite telling. Figure 5.3a shows FADN indicator SE270, the total input costs of production, defined as the sum of: (i) intermediate consumption, (total specific costs like seeds and seedlings, fertilizers, crop protection products, other specific crop costs, feed for grazing stock and granivores, other specific livestock costs); (ii) farm overheads (general supply costs linked to production activity but not linked to specific lines of production); (iii) depreciation of fixed assets and (iv) external factors, i.e. the remuneration of inputs (work, land and capital) which are not the property of the holder (wages, rent and interest paid). This indicator reflects thus the total flux of input capital that the farmer

5.2 Urbanization in the EU in the Frame of Post-political Planning b) Total Physical Assets value of EU farms

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has to invest annually in the form of purchased goods for his/her production. As seen, part of this costs, namely intermediate consumptions and overheads are at the same time a flow of outputs from other production branches (e.g. fertilizers and pesticides from industry): this is the orange line in Fig. 5.3a and the trend is almost identical to the previous one. The diagram in Fig. 5.3b depicts indicator SE436, namely total assets, the sum of fixed, physical assets (land, machinery and equipment, buildings) and current assets (non-breeding livestock, circulating capital). It thus represents the total amount of fixed capital invested in production, the assets that are literally “fixed” (sensu Harvey). Both figures show a very similar, upward trend, confirming that agriculture is evermore an absorber or a fixer of capital from the first and the second circuit of production. The blue line in Fig. 5.3c shows FADN indicator SE415, namely Net Value added, defined as the remuneration to the fixed factors of production (work, land and capital), whether they be external or family factors. The green line in the same diagram is indicator SE420, i.e. farm net income defined as the remuneration to fixed factors of production of the farm and remuneration to the entrepreneurs risks (loss/profit) in the accounting year, namely the net value added minus the remuneration of inputs (work, land and capital) which are not the property of the holder: wages, rent and interest paid, plus the balance between subsidies received and taxes paid. Their trend in time is very similar and overall the long-term trend is perfectly flat. This means that since the total capital invested to obtain the value

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added/income is increasing, as shown by the figures in panel (a), the trend of the rate of profit (added value or income on capital invested) is a decrease, as theoretically postulated in Chap. 4: this is shown in Fig. 5.3d representing the ration between the net added value and the total capital invested in production (intermediate consumption plus physical assets). The trend is the same if we consider the added value or the income in the numerator and the total input costs, intermediate costs or the physical assets (or the sum of the two) in the denominator. Total labour input in agricultural production is shown in Fig. 5.4 (annual working units), featuring a downward trend, notably with a local peak in 2007, when the capital inputs instead decreased. Overall, these figures are a textbook case of the theory of the shift in the organic composition of capital towards fixed capital, and the tendency of the profit rate to fall. Importantly, the net value added shown in Fig. 5.3c and its ration on total input costs in Fig. 5.3d comprise the subsidies received by farmers, which are a transfer of public money to support their income: they are shown along with added value and income in panel (a) and it can be seen that they represent a relevant share of the total income, more than 50% on average and even more in year of crisis as 2009. Put plainly, the real rate of profit of EU farming is so narrow due to input costs that without subsidies most of the farmers in Europe will be out of business. This confirms how agriculture in the most industrialized countries (the patterns in the US are similar) acts as a huge process of capital valorization in the form of outlet for industrial production, valorization of fixed capital (land, buildings, etc.) and financial capital (loan to farmers). We have seen in the previous section that overproduction is the other outcome of the process of shift of organic composition of capital: as the rate of profit for single unit of output decreases, the only way to increase or maintain the overall profit is to increase the absolute production, regardless of whether a demand for that exists or not. The Common Agricultural Policy was devised when many regions of Europe were still facing the aftermaths of World War Two, and guaranteeing food supply was indeed a priority. But underproduction of food was a contingent problem derived by the exceptional situations created by the war. In fact, already in the 30s some countries of Europe had faced overproduction crisis and fall of prices of food commodities. Since the 60s and throughout the present day, it can be said that overproduction Fig. 5.4 Total labour input in EU farming expressed in annual working units (AWU)

Total Labour Input in EU farming 1.85

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has been a chronicle problem for EU agriculture CAP had to manage (Barnaby 1986; Buckwell 1991; Patterson 1997). As Patterson (1997, p. 136) explains, the effort to pursue different, sometimes contrasting objectives (increase productivity and farmers’ income, stabilize markets, maintain supplies and reasonable consumers’ price) led European agriculture “to virtually uncontrollable overproduction”. As a consequence, stocks and exports (strongly subsidized) increased—between 1975 and 1986 the European Economic Community passed from being a net importer of agricultural produce to being a net exporter of cereals, sugar, wine, beef, and veal (Buckwell 1991), while imports were subjected to levies. Overproduction was chronic and at time so intense as to get extensive coverage by mass media and become part of the popular culture, such as the so-called “butter mountain,” i.e. massive supply surplus of dairies products, particularly butter, in the late 70s early 80s. In 1984 national newspapers in Italy reported shocking images of tons of lemons, oranges and other citrus fruits smashed by bulldozers: only in Sicily, more than 8 Mt were destroyed in trying to stop the fall of prices (La Repubblica 1984). To limit overproduction, a system of quotas and production ceilings was established with the so-called stabilizers reform of 1988, but ceilings were high and penalties relatively low, which limited the effectiveness of the reform (Patterson 1997). The 1992 McSharry reform represented an important turning point in the CAP to this regard, as support to the maintenance of high prices was gradually reduced and replaced by support to farmers’ income, based on historical production levels calculated on area or livestock head. By introducing a direct compensation programme, the reform also shifted EU’s largest policy from non-transparent consumer subsidies to more transparent taxpayer subsidies (ibid.). Several measures were introduced, intended to limit supply surpluses: as said, support was partially decoupled from production and set aside schemes were introduced with the double aim of reducing the environmental pressure of agriculture and withdraw land from production. This had a positive effect in stopping the increase of production input in western European countries, as shown in Fig. 5.2. All subsequent reforms further decoupled support from production: The Agenda 2000 reforms, agreed in March 1999, further cut support prices for cereals and beef, partially compensating this by increases in area and headage payments. The Fischler reform of 2003, fully implemented starting from 2005, introduced the Single Payment Scheme that (almost) fully decoupled any income support from production, linking it, instead, to the land and the maintenance of good agricultural and environmental conditions. Under this scheme, farmers can grow whatever they want on their land, or even decide not to produce at all. The so-called CAP Health Check7 pursued further decoupling for all payments as from 2012, except for a few sectors (suckler cows, sheep and goat and cotton). The new CAP for the period 2015–2020 continued along these lines, further enhancing the

7 Council

Regulation (EC) No. 73/2009 of 19 January 2009 establishing common rules for direct support schemes for farmers under the common agricultural policy and establishing certain support schemes for farmers, amending Regulations (EC) No. 1290/2005, (EC) No. 247/2006, (EC) No. 378/2007 and repealing Regulation (EC) No. 1782/2003.

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role of farmers as custodians of the landscape and the environment by introducing environmental measures as requirements to get up to 30% of direct payments. Notwithstanding this, overproduction has continued to be a recurrent phenomenon in EU agriculture even after 1992. To give some examples, the butter mountain reappeared periodically in the EU and “wine lake” has been the name attributed to overproduction of wine in the period 2005–2007, mainly from French regions. In 2014, citrus overproduction in Sicily reached 50,000 t and local politics asked for special purchases by the regional government, a measure already adopted in 2009 and in previous years. Farmers’ protests associated with overproduction have also periodically erupted in the EU. In 1997 the then main airport of Milan was literally sieged for two weeks by a massive picket of farmers of the dairy sector protesting against the system of milk quota, which had been systematically exceeded for years causing the request by the European Commission to pay penalties (over 600 million e of 1997). Similar protests from the milk sector, even though not so massive, have occurred repeatedly since then. To remain in Italy, the public opinion was again shocked in early 2019 when shepherds in Sardinia organized a massive protest pouring thousands of milk on highways and major road to protest the extremely low process their product is paid, dropped to 0.80–0.60 e/L in only one year, well below their production cost. The deep cause of the protest is, again, overproduction: the main outlet of Sardinian milk is not in Sardinia, but goes into the production of Protected Designation of Origin Pecorino Romano cheese, managed by a consortium of a relatively low number of cheese factories in Lazio region—regulated by a quota. In 2018 the consortium exceeded the quota by producing 34,000 t instead of 28,000: the penalties were in fact very low, about 0.16 e/kg of exceeding product . But high production soon caused the cheese price to drop from e7.5 to 5.5 per Kg so that, in turn, the association of cheese producers lowered the price paid for milk to shepherds, representing in the supply chain the first and weakest ring. The final price of a product is set by the sector of the supply chain that concentrates the highest amount of capital, i.e. the retailer, which determines it on the basis of the selling price of the processor, the intermediate category that transforms the raw material and delivers to the marketers (Girardi 2019) Conversely, producers, the first group of the chain, are many and dispersed with little if any negotiation power. The problems of the agricultural sector in Europe are testified at the end of 2019 by farmers’ protest spreading in the Netherlands, in response to a government’s proposal of curbing Nitrogen emissions from the highly intensive livestock sector, and also in France, Germany and Ireland (Byrne, 2019). In all cases, farmers protest because their economic margins are ever more narrow and the continuation of their activity is at risk. We can now turn to explore the territorial consequences of the phenomena we have described so far. Urbanization has of course played a role in eroding European agricultural area, but as shown previously it accounted for at most 3 Mha out of 30 million lost. Obviously, the environmental impact of this is extremely relevant as sealed soil loses all it ecosystem functions and the total area affected by urbanization should be considered much larger than the area strictly sealed, since effects of fragmentation and erosion of habitats should also be considered (Nabielek et al.

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2016). What is important to acknowledge here, however, is that much of the land lost to agriculture is the result of abandoned of “marginal” areas, often consisting of extensive, high-value agricultural landscapes. In other words, most of abandoned, or prone to abandonment, agricultural area is located in mountain regions or in other areas where geographic and topographic conditions are too unfavourable for the current agricultural system. As seen, the absorption of output from other circuits of production and the fixation of capital in the form of assets and the subsequent increase in input costs for farmers have been so marked, and consequently the profit rate so narrow, that only high absolute amount of production, plus subsidies, can keep holdings in business. Consequently, many small farms have been “expelled from the market” as economists would say: in only 8 years, from 2005 to 2013, the number of holdings in the EU28 dropped from 14.66 million to 10.84 million (−26%!) and average farm size increased from 13.1 to 17.0 ha/holdings. Such processes of land consolidation often entail the suppression of natural and seminatural features in farmland, previously used to partition properties, such as hedges or treelines. More in general, agricultural intensification is associated to landscape simplification in the form of levelling and remove of all elements that can constitute a hinder to mechanization, but also in the reduction of the varieties of the crops planted, including not only the main crops but also auxiliary ones like cover crops and catch crops.8 In large parts of Europe, intensification entailed the shift from polycultural farming systems featuring a mix of arable, grasslands and permanent crops, to monocultures. To make an example, the Po Plane—now one of the more intensive arable districts in the EU with prevalence of monoculture—in the middle twentieth century was still a polycultural landscape with association of cereals and vineyards and, often, other orchards. The effects of land abandonment on landscape structure and functions in Europe are known and well-documented (see, e.g. González Díaz et al. 2019 for a recent study). In mountain areas, the typical pattern is grassland reductions, shrub expansion and reforestation, in some cases accompanied by the expansion of alien tree species (e.g. locust trees or eucalyptus) and decrease of other non-forest seminatural land covers (heathlands). Traditional silvo-pastoral practices such as transhumance are also under pressure and with them, the whole socioecological systems comprising traditional practices, buildings, artefacts, products (e.g. cheeses). Local knowledge and practical know-how associated with these practices are also in danger. Perhaps less known by planners is the fact that such changes bring about negative ecological consequences as well: contrary to what a lay understanding may suggest, the new landscapes are less biodiverse than the previous ones. Forest densifications and the reduction of forest clearings decrease the suitability for a wide range of animal and ecological succession leads to the prevalence of a more limited number of species. As the ecological theory has now documented, a low level of disturbance by humans and livestock corresponds to the highest level of biodiversity and the overall highest 8A

catch crop is a rapidly growing plant that can be intercropped between rows of the main crop; a cover crop is a crop grown to prevent soil erosion by covering the soil with living vegetation and roots that hold on to the soil.

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provision of ecosystem services. For instance, risk of fire ignition is augmented by forest densification, as well as the proliferation of certain fungi and diseases; grassland decrease is detrimental for carbon sequestration, as abandoned subalpine grasslands in some regions (e.g. Pyrenees) have less soil organic carbon than grazed ones. What emerges by available evidence is that integrated strategies are needed for halting land abandonment and in doing so preserving the multiple ecosystem services delivered by extensive agriculture. Importantly for our argument, recent literature addressing these themes and more in general agricultural policies is acknowledging two key aspects—we can quote directly from González Díaz et al. (2019, emphasis added): (i) “Understanding both common and singular drivers behind the changes in the landscapes is crucial to design suitable policies at several spatial scales”; and (ii) the future of these landscapes still depends on the effectiveness of agro-environmental policies included in present and future CAP reforms. However, these policies have also to attend to lower scale drivers which are also key for the future of each area”. Among these local drivers, the authors identify changes in local governance and management of common land, two aspects directly pertaining to spatial planning.

5.3 Wrap Up and Ways Forward—Bringing the Politics in Again In this chapter, we took a closer look at the main drivers of landscape transformation occurring in Europe, interpreting relentless urbanization, agricultural intensification and land abandonment as the interlinked manifestations of a joint processes of socioecological fix (sensu Ekers and Prudham, 2017). In this frame we have examined more closely the processes on neo-liberalization of spatial planning as described by recent literature, bringing out, from the diversity of the circumstances and guises in which such processes appear at first sight, the general push to quantitative expansion of the built environment as the compelling necessity for capital valorization—or at least as the attempt to avoid capital devaluation through the spatial fix. This literature provides us significant critical theoretic reflection and valuable empirical evidence, the only limit being that it is intrinsically focused on the urban environment. We have therefore expanded our analysis to the rural areas, bringing in mind that the urban–rural distinction is purely used for the sake of the exposition, but that the territory has to be conceptualized in its entirety for our analytics to hold explanatory power. Statistical data available for relatively long time series on agricultural production trends and capital composition in the EU proved an excellent support to our theoretical frame, or—put the other way around—thanks to it we have been able to fully understand and interpret the observed figures and the processes going on in agricultural areas. It is now time to move a step forward and the same examined literature suggest us in which direction we shall advance. What clearly emerges is a process of de-politicization of planning, (also referred to as post-political planning), i.e. an

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approach where conflicts are masked out and pursued developments are portrayed as win-win solutions by excluding or simply ignoring the voices of those who do not win (Allmendinger and Haughton 2012; Olesen 2014; Lord and Tewdwr-Jones 2018). However, the literature also showed that this analysis should be complemented by an analysis of the clashes and negotiations between the policies stemming from the governmentalities of neo-liberalism and the spaces in which they are deployed (Tulumello 2016). We have interpreted this as an aspect of the more general contrast between the aspiration to abstraction of capital accumulation for the sake of accumulation and the asperities and uncertainties posed by local peculiarities when such process occurs through the production of space or, in Harvey’s terms, within the second circuit of capital. The point made by Tulumello (2016, p. 17) in this sense is important in the context of this book: “local aspirations and wishes can take advantage of the ambiguity and contradictions of neoliberal governmentalities and policymaking”: spaces of local empowerment will have in most circumstances to emerge despite (or better said, openly against) the neoliberal discourse and the processes of accumulation and spatial fix, but under certain conditions may open up within them (ibid.). We extend this argument to ecological rationality: spaces of ecologically oriented planning can be conquered despite and within the neoliberal discourse and its intrinsically antiecological rationality. As Patel (2013, p. 3) pointed out concerning agriculture: “The authors of the Green Revolution could not make history as they pleased, but did so against the often collectively organized resistance of the poor, using the tools of the state against a rural majority”. Already Marx had emphasized that the price of labour, the workers’ wages, were not determined primarily by the offer–demand dynamic, as classical economists argued, but by the ability of workers, through organization and struggles, to contrast the natural tendency of capital to low down wages at the minimal subsistence level. Accordingly, the establishment of industrial capitalism had to fight to supplant the artisanal mode of production and its self-limiting mechanisms (negative feedbacks in ecological terms) dating back to Middle ages guilds: land enclosures were imposed with force and violence and so on. Again, any monocausal interpretation of the driving forces acting in our framework would be against the conceptual theorization underlying it, by the same fashion that any monocausal interpretation of Marxian laws would have been, and actually was, stigmatized by Marx and Engels. As illustrated with details by the Atlas of Environmental Justice (https://ejatlas.org/), in Hafner (2018) and in Martinez-Alier et al. (2016), just to mention a few, recent publications, grass-root organization, NGO, but also, though less often than in the past, traditional politics are themselves a driver of change, that can oppose, pander to or openly support the processes we have described in this chapter. As Martinez-Alier et al. (2016) argue, “one of the causes of the increasing number of ecological distribution conflicts around the world is the changing metabolism of the economy in terms of growing flows of energy and materials. […] Therefore, there are many local complaints […] And not only complaints; there are also many successful examples of stopping projects and developing alternatives, testifying to the existence of a rural and urban global movement for environmental justice.”

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We—practitioners and scholars—have to bring the political back in the planning process. Arguably, a necessary condition for this is a deep knowledge of the policies that are in place and the potential spaces of manoeuvre they create. Put more plainly, we need to master the policies that are relevant for spatial planning to counter post-political planning. Furthermore, if bringing back together with the urban and the rural domains into a unified approach is a key condition towards ecologically rational planning as postulated here, we need to dedicate some effort to the potential integration between agricultural policies and spatial planning. We pursue both aims in the next chapter.

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Chapter 6

Policies and Regulatory Frames in the EU and the Needed Link with Spatial Planning

Abstract The driving forces of territorial transformation examined in the previous chapters produce effects at the local level but what is observed empirically is the resultant of the mediation realized by the political institutions, the system of regulations in place and the complex institutional technologies through which planning systems are articulated. Territorial policies—i.e. policies with an explicit or implicit spatial component that are able to influence patterns of landscape transformation either directly or indirectly—are a pivotal element of this complex. In this chapter, the focus will be on the most relevant European Policies in terms of territorial transformations. In particular, the following policies will be addressed: the Habitat Directive, the Water Framework Directive, The European Biodiversity Strategy (and its focus on ecosystem service and Green Infrastructure) and the Common Agricultural Policies. For each of them, the link (implicit, explicit, or in need to be fully developed and exploited) with spatial planning is addressed and discussed. The role of the “environmental safeguard directives” and in particular Strategic Environmental Assessment as a cross-cutting policy tool to foster ecological rationality is also discussed. A substantial and deep integration between planning policies and agricultural policies is put forward as a pressing need in order to advance towards ecological rationality in spatial planning. Keywords Territorial policies · Habitat directive · Water framework directive · Strategic environmental assessment · Biodiversity strategy · Ecosystem services · MAES · Green infrastructure · Common agricultural policy · Rural development policy

6.1 The EU Policy Frame and Spatial Planning Policies are the outcomes of competing interests and values as formalized in the government arena and are in turn a driver acting on the landscape. As such, they can vary in space and time and are also less generalizable that the drivers we have examined so far: they are determined by the level of social development of different sectors of society and the socio-historical patterns of regions and nations. Spatial planning may be considered itself a policy with a direct influence on the territory, embedded in a © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 C. Rega, Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning, Cities and Nature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33027-9_6

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complex network of national and supranational policies, legislations, regulations, as well as public authorities acting at different scales linked to each other by different relations, from formal, strictly hierarchical ones to informal ones. Examining all possible local policies in European Countries is clearly beyond the scope of this book, nevertheless in member states of the EU, most of the policies that produce effects on landscapes and that are relevant for planning are derived by high-level policies designed by the European Commission and the Parliament, which can take the form of directives, funding schemes, legally binding norms and less binding communications or documents. This constitutes the element of the framework proposed in Chap. 4 on which we elaborate here. As argued, policies are never pregiven or fully determined but are a condensation of relationships of forces (Poulantzas 2013). Even when the trends of capital accumulation and spatial fix are fully developing, the State and its public policies have an important role in mediating the contradictions arising from such trends (Jessop 1990). We cited world-leading ecological economist Martinez-Alier and colleagues, mentioning that such contradictions derive from the processes of capital accumulation and their consequences on the metabolic rift that generate conflicts that in turn can be effective in contrasting them. Capital fixation and accumulation are powerful drivers, but not all-powerful: again, a dialectical process is at work and we have to dig into it. In this frame, spatial planning is not, therefore “a homeostatic phenomenon” but it is “on the contrary an ever-changing historical process that is continually being shaped and reshaped by a broad system of […] tensions” (Dear and Scott 1981, p. 13 as cited by Miessner 2018). Therefore, in policy formulation we will find traces of the tensions from which they generated and, within the space of opportunity created by such tensions, we, as planners, have the chance to intervene and propose ecologically oriented planning choices—to bring the political back into planning. To do this, we must gain a full understanding of the relevant policies and how they relate to spatial planning. As recurrently mentioned in the literature, the European Union has, legally speaking, no direct competence on land-use planning, which remains a competence of member states. In some countries with a federal or semi-federal State structure (e.g. Germany, Italy, Spain), this competence has been devolved from the central to the regional governments, so that different spatial planning frameworks may coexist in a single country to make things even more complex. It is likewise acknowledged that despite the lack of a clear legal frame, the European level does affect land-use change and spatial planning in a number of ways, both directly and indirectly (e.g. Dühr et al. 2007; Evers and Tennekes 2016). Indirectly, European policies can act on the main drivers determining land-use trajectories, such as GDP changes, trade fluxes, demand for residential, industrial or commercial use, demand of food, biofuel or wood products. All of these drivers can influence contrasting demands for local land uses with consequences on planning choices (EEA 2016). More directly, the EU influence is exerted through four main types of policies (EEA 2016; Evers and Tennekes 2016), as schematized in Fig. 6.1.

Appropriate Assessment of projects, plans and programmes (Direcve 92/43/EC)

Direct Payment to economic actors (e.g. Common Agricultural Policy financing maintenance of landscape elements or requiring crop diversificaon)

EU funds financing projects (e.g. Cohesion Policy financing urban development projects)

Funding

Territorial Impact Assessment of EU Policies

EU policy objectives on land take/degradation (e.g. Soil Themac Strategy Strategy, Territorial Agenda)

Documents linked to EU sectoral policies (e.g. Environment: EU Biodiversity Strategy)

Strategic documents and policy guidelines

Fig. 6.1 Different types of EU policies influencing spatial planning at local level, as mediated by national regulatory framworks

Local Spaal Planning

National frameworks : instuonal structure, key naonal policies, planning tradions, naonal legislaon on spaal planning, naonal transposion of EU Direcves, degree of centralizaon/decentralizaon of governments

EU targets with implications for land: renewable energy policies, biofuels etc.

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of plans and programmes (Direcve 2001/42/CE)

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of projects (Direcve (2014/52/EU)

Area-based designations: Delineaon of certain areas for specific purposes (e.g. Natura 2000 sites)

Planning obligations: e.g. operaonal programmes (cohesion policy); River basin management plans (Water Framework Direcve)

Legislative requirements (Procedural)

vv

Legislative requirements (substantive)

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Firstly, there are legislative requirements with a spatially explicit component that demands action by member states (and lower tiers of governments). xamples include the designation of specific areas for biodiversity preservation, the delineation of nitrate vulnerable zones where measures shall be taken to avoid contamination, or the spatial constraints derived from the regulations on the Control of Major Accident Hazards (e.g. definition of buffer zones). Secondly, the approval of major projects and of the majority of spatial plans is now subjected to procedural requirements ensuing from the so-called “environmental safeguards” directives, namely, the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive (85/337/EEC and following amendments), the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive (2001/42/EC) and the Appropriate Assessment established under art. 6 of the Habitat Directive for plans that can impact sites of the Natura 2000 network. Thirdly, EU policies can trigger spatial changes at local level by putting on the table something that higher planning instruments usually cannot mobilize: money. The Cohesion Policy financing investments and projects across a wide range of sectors, encompassing environment, energy, agriculture, transport and urban development, is one of the most notable examples. Finally, the EU produces a set of strategic documents and policy guidelines that can influence spatial planning although they are not translated into proper legislative requirements. Examples of this are the Territorial Agenda of the European Union 2020 (EU Ministers Responsible for Spatial Planning and Territorial Development 2011) or the EU Biodiversity Strategy towards 2020 (EC 2011). In December 2019, at the time of closing this book, the new European Green Deal was launched as one of the first act of the new President of the Commission (EC, 2019). This is a strategic policy document where many of the ecological trends described in this book are clearly identified and committments to tacle them are outlined. The new Green Deal will certainly shape forthcoming EU policies and will impact all level of governance.The effects of such policies on local/regional land-use patterns and planning decisions can be unintentional, unforeseen, hidden or delayed (Fischer et al. 2015) which, again, calls for a holistic and system-thinking analytical approach when examining them. The way through which EU policies impact national ones and, in turn, spatial planning has received significant attention from the planning literature under the label of “Europeanization” of spatial planning (see, e.g. Radaelli 2003; Dühr et al. 2007; Faludi 2014; Cotella and Janin Rivolin 2015; Luukkonen 2017; Elorrieta 2018). Yet, as Evers and Tennekes (2016, pp. 1748–1749) put it “[f]or decades, academics have pondered the meaning and implications of Europeanization for planning as well as the Europeanization of planning, but so far this has not resonated far beyond the ivory tower”. They describe the situation in the Netherlands, reporting that, “[…] neither professional trade journals nor planning curricula pay much attention to the EU” (ibid.). If this is the case with the Netherlands, one of the member states with the strongest tradition in spatial planning and in integration of European legislation into the domestic framework, the situation must not be much better in other countries. Often, studies in this domain have referred to the concept of multilevel governance to describe the complex patterns through which high-level policies exert

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influence on local territories through the mediation of national legal, social and cultural frameworks. Other strands of the literature on “Europeanization” have examined the possible emergence of EU-level Spatial Planning along with the role played by the concept of territorial cohesion, and the institutionalization of transnational learning and cooperation in Europe (Evers and Tennekes 2016). The way in which such policies affect the local level will always be mediated to some extent by the national (and sometimes regional) contexts (EEA 2016) (Fig. 6.1): the specific forms that such mediations can assume are not the focus of this chapter. Rather, we deem it relevant to explore whether, and to what extent, these policies can enable, inform, legitimize and steer ecologically rational planning choices at lower territorial levels despite the expectable differences that will occur in such a diverse milieu as the EU. Important in this regard is that these policies and documents have different statuses: for example, directives have to be formally transposed by member states in their legislation and produce legally binding requirement; the Biodiversity Strategy (EC 2011c), though not a formal directive, was endorsed by the European Parliament and the Council, while the Territorial Agenda is an informal ministerial document. The differences in status will influence the approach to implementation (EEA 2016) and their relevance for spatial planning. Results from empirical studies confirm that European policies do affect the work of local planning practitioners in member states on a daily basis, even if this influence is usually hidden from view (Evers and Tennekes 2016). In a study covering a Dutch province, Fleurke and Willemse (2007) found that half of the decisions at the local level involved some EU policy; Böhme and Waterhout (2008) cite a report of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities mentioning a figure of 90% for examined land-use plans. From the perspective of land-use planners, this array of requirements might be seen as a tangled system of constraints that narrows down the spectrum of planning choices locally. As a consequence, planners may tend (or be pushed by local politics) to circumvent them rather than fully implement them. Or, as discussed in Chap. 1, in this situation civil servants and policy makers may be led to act predominantly under a legal rationality mindset and devote efforts to design “EU-proof plans” rather than “ecological rationality-proof” ones. Of course, a radically different attitude is as much possible, and it is the focus of this chapter. Framing ecological approaches of local planning choices into higher level policies would not only facilitate the passing of the compliance tests but, maybe more importantly, would also add legitimacy and credibility to them, providing proponents with stronger arguments in their favour and help contrasting opposition and litigation. However, the above-mentioned intricacy at the EU-level entails that the coherence of the various components depicted in Fig. 6.1 does not automatically ensue from the policies themselves. EU objectives or measures can conflict or, in any case, be susceptible to misalignment; in fact, non-coordination of EU policies is another recurrent topic in the literature on Europeanization (Evers and Tennekes 2016), and has also been addressed by EU documents as the White Paper on Governance (EC, 2001) and the Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion (EC, 2008). Despite recurrent calls for “breaking silos” in EU

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policymaking, policies and measures’ design are still largely dominated by a sectoral approach of the particular policy sector from which they originated (Dühr et al. 2010; Evers and Tennekes 2016). In fact, sectoral policymaking tends to pay little attention to the spatial impacts of its policies and how they are linked to those of other sector policies (Dühr et al. 2007). This is not surprising given that identifying and assessing such territorial impacts require specific knowledge and competences, which can be difficult to find in all departments responsible for the different policies. In response to that, the Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) has been proposed as an assessment tool to identify and evaluate the territorial impacts of EU policies. TIA was launched in the mid to late 1990s with the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) (Fischer et al. 2015). The development of TIA methodologies was one of the research themes of the European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) and the importance of assuring a territorial coherence of European Policies was reaffirmed by the updated Territorial Agenda of the European Union document “TA2020” (EU Ministers responsible for Spatial Planning and Territorial Development 2011). However, the impact of TIA in improving integration and coherence of sectorial policies does not seem to have been highly significant so far (Stead and Meijers 2009; Fischer et al. 2015; Evers and Tennekes 2016). Now, the fact that different policy objectives entailing contrasting land-use choices have to be dealt with by planners locally is not something new in itself. The territory is the space where sectorial objectives converge and must find a synthesis—this is indeed the job of spatial planners. However, the number of high-level policies that may be relevant at the local level—hence the potential conflict between them—has increased so much over the years that the degree of complexity planners have to face is unprecedented. Frictions between policies can arise when (1) policy objectives are contradictory in terms of content, (2) there is spatial overlap exacerbating the discrepancy of objectives and (3) policies established at a higher level undermine those at the lower level (or vice versa) (Evers and Tennekes 2016). For example, a review by the European Environmental Agency on the effect of EU policies on local land-use change based on two case studies in Poland and Andalucía found that Cohesion Policy investments on roads fostered urban sprawl, in contrast with other EU and national objectives on land use (EEA 2016). These findings are consistent with previous studies on the same topic carried out by the same EEA (2006) and the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC 2013). The latter carried out an ex ante assessment of the potential impacts of 2014–2020 Cohesion Policy spending on land use, ecosystem services and land taking, considering inter alia the effects on local attractiveness and economic growth. A reference scenario without Cohesion Policy was compared with a scenario that included it and results indicated that expenditure would slightly increase urbanization and land take. The study pointed out the existence of trade-offs between physical capital investment, development, land-use changes and their environmental impacts. Fischer et al. (2015) report instances of European directives that had unintentional impacts, such as the development of onshore wind farms following the designation of Natura 2000 sites (Commission of the European Communities 2010a) or the protest of French and Irish

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farmers against the limitation posed on agriculture by the designation of Natura 2000 areas (Alphandéry and Fortier 2001; Bryan 2012). Therefore, we cannot expect that the complex set of legislation, regulations and less binding documents that we label here “EU policies” for simplicity, can be straightforwardly taken as a policy frame for ecologically rational spatial planning. Again, this “retreat into simplicity”, although tempting, would contradict the epistemological premises of ecological rationality, namely the recognition of complexity. Nor should we be surprised or discouraged by this: “the EU” is not a monolithic entity pursuing a single aim, but a complex structure where different interests and stances interact. Again, we shall adopt a dialectical approach here: the EU policies are the resultant of different driving forces, it is up to us—spatial planners—to critically examine them, deconstruct them and then reconstruct from them a coherent framework that can steer and underpin ecological rationality in spatial planning. This is what is entailed by bringing back the political into planning, as advocated in the previous chapter. For many observers, the European environmental legislation is the most advanced in the world and is an example of a great success story of the European Union. It is just as certain that such a production of environmental legislation came as a consequence of an unprecedented decline of the condition of European environment, triggered by the dramatic industrial development and the “green” revolution in agriculture that Europe faced after World War II, and, to some extent, by some European policies themselves like the CAP. In the next subsections, we examine the policies that we identified as being more relevant for their direct or indirect, explicit or implicit effects on the territory and which have the potential to inform ecologically rational planning choices. We start with the older directives that we have classified in Fig. 6.1 as legislative requirements implying substantial action by planning bodies in delineating areas for conservation and in elaborating specific plans, i.e. the “Nature” directives (Birds and Habitat Directives dating back, respectively, to 1979 and 1992) and the Water Framework Directive. This will also help us sketch a brief history of the evolution of environmental policies in the EU. We continue with the European Biodiversity Strategy towards 2020, the cornerstone of EU commitment to preserve and enhance biodiversity, and examine it as a frame for integration of the now popular concept of Ecosystem Services (ES) into spatial planning, and the importance of the Green Infrastructure approach to this regard. We have advocated in the previous chapters that a key component of ecological rationality in planning is the reconciliation of the urban and rural domain, hence the necessity of analysing the processes of transformation occurring in agricultural land and the importance of examining them together with urban phenomena holistically. Consequently, we conclude our analysis with the Common Agricultural Policy, exploring possible ways of integration with spatial planning. During the argument, we will also consider, in a cross-cutting way, the role of the safeguard directives (second block from the left in Fig. 6.1), in particular the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA).

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6.2 The Habitat Directive and the Water Framework Directive 6.2.1 The Habitat Directive Already in 1979, the then European Economic Community issued directives 79/409/EEC, known as the “Birds Directive”, which first sought to protect, manage and regulate all bird species living in the wild and established for member states the obligation to create protection zones, maintain habitats in a good conservation status and restore degraded ones. The Birds Directive already had an implicit link with planning in that it provided the obligation for member states to classify “the most suitable territories in number and size as special protection areas for the conservation of [birds] species” (ECC 1979, art. 4). However, no further provisions on how to integrate the requirements of the directive with planning frameworks were provided. Meanwhile, in 1992, the renamed European Community issued Directive 92/43/EEC, known as the “Habitats” Directive; together with the previous one, these directives form the basis of the EU policy for nature and biodiversity conservation. They establish an EU-wide network of nature protection areas (Including those designated following the Birds Directive) known as Natura 2000. Overall, the directive lists 231 habitats (Annex I) and 1,875 species (Annexes II, IV, V) of conservation interest. The idea of a network of areas, of course, already entailed a strong, explicit spatial component. Article 10 stated that member states shall endeavour to encourage the management of features of the landscape which are of major importance for wild fauna and flora where they consider it necessary, in their land-use planning and development policies and, in particular, with a view to improving the ecological coherence of the Natura 2000 network. So, the explicit link with land-use planning remains somewhat vague and, above all, limited to a specific—though not negligible—aspect, i.e. the management of landscape features. However, the Habitat Directive would have had another impact on land-use planning mainly through the provision of art. 6. This required that any plan or project likely to have a significant effect on a Natura 2000 site, either individually or in combination with other plans or projects, shall be subject to an appropriate assessment of its implications on the site’s conservation objectives. In the light of the assessment, the competent national authorities shall agree to the plan or project only after having ascertained that it will not adversely affect the integrity of the site concerned and, if appropriate, after having obtained the opinion of the general public. Spatial plans were included among those potentially having an impact on sites and thus fell in the ambit of application of the directive. This was the first time in Europe that a legally binding norm established that spatial plans’ approval is subjected to a specific assessment on their potential environmental consequences, though limited to their impacts on a limited number of specific sites. No doubt that at that time this represented a much needed policy boost for the preservation of the European environment, and, more generally, an important advancement in the

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legislation. Article 11 of the Habitats Directive requires member states to undertake surveillance of the conservation status of the natural habitats and species listed in the directive. This provision does not concern only Natura 2000 areas, but applies to the whole EU territory. Article 17 requires member states to report every six years about the progress made with the implementation of conservation measures and the main results of monitoring activities pursuant Article 11. In particular, the report shall provide information on the conservation status of habitats and species in absolute terms and in comparison with previous periods. These requirements have thus generated a database of relevant, spatially explicit information that can be used by planners (see, e.g. Masante et al. 2015 for an application at the EU scale).

6.2.2 The Water Framework Directive Like land, water is an essential and finite resource; a key element of the EU environmental legislation is the Water Framework Directive (WFD) (EC 2000), which defines a framework for the protection of inland surface, transitional, coastal and ground waters, as well as to preserve and improve the condition of aquatic ecosystems. The WFD also aims at protecting water resources in the long term by fostering sustainable water use and the reduction of groundwater pollution. The key legislative requirement of this directive is the preparation of river basin management plans by competent authorities defined by member states. By establishing a planning mechanisms at river basin scale, the directive introduces an ecologically relevant spatial scale, which represents a great advancement in insinuating ecological rationality in planning. Given the relevance of water management for sustainable development, the WFD was in fact greeted as “the most groundbreaking pieces of EU environmental legislation” (Carter 2007, p. 335) and World Wildlife Fund (2001) claimed that it had the potential to be the EU’s first sustainable development directive. Furthermore, water management is addressed by the directive with an integrated and holistic approach (Frederiksen et al. 2008) which again is in line with the principles of ecological rationality discussed in Chap. 1. The linkages between spatial planning and water management have been acknowledged in literature (Frederiksen et al. 2008; Carter 2007) and can be summarized as follow (Carter 2007): (i) increasing/decreasing of diffuse pollution (urban and agricultural); (ii) affecting the demand for water supply and wastewater treatment from industrial and residential areas; (iii) limiting or exacerbating flood risk; (iv) increasing/decreasing groundwater recharge rates, mainly through limiting/incrementing soil sealing; (v) protecting or harming aquatic habitats and biodiversity. As recent disasters in Europe have dramatically highlighted, planning has a particularly critical role to regulate urban developments in areas at risk of flooding. Carter (2007) describes three planning mechanisms that can be used to implement the link between spatial planning and sustainable water management: plan preparation, development control and planning approaches/techniques. The first one refers to the fact that planning choices can have direct consequences on water:

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obvious examples are the delineation of buffer zones around water bodies where polluting activities are forbidden, the limitation of developments in flood-prone areas and the improvement of the whole water retention capacity of the territory through provisions for permeable surface and adequate urban design. Development control concerns the process of granting/refusing permissions for new development proposals or modifications of land uses. This can include specific planning obligations for developers, such as water-efficient appliances, rainwater collection devices, greywater recycling systems or use of permeable surface whenever possible (e.g. in parking lots). Stakeholder participation may be an effective mean to introduce sustainable water management in local plans. Of particular interest in this regard can be the involvement of water companies which can provide useful information in terms of needs and possible solutions for sustainable water management (ibid.). Art. 5 of the directive states that for each river basin district, a detailed analysis shall be carried out covering the characteristics of the river basin district, review of the environmental impact of human activity and an economic analysis of water use. This can be an excellent resource for planners in supporting baseline data collection and informing land-use choices locally. Art. 11 requires that the river basin plans establish a “programme of measures”, taking into account of the results of the abovementioned analyses; this shall contain a set of basic measures covering the following aspects: • Promote efficient and sustainable water use. • Safeguard water quality in order to reduce the level of purification treatment required for the production of drinking water. • Control of point source discharges liable to cause pollution. • Control of diffuse pollution sources. • Prohibit direct discharges of pollutants into groundwater. • Eliminate pollution of surface waters. • Prevent and/or reduce the impact of accidental pollution incidents, e.g. as a result of floods. Through the three mechanisms outlined above, spatial planning not only can contribute to the successful implementation of these “basic measures” and consequently encourage sustainable water management (Carter 2007), but can also envisage imaginative solutions to local problems pertaining to the link between water and land use that may have been otherwise overlooked. A simple but very strong argument for planners and policymakers here is that spatial planning is “a low-cost option for safeguarding and enhancing the water environment, particularly in comparison to the provision of infrastructure such as water treatment plants or structural flood defences” (ibid., p. 339). Examples of good practices on how spatial planning made operational the link with water management and delivered the directive’s objective were identified by the European Network of Municipalities and Rivers (ENMaR), an INTERREG IIIC project (2005–2007) and are reported in Carter (2007). The reader can get inspiration from them and also from the key lessons learnt that include the utility and necessity of sound and “hard”, GIS-based techniques and methods for flood risk assessment

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(which resonates with our general argument put forward in Chap. 2), as well as the importance of stakeholder involvement and the fact that good water management can change people’s perception and increase awareness. However, keeping our dialectical approach, we should also point out the barriers and difficulties planners have to overcome to put in practice the advocated integration of the WFD. Three main aspects can be highlighted (Frederiksen et al. 2008). The first revolves around the notion of “spatial fit”, i.e. the matching (or lack of) between the management regime and the boundaries of the resource to be managed. This is clearly an issue as river basin does not correspond to traditional levels of governments (regions, municipalities). Three main necessities emerge: (i) the need for interaction between land-use planning and the river basin management plans; (ii) the need to integrate water goals into all relevant sectoral policies and (iii) the need to streamline and harmonize elements and procedures which are common to several pieces of legislation (e.g. management plans, monitoring, public participation), which would benefit from the establishment of common databases, spatial information systems, and methods of communication. Substantial integration cannot ensue from the simple convergence of (some) objectives between spatial planning and river management. Case studies from Finland, for instances demonstrate that planners are not always aware of the specific provisions of the WFD and, vice versa, entities in charge of elaborating the river basin plan are not familiar with spatial planning procedures and plans’ contents; in some cases, objectives of the preservation of open, cultivated landscape for scenic–aesthetic purposes were found to be in contrast with basin management needs that would suggest afforestation (Alahuhta et al. 2010). However, the same studies show how spatial plans at different scales can implement direct actions to deliver the objectives of the WFD, particularly by tackling diffuse pollution by land-use regulations, identifying agricultural areas prone to flooding and are that are usable in creating wetlands or establishing buffer zones (ibid.). So again, spatial planners have the possibility to pursue ecological courses of action by considering other policies, but this is something to be pursued, not an automatic outcome of the existence of such policies. These two directives provide an example of the evolution of the EU environmental legislation and its relationship with spatial planning: the Habitat Directive still conceives the environment as a set of islands to be preserved, and the relationship with spatial planning is mainly established in terms of impact evaluation aimed at avoiding major negative consequences on sites’ conservation. The WFD already envisaged a more holistic and integrated approach whereby the objective of the legislation can be delivered through planning, thus entailing a more complex and proactive interrelation between conservation, reduction of risks and landscape design, that will be further advanced by the Biodiversity Strategy in 2011, as we are going to see in the next subsection.

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6.3 The European Biodiversity Strategy, MAES and Green Infrastructure as a Spatially Explicit Approach to Integrate Ecosystem Services and Spatial Planning The European Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 (hereinafter simply the Biodiversity Strategy) (European Commission 2011) was adopted by the EU following the adoption by countries that signed the global Convention of Biological Diversity of a new strategic plan until 2020. This plan includes the so-called Aichi biodiversity targets, 20 objectives to stop biodiversity loss and to ensure healthy ecosystems providing essential services to people (Maes et al. 2016). The Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 sets six targets, also establishing quantitative thresholds: 1. Full implementation of the Birds and Habitat Directives so that by 2020, compared to current assessments there will be: (i) 100% more habitat assessments and 50% more species assessments under the Habitat Directive show an improved conservation status; and (ii) 50% more species assessments under the Birds Directive show a secure or improved status. 2. Enhance the protection of ecosystems and the services they provide, so that by 2020 at least 15% of degraded ecosystems are restored. 3. Pursue more sustainable agriculture, forestry and fisheries, to maximize agricultural areas covered by biodiversity-related measures under the CAP and to adopt Forest Management Plans covering all public-owned forests in the EU by 2020. 4. Achieve Maximum Sustainable Yield in fishery by 2020. 5. Contrast the diffusion of invasive alien species. 6. Increase the EU contribution to halt biodiversity loss at global level. A midterm review of the Strategy was carried out in 2015 and concluded that despite relevant progress achieved in some policy areas like fisheries (Target 4), the control of invasive alien species (Target 5), and the introduction of biodiversity provisions in bilateral trade agreements (Target 6), biodiversity targets can only be reached if implementation and enforcement efforts become considerably bolder and more ambitious. At the current rate, biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystem services will continue throughout the EU and globally, eroding natural capital and compromising efforts to achieve sustainable development (EC 2015). Following the appointment of the new European Commission in late 2019, a new Biodiversity Strategy towards 2030 is being drafted, which will be based on the previous one in its core objectives. Therefore, the considerations made here will apply to the next Strategy as well. An important element in the context of this book is that the Strategy clearly links its objectives to, inter alia, spatial planning, identified as a key activity through which some of the targets can be achieved. In particular, it is stated that “Target 2 focuses on maintaining and enhancing ecosystem services and restoring degraded ecosystems by incorporating green infrastructure in spatial planning” (ibid., Sect. 6.3.2, p. 5); in Sect. 6.4, it is affirmed that “The Commission will further encourage collaboration between researchers and other stakeholders involved in spatial planning and land-use management in implementing biodiversity

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strategies at all levels, ensuring coherence with relevant recommendations set out in the European Territorial Agenda” (ibid., p. 8). To meet the six targets the Strategy sets 20 specific actions, articulated in subactions, some of which have again a direct link with spatial planning. Action 1b) provides that the Commission will further integrate species and habitat protection and management requirements into key land and water use policies, thus including spatial planning; Action 5 commits the member states to map and assess the ecosystems and their services on their national territory. This led to the establishment of an ad hoc working group on Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystem Services (MAES) in Europe. The MAES working group oversees the implementation of Action 5 of the Strategy, provides member states support and technical guidance for mapping ES at a national level and carries out ES mapping and assessment at the EU-level to inform EU policymaking and contributes to the implementation of the Biodiversity strategy and the drafting of the new Strategy towards 2030. A series of MAES reports have been released in the last years, covering the main conceptual framework (Maes et al. 2013), indicators and methods for ecosystem assessment and ES mapping presenting spatially explicit indicators available at national and EU scales (Maes et al. 2015) as well as specific indicators for urban areas (Maes et al. 2016). An important feature of the effort being conducted under the MAES umbrella is that it aims to develop spatially explicit indicators, which has a direct relevance for spatial planning. Mapping, in fact, refers to the spatial delineation of ecosystems which are spatially explicit and so too are the pressures acting upon them (Maes et al. 2016). Accordingly, the assessment of the condition of ecosystems and the supply of ecosystem services requires the use of spatial data and indicators (Maes et al. 2012). Action 6 establishes the deployment of Green Infrastructure (GI) in urban and rural areas to maintain ecosystem services, including through incentives and upfront investments in green infrastructure projects, for example, through better targeted use of EU funding streams and Public–Private Partnerships. Action 7 aims to ensure no net loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, mentioning the use of compensation and offsetting schemes. Action 9 promotes better targeting of Rural Development funds for biodiversity conservation and supports collaborative actions among farmers to this end. Finally, Action 19 asserts that The Commission will continue to systematically screen its development cooperation action to minimize any negative impact on biodiversity, and undertake Strategic Environmental Assessments and/or Environmental Impact Assessments for actions likely to have significant effects on biodiversity. These actions thus touch all the main issues we are discussing in this chapter, as it identifies spatial planning at various scales as a key activity to realize the objectives of the Strategy, acknowledges the role of agriculture and rural development measures and even identifies compensation/offsets mechanism as a viable tool to achieve them. Besides the specific actions envisaged, one relevant aspect of the biodiversity strategy is that it has served as a much needed boost to streamline the concept of Ecosystem Service (ES) in the official European policy discourse. Therefore, it is now time to dedicate some space to the ES/spatial planning interface.

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6.3.1 Ecosystem Service and Spatial Planning: A Trendy Topic in Need of Some Critical Reflections Slightly different definitions and classification systems of Ecosystem Services exist but here we refer to the CICES (Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services) classification, proposed by Haines-Young and Potschin (2010), as it is the one used for reference in Europe; the most updated version as of May 2019 is CICES V5.1 (Haines-Young and Potschin 2018). There, final ecosystem services are defined as the contributions that ecosystems (i.e. living systems) make to human wellbeing. These services are final in that they are the outputs of ecosystems (whether natural, semi-natural or highly modified) that most directly affect the well-being of people. Conceptually, CICES is based on Haines-Young and Potschin famous “cascade framework,” that has been recently refined by La Notte et al. (2017): the latter one is our reference here and is shown in Fig. 6.2. Here, ecosystems are conceptualized as a network of biophysical structures and ecological processes, featuring flows of energy and matter through space and time. Only a subset of the ecosystems’ characteristics and properties (i.e. ecosystem functions) have a utility for people that, once realized, turns into a final service. ES had already become a very popular term before the cascade framework was proposed: the reference usually inserted at this point to mark the beginning of this diffusion is the highly cited study on Nature by Costanza et al. (1997), which undoubtedly represents a milestone and a boost of the concept within and outside the scientific community. But let us remember that Ian McHarg in 1969 had already discussed the very same concept, even if not using the precise term “ecosystem service”, (see Chap. 1): “nature performs work for man without his investment and […] such work [do] represent a value” (McHarg 1969). In a way, we can say that originally the Ecosystem Service concept was devised within the planning discipline! Only more recently, however, planning seems to have (re)discovered the concept and the literature on Ecosystem Service and planning has grown considerably: a seminal work is a paper by De Groot et al. (2010) in which the main challenges in integrating the concept of ecosystem services in landscape planning are identified and discussed. They comprise (i) the understanding and quantification of how ecosystems provide services, including how can they be mapped and visualized and how changes in landscape spatial patterns affect them; (ii) how to evaluate ecosystem services; (iii) how they can be used in trade-off analysis and decision-making, including how to visualize landscape design alternatives; (iv) how to use ecosystem services in planning, including how to incorporate resilience of landscape functions and thresholds into planning methods and design. Maes et al. (2012), in another influential paper, discussed more in detail the reasons for mapping ecosystem services, identifying the need to analyse their spatial distribution at different scales, evaluating spatial congruence with biodiversity, identifying and analysing synergies and trade-off between different services, valuating them in monetary terms, comparing demand with supply and identifying priority areas in spatial planning. The last point clearly links ecosystem services and spatial planning directly, but indirectly all other aims can be

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Human System

(a) Biophysical structure Function Service Benefit

(b)

Biophysical Structure Function Service Benefit

Fig. 6.2 a The traditional cascade framework with emphasis on end use benefits; b reinterpretation of the cascade framework, with emphasis on the underpinning complexity of the ecological system. Source La Notte et al. (2017)

relevant within a planning process as the landscape configurations devised by the plan affects, as we have already said, the capability of a territory to provide many, if not all, services. In a subsequent paper Maes et al. (2016) proposed an overall framework for mapping and assessing ecosystem services consistently across Europe, as required by the Biodiversity Strategy. Figure 6.3 below represents it graphically. The basic idea here is that the socio-economic system is linked to ecosystems via the flow of ES, and via the drivers of change exerting pressures on ecosystems and biodiversity. Biodiversity plays a key role to support ecosystem functions, part of which are used (directly or indirectly, consciously or not) by humans and translate

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Fig. 6.3 Conceptual framework for ecosystem service mapping and assessments under Action 5 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy. Source Maes et al. (2016)

into proper ecosystem services. The governance of the combined socio-economicecological system is an integral part of the framework: policies, institutions, stakeholders and users affect ecosystems through direct or indirect drivers of change. Importantly, the authors affirm that policies can have an impact on ecosystems, even though they might not target them explicitly. The framework we proposed in Chap. 4 is in line with this one, especially in considering policies and other drivers of changes as an integral component. The main differences are that the latter is specifically focused on ecosystem services supply, while the framework proposed in this book is centered on the landscape as a whole and emphasizes more the distinction between policies and the overall economic processes of capital circulation and accumulation as manifested spatially. The use of ES in landscape planning has been explored by several scholars from a Landscape Ecology perspective (see Albert et al. 2014). The role of landscape metrics to assess the capability of different landscape configurations in delivering ecosystem services has been addressed, among others, by Jones et al. (2013) and Almenar et al. (2018). The latter proposes a conceptual framework with relevant practical utility in planning, comprising of four main components: Characterization, Assessment, Design and Monitoring. Characterization entails the identification of relevant stakeholders and delineation of the spatial system boundary that should include the area of intervention plus adjacent spatial units sharing strong functional dependencies (social and/or ecological). The Assessment phase consists of identifying relevant landscape functions that are then focused on specific ES of interest that are in turn evaluated economically. The Design phase is divided into three stages:

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strategy, planning, and design; in the strategy stage, the information on character, services and values are integrated and compared to identify potential incompatibilities in different scenarios. In the Design stage, four types of actions might be assigned to different landscape character areas or entities: conservation, enhancement through management, physical recovery or restoration, and redesign. The Monitoring phase is extended beyond the short term and makes use of landscape metrics as landscape service indicators, as they have low resource demands, are simple to use, and are spatially explicit. The authors, however, recommend caution in the use of landscape metrics alone, acknowledging that they are not suitable for measuring all of the services, but only those dependent on structural aspects. In discussing how to improve the use of ecosystem services in landscape planning, von Haaren et al. (2014) stress the need to distinguish between “offered ecosystem services,” “utilized ecosystem services,” “human input” and “ecosystem service benefits” as relevant information for decision-making, and suggest that ecosystem service integration in planning requires explicitly linking ecosystem service evaluation to the societal norms and general values enshrined in planning regulations, which should safeguard not only used services (or their use value) but also unused ones, i.e. their existence value. Also important is their argument that human input is a significant element in several ecosystem services (e.g. food productions, visual aesthetic) and that planning can affect it, thus highlighting another aspect of the planning/ecosystem service relationships that should be taken into account by planners. Other authors have emphasized the role of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in streamlining ES use in spatial planning. Geneletti (2011) discussed how ecosystem services can be usefully deployed to inform several stages of the planning and SEA processes, including definition of a plan’s objectives and actions, identification of mitigation/compensation measures and monitoring and follow-up, concluding that SEA represents an ideal platform to incorporate ES in planning. Along similar lines, Mascarenhas et al. (2015) addressed ES integration in European policy and the guidance framework for spatial planning and SEA, taking Portugal as a case study and arguing that bottom-up demand for improved ES integration in plans and policies will be an important driver for integration. Rozas-Vásquez et al. (2018) addressed the issue of ES incorporation across different stages of SEA and different planning scales and found that the concept is more often used in the definition of objectives but less often in the definition and assessment of alternatives and in monitoring. Concerning scales, they found that regulating services, particularly those related to hydrology, were considered mainly at a regional level, while at municipal levels, the focus was exclusively on urban areas and the associated infrastructure. They conclude that a proper and consistent integration of ES in spatial planning does not rely on a particular scale, but rather on the current possibilities offered by the available policy instruments and guidelines for implementing spatial planning and SEA. Increasing use of the concept is reported in planning practice at a different scale from the urban (Mooney 2014; Rall et al. 2015; Kaczorowska et al. 2016; Geneletti et al. 2020) to the regional one (Geneletti 2013; Frank et al. 2014; Jaligot and Chenal

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2019). For planners, a very popular method for incorporating ES in plans is by crosstabulating land-use cover classes and ES. A main reference to this regard is Burkhard et al. (2009) who elaborated a general methodology to assess the capacities of different landscapes to provide ecosystem services based on linking land cover data (like CORINE) with expert judgements about the different land cover types’ capacities to provide various ecosystem services. The result is a table cross-tabulating each CORINE land cover class with each ecosystem service and assigning to each combination a score from 1 to 5 representing the potential of the class to supply the specific services. Though simple in its essence this method has been and is still much used in real spatial planning practice. Scolozzi et al. (2012) proposed a similar approach, again based on CORINE, providing, in addition, an estimation of the economic value associated with each ecosystem service/land cover combination based on expert judgement and literature. With time, ever more elaborate approaches to ES mapping have been elaborated on and a wide array of spatially explicit tools and models has have been developed, which can be used in planning practice (see Englund et al. 2017; and Palomo et al. 2017, for on overview). Examples include the InVEST suite (Sharp et al. 2016); ESTIMAP (Zulian et al. 2018); and webbased platform such as the ESP Visualization tool (ESP-VT) (Drakou et al. 2015) that allows users to share information on ecosystem service maps, data and mapping methods. Spatially explicit models taking into account landscape configuration are now available for the ES identified as more relevant in planning by Bastian et al. (2014), including, e.g. pollination (Zulian et al. 2013), outdoor recreation (Paracchini et al. 2014) and biological pest control (Rega et al. 2018). Two recent EU-funded research projects (OPERA and OpenNESS1 ) have made an important contribution towards the operationalization of Ecosystem Services into land, water and urban management and decision-making. A joint product of these two projects is the web platform OPPLA, a “knowledge marketplace” co-designed with various user groups, containing a set of guidance tools and case studies to help practitioners and stakeholders finding methods and approaches that are fit for purpose in a broad range of management and policymaking contexts, including in land-use planning and urban planning (Pérez-Soba et al. 2018; Jax et al. 2018). In summary, the usefulness of the ecosystem service framework in planning is reported by several studies and lies in its communicative power and in its capacity to be more easily understood by stakeholders and policymakers compared to other ecological concepts, thus facilitating collaborative planning, stakeholder engagement and interdisciplinary research, bridging gaps between different policy fields and ultimately increasing legitimacy of planning choices (Albert et al. 2014; Moreno et al. 2014; Sitas et al. 2014; Bull et al. 2016; Wissen Hayek et al. 2016; Galler et al. 2016). Ecosystem Services thus appear to be a very valuable concept and operational tool to pursue ecological rationality in planning and, specifically in the EU context, to implement the integration between biodiversity conservation and planning put forward by the EU Biodiversity Strategy.

1 http://www.openness-project.eu/

and https://www.operas-project.eu.

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Yet, a more critical stance is needed at this point. We showed in the previous chapter how many of the concepts that have been put forward to advocate for ES integration in planning—new governance arrangements, collaborative planning, stakeholder engagement and so on—can and have been extensively co-opted to underpin an overall neoliberal agenda in planning, whereby ecological considerations have been subsumed into the processes of capital accumulation, circulation and fix. There is a similar risk with the ES frame, being it inherently anthropocentric, as it conceives services in terms of their utility for humans: using ES in current “post-political planning” can be either a way to counter or foster the post-political trends, irrespective of the good intentions of the proponents. Hence, the use of the concept per se does not guarantee that the outcome of the planning process is more ecologically sound, in the same fashion as “innovative governance arrangements”, localism and stakeholder engagement does not guarantee a more equal plan responding to local needs, as seen in Chap. 5. As any evaluation of something whose values lie in the use people make of it, it entails all the risks that we have exposed about legitimacy of participatory processes, use of soft spaces, and inclusion of only some stakeholders. Moreover, a recent analysis on current use of ES in planning by Geneletti et al. (2020) based on several case studies shows that, along with an increasing uptake of the concept, proposals of ES-related measures are rarely supported by an adequate knowledge base and analysis: “The general idea that “more green will do some good” seems to guide the inclusion of ES-based actions in current plans, where critical decisions about the design and the location of interventions are seldom justified by the analysis of the expected outcomes and the distribution and vulnerability of the potential beneficiaries” (ibid., p. 68). Furthermore, not all ES are equally considered in planning, which may lead to trade-offs unconsciously generated by planning decisions and, ultimately, to a loss of important but underestimated ES (ibid.). Secondly, and reinforcing the previous point, analytical and policy frames often adopted to promote the concept are rooted in the economic valuation of ES, which even more emphasizes the anthropocentric focus of the concept and puts again economic rationality as the dominant rationality, even if mitigated by an explicit and more comprehensive consideration of environmental “values”. A dearth of literature has been produced highlighting criticism to economic valuation of nature and ecosystem services (Toman 1998; Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez 2011 and references therein). The critical arguments to economic valuation of ES can be considered specific instances of the more general critique of the economic rationality we have elaborated on in Chap. 1. Valuation of ES has often been used as a way to foster a broader process of commodification of nature and ecosystems (Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez 2011). The system of prices, property rights, willingness to pay and contingent evaluation upon which ES valuation techniques are based cannot but reflect the rationality of the current economic systems. As argued by Gómez-Baggethun and Muradian (2015), economic valuation of ES is embedded in a vision conceiving markets as the overarching institutional framework defining what is inside and outside the system of societal choice and that conveys the notion that the solution to environmental problems is to be found in the technical domain. Accordingly, the extension of market-oriented values, logic, and language

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into the environmental domains “may drive the symbolic and discursive changes that characterize early stages of commodification processes. That is, market reasoning has frame-shifting effects that can erode the conceptions, norms, and taboos that act as cultural barriers to the extension of markets and market values to domains traditionally governed by non-market norms” (ibid., p. 222). Commodification can be considered as a complexity blinder that masks critical processes underlying the production of ES behind the homogeneity of monetary figures, thereby transforming a symbolic value into an objective and quantifiable relationship (Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez 2011). In other words, commodification is a form of abstraction through which complex social relations between people and nature are represented as simple exchange relations between objects, a phenomenon already examined by Marx and more recently by ecological economist and conservation biologists (Martínez-Alier 1987; Kosoy and Corbera 2010; Peterson et al. 2010, as cited in Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez 2011). We have discussed in the previous chapters how these processes of abstraction respond to the needs of capital accumulation and circulation and are often at odds with specificities and peculiarities of territories. Interestingly, these types of criticisms for the ES concept are reported by different studies that surveyed planners’ perceptions about the use of ES in their practices (Albert et al. 2014a; Sitas et al. 2014). Major criticisms of the ES concept reported by practitioners include “its (perceived) focus on economic valuation, its supposed contribution to the risk of further commodification of nature, and the potential conflict or trade-off scenarios with regards to biodiversity conservation objectives” (Albert et al. 2014b, p. 1280) In summary, we should consider ES as a toolkit for ecological rationality in spatial planning, its actual effect depending on the use we make of it. Bearing this in mind, the concept is certainly valuable as a communication tool and has direct relevance in spatial planning as most ES are affected by landscape patterns and by the spatial configuration of human agency on the territory. Provided that the critical elements discussed are fully recognized, the Ecosystem Service concept can by fully embedded into spatial planning theory and practice as a deepening of a broader ecological fix in planning, as Lennon and Scott (2014) put it, very much in line with the argument of this book. Sagely, these authors frame the evolution of the use of ES in planning into the latter’s broader trend of reconfiguration of the role of planners and planning to one of coordinator, integrator and mediator of the spatial dimensions of wider policy streams through negotiated governance, partnership and so on, in turn positioning this within the strategies of territorial competitiveness, a key aspect of planning neoliberalization. Acknowledging this, they, however, maintain that a critical use of the concept can inform ecological approaches to planning, provided that attention is given to principles, processes and procedures of spatial planning. Principles concern issues of high-order reflection on what planning should seek to achieve, practices regard the analysis of particular situations that offer a means of learning from empirical experience and procedure refers to planning processes, management techniques and skillsets, i.e. addressing how to plan rather than what to plan (ibid., drawing from

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Hebbert 2009). In this frame, they identify the Green Infrastructure approach as a key vehicle for operationalizing the use of ES into planning: we are much in line with this approach and hence elaborate on it in the next subsection.

6.3.2 Green Infrastructure in the EU—An Approach to Operationalize Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning? From a planning perspective, the main provision of the Biodiversity Strategy is perhaps the introduction of Green Infrastructure, which was detailed in the following communication of the Commission in 2013 (European Commission 2013). Here, Green Infrastructure (GI) is defined as a “strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas with other environmental features designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services (ES)” (ibid., p. 3). The concept of (GI) had become popular among scholars, conservationists and planners, especially in Europe and in the US even before the communication by the EU, and ever the more so after it (Kilbane 2013; Lennon and Scott 2014; Garmendia et al. 2016): consequently, a relevant amount of literature specifically dealing with GI and planning is available, covering different issues such as approaches and methods for GI designed in urban areas (Lafortezza et al. 2013; Pappalardo et al. 2017) and agricultural areas (La Rosa and Privitera 2013; Estreguil et al. 2016); incorporation of experts’ and local actors’ knowledge (Kopperoinen et al. 2014); and the role of GI in promoting holistic, landscape-oriented approaches to planning (Lennon et al. 2017). The most recent evidences indicate an increasing uptake of GI in planning practices though difficulties and barriers to adoption are still present (Di Marino et al. 2019 and Slätmo et al. 2019). While this increasing interest and application is positive, we shall, again, adopt a critical stance here to fully understand the role of GI and its application in planning under an ecologically rational paradigm. In the European Commission communication of 2013, several objectives are attached to GI, comprising conservation of ecologically valuable areas, climate change halting, adaptation and mitigation, provision of multiple ES, but also broader socio-economic objectives such as fostering sense of community, contrasting social exclusion, enhancing regional and urban development, and creating job opportunities. Some authors have claimed that such a wide array of functions associated to GI may act as a double-edged sword. Garmendia et al. (2016), building on Star and Griesemer (1989) argue that GI can act as a boundary object, i.e. a concept robust enough to enable cross-communication but broad and plastic enough to be interpreted differently across communities and stakeholders. Optimistically, GI can provide a common frame in which planners, conservation biologists and policymakers can act together and gaps between disciplinary fields can be bridged. On the other hand, such a broad definition may obscure the inherently conflicting nature of different objectives or lead to the identification of any green space as part of GI (Garmendia et al. 2016). Under this perspective, the way

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the GI concept is framed may convey the neoliberal and anthropocentric paradigm we have stigmatized about the neoliberal turn in planning and the co-optation of some concepts and terms (ibid.). Nonetheless, the GI undoubtedly can be used as a major policy boost in Europe to operationalize ecological rationality in spatial planning and deliver multiple ecosystem services. The relevance of GI for planning lies in three distinct, though interlinked, components embedded in its definition (Liquete et al. 2015; Snäll et al. 2016, Rega 2019) (1) the planning and management component; (2) multifunctionality, in terms of provision of multiple ES and (3) connectivity as its essential functional characteristics. All these aspects are relevant for the effective implementation of GI and, at the same time, pose challenges that need to be recognized and addressed. At its core, the GI is an inherently spatial concept, which should involve bringing together spatially explicit data and modelling and planning methods (Snäll et al. 2016). We already mentioned that the Biodiversity Strategy identifies spatial planning as a key activity to deliver its conservation objectives. Now, the concept of an interconnected network of areas with high ecological value is not something new for spatial planners. The concept of “greenways” has a long tradition in planning (Ahern 1995) as that of ecological networks made up by core areas, buffer zones and corridors connecting them (Leibenath 2011). Such concepts preceded the GI definition and have been extensively used by ecologists and spatial planners. The Natura 2000 network, as seen, represents an outstanding example of this at European scale, and planners have been dealing with Natura 2000 sites at local scales for years now. However, there is an important difference: the main rationale behind the establishment of Natura 2000 and ecological networks was the conservation of biodiversity and natural values, and preservation from anthropic pressures. While preservation was of course necessary, this often favoured dichotomy approaches to planning, characterized by “islands of protection” (Owens and Cowell 2011) within a matrix of unprotected area where anything was allowed, exerting increasing pressures on the former, as we have pointed out above when discussing the Habitat Directives. Conversely, GI is not envisaged merely as a set of already existing areas with some ecological value that shall be safeguarded. Its definition as a “strategically planned network” calls for human agency to design such a network and entails a more complex conceptualization, with its emphasis on delivery of multiple ES. To start with, a strategic planned network requires a strategy, which means the identification and selection of a set of objectives that can and should be pursued through GI, and the definition of actions to be implemented to achieve them. Of course, such a linear, simplistic conception of GI planning would be at odds with the complexity of the planning process and of the coupled-socio ecological systems we have widely described throughout this book, but the point here is that there is a shift from conservation to design that calls for an active, imaginative role for planners, as that highlighted by Dramstad et al. (1996) cited at the beginning of this book. A first implication of such a shift is acknowledging that win-win solutions are not always possible and trade-off between different and conflicting goals shall be clearly identified. When acting at the landscape level, envisaging and designing future landscape configurations, even the link between biodiversity and ES shall be problematized. In

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general, conservation policies will likely enhance the delivery of multiple ES, but as pointed out by Garmendia et al. (2016) this link is complex and context-, time- and pattern-dependent. In practice, not all measures aimed at preserving biodiversity will result in increased provision or multiple ES, at least not in all landscapes and at all scales. More technically: not all landscape configurations have the same capacity to deliver ES, and it is not granted that an optimal landscape structure able to optimize the supply of all services at once, and across scales, can be achieved. So, which objectives and ES to prioritize shall be made explicit when designing GI. This, however, should not discourage planners: identifying trade-offs derived from different spatial arrangements and provide policymakers with this knowledge in order to make informed choices is what they should always do, and doing this in the context of GI design should be no exception. The picture is made even more complex if broader socio-economic objectives are taken into account: human well-being and biodiversity conservation will often trade-off (McShane et al. 2011) and selling win-win solution as always achievable would be a typical feature of neoliberal, post-political planning. Of course, this poses methodologically challenges planners should be aware of. These pertain to the second and third identified components of GI, namely multifunctionality and connectivity. By definition, GI should deliver multiple ES; hence, GI design should be informed by and assessed against this objective. Some conceptual and practical issues enter into play here: first, this implies that planners have at disposal spatially explicit information on the current level of ES flows and stocks in the area under the influence of the plan; secondly, they should be able to measure or estimate the changes in ES flows and stocks deriving from the modification of the landscape structure envisaged by their plan. We have seen that planners can now resort to a quite stocked toolkit of methods and models to do this, but to properly make use of it, practitioners shall take into careful consideration some methodological and practical issues with mapping ecosystems service. A first issue concerns the very conceptualization of ES. As La Notte et al. (2017, Fig. 6.2) point out, a clear distinction between ecosystem structure, function and services shall be made: ES maps not always refer to the final service used or consumed by people, in many cases maps refers to other levels of the cascade, ecosystem function or even structure. Moreover, available indicators/maps might refer to ES flow, stock, potential or demand (Maes 2017). Stocks are easier to map than flows, which are dynamic in time, and, particularly for large areas, the potential ES supply is easier to map than the realized service. Understanding what is actually mapped by available dataset is thus crucial for planners. Scale-related issues and spatial resolution are other widely cited points in ES mapping. Different services ensue by ecosystem structure and functions at different scales, therefore the level at which they are mapped vary accordingly. When considering multiple ES, even if different maps for different ES are available, they will likely have different accuracy and resolutions. The harmonization of different datasets for planning purposes requires in this case to resort to spatial adjustments that shall be carefully carried out by planners as they can increase uncertainties and propagate errors (Maes 2017). For example, Dick et al. (2014) shown that synthetic

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indicators on total ecosystem services in selected areas differed depending on the scale of the sources of data (local vs EU dataset). Finally, scales are also relevant for the degree to which landscape configuration affects the ES. For instance, the reduction of CO2 delivered by a forest patch acts at a global scale and the capacity of a single land patch to supply it can be considered relatively not affected by surrounding landscape configuration: the overall service provided by a certain number of patches can be approximated through a linear sums and its relatively invariant across scales. Conversely, insects-mediated ES like pollination or biological control are sensitive to landscape structure at a finer scale (Zulian et al. 2013; Rega et al. 2018). The range of influence of pollinators and beneficial predators can span from few hundred metres to few Km, and it depends among other things by the presence and morphology of semi-natural element within the agricultural matrix. In the first instance, the service provided will be mostly dependent only on the share of forest cover in a certain area, and a simple forest presence/absence layer would already be sufficient for a fair estimation of the service. For pollination and pest control, more detailed data would be needed and loss of granularity across scale will seriously decrease the accuracy of the estimation and this has implications on the efforts needed to model and assess changes in ES delivery under different planning scenarios. It follows that information conveyed by land cover/land-use maps traditionally used in spatial planning is often not sufficient for proper ES mapping. For some ES, the supply capacity of a land cover patch is, moreover, strongly dependent on the quality or condition of the ecosystem, which is an additional piece of information. Timber production within a forest patch, for instance, depends on the species composition and age class distributions of the forests (Erhard et al. 2017); similarly, the potential to supply pollination depend on the land cover category, but within each category is strongly affected by the presence of flowering vegetation and of key species particularly attractive for pollinators. Another example is offered by agricultural areas, as their capacity to supply (or their reliance upon) ES is strongly dependent not only by the type of cover but also by farming practices and intensity of management. The latter is complex to determine by using a single metric and would require considering different aspects such as quantity of inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, machinery, etc.), and output levels, information planners are usually not familiar with and that are not provided by land cover maps. Connectivity is the third main characteristic of the GI: it refers to the possibility of dispersion of individuals across space from source habitats patches to destination patches (Kukkala and Moilanen 2017). Like landscape, connectivity has a structural and a functional component. The first one describes the physical characteristics of a landscape (topography, morphology etc.) and can be measured through established indicators. The second one, conversely, is species-specific as it refers to how individuals and populations move through the space, depending on their ecological traits (Rudnick et al. 2012). Structural connectivity is usually defined by identifying core areas, buffer zones and corridors. The first ones are areas with high ecological value able to support a high degree of biodiversity while corridors are the connections

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between them. Buffer zones (or complementary network) are less ecologically valuable than cores, but still important to support biodiversity. Non-habitat areas are usually defined in terms of permeability or resistance, a measure of the difficulty of dispersion for a certain species. Connectivity at large scales is measured considering the habitat requirements and dispersal capacity of large mammals; other taxa can be considered depending on the purpose of the analysis. Therefore, the degree of connectivity of a network, and the elements that can be considered part of the network, are a function of the species considered. As discussed by Kukkala and Moilanen (2017), three different types of connectivity should be considered when dealing with ES. The first one concerns size requirements of local areas, which again points out the relevance of scale (thus planning tiers): some ES cannot be provided by small areas (e.g. outdoor recreation) or require sufficiently large areas for the underlying ecological process to operate (e.g. flood protection). Consequently, the planning tiers at which they are more relevant are different: flood protection will be more adequately dealt with and evaluate at Regional or Provincial level, while pollination or pest control at the local (municipal) scale. This implies that also trade-offs analysis between services, recurrently called for as a main benefit of adopting the ES frame, will require cross-scale cooperation, involving different actors and planning bodies. The second type of connectivity refers to the link between the site when the service is generated and the site where it is used by beneficiaries. This is usually referred to as ES flow. In some cases, the ES demand or supply (or both) can move, as for instance for outdoor recreation (visitors go to recreational sites) or agricultural provisioning service (product can be displaced from the fields to markets). In other cases, spatial proximity between suppliers and beneficiaries is needed for the service to be generated e.g. for pollination and pest control. The direction of the flow matters too: pest control and pollination can be considered to be isotropic in space, while water flows and related ES are unidirectional. The third type of connectivity regards the degree of dispersion needed to guarantee equitable access to the ES across different territories. For instance, drinking water provision or flood protection can be considered realized ES only if they are benefited by a large number of users (ibid). In summary, connectivity is a multiscalar concept and shall be addressed at different scales in relation to different ES and planning tools: for example, the connectivity relevant for some taxa (e.g. conservation of large mammals) will not be addressed adequately at a local scale (Rudnick et al. 2012). Cross-scale cooperation—a key topic in planning—is thus crucial also in relation to GI design. Finally, spatial planning defines future land uses, so all assessments should include the temporal component along with the spatial one. ES stocks and flows, as well as supply and demand, should be considered not only in relation to the present situation but also with regard to landscape scenarios envisaging by the plan. Not only planning affects the capacity of a landscape to deliver different services (supply), it also affects the potential demand of services by envisaging new land configurations. The interrelated changes in both supply and demand of ES shall be considered. These considerations have very practical implications for planning. First, designing the GI does not mean to provide for some green space in an area: only green areas

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designed and connected in a way that meets the multifunctionality and connectivity requirements are to be considered GI. This is a general principle valid across scales and landscape types. Secondly, different approaches and methods are needed when planning for GI in different contexts. The choice of such methods and tools depend on the scale, the conservation objectives and the type of matrix landscape. A large-scale GI design for conservation of large mammals at regional or national level requires different tools than a GI design aimed at enhancing micro-connectivity within an agrarian matrix. The ES delivered by GI in urban contexts will usually differ from those relevant in agricultural contexts and the design of GI closer to cities or periurban areas with poor ecosystem condition will differ from that in more intact areas (Vallecillo et al. 2018), shifting the planning focus from restoration in the first case to conservation in the second. In turn, restoration and conservation entail different measures and planning techniques: in the first case investments in the creation of new semi-natural features will be needed, in the second one policies may concern limitation or regulation of tourist access, for example. Luckily for practitioners, several replicable methods and mapping approaches at different scales have been proposed recently and are available for use and adaptation to different planning needs. Liquete et al. (2015) elaborated a comprehensive approach to map the major element of GI at the European scale based on a spatially explicit methodology accounting for: (1) the quantification of the natural capacity to deliver ES and (2) the identification of core habitats and wildlife corridors for biota. The first consisted of identifying available maps of regulating and maintenance ES and by combining them so to derive an aggregated measure of ES supply at 1 km spatial resolution. The connectivity component was addressed by identifying core areas able to support the presence of large mammals and the major corridors connecting them. The outputs of these two steps were integrated through spatial overlay and the result is the identification of two classes of GI elements: (i) core GI, comprising the best functioning ecosystems, crucial to maintain both natural life and natural capital; and (ii) subsidiary GI, made of other relevant areas sustaining ES and wildlife. Vallecillo et al. (2018) used a spatial conservation prioritization tool to assess different alternatives for the spatial planning of GI, again at the European Union scale. Their approach consists of considering three main components for the designation of GI areas: their intrinsic potential to provide ecosystem service, the proximity to service beneficiaries (i.e. people) and the state of conservation of ecosystem. For the first criteria, methods of spatial conservation prioritization were utilized, based on iterative optimization algorithms to select priority areas. By imposing different spatial constraints and giving more weight to conservation of areas with high ES potential, areas close to cities or areas with poor conditions, different planning scenarios with different GI designations were produced, each requiring a total different amount and spatial arrangement of GI areas. This exercise thus provides a good example of the planning component in GI and the increased complexity compared to more traditional planning conservation measures such as “protection of wilderness islands,” discussed above. In both examples, the scale of the analysis was continental and therefore not apt for GI design in urban areas or within agricultural areas at finer scale. Methods for GI

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planning in urban areas are provided, e.g. by Cortinovis et al. (2018) who elaborated a spatially explicit approach to enhance urban outdoor recreation through GI; and by Norton et al. (2015), Marando et al. (2019) and Nastran et al. (2019) who developed different methods to contrast the urban heat island effect through the use of different GI elements as green open spaces, urban trees, green roofs, and green walls and facades. A spatially explicit method GI design in agricultural area was proposed by Estreguil et al. (2016). In this case, the designation of current and potential (i.e. to be created) GI patches took into account the dispersal range of insects providing two key ES in cropped land, pollination and pest control. Cells (100 m resolution) potentially eligible for GI were identified based on the share of semi-natural vegetation in the agrarian matrix. High-resolution layers on woody and grassy semi-natural features in cropped land were utilized and the importance of each cell was determined by considering the degree of connectivity with the rest of the network, based on the dispersal range of European wild bees (200 m). Also in this case a different GI design was proposed based on different planning objectives and constraints; costs were determined by considering loss of agricultural production in agricultural patches following the conversion of shares of cropland to GI element. In this way, it was possible to identify the best options for targeting measure to increase the ecological equipment of agricultural areas (i.e. to design new components of GI) under different scenarios: (1) maximization of the connectivity without budget limitation; (2) maximization of the total connectivity with a given budget; (3) achievement of a predetermined level of connectivity with minimum loss of agricultural land; (4) achievement of a predetermined level of connectivity with minimum loss of agricultural land. These examples illustrate how the general principles of the GI described above can be implemented in different ways when planning for GI in different contexts, requiring different data inputs. In conclusion, GI is a planned network acting at different scales: two pivotal features across scales are the capacity of providing multiple ES and the connectivity with the rest of the network. Connectivity is in turn a multiscalar concept and shall be addressed in different ways depending on the planning context and the scope of the analysis. Planning for GI requires planners to handle spatially explicit information on current and possible future state of ES stocks and flows in a certain area. The systematic consideration of GI principles in spatial planning holds a great potential for operationalizing ecological rationality in planning, providing that a critical stance on the ES frame is maintained. Spatially explicit approaches and methods for mapping GI are increasingly available and should be incorporated in routinely spatial planning. The last shown example also highlights the importance of approaches explicitly dealing with agricultural areas: this in turn calls for a more detailed analysis of the most relevant policy acting on these areas in Europe, i.e. the Common Agricultural Policy, to which we turn now.

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6.4 The Common Agricultural Policy and the Rural Development Policy: Towards a Possible Territorialization 6.4.1 CAP and Rural Development Policy: A Basic Glossary The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the largest in the EU in terms of budget (408 billion e for the period 2014–2020, 38% of the total EU budget) with an annual expenditure of approximately 58 billion euros. Agricultural area covers more than 40% of the EU territory, a figure that rises to 84% if forestry is considered. This gives an idea of the territorial relevance of this policy. We have already discussed the role of the CAP in Chap. 5, as needed support to farmers’ income that would be otherwise too narrow given the level of input needed in production and the relatively low prices of agricultural commodities. But we have also discussed how policies shall be better interpreted as a condensation of relationships of forces and at least since the McSharry reform of 1992 environmental concerns have been one of the forces shaping the CAP. Since 1992, the CAP has been articulated in two so-called pillars: the first one, accounting approximately for 75% of the budget in the programming period 2014– 2020, is the support to farmers’ income (the subsidies) we examined in Chap. 5. The second Pillar is the Rural Development Policy, a set of voluntary measures aimed at improving farms’ productivity, supporting more environmentally friendly farming practices and fostering broad socio-economic development of rural areas. Funding for the rural development policy is managed by member states by the elaboration of Rural Development Programmes (RDP) by members states and, in some cases, Regions. The environmental measures of RDPs (Agri-environment schemes), firstly introduced during the late 1980s as an option to be applied by Member States, since the McSharry reform of 1992 have become compulsory for member states in the framework of their RDPs, whereas they remain optional for farmers. While initially the two aims of the CAP were clearly split into these two pillars, the consecutive reforms have progressively introduced environmental-related requirements into the first Pillar as well. An important evolution to this regard is the process of progressive “decoupling” of subsidies from production: once dispensed in function of the production output, now they are linked, instead, to the land cultivated, irrespective of the attained yield. This intended to contrast the chronicle problem of overproduction we dwelt on in the previous chapter. Furthermore, distribution of subsidies has been progressively subjected to the observance of a set of basic regulations broadly referred to as “cross-compliance”. This includes a set of compulsory requirements that all farmers receiving support from the Commission must meet. Cross compliance was introduced as a voluntary scheme in the Agenda 2000 and was further developed in the CAP reform of 2003. The current implementing regulations in force for the period 2014–2020 are set by Commission Implementing Regulation (EC) No 809/2014 and Commission Delegated Regulation

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(EU) No. 640/2014. A main element of cross-compliance is the so-called Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC), aimed at assuring that minimum environmental standards are met in EU farming. The current legal basis establishing CAP is Annex II of Council Regulation (EC) No. 1306/2013, and current GAEC standards requires among other things, the establishment of buffer strips along watercourses, protection of groundwater against pollution; prohibition of direct discharge into groundwater and measures to prevent indirect pollution of groundwater; maintenance of a minimum soil cover and Retention of landscape features, including, hedges, ponds, ditches, trees in line, in group or isolated, field margins and terraces. The general GAEC provisions have to be detailed by member states taking into account the specific characteristics of the areas concerned, including soil and climatic condition, existing farming systems, land use, crop rotation, farming practices and farm structures, which led to a high variety of minimum requirements throughout Europe and in some cases even within the MS that define GAECs at regional level (JRC 2019). En passant, we can recognize in this process of strong devolution of implementation to lower levels some resonance with a similar trend in planning we have discussed in the previous chapter. With the CAP reform implemented in December 2013 for the period 2014–2020, another important step in the introduction of environmental requirements into the first pillar was introduced, the so-called “greening” payment (Regulation (EU) No. 1307/2013; Delegated Regulation No. 639/2014 and implementing regulation No. 641/2014). These regulations establish that large arable farmers receiving subsidies must implement farming practices aimed at benefiting the environment and climate. Specifically, the requirements are: (i) crop diversification; (ii) maintenance of permanent grasslands and (iii) devoting 5% of farm are to so-called ecological focus areas (EFA), namely, natural and semi-natural features as fallow land, terraces, buffer strips, agroforestry, hedgerows, tree lines, ponds and nitrogen-fixing crops. Only farms with more than 15 ha of arable land are subjected to the EFA requirements. Again, member states were left with high discretion in defining specific EFA types and implementation rules, so that also in this case a quite diversified regulatory frame has been established across the EU. Despite the fact that Greening measures have been criticized by many scholars for setting too low environmental requirements having watered down the implementation of the most effective measures (Pe’er et al. 2014; Dicks et al. 2014; Sutherland et al. 2015), they have a direct territorial relevance with and in some cases tangible, positive effects on landscape structure and composition have been reported (e.g. Cortignani and Dono 2019): here planners may start glimpsing possible relevant interactions with their activity—we will get back to this. The architecture of CAP’s second pillar is, again, established in its general features at the EU-level and subsequently implemented by member states and regions. For the period 2014–2020, RDP measures and sub-measures were defined around 3 main objectives: (i) fostering the competitiveness of agriculture; (ii) ensuring the sustainable management of natural resources, and climate action; (iii) achieving a balanced territorial development of rural economies and communities including the

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creation and maintenance of employment (EC Regulation no. 1305/2013, art. 4, emphasis added). RDP measures finances a wide array of activities, including • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

investment in physical assets supports to young famers support farmers that resort to advisory services participation to quality schemes restoration from natural disasters and catastrophic events diversification of farm business in non-agricultural activity (e.g. agritourism, restoration) Basic services and village renewal in rural areas, including the drawing up and updating of plans for the development of municipalities in rural areas Investment in the forestry sector, including afforestation and establishment of agroforestry systems Setting up of producer groups and organizations Agri-environment-climate measures Organic farming Specific support for agriculture activity in Natura 2000 and Water Framework Directive areas Payments to farmers in areas with natural constraints Measure aimed at improving animal welfare in livestock farms Cooperation,i.e. support to the creation of networks of actors involved in the supply chain, including cooperation for the development of new products, practices, processes; development and marketing of tourism; joint approaches to environmental projects and ongoing environmental practices, including efficient use of resources and the preservation of agricultural landscapes.

The basic concept is that farmers who, voluntarily, decide to implement environmentally friendly practices beyond those required by cross-compliance and (where applicable) greening, receive a financial compensation covering the increased costs and or the foregone income incurred. Some measures do not require any additional efforts to farmers but support those who conduct agriculture in less-favoured areas or “Areas facing Natural Constraints”, typically marginal areas due to geographical factors like altitude, slope, etc. This measure thus intends to support continuation of agriculture in areas where it is comparatively less convenient and contrast land abandonment. Agri-environment-climate measures comprise a variety of sub-measures, among which creation and preservation of landscape features, preservation of river banks, conservation agriculture (minimum tillage, maintenance of soil cover), integrated pest management (reduction in the use of chemical inputs to control pests and substitution with less impacting techniques), preservation of genetic variety and local/rare breeds, conversion of arable land to permanent grassland, increased crop diversification (beyond Greening requirements), pasture management (through, e.g. rotational grazing and low livestock pressure). The RDP is subjected to a comprehensive evaluation and monitoring activity, comprising ex ante, ongoing and ex post evaluation carried out through a set of indicators established by the so-called Common Monitoring Evaluation Framework. Furthermore, RDP is subjected to an

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ex ante Strategic Environmental Assessment pursuant to Directive 2001/42/EC (see Fig. 6.1). It clearly emerges not only how many of RDP measures have a direct spatial component, but also that in some cases they would require a direct link with land-use planning, such in the case of renewal of rural municipalities and villages, entailing the drafting of a plan for the provision of basic services and small scale infrastructure. There is, therefore, a territorial dimension of the Rural Development Policy that calls for integration with spatial planning. Before elaborating on this aspect, we shall provide a brief overview of the current proposal for the forthcoming CAP, covering the period 2021–2027. The proposal for the new CAP by the Commission COM (2018) 392 final (European Commission 2018) was published in June 2018 and would repeal current Council Regulation no. 1305/2013 and 1307/2013. At the time of writing the proposal is under discussion between the Commission, the Parliament and member states, so it is not possible for the time being to know exactly how the new CAP will look like as the outcomes of these negotiations. Some main features can, however, be identified and are summarized here. First, the proposal gives Member States further responsibilities and flexibility in implementing the CAP, although in the framework established by the Commission. This further devolution is justified on the basis that it would streamline implementation, reduce the administrative burdens on farmers and strengthen the capacity of Member States to address their specific needs and conditions (geographic, social, economic and environmental). The list of GAECs will be elaborated and enhanced. The second main element is that all CAP funding (this including direct support) will be managed through a CAP Strategic Plan to be elaborated by member states. These Plans will have to • set the conditions for receiving direct payments, • provide for a basic income support for sustainability on a per ha basis and define the specific conditions for such support, • provide support for voluntary schemes for the climate and the environment (“ecoschemes”) under general conditions set out by the proposal itself and specified in each Strategic Plan, • establish specific types of intervention for the different agricultural sectors, • define types of interventions for rural development, including environmentalclimate commitments; natural constraints or area-specific disadvantages resulting from certain mandatory requirements (Natura 200 and Water Framework Directive areas); support to investment, young farmers and rural business start-up, knowledge exchange, promotion of risk management tools and support to cooperation and establishment of networks. Each Plan will contain a diagnostic part with an assessment of needs, followed by a description of the general intervention strategy and a more detailed description of the direct payments and rural development interventions. Member states shall also detail established targets and the financial plans along with a description of the governance and coordination system and measures taken to modernize the CAP and reduce the administrative burden for beneficiaries. Furthermore, the Plans will have

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to contain, in a first Annex, the ex ante evaluation and the strategic environmental assessment (SEA); and a SWOT analysis in a Annex II. The elaboration of the Plans shall be carried out under the responsibility of member states but in partnership with competent regional and local authorities, comprising social and economic actors and relevant bodies representing civil society. A third main innovation of the proposal is the shift from a delivery models mainly based on compliance to a “New Delivery Model” based on performance. This will entail the establishment of a Performance Framework constituted by a set of common context, output, result and impact indicators, targets established for each objective and a system for data management. The Framework shall also define the activities for periodical reporting and monitoring and contain the ex ante, interim, and ex post evaluations and all other evaluation activities linked to the Strategic Plan. This system aims at assessing the impact, effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, coherence and Union added value of the CAP. An incentive system to reward good environmental and climate performance is established, providing for a financial bonus up to 5% of the total budget of the Member State to be attributed starting from 2026 in case the result indicators applied to the specific environmental- and climate-related objectives have achieved at least 90% of their target value.

6.4.2 CAP as an Hybrid Territorial Policy—Spaces of Integration with Spatial Planning Devised initially as a sectoral policy, along its life the CAP has evolved towards what we can term an hybrid territorial policy, in the sense that though its conception is still guided by a prevailing sectoral approach, its territorial dimension is ever more evident and relevant. The effects of CAP on the European landscape have been widely acknowledged and studied (Brady et al. 2009; Lefebvre et al. 2015; Paracchini et al. 2016; Ogorevc and Slabe-Erker 2018; Penko Seidl and Golobiˇc 2018). As affirmed by Lefebvre et al. (2015), though not a landscape policy per se, the CAP it is often put forward as being one of the main driver of changes in land use and farming practices in the EU with significant effects on the rural landscapes. At the same time, these authors acknowledge that it would be naïve to identifying it as the sole driver, since infrastructure and land-use planning (including urban planning with impact on periurban agricultural areas), as well as EU environmental policy, also have potential and acknowledged impacts on rural landscapes (ibid.). Given the evident relevance of CAP in shaping the landscape and the recognition that this act in conjunction with, among other drivers, land-use planning, the separateness that has long characterized in these two research domains is puzzling. In planning, a strong dichotomy between the urban and the rural has been the predominant approach whereby even the analytical tools and concepts used to investigate the agrarian domain have been developed in function of the needs of urban development (Cazzola 2006). Or, put more plainly, cities have long been considered by planning

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scholars as the main object of study and the focus on urbanization processes led to consider agricultural areas mainly as blank spaces waiting to be progressively urbanized. This led to a predominant conceptual contraposition of the urban and the rural, whereas their mutual relationships should be understood in terms of juxtaposition and, more recently, also transposition, e.g. as regards urban agriculture and the import of other rural practices in the city (Santangelo 2019). In this frame, agricultural areas have been considered overall as intrinsically marginal by planners, and the relationship between the rural and the urban interpreted mainly in terms of fluxes from the first to the latter, constituted by food and migrant labour forces. Only more recently, the complexity of the fluxes from rural territories to cities has been investigated, mainly resorting to the concept of ES: the agrarian landscape indeed provides a multitude of functions that translate into services enjoyed by urban residents besides food provision, including soil maintenance, carbon sequestrations water storage or leisure activities. Some services, particularly those classified as cultural ecosystem services in the CICES nomenclature2 as visual aesthetic and outdoor recreation, entail a perceptive component as conveyed by the landscape rather than by the ecosystem and have therefore been termed landscape services (Willemen et al. 2008; Termorshuizen and Opdam 2009; Bastian et al. 2014; Westerink et al. 2017a).3 But also the supply of several regulation and maintenance ES is affected by landscape structure (Termorshuizen and Opdam 2009; Bastian et al. 2014; Duarte et al. 2018). Bastian et al. (2014) in particular assessed the importance of landscape configuration and the relevance of landscape elements and planning in affecting the capacity of a portion of land to supply ES. They maintain that while for provisioning services the spatial relevance is rather low, several regulation and sociocultural services show medium to high relevance, especially protection against noise (e.g. vegetation structures between roads and settlements), water regulation, pollination, aesthetic values and recreation (size and pattern of forests). We shall point out here that any approach focusing only on the fluxes from rural areas to urban ones misses a crucial element: we have shown in Chaps. 4 and 5 that currently agricultural land is a huge absorber of energy and material fluxes in the form of industrial production inputs—mineral fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, fuel, and so on. There is thus an inverse flux from the urban productive areas where such inputs are manufactured and the rural land when they are consumed and fixed in the land (in the double sense explained by Harvey 2001 and discussed in Chap. 4).

2 Common

International Classification of Ecosystem Services, see: https://cices.eu/.

3 Dwelling on the distinction between ecosystem services and landscape services is not the focus of

this section. For detailed accounts, see Termorshuizen and Opdam (2009), Bastian et al. (2014) and references therein. Briefly, if ecosystem services are the benefits to people provided by ecosystem functioning, landscape services may be similarly defined as the benefit provided to people by landscapes (Bastian et al. 2014). The point is, therefore, the distinction between the concepts of ecosystem and landscapes, which we have discussed in chapter 2. To recall it, the landscape term makes the spatial dimensions of ecosystem explicit and accounts for the human perception, including thus non material (social and cultural) components.

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Recognizing this double interaction as a constitutive feature of the current worldecological system is pivotal to achieve an integrated and holistic understanding for ecological rationality in planning. Bearing this in mind, it is evident that any change to the agrarian landscape implies to a higher or lesser degree a change in the capacity of that landscape/ecosystem to supply services to people. Considering the potential of the CAP to affect agrarian landscape character (e.g. through intensification/intensification, crop rotation), structure (e.g. patch sizes, crop diversification) and landscape elements (e.g. preservation or creation of semi-natural features in farmlands), the potential synergies between CAP and planning should become self-evident. More recently, the need to integrate the planning discipline with agricultural and rural development policies in the frame of the CAP has been advocated by several scholars and proposals and case studies are increasingly available: (Fastelli et al. 2018; Gottero 2019; Gottero and Cassatella 2019; Lefebvre et al. 2015; Rega 2014a). A main argument in this regard is the potential complementarity of the different “capabilities” of CAP measures and planning regulations: the CAP can allow the concrete realization of interventions that preserve or improve the rural landscape, e.g. via the establishment of landscape features, maintenance of agriculture in marginal areas, renewal of rural villages and so on. It does so, however, mainly at farm scale and through voluntary actions by single farmers, thus leading to disconnected action lacking a more landscape-oriented, coordinated approach (Prager et al. 2012; Rega 2014b; Lefebvre et al. 2015; Gottero and Cassatella 2017; Leventon et al. 2017). Planning instruments, conversely, have a comprehensive and coordinated approach to landscape management, but their agency is mostly limited to ensuring conservation through a set of norms, i.e. forbidding or limiting development in identified areas, usually without direct funding for the implementation of proactive measures (Rega 2014b; Gottero and Cassatella 2017). Therefore, putting together the capabilities of these two policy tools into a unified framework would remarkably enhance their respective objectives and improve effectiveness. Interestingly, evidence in support of the advocated integration is being produced from different angles and research perspectives. A well-explored research strand concerns the need for collaborative, large-scale approaches to the implementation of agri-environmental schemes. From an ecological point of view, it is known that there are critical concentration thresholds below which single, disconnected measures aiming at enhancing biodiversity are not effective (Dupraz et al. 2009; Kuhfuss et al. 2015; Batáry et al. 2015). A large amount of studies have been produced by ecologists maintaining the need to foster landscape-scale implementation of environmental measures within the CAP, particularly agri-environmental schemes (Dupraz et al. 2009; Franks and Emery 2013; McKenzie et al. 2013). The same issue has been addressed also in terms of the changes needed in the governance systems to achieve coordination and (more demanding) collaboration, similarly pointing at improving effectiveness with respect to disconnected efforts, but also highlighting the difficulties and barriers that will have to be overcome (Prager 2015; Westerink et al. 2017b).

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Explicitly considering the spatial dimension in agri-environmental measures design and assessment, i.e. the spatial patterns of implementation across the territories and potential spatial mismatch, has emerged as a relevant research topic. (Uthes et al. 2010; European Court of Auditors 2011; Spaziante et al. 2013; Uthes and Matzdorf 2013; Rega 2014b; Piorr and Viaggi 2015; Meyer et al. 2015; Raggi et al. 2015; Desjeux et al. 2015; Früh-Müller et al. 2019). Increasing evidence in fact shows that often such measures are more concentrated in already low-input or marginal agricultural areas, as a form of mere support to income, than in high-intensive farms, where the trade-off between the subsidies and foregone production does not seem to pay-off. Lack of coordination and synergies with other policy goals is also often reported (e.g. Uthes and Matzdorf 2013; Früh-Müller et al. 2019) Therefore, collaborative governance approaches integrating agricultural management and planning instruments—that explicitly address the territory and its articulation across space, constituting a coordination framework between different sectoral policies—appears a natural way forward (Rega 2014b; Gottero and Cassatella 2017; Zasada et al. 2017). The same applies not only to Pillar 2 measures but also to Greening measures under Pillar I and new ecoschemes proposed in the new CAP, for which increased coordination at territorial level is similarly advocated in the literature (Díaz and Concepción 2016) also considering that the overall environmental benefits of greening at EUlevel appear limited (Gocht et al. 2017) and uptake of more ecologically beneficial Ecological Focus Areas by farmers rather low (Pe’er et al. 2017). However, advocating such integration basing on potential convergence of objectives alone does not suffice if practical barriers and implementation mechanisms are not adequately addressed. Firstly, we shall acknowledge that CAP and spatial planning respond to two different policy rationales, respectively, sectorial and territorial (Rega 2014b): under the first one, the main target of the policy is the farmer as an economic actor: the subsidies are calculated to compensate foregone income and additional costs: an economic rationality thus prevails here, even if such subsidies are given because it is acknowledged that the “market” alone will not lead farmers to adopt more ecological practices. This will be the guiding rationality under the future CAP too, even if the goal is to move towards a performance approach–paying for results and not just for the effort. Therefore, any territorialization of such policy, i.e. any effort to coordinate single actions into a more coherent design, will in any case be subsequent: incentives to coordination/cooperation will be present in the next CAP, as they were for the 2014–2020 period, but territorial coordination will be something to pursue for. On the other hand, very sensitive issues are at stake here: differentiating payments to farmers based on the service provided instead of income loss/costs incurred, requires that clear, sound and transparent methods to quantify and evaluate the service are available; furthermore, the service provided will depend not only by the farmer’s effort, but also on several other variables not under their control, such as climatic conditions, the ecological characteristics of the landscape, the behaviour of other famers and other land managers, and so on. Any form of “integrative governance” will have to cope with these issues in ways that are acceptable by all involved actors. Similarly, targeting funding a priori on specific

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areas, while effective from an ecological point of view, might produce or increase socio-economic injustice to the detriment of farmers located in non-priority areas. Secondly, the different legal and procedural aspects of CAP and spatial planning processes should not be neglected. CAP is devised at the EU-level and it is the result of the negotiations of member states, the Parliament and the Commission. It is subsequently detailed at member state or regional level and finally implemented on the ground by farmers. The national or regional level thus appears the relevant ones at which any form of integration should take place: however, planning departments and agricultural departments within governing bodies are traditionally separated, have distinct technical structures and usually respond to different political representatives. Integration is therefore easy to call for, more difficult to achieve in practice: a strong political willingness is a crucial prerequisite, implying that each governing sector/department accepts to “lose” some of its current share of exclusive agency and accepts to co-work. Moreover, a relevant body of literature has identified and explored the factors that drive farmers’ landscape management decision, finding many aspects to be relevant, including of farmers’ role as producers, citizens and landowners, age, education, gender, succession situation, income dependency, environmental awareness, motivation, sense of place, legacy and history, interaction in social networks, societal valuation of landscape and demand from consumers (Primdahl et al. 2013; Zasada et al. 2017 and references therein). Very rarely spatial or land-use planning is mentioned within such factors (but see one case study in Zasada et al. 2017). Thirdly, and linked to the previous point: the legal capacity of traditional planning instrument is a crucial element. Usually, plans can avoid developments and other heavily affecting activities in agricultural land, or provide for some special protection to significant landscape elements (e.g. monumental trees, terraces) but do not have the legal power to regulate farm management in agricultural area. Neglecting this aspect puts claims for new “collaborative governance” approaches (or similar terms) at risk of being unheard if no concrete viable options are offered to policymakers and civil servants. Bearing all this in mind, we can put forward some practical propositions to make such integration operational, starting by bringing out the somewhat implicit territoriality of the CAP focusing on the new proposal. The first element is the mere consideration that the requirement to programme and manage all funding through a CAP Strategic Plan will open up further possibilities for integration with other (spatial) plans. It may sound trivial but this entails important consequences: first, a formal procedure will be established, which will require, as described earlier, to setup collaborative partnership at national and regional level with other relevant bodies. This can offer the procedural and political window of opportunity to be grasped. It is important to highlight to this regard some contents of the new Strategic Plans addressing the spatial dimension directly: to begin with, one of their stated objective will continue to be “the protection of biodiversity, enhance ecosystem services and preserve habitats and landscapes”, the reference to the latter term providing a clear link with spatial planning or, in other words, allowing any plea for integration to be based on one of the main Plan’s intended objectives. Further, member states

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should define a national standard for each of the standards set at Union level taking into account the specific characteristics of the area concerned, including inter alia “soil and climatic conditions and land use” (EC 2018, considerandum no. 22). The political bodies in charge of land-use regulations might therefore claim a more prominent role in the established partnerships. Considerandum no. 24 offers another interesting hook-up concerning advisory services, which member states should set for the purpose of improving the sustainable management and overall performance of agricultural holdings helping farmers and other beneficiaries of CAP support to become more aware of the relationship between farm management and land management. Considering the role of the intermediary highlighted above, this element assumes relevance and point at advisory service as being one of the pivotal enablers of the advocated integration. This implies, however, that personnel of the advisory service is in turn made aware of the existence, scope and capabilities of planning instruments and their potential relevance. Art. 18 of the proposed regulation gives member states the possibility to differentiate the amount of the basic income support per hectare among different groups of territories faced with similar socio-economic or agronomic conditions. This statement leaves several possibilities open to managing authorities and do not impede that more detailed territorial criteria for the delineation of groups of territories are used: here planning authorities can deploy their analytical tools in support of such delineation, for instance based on the identification of typical agrarian landscapes when continuation of agriculture is deemed important for conservation. An explicit territorialization of payments is provided for art. 67 concerning area-specific disadvantages for Natura 2000 areas or areas under the requirements of the Water Framework Directive and specifically referring to agricultural areas included in river basin management plans. According to art. 98, the analysis of specific needs should include vulnerable geographical areas, such as the outermost regions, which again would benefit from previous and ongoing territorial analyses typically carried out in spatial planning at various scales. Strategic Plan will have also to describe direct payments, sectoral and rural development interventions specified in the strategy (art. 95) including their “territorial scope” and “condition of eligibility” (art. 98). The combination of these two provisions gives room to a deep territorialization of policies, provided that there is the political will to go in this direction. A further crucial element deriving from the managing of CAP funding through Strategic Plans is that, being formal Plan approved by a governing public body, they are subjected to Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) pursuant Directive 2001/42/EC,4 to be carried out within the broader ex ante evaluation. The SEA directive is one of those we referred to in Fig. 6.1 as the “environmental safeguards” directives. In brief, for readers not familiar with it, the directive requires that such plans/programmes be subjected to a formal assessment procedure aimed at identify, quantify and evaluate all potential, direct and indirect, cumulative impacts ensuing 4 Formally:

Directive 2001/42/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 June 2001 on the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment (OJ L 197, 21 July 2001, p. 30).

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from their implementation. It also requires that different reasonable alternatives are considered, that the preferred course of action is justified in light of the identified environmental consequences and that negative impacts be, to the extent possible, avoided, mitigated and compensated. The evaluation shall consider the coherence between the evaluated Plan/Programme with international and national established environmental protection objectives and other relevant plans and programmes; relevant environmental problems and environmental characteristics of the areas likely to be affected shall be identified and taken into account. The “environment” in the directive is intended in a broad sense, including biotic and abiotic factors, biodiversity, landscape and cultural heritage and the interrelationship between these factors. Requirements of the SEA directive further include that consultation with authorities are carried out to inform the assessment, including at least information to the public, and that a monitoring programme is defined to follow-up the environmental effects of the Plan. All this information shall be contained in an environmental report and the final decision shall explicitly take into account the results of the SEA process. In the 2007–2013 and 2014–2020 programming periods the directive applied only to rural development programmes (pillar II): the fact that hereinafter all CAP is subjected to SEA undoubtedly represent a relevant window of opportunity for environmental policy integration in general and in particular for the main issue at stake here, i.e. integration with planning practice. It is evident that the requirement to consider other relevant plans in the assessment provides a formidable procedural hook for substantial integration and joint plan making. The obligation to assess the spatial scope of the plan, the analysis of the characteristics of areas potentially affected and the inclusion of landscape as a specific element to evaluate further enhance the possibility to territorialize CAP Strategic Plans and offers a way to operationalize the “integrated governance” advocated by the literature. Curiously, the potential of SEA to this regards has been, so far, substantially neglected by relevant literature. Obviously, all these possibilities are potential and it would naïve to think that integration and territorialization will automatically ensue from the mere existence of procedural requirements: the latter, however, undoubtedly offer a chance that practitioners, scholars, policymakers and other relevant actors can grasp. In this frame, it is possible to elaborate on the territorialization of CAP not only in terms of its effects on landscape and the subsequent need to foster positive ones through landscape-level coordinated approaches but also by considering the specific role of planners an improved, more territorialized CAP. The following processes and activities can substantiate the CAP/spatial planning integration: • In the diagnostic phase, planning authority can provide information and technical expertise on the identification of areas with specific characteristics or needs; specifically, within the SEA process, areas with similar environmental problems can be identified, complementing agronomic and economic factors with environmental and landscape ones • in the definition of Strategic Plans actions, planning authorities and planners can provide technical expertise to spatial delineation of different intervention

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areas using more refined criteria able to account for all relevant landscape characteristics • In the definition of the monitoring schemes, specific landscape indicators can be devised, possibly drawing from already existing ones established for monitoring landscape or territorial plans. The harmonization and coordination of different monitoring schemes to avoid duplications is indeed a specific requirement of the SEA directive. A final element appears important: we have discussed how CAP territorialization is inherently limited by the fact that subsidies to farmers are calculated based on purely economic considerations, which makes it difficult to achieve an optimal implementation based on territorial and ecological criteria: understandably, a main factor for farmers will be their net benefit. We also acknowledged that to a certain extent this is unavoidable and that other solutions may entail legal and equity issues. In a way, planners are confronted with a similar dilemma when assigning building rights: concentrate new buildings in certain areas may generate inequalities foster speculation based on expectation of future gains: this is not substantially changed if the choice of specific development areas are based on ecological and/or social considerations. Planning theory has been addressing this issue since long time and different forms of equalization planning have been proposed. Without entering into technicalities and details, the idea is to assign equal building rights across relatively large areas to all landowners that must be purchased by/transferred to developers for the realization of planned developments, which then can be realized only on identified areas. This is often implemented through the set-up of mechanisms of transfer of development rights from sending areas (on which developments are not allowed) to receiving areas. The main aim of this ese mechanism is a better efficiency in the localization of new developments and to guarantee equity of treatment for private interests and making private landowners indifferent to the actual localization of developments. Following the same rationale, financial compensation mechanisms in agrienvironmental policies can be devised to steer the realization of measures in specific areas identified as the most suitable in ecological terms while guaranteeing equality among farmers. A similar “innovative governance” arrangement has not yet explored extensively in the literature to the best of our knowledge, an exception being the paper by Carmona-Torres et al. (2011) who elaborated a detailed compensation mechanism for collective action that would allow increasing the equity of individual resource managers by transfer of profits from farmers that benefit from landscape configuration changes to those that would incur losses. Here, the vast experience gained over the years by planners on transfer of development rights will be valuable, also considering that for such mechanism to achieve the intended objectives several conditions must apply and that under the “transfer of development rights” quite different mechanisms can be established leading to very different results (Pruetz and Standridge 2008; Camagni 2014; Linkous 2016; Falco and Chiodelli 2018). Similarly to what we have seen with other alleged planning innovations, there is the concrete risk that specific development rights transfer arrangements serve neoliberal agendas: nevertheless they can indeed by devised as part of ecologically rational planning,

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complementing (without completely substituting) traditional planning and zoning. These mechanisms cannot be straightforwardly transferred to the management of agri-environmental measures: practicalities, legal aspects and acceptance by farmers should be investigated carefully, but it is a way that is worth exploring. Farmers could be more directly involved, within spatial planning frames, in the establishment of compensation schemes, i.e. requirements for developers to offset residual environmental impacts of proposed developments by purchasing land elsewhere and realize on it measures improving its ecological value and the supply of ecosystem services (Rega 2013). Being agricultural land the main pool of areas usable for compensation in Europe, environmental stewardship mechanisms can be put in place as part of the negotiation between private developers and the public, with farmers being rewarded for carrying out agri-environmental measures or other forms of ecological land management. The fact that farmers are already familiar with such arrangements under CAP Pillar two and the existence in many countries of laws allowing farmers to be compensated for the provision of environmental goods and services5 constitute favourable preconditions. The incorporation of such schemes within spatial planning would also allow consideration of offsets in synergy with broader landscape conservation policies and would be a concrete form to implement the planning agriculture integration (see also Franks and Emery 2013 for similar considerations).

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Chapter 7

Conclusions and Ways Forward: Five Propositions for Bringing Back Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning

Abstract In this concluding chapter, a wrap-up of the main arguments of the book is provided and five main courses of action towards a refoundation of spatial planning under the paradigm of ecological rationality are proposed. It is argued that the latter should build on: (1) a stronger expertise on ecology and system theory by planners; (2) a stronger capacity to identify and interpret the broader drivers of changes underlying the local processes of landscape transformation; (3) a greater consideration of agriculture and rural areas by spatial planners and of the ongoing phenomena therein; (4) a higher uptake of emerging spatially explicit tools and method, but maintaining a critical attitude, particularly with reference to ecosystem services; (5) producing actionable research, i.e. delivering concepts, methods and tools with direct applicability in real planning processes. The implications of these efforts in terms of curricular education and training for current and future planners are also discussed. Keywords Ecological expertise · Spatial planning education, training, actionable research

7.1 The Ways Forward: What Do We Need to Equip Planning and Planners to Deliver Ecological Rationality Throughout the book, we have discussed the need for a refoundation of spatial planning under the paradigm of Ecological Rationality. I stress the importance of the re-prefix because, as it has been shown in the first chapter of this book, ecological rationality was at the core of the theorization and practice of some eminent spatial planners and urbanists like Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford, Ian McHarg, and Artur Glikson. Of course, many other past and current scholars and practitioners would merit to be mentioned here, but the point is that besides laudable exceptions and niche practice, spatial planning discipline has not been able, to date, to provide a sound answer to the pressing socioecological issues society faces today. The fact that planning sometimes has not been able to do so and in other circumstances may have been part of the problem is not the point here. The point is whether this refoundation is possible and, if so, how to achieve it. I maintain that the answer to the first question is yes, but answering the second one is more complicate and © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 C. Rega, Ecological Rationality in Spatial Planning, Cities and Nature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33027-9_7

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requires recapping the underlying principles of ecological rationality and discussing them against the current status of planning. We will do this by putting forward five “propositions for bringing back ecological rationality in spatial planning” that have the double purpose of recapping the main arguments of this book and linking them to practical suggestions for advancing planning theory and practice. (1) A stronger expertise on ecology and system theory is required by planners We need integrated approaches and holistic thinking, no doubt about that. Spatial planning is the arena where synthesis between different expert knowledges can be achieved. This obviously does not mean that planners themselves must be experts in all disciplines, but surely poses a problem about what their specific expertise should be. Acknowledging that the spatial configuration has a key role in determining the capacity of ecosystems (or landscapes) to support human wellbeing is of little help if planners cannot translate this into concrete planning choices. But planning for ecosystem services, to use a now trendy expression, implies knowing how ecosystems works. Ecosystem is the contract form of ecological system which means that ecology and system theory should be two fundamental topics for planners. Is that the case? Probably yes in some cases, but no in the majority of the situations, particularly when spatial planning is taught in architecture and design schools where such topics are not covered with the degree of detail that the complexity of current socioecological systems would require. In Mediterranean countries, in particular, the coursework of planning schools is still dominated by an urbanistic approach that focuses on the urban form and the urban design. These are important elements, particularly in such contexts where historic town centres represent a relevant cultural heritage, but are not sufficient. Even the more complex system will behave following some basic principles, which should form part of the core skills of planners. We have discussed for example how the term resilience is often misused in planning literature, sometimes as a synonym of sustainable, sometimes referring to what is more properly defined resistance or homeostaticity in system theory. Resilience is a specific property of a system, thus the term can be used knowledgeably only if the broader functioning of systems is well understood. Planning faculties in Universities shall, therefore, adequate their formative offers and study plans, which of course implies in the first instance that lecturers and planning scholars themselves adequate their knowledge base and that criteria for selection of new academics are established taking into account these needs. Graduated practitioners should also update their skills and expertise to reach a minimum level of expertise in these fields. Long-life learning and training courses offered by professional bodies where they exist or by planning association/institutions should provide such knowledge. (2) A stronger focus on the broader drivers of changes and avoiding the retreat into specificity is required In many conceptual frameworks on landscape as socioecological systems and alike, it is correctly emphasized the presence and relevance of some “drivers” that act upon the territory, producing effects with a marked spatial component

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and transforming landscape structure and functions. These frames also fully recognize the nexus between such induced changes and the capacity of landscapes to support human wellbeing. But in most cases the drivers themselves are not analysed, they are just presented as something that happens. At most, they are examined at their lower, or most proximate, level of manifestation. Indeed, urban diffusion and sprawl are drivers of ecological depletion—and how this depletion occurs has been the object of many studies, see the relevant literature on soil sealing and its effects on ecosystem services. But what is the deeper, underlying driver of urban expansion, suburbanization and sprawl? This should be examined more in detail besides some generic reference to land speculation and generation of rent/surplus. It is not just a matter of being more aware of the broader picture; the point is that scrutinizing these trends gives us more instruments to react to them in planning. We have said at the outset of this book that planning is more than a technical activity, it is a process that interacts with these drivers in a more complex way: it is not just subjected to them but can in turn pander to them or contrast them. In a way, the planning system is itself a force of territorial transformation, but the orientation of this force may vary, as the discussion on the neo-liberalization of planning in Chap. 5 has shown: planning may be either act as a redistributive system that cushions the uneven development that it would be generated by the other forces of territorial transformation as much as systems that ease the unfold of such forces. To act as in the first case, a deeper knowledge of such forces is required, by the same fashion that a deeper knowledge of ecology and system theory is needed if we want to plan for landscapes able to supply ecosystem services. It is important to stress again that whilst detailed knowledge on specific, local circumstances is essential, we should avoid the retreat into specificity and always try to link what we see locally to the broader picture, even is such link might not be straightforward to identify. In practical terms, this again calls for a reconsideration of current coursework in planning schools, but mostly—as it was widely argued throughout this book—at opening up towards cross-fertilization with other disciplinary fields. Increasingly research in Europe and elsewhere is promoting collaboration between disciplines: this is a recurrent claim also within planning but is happening at an insufficient pace. Spatial planners have now an overall marginal role in the top-level researches projects at EU level: this does not only represent a gap in research, as scholars from cognate disciplines are now acknowledging, but poses the discipline at risk of further marginalization and irrelevance compared to other approaches such as land-use science and political ecology if substantial integration between these research domains is not achieved. (3) A stronger consideration to agriculture and rural areas If, as argued, there is a need to shift from predominantly urbanistic planning approaches to more comprehensive and integrated ones, agricultural areas cannot any longer be considered as marginal spaces either to be urbanized in the next future or to preserve from any form of urbanization. In doing this, spatial planning gives up adopting a proactive, imaginative approach to the management of such areas. Now, that planning has not dedicated enough attention to

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the rural areas and that should do it in the future is by now widely acknowledge by mainstream planning theory. But the consistent step forward is much less made: if agricultural areas are key in the design of sustainable, resilient, ecosystem services providing landscapes, then the drivers of changes acting upon them shall be equally deeply studied and understood. Again, this does not mean that planners should become agronomists or agricultural economists, but certainly entails a deeper understanding of the main aspects of current agricultural production systems, their specific drivers and relevant regulations and policies. No significant planning measure involving agricultural areas can be effectively implemented if we do not know how and why the managers of these areas (farmers, landowners) act, what influences their decisions, and what is the role of agricultural areas in the current systemic cycle of agroecological transformation. If such knowledge is not acquired, a renovated interest in agricultural area in planning will just lead to preservation and restriction actions, the traditional forms of planning measure, which would be necessary in some cases, but not sufficient in many situations. (4) A wider uptake of emerging models and method is required, but with a critical attitude We have shown that methods and tools for mapping and assessment of ecosystem services and design of Green Infrastructure are increasingly being proposed and used. In many cases, such instruments have a spatially explicit nature, which makes them suitable to be used in planning processes as supports to analysis, evaluation and decisions. Therefore, their uptake by planners is to be encouraged and such methodoloies should become ever more part of the basic toolbox of planners. At the same time, as with all tools that become popular, there is the risk that they are misused if the concepts and frames underlying them are not fully mastered by planners. This requires in the first instance that suggestions put forward in the previous point are followed, but also that planners always maintain a critical stance towards all tools and methods and their underpinning concepts. The considerations made above on the misuse of the resilience concept are valid for ecosystem services as well: there are several conceptual and practical caveats that should be carefully taken into account when using ecosystem service mapping tools in planning. The fact that using ecosystem services in real-life planning processes is (still) a relativelynovel approach and is thus assumed as intrinsically leading to more ecologically rational outcomes is dangerous. Misuse (even in good faith) of ecosystem services can well support anti-ecological, unjust or uneven planning decisions, with the aggravating factor that now they would be justified by a “novel” and “ecological” instrument. This calls for not only specific technical training (however important) but more in general to a more critical use, always remembering that any tool can support and inform decision, but is not the decision itself. This is of course linked to the first and second propositions: gaining a stronger expertise on ecology and system theory is the necessary, but not sufficient, condition, for a critical and knowledgeable use of new tools. The more sophisticated model, method or mapping approach will never be able to grasp and reproduce the full complexity of the

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socioecological system on which planning acts: the particular knowledge of planners will always be needed. (5) Actionable research! We have to deliver—either as scholars, practitioners or both. Our research shall always have a practical focus, results shall be tested against their relevance in real planning processes, continuous exchange between scholars, practitioners, public officers and policymakers is needed. Often, these categories and the relationships between them are portrayed in a stereotypic way, depicting researchers as providing good but unheeded solutions (or academic, nonpractical ones) from their ivory towers, practitioners as too much occupied with their daily activity to listen to them, public officers as mostly concerned to the bureaucratic aspects and to formal compliance and policymakers as shortsighted players unwilling to engage with too complex research results and think about long-term ecological sustainability. My personal experience as scholar and practitioners with constant interaction with both public officers and policymakers tells a different story. In spatial planning, practice can inform research as much as the other way around; there are many public servants with a deep knowledge and expertise besides the bureaucratic aspects and many policymakers are and keen to assume a long-term perspective and fully able engage with research, not only in terms of what they want researchers to provide them but also with substantial knowledge. Research-action is thus at the core of ecological rationality in spatial planning.

Epilogue

Let us return to 1969. The year had begun with an environmental disaster. At 10:45 am on the 28th of January, an oil platform belonging to the Union Oil Corporation (now UNOCAL) was operating in the waters 6 miles off the Californian coast of Santa Barbara when, suddenly, a huge spill of oil and natural gas occurred. More than 11 million litres of oil were estimated to have come to the surface in the following days. The combined effect of the wind, waves and oceanic currents produced a slick that had a surface area of 300 km2 , a thickness of 15 cm and a front of 35 km. The fight to contain the spill lasted 11 days. The environmental impact was devastating. More than 3600 sea birds, hundreds of dolphins and seals, as well as countless fish and invertebrates all died. The local economy, based on fishery and tourism, was brought to knees for several years. However, something else happened; an unprecedented spontaneous mobilization took place. Thousands of volunteers rushed to support the rescue operations and the cleaning of beaches and wild animals that were trapped by oil. Public opinion all over the country was shaken by the news, which received massive media coverage. Many scholars identify, in that event and in the reaction that it triggered, the inception of the environmentalist movement. The Environmental Defence Centre, a no-profit organization that has since supported environmental safeguard projects, was created in California shortly afterward. The internal debate caused by the event lead to the approval, in December, of the National Environment Policy Act (NEPA), which is still one of the most advanced pieces of environmental legislation in existence and the forerunner of environmental impact assessment laws all over the world. On the 30th November of the same year, the first “Earth Day” was announced and the event was celebrated on the 22nd April of the following year. It featured millions of people demonstrating all over the world to demand that ecological issues be placed on government agendas. Other things had happened that year: on the 4th of January, 156 countries signed the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a document condemning discrimination based on race and

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pursuing a unified effort to end racism, also calling out colonialism and apartheid. The Stonewall riots in New York marked the beginning of the gay–lesbian liberation movement; the death penalty was abolished in the UK; the first microprocessor was invented, opening the way for the computer revolution that followed. Fifty years have passed since then. In this time, the human population has doubled, consumption and production patterns have changed accordingly, and new ecological challenge have emerged. However, our knowledge of ecological systems has also improved, as has our awareness of the impact of our own activities and the underlying causes. Ecological rationality shall become the reference paradigm for spatial planning as much as spatial planning shall become a concrete way to deliver ecologicallyrational courses of actions. It is a cyclical, mutually reinforcing process that will face resistance and barriers and will require concrete, continue, enduring efforts. As all inherently political processes, it is going to be a struggle.

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