Poelsema, K (2020) The Environment and Planning Act and Sustainable Mobility. Master thesis.
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Abstract
In July 2011, the minister of Infrastructure and Environment (Schultz-‐Van Haegen) announced a bill for the Environmental and Planning Act. The minister described this change as the ‘largest legislative operation since the Second World War’. The Environmental and Planning Act seeks to modernise, harmonise, and simplify current rules. Furthermore, the Environment and Planning Act comes with four main points for improvement: Increasing clarity, ensuring a coherent approach, increasing flexibility, and accelerating the decision-‐making process. Whereas the revisions within Environmental law are situated in the process side of the planning system, there are also big challenges ahead in the content side of the system with for example challenges regarding the energy transition, climate adaptation, and more and more. Currently, a big challenge, or even the biggest challenge of today’s society, is the need to deal with climate change and the need to reduce CO2 emissions for this matter. Although there is a large variety of contributors to CO2 emissions, the impact of transport‐ and mobility processes on the environment has gained more and more attention in recent years. The transport sector is a large contributor to global warming (Santos, 2017). Transportation planning has traditionally been focused on sectoral working (Zuidgeest & Van Maarseveen, 2000). Whereas according to Banister (2007) a sustainable mobility paradigm requires a focus on consistency between different measures and policy sectors, as many of the problems in the transport sector do not emanate from the sector itself, rather they are coming from one, or a combination of other sectors. Therefore, Banister and Zuidgeest & Van Maarseveen (2000) are arguing that a holistic and integral perspective in transport planning is needed. The Environment and Planning Act aims to tackle problems integrally. This research is focused on discovering the potential opportunities and limitations coming from the combination of two simultaneous transitions, being the transition towards the Environment and Planning Act and the transition towards sustainable mobility. To research the potential possibilities and limitations coming from these transitions, the implications of th core instruments have been researched. Following from this, chances for working with more integrality can be derived from several instruments. The instrument of the Environmental vision is indicated as the instrument with the most potential for improving integrality. The Environmental vision brings opportunities to integrate sustainable mobility practices as a red line through this vision. Furthermore, the Environmental vision can have the function of a leading document. However, choices have to be made in this vision and this needs strong political support. In this way, a governmental body can state that sustainable mobility is important, and following from this every project and development needs to consider and incorporate this point of focus. Political support and the will and dare to make choices are essential to create these focus points. The quote beneath describes this situation. The Environment and Planning Act itself will not solely enhance sustainable mobility in the Netherlands, however, with political support and the dare to make choices, it can be a toolbox. On the other hand, without political support and the dare to make choices, the Environment and Planning Act is not bringing improvement in itself regarding the enhancement of sustainable mobility in the Netherlands. Next to this, this research led to the observation that the (formal) instruments coming along with the installation of the Environment and Planning Act are not regarded as completely new instruments, as most of them are already present in similar forms. The potential opportunities to enhance sustainable mobility are mainly lying in working with another approach, a broader view and the goal to work with more integrality in the living environment. In this way, various spatial issues (e.g housing shortages traffic jams, liveability issues) can combined to find and create win-win situations.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
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| Degree programme: | Environmental & Infrastructure Planning |
| Supervisor: | Van Kann, F.M.G. |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Jun 2020 15:03 |
| Last Modified: | 03 Jun 2020 15:03 |
| URI: | https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3195 |
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