Download Connecting England - Town and Country Planning ...

26 Connecting Englandkey priorities: putting limits on consumption (demand management), combating climatechange, protecting and enhancing natural resources, and creating sustainable communities.These demand national and international programmes of action. Local strategies, althoughimportant, are insufficient.The environmental resources we seek to sustain depend on trans-regional, even trans-national,ecosystems. Biodiversity depends on species which are controlled internationally. Moreimportantly for the work of the Commission, the habitats upon which all species (includinghumans) depend are inter-related, whether they are part of local watersheds or drainagecatchment areas, or more especially the seas, atmosphere or climate, which serve us all.Inevitably, the changes threatening the future of these habitats and ecosystems are equally transregional,including the consumption of energy, land or water, and the associated waste byproducts.Globalisation is also reflected in international sharing of powers and acceptance ofresponsibilities. There is an emerging framework of global governance networks, reflected informal agreements and informal co-operation determined by national governments, whichvariously either constrain or empower local communities. The urban agenda is becoming centralto many of these international debates, as in the European Union’s Bristol Accord (December2005) and the World Urban Forum (Habitat Conference in Vancouver, 2006).2.3 Responding to the Casual FactorsThere is an established and growing role for territorial governance and management, linkingspatial environmental and economic strategies and integrating sectoral policies and programmes.Within the UK this has in part driven the new ‘regional agenda’ of the Government and,internationally, it is reflected in the OECD’s territorial development programmes/initiatives.The new global context means that such management is not open to ‘direction’ by government:the economic ‘cake’ can no longer be divided up or allocated at the whim of government.Historic interventionist policies are no longer relevant. Other mechanisms and programmes haveto take their place.The Government has responded to this challenge in a number of initiatives, which are describedin Section 3. The Commission has sought to assess whether these action programmes aresufficient or whether they need to be complemented by the preparation of an integratedDevelopment Framework for England (DFE). In the following sections therefore, this report firstassesses the current policies and their outcomes (Section 3) and then seeks to address the issuesidentified (Section 4).It should be remembered that a ‘housing-only’ approach to the regional development challengeidentified is unlikely to be successful. Constraining housing development in the South East, forexample, does not produce economic growth at the other end of the country. Some of theleast successful attempts to address regional disparities have relied on crude marshalling ofhousing numbers to try to achieve economic outcomes. While attractive living environmentsare a key element in economic success, this report focuses upon inspiring growth in the regions;and if this is successful, the people and the increased demand for homes in those regions willfollow.