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Public Versus Private: The European
Experience
Actions like this must seem totally bizarre to most
people in Europe, where tree preservation orders are
commonplace. (They appear bizarre to many
Americans as well.) In Europe generally, there are no
such legal constraints about devaluing land. Land
ownership doesn’t come with pre-packaged rights to
develop it, so there is no ‘taking’ and no compensa-
tion payable except in the obvious cases of land pur-
chases for public projects. For American readers we’ll
say that again: 
Ownership of land doesn’t include the
rights to develop it
. These rights are generally con-
ferred by government, acting on behalf of the public
good and in accordance with a community plan that
is the result of democratic debate. Patterns of growth
are thus shaped far more by public authorities, and
some areas around a town or city may be designated
for future development, while others are not. In situ-
ations where land is required for public projects such
as roads or railways, it is simply purchased by the
government at the value of its existing use.
The extent to which governments plan and design
such growth varies from country to country. In
Germany, for example, no building can take place
without a specific, detailed plan for the development,
usually prepared by government planners
(Beatley: p. 59.
Authors’ emphasis added). Such plans illustrate the
siting and massing of buildings, building heights and
densities, even tree planting. They are in effect urban
design master plans. A planner from a German city
visited Charlotte on a study tour a few years ago, and
explained his country’s system to his American hosts.
A Charlotte planner asked what would happen if a
landowner at the edge of town wanted to develop
his open land for housing, or an office park. The
German visitor didn’t understand the question. ‘Why
would they do that?’ he asked. In their turn, many of
his American hosts had difficulty in comprehending
a planning system that wasn’t constructed around
public reactions to private initiatives.
In Britain, government direction of growth is
not so detailed, but it still exceeds the objectives
of American planners. At a conceptual level, there is
considerable similarity between the two systems, but
the major differences appear in the manner of imple-
mentation, and these variations are largely a product
of cultural imperatives. The function of the British
planning system is to secure, in the public interest,
the orderly and appropriate use and development of
land. The system originated from concerns about
public health and slum housing in the Victorian city,
but as well as controlling and preventing abuses it
has evolved to serve more positive and proactive
objectives. British planners are charged with anti-
cipating needed development and providing the
necessary infrastructure. They are required to protect
the natural environment and historic structures, and
to stimulate economic development. During the 1990s,
government guidance extended these established
tasks to include meeting the objectives of sustainable
development by focusing development more on
brownfield sites, limiting greenfield expansion and
improving public transit to limit increases in the use
of private cars.
The attitudes and laws that gather the develop-
ment potential of private land into the hands of
European governments date largely from the era of
rebuilding Europe after World War II, when towns,
cities and nations had to be reconstructed from the
rubble. A task of this magnitude clearly required
national coordination. Attempts at national planning
certainly existed in Britain during the 1930s, as they
once did in America under the failed New Deal
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legislation, but it wasn’t until the postwar planning
Acts of Parliament, notably the 1947 Town and
Country Planning Act, that these ambitions in
Britain had any real legal power. The 1947 Act left
the ownership of land in private hands, but effec-
tively nationalized its development potential, making
all land subject to planning control. Subsequent leg-
islation from both right- and left-wing governments,
with the exception of some dismantling of the plan-
ning system carried out in the 1980s by Margaret
Thatcher, has followed this principle ever since.
Whereas in continental Europe much, if not most
development is initiated by towns and cities in accor-
dance with their very detailed master plans, in Britain
the process has elements more recognizable to an
American observer. In the UK, private landowners
and developers often start the process by applying for
planning permission to develop their land, usually in
accordance with the precepts of the approved public
plan. All communities in Britain are required to have
detailed development plans that must follow national
and regional planning guidance issued by the national
government on matters such as urban regeneration,
sustainable development, historic buildings, trans-
portation, and so forth. As we have noted earlier, the
topics for national guidance also include the quality of
design, and in particular urban design. Planning
procedures vary slightly between England and
Scotland, and with the devolution of planning powers
to the Welsh National Assembly, it is possible that fur-
ther regional variations may develop. Accordingly,
we’ll concentrate here on the English situation; how-
ever, many of the same principles apply throughout
the United Kingdom.
Planning procedures set out in a 1991 amendment
to the Town and Country Planning Act require that
all planning applications from landowners and
developers must be determined in accordance with
the municipality’s development plan, unless there
is some substantial ‘material consideration’ that
may warrant some variation. This emphasis on the
adopted plan was reinforced in 1999 by the govern-
ment’s Planning Policy Guidance Note 12 that reiter-
ated the commitment to a ‘plan-led’ system. What
factors might constitute a material consideration are
the subject of detailed legal argument and variations
to approved plans are rare and are not made lightly.
(In Continental Europe there is usually even less
room for variation.)
In this situation, property owners do not often
make applications for developments that contradict
the approved legal plan. If they do, the application is
likely to be refused, and then this refusal by local
government can be appealed to the national govern-
ment in London. A planning inspector then adjudi-
cates the matter and issues his or her decision, which is
virtually final: the only recourse for an aggrieved party
is an appeal to the British House of Lords. A relatively
small proportion of planning applications are decided
on appeal, and in many cases the inspector upholds the
plan and disallows the appeal.
The plans on which these decisions are made are
detailed and comprise three types. The first of these
are ‘structure plans’ that cover large areas and are
concerned primarily with broad-based strategies for
transportation and other infrastructure, economic
development, and the amount, location and type of
all new development to fit these first two categories.
Also of major importance are energy and environ-
mental issues, landscape preservation, historic build-
ing conservation and concordance with national
policy. These plans are based on written arguments
and description and not on maps, so there is little
concrete link with design at this scale. However,
within the areas covered by these large plans, ‘local
plans’ are prepared for each community which are
map based. These plans focus on smaller areas and
illustrate more detailed proposals for specific sites
and buildings, including matters of design. Third,
there are ‘unitary development plans’ that relate to
specific large metropolitan areas, and combine the
two levels of scope and detail found in structure and
local plans.
All these plans are created by a lengthy process of
public participation and coordination at local,
regional and national levels, and are subject to
continuous updating and revision. They do not have
the force of law that their counterparts in European
countries do, but local governments are obliged by
national policy directives issued from Westminster to
follow their adopted plans in adjudicating applica-
tions to develop land. During the 1990s, local
authorities have revised these plans to take into
account new national government guidance on
sustainable development, a topic that has assumed
much greater national importance. Sustainable devel-
opment is defined in the British government’s