The compliance of land-use planning with strategic spatial planning - insights from Zurich, Switzerland

Although many planning systems are based on a combination of traditional land-use planning and strategic spatial planning, the interplay between the two approaches remains insufficiently investigated. Focusing on the Canton of Zurich, we applied a qualitative content analysis to extract strategic pl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European planning studies 2021-07, Vol.29 (7), p.1231-1250
Main Authors: Schmid, Franziska B., Kienast, Felix, Hersperger, Anna M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Allocation
Compliance
Content analysis
Density
digital plan data
discretion
federalism
Flexibility
Land
Land use
Land use management
Land use planning
planning evaluation
Qualitative analysis
Residential density
Socioeconomic factors
Steering
Strategic planning
zoning
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Summary:Although many planning systems are based on a combination of traditional land-use planning and strategic spatial planning, the interplay between the two approaches remains insufficiently investigated. Focusing on the Canton of Zurich, we applied a qualitative content analysis to extract strategic planning intentions from the Cantonal Structure Plan (1995). We quantitatively analysed the compliance of changes in municipal land-use plans between 1996 and 2016 concerning the extracted planning intentions. The overall low rate of changes was accompanied by few active contradictions of land-use planning. Minor deviations from the strategic plan were seen in the spatial allocation of new building zones. Considering the socio-economic dynamics of the region, surprisingly few changes were detected regarding the permitted building density for residential and mixed-use areas. This leads us to the conclusion that the Cantonal Structure Plan (1995) was very successful in quantitatively limiting the expansion of building zones. However, it showed a limited active steering capacity regarding their allocation and the regulation of building density. Our analysis showed that margins of discretion play a key role in multi-level planning systems, balancing flexibility for locally adapted solutions against statutory boundaries to prevent their misuse, as such they need to be considered in planning evaluation.
ISSN:0965-4313
1469-5944
DOI:10.1080/09654313.2020.1840522