Environmental Planning

The Conservation Movement

The later half of the 20th century gave rise to a philosophical interest in “conserving nature.” Informed by the earlier work of Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and John Muir and implemented by nongovernmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, governments began to consider what legislative tools could be employed to protect and preserve vast tracts of undeveloped land or wilderness and the natural resources they held. During this period, environmental planning concerned itself with land outside urban settlements and was applied to vast tracts of land. These preserved or protected areas stood in stark contrast to the increasingly dense urban areas that were home to the infrastructure of the Industrial Revolution.

The Public Health Movement

Responding in part to the negative human health impacts resulting from widespread industrialization located in urban areas, environmental planning's focus next turned to matters of public health. This movement forged a link in lawmakers’ and decision makers’ minds about the connections between human health and the surrounding environmental conditions. During this phase of environmental planning, there was new urban investment in infrastructure in support of public health, facilitated in part by expanded technological capacity. For example, there were major urban investments in water and sewage treatment, and cities began to explore opportunities to bring “nature” back through the provision of public parks and open spaces.

The transition from this movement to the ecosystem-approach movement was triggered in part by two events. The first was when humankind was first able to view Earth from space—an event widely credited with contributing to our understanding of the planet as a series of connected systems. The second was the release of Rachel [Page 981]Carson's seminal book Silent Spring in 1962, which sensitized us to the impacts that human activities have on ecosystems.

The Ecosystem Approach

Planning based on ecosystem approaches began in the early 1980s in North America but gained prominence in other regions after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the so-called Earth Summit) was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. Rather than focusing on the environment as a source of resources or a sink for waste, the ecosystem approach to land use planning emphasized decision-making processes that integrated the consideration of the impacts of human development on land, water, and other resources. Through efforts to assess the impact of current development on future generations, the ecosystem approach requires urban planners to think about the impacts of resource use (or conservation) on current and future generations.

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