Environmental Planning

Environmental planning consists of a set of theoretical tools and management practices that help humans make informed decisions about how to protect and conserve shared environmental resources. Like all types of planning, environmental planning attempts to translate social values and goals into policies aimed toward protecting public health, welfare and safety. Environmental planning adds to these goals an express concern for protecting and conserving the natural environments found in urban, rural, and wild landscapes. These goals, though, are often contested at all levels of government and society. As such, environmental planning is intricately woven into social and political processes.

Environmental planning addresses a broad array of issues that confront contemporary society. For example, the following topics are central to environmental planning practice: protecting air and water quality; conserving resources, such as farmland, forests, and open space; reducing the impact of environmental hazards on humans; managing the disposal of solid and hazardous waste; and protecting and developing the environmental amenities that make communities attractive places to live. Additionally, environmental planners work to remediate and redevelop brownfields; find innovative strategies to preserve energy resources; and protect natural resources, such as scenic wilderness, wildlife habitat, coastal areas and wetlands. Effective environmental planning practice attempts to foster sustainability in each of these endeavors. By approaching these problems with the intent to create environmental health, economic development, and social equity, environmental planning practice is a key input for a more sustainable society.

Environmental planners often receive professional training in a variety of disciplines, such as planning, geography, biology, landscape architecture, geology, hydrology, economics, law, or a number of other related fields. They work for local, state, or federal government agencies, nonprofit environmental associations and resource user groups, as well as private corporations.

In many ways, any human that has ever made a decision about the use of a piece of land has engaged, in one way or another, in a form of environmental planning. However, as urbanization and natural resource use increased in the 19th and 20th centuries, more people became concerned about environmental planning. The historical development of environmental planning theory and practice in the United States reflects the country's changing environmental and social conditions.

[Page 180]During the progressive era in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, environmental planners reflected the national concern regarding poor urban conditions and the country's growing appetite for natural resources. Planners like Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed New York's Central Park, sought to create beautiful urban greenspaces that would combat the increasingly ugly and unsanitary conditions of cities in the turn of the century. Outside of cities, naturalist John Muir fought for wilderness protection, while forester Gifford Pinchot contended that efficiency and a sustained yield of timber resources were paramount concerns for wilderness areas. The federal government became involved in environmental planning during this period and created several new federal organizations, such as the National Parks Service and the Soil Conservation Service. Pinchot established the newly formed National Forest Service's utilitarian mission as creating “the greatest good for the greatest number”—a conservation focus that continues to inform the planning practices of many government land use agencies.

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