The Planning and Building Act between market demand, land policy, sustainability, temporality, and intergenerational justice

LANDTIME is a collaborative project to develop the knowledge base concerning how planning according to the Planning and Building Act (PBA) together with relevant sector legislation promotes a sustainable societal development. LANDTIME will study the PBA, development of the act’s legislative room and need for new instruments by investigating the significance of temporality in Norwegian planning, through governance/institutional and time-based perspectives with particular emphasis on planning at regional and municipal level, i.e., from regional strategy plans to detailed zoning plans. The numerous plans and planning procedures made according to the PBA and other sector specific legislation take place at different hierarchical levels, have different spatial scales and time perspectives, and are subject to periodic changes and practices of exemption. In Norway, land consolidation and land readjustment are partly decoupled from public planning. LANDTIME will also study planning and markets by investigating the interplay between public planning, private property, and property rights. In Norway private developers initiate and prepare most detailed zoning plans, and urban transformations usually rely on private development. LANDTIME will also investigate whether the PBA is an adequate framework for regional and municipal planning to facilitate sustainable industrial and business development, and how the PBA and relevant sector legislation handle development conflicts, i.e., environmental protection vs. equity, social and intergenerational justice. LANDTIME will investigate three different contexts, Nordland County with selected municipalities, City of Bergen and Indre Østfold Municipality, hereunder urban land consolidation cases from Nordland, Bergen and Indre Østfold Municipality. The challenges uncovered by LANDTIME will be subject to international comparisons. How are similar challenges managed in countries with other public planning regimes than in Norway?

The Norwegian Constitution’s §112 establish that public authorities must take long-term responsibilities to ensure future generations’ right to a healthy environment, and the nature’s diversity and production capability. LandTime will investigate the following research questions (RQ): 1. How does the PBA perform as a “gearbox” for multiple spatial and temporal scales within the Norwegian spatial governance system? 2. How are the PBA’s instruments in interplay with the sector legislations and property rights utilized to handle noticeable increases in nature-based tourism and outdoor recreation in a sustainable way? 3. What are the tensions between predictability and flexibility and the use of regulatory and/or discretionary instruments in detailed zoning plans? 4. What are the consequences of PBA’s lack of measures to estimate and allocate net gains from land reallocation to facilitate sustainable development? Based on the answers to RQ 1-4, LandTime will also investigate the following RQs: 5. Should the PBA’s requirements for planning procedures be differentiated depending on the municipalities’ resources and the undertakings’ complexity? 6. Is the PBA an adequate measure for regional and municipal planning to facilitate sustainable industrial and business development? 7. How do the planning authorities’ use of the PBA’s legal scope of planning instruments for regional and municipal spatial planning influence the effectiveness, efficiency, legitimacy, and fairness of spatial planning? 8. How do the PBA and relevant sector legislations’ measures for regional and municipal planning solve development conflicts, i.e. environmental protection vs. equity and social justice, and safeguard sustainable development and intergenerational equity? LandTime’s analytical framework is based on an institutionalist perspective. LandTime will investigate three case areas that facilitate stress tests of some of the findings from EVAPLAN.