environment

One of the main obstacles to change is that the transportation establishment has organized itself into a well structured, disciplined and cohesive profession, dedicated to delivering on its perceived mandate to provide Americans with a system of high speed and supposedly safe roads. The industry has managed to influence two generations of planners, politicians, developers, people in construction industries, special interest groups, and the public itself about how planning should be done to achieve these goals. There is a language and terminology, funding mechanisms, curriculum at universities, carefully articulated values and policies that have been institutionalized at a scale that has rarely been matched.

The concept for “Streets as Places” originated over 10 years ago when PPS received grants from several foundations to write about an important dilemma that was facing people in many cities - the disappearance of places in communities and the role that cars played in that disappearance. People were experiencing this in different ways but the issues were always the same. Whether they were mothers pushing strollers, parents thinking about whether it was safe for their children to walk or bicycle to school or older people who were feeling isolated because they couldn’t drive, all were experiencing difficulty crossing streets in their neighbourhoods and in their downtowns. All were concerned about issues related to the livability of their communities, including the noise and speed of traffic and their ability to get around their neighbourhoods and downtowns on foot.

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In this issue

We are all pivotal to changing attitudes towards environmental issues like our over reliance on carbon.

This report has been prepared to identify legal and institutional barriers to the integration of land use and transport planning in New Zealand. The research undertaken for the report was carried out between July 2006 and August 2007, as part of Land Transport New Zealand’s 2006/2007 Research Programme. Over the last decade, the integration of land use and transport has gained increasing international attention. In large part, this trend has been necessitated by the growing environmental and social impacts of road networks and motor vehicle use. These impacts are widely seen as being exacerbated by a lack of integration between land use and transport planning. Recent developments in New Zealand have also led to an emerging awareness of the importance of integrating land use and transport planning. The introduction of the New Zealand Transport Strategy and the Land Transport Management Act 2003 has served to focus attention on improving transport planning. In response, the Ministry of Transport has identified integration as one of four strategic priorities for the sector. While the principle of integration is becoming established, its implementation remains problematic. Overseas experience shows there are often significant legal and institutional barriers to integration, many resulting from the traditional separation of land use and transport planning. Identifying and addressing these barriers is, therefore, critical if planning processes are to work together to achieve sustainable transport outcomes. In summary, the main aspects of New Zealand’s planning arrangements that appear to be hindering integration are the: • allocation of planning functions across a range of different organisations • limited linkages between land use and transport plans • lack of common goals and policies to guide planning outcomes • disparities in public access to decision-making processes and limited opportunities for the public to genuinely influence transport decisions • funding and assessment processes that do not support land use and transport integration.