Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
planning approaches in the UK. Yet the key diagrams in the documents under
study disappoint in this respect in their rather non-imaginative representation of
infrastructure, urban areas and economic development and environmental designa-
tions. It remains to be seen how the regional planning agenda in England will
develop, and whether more emphasis will be placed on cartographic illustrations in
regional plans in the future.
Above and beyond these differences that relate to the organisation of the
planning system, there are some observations on the basis of the analysis which
apply more generally. First, there is a structural distortion in favour of urban areas,
infrastructure and designations (for example for environmental protection or eco-
nomic development). Rural areas for example tend to be underrepresented in the
visualisation of spatial policy. This structural distortion is of course partly influenced
by dominant spatial concepts and policies (urban networks and development axes
in the Netherlands, central places and development axes in Germany; green belts
in England), but the power of 'being on the map' could imply an in-built disadvan-
tage for areas that are not easily delineated and located. Second, the analysis also
demonstrated that while current planning discussions pay much attention to the
'network society' and the spatial impacts it may have, including increasing func-
tional interdependences predominantly at regional level, there is not much evid-
ence that these changing conceptions of space are being applied to the
cartographic aspects of planning. As there should be a thorough analysis of the
territorial structure before plan preparation, one could expect certain geographical
relations to be visualised on the key diagrams, especially in plans with a predomi-
nantly communicative function. Brunet's
chorèmes
demonstrate how spatial inter-
pretation can even lead to geometric transformation (cf. Chapter 3). Clearly, none
of the documents under study has taken this rather radical step yet and incorpo-
rated elements resembling Brunet's models, and there is little evidence of any inter-
pretation of spatial relations in the majority of plans. Instead, a traditional and
strictly Cartesian cartographic representation of spatial policy still appears to domi-
nate the planning approach in the three countries under study. Third, and reflecting
experience at European level, is the expanding scope of European planning
systems to include ever more policies without a clear territorial reference, such as
ICT or social cohesion issues. Clearly, the visual representation of their spatial
impact is a very difficult task, possibly requiring new approaches to visualisation.
Structural distortion in favour of objects with clear territorial delimitation is already
evident in the plans under study in this topic, and by integrating a large number of
other sector policies in spatial planning systems, which the European 'spatial plan-
ning approach' implies, the integrative representation of spatial policies in the terri-
tory will become even more challenging.
Overall, the cross-national analysis of the form and style of cartographic
