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coordination, and thereby to introduce national and regional perspec-
tives to local planning processes because they operate at an interface
between the national and the local. The regional level is seen to be closer
and more sensitive to the local context than national government. 74 At
the same time, its broader planning horizons would allow it to explore
with local authorities how the organisation of identi
able social and
economic regions, including, for example, those areas comprising cities
and their hinterlands which Wheeler describes as
,
might be restructured to reduce their ecological impacts, and the parts
that individual communities might play in this restructuring. 75
The second is that regional bodies which collaborate closely with local
authorities, and through them with members of the public, will be able
to assist central government with developing strategic plans that are
more likely to be publicly acceptable because they rest on a
'
commutesheds
'
rm founda-
tion of local knowledge. Regional institutions have, in the past, tended to
be
bodies with a primary responsibility for developing
plans that advance policies of central government for economic growth. 76
However, their principal role in ecological governance would be to
develop a spatial understanding of areas and knowledge of possibilities
for, and constraints on, resource provision within them based on which
theycanthenworkwithcentralgovernment to develop plans that are
genuinely strategic, in the sense that they capture what can be done to
advance ecological objectives. 77 The legitimacy of a system of gover-
nance which incorporates regional bodies that are
'
national-facing
'
and
that work predominantly with local authorities on the formation of
regional plans would be enhanced as they would preserve a clear link
with local governmental institutions and participatory fora in higher-
level debates.
An important consideration and one which has dogged the efforts
by the UK Government to introduce regional government during the
'
locality-facing
'
74 H. Dimitriou and R. Thompson,
in H. Dimitriou and R. Thompson (eds)
Strategic Planning for Regional Development in the UK: A Review of Principles and
Practices (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 3.
75 Wheeler,
'
Introduction
'
'
Planning for Sustainability
'
, pp. 14, 151. See also Wheeler,
'
Regions,
Megaregions and Sustainability
'
,872
-
3.
76 Dimitriou and Thompson,
'
Introduction
'
,p.5.
77
I refer to the classi cation of decision-making levels and their objectives in B. Mitchell,
'
in R. Lang (ed.) Integrated
Approaches to Resource Planning and Management (Calgary: The University of
Calgary Press, 1986), p. 14.
The Evolution of Integrated Resource Management
'
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