Environmental Planning Concepts and Theories

Planning is a decision-making process that involves choosing alternatives among different courses of action to attain a certain objective.
It is a problem-solving process that involves establishing ends, determining means, and procedures to achieve the end.
Planning involves identifying different elements and aspects of the environment, determining their present state, and projecting them into the future.

Conventional: Planning is a decision-making process that involves choosing alternatives among different courses of action to attain a certain objective.
Academic: Planning is a deliberate, organized, and continuous process of identifying different elements and aspects of the environment, determining their present state, and projecting them into the future.
Urban and Regional Planning: It refers to the scientific, orderly, and aesthetic disposition of land, buildings, resources, facilities, and communication routes, with a view to obviating congestion and securing the maximum practicable degree of economy, efficiency, convenience, sound environment, beauty, health, and well-being in urban and rural communities.
Legal: Environmental Planning refers to activities connected with the management and development of land, as well as the preservation, conservation, and management of the human environment.

To further the welfare of people and their communities by creating a convenient, equitable, healthful, efficient, attractive, ecologically sustainable environment that contributes to the economic prosperity of the present and future generations.

Urban Area: A human settlement with high population density and substantial infrastructure on built environment.
City: An important permanent settlement possessing the characteristics of size, density, and heterogeneity, whose people are granted a substantial level of self-governance.
Region: Refers to a city of central place plus the outlying territories that are functionally integrated with it.
Sector: An element or sub-system of a whole having coherent functions and subject to common-thematic type of planning.
Program: A collection of complementary projects/activities formulated to achieve the functions/objectives of a sector.
Project: A self-contained unit of investment aimed at developing resources and facilities within a limited area within a given time period.
Concept Plan: The output of the first stage activities in the preparation of a development plan.
Development Plan: A series of written statements accompanied by maps, illustrations, and diagrams that describe what the community wants to become and how it wants to develop.
Consultation: The process of obtaining technical advice or opinion that may be or may not be followed.

Incremental Planning: A "science of muddling through" approach, where the planner acts as a mediator to determine common interest.
Systems Theory: A set of interconnected components interacting to form a unity or integrated whole.
Linear Planning Process: A step-by-step approach to planning.
Activist or Advocacy Planning: Planners advocate for those who are powerless and disenfranchised.
Communicative Planning: Finding common ground and common aspirations among conflicting groups.
Traditional Planning: The Master Plan Approach or Imperative Planning - a grand one-shot attempt, its end-product is long-range (20-40 years).
Rational-Adaptive-Comprehensive (Synoptic) Planning: Uses reason more intensively - a rational or scientific approach to planning.
Strategic Planning: An aggressive pursuit of change, ensuring that all options are explored and that the most appropriate option is selected.

Laws governing the practice of environmental planning: Presidential Decree No. 1308 (repealed) and Republic Act No. 10587 (Environmental Planning Act of 2013)
Environmental Planner: A person who is registered and licensed to practice environmental planning and holds a valid Certificate of Registration and a valid Professional Identification Card.
Fields of Planning: Land use, urban and rural community development, urban design, resources, environment, recreation management, politics, tourism, heritage, transportation, waste management, health and social services, housing, economic development, policy, education, information systems.

General: Ethical awareness, ethical competency
Specific: Service to others, integrity and objectivity, professional competence, solidarity and teamwork, social and civic responsibility, global competitiveness, equality of all professions