Select and complete one of the following assignments.

Select and complete one of the following assignments.

What would you suggest are the necessary criteria for an effective spatial planning system for any national context, and to what extent are these criteria achieved by the planning system in Scotland? Give examples, and cite relevant theory/concepts, to illustrate your answer.

OR

What would you suggest are the necessary criteria for an effective spatial planning system for any national context, and to what extent do you consider that these criteria achieved by the planning system in a selected country of your choice (not Scotland)? Give examples, and cite relevant theory/concepts, to illustrate your answer.

In each case, the planning system covers the policy and legislative/regulatory context including how aims are to delivered by relevant spatial planning mechanisms. If you elect to choose another country (not Scotland), this should be one that has an independent (or devolved) national planning system (so it could be England, Wales or Northern Ireland in the UK since the planning function is devolved to these jurisdictions). Building on your evaluation of your chosen system, you may wish to include (briefly) any relevant recommendations on how it might be improved.

You are advised to choose the question depending on your prior experience as well as access to appropriate information. The first element of both questions is common, and you should research a variety of sources (including e.g. websites, books, journals etc) to reach your conclusions. The second part of the question is dependent on your familiarity with and understanding of another planning system.

You should ensure you fully justify all elements of your argument. For instance, you should fully justify the criteria you have selected based on your own argument and appropriate supporting sources. You should also include relevant supportive content in relation to showing how far your suggested criteria are achieved in your selected context. This should include a description of the relevant planning system (ie the broad policy and implementation context, key regulations and delivery mechanisms, etc). You may find it useful to provide appropriate tabular/visual illustration here, e.g. via a summary table showing your selected criteria and how far these have been achieved.

You should avoid superficial discussion at a very general level and you should (whatever choice you make) consider the potential impact and influence of different economic, cultural and historical contexts. So a component of the essay should consider the issue of how far criteria can be developed that are context-independent this may be straightforward for some criteria but not for others, and you should clarify this as appropriate. You should also make accurate use of the Harvard referencing system (author, date) to cite all sources appropriately. Information on this is available online and in the library.

The essay must not exceed 3,000 words (not including reference list) and must follow the normal School requirements in terms of presentation. This is a research-oriented assessment using mainly secondary materials and data, but you must avoid plagiarism and carefully reference in the text the work of authors whose ideas you are using. There must be a full list of references at the end.

You should use the course reading list to guide your research.

The submission of the coursework is to be made online (via Canvas site)

Please provide your name AND study mode (Edin/Dubai/PGOnline-IDL/ALP) on the front page, together with the word count for the essay.

There is a +/- margin of error of 10% for the word count (THIS MEANS THE ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM EXCLUDING REFERENCE LIST IS 3,300 words).

Key criteria for assessment:

-understanding of nature of, and rationale for, the essay

-logic and clarity in the development of argument

-style and presentation, including the use of Harvard referencing