Author Archives: cygalp

New book – Planning and Development Law in the Netherlands

Planning and Development Law in the Netherlands seeks to be an accessible introduction to the extensive field of planning law. The book covers both the ‘planning side’ (the formal system) and the ‘development side’ (including the interrelations between municipalities and developers).

Chapters concern: planning powers, planning and property rights, the environmental permit, statutory spatial plans, private law planning instruments, infrastructure planning law and research obligations regarding environmental aspects of spatial planning.

The book is primarily intended for students. But also researchers and practitioners outside the Netherlands seeking information about Dutch Planning and Development Law may find this a useful introduction to this complex, yet highly relevant field. The book holds many international comparative observations.

Authors: Dr. Fred Hobma and Dr. Pieter Jong, lecturers in Planning and Development Law at Delft University of Technology

Published by Instituut voor Bouwrecht
ISBN 978-94-6315-012-5
The Hague, 2016
Orders: www.ibr.nl/publicaties

Conference 2014

After seven successful conferences of the Platform of experts in Planning Law the eight conferece will take place in The Hague, Holland, on 9 and 10 October 2014. Location: the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, Plesmanweg 1, The Hague.

The subject of the conference will be: The New Environment & Planning Act (Omgevingswet). The conference is organized in collaboration with the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment.

Click here for more on the conference

Click here for the case

Evaluation of European Judicial Systems

The statute of the CEPEJ emphasizes the comparison of judicial systems and the exchange of knowledge on their functioning. The scope of this comparison is broader than ‘just’ efficiency in a narrow sense: it also emphasizes the quality and the effectiveness of justice. In order to fulfil these tasks, the CEPEJ has undertaken a regular process for evaluating judicial systems of the Council of Europe’s member states.

Its Working Group on the evaluation of judicial systems (CEPEJ-GT-EVAL) is in charge of the management of this process. To facilitate the process of collecting and processing judicial data, an online electronic version of the Scheme has been created. Each national correspondent can thus accede to a secured webpage to register and to submit the relevant replies to the Secretariat of the CEPEJ. The 2012 Edition of the report is based on figures from 2010.

The report has been published on 20 September 2012, at the Minister’s of Justice Conference in Vienna (Austria). National replies also contain descriptions of legal systems and explanations that contribute greatly to the understanding of the figures provided. They are therefore a useful complement to the report, although because of the need to be concise and consistent, it was not possible to include all this information in this report. Thus, a genuine data base on the judicial systems of the Council of Europe’s member states is easily accessible to all citizens, policy makers, law practitioners, academicians and researchers. In the meantime, the States, if they wish, have the possibility to update some key data.

As for the previous cycle and from the information contained in the report, the CEPEJ wished to complete this stage of knowledge of the judicial systems by a stage of deepened analysis of some topics.

For more information click here.

Smart Cities and Communities Communication

Smart and innovative cities make the best use of Europe’s great capacity for research and innovation to improve the urban environment. In essence, a smart city/community combines diverse technologies to increase the efficiency of how a city functions. Cities and industries join forces to develop a joint technology agenda.

One of the greatest challenges facing Europe is how best to design and adapt cities into smart, intelligent, sustainable environments.

  • Cities create some 80% of the EU’s gross domestic product with their concentration of trade, business and “people expertise”. Cities are a driving force in generating Europe’s economic growth.
  • They will become even more important as the proportion of Europeans living in urban areas grows from just over two-thirds today to a forecast 85% by 2050.
  • 68% of the EU population lives in urban areas, which consume 70% of energy. This accounts for 75% of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
  • The information and communications technology (ICT) sector will require more and more electricity by 2020.
  • Urban transport is responsible for one-quarter of all the emissions from road transport.
  • Congestion costs Europe about 1% of GDP every year – most of if it from urban areas.

At present however, cities are confronted with many obstacles when it comes to the use of smart technologies: barriers to the adoption of efficient technologies, difficulties for the promotion of innovation in public procurement or uncertainty about returns on investment. In tough economic times, businesses are also reluctant to scale up and rapidly deploy innovative technologies despite potential cost savings and longer-term emissions reductions.
In addition, the transport, energy and ICT services and value chains are now converging. The idea is that industry tests technology in a given city/community to show that the technology it developed works on the ground, can be implemented for reasonable costs and has advantages for citizens and the whole community.

Many technologies have been tested by industry under laboratory conditions and need to be validated under real conditions of a city. The projects therefore bring competent industrial consortia (composed of R&D intensive industries from the three sectors) together with one or two cities to demonstrate their advantages – so that other cities may follow to implement the same technologies.

EU funding will be concentrated on a limited number of demonstration projects with high impact. It is therefore foreseen that: 1.Starting from 2014, a High Level Group will formulate a technological agenda with the most important aspects/issues to be addressed. 2.Based on this agenda, the European Commission will make calls for proposals. Industry-consortia can apply, submitting their project ideas.

European Commissen, July 10th 2012

New Book: Management of Urban Development Processes in the Netherlands

This book includes a 23 page chapter on the Legal Framework for urban development. The chapter is written by Monika Chao-Duivis, Fred Hobma and Elisabeth Schutte-Postma. European law, Private law and Public law regulations for urban development are discussed, illustrated by Dutch cases. The chapter is organised along the phases of urban development.

Amsterdam: Techne Press 2011, ISBN: 978-90-8594-029-6

www.technepress.nl

Question from France

We received the following question:

I’m making a study in comparative law about the regulation which applies to building shopping centers and preserving other (little) commercial activities. I would like to find the references and the original text of the laws and decrees which govern this matter in different countries. Would you have any bibliographical documents on this subject ?

We asked the members of the Platform of Experts in Planning Law to answer this question and give references to laws and/or decrees in their own country.

For the responses and more information click on the links below: