Applied land and marine spatial planning on/for islands (GEO-ISLANDS 714)

This course introduces land and marine spatial planning on islands and for islands. Land planning has been a well-established discipline within geography and planning sciences. In this course the geography of islands, including their physical, economic, societal and symbolic characteristics, will be brought into the planning process for land on islands. Specificities related to their size and physical limits are discussed and their influence on land planning is presented in detail with many examples of how these are dealt with under different planning and governance contexts and systems. Urban and tourism pressures have a special place within a context of sustainable development on islands.

Marine spatial planning on the other hand, has been a relatively new addition to spatial planning theory and practice. It is similar to land planning in the sense that it has to propose what type of activities can and should be located, but it is also much more three dimensional, in the sense that depth is an issue of great importance. The importance of marine spatial planning increases as the need for sea and sea bottom resources increases and therefore issues of limits and location gain importance. Islands in this context become central, due to their place and importance in the international legal system. Disputes in marine land planning around the globe prove the point. In this course, marine spatial planning principles and applications are presented and discussed within a context of sustainable use of marine resources and students are asked to study and review practices and contexts and apply them in a marine (or land) planning case study on (or around) islands.