Conceptualisation of land planning and early experiences of planning land use in the Basque Autonomous Community

Abstract

Before the development of the current planning system, which is the result of the structuring of the state into Autonomous Communities and the transfer of land planning responsibilities to those Autonomous Communities, there were some earlier experiences almost entirely coinciding with the Franco dictatorship. For various reasons, the Basque Autonomous Community was especially rich in land planning documents. The objective of this paper is to identify the land planning documents produced in the Basque Autonomous Community during the era of the Franco Dictatorship, to analyse them and to assess them. The conclusions are intended as a response to three groups of questions: how is the treatment of the physical environment reflected in these document, how did these papers and documents contribute to the creation of a planning model and, thirdly, the intention is to identify the difficulties involved in implementing their proposals.