The last chapter introduced the paradigm of growth-dependent planning in outline form and argued that the rise of governance had enabled this paradigm to become embedded in the planning system. This chapter explores this embedding process in more detail, looking briefly at the history of planning over the past four decades and considering key aspects of the contemporary institutions of planning. In setting up the discussion of how growth dependence became and remains embedded in the institutions of the planning system, it is helpful to clarify a little further what growth-dependent planning is and what it is not.

Planning debates have had a tendency to become entrenched in dichotomies, typically between pro- and anti-development positions or between pro- and anti-regulation positions. Thus accounts of planning often tell how planning policy and practice has emphasised the release of land for development or, alternatively, has constrained such land releases. Or it has told the history of planning in terms of shifts between more and less regulatory phases. In these accounts, the emphasis on regulation within the planning system often becomes elided with concerns about the attitude to releasing land for development. It is assumed that the existence of these regulatory powers, and the strong support for their use, will lead to the use of regulation to restrict the supply of development land.

But the identification of the paradigm of growth-dependent planning importantly separates out these two aspects of planning policy and practice: the attitude to releasing land for market-led development and the effective exercise of planning regulation. This is because, for growth-dependent planning to deliver on its promises it requires both a commitment to fostering market development and a commitment to using regulatory powers to deliver social and environmental benefits. These only come into tension when the scale of those social and environmental benefits threatens the viability of market development (as will be explained in Chapter 3). Table 2.1 illustrates this distinction between growth-dependent planning and a planning approach that is purely concerned with promoting market-led development, that is, a de-regulation perspective.

Table 2.1 has two axes: the extent to which market-led development is prioritised and promoted, on the one hand, and the focus within the planning system on getting social and environmental benefits from new development on the other.