Top-down and bottom-up urban and regional planning: towards a framework for the use of planning standards

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ways that the top-down and the bottom-up approaches to planning can be combined in the practice of planning standards. In the first part, the paper examines the utilization of planning standards through time, while in the second part it aims to unravel the relationship between the use of planning standards and the top-down as well as the bottom-up planning approach. In the third part, the paper focuses on the limitations of bottom-up approaches, in order to demonstrate that they can only be used in a certain planning scale, leaving all other scales to top-down approaches. Last but not least, the paper proposes a framework for the use of planning standards in a combined top-down and bottom-up planning approach.