current land use act in particular.
2. The adoption of the LOUGA by Galician local governments
The enactment of the Local Planning and Protection of Rural Areas Act of 2002 was encouraged by three judgements of the Constitutional Court of Spain of 5 July 2001, 11 July 2001 and 27 February 2002. They were aimed at clarifying the competences of the State and Regional governments in the definition of land use classes. However, the enactment of the LOUGA went far beyond what was needed to adapt the 1997 land use act of Galicia to the new national framework.
Actually, the LOUGA imposed much more restrictions on building in rural areas than the previous acts. Such a dramatic change cannot be understood without considering the prevailing climate during the drafting of the act. As an example of the atmosphere that contributed to trigger the passing of the planning act, one may cite the main regional newspaper La Voz de Galicia that on May 19, 2001, started a campaign against uglinism, a concept created to explain the lack of spatial organization in Galicia, by placing the following title on its front page: “The agony of the Galician Landscape”. The impact of the campaign was essential to understanding the goals of the new land use act (García Vidal, 2002; Tubío-Sánchez et al., 2013).
Despite that atmosphere at that time, a decade after the passing of the LOUGA, the outcomes of implementation are uneven. The act compelled local governments to adapt their plans or draft new ones before 2006. However, until 2011 only 53 local governments had made a land use plan that complied with the goals of the LOUGA. Among these, only 31 did so on their own initiative, insofar as 20 of them had already started drafting their land use plans before the enactment of the LOUGA and 2 of them were forced to adapt to the LOUGA after suspension of their plans by the Regional Government. This means that only 10%
of the municipalities adapted their land-use plans to the LOUGA in ten years, which can be interpreted as a low degree of compliance with the law. However, most municipalities are currently drafting their land use plans. Actually, only 6%
of the Galician municipalities have not contacted the regional government to start drafting their plans. Table 11 shows data of number of municipalities and their situation with regard to the LOUGA.
What are the characteristics of the municipalities that have approved a land use plan and what are the characteristics of the municipalities that have not started
the procedure for drafting the plan? To answer to this question we need to consider a number of factors that may be relevant to understanding why local governments decide to adapt or not to the LOUGA, namely:
1) Type and age of land-use plans
2) Political colour of the administration in office and its continuity over time.
3) Physical, economic and social characteristics of the municipalities.
In this paper these 3 factors are analysed both for the municipalities that have adapted their land-use plans to LOUGA and for the municipalities that have not started the process. The 221 municipalities that are currently (in 2011) working on their plans were not analysed because of the lack of available data on planning implementation and because the quantitative analysis that would be required goes beyond the scope of this paper, even though such an analysis might help determine the causes of delay in approval.
The analysis of the municipalities that adapted land-use plan to comply with the goals of the LOUGA is presented below.
2.1. Influence of type and age of planning policy tools at the time of plan approval
Type and age of land-use plans seem key to understanding the unwillingness of municipalities to adopt or refrain from adopting the act. Table 7 divides municipalities into three large groups: municipalities that have approved a land use plan adapted to the LOUGA, municipalities that have started drafting a plan adapted to the LOUGA and municipalities that have not started drafting yet.
As shown in table 11, the group of municipalities that have started drafting is the largest group, with 221 municipalities. Two factors were analysed: 1) the age of the plan implemented in the municipality when the LOUGA was enacted, and 2) the planning policy tool applicable in the municipalities that adapted to the LOUGA (for the municipalities that have not adapted to the LOUGA or have started working on their plans, the policy tool available in 2002 is still applicable).
Table 7 summarizes two relevant findings: the first finding suggests that the municipalities with previous land-use plans were much more reluctant to adopt the LOUGA. Data show that 50% of the municipalities that have adapted planning to comply with the goals of the LOUGA did not have any land-use plan, whereas 30% of the municipalities that are working on the drafting of the plan currently do not have any land-use plan. In contrast, almost all municipalities (78%) that have not started drafting a plan adapted to the LOUGA have an applicable general land-use plan. The second finding refers to the average age of the plans that were applicable when the LOUGA was enacted in 2002. The average age of the plans applied in the municipalities that adapted their plans to the LOUGA was 15 years. For the municipalities that are currently working on adaptation, the average age of their plans applicable in 2002 was 10 years, whereas for the municipalities that have not started drafting, the average age of their plans available in 2002 was four years. This finding suggests that the willingness of local governments to adapt plans to LOUGA increases with the increase in the age of their previous plans.
Therefore, we have verified that the municipalities that have adapted their plans to the LOUGA share the following characteristics: a) a trend to not having currently applicable land use plans, or b) a trend to having applicable land use plans amongst the most obsolete planning policy tools in Galicia.
2.2. Political colour of the administration in office and continuity over time
The political colour of the administration in office can be highly relevant for making decisions on whether to draft a land-use plan insofar as different political parties have different views on the degree of government intervention on markets or on citizen participation in decision making. A study about the influence of political parties in the conversion of rural land into urban in Spain has revealed that left-wing local governments allow 65% less land to be developed than right-wing governments in similar municipalities (Solé-Ollé and Viladecans-Marsal, 2012). In the case of Galicia, given the increasingly long implementation processes, stability, that is continuity of local government over time, must be added to political colour as a relevant factor, for it facilitates plan implementation without the interruptions caused by changes in local administration. Table 8 summarizes data of political colour of local administration and its stability over time. The first column includes the percentage of municipalities that adopted a plan in compliance with the LOUGA and of political parties that stayed in the local government for two terms (from 2003 to 2011) as well as the percent change of party during the two terms considered.
Table 8 reveals two characteristics of the analysed municipalities that are relevant to understanding the influence of political parties on making decisions on whether to approve a plan. First, the conservative party “People's Party” (PP) prevails both in the municipalities that have approved a plan as well as in the municipalities that have not contacted the regional government to start drafting the plan (in both cases, the PP was incumbent in about 50% of municipalities). It is therefore observed that municipalities governed by the conservative party PP were equally prone to adopt the act, they account for about 50% of the municipalities. Second, the presence of the liberal party “Socialist Party” (PSdeG) is almost three times higher in the municipalities that have approved a plan in compliance with the LOUGA than in the municipalities that have not started adaptation to the LOUGA.
The table 13 presents the developable area in the plans of the non-adopters, the municipalities that are currently making it and the adopters of the act in relation to the political parties that obtained the majority of seats17. Results suggest that the adopters governed by the conservative party PP during the two terms in office (from 2003 to 2011) have made plans that convert 0,04% more land from rural to urban uses. This represents around 34 ha of more developable land in municipalities governed by the PP. In the case of non-adopters and municipalities working on the plan, it is not possible to make a relationship between the developable area of the plans and the political colour of the local government, for their current plans have been approved in the past, in some cases many years ago. This means that the political parties that adopted these plans may be quite different from the parties that have been governing in the municipalities between 2003-2011. Beside this, there is however a clear relationship between a
17 Notice that when the conservative party PP has the majority of seats it becomes the governing party. The left-wing political parties (PSOE and BNG) may form coalitions when they obtain more seats than the PP. However this is not always the case. Only in the case of adopters, the political coalitions have been checked to assure the political colour of the local authorities during the terms in office 2003-2007, 2007-2011. In the rest of the cases, it was assumed that a majority of seats of left-wing leads to a left-wing coalition. This uses to be so – at least in the case of adopters – but only if the parties agree to form a coalition.
dominant proportion of left-wing seats (PP) and the convertion of rural to developable land, in particular when the proportion of seats is above 40%, as showed in the figure 2 shows.
With regard to the relationship between continuity of the administration in office and reluctance to undertake planning, the percent change of local administration during the two terms considered was substantially lower in the municipalities that adopted a land-use plan that complied with the LOUGA (19.3%) than in the municipalities that have not started the plan-making (31.6 %).
Compared with the group of non-adopters or the group of the municipalities working on the plan-making, the group of adopters has had the lowest variation of seats between the local elections of 2003 and 2007, as shown in figure 2. This finding points to a relationship between the continuity of the administration in office and the decision to approve a general plan.
According to these findings, PP is the political party that has approved the highest number of land use plans adapted to the LOUGA, but also the most represented party in the municipalities that have not started the adaptation to the LOUGA. Yet, the presence of PSdG in the municipalities that have adapted to LOUGA is three times higher than the presence of PSdG in the municipalities that have not started implementation. In addition, results reveal a relationship between the continuity of the administration in office between 2007 and 2011 and the approval of a general plan that complies with the goals of the LOUGA.
2.3. Physical, economic and social characteristics of the municipalities that adopted the LOUGA and of the municipalities that have not started plan-making
The above sections focused on some political and planning factors that could affect the adoption or rejection by local governments of a land-use plan that complies with the goals of the LOUGA. But what are the physical, economic and social characteristics of municipalities that may be related to the willingness or reluctance to adopt the act? The municipal willingness to adopt the act should be aligned with the act's goals, in the way that the greater is the willingness to adopt the act. Taking into consideration that the goals of local planning, particularly since the middle of the 20th Century, are mostly to manage urban growth processes and to protect agricultural land (OECD, 2001; Pallagst, 2007), variables related to urbanization processes and rural characteristics of the territory can be relevant to understand willingness to adopt the LOUGA. Therefore, to characterize the municipalities ten physical, economic and social variables, which are listed here along with the data sources for all the variables were used: 1) Total number of building permits in 2000 and 2009 (Galician Institute of Statistics – IGE), 2) rural land prices between 2008 and 2011 (Land Bank of Galicia); 3) agricultural labour force in 2001 (IGE); 4) 2010 population density (IGE); 5) crop areas (Spanish Land Use Information System - SIOSE); 6) forest areas (SIOSE);
7) artificial land area (SIOSE); 8) population centres (INE); 9) human settlements (INE) and 10) proportion of labour force engaged in services (IGE). When applicable, the variables were referred to the area of the municipality to make comparison between municipalities of different size possible. These variables help us to group municipalities with similar characteristics in order to determine the relationship between such characteristics and the adoption or rejection of the
LOUGA. Municipalities were grouped into five large groups or clusters, each of which had members with great similarities with respect to the ten variables mentioned in the above paragraph. Ward’s hierarchical clustering method was used to group municipalities with similar characteristics. Figure 3 shows the spatial distribution of the five clusters.
Clusters are arranged from most to least urban, such that cluster 1 corresponds to the most urban municipalities and cluster 5 corresponds to the least urban municipalities. Table 9 shows the number of municipalities that made a plan compliant with the LOUGA by cluster and the number of municipalities that already had a land-use plan when adapted it to the LOUGA.
As shown in table 9, cluster 4 includes the highest percentage of municipalities that have adopted the LOUGA. According to figure 3, cluster 4 municipalities are located in the rural areas with the highest levels of agricultural and farming activity in Galicia, as suggested by Corbelle Rico and Crecente Maseda (2012). At the same time, cluster 4 municipalities had the lowest percentage of plans before adapting to the LOUGA, even lower than the percentage obtained for municipalities located in mountain areas.
According to Table 9, cluster 2 includes the lowest percentage of municipalities that have adapted their plans to the LOUGA, with only 6.2% of 65 municipalities. Based on figure 3, cluster 2 municipalities are geographically located in metropolitan and coastal areas of the Rías Baixas, in southeast Galicia.
In addition, it is important to mention that both cluster 1 and 2 municipalities that have adapted to the LOUGA had already land-use plans. Many municipalities in cluster 4 did not have land-use plans or they were very obsolete.
Table 10 shows: 1) the municipalities that have not started the process to adapt to the LOUGA, 2) the clusters in which they are included, and 3) the percentage of municipalities that had previous plans before adapting to the LOUGA.
All the municipalities in cluster 1 have initiated the process to implement a plan, whereas cluster 3 includes the lowest percentage of municipalities that have not started the drafting of a plan. This result is in agreement with the results for cluster 3 municipalities that have not adapted their land-use plans. Apparently, having a previous plan is strongly correlated with low willingness to adapt the LOUGA. However, this is not strongly correlated with the cluster in which the municipality is included. Yet, the proportion of variance is not as large as the proportion of variance found for the municipalities that have adopted a plan in compliance with the goals of the LOUGA.
To sum up, the cluster analysis suggests that the highest level of adoption of LOUGA correspond to cluster 3 municipalities, which are located in areas of Galicia where the economic activity is mostly agriculture and farming (figure 3).
Accordingly, cluster 3 includes the lowest percentage of municipalities that have not initiated the adoption of a plan that complies with the goals of the LOUGA.
Adoption of LOUGA is strongly related to the cluster in which the municipalities are included as well as to the lack of applicable plans when the act was passed.
The reasons for not adaptation to the LOUGA appear to be related to the existence of a previous municipal plans that was very recent when the LOUGA was enacted in 2002 rather than to the inclusion of the municipality in a given cluster.