Evergreen issues of planning? Learning from history for sustainable urban-rural systems landscapes

Contemporary planning for sustainable development has a main focus on sustainable urban areas. This paper highlights a systemic approach as well as integrated and contextual knowledge in spatial planning. Significant theorists within urban planning, landscape architecture and other related fields are faced with a search for knowledge that accommodates the development of sustainable societies. Our historical selected data (Sitte, Howard, Geddes, Migge, Mumford, and McHarg) was analysed in relation to the contemporary UN policy document The Habitat Agenda and the French architectural theorist Francoise Choay’s theory on urban design and critical planning. We identify several issues that could be considered as fundamental and discuss their potential role in current spatial planning in a Scandinavian context. The results are discussed in relation to theory and current planning trends. The main contribution of the study is a tentative theoretical framework that supports urban-rural interaction in spatial planning, titled The Sustainability Approach. This framework is also suggested as a natural evolution of Choay’s planning models.