Chosen Socio-economic Aspects of Spatial Planning in the Process of Space Management

The article highlights some socio-economic aspects of land use planning. Effective space management requires co-ordinated programmes, the limits allowing the social space to self-regulate and the carefully calculated volume of input (not only in the economic terms) into maintaining the desired quality of this space. Disturbed balance between the space self-regulation and the disproportionate input usually results in excessive burden laid on one of these elements. Therefore, adequate proportions between the two of them should be of central importance for land use planners. To this end, it is extremely important to develop a proper land use policy, a part of which are local development plans. They create the space and its functions and, conversely, it is the space and its quality that determine the provisions of land use plans. The latter make entities behave on the market in a specific way, thus shaping, directly or indirectly, the local property prices. A local development plan, or its absence, often hinders the growth of not only the local real estate market, but also the local development in general. Effective planning, especially in terms of economic and social consequences, determines the contents of the information resource that is necessary for making right land use decisions. The deficit of micro-scale analyses leads to a situation when local plans are created on the basis of data aggregated for much larger areas (such as cities or their districts) thus making the predicted effects of land use planning burdened with error. Another equally important issue is an ex post analysis of the land use planning effects. It is also necessary to develop a coherent concept of the spatial order of the area beyond the administrative borders. Unfortunately, the areas covered by land use planning are constantly shrinking in size, which is resulting in the disturbed continuity of the spatial order and in the uncontrolled urban sprawl.Spatial development policies and land use plans should be preceded by the strategic analyses of their impact on the natural environment, of the mutual influence of the plan provisions on the neighbouring administrative units, of the economic effects of using local land and buildings (not limited to the financial consequences of a zoning fee) and, first and foremost, of the social relevance of the functions proposed for the area in question