Assessing social impacts of urban land-use plans: From theory to practice

The purpose of this article is to analyse the content and importance of social impact assessment (SIA) in urban planning. SIA can be defined as a systematic effort to identify and analyse social impacts of a proposed project or plan on the individual, on social groups within a community, or on an entire community in advance of the decision-making process. Social impacts of urban plans refer to various factors such as quality of housing, local services and living environment, gentrification or segregation, conditions of transportation etc. The article is focusing on the Finnish experiences, which are representing pioneering work in this field in the whole world. In Finland the new Land Use and Building Act, which came into force on 1 Jan. 2000, brought impact assesment as an integral part of urban planning. The SIA experiences in Jyväskylä City offer an interesting case. In addition, the paper presents a typology of various factors (dimensions of impacts) for different scales of land-use plans. It is important to understand what kind of impact typologies are relevant in various scales of planning such as detail plans, general plans or regional plans.