At the end of 2000, France enacted major reform of its planning system in the <italic>Loi relative a` la solidarite´ et au renouvellement urbains</italic> (Loi SRU). It presented a restructuring of the instruments of land-use planning and in addition carried sections that dealt with housing policy and urban...

Legislation introducing major reform of the French planning system is now 6 years old. It was intentionally seen as part of a trio of reforming statutes that linked spatial planning to institutional reform of local government. Taking as its starting point, the idea that planning is inevitably an...