1. What would you suggest are the necessary criteria for an effective spatial planning system for any national context, and to what extent are these criteria achieved by the planning system in Scotland? Give examples to illustrate your answer.

In this case, the planning system covers the policy and legislative/regulatory context including how aims are deliver by relevant mechanisms (eg some form of development management/control).

You should research a variety of sources (including eg websites, books, journals etc) to reach your conclusions. The second part of the question is dependent on your familiarity with and understanding of another planning system.

You should ensure you fully justify all elements of your argument. For instance, you should fully justify the criteria you have selected based on your own argument and appropriate supporting sources. You should also include relevant supportive content in relation to showing how far your suggested criteria are achieved in your selected context. This should include a description of the relevant planning system (ie the broad policy and implementation context, key regulations and delivery mechanisms, etc). You may find it useful to provide appropriate tabular/visual illustration here, eg via a summary table showing your selected criteria and how far these have been achieved.

You should avoid superficial discussion at a very general level and you should consider the potential impact and influence of different economic, cultural and historical contexts. So a component of the essay should consider the issue of how far criteria can be developed that are context-independent – this may be straightforward for some criteria but not for others, and you should clarify this as appropriate.

You should also make accurate use of the Harvard referencing system to cite all sources appropriately. Information on this is available online and in the library.

The essay must not exceed 4,500 words and must follow the normal School requirements in terms of presentation. This is a research-oriented assessment using mainly secondary materials and data, but you must avoid plagiarism and carefully reference in the text the work of authors whose ideas you are using.  There must be a full list of references at the end.