Implementing Sustainability

New Zealand's Resource Management Act (RMA) was hailed as a radical new approach to planning that would both achieve better environmental outcomes and benefit developers by working rapidly and more efficiently. This book examines the lessons that can be learned by planning practitioners across the world. It focuses on the realities of implementing the RMA for the planning profession, the community and the political system within which planning must always operate. Offering a practitioner's insight, the book looks at those strategies and techniques that have proved successful, and spells out what can be applied to the planning systems of other countries.

Caroline L. Miller is a senior lecturer in the Resource and Environmental Planning Programme at Massey University in Palmerston North where her teaching focuses on planning practice. She was a planning practitioner for some 15 years and is a Councillor of the New Zealand Planning Institute from which she received a Distinguished Service Award in 2007.

1. Introduction - Setting the Scene 2. Implementing Sustainability by Legislation - Institutions and Processes 3. Integrated Management and Regional Planning - Water, Air and Land 4. Urban Planning and the Built Environment 5. Energy and Infrastructure 6. Tangata Whenua and the Resource Management Act 7. The Profession, the Politicians and the Public 8. Conclusions - The Lessons from New Zealand