fronts. More competences with respect to land policy, local land-use plan opportunities, and
project procedures contrast with the retrospective validation of local land-use plans.
The present role of the seven city-regions is in practice rather limited. When altering the local
land-use plan, local authorities must keep to the strategic regional plan. However, the city-
region is not capable of making a change to a positive land-use. In contrast with the province,
the city-region does not have a strong development control competence: it only has an
advisory role, not the retrospective validation competence of local land-use plans. It is not yet
clear what place there is for the city-region in the new spatial planning system. Provinces can
possibly transfer their competences if they so wish to the city-region. Then a binding local
land-use plan could also be set up on that smaller regional scale level. The precise role of the
city-regions will only become completely clear with the Enactment of the new Spatial
Planning Act.
The manner in which the province involves citizens with respect to spatial policy has been
partly left open in the proposed legislation. The legislators have chosen not to set down any
procedural prescriptions with respect to the strategic plans (structure visions). In the
mandatory prescriptions (the local land-use plan) this is a different matter. The government
authority is required to involve citizens in the setting up of the plan. The proposed system is
designed to make land-use regulations more transparent for the citizen. The required periodic
realization of plans should help in this respect, as should making the digital plans accessible,
which in due course will also be a requirement. At present several land use regulations may
seem to apply to one piece of ground, and it is sometimes difficult to ascertain precisely
which planning regime applies.
6. Flanders (Belgium)
6.1 The present planning system
Since 1980, Belgium has had a federal state structure. There are three Regions: Flanders,
Wallonia, and the Brussels Capital City Region. The regions of Flanders and Wallonia are
divided into provinces. The Flemish Region has 5 provinces. In total, Belgium has 10
provinces; the smallest province has 0.8 million inhabitants, the largest 1.6 million. The
Brussels Capital City region, however, does not have any provinces. Each province is further
subdivided into a number of local authorities: in total, Belgium has 589 local authorities; of
these, Flanders has 308. The smallest municipality in Flanders has 87 inhabitants, the largest
455,000 (as of 1 January 2004). The local authorities stand under the supervision of the
regions (not of the provinces). In addition to the independent local authorities, Belgium has
many intermunicipal cooperative associations (intercommunales); in general these are also
active in the area of spatial planning, for example by drawing up plans on commission from
local authorities and sometimes also by taking on the implementation of spatial policy (for
example, business park development). In the federal structure, the Regions have the
competence to put legislation with respect to spatial planning in place. We therefore
concentrate our attention in this article on one of these Regions, the Flemish Region. The
relevant legislation is to be found in the Decree on Spatial Planning; this decree came into
force in 2000 (De Wolff, 2000). The integral revision of the planning system in Flanders
therefore took place several years ago.
Within the Flemish Region there are three government levels which have competences in
spatial planning at their direct disposal: the Region, the province, and the local authority.
11