ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING - A TALE OF THE MUNDANE AND THE SUBLIME

The paper contributes to the growing body of work on planning discours e. In the context of the current 'greening' of British land-use planni ng, it poses the question: ''How is the term environment, articulated within planning discourse?'' With the use of material from development plans and development-control decision letters, an analysis is made o f the term 'environment' which distinguishes 'mundane and 'sublime' in terpretations. The function of the texts analysed is then related to t he dominant meaning given to the term. This raises further questions c oncerning the current preoccupation with using the land-use planning s ystem to implement environmental policy and identifies the problems of moving between strategic planning and detailed development-control le vels, a problem reflected in and compounded by the distinct operation of planning discourse at the two levels.