Strategic Environmental Assessment – An Instrument for Better Decision-Making Towards Urban Sustainable Planning ☆

Abstract The connection of urban planning and SEA is understood as the inevitable condition for acceptable development and an important opportunity for enforcing approaches leading to sustainable development in the decision making process. Application of the SEA in such planning could be observed for decades and urban planning is a field to which SEA is most commonly applied in many countries since it is probably the easiest field to implement all types of SEA. This paper is focused on pointing out the “added value” and potential benefits of linking SEA with spatial planning, on reviewing the recent development and application of SEA in planning in various countries worldwide with a special accent to circumstances and conditions under which this development took place. In addition, it provides a summary of the experience with evaluation in this area based on the SEA systems founded so far and case studies. This knowledge implies also proposals for future developments. A special attention is given to the dynamic development of SEA application in spatial planning in all EU member countries. Furthermore, it gives a summary of practical experience in this fields based on available reference SEA system evaluations as well as on a number of published case studies and on personal experience.