At the core of urban planning as a discipline is the idea of ​​planning, which, understood in a broad sense, can be understood as the action of ordering the urban development of a given geographic area over time, in order to avoid conflict.

Already in the 19th century, the application of expansion techniques and internal reform of towns will be accompanied by the use of Plans. These constituted, already at that time, the appropriate technical instruments to put into practice the urban planning determinations included in such expansion or internal reform operations.

However, the idea of ​​a Plan does not originally come from urban planning but from the field of engineering and architecture, where it is equated to the construction project. Urban planning, starting from this purely technical conception of the Plan, will expand its content, beginning by introducing, at first, alignments and widening of public roads, later incorporating zoning techniques, urban discipline measures, creation of green belts, protection of rural land, etc., until making the Plan a long-range instrument whose effects increasingly reduce the content of private property.

The Plan thus becomes the classic planning instrument for urban activity, moving the construction works, which initially constituted its content, to integrate what are currently called Urbanization Projects.

The idea of ​​the Plan has not been without criticism. Opposed to its supporters, who defend it as a necessary instrument to configure a functional unit of the city and to which its growth must be subordinated in accordance with a rationalist approach, are those who find higher levels of human integration in unplanned cities and neighborhoods and, therefore, with a more spontaneous development.

However, today, the Plan has become, within the urban planning discipline, a fundamental instrument that cannot be dispensed with when intervening in urban development. Carceller Fernández defines the Urban Plan as follows:

The legal configuration of the Plans appears from the first moment that they contain mandatory regulations.

Spain

In Spain, urban planning law has evolved from a rarely used reparcelling system, passing through a highly hierarchical model of municipal, provincial, regional and national plans, which in practice was poorly developed, since the municipalities were governed by urban land delimitations and subsidiary planning regulations, minor figures of planning.

The successive Land Laws of 1976, 1992 and 1998 (modified in 2003), have established the basic parameters of the types of land and corresponding rights and duties of the owners. However, the practical application corresponds to the autonomous communities, which makes a homogeneous treatment of the matter difficult and leads to different urban planning rights according to each autonomy.

In Spanish Law, plans are integrated into urban planning through the technique of regulatory referral currently established by Royal Legislative Decree 7/2015, of October 30, which approves the consolidated text of the Land and Urban Rehabilitation Law.[2]​.

At the core of urban planning as a discipline is the idea of ​​planning, which, understood in a broad sense, can be understood as the action of ordering the urban development of a given geographic area over time, in order to avoid conflict.

Already in the 19th century, the application of expansion techniques and internal reform of towns will be accompanied by the use of Plans. These constituted, already at that time, the appropriate technical instruments to put into practice the urban planning determinations included in such expansion or internal reform operations.

However, the idea of ​​a Plan does not originally come from urban planning but from the field of engineering and architecture, where it is equated to the construction project. Urban planning, starting from this purely technical conception of the Plan, will expand its content, beginning by introducing, at first, alignments and widening of public roads, later incorporating zoning techniques, urban discipline measures, creation of green belts, protection of rural land, etc., until making the Plan a long-range instrument whose effects increasingly reduce the content of private property.

The Plan thus becomes the classic planning instrument for urban activity, moving the construction works, which initially constituted its content, to integrate what are currently called Urbanization Projects.

The idea of ​​the Plan has not been without criticism. Opposed to its supporters, who defend it as a necessary instrument to configure a functional unit of the city and to which its growth must be subordinated in accordance with a rationalist approach, are those who find higher levels of human integration in unplanned cities and neighborhoods and, therefore, with a more spontaneous development.

However, today, the Plan has become, within the urban planning discipline, a fundamental instrument that cannot be dispensed with when intervening in urban development. Carceller Fernández defines the Urban Plan as follows:

The legal configuration of the Plans appears from the first moment that they contain mandatory regulations.

Spain

In Spain, urban planning law has evolved from a rarely used reparcelling system, passing through a highly hierarchical model of municipal, provincial, regional and national plans, which in practice was poorly developed, since the municipalities were governed by urban land delimitations and subsidiary planning regulations, minor figures of planning.

The successive Land Laws of 1976, 1992 and 1998 (modified in 2003), have established the basic parameters of the types of land and corresponding rights and duties of the owners. However, the practical application corresponds to the autonomous communities, which makes a homogeneous treatment of the matter difficult and leads to different urban planning rights according to each autonomy.

In Spanish Law, plans are integrated into urban planning through the technique of regulatory referral currently established by Royal Legislative Decree 7/2015, of October 30, which approves the consolidated text of the Land and Urban Rehabilitation Law.[2]​.