Urban planning law is a branch of administrative law formed by the set of legal rules that regulate urban planning, territorial planning and land use "Land (urban planning)"), and therefore establish the specific powers and obligations of the land owner.[1].
The three main branches in which Urban Planning Law is structured are planning, management or execution, and urban planning discipline.
Urban discipline
The urban planning discipline is the set of measures, techniques and powers that public administrations are obliged to implement before, during, and after any urban planning action, in order to guarantee that urban planning legality is complied with. In short, urban planning discipline is the Administration's way of ensuring compliance with urban planning regulations.
"In the urban discipline, administrative sanctions, precautionary measures, coercive fines and the restitution of legality are contemplated."
When an urban planning violation is committed, two procedures are opened: the sanctioning procedure and the procedure for restitution of urban planning legality.
The procedure for restitution of urban planning legality consists of the physical replacement of the building to its original state and essentially consists of two basic procedural moments: the legalization requirement and the execution order, if the requirement is not met.
Town planning
Urbanism, as an autonomous discipline, arises from the contradictions offered by the urban and social reality of this industrial capitalism and its reflux in the organization and structuring of urban space, a space that acquires an economic value (position value) until then unknown. The creation of this discipline, initiated from the political level with the figure of the public administration technician and from the private level with the formation of small specialized groups, has a subsequent development in universities and professional institutions where theories, techniques for the construction of physical space, methodologies, etc. were developed. which constitute, together with the precedents of those public interventions in specific matters such as health or regulations on building alignments, the breeding ground of the discipline.
Urban sanctions
Introduction
Urban planning law is a branch of administrative law formed by the set of legal rules that regulate urban planning, territorial planning and land use "Land (urban planning)"), and therefore establish the specific powers and obligations of the land owner.[1].
The three main branches in which Urban Planning Law is structured are planning, management or execution, and urban planning discipline.
Urban discipline
The urban planning discipline is the set of measures, techniques and powers that public administrations are obliged to implement before, during, and after any urban planning action, in order to guarantee that urban planning legality is complied with. In short, urban planning discipline is the Administration's way of ensuring compliance with urban planning regulations.
"In the urban discipline, administrative sanctions, precautionary measures, coercive fines and the restitution of legality are contemplated."
When an urban planning violation is committed, two procedures are opened: the sanctioning procedure and the procedure for restitution of urban planning legality.
The procedure for restitution of urban planning legality consists of the physical replacement of the building to its original state and essentially consists of two basic procedural moments: the legalization requirement and the execution order, if the requirement is not met.
Town planning
Urbanism, as an autonomous discipline, arises from the contradictions offered by the urban and social reality of this industrial capitalism and its reflux in the organization and structuring of urban space, a space that acquires an economic value (position value) until then unknown. The creation of this discipline, initiated from the political level with the figure of the public administration technician and from the private level with the formation of small specialized groups, has a subsequent development in universities and professional institutions where theories, techniques for the construction of physical space, methodologies, etc. were developed. which constitute, together with the precedents of those public interventions in specific matters such as health or regulations on building alignments, the breeding ground of the discipline.
Historically, the origin of modern urban planning lies in the laws of “sanitary urban planning” of the 19th century, aimed both at protecting the urban population from pests and diseases, as well as at implementing drinking water supply services, sanitation, standards on street alignment, ventilation of homes, etc. These laws arose due to the poor living conditions in industrial cities. Thus, in England the Public Health Act (headline standard of urban planning legislation) emerged, which approved the first health regulations. Based on said regulations, urbanization is carried out, without attention to organic principles or functional specialization.
Also in this century three important urban development techniques appear:
• - expansion, aimed at opening fences and walls that restrict urban growth.
• - the interior reform aimed at the demolition of old neighborhoods and their replacement with new roads and buildings of better quality.
• - Another fundamental technique of urban planning that dates back to the second half of the century is zoning. The technique of zoning, first presented in 1860 by a German architect, Stubben, consists simply of attributing certain uses to specific areas of the city.
Apart from zoning, which is the predominant urban planning technique, others of great interest emerge, such as the garden city of Ebenezer Howard, the linear city of Arturo Soria, the urban regionalism of Munford, or the functionalism of Le Corbusier.
As García de Enterría and Parejo Alfonso point out), until then the owner, with the system of road alignments that was extended through the widening and interior reform plans, found only one limit to his free building powers: that of respecting said alignments. From zoning onwards, the powers of land ownership will be more deeply constrained, reaching its very core of freedom or power of use, and with this, a radical limitation of the "ius aedificandi".
In short, it is in the century when urban planning becomes not only a current of scientific thought, but, above all, a technique for the distribution of public and private spaces and the uses or activities that can be developed in them. Obviously, these techniques had to end up having a legal content in order to be imposed, so their evolution gave rise to the current Urban Planning Law, composed of legal norms and planning figures that regulate the exercise of property rights and discipline the urban development and building activity on the land.
The urban planning plan
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.
Urban planning law by country
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].
Historically, the origin of modern urban planning lies in the laws of “sanitary urban planning” of the 19th century, aimed both at protecting the urban population from pests and diseases, as well as at implementing drinking water supply services, sanitation, standards on street alignment, ventilation of homes, etc. These laws arose due to the poor living conditions in industrial cities. Thus, in England the Public Health Act (headline standard of urban planning legislation) emerged, which approved the first health regulations. Based on said regulations, urbanization is carried out, without attention to organic principles or functional specialization.
Also in this century three important urban development techniques appear:
• - expansion, aimed at opening fences and walls that restrict urban growth.
• - the interior reform aimed at the demolition of old neighborhoods and their replacement with new roads and buildings of better quality.
• - Another fundamental technique of urban planning that dates back to the second half of the century is zoning. The technique of zoning, first presented in 1860 by a German architect, Stubben, consists simply of attributing certain uses to specific areas of the city.
Apart from zoning, which is the predominant urban planning technique, others of great interest emerge, such as the garden city of Ebenezer Howard, the linear city of Arturo Soria, the urban regionalism of Munford, or the functionalism of Le Corbusier.
As García de Enterría and Parejo Alfonso point out), until then the owner, with the system of road alignments that was extended through the widening and interior reform plans, found only one limit to his free building powers: that of respecting said alignments. From zoning onwards, the powers of land ownership will be more deeply constrained, reaching its very core of freedom or power of use, and with this, a radical limitation of the "ius aedificandi".
In short, it is in the century when urban planning becomes not only a current of scientific thought, but, above all, a technique for the distribution of public and private spaces and the uses or activities that can be developed in them. Obviously, these techniques had to end up having a legal content in order to be imposed, so their evolution gave rise to the current Urban Planning Law, composed of legal norms and planning figures that regulate the exercise of property rights and discipline the urban development and building activity on the land.
The urban planning plan
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.
Urban planning law by country
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].