The Estonian Ministry of the Interior commissioned a study from EAA’s Faculty of Architecture for providing guidelines so that county plans can be used to shape settlement patterns. One of the functions of preparation of county plans is, in the wording of clause 7 (3) 4) of the Planning Act, to provide directions concerning the development of human settlement. To this point, the function was handled in county plans empirically, and the output was ill-defined. There was a need for a systemic, uniform approach in the case of each county. The approach would be predicated on general spatial interests and highlight in the county plan, in an evidence-supported manner, practical output for as to the solution to the problem of directing settlement patterns. The objective of this study is to create practical, working guidelines for county governments to direct development of human settlement through preparing county planning documents and to lay down a single set of principles for guiding settlement patterns nationwide.
The full version of the study is available here.