Land Use Policy 30 (2013) 519–527 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Land Use Policy jou rn al h om epa g e: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol Strategic Environmental Assessment in Latin America: A methodological proposal for urban planning in the Metropolitan Area of Concepción (Chile) Carolina Rojas a , Joan Pino b,c,∗ , Edilia Jaque a a Department of Geography, Architecture, Urbanism and Geography Faculty, University of Concepción, Victor Lamas 1290, Casilla 160-C, Concepción, Chile b CREAF, Cerdanyola del Vallès 08193, Spain c Univ Autònoma Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès 08193, Spain a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 8 September 2010 Received in revised form 18 April 2012 Accepted 22 April 2012 Keywords: Urban planning Strategic Environmental Assessment Metropolitan areas Landscape ecology a b s t r a c t This work describes a methodology for Strategic Environmental Assessment of urban areas in Latin Amer- ica based on the recently approved European Planning Directive, and applies it to the Metropolitan Area of Concepción (Chile). The method is based on the Land Suitability Index (LSI), a cartographic GIS-based index originally developed for the region of Barcelona (Spain) and aimed at determining the suitability of each point in a region for urban development, considering three sub-indexes: (i) Naturalness, (ii) Ecolog- ical Connectivity and (iii) Natural Risk. Using the LSI we evaluated the already approved urban plans of the municipalities in the region, considering two scenarios: the initial land use or baseline scenario (S0) and the designated land use or planned scenario (S1). The results show that overall the planned scenario will result in a loss of around 16% of naturalness, with particularly negative effects on brushwood and wetland areas. Connectivity will decrease by around 17%, and urban areas exposed to many types of nat- ural risks will increase considerably, from approximately 49% to 92% of the total urban surface. Finally the LSI shows that around 252 ha are suitable for new urbanization in the extension area. This corresponds to around 0.7% of the total extension area (37.381 ha), which represents 12% of the region (271.398 ha). We propose this methodology can be a valuable contribution to the design of Strategic Environmental Assessment applications and indicators for land planning in Latin America. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) has been a manda- tory land planning procedure in Europe since the approval of the Directive 2001/42/EC, on the assessment of the effects of plans and programs on the environment. SEA is the process by which envi- ronmental considerations are required to be integrated into the preparation and adoption of these plans and programs in order to promote environmentally sustainable development (Jiricka and Pröbstl, 2008). In consequence, SEA will contribute to the reduc- tion (or avoidance) of the environmental, social and economic costs often associated to excessive or chaotic urban growth (Portal and Béjar, 2005; Botequilha-Leitão and Ahern, 2002). SEA is inspired by two objectives: (1) to overcome the insuffi- ciencies of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) by evaluating projects earlier in the decision making process and (2) to empha- size the importance of a territory’s limitations and opportunities by defining the options of sustainable development. While being a ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 935814665; fax: +34 935814151. E-mail addresses: crojasq@udec.cl (C. Rojas), joan.pino@uab.es (J. Pino), edjaque@udec.cl (E. Jaque). more general procedure than project-specific assessment instru- ments such as EIA, it poses significant challenges for decision making (Unalan and Cowell, 2009). A particular challenge of SEA is how to adequately integrate all the dimensions of sustainable development so that it becomes an achieveable, practical objec- tive, which can thereby incorporate the environment into policies, plans, and programs (O˜ nate et al., 2002). A particular focus of application for SEA is urban plans for metropolitan areas. Currently, more than 3 billion people are living in urban areas worldwide, and this figure will have increased to 6.4 billion by 2050 (United Nations, 2009). A critical feature of this projection is that the largest population growth expected in urban areas will be concentrated in the cities and towns of developing regions (United Nations, 2009), such as Latin America. However, these overpopulated metropolitan regions still house important natural areas featuring considerable ecological diversity, and pro- viding ecological services to the population. There is, therefore, an urgent need to rethink the appraisal of urban plans and projects to consider metropolitan areas as a mosaic for natural systems and population. It is paramount to combine traditional urban plan- ning that emphasizes quality of life, with conservationist planning that focuses on the conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity (Forman, 2004). 0264-8377/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2012.04.018