Participation, collaboration and leadership

Leadership Conference Supported by Architecture + Design Scotland and the Academy of Urbanism

5: Participation, collaboration and leadership

Learning from the City Gardens Project: Participation, collaboration and leadership In 2010, ‘Delivering Better Places’ was published as a collaborative research exercise between the Scottish Centre for Regeneration, A+DS, and RICS with the University of Glasgow. The scope was to examine the process of making better places with reference to eight European case studies. The report identified five key elements to delivering better places, two strategic and three tactical. The strategic elements are leadership and stewardship. The tactical elements are initiation [getting the right team], frameworks [pulling the idea together] and implementation processes.

‘Delivering Better Places’ concludes that ‘If we want to create better places in Scotland more often than we have in the past, policymakers and those charged with delivery need to engage with both making markets and place shaping strategies – especially by rethinking public sector commitment to, and investment in, place quality. Better connections between “Place” [more spatial] interventions and “People” interventions [developing social capital, institutional capacity, innovation and entrepreneurship] may produce better and more sustainable outcomes for places in Scotland whether they are in growth, transformation or regeneration contexts’. In this context, delivering better places demands leadership.

The report argues that ‘good leadership matters because it drives forward action, breeds confidence, provides certainty for development partners, reduces risk for all involved and widens participation in the delivery. Without such leadership, place delivery relies on rules and regulations.

However, ‘the relationship between leadership and place, or the place-shaping aspects of leadership, is full of intriguing ironies: how do we place leadership? Who leads the development and delivery of place in an increasingly diverse and globalised world?

George Orwell (1946) wrote that the English language ‘becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.’ The issue here is clarity of purpose and clarity of execution. Clarity though, as Orwell observes, is not easily achieved. Do terms like ‘sustainable place-making’ make it easy for us to have foolish thoughts? Despite the radical transformation of society associated with globalisation and the ongoing revolution in information and communication technologies, we remain profoundly attached to place. But what do we mean, why is place so important and what does it mean for leadership?

Kim Dovey in ‘Framing Places’ argues that ‘place is a centre of meaning formed by lived experience’. Dovey’s basic argument is that a place makes some meaningful difference to peoples lives. It is not about belief in abstract ideas like the spirituality of ‘genius loci’. It is more about how we, citizens, create opportunity and purpose in a location. For Dovey, place is somewhere that delivers many things. It is based on observations of how the world works. Professor Duncan McLennan in ‘Investing in Better Places’ argues that ‘places fix capital’. Places matter because they are the framework that Government and agencies imagine the relationship between people and space. Based on these priorities, investment decisions are formed. These decisions lock physical capital in place, and provide opportunities for other types of capital to form different types of economy, different types of society. Accordingly, the framework of planning for place may be understood in a number of ways, which overlap. It may be about location - the idea of place provided by the fixed geographical coordinates of a precise physical location; it may be about locale-the idea of place considered as the ‘material’ setting for social relations, this being a more fluid geographic idea than location;

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or it may be a ‘sense of place’ - the subjective emotional attachment people form to place. This could be a skill base, a tradition, an image, a culture, not necessarily spatially defined.

It is important to note that place is not necessarily all about space, nor is it all about location. Nor is it a fixed idea. Professor Doreen Massey of the ‘Open University’ argues that cities are about movement and settlement. People, ideas and transactions constantly move in and move out of the physical and social structures of cities all the time. Some elements fix, some do not, but the idea of the city carries on. In this context, she sees the city more as an ‘event in time’. Massey suggests that ‘locality’ cannot therefore be thought of as a fixed or bounded. Rather, it should be understood as a ‘jagged fragment drawn from systems that are larger, as well as a rough assemblage of many things that are smaller’. She sees dangers in bounded, fixed ideas of place in a dynamic world. For her, a ’retreat to ‘place’ represents a protective pulling of drawbridges and a building of walls against the new….place, on this reading, is the locus of denial, of attempted withdrawal from ...difference. It is a politically conservative haven, an essentialising [and in the end unviable] basis for a response; one that fails to address the real forces at work. It has, undoubtedly, been the background imagination for some of the worst of recent conflicts’.

What is clear here is that place, [and therefore place-making], is not a simple idea. People matter to the success of place, not in a superficial way. They matter because the entire idea of ‘place’ is based on collective meaning; in other words place is a story that we participate in. The making of this story, and the participation in the physical expression of this story, the form of buildings, streets and spaces matters greatly. This is about participation and democracy in spatial terms.

The Obama administration is proposing a framework for the development of public policy based on ‘participation and collaboration’. This framework is based on a sharing of power and responsibility.

It raises challenges to the idea of leadership as a singular or hierarchical activity.

Scotland’s commitment to participation recognises that the people who learn in and use our communities are the true experts about their own lives and know the most about their own surroundings. Tapping their expertise and insight through meaningful engagement is key to finding out what works best in any given context. Talking to teachers about teaching, children about childhood, and neighbours about their neighbourhoods is more likely to provoke workable solutions that are supported by the people they are designed to help.

Collaboration is an inevitable part of providing the best services possible using the overall resources available and all the assets we have on the ground. By looking at a whole place we can support whole lives – putting citizenship at the heart of economically sustainable communities. By asking the simple question – what can we do with what we’ve got – and dovetailing our priorities, we stand a better chance of better outcomes for any given level of resources.

Participation seems like a good idea to most people – but general support is almost always tempered by specific reservations. These reservations usually find expression in two frequently asked questions: - Isn’t there a danger of raising unrealistic expectations? Yes there is, if you ask people what specific solutions they want built rather than what needs and hopes they want satisfied. It is not unrealistic to have an expectation that people will be listened to about the aspirations they have for the places they want to live in. We want our communities to have high aspirations and we expect the places we create to help turn them into reality.

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- Why should experienced professionals listen to inexperienced amateurs? Because it’s their place. Because they will have to live their lives in what the professionals create. Because they are the world class experts about their own lives. And, because the alternative - don’t try to understand or engage with the people who will use your design - is not a credible, responsible way to help set the spatial and institutional context for better lives.

Participation is not about the process of ‘post it pasting’ at a planning consultation. The Competitive City agenda suggests that cities compete for capital and labour in an increasingly global and competitive context. To enable growth, cities need to organise policy and investment to form elements that attract these factors of growth. This includes high quality public space, high quality office development and residential amenity, factors which influence the ‘motivations’ to locate in one place or another. In the ‘Place Race’ , a report prepared for Scottish Enterprise’, these motivations were expressed against four interdependent factors of place: [i] reputation-the view of a place expressed through the media, or internet, often the first point of contact between a person moving to a place and the place itself, [ii] opportunities-the economic and social opportunities available to the skilled worker, their family and friends, their existing and potential social network, [iii] values-the degree to which this place tolerates difference, sexual, political, ethnicity etc, and [iv] assets-the physical and natural amenities of a place and the way they are stewarded, collectively valued.

What is interesting about the ROVA analysis is that it is multi dimensional. It does not just narrowly focus on the economics of labour. It addresses the opportunities for the worker, their family and friends to participate in the society of the place they are moving to. If participation matters at this level, then the frameworks for participation also matter. This suggests that spatial and not spatial interventions in a place are not just about the spatial outcome ie the plan or design in themselves.

More significant outcomes may be about how these interventions enable opportunities for greater participation between people and place on a range of levels.

This idea about motivations to locate, linked with participation in the society of a place and collaboration in the shaping of place, raise important leadership issues. Kann [1979] argued that ‘democracy and leadership are never more than uncomfortable allies’. Is there therefore a fundamental tension between leadership led place-making and participation in the place-making process?

Increasingly, political leadership is seen as important at a place level, evidenced by Ken Livingstones work on congestion charging in London, or Gulliani’s ‘zero tolerance’ in New York’ or Howard Bernsteins success in championing Manchester’s ongoing renaissance. However, the interface between administrative and political leadership is crucial. In recent times, observers argue that public sector reform has tended to focus more on efficiency than leadership. Public sector managers, taking control of local processes, have emphasised targets over outcomes, with politicians sometimes acting less and less as mediators between the citizen and the service provider. An emphasis on management then over leadership can lead to an imbalance in the type of outcome, and the degree to which the citizen participates. This can strengthen some managers, and their connection to key stakeholders, as ‘strong men’ who have a greater influence over change. This forms a basis for tension between leadership and democracy, typically expressed in terms of the two observations on participation set out above.

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Research suggests that a greater emphasis on leadership matters not in the ‘strong man’ form, but rather in terms of ‘installing hope for a better future for people and engage them in a common vision’. This is about listening, consulting, enabling participation. Instead of being mutually exclusive, leadership and participation need increasingly to come together. There is aa need for a much ‘better alignment than currently exists is required between leadership, place and policy discourses’.

Keith Grint argues that ‘development of place is not the rolling out of logical [technical] plans from the centre but the consequence of local agents [leaders] shaping decisions and interpretations of what is, and is not possible’. Wherever we look, the design and delivery of public policy has become a more complex cross-boundary and relational leadership task. Some observers note that the place based emphasis on ‘infrastructure and inward investment is giving way to ‘softer’ measures to support entrepreneurship and firm foundation, collaborative networking and innovation, knowledge and learning, and institution building’. This all requires policy collaboration, collaboration between public, private and Third sectors. Research consistently indicates that it is difficult to work across administrative, territorial, thematic, community and professional boundaries.

This suggests that a ‘command and control’ approach to leadership in place is not sufficient. Nor is a focus on organisation management. The context, and the necessary response to contemporary places will be more networked, collaborative, with a series of actors acting in different ways to achieve shared outcomes.

Gibney and Mabey in the collected essays on ‘Leadership and Place’ distinguish between different models of leadership. The first is termed the ‘functionalist leadership of place’. This model places an emphasis on performance gaps, addressed through selection and retention of the right individuals. With a focus on that which is accomplished rather than that what which leaders are, this model considers leadership to be open to those willing to learn. This enables leaders to note that a shift from hierarchical professional silos to networked and cross boundary working requires new leadership competencies/skills in partnership building across thematic, organisational, local and professional bodies. It also recognises that leadership skills associated with collaborative learning are required, with the aim of supporting and developing successful and sustainable collaborations.

Another model in Gibney and Mabey’s review is the ‘constructivist model of leadership in place’.

This is concerned with ‘active sense making’. The ability to influence culture is the hallmark of transformational leadership. On this reading, cultures consist of patterned understandings and actions reflected in language, symbols, stories and myths: a respository of shared values. Cultural transformation requires leaders to re-interpret shared meanings influencing perception and activity through stories and visioning. Visioning here refers to the development of an attractive and believable potential future which can secure support from stakeholders. This is typically supplemented by interpretative work to frame events in line with the vision, together with the design of new structures.

A constructivist view of leadership in place would pay close attention to the shifting ideas and meanings of ‘place’-the narratives, myths and stories that are deployed to evoke a shared sense of place. Distributed leadership becomes an important tool. On this reading, the who, what and how of leadership is recast, leadership conceptualised as a distributed and interdependent set of practices enacted by all rather than specific traits possessed by figureheads at the head of a hierarchy.

Leadership is presented as a collective activity occurring in and through collaborative relationships centred on mutual learning, understanding and positive action and requiring facilitation of reflection and co-creation of ideas. The hierarchical assumption of leadership embodied in a single person at the apex of a unitary organisation gives way, to be replaced by an acceptance of the importance of ‘change agency’ behaviours from a broad range of collaborators, co creating a shared vision towards which they work.

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References Academy of Urbanism 10x10x10 series, Reading Provocation: http://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/projects/10x/provocation_reading.pdf Allen, John, Massey, Doreen and Pryke, Michael. Unsettling Cities: Movement/Settlement (Understanding Cities), Routledge, London and Open University, Milton Keynes, 1999 Adams, David, Tiesdell, Steve, Weeks, George. Delivering Better Places, A+DS, RICS, Scottish Government, 2010 http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/336587/0110158.pdf Bound, Kirsten. The Place Race, Demos, London, 2007 Centre for Cities, 2007 http://www.centreforcities.org/assets/files/pdfs/urban_myth_discussion_paper_5.pdf Chisolm, Sharon [ed]. ‘Investing in Better Places: International Perspectives’ , The Smith Institute, 2010. http://www.smith-institute.org.uk/file/Investing%20in%20Better%20Places.pdf Collinge, Colin and Gibney, John. Connecting place, policy and leadership, Policy Studies, Vol 31, Number 4, July 2010, pp 379-392 Dovey, Kim: Framing Places: Mediating power in the built form, Routledge, London, 1999 Leadership in Crisis: conference proceedings. 8th International Conference on Studying Leadership, Centre for Leadership at the University of Birmingham, 2009 http://www.club.bham.ac.uk/leadership2009/8th-International-Conference-on-Studying-LeadershipLeadership-in-Crisis-Conference-Proceedings.pdf Lee, Neil. Distinctiveness and Cities: Beyond ‘Find and Replace’ Economic Development?, The Work Foundation, October 2007 http://www.theworkfoundation.com/research/publications/publicationdetail.aspx?oItemId=50 Senses of place, Learning Towns.Architecture and Design Scotland. www.learningtowns.org

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