That’s another fine mess you’ve got us into maggie

“That’s another fine mess you’ve got us into Maggie” 1 Political distrust and active participation in the consultation of development in English coal belt villages

Abstract Using a narrative of incoming proposed development, this essay explores the collaborative and action research techniques that can be leveraged within the design of the consultation process within a post-mining village in the north of England. Using the village of Goldthorpe, located north east of Sheffield in the Dearne Valley and Yorkshire Coal belt, as a case study, this paper critiques the role of governance and actors in complex systems manifesting in fringe and underperforming areas. Considering Fung’s (2006) democracy cube, this paper looks at action research techniques practiced by Crookes, Till, di Carlo and Hübner in designing and implementing more democratic processes in resolving planning proposals.

The socio-historical and political context of Goldthorpe This paper will examine the collapse of political engagement at both grassroots and governmental level of towns in the English coal belts, looking in particular detail at the village of Goldthorpe, located to the northeast of Sheffield in the Dearne Valley. The village’s history is intimately connected with the coal mining industry, exploding in size in the early 20 th century with the introduction of coal collieries the area. The majority industry for the town historically was mining, with social constructs in place revolving around such identities (Dennis, 1969; Warwick and Littlejohn, 1992; Winterton, 1989).

The socio-historical context of Goldthorpe has revealed issues within the ‘democratic potentials of governance’ in the potentially responsive linkages between ‘what citizens do and what citizens receive’ (Warren, 2009, p.3). Contemporary democracy within Goldthorpe lies within non-institutionalised politics of the kind outlined by Warren (2009, p.5; also Fig. 1). During the conservative government helmed by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, the industry suffered a swathe of closures, including all local collieries by the late ‘90s. As a result, the local economy underwent a fundamental employment shift, one from which it has not fully recovered. In the wake of the mine closures, policy impositions resulted in citizens enacting

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Quote taken from banner erected outside Goldthorpe’s local pub, the Rusty Dudley. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ukengland-south-yorkshire-22183736> Total word count: 2991

Fig.1. Warren (2009) outlines democratic spaces for governancedriven democratisation.

This adapted diagram notes the three progressive stages of democratic organisation exhibited by Goldthorpe.

non-institutionalized power within the societal domain in the form of repeated strikes (Winterton, 1989).

Culminating in the Battle of Orgreave (Johnson, 2015), the Yorkshire miners experienced the lack of ‘protected space for non-institutionalized forms of politics (Warren, 2009, p.4) in the meeting of protesting citizens and state control in the form of police. The resultant deep seated distrust of governance extended to further demonstration in the wake of Thatcher’s funeral celebration in 2013, now protesting the state and representative democracy. The 2008 recession also hit hard, costing the coalfields an above average 46,000 jobs (Foden, Fothergill and Gore). During this period the high street collapsed, with both chain stores and banks leaving the area.

Further confusion came from the imposition of a redrawing of authority boundaries altering the village’s local authority, compounding feelings of top-down governance with little consultation. This compounds existing issues that these linkages ‘that should describe democracy are broken at almost every step: territorial electoral constituencies do not match issue constituencies’ (Warren, 2009, p.6). The problem of issue constituencies can be seen in the findings of Foden, Fothergill and Gore (2014), whose study of the coalfields revealed matching socio-economic patterns across the regions spread through England and Wales. The end result is such that the capacity for locals to engage within political participation has been much reduced, with representational governance structures failing to adapt to the gap. As Warren notes (2009, p.7), ‘the gap between the functional incapacities of electoral democratic institutions and the demands and aspirations of citizens has been showing up […] in high levels of distrust with, and disaffection from the political system’.

The failure (perceived or otherwise) of representative democracy in the area has led to contemporary democracy enacted through non-elected institutions in the form of the Local Trust charity and the establishment of a Big Local group partnered with the neighbouring Bolton-on-Dearne. This “Big Local” designation, one of 150, would be funded by the National Lottery’s Big Lottery programme, and granted £1 million funding to invest ‘in planned neighbourhood improvements over a 10-year period (Crookes, Inch and Slade, 2015). The group has had successes funding local social enterprise initiatives, and has recently purchased four terrace houses in the area to rent back to local residents at affordable rates (Foster, 2016).

This essay seeks to further explore the application of democratic techniques to the spaces metered out by developers in the consultation and design development of development applications in these villages. With reference to action research (Crookes, Inch and Slade, 2015) and professional-as-actor techniques (Blundell Jones, 2007; di Carlo, 2012), it is argued that a reflexive, devolved form of democracy engaging existing nonelected institutions in Goldthorpe can create more democratic solutions to applications that would otherwise be distrusted (Cornwall and Coelho, 2007) or disregarded (Allen and Crookes, 2009).

Actors and representation in complex systems The policy of mine closure by electoral politics and subsequent flow of uninvited participation through societal to state spheres reveals the inherent uncontrollability of complex societal structures both technically and politically (Wagenaar, 2007; Warren, 2009). Through insertion of development proposals into these systems, responsiveness to this complexity can ultimately make or break these proposals. Ways of harnessing this complexity for beneficial democratic outcomes is discussed later, but this section looks briefly at actors and representation in complex systems.

Within these dynamic, complex systems, ‘questions of inclusion imply questions of representation. If these institutions are to represent ‘the community’, ‘users’, ‘civil society’, or indeed ‘citizens’, on what basis do people enter them – and what are their claims to legitimacy to speak for others?’ (Cornwall and Coelho, 2007, p.8). Simply imposing these structures, as is the initial case with the Big Local, is not enough to create ‘viable political institutions’. ‘Much comes to depend on the motivations of those who enter them, and what ‘participation’ means to them’ (ibid., p.9).

However, as Wagenaar explores (2007, p.18) the argument for ‘participatory, deliberative democracy in governance is that it is superior to representative arrangements in dealing with system complexity because it increases system diversity and system interaction’. This structure has the effect of enabling the actors to ‘produce, appreciate and select productive intervention strategies and arrive at the coordination of problem

solving and decision making’. The outcome of this arrangement is a society that has fostered ‘a sense of political efficacy, [one that can] contribute to the formation of a knowledgeable citizenry capable of taking a sustained interest in the governing process’ (Held, 1996, p.271, in Wagenaar, 2007, p.20). In so doing, it suggests, that a participatory approach can iteratively return and produce a Big Local group that is comprised of a new ‘knowledgeable citizenry’.

Concurrently, governance-driven democratisation often ignores electoral and territorial constituencies, instead ‘’peoples’ are […] brought into existence in response to issues, and often dissolve when issues are resolved’ (Warren, 2009, p.8). This dynamic, serial, approach to constituency rejects the ‘all affected’ territorial principle (ibid.), and instead lends itself to close interaction with involved actors in ‘knotty’ problems at a single node point – the development application.

The Goldthorpe Big Local model, located on the participatory sphere, as discussed by Cornwall and Coelho (2007, p.1), therefore has the potential to become an ‘intermediate, hybrid ‘new democratic space’ located at the interface of ‘state and society’ acting as ‘conduits for negotiation, information and exchange’. This structure, whether selected or self-selected, can include a sample of ‘interests, values, views and opinions of those potentially affects, as well as […] the capacity to render considered advice or decisions that responds to those affected (Warren, 2009, p.10). He continues, (ibid.), ‘the more points of access there are to government, the more advantages are those with organisation and resources’, enabling ‘those potentially affected by a collective decision [to] have some influence over the decision’ (Goodin, 2007, in Warren, 2009, p.9).

In this manner, the Big Local group has the potential to become a representative intermediary tool for the community of Goldthorpe to speak through to the state regarding issues that affect the village individually beyond and outside electoral constituencies. In a similar manner, these non-elected organizations offer the opportunity for issues to transcend territorial constituencies and ‘lock-in’ with wider issue-based constituencies, connecting with the wider Coalfields Regeneration and Local Trusts offer representation for diffused communities with shared issues.

Despite Warren’s (2009) critique that these agendas are typically elite-driven, his argument, and one that I share, and will expand upon below, is that ‘though elite constitution of peoples is not, on the face of it, a particularly democratic way of constituting peoples, within the broader environment of […] advocacy and social activism, we could look at elites as intermediaries in an on-going process of constituency formation that is potentially more responsive to those affected by issues than territorially-defined electoral constituencies can be’ (2009, p.9). In the next section, we explore how elites-as-intermediaries can be leveraged within the context of consultation processes to engage publics and create democratically resolved outcomes for affected parties.

Action research in engagement in the planning and architectural consultation processes An alternative approach to top-down ‘ivory tower’ techniques can be seen throughout the literature on action research, both within the planning field, and in a more arts-practice manner by a number of architects. As Forester aimed in his writing: the focus is to ‘learn from practitioners as actors, not spectators [and] how they deal with a situation’ (Forester, 2009, p.203 in Wagenaar, 2011, p.297). In this section we compare the failures of imposing structures to a number of case studies similar to Goldthorpe’s sociohistorical context.

The Westfield Action Research Project (Crookes, Inch and Slade, 2015) comprised a partnership between the Westfield Big Local, with similar remit to Goldthorpe’s designation, and the University of Sheffield.

Within this group, already in its early stages and still learning to trust one another, the introduction of ‘outsiders’ from the university needed to be navigated with care (ibid., p.419). In this case, the authors developed an agreed set of principles to govern the work of the partnership, summarised as the authors seeking ‘to work with Westfield on a long-term basis in a collaborative, participatory manner with [their] activities broadly dictated by residents’ (ibid.). In criticism, some residents felt that the involvement of the university lay more in the ‘provision of traditional consultancy style “expertise” on technical matters (ibid., p.420).

This provision of technical “expertise” can be exploited and manipulated to empower local citizens, as can be seen in architect Peter Hübner’s project for Evangelische Gesamtschule - a school and community facilities - in Gelsenkirchen during his engagement with the community during planning stages of the project. In social and historical context, Gelsenkirchen, a former industrial-coal mining suburb in the Ruhr, is similar to Goldthorpe in the UK. During the design process, Hübner visited the children and locals affected by the school’s development and involved them in the planning, modelling and construction. The team involved the children ‘measuring themselves and making clay models [… and] discussed the need for furniture, and modelled their chairs and tables, setting out real chairs and tables in the playground to see what space was needed’ (Blundell Jones, 2007, p.93). They discussed the differences between ‘classroom and house: how many rooms [were] needed and of what kind?’ (ibid.). Later, the architects returned to the school with scale parts of the proposed classrooms. Reengaging the children, models were constructed to the architect’s drawings (ibid., p.95).

What Hübner shows us in this engagement is a subversion of the usual ‘ivory-tower’ elites imposing a proposition on a locale and expecting all comments to only arrive through formal channels and limited

consultation sessions. Instead, the architect utilizes his expertise as a filter through which the user group can have their opinions and thoughts translated into effective change in the final proposal. The ability to deploy ‘transparent elite-knowledge’ is echoed by Till (2015), who in discussion with Bernd Upmeyer, commented ‘if the architects [and planners] have lost the ability to deploy knowledge, nobody benefits and everybody loses. I think it is fine that architects bring a certain form of knowledge to the table, but if they are prepared to receive knowledge back from the other side of the table’.

A second benefit of this strategy is the ongoing engagement of the end user group throughout the lengthy timeline. In so doing, the proposal is embedded within the community – their personal involvement with the design and construction has won the trust of the end users. The architect Di Carlo was a strong advocate of community engagement in the process, arguing ‘the neighbourhoods and buildings planned ‘for’ the users decay because the users, not having participated in their planning, are unable to appropriate them and therefore have no reason to defend them’ (di Carlo, 2012, p.31). This creation of a ‘shared ownership of process’, as practiced by Hübner, works toward a future where ‘all barriers between builders and users [have been] abolished, so that building and using become two different parts of the same planning process’ (ibid., p.29). However, care must be taken through careful design of participation spaces to avoid a surface level engagement wherein participants are only subjected to a glorified parade of proposed models without actual listening to what is being returned.

Fig.2 Ansell and Gash (2007), illustrating a roadmap of collaborative government and influences.

Highlighted is the critical benefits that influence and are affected by the techniques adopted in eliteactor participation described in this section, particularly that of Hübner.

Designing for engaged participation in ex-mining towns

There are multiple cautions that must be observed when designing for lengthy participatory consultation processes. As Crookes, Inch and Slade (2015, p.421) observed, ‘like any worthwhile, devoted relationship, establishing and sustaining a community-university partnership is hard work: it requires ongoing commitment, consumes inordinate amounts of time […] and requires a constant process of negotiation’.

Within Goldthorpe and similar coal belt villages it additionally pays to be attentive of the ‘contingencies of political culture, […] histories and cultures - of struggle as of subjugation, of authoritarian rule as of political apathy – [that] may embed dispositions in state and societal actors that are carried into spaces for participation’ (Cornwall and Coelho, 2007, p.22). They argue that these ‘contingencies may make alliances difficult to realise, especially for groups whose right to participate at all has been persistently denied in the past’ (ibid.). In spaces historically disenfranchised by government action as in Goldthorpe, these contingencies result in the formation of trust becoming a large issue of design. Traditional consultation techniques in these areas can frustrate professionals when presenting to the public, as Allen and Crookes found (2009, p.472): 'we're paying consultants and architects thousands and thousands of pounds to come in here and show you designs and talk to you about what's meant by sustainable construction and urban design… and people just weren't interested'.

Together, these observations reveal an obligation to take time, listen and respect the views of residents as legitimate in their own terms (Allen and Crookes, 2009, p.466), that results in a rereading of ‘failed’ neighbourhoods, not in the ‘treacherous selective vision’ (Shields, 1991, p.245) that planners can reveal in statistics and a partial evidence base, but instead as ‘lived spaces’ (Allen and Crookes, 2009, p.466). This rereading of neighbourhood as unproblematic shifts the way power is mediated through the built environment (ibid, p.469), back toward local residents and their ‘lived experiences’.

In legitimising residents’ views, designs for engaged participation need balance the ‘multiple realities’ of ‘formal’ order of knowledge (professional perspectives’, and the ‘local’ orders of knowledge (experiential views) (Allen and Crookes, 2009, p.476). This rebalancing of orders of knowledge is summarised eloquently

by Forester (1999, p.3), who writes that planners ‘must develop an astute practical judgement to deal with far more than ‘the facts’ at hand, especially when they face economic and political uncertainty, cultural […] differences […] that threaten planning processes and outcomes’.

This is reinforced by Wagenaar’s (2007) concept of the complex system, one where ‘actors’ images of the future – ideals, perspectives, metaphors, storylines – are essential’ (p.25). He argues that in these systems, ‘models of the future are often based on past experiences that have been transformed into expectations about what so-and-so will say or do’ (ibid.). These experiences, as explored by Cornwall and Coelho above can colour local attitudes toward participation in ‘rational’ forms but are critical to access for effective participation in complex systems. As argued through case studies above, in particular Hübner’s work (Blundell Jones, 2007), the application of a filter can enable professionals to listen as a spectator, and gain trust over time, whilst providing communicative influence into proceedings can enable a pathway toward democratic participation as illustrated in Fung’s ‘democracy cube’ (2006 and Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Fung’s democracy cube (2006). The design of participation within Goldthorpe’s consultations seeks to establish a public hearingesque strategy to the development of spatial applications. The communicative influence of participants can be filtered through the listening intermediary elite to create a democratic outcome for those involved publics.

Conclusion It is apparent that top-down approaches to national planning have failed towns in the coal belts in England, leading to a collapse in employment, welfare and amenity in these areas. As Allen and Crookes argued (2009), the contemporary approach to selling these spaces through ‘place shaping’ development in an endeavour to modernise and regenerate these towns has continued to alienate local citizens. The application of elite knowledge to these areas in the form of development proposals continues to be unsustainable, by alienating citizens they often lead to project decay (di Carlo, 2012).

Instead, as argued here, and visible in case studies taken from contextually similar projects (Blundell Jones, 2007; Allen and Crookes, 2009; Crookes, Inch and Slade, 2015), successes can be traced to active engagement of participants in a meaningful manner. Reinterpretation of knowledge application to function as a filter for citizen ideas earlier in the process leads to more successful results upon project completion.

Indeed, the carrying of an engagement methodology throughout a lengthy timeline embeds both trust in the expert (Crookes, Inch and Slade, 2015), and ownership in the final proposal (Blundell Jones, 2007).

In closing, top-down applications of elite knowledge to citizens in fringe areas in coal belt towns should be avoided and projects organised as such are likely to prove undemocratic and prone to decay. Instead, public participation, discussed here within the framework of development applications, should be designed to welcome open, self-selected participants with the ability to express their preferences throughout a lengthy, engaging process. Those with power should arrange themselves to promote a form of communicative influence as a filter of knowledge. A successful design will deeply engage participant views into the process and form an iterative process through which participants are able to see their views incorporated and acted upon â&#x20AC;&#x201C; progressing past merely being â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;listened toâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; toward a democratic design process, by and truly for the users.

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Reports

The Coalfields Regeneration Trust, 2014. Our Impact Over the Last 15 Years. [Report]. s.n.

Foden, M., Fothergill, S., and Gore, T., 2014. The State of the Coalfields: Economic and Social Conditions in the Former Mining Communities of England, Scotland and Wales. Sheffield: Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research.

Online Articles

Ball, A., 2016. Architecture students present Goldthorpe plans. Barnsley Chronicle, [online].

Available at: <http://www.barnsley-chronicle.co.uk/news/article/11778/architecture-studentspresent-goldthorpe-plans> [Accessed 15th February 2016].

Foster, D., 2016. Locals buy up empty houses to create homes and jobs. The Guardian, [online].

Available at: < http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/09/locals-buy-empty-housescreate-homes-jobs-barnsley> [Accessed 19th February 2016].

Goldthorpe Big Local [online]. Available at: < http://localtrust.org.uk/get-involved/biglocal/goldthorpe-with-bolton-on-dearne> [Accessed 16th February 2016].

Johnson, D., 2015. Background: The Battle of Orgreave. BBC News, [online]. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-33107090 [Accessed 22nd April 2016].