It's Their City

It’s Their City Participatory Planning and the Localism Act

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Executive Summary This dissertation is about planning urban environments and handing responsibility for doing so to people who have no professional interest in it.

It is relevant because the Coalition Government recently passed the first legal mechanism for this devolution in the history of English town planning, the 2011 Localism Act. At its heart is the principle of participatory planning, the tantalising notion of giving power over the built environment to the people that live in it. The passing of this Act gives us reason to believe that participation may be a central element of the way that we plan in future.

There are three parts to this dissertation. Firstly it examines planning as an abstract notion, and as an evolving field of techniques. Secondly it focuses on participatory planning: what its apparent resurgence says about our society, and what challenges we face in making use of it.

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Finally we look at the concrete expression of the Localism Act in selected case studies, and how this legislation is beginning to shape, and reshape, the environment we live in.

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1.0 Introduction to Planning Models 1.1 The Nature of Planning

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What is Planning?

‘The process of deciding in detail how to do something before actually starting to do it’.1 In this context we are discussing planning of the built environment: apparently the original use of the word, as the etymology stems from French plant meaning 'ground plan, plane surface' and formerly Italian pianta 'plan of building’.2 The connection seems quite natural, as the importance, effort and permanence of erecting buildings makes it impractical without forethought. It is also natural that planning has an ancient role in the creation of towns, as A.C Hall states in Design Control: towards a new approach: ‘all people use buildings and the spaces between them ... it would be surprising if there was not some public concern for quality’.3 Consequently the first written work on building, Vitruvius’ De Architectura, treats the 1

Collins English Dictionary - ‘Planning’ Oxford English Dictionary - ‘Etymology of Planning’ 3 A.C. Hall, Design Control: towards a new approach (Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd.1996) p.1 2

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planning of towns and buildings as a single field of knowledge. The two scales were not made professionally distinct until the 19th century and remain closely related today.

The purpose of planning is to accommodate change. The human and natural worlds are inherently in a state of change and acts of planning are continually needed to offset the imbalance and maintain stability. Planning has the additional potential to influence change for the better: to direct progress.

How do we plan?

A simple act of planning requires a minimum of two actions: it requires the visualisation of an ideal state and the visualisation of a change that will bring about that ideal state. I would argue that an act of town planning requires a third action: an understanding of the initial state you seek to change. My contention will form a primary theme of this dissertation, and the discussion centres on

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whether or not participation is an appropriate method of doing it.

The notion of understanding the initial state you seek to change constitutes the famous dictum of town planning ‘survey-analysis-plan’, attributed to Sir Patrick Geddes.4 It has since fallen out favour, partly because of the remove implied in survey, so I prefer a less snappy but more inclusive version: requirement-change-provision. The bringing-aboutof-change makes all planning a technical act: it is the process of applying knowledge to get an outcome. But in towns, where these changes affect other people, planning also becomes a political act, as applying power is necessary to get an outcome.

Cliff Moughtin describes town planning as a process by which resources are distributed - the essence of politics.5 4

Ela Krawcyzk, ‘Geography, planning and the future’ in Knowing tomorrow: how science deals with the future (Eburon 2007) p.121 5 Cliff Moughtin, Urban Design: Street & Square, (Elsevier 2004) p.1

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The Political Role of Planning In a form of society such as a town, politics mediates between the private individual and the public collective, with the aim of delivering mutual benefit. The private individual is required to surrender part of his or will to the collective and in exchange, shares advantages he or she would be unable to command alone. If we understand planning to be the spatial application of politics, then town planning mediates between the principles of private and public space. Use of private space is controlled by single owner. In public space, either no one holds control or (more commonly) the control is held by an entity created by society to act on its behalf. In England there are two basic statutory instruments that control this divide: The first is the principle that land can be property: that a person or entity can own a piece of the environment and have the exclusive right to make use of it. Private land has been protected by British law since at least the Domesday Book of

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1086; it is recognised in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 as ‘any corporeal hereditament including a building, a structure or an erection’.6 The second is the principle of planning permission: that development of private property can have impacts outside it and must therefore be agreed with government. Forms of planning control over private property have probably existed as long as large towns. The legal requirement to apply for planning permission for any act of building, engineering, mining or change of use7 was introduced by the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947, and remains effectively unchanged8. A private property owner must supply a plan for an intended development to a Local Planning Authority and can only legally construct it once it has been approved.

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Sir Desmond Heap, An Outline of Planning Law, (Sweet and Maxwell 1996) p. 123 7 There are special dispensations for minor developments, and this was first enshrined by the Town and Country Planning General Development Order 1988 and subsequently by the General Permitted Development Order 1995 8 Heap, op.cit, p. 138

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The Technical Role of Planning We also describe planning as technical since it uses knowledge of principles to do something. However the political dimension of planning makes this ‘knowledge’ a more complex concept. What is it based on, if it involves not just objects but human relationships? Hilary Wainwright identifies three technical approaches to planning defined by the source of this knowledge: the ‘expert state’, the ‘free market’ and ‘participation’.9 The ‘expert state’ describes a rational approach where all the knowledge required to plan for a society can be objectively established as statistics and then codified; non-codifiable knowledge such as opinions and emotion is considered irrelevant.

The knowledge is established through a system called the scientific method, where observations are used to test, refine and assert theories that are then used to make decisions. In the context of planning 9

Hilary Wainwright, Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy, (Verso 2003) pp. 14-29

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this means that, once codified, the knowledge can be used by an expert to shape unambiguous plans, and since this expert is to act on behalf of society it is natural to embed him or her in the state.

The principle of the ‘expert state’ stems from the notion of social science conceived by German theorist Max Weber, its application in town planning derives from the work of theorists such as Ebenezer Howard and Lewis Mumford and since it suggest a need for paternalistic government it is commonly associated with the political theories of the New Left.

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The ‘free market’ describes a systems approach where all the knowledge required to plan is relative: ‘of particular circumstances of time or place’ and therefore impossible to quantify absolutely.10 It is generated through personal experience and is therefore specifically individual, it also becomes tacit: we cannot share it or transfer it for anyone’s use but our own. The interaction of our individual plans becomes collective through a shared system of negotiable value (i.e. money) that directs them generally toward a state of shared value.

The active agent in this philosophy is not a single state but a myriad of self-serving entrepreneurs, each seeking to satisfy themselves and negotiating the best method of doing so. In concert, everyone is benefactor and beneficiary to a varying degree depending on the efficiency of his knowledge, driving an incentivised evolution of it.

The principle of the ‘free market’ stems from the economic theories of Friedrich Von Hayek and 10

Friedrich Von Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society in Individualism and Economic Order, (Chicago 1948) p.87

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became dominant in western politics from the late 1970s following the work of economists such as Milton Friedman. Various architectural theorists began to praise the influence of the free market on town planning at the same time, among them Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown in Learning from Las Vegas (1977). The role of town planning within the ‘free market’ is then curiously paradoxical; broadly it is to ensure the functioning of the self-regulating principles of market economy.

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‘Participation’ describes an alternative systems approach in which relevant knowledge is held by all members of a society and must be accessed through a process of participation, where members of a society co-operate in order to apply their individual knowledge for collective benefit. The duty to co-operate requires some form of social contract, with the individual surrendering a part of his will in order to benefit from the collective.

Participatory planning emerged as a theory in the 1960s, most lucidly in the writing of Christopher Alexander and Sherry Arnstein. It has a number of expressions in town planning at a local level however it has been rarely adopted as policy by national government and is conventionally associated with the anarchic left.

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Exploring ‘The Participatory Turn’ The history of town planning in England is almost entirely a play between the modes described of the ‘expert state’ and the ‘free market’. There is sense to both, and each has had a period of dominance.

But the ‘expert state’ shed much of its credibility in the 1970s when despite enormous investment it persistently failed to produce safe, healthy human environments. Its decline was a factor in our relaxation about planning by private enterprise from the 1980s onward, but this enthusiasm has also waned following concerns about widening inequality and the stability of the global system of capital.

Consequently the early 21st century has seen participation become increasingly more important in the context of planning. Footprint Journal describes it as ‘the participatory turn’ – a desire for more direct forms of determination.11 This dissertation is an examination of where this desire came from, why it 11

aros Kriv and Tahl Kaminer, Introduction: The Participatory Turn in Urbanism, Footprint Journal, Issue 13 (Techne Press 2013) p. 1

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has become significant and what effect it is having on planning in England.

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1.0 Introduction to Planning Models 1.2 An Essential History of Planning

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The birth of town planning The earliest forms of planning were probably between individuals through a combination of cooperation and competition. Once communities became too large for effective interaction between them we would see the establishment of a form of state, acting as both arbiter between its subjects and pursuing a planning agenda of its own. This second form describes a classical understanding of town planning. Vincenzo Scamozzi’s defensible Palma Nova, the commercial appeal of James Craig’s rational Edinburgh New Town and Georges Eugene Haussmann’s pursuit of martial control through the Parisian boulevard are successive attempts by states to change society for their own ends through planning.

About 150 years ago planning established itself as a professional discipline through the writings of quasi-scientific theorists such as Sir Patrick Geddes, described as ‘one of the founding

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fathers of town planning’.1 The significance of this move was that professional planners were no longer seeking a way to satisfy the objectives of rulers or rich patrons. Instead they claimed natural authority, becoming administrators of their own ‘orthodox planning theory’ based on scientific principles.2 The authority was accepted and they become embedded in government, the beginning of planning by the ‘expert state’.

There were two triggers for this move. The first was that scientific method took over from religion as the primary process for revealing truth, resulting in Friedrich Nietzsche’s declaration of God’s death in 1882.3 The second was that urbanisation began to demand a solution. London became first the biggest city in the world and then 1

Michel Batty and Stephen Marshall, The Evolution of Cities: Geddes, Abercrombie and the New Physicalism, Town Planning Review, 80 (6), p.553 2 Jane Jacobs, The death and life of great American Cities, (Penguin Books 1972) p. 21 3 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Cambridge University Press 2008) Section 125 p. 120

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the biggest city in history; the resulting problems of crime, sanitation and overcrowding confronting society were unprecedented. Solutions began to arrive piecemeal (police forces in 1829, underground railways in 1863) but not comprehensively enough to fit society’s search for a cure. The outcome was a general approach to planning – the foundation of the ‘expert state’. Batty notes that the first professional town planners were ‘almost forced by the times in which they lived to adhere to a model of uniformity that considered good planning to be the imposition of an homogeneous order’.4

Morphology and Physicalism The founding principles are commonly linked to Geddes: originally a biologist who met Charles Darwin at University College London in 1877.5 Consequently the principles owe a debt to both 19th century biology and the concept of evolution.

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Batty and Marshall, op.cit, p.569 Ibid p.555

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Geddes' first insight was that the city is a macro organism, containing a complex web of distinct processes that generate an aggregate whole. His second insight was that these processes adapt over time through a form of evolution. Urban evolution is distinct from biological evolution in that this macro organism has no definite lifespan, but adapts continuously as a result of internal (as opposed to external) factors. Geddes was uncomfortable with the ruthless struggle of ‘survival of the fittest’; according to

arshall and Batty ‘he

emphasised the importance of cooperation (from the scale of cells to societies), which ultimately triumphed over competition. According to this view, cities were the ultimate expression of social union and evolution’.6 Geddes first described the principle of Physicalism: ‘a perspective that assumed social problems might be solved by manipulating the physical built environment’.7 It was Physicalism that 6 7

Ibid p.556 Ibid p.551

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was most influential in later orthodox planning theory.

Reintroduction of the rural The first widespread solution to manipulating towns was to reverse the process of urbanisation, an idea derived from the view that the city was pathogenic.

It was first proposed in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard, who accepted industrial production but not the urban hinterland it had produced.8 He proposed a 'Garden City’, self-sufficient in industrial production but tightly regulated to keep within it the character of the countryside, which Howard saw as man’s ‘natural’ environment.

Some ‘Garden City’ control systems are still in use today, such as zoning and green belts.

Howard also proposed maximum populations and total public ownership of land, which have subsequently been found to be too prescriptive.

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Sir Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, (General Books LLC 2012)

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Zoning and proximity The second important point of consensus in town planning was Le Corbusier’s unrealised 1924 project the ‘Ville Radieuse’. Le Corbusier was a bold and terrifyingly original architect who was also unsatisfied with the natural state of cities. He shared with Howard the view that green space was the most desirable environment for humans.

However rather than proposing a return to smaller scale and lower density urban environments, he suggested higher density inhabitation to minimise the urban footprint and leave as much land as possible for greenery. His imaginary Ville Radieuse plan proposes twenty-four skyscrapers with a density of 1,200 inhabitants to the acre, leaving 95% as parkland. The assumption was that an urban environment cannot co-exist with nature and zoning must therefore be taken to extremes.

Another original idea in the Ville Radieuse was the unimportance of proximity due to universal use of the car. If every member of an urban

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population could be anywhere without significant effort or time, the arrangement of uses could be completely freely planned. This rendered urban form redundant as long as everything was connected by high-speed motorways and navigable by a driver, requiring cities that were rationally and simplistically zoned but with no concerns of scale.

Le Corbusier boldly wrote ‘streets are an obsolete notion. There ought not to be such a thing as streets; we have to create something that will replace them’.9

The golden age of ‘expert state’ planning After the Second World War, unquestioning faith in the scientific method began to falter. Kurt Vonnegut reflects this in his address to Bennington College: "I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist would have taken a colour 9

Le Corbusier, The Radiant City, (Faber & Faber 1967) p.121

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photograph of God Almighty. Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima".10 Ironically the Second World War also gave town planning its biggest opportunity in Britain: the foundation of the welfare state gave its inherent paternalism a popular endorsement, and the Luftwaffe had left it a large quantity of tabulae rasae. Enthusiasm for this opportunity drowned out more general misgivings about the basis of the ‘expert state’ for over a decade. During that time the state remodelled much of Britain’s urban landscape according to orthodox planning theories.

Discrediting of ‘expert state’ planning The 1960s saw several academics publishing vociferous criticism of ‘expert state’ town planning.

The foremost assertion was that orthodox planning 10

Kurt Vonnegut, ‘Address to graduating class at Bennington College, 1970’ in Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons (Dell Publishing Group 1974) pp. 159-168

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theory had been simply wrong in much of its understanding about the way cities worked. Many generally held beliefs were specifically denied. 

It was questioned whether the physical environment had a dominant role in shaping human behaviour: Herbert Gans asserted that ‘the physical environment has much less effect than planners imagine … the social environment has considerably more effect.’11

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It was contested that the physical environment could give rise to successful community. Robert Gutman asserted that successful environments ‘came about because of the prior existence of a coherent community; they did not then, nor could they now, by themselves bring about such a community.’12

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It was denied that streets were an obsolete notion. Jane Jacobs argued that they

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Herbert Gans, People and Plans (Basic Books, 1968) p.19 Robert Gutman, ‘The Street Generation’ in On Streets (MIT Press 1986) pp. 29-30 12

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reduced crime13, encouraged interaction between people14 and allowed children to play safely while developing an awareness of the adult world15. 

It was doubted that urban green space was intrinsically valuable. Jane Jacobs argued that parks must be a successful human environment first16, that there was a limit on how many parks could be well used in any case17 and that they had no role in air purification18.

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It was refuted that cities must be neat, compartmentalised and structured by a simple order. Jane Jacobs maintained that ‘cities happen to be problems in organised complexity, like the life sciences. They present situations in which half a dozen or

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Jane Jacobs, op.cit, pp. 39-65 Ibid., pp. 66-84 15 Ibid., pp. 85-98 16 Ibid., p. 104 17 Ibid., p. 113 18 Ibid., p. 101 14

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several dozen quantities are all varying simultaneously and in subtly interconnected ways … The variables are many but they are not helter-skelter; they are interrelated into an organic whole’.19 Another criticism was that the ‘expert state’ approach had applied planning theory without actually planning - in the sense of using forethought. Patrick Abercrombie had established the notion of the development plan, a public document that considered requirement and delivery, but he underestimated how long such plans would take to produce. Consequently, in their absence planners were forced to use their own judgement to decide planning applications on a case-by-case basis, risking decisions with no regard for longerterm strategies and also opaque to the public.20

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Ibid., p. 433 Hall, A.C Design Control (Butterworth Architecture 1996) p.

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The overarching criticism of ‘expert state’ town planning was its ideological reliance on top-down management, requiring a dismissal of more vernacular knowledge that bordered on contempt.

Jane Jacobs quotes Clarence Stein (part of an American variant of the English Garden City movement) describing the city as ‘the summation of the haphazard, antagonistic whims of many selfcentred, ill-advised individuals.21 State planning had underestimated the complexity of urban areas and their inhabitants, and was unable to predict and provide reliably successful environments for them.

Systems theory The intellectual response to the collapse of faith in a single technique for planning was to disseminate the responsibility for that technique. The belief that the state - as the largest, best funded and most integrated human agent - was best placed to develop it had not produced consistent results; 21

Jane Jacobs, op.cit., pp. 27-31

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academic and political opinion seems to have consistently accepted that the solution was a field of techniques that would be borne out by a much greater number of smaller agents.

This model is described by Batty as a ‘complex system’; he cites the 21st century vogues of cloud computing and parametricism as examples but the free market and natural selection are older variants on the same idea. They are defined as ‘a collection of elements that act independently of one another but nevertheless manage to act in concert, often through constraints on their actions and through competition and co-evolution’. 22 Enthusiasm for complex systems in the built environment peaks in the mid-to-late 20th century after belief in the ‘expert state’ falters, and visions of complex systems are often published hand in hand with critiques of it. Common to all of these visions was the notion that independent citizens should have control over their environment, although some

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Batty and Marshall, op.cit., p. 567

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were more specific than others about how it should be applied.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

by Jane Jacobs (1961) rejects almost every tenet of town planning and asserts that cities are already functional complex systems; therefore she recommended a return to vernacular planning principles.

A Pattern Language of Architecture by Christopher Alexander (1977) is an open-ended directory of positive spatial patterns that can be combined in infinite variations: thereby educating individuals on how to build using a shared ‘language’ that creates a complex system.

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

by Robert Venturi (1966) makes a case for this discord by challenging the idea of a single taste that everyone must abide by.

Non-Plan, an article by Peter Hall, Cedric Price, Reyner Banham and Paul Barker (1967) also advocates making planning a completely personal

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concern, but gives no guidance and describes instead a fantasy vision of riotous discord.

The compelling appeal of the complex system is that it seems refreshingly unassuming and flexible. There is intimation that it will be uniquely right for everyone and eternally selfregulating. When held against the singular ‘expert’ assumptions of orthodox planning, it makes the latter seem absurdly presumptive and arrogant. The democratic overtones are politically alluring and it is not surprising that the abstract idea of a complex system dominates planning theory in the late 20th century.

There are two manifestations of complex systems in modern town planning. The first is a system of participatory planning using an individual person as the agent as described by theorists such as Christopher Alexander. Despite academic interest and support from HRH Prince Charles, it sees limited adoption in the aftermath of orthodox planning other than in independent locally 34

organised projects. The more successful form of complex system was the ‘free market’ using a unit of currency as the agent. The swing away from an empowered state in Britain in the 1980s resulted in a persisting consensus that planning should be left to the free market.

The Free Market There is a democratic basis to money, and an argument that it can serve as a medium for participation. Money is a social construct with no a priori justification; it is founded on agreement and cooperation. Anyone can have a role in defining the construct when they use it to qualify what they consider of value. Equally, the infinitely broad interpretation of human value means that the ability to provide value should be available to all. If money is accumulated simply by providing things of value to other human beings, then the pursuit of money should indirectly benefit humanity. Furthermore, as the accumulation of money further improves the

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potential to provide value, the system should naturally tend towards its concentration in the hands of humans best able to provide value to other humans.

This description is slightly tongue-in-cheek; even the staunchest neo-liberal economist wouldn’t claim that money is anything like as inherently altruistic. However this sets out the reasoning for why an unregulated complex system of monetary exchange could claim to tend towards effective planning - if it succeeds in providing environments that people value it will be allowed to continue and vice versa.

The self-regulating principles of the free market exerted a strong pull on the Conservative Government that came to power under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and town planning by government was seen as ‘a bureaucratic instrument inhibiting development’.23 The Conservatives were

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Moughtin, op.cit., p. 242

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simultaneously pushed away from an ‘expert state’ not only because of intellectual concerns, but also because it simply cost too much money to sustain.

The previous Labour Government had been forced to borrow £2.3 billion from the International Monetary Fund, in part due to high public spending commitments, and a reduction in the size of the state was a condition of the loan. The Conservatives also needed to reduce the burden of funding the ‘expert state’ in order to finance tax cuts which they saw as necessary to encourage investment and growth.

A hybrid system Advocates of the ‘free market ‘could no more begin with a tabula rasa than the planners of the ‘expert state’ and in any case belief in public control of planning had not entirely evaporated. Consequently the system developed under Margaret Thatcher was a hybrid of ‘free market’ and ‘expert state’, which has survived until the present day.

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There are number of significant differences under this planning model. It became much rarer for the state to fund development itself, focussing on premises for its own use and a diminishing rearguard action in maintaining its existing stock.

The only area where the state continued to fund construction was infrastructure, seen as enabling development. Planners also came under more pressure to open up their profession to those outside it. I have described how the expert state had struggled to codify plans and how ‘a professional culture filled the gap in policy’;24 under the new system provision of clear plans, guidance and other documents of planning technique became progressively more comprehensive. Tentative experiments were also made at taking control of planning out of the hands of planners altogether in Simplified Planning Zones and Enterprise Zones, although these were not widespread.

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A.C. Hall, op.cit., p. 8

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Key elements of the hybrid system The hybrid planning system could best be described as led by private development and regulated by public Local Planning Authorities. The primary instrument of regulation is planning permission; however decisions to grant or refuse permission are based on compliance with a system of documents that seek to strategically direct development. These planning policy documents can be grouped by the theme of their objectives, and there are identified difficulties with each: Development plans are ‘concerned with general land-use allocation including significant areas of open space and the identification of the principal road network and other major transport facilities’.25 Each plan deals with a defined area and aims are frequently communicated using maps. There are a number of problems reported with local plans: firstly they are still written exclusively by planners, 25

Ibid, p.11

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although they are at least publicly available and authorities are now required to consult on them.

They take a long time to prepare, and are usually partly out of date by the time they are published.

Furthermore since their content is political, revisions are often forced by changes of government (thrice since 1990).

Listing and conservation areas are protection for individual buildings and areas respectively that are considered to have heritage value. Plans for material changes or demolition have to be judged against this value, usually codified with an appraisal and management strategy. English Heritage designates listing, while local authorities designate and manage conservation areas. Criticism is usually either that the designation is not clear enough or that it restricts development on grounds of architectural character even if it might have other benefits for the area.

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Standards and design guides are prepared by local authorities as guidelines for the detailed aspects of design. Standards tend to focus more on minimum dimensional properties, while design guides are more concerned with aesthetic considerations. They are generally popular, although some critics have warned about using them out of their intended context, for example in the London Docklands. 26

Conditions require further information on a plan that must be agreed before the development is legal.

They provide a slighter longer-term relationship between planners and developers, but can only make superficial design changes.

The Community Infrastructure Levy (formerly Section 106 Agreements) is a mechanism for compelling a developer to contribute to local authority funding for public development; sometimes in exchange for an easing of planning policy. Their worth to the public is dependent on the 26

Ibid p.14

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skill of the local authority in negotiating and developers are often more experienced. In the worst case scenario the public accepts a substandard quality of development without sufficient remuneration.

Dissatisfaction of the hybrid system The hybrid model has survived for thirty years because it does satisfy our needs for stability and progress, after a fashion. Private developers broadly seek to offer what the market wants and planning authorities broadly keep them in line with an understanding of the urban environment.

However there is a widespread feeling; voiced by politicians such as Greg Clark27, academics such as David Knight28 and more generally within the construction industry and general public, that it can

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Greg Clark, Total Politics, (Conservative Policy Unit, 2003) David Knight, ‘ aking Planning Popular’, TedxHackney 1809-2013, http://tedxhackney.co.uk/making-planning-populardavid-knight/ 28

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be done better. There are a number of primary concerns:

1. The bureaucracy of the process frustrates developers and central government.

Planning policy is so complicated that it requires an entire profession (planning consultants) to negotiate. Even straightforward planning permissions take several months; if an application is complex or generates public controversy it can take years.

2. The role of the general public is unsatisfactory. For a private citizen to influence the planning system requires time and an obsessive personality. Where such citizens do exist, they can end up wielding a disproportionate amount of influence over planning decisions.

3. The act of planning is still ‘top-down’ – the power rests entirely with developers or the state. There is growing requirement to 43

consult, however this is frequently dismissed as a ‘box-ticking exercise’, focussing as it does on research rather than collaborative decision-making. 29 4. The system is based on antagonism.

Developers seek to build the maximum as cheaply as possible, relying on planners to enforce appropriate scale and quality.

Conversely, planners and private citizens give little thought to business models when making their demands. The result is always a compromise rather than a joint solution.

5. The knowledge used to plan still comes from very limited sources. Developers instinctively use financial statistics, while planners interpret policy written within their profession.

The knowledge of the community is rarely used in the preparation of plans; it is more

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Julia Udall and Anna Holder, The diverse economies of participation, Footprint Journal, Issue 13 (Techne Press 2013) p. 72

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likely to modulate them in order to secure a planning permission.

These concerns on the efficiency and the outcome of the planning process resulted in a restructuring of planning policy in 2011 into the National Planning Policy Framework. Part of this is the first recognition in English law that participation should have a part to play in the planning of the built environment.

While these revisions are by no means a wholesale replacement, they should provoke a discussion about what participatory planning means and how it can be utilised.

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2.0 Participatory Planning 2.1 Reasons for Resurgence

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What is participatory planning?

Under a system of participatory planning, people affected by planning decisions are directly involved in the making of them. Sherry Arnstein observes that there are two types of participant in an act of planning: a ‘power-holder’ and a citizen. She holds that true participation can only occur when there is a transfer of power to the citizen. 1

The power holder is usually a member of government or a rich private entity: a mandate and money being the two most common sources of power. The citizen describes everyone else who is affected – in planning speak this word is usually ‘the community’. Development that affects other people rarely happens without money or power, so the developer is usually a power-holder. If a planning authority regulates development, they will be a power-holder too. This triangle describes most planning applications in England.

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Sherry R. Arnstein, A Ladder of Citizen Participation, JAPA Vol. 35, No.4 (JAPA 1969) pp. 216

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The relationship between the power-holder and the community inevitably exists in all forms of planning.

This relationship can be graded using two tools: Arnstein’s ladder of participation and C.

oughtin’s

techniques of participation. 2 Under the ‘expert state’ the relationship is that of the scientist to his subject and planning is informed largely through detached observation, which grades at the bottom end of oughtin’s scale and would not be considered participation by Arnstein. Under the ‘free market’ the relationship is that of the businessman to the market and ought to exploit whichever level is the most effective, yet in practice private enterprise struggles to assimilate information it cannot value, and primarily uses statistics such as sales patterns or abstract market research. Under both systems, the furthest stages of participation possible are degrees of tokenism: informing, consultation and placation. It could be argued that these offer a

2

Moughtin, op.cit., p. 16

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degree of involvement; however Arnstein does not consider them participatory.

The key watershed is that the community can make power-holders listen to them, as well as ask them. They have the ability to make the developer and the planning authority do what they would not otherwise do – this is the basis of power. This cannot occur under the ‘expert state’ or the ‘free market’, which hold that government or business are the only entities qualified to make this judgement. Participation means that the operation of planning shifts from technical to political, from professionalism to populism, and from representative to direct.

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Why is Participatory Planning relevant?

Its inherently political nature makes participatory planning a subdivision of participatory democracy concerned only with the spatial environment. In this context it is far from new, having manifestation in Athenian democracy3 and explored by Jean Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract4.

However, Krivy and Kaminer believe that it has two important periods in the context of the built environment: the 1960s and the present day.5 The first surge of interest in participation is largely a response to the failures of the ‘expert state’, although it forms part of the much-vaunted counterculture of the 1960’s, attributed to factors as diverse as the adolescence of the baby boomers and the Vietnam War. We do indeed see the

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K. A. Raaflaub, J. Ober, R. W. Wallace, Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (University of California Press 2007) p. 5 4 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Penguin Great Ideas: The Social Contract (Penguin 2004) 5 Kriv and Kaminer, op.cit., p. 1

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flourishing of some forms of popular involvement;6 however it is not expressly taken up by government in Britain and certainly not in the form of a formal power transfer to the community.

A current interest in participatory planning is exemplified by the passing of the Localism Act 2011, but there is wider evidence of its rise.

Wainwright has documented the role of community participation in the New Deal for Communities (NDC) under New Labour.7 Krivy and Kaminer cite the Occupy and Tea Party movements as two emergent pressure groups for direct power.8 There is also the increasing importance given to community involvement in successive Local Development Plans resulting in the emergence of professional consultation businesses such as Soundings.

6

This period is described by Nick Wates & Charles Knevitt in their book Community Architecture (Penguin 1987), where it is characterised as popular control over design rather than planning. Also interesting is how it confidently heralds a new era of participation that never seemed to materialise.

7 Hilary Wainwright, Reclaim The State, (Verso 2003) 8 Krivy & Kaminer, op.cit, p. 2

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The current ‘participatory turn’ is a different breed to its earlier incarnation; critics such as Ryan Love believe it may be more self-interested, less noble.9 What is familiar is that it is emerging from several factors, each of which has something to say about our society.

There are some drivers that have not changed since Jane Jacobs, Arnstein et al. For example, there is still an antipathy towards the professions of architecture and town planning who have lead roles in the process. This is partly lingering blame for the failures of the ‘expert state’, which call into question the competence of their professional techniques. Journalist Simon Jenkins has taken issue on social grounds, demanding that architects apologise for the ‘professional crime’ of housing estates in the style of a South African

9

Ryan Love, Aporia of Participatory Planning: Framing Local Action In an Entrepreneurial City, Footprint Journal, Issue 13 (Techne Press 2013) p.16

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reconciliation committee.10 Prince Charles has frequently questioned their aesthetic judgement, as in his famous quote that ‘when [the Luftwaffe] knocked down our buildings, it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble.’11 Other critics have remarked on the lack of importance afforded to community participation in the training and practice of both professions. Cliff Moughtin observes that ‘the subject is taught with little or no reference to the public for whom the product is intended.’12 In combination with the dubious public benefits of planning theory, this amounts to a ‘special subculture designing with its own peer group in mind’. If trust in planners and architects is consequently so wanting, then it is unsurprising that the public are unhappy delegating decisions to them, and would prefer to exercise direct control.

10

BDonline.co.uk Jenkins: apologise for 1960s Estates, 1201-2007 11 HRH Prince Charles, Speech at the annual dinner of the Corporation of London Planning and Communication Committee, 1987 12 Cliff Moughtin, op. cit, p. 13

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Another motivation shared by the participatory turn of the 1960s is the value of a sense of community, defined by psychologist Seymour B. Sarason as ‘the feeling that one is part of a larger dependable and stable structure’13 and identified by Gustfield as having a territorial as well as a relational dimension14. Academic opinion remains in broad consensus that a sense of community is a natural human impulse, beneficial if present and destructive if absent. It has also been asserted that it is delicate and takes time to acquire.15 Participatory planning is consistently regarded as conducive to a sense of community, firstly because it is a subjective quality that an external planner cannot comprehend and is therefore likely to ignore16, but also because the act

13

Seymour B. Sarason The psychological sense of community: Prospects for a community psychology (JosseyBass 1977) p.157 14 J.R. Gustfield The community: A critical response, (Harper Colophon 1975) 15 Jacobs, op.cit., pp. 66-67 16 Jacobs, op.cit., pp. 68-84

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of participatory planning can actually strengthen it17.

Muf architecture argue in their web pamphlet Making Space in Dalston that a sense of community is actually a pre-requisite to the successful operation of participatory planning.18 A third reason shared by both ‘participatory turns’ is the belief in a latent knowledge among the community that can only be harnessed by direct involvement. Hilary Wainwright calls it ‘a mass of sense’ after Tom Paine’s passage in The Rights of Man, which explains innovation following revolutions.

Participation shares with the free market this faith in the superiority of tacit, situated knowledge over the generalised, centrally held variety.

However, there seems to be very little sense that the free market is representative in the context of development.

17

Wainwright, op.cit., p. 67 Muf architecture/art, Is This What You Mean By Localism, http://issuu.com/mufarchitectureartllp/docs/making_space_big 18

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In fact, commentators such as Wainwright identify dissatisfaction with the free market as a new cause of renewed interest in direct participation.

The Occupy movement typify two objections to it in their slogan ‘we are the 99%’, reference to the statistic that the top 1% of earners in the US hold 34.6% of its wealth, with only 15% held by the bottom 80%.19 Firstly, the argument weakens that the market is a substitute for democracy, even the representative democracy of the maligned expert state, when so much power is concentrated in the hands of an unaccountable minority. Secondly, it is likely that imbalance of money (and therefore power) maintains an imbalance of resource as there is no imperative to redistribute, unlike the expert state. The global imbalance of wealth has driven the aid industry since 1980, however more recently the focus has shifted to how the ‘free market’ is causing 19

Deborah L Jacobs, ‘Occupy Wall Street and the rhetoric of equality’, Forbes, 11-01-2011, http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2011/11/01/occup y-wall-street-and-the-rhetoric-of-equality/

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this imbalance – highlighted by the decision to focus aid concert Live8 on shifting economic policy rather than aid.

Hilary Wainwright asserts that though the free market won the ideological battle of the cold war, ‘it cannot be said that rampant capitalism has morally vindicated its triumph.’20 This raises questions about whether a planning system led by private developers will most effectively meet society’s needs – the anti-corporatist rhetoric invoked in almost every large planning application indicates widespread doubt.

The popular rejection of the free market (or more universally, corporatism) is interesting because it was not central to the interest in participatory planning in the 1960s; the focus was more on combating an oppressive state than selfserving big business. Jane Jacobs describes the workings of the free market as an essential part of 20

Wainwright, op.cit., p. ix-xx

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the creation of diversity in cities.21 This is not because big corporations were any better back then - they simply didn’t exist on the scale they do today.

The phenomena of companies wealthier than sovereign states emerged under the economically liberal government of Thatcher in Britain and Reagan in the US, where limiting regulations were systematically dismantled. In reality Thatcher could not have transferred the enormous functions of the state into private hands without encouraging enormous corporations to match – the starkest example in the field of planning is the transfer of planning policy for the entire Isle of Dogs to the London Docklands Development Corporation in 1985. Misgivings about the substitute of state for corporations emerge in popular culture at about the same time: Robocop (1987) is probably the most famous example.

There are a number of other factors that are distinct to the current interest in participation. In the era of the powerful corporation, the public may feel that 21

Jane Jacobs, op.cit., pp.155-283

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their elected representatives have lost sovereignty, and therefore that direct participation is a better process to have their views heard. Corporate developers often command resources comparable to the local authority, which may be limited to the role of the ‘entrepreneurial partner.’22 A growing interest in participatory planning may be the result of frustration with representative democracy as a whole.

There have been changes to contemporary perception of participation at the level of government too; the Coalition under David Cameron would like to see public participation shrink the size of the state (the so-called ‘Big Society’) just as

argaret Thatcher expected of

private enterprise. This is very clearly set out in the introduction to The Plain English Guide to the Localism Act by the Rt. Hon Greg Clark MP and in the assertion that ‘the time has come to disperse

22

Love, op.cit., p. 7

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power more widely in Britain today’ in the

ay 2010

Coalition Agreement.

This introduces another interesting dimension that I have not yet discussed, which is the connection between participation and spatial unit. In Cliff Moughtin’s analytical scale of participation he makes a link between the scale at which a decision is to be made and level of participation that it is appropriate to use.23 He makes the point that the larger the spatial unit, the more people will have interest in decisions, therefore planning acts involving participation will also be larger. Ricoeur describes a balance that needs to be struck between a number of participants small enough to ‘make a decision possible,’ but large enough ‘that the largest possible number of men can take part in this decision’.24 If a high degree of participation is advocated, then the 23

Moughtin, op.cit., p. 17 Paul Ricoeur, ‘Universal Civilization and National Cultures’ in History and Truth (Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1965) p. 273 24

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decisions must be taken at the level of a smaller spatial unit. Cliff

oughtin puts the ‘neighbourhood’

as the largest spatial unit that can accommodate the levels of citizen participation defined as meaningful by Sherry Arnstein. According to this logic, localism is an inseparable component of participation.

This spatial element ties participation to two issues that have become politically significant in recent years: devolution and sustainability.

Devolution was obviously anathema under the ‘expert state’, however neither was it a feature of argaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government in the 1980s; the cuts to the state were disproportionately at the Local Authority level. Yet one of the largest changes to 21st century British politics has been the devolution of power to Scotland and Wales, following pressure for more local government.

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Similarly, sustainability is an issue that has provoked unprecedented debate in recent years, emerging from relatively recent scientific consensus on man-made climate change. David Cameron’s Conservatives were the first party to campaign and lead government on a platform of sustainability.

By requiring decisions on a local level in order to be effective, participation has obvious benefits for devolution. It is relevant to sustainability in the context of the environmental damage of CO2 caused by long distance transportation.

Sustainability is not the only factor in the participatory turn that has emerged from recent technological advance; the World Wide Web is a development with significant implications, although it cannot be understood as an intellectual movement as such. It is however a widespread networking platform, which makes both communication and the sharing of data faster and more straightforward: important elements of participation. A significant percentage of the activity 65

is characterised as social networking, which is inherently participatory. 25 The potential of the Internet to effect changes of power was well documented during the Arab spring.26 The World Wide Web is not inherently linked to participatory planning: it has an equally large role in data collection for the ‘expert state’ and promoting the businesses of the free market. However it reduces the obstacles to co-ordination that have stymied previous incarnations of participatory planning.

Furthermore since 73% of the population of Britain now use the Internet every day, enjoying rapid access to any information they desire and the opportunity to globally express their opinion, it is easy to conceive that a sense of entitlement to self-

25

53% of adults and 93% of 16-24 have used social networks.

Source: Office for National Statistics, Internet Access – Households & Individuals 2013, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_322713.pdf, p.7 26 David Wolman, ‘Facebook, Twitter help the Arab Spring blossom’, Wired 16-04-2013, http://www.wired.com/magazine/2013/04/arabspring/

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determination may permeate the politics of the physical world.27

The final factor that has been identified in the present ‘participatory turn’ as being distinct from the 1960s is the growth of small-c conservatism. Love argues that the participation of citizens in planning has become less about encouraging development along the right lines than maintaining the status quo.28 The term NIMBY has been coined in the press to describe participants that are opposed to local development, and there is statistical as well as anecdotal evidence for this trend. An Ipsos MORI survey found that while 83% agreed there was a lack of affordable housing for young people, 59% disagreed that Britain should build more housing each year.29 Research carried out by Colin Buchanan suggest that while only 46% of urban 27

Internet Access – Households & Individuals 2013, op.cit., p.

1

28

Love, op.cit., p.16 Berkeley Homes, Delivering Growth Through Localism, (Privately published 2011) p. 145 29

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dwellers would oppose the construction of private housing in their neighbourhood, 60% would oppose social housing, 39% would oppose supermarkets and 73% would oppose light industry.30

Less evident are the causes for this apparent reluctance to endorse development. The first possibility is that NIMBYism is an outcome of argaret Thatcher’s drive to make Britain a ‘nation of homeowners’.31 Home ownership rose by 20% between 1971 and 200132 and it is possible that possession of a large asset with a value directly tied to planning decisions in the local area will make a participant less likely to support development.

NIMBYism certainly seems to be closely tied to wealth: an Ipsos MORI poll of British households 30

The SK Colin Buchanan blog, ‘localism – are we a nation of NI BYS?’, http://colinbuchanan.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/localism%E2%80%93-are-we-a-nation-of-nimbys/ 13-05-2011 31 Margaret Thatcher, Conservative Party Political Broadcast 1974 32 Sam arsden, ‘Home Ownership Falls’ in The Telegraph Online, 19-04-2013

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showed ‘Wealthy Executive’ (8.6%) have a ‘high’ likelihood of opposing housing development and for ‘Secure Families’ (14.9%) it is ‘fairly high’, whereas ‘Struggling Families’ and ‘Blue Collar Roots’ (13% and 7.7% respectively) have a ‘low’ likelihood of opposition. If allowing development is seen as a gamble with property prices, perhaps it is unsurprising that communities have become more reluctant to do so. According to an Ipsos MORI survey of voting habits for the 2010 general election, homeowners are also more likely to vote Conservative than any other form of tenure.33

A second theory is that since participation through the traditional channels of planning consultation is so time consuming, it attracts a disproportionate amount of elderly people.34 The same Ipsos MORI survey reports that people above 33

Ipsos ORI, ‘How Britain voted in 2010’, http://www.ipsosmori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2613/HowBritain-Voted-in-2010.aspx?view=wide 34 I should note that since neither consultation specialists nor planning authorities are in the habit of asking respondents for their age, this is based solely on my own experience.

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65 are more likely to vote Conservative than any other demographic.35 They have lower potential gain from long-term change and longer conditioning to the status quo, but also a longer experience of cycles of change that might make them more cautious of continuing to embrace them. These factors might conspire to further a resistance to change among planning consultees.

The third and most optimistic view of the growth of conservatism in planning is that it is an outcome of the non-participatory role to which the community has been relegated. If obstruction is the only active role that a citizen can play in the process of development, then conservatism may simply be the only possible expression of their concern over development that affects them.

35

Ipsos MORI, op.cit.

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71

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2.0 Participatory Planning 2.2 Risks and Opportunities

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Information Sharing The start point of the planning process is requirement; a plan must define its objectives and who is setting them. In participatory town planning that should always be the citizenry/community: the end users and people affected by the plan. Whether seeking profit or re-election, the objective of the developer is to offer a fulfilling of their requirement.

Participation is not always perceived as a necessary part of this process. Under the auspices of the professional planners of the ‘expert state’, requirement was often based on the zoological observations of a complex animal. An even more distant method, contestable but frequently evident is that planners and more particularly architects sometimes consider inhabitation below aesthetics.

The somewhat tacit fact that requirement is not general across the human species but needs some form of situated survey constitutes the first advantage of participatory planning.

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This is generally accepted (at least publicly) by state and private developers, and the methods for establishing knowledge of requirement have already been listed, ranging from detached analysis to consultation. Despite this, Hilary Wainwright contends that much of the relevant knowledge of requirement is tacit in nature and cannot be transferred; therefore the only process by which it can be utilised is through the active participation of the bearer.1 Love contests whether participation makes any difference, since assimilating tacit knowledge into a system of planning at any meaningful scale is difficult and sometimes paradoxical.

uch of the ‘mass of sense’ is simply

too personal to translate with any meaningful degree, what Ben Highmore calls ‘traces or remainders of the overflowing unmanageability of the everyday.’2 In order to assimilate this knowledge into an extra-personal system of planning, it must

1

Wainwright, op.cit., pp.19-20 Ben Highmore, Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction (Routledge 2002) p. 26 2

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be rationalised into a communicable form and inevitably distorted as a consequence. Planning needs to be able to place definite value on things in order to make judgements upon them from a position of neutrality: Peter Berger claims that this rationalisation is not only essential to the technique of planning, but also its claim to legitimacy.3 My opinion is that while Love’s vision of an allrationalising planning process is valid in abstract, in reality it is carried out by humans, who are well able to process the irrational. If the bearer of tacit knowledge is involved in a planning process, that knowledge will have an effect on his or her actions and therefore to the process at large.

Technical Expertise If we accept that participation is a more effective means of involving the knowledge of the community in the planning process, the second question is what value it has versus the professional knowledge 3

Peter Berger, The Homeless Mind, (Penguin 1973) p. 53

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of the architect and planner (the value of these professions would also make for an interesting discussion, though there is not space for it here).

Firstly, if we accept that people do not all have identical requirements, then we must also accept that there are values within them that vary.

Awareness of these values is available in its entirety only to the citizen, and not to the professional.

Secondly, if we understand planning as a problem requiring a solution, then having a large diverse set of minds working on it should produce a more resolved answer, providing that the set is small enough to comprehend the problem, collaborate on the process and express solutions. We can therefore establish that participation can offer both unique expertise and contribute to the efficiency of the planning process.

The citizen is less likely to have access to planning knowledge of a technical variety, which is accessed primarily through specialist training or 77

previous experience in the field. I would hold that this knowledge is required in order to plan successfully. If it is not available, a participatory planning group will need to expend time and energy producing their own version through trial-and-error.

This is not to say that professional technique is the only valid form, but that it is certainly useful. A number of architectural theorists, foremost among them Christopher Alexander, have contended that professional expertise is unnecessary and that every person has an innate ability to build: ‘without the help of architects or planners, if you are working in the timeless way, a town will grow under your hands’.4 However, his attempt to codify this ‘timeless way’ in a book constitutes education, and therefore recognises the value of expertise. It should also be noted that Alexander trained as an architect, and that his own highly original projects in

4

Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, (Oxford University Press 1979) p. 8

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participatory planning have all been supervised by architects.’5

Love warns that the involvement of professional design disciplines risks inhibiting the participation of the community.6 Since the training and interest of architects and planners includes aesthetic as well as technical principles, they also claim the right to speak technically about soft forms of knowledge that the community has equal right to.

Because of the status afforded to them from their qualifications, articulacy and jargon they will tend to dominate discussion; hence Love argues that their inclusion in participatory planning is ‘simply a soft version of the hard paternalism of previous planning regimes’.

5

Christopher Alexander, The Oregon Experiment (Oxford University Press 1980) 6 Love, op.cit., p.15

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The solution recommended by Wates and Knevitt is the ‘creative working partnership’.7 While maintaining that ‘specialist knowledge and expertise are essential’ the relationship should be equal dialogue between two sets of experts. ‘Experts have to tap the knowledge of the people they are working for and gain an empathy with them. Users need to gain a better understanding of the environmental and technical issues involved, and the options that are available to them’.8 The vision of this partnership is quite rosy, so they have two recommendations for the incorporation of professionals into participatory planning: firstly that they are directly accountable to the community, and secondly that they live and work within it. They also expect a rather large remunerative sacrifice on the part of the design professional: a report by Hunt Thompson Associates found that the involvement of tenants in a straightforward refurbishment adds 7

Nick Wates and Charles Knevitt, Community Architecture: How people are creating their own environments, (Penguin 1987) p. 117 8 Ibid., p. 118

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20% to costs, and a study of sixty such ‘creative working partnerships’ by the RIBA in 1978 found that ‘architects have received no more than one sixth of the fees to which they are entitled’.9 This experience has been affirmed by Muf Architecture in their report Is this what you mean by localism.10

Innovation, or stability Another vaunted advantage of participatory planning is the potential for innovation. Hilary Wainwright contends that this is inherent within the tacit knowledge of the public. Her view is summarised by Tom Paine in the rights of man: ‘It appears to general observation that revolutions create genius and talent; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing in man, a ‘mass of sense’ lying in a dormant state.’11

9

Ibid., p.128 Kieran Long, Is this what you mean by localism, p. 5 http://issuu.com/mufarchitectureartllp/docs/layout_final_vis_re v_05 11 Thomas Paine ‘The right of man’, in The Thomas Paine Reader, (Penguin 1987) p. 277 10

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Correspondingly, both Wainwright and Love contend that innovation cannot come from the top as both power-holders and planning professionals have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

In the case of the planning professionals this is to cement the credibility of their qualifications,12 and for power-holders to ensure stability of their power13.

To counter this, we have already observed how real world experience of local planning tends towards conservatism. Udall and Holder remark that public participation has become colonised by NIMBYist oppositional practices motivated in defence of the value of private property.14 We have also seen that this conservatism is a function of wealth and stability, therefore it should be noted that participatory planning is no guarantee of innovation if the participants are those who have an interest in

12

Love, op.cit., p. 14 Wainwright, op.cit., p. 21 14 Julia Udall and Anna Holder, op.cit., p. 63 13

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maintaining the status quo. To balance this, Wortham-Galvin quotes online posts from American groups engaged in a private regeneration activity called ‘homesteading’ which contend that homeowners have a vested interest in the quality of life in their neighbourhood and are therefore more likely to seek to participate in improving it.15

The key difference between these opposing outcomes of home ownership is the perception of whether development is necessary. In the example cited by Wortham-Galvin, the homeowner is part of a regeneration scheme and unlikely to conclude that no further development is necessary. However, the phenomenon of NIMBYism in Britain goes hand in hand with the process of gentrification: the incremental increase of the value of property and the wealth of residents in an area. A free market in homeownership does seem to tend toward a stable 15

Brooke D. Wortham-Galvin, An Anthropology of Urbanism: How people make places and what designers and planners might learn from it, Footprint Journal, Issue 13 (Techne Press 2013) p. 32

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state where the value of an area is considered high enough that it will only be compromised by further development. If a house becomes a commodity as well as a dwelling then its value derives partly from limits on its availability. An example comes from the gentrified suburb of Crouch End in North London, where in 2006 the local authority held a consultation on a planned expansion of the popular Coleridge primary school. The most vociferous objections came from neighbours within the existing catchment area of the school, whose house prices would suffer if it were enlarged.

The attainment of a stable state of high value tends to have the effect of reducing diversity. High value property naturally ends up owned by wealthy individuals and groups. It is the unfortunate nature of our society that the wealthy owners tend to share similar characteristics, including skin colour.

Commercial property can only be leased by businesses with large incomes, which are more often corporate supermarkets than second hand 84

bookshops. Jane Jacobs refers to this phenomenon as ‘the self-destruction of diversity’.16 While it could be argued that this stable state is the nirvana of home ownership, in planning terms it has failed.

Leaving aside Jacob’s concern about where you buy second hand books, the stable state has no ability to grow and adapt for new residents.

Establishing what is required goes beyond what is required by the current inhabitants – it should also plan for the assimilation of new ones.

Participatory planning among a community that is in a stable state has the potential to be the least innovative form of planning. While a community can plan effectively for itself through a pleasant form of self-motivation, it may be unwilling to extend this generosity to future members.

A final note is that both Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander believe that a conservative form of planning is no bad thing, the 16

Jacobs, op.cit., 255-270

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accommodation of new residents notwithstanding.

Both argue independently that the tacit operation and planning principles of towns are products of long complex histories of negotiation, and that the greatest failures of town planning in the last 60 years have resulted from a slavish obsession with innovation rather than an understanding of the status quo.

Efficiency The most common doubt expressed about participatory planning is that giving equal weighting to an increased number of participants inevitably slows the process down. Agreement is more easily reached among fewer people, and developers are reluctant to risk delays without a quantifiable benefit.

The first counter-argument is that a lack of participation may result in the wrong process. The benefits of information gathering and analysis

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described above may merit a delay if the outcome is markedly better as a result. Yet while case studies such as the retention of Covent Garden piazza ably demonstrate how participation can add value, this has been slow to gain acceptance from private developers due to a lack of studies that financially qualify the benefits. If it transpires benefits cannot be monetised, then an agreement seems unlikely under the current model of speculative development.

The second argument is that the time lost during the preparation of plans is made up during the process of seeking approval. Kieran Long makes this point in a study of the work of Muf Architecture in Dalston. After pointing out that even small developments may be held up for several years if they struggle with objections at the planning stage, he goes on to say: 窶連 concern raised about a new localist planning regime based on large amounts of public participation is that it has the potential to strangle the planning process with 87

delays due to the concert of voices demanding input on projects. In fact, the projects of ‘making space in Dalston’ happened at pace – all were developed with stakeholders, designed, received planning permission and were built within 12 months …

Because people were involved in projects from the beginning they supported them at planning application stage’.17 The point being that the community will have their say at some point in any case, and it is more useful to both parties to involve the community at the beginning so that their input can be positive integrated.

The stumbling block with the application of this argument is once more the presence of stable state conservatism. In the example above, the projects were small and uncontroversial: mostly small-scale public space improvements for community use. Crucially the neighbourhood is also relatively deprived, although gentrifying. Where the objectives of the community participants are more 17

Long, op.cit.,p. 12

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to limit development than improve it, either an unacceptable compromise on scale or a contested planning application may be inevitable, in which case a developer has little to gain from participatory planning.

Longevity A last claim made by champions of participatory planning is that it promotes the quality of ‘ownership’, which results in increased use and selfmaintenance of the resulting development. Wates and Knevitt assert that ‘the environment works better if the people who live, work and play in it are actively involved in its creation and management’18.

This is certainly borne out by the experience of Muf Architecture in Dalston, where the residents of the Somerford Estate have run gardening workshops in their new community garden for 3 years, and the businesses of Ashwin Street 18

Wates & Knevitt, op.cit., p. 18

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collectively tend the planting of the pavements.

However there are many examples of failed community gardens that contest this point: the community garden on the junction of Kenworthy road in Homerton, now permanently closed and the site of two stabbings in the last sixth months, is only my most local example.

I think it is ambitious to state that participatory planning can bring about ownership, use and management by itself, although it can establish the social networks that make such benefits more likely. It is more important that the environment suits the requirements of the community, than that they can necessarily claim authorship.

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91

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3.0 The Localism Act 2011 3.1 A Summary

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As described in the introduction, a paradigm shift has occurred in government since the last election that emphasises a move away from a centralised state. Revisions to planning law have been a significant part of this change, as a result most of the planning law applicable to the average citizen will have been written in the last three years. At the level of national government the centre of this change was the Localism Act, an act of parliament that David Cameron described as ‘distributing power more widely in Britain’. But behind its unarguable rhetoric of ‘empowerment of local people’, what changes has it actually brought to the way we build in England?

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The Localism Act 2011 A new climate in planning was defined and typified by the Localism Act of 2011.

The aim of the Localism Act is decentralisation: ‘to disperse power more widely in Britain’. So begins the foreword to ‘A Plain English Guide to the Localism Act’, which goes on to make three arguments for this process.1 1. General decisions taken at high level cannot take into account local conditions and will be poor by definition.

2. Efforts to implement these decisions require a large bureaucracy, which is inefficient and costly.

3. Having these decisions imposed upon them does not create a sense of participation and involvement ‘on which a healthy democracy thrives’.

1

Greg Clark P, ‘A Plain English Guide to the Localism Act’, (DCLG Publications 2011) p. 1

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In execution the Localism Act introduces changes to existing powers and the addition of new ones, at the level of either the local authority, or the group nebulously referred to as ‘the community’.

Particularly at the local authority level, many of these powers are only indirectly related to the built environment. For example: 

Councillors may act as private individuals when campaigning, expressing views.



Local authorities have greater freedom in setting up ‘area committees’, which are discussion groups for area-specific concerns.

However, some of the powers theoretically granted to local communities are directly relevant.

1. Neighbourhood Planning.

Communities have the right to draw up a ‘neighbourhood plan’, a document that once ratified forms part of enforceable planning policy. The aim of this document is simply described as ‘where they [the community] 96

think new houses, businesses and shops should go - and what they should look like’.

Neighbourhood plans are ratified by a process described in The Neighbourhood Planning General Regulations 20122 and implemented by local councils. Once prepared, the neighbourhood plan is the primary piece of planning legislation for the neighbourhood area.

2. Community Right to Build.

A development proposal can be built without planning permission if it is proposed by a ‘community’ within their local area and can demonstrate that it aims to benefit both.

These Community Right to Build orders may be granted as part of a Neighbourhood Planning process or on their own. The legal basis for such orders is also enshrined in 2

HM Government, The Neighbourhood Planning General Regulations 2012, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2012/637/pdfs/uksi_201206 37_en.pdf

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‘The Neighbourhood Planning General Regulations 2012’, and the stages in achieving one are described in accessible form in the document ‘Understanding the Community Right to Build’3.

3. Requirement to Consult Communities.

Developers are required to consult local communities before submitting planning applications for certain developments. This requirement is described in the National Planning Policy Framework and the specific details of eligible developments and the consultation required must form part Local Plans.

4. Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL).

3

My Community Rights, Understanding the Community Right to Build, http://mycommunityrights.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2012/04/LOCALITYBUILD_UNDERSTANDING.pdf

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CIL (and mayoral CIL in London) is payable on all developments over a certain size and intended to support new infrastructure for the local area (replacing section 106 agreements). Reforms introduced by the Localism Act ‘gives the government the power to require’ that some of the money raised goes directly to the neighbourhoods where development takes place. CIL is also used as an incentive to create neighbourhood plans: areas with a plan receive 25% of the levy, while those without receive only 15%.

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The National Planning Policy Framework The principles of English planning law have been re-codified since the last general election in a single document called the ‘National Planning Policy Framework’ (NPPF).4 It bridges the gap between the intent and power defined in the Localism Act and its implementation. The aim of the NPPF is summarised in its foreword as law for enabling sustainable development.

4

Department for Communities and Local Government, National Planning Policy Framework, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attac hment_data/file/6077/2116950.pdf

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The NPPF has two tenets for enabling sustainable development. The first is a presumption in favour of sustainable development. The second is that a body described as ‘people and communities’ should have a greater role in a planning process from which they have long been excluded. The closing words of the foreword suggest that the NPPF facilitates these tenets through the simplification of planning policy.

Prior to its introduction, this policy was enshrined in documents called Planning Policy Statements (PPS) and Planning Policy Guidance notes (PPG) which totalled over 1300 pages. The NPPF is just 65 pages, with a 27 page appendix. The logic runs that this makes it easier for both developers to produce permissible building developments and communities to take a greater role in influencing building in their area.

In reality the NPPF is not a definitive, comprehensive document for achieving these aims.

As the name suggests, it is a skeleton on which to hang a set of more specific, locally applicable 102

legislation: the Local Development Frameworks (LDF). The example I have studied in detail (for the London Borough of Hackney) constitutes hundreds of pages of information over several documents.

When one has digested this information, the following tools are made available for an average member of the public with no professional role in the construction process or government to influence the course of their built environment.

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Passing comment on local planning policy Any person may read and supply comments on draft forms of all local planning documents (which form the majority of planning policy relevant to their locality according to the Localism Act). They will need to be proactive enough to:

1. Be aware of the timescales for documents becoming available for comment, which is made clear in the Local Development Scheme, available online.

2. Gain access to the document, which is straightforward for a person with Internet access.

3. Read and understand the document. I have found structure and language of the local planning documents to be rational and comprehensible, at least for the English edition.

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4. Return comments on the document; which is also straightforward for a person with Internet access.

The council has a duty to consider all comments, although there is no dedicated stage outlined in the consultation process for incorporation of these comments.5 A person may increase the weighting of their opinion by joining a stakeholder group that the council considers to be representative of a larger group of people (general consultation bodies) or to have expert knowledge (specific consultation bodies). For local planning policy this may result in their opinion being regarded in the compilation of the document rather than after its publishing in draft form.

5

Hackney Council, Statement of Community Involvement 2014, pp. 8-19 http://www.hackney.gov.uk/Assets/Documents/Statement-ofcommunity-involvement-2014.pdf

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Passing comment on planning applications Any person may view all submitted information for a planning application and pass comment on it, subsequent to the application having been submitted. They will need to: 1. Actively review the council website for new applications, which I have found to be an opaque and time-consuming process in the case of Hackney Council. Alternatively they may request to be notified of new applications, or live in a catchment area considered by the planning department to be ‘neighbouring’ to the site.

2. Return comments on the document, which is a straightforward process.

The council has a duty to consider all comments, although only to act upon them if they believe them to be relevant. The comment may encourage the council to a) refuse the application b) negotiate for changes with the applicant, although in practice these changes will not be substantial.

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In some cases, a person may be given the opportunity (entirely at the developers disposition) to pass comment on a proposal before it has been formally submitted. These usually take the form of a public exhibition, debate or workshop and give the opportunity for more meaningful input. There is no statutory requirement for this process, although it is becoming more popular.6

Neighbourhood Planning The most substantial opportunity presented to nonaffiliated members of the public to have a direct input on their built environment is via the power granted to neighbourhood planning via the Localism Act 2011.7 Any person may play a part in preparing a document that, while it must be compliant with more general principles pursuant to relevant Local Plans, Regional Spatial Strategies and the NPPF, will be the primary 6

Hackney Council, Statement of Community Involvement 2014, pp.21-34 7 HM Government, The Localism Act 2011, pp. 349-363 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/20/pdfs/ukpga_2011 0020_en.pdf

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piece of planning policy for their locality. The requirements to achieve this are substantial, a body must: 1. Decide an appropriate definition of neighbourhood, submit and have this approved by the council.

2. Organise a representative ‘neighbourhood forum’, submit and have this approved by the council.

3. Build an ‘evidence base’ of all data relevant to the preparation of a plan, some of which may need to be empirically produced.

4. Hold substantial consultation with the local community in order to claim to be representative of their needs.

5. Write a neighbourhood plan.

6. Hold a consultation on the draft of the plan with the local authority and all interested stakeholders.

7. Submit the plan to the local authority for inspection, including by an independent examiner.

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8. Accept any amendments recommended by the local authority to ensure compliance.

The local authority must then hold a referendum on the plan with the residents of the affected area and accept the neighbourhood plan as law if it gains a simple majority.

Conclusion Greg Clark

P’s introduction to A Plain English

Guide to the Localism Act is compelling reading for supporters of humanist democracy.8 The very fact that this piece of legislation has been translated into ‘plain English’ seems to suggest empowerment of the public. Yet as Hilary Wainwright remarks, Tony Blair also championed the principle of empowerment, and the results were far from revolutionary.9 In the context of planning, the further I have read into the role of the community enshrined by the documents of the National Planning Policy Framework, the more trivial the Localism Act seems 8 9

Clark, op.cit., pp.1-2 Wainwright, op.cit., p. 27

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in the face of the planning system. Effectively there is one tenet on which the reality of community empowerment rests, and that is the neighbourhood plan. The consultation on other documents in the NPPF is indeed further reaching than previous iteration of the same controls, but there is no ground-breaking incentive to make their development any more participatory than the documents they replace. The scale is still too large for the inclusion of plans that have personal significance to individual citizens, and the process of consultation still too limited to involve those without an active interest in planning.

Neighbourhood plans are different in two regards. Firstly their scale is defined by the representative forum that steers them, a group of around twenty people, setting a natural limit on the scope of their local interest. Secondly, as this group is unelected they are under much stricter requirements to prove legitimacy through community involvement, concluding with a referendum. While there is no minimum turnout for 110

the referendum, it should be unlikely that affected citizens will be unaware of the plan that it decides – a statement untrue for plans ratified at the level of local government. I think it is true to say that neighbourhood plans are the most holistic concession to participatory planning in the history of English town planning. The final point of interest is this dissertation is the emerging effects of this legislation in our society.

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3.0 The Localism Act 3.2 Outcomes of Neighbourhood Planning

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The Localism Act came into force in April 2012. The first neighbourhood plan (in Upper Eden, Cumbria) was passed in March 2013,1 so it can be estimated that neighbourhood plans take at least eleven months to prepare. In fact the period may be longer, since plans such as for Norland in Kensington were in preparation in anticipation of the act. Since almost all of the earliest designations had strong pre-existing neighbourhood forums, we may expect that it will take a while longer before neighbourhood plans become a more general part of the planning landscape. Rosemarie Macqueen, strategic director for the built environment at City of Westminster Council, believes it will take 5 years before the effect of neighbourhood planning can be properly assessed.2 However the final section of this dissertation seeks to analyse what has emerged so 1

Department for Communities and Local Government, Notes on Neighbourhood Planning Edition 4, 03-2013 p. 1, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notes-onneighbourhood-planning-edition-4 2 London Assembly Planning and Housing Committee, ‘Investigation on Neighbourhood Planning’, debate at city hall 10-11-2013, http://www.london.gov.uk/webcasts/34315/asx

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far from neighbourhood planning, and what trends it is beginning to reveal about participation in our planning system. As the interest of my study is town planning, the focus is on urban areas, though drawing on relevant trends from all parts of the country.

As of December 2013 there were 800 neighbourhood area designations in over half of the local planning authorities in England. Of these 630 were at the stage of neighbourhood designation, 54 had published draft plans, 25 plans were submitted to examination, 9 had passed examination, 6 had passed referendum and 4 plans were in force3. This is already surpassing government expectations (and funding) in some areas; local authorities can claim funding for up to 20 designations4, as of October 2013 the Borough of Westminster has had 3

Department for Communities and Local Government, Notes on Neighbourhood Planning Edition 8, 12-2013 p. 1, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notes-onneighbourhood-planning-edition-8 4 Notes on Neighbourhood Planning Edition 4, op.cit., p. 3

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43 applications5. At this early stage it seems that interest in participatory planning is high, although observers in local government have expressed doubts that this will follow through into a significant number of completed plans.6 Beyond Consultation is one of the few pieces of critical research on the early efficacy of neighbourhood plans. Published in February 2012 by the London Assembly, it establishes four key challenges in their establishment.

Defining Neighbourhoods The first challenge is the definition of a neighbourhood. This is particularly relevant in the context of towns, where boundaries are as likely to be judged by distances to high streets or postcode snobbery as they are to physical edges. The

5

‘Investigation on Neighbourhood Planning’, op.cit., London Assembly Planning and Housing Committee, Beyond Consultation: The role of neighbourhood plans in supporting local involvement in planning, 01-02-2012 p.31, http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor-assembly/londonassembly/publications/neighbourhood-planning-in-london 6

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relative nature of neighbourhoods is excellently demonstrated in a study by Euan Mills7 on the limits of Dalston, which he carried out by asking passersby where they thought they were at 200m intervals along the Kingsland Road8. The resulting graph showed that the sense of a neighbourhood was less a definable boundary and more an opinion that gradually shifts between local centres. This complicates the earliest stage of preparing a neighbourhood plan: the drawing of an unambiguous edge.

The definition of neighbourhood limits has also run into problems where they do not follow ward or borough boundaries. Proposals for the St Quintin and Woodlands neighbourhood in west London straddled two boroughs, had to submit to both and were rejected by one after local residents 7

Euan Mills is also one of the leading figures in the establishment of the Chatsworth Road neighbourhood plan.

8 Euan ills, ‘Desperately Seeking Dalston’, Big Think 30-012012, http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/551-desperatelyseeking-dalston-a-field-study

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expressed doubt that the boundary defined a single neighbourhood.9 However some areas with a strong single identity are located on statutory boundaries: Crystal Palace is located in four boroughs and Finsbury Park in three; therefore it seems inevitable that some plans will be inter-borough. This is likely to complicate applications for funding, which are allocated per local authority. It also makes the preparation of the plan more difficult, as each Local Planning Authority prepares an independent local plan that neighbourhood plans are required to comply with, meaning inter-borough plans must respond to more than one.

Boundaries have also been rejected where they include sites of political significance. A neighbourhood plan submitted for Daws Hill in Wycombe included two large sites that had recently 9

John Geoghegan, ‘Cross-borough neighbourhood plan bid knocked back by London council’, Planning Resource 24-102013, http://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/1218049/crossborough-neighbourhood-plan-bid-knocked-back-londoncouncil

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been sold to housing developer Taylor Wimpey.

The neighbourhood forum had previously voiced concerns about proposals to develop the site and the council’s refusal to include them in the designation (on grounds of their ‘strategic nature’) is likely to have anticipated that a neighbourhood plan would seek to block development.10 The case is due to be heard in the court of appeal in February or March 2014.11

Another obstacle to the definition of a boundary is conflict with other neighbourhood plans.

Rosemarie Macqueen estimates that one third of applications in Westminster overlap others.12 This may be a result of relative understandings of neighbourhood, however in some cases these 10

Jamie Carpenter ‘Group granted judicial review over neighbourhood plan redraft’, Planning Resource 25-01-2013, http://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/1168338/groupgranted-judicial-review-neighbourhood-plan-redraft 11 Simon Farr, ‘Daws Hill legal challenge being watched around the country’, Bucks Free Press 11-10-2013, http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/10734453.Daws_Hill_l egal_challenge_being__watched_around_the_country_/ 12 Investigation on Neighbourhood Planning, op.cit., 10-112013

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conflictions are the result of rival neighbourhood forums seeking to disrupt applications for plans that they disagree with. Two overlapping proposals for Stamford Hill in London have been rejected after it became evident that they were the result of a deeper argument about planning rights.13 Meanwhile in Bermondsey, efforts to establish a boundary have descended into chaos with three competing forums and multiple interest groups vying to convince Southwark Council of their legitimacy to plan.14

The definition of neighbourhood is a good example of the complex interface between what Ryan Love describes as the ‘absolute purpose of the cultural and the absolute rationality of administration’15. A neighbourhood is a subjective 13

Robert Booth, ‘Hackney planning row exposes fault lines in orthodox Jewish area’ in The Guardian 8-03-2013, http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/08/hackneyplanning-row-orthdox-jewish 14 Chris Brown ‘Neighbourhood planning chaos’ on Regeneration and Renewal 18-03-2013 15 Love, op.cit., p. 11

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spatial concept and attempts to define one on a map will always be difficult and partially unsuccessful, encapsulated in Theodor Adorno’s statement that culture’s integration into administration is an ‘external affair by which it is subsumed rather than comprehended’.16 However I would stop short of equating difficulty with futility.

After all, residents of London boroughs are quite happy to identify themselves with administrative boundaries simply because they have been established long enough for people to incorporate them into definitions of place. The appraisal of Beyond Consultation is that current conflicts in neighbourhood definition are simply the testing of new law and that best practice guides should be published, based on these early examples, describing how difficulties can be resolved.17

16

Theodor Adorno, ‘Culture and Administration’ in The Culture Industry (Routledge 2004) P. 112 17 ‘Beyond Consultation’, op.cit., p. 20

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Legitimacy The second challenge, which also forms part of the prerequisite to developing a neighbourhood plan, is passing responsibility to a group that can claim to be representative of the neighbourhood.

Historically, planning decisions are taken by local authorities that are democratically elected and accountable, (regardless of how ineffective the system of representation may feel). The executive power of a neighbourhood plan is held by a neighbourhood forum that is unelected and unaccountable, although they are required to reflect the inclusivity, diversity and character of the area.18 Furthermore, although efforts must be made to include a councillor, a resident and a person working in the area, this is not compulsory.

Therefore a chief concern in neighbourhood planning is whether the forum has the legitimacy to make policy decisions for a whole community.

18

Locality, ‘Quick Guide to Neighbourhood Plans’, My Community Rights p. 5, http://mycommunityrights.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2012/04/Neighbourhood-Planning-QuickGuide.pdf

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One concern raised by Living Streets (a public space charity) is that only a minority of the local population can give the commitment required to play an active part in a neighbourhood forum.

While this concern is certainly valid, it is equally valid for public feedback under the previous planning system. This raises the question of whether any form of community participation is discriminatory against those who are unable to dedicate time to it.

Another difficulty with ensuring representation is that the production of a neighbourhood plan may take upwards of a year, and the transient nature of urban populations could make communities subject to policy drawn up by a previous generation of residents. This concern is mollified by the argument in Wortham-Galvin’s study of homesteading that an important factor in participatory planning is having a long-term interest in an area, in which case the likelihood would be lower of the neighbourhood forum containing 123

transient inhabitants19. The makeup of the community they represent might still be transient; however the requirement for open membership of neighbourhood forums ought to allow for adaptation.

One issue that has caused notable difficulty is the presence of several communities with contradictory views on planning living in the same neighbourhood. Multiple ethnic, social and economic communities sharing a single neighbourhood are a much-loved hallmark of cities, yet attempts to represent them by area can find it difficult to reconcile the needs of these communities into shared goals.

A dramatic example of this difficulty is the ongoing disagreement over a neighbourhood forum for Stamford Hill in London, which has the largest Hasidic Jewish population in Europe comprising

19

Wortham-Galvin, op.cit., p. 32

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about 21% of the population.20 A neighbourhood forum led by members of the Jewish community (although mixed and chaired by Conservative councillor Linda Kelly) submitted an application to designate a neighbourhood citing overcrowding as a prime concern since Stamford Hill has a birth rate of 5.9, over twice the UK average, and ‘the highest child population in Europe’ according to forum representative Isaac Liebowitz.21 This led to an accusation that the group wanted to ‘rip up the rulebook’ on planning from the local amenities organisation Hackney Planning Watch (HPW) led by two white professionals, who began flyering against overdevelopment. Both groups claimed to be the more representative and accused the other of bias, characterised by Rabbi Abraham Pinter as a dispute between ‘the yuppies and us’. Both submitted applications following a debate in the local press, with HPW also submitting a petition that both be rejected - the council duly obliged. The 20 21

London Borough of Hackney, CSHNF Area Profile p. 4 ‘Hackney planning row …’, op.cit.,

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decision not to allocate planning power was based on the assertion by planning minister Nick Boles that new rights would not be granted if forums divided communities, i.e. if the legitimacy of the neighbourhood plan was under suspicion. It is significant that legitimacy has come to the fore in this example only because of a rival group with strong views on development, and neighbourhood forums with equally debatable legitimacy could have been successful where such a stimulus was absent.

There is a suggestion in Stamford Hill that HPW consider all neighbourhood forums to be illegitimate. Jane Holgate, one of its leaders, states in her interview with The Guardian that ‘functions like planning should remain with the council, not an unelected and unaccountable body like the neighbourhood forum’.22 Holgate is suggesting that neighbourhood planning is not participatory at all, but even less democratic than local authority planning.

22

‘Hackney planning row …’, op.cit.,

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While I recognise that representation is a key challenge of the Localism Act, I do not think that Jane Folgate has proved that it cannot be attained.

Their petition suggests that HPW always intended to disrupt rather than integrate with neighbourhood planning, though the group denies this.23 Nick Boles makes reference to the Spring Boroughs district in Northampton, where a neighbourhood forum has been assessed as not only representative of its Somali and English constituents but responsible for improved relations between the two. I believe that this is a preferable outcome to a centralised planning body that is elected but unsatisfactory.

The debate in Stamford Hill is interesting because not only does it raise a debate about whether diversity is an obstacle to localism, it is also a struggle between conservatism and the desire to 23

Hackney Planning Watch, ‘Response to Hackney Council on the proposal for the establishment of a Neighbourhood Forum covering the wards of Springfield, New River, Lordship and Cazenove’, January 2013

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develop. Leaving aside concerns about the legitimacy of the respective neighbourhood forums, one body would like to see planning legislation reflect an empirically verifiable and very pressing need to tackle overcrowding, while the other is motivated by a desire to restrict development based on visual impact. In respective interviews on the Guardian website, John Page of HPW and Benzion Papier of the Stamford Hill Neighbourhood Forum respectively describe their concerns as ‘overdevelopment’ of Victorian houses24 and ‘lack of space to lie down’. Both concerns have been given equivalent weighting in the preparation of neighbourhood planning policy. Based on a thorough reading of the HPW blog,25 I think it would be fair to characterise them as NIMBYs: there are no posts in favour of development, though there is 24

This interview appeared in the form of a video on the Guardian website between 8-03-12 and 30-12-13. It had disappeared on 02-12-14, coinciding with a post on the HPW website calling for volunteers to obstruct an amended neighbourhood application in the same way.

25 Hackney Planning Watch, http://hackneyplanningwatch.wordpress.com/

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much that is community orientated. What the debate in Stamford Hill has proven is that the Localism Act is no more resistant to NIMBYism than the hybrid planning system.

Wider Planning Frameworks Contrary to the fears of groups such as HPW, neighbourhood plans do not supersede any other planning legislation. They take precedence over the Local Development Framework in ‘non-strategic policies’ once ratified, however they are required to be in ‘general conformity’ with it.26 This has led to the concern that neighbourhood plans have little scope to genuinely influence planning policy. The City of Westminster has commented that ‘in light of the need for neighbourhood plans to be both positive and in conformity with strategic planning policies, there is little scope for neighbourhood plans to truly reflect

26

The National Planning Policy Framework, op.cit., p.44

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local wishes of local residents’.27 Professor Yvonne Rydin of University College London has commented that the NPPF tenet of ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ may override any neighbourhood plan and its implementation.28 Further to this is the concern by the St James Conservation Trust that not only will neighbourhood plans be unable to add anything useful to higher levels of planning policy, they will add an extra layer of complication for the overstretched planning departments that have to apply them.29

Although all neighbourhood plans are required to be in ‘general conformity’ with Local Development Frameworks and should not promote any less development, documents such as the ratified Norland plan in have managed to include significant quantities of original and prescriptive constraint, thus the interpretation of this ‘conformity’

27

Beyond Consultation, op.cit., pp. 14-15 Ibid., p. 15 29 Ibid., p. 15 28

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seems fairly loose. It is less evident whether neighbourhood plans will be either disregarded or obstructive when applied by planning officers. With just four in force as of December 2013, establishing their impact will be easier once they have been tested by a significant number of planning applications and appeals. In advance of this information, Beyond Consultation recommends that local authorities ensure the dovetailing of neighbourhood plans and other relevant legislation when fulfilling their requirement to advise neighbourhood forums. They also propose their incorporation into other legislation such as the ayor of London’s Opportunity Area Planning Frameworks.30

Capacity Gaps In previous sections I have discussed the paradoxical requirements of both specialist knowledge and general decision-making in 30

Ibid., p. 23

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participatory planning. Accordingly this is highlighted as an obstacle to neighbourhood planning in Beyond Consultation. The document identifies several examples of what it calls ‘capacity gaps’ in the process of preparing a neighbourhood plan, but in a broader sense than the community’s lack of technical expertise.

In fact, while a lack of planning knowledge among the neighbourhood forum is described as a ‘capacity gap’ by Beyond Consultation,31 this is only in the context of negotiating the bureaucracy of the planning system. There is no suggestion that planning officers might have skills to do with the process of planning that could be usefully transferred to the community. This curious omission is echoed in the Quick Guide to Neighbourhood Plans, where this capacity appears as the seventh point of nine in a list of support services the Local Authority is required to provide, and then only as a sub-clause in the sentence ‘providing technical support, such as assistance in laying out and 31

Ibid., p. 23

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illustrating a plan and writing plan policies32’. Since the Localism Act itself refers simply to ‘technical advice33’ it is interesting that both these important responses have chosen to emphasise knowledge of legislation and illustration over planning expertise, this is in spite of the fact that R. Macqueen has observed that neighbourhood-planning applicants struggle most with the establishment of an evidence base34. At least two possible reasons for this emerge from the discussion in previous sections: either it is evidence of the lack of faith in the planning profession following the failure of the ‘expert state’, or a concern that if the community accepts the planning profession as an expert they are likely to re-appropriate the same principles that they are intended to re-invigorate.

Beyond Consultation gives more weight to inexperience in working with communities among 32

‘Quick Guide to Neighbourhood Plans’, op.cit., p. 6 Department for Communities and Local Government, A plain English guide to the localism act, (DCLG Publications 2011) p. 12 34 ‘Investigation on Neighbourhood Planning’, op.cit., 33

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the planning authorities. The new skills required of planners under their duty to support are one of the more novel challenges of the Localism Act: as David Knight has observed, their communication was previously limited to a rubber stamp.35 The onus is currently on private developers to fund community consultation, who will then convey the outcome to planners with their submitted application; planners are not required (or funded) to have a more direct relationship with the community that they act for. One of the most obvious needs for the success of this participatory turn in planning is the improvement of this relationship. This new demand is already resulting in some intriguing new approaches.

At the more conventional end, some Local Planning Authorities are developing close relationships with neighbourhood forums, as is the case with Southwark Council and the forums for Bankside36 and Bermondsey37. The Royal Borough 35 36

Knight, op.cit., Beyond Consultation, op.cit., p. 22

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of Kensington and Chelsea have established a dedicated ‘Neighbourhoods Team’ to perform this role38. A more original initiative (although not inspired by the Localism Act) is the Building Rights website, due to launch in March 2014. This online forum aims to connect members of the public with planning queries to planners, on a free and informal basis inspired by programming chat rooms.39 Another suggestion by Peter Eversden of The London Civic Forum is that the divide could be bridged by democratically elected ward councillors, acting as ‘community champions’ to translate the wishes of their constituents into planning policy.40 Beyond Consultation identifies a last method of the bridging the capacity gap, which is the inclusion of individuals with planning experience in neighbourhood forums.41 While the report stresses that neighbourhood planning should not remain the 37

Ibid., op.cit., p. 24 Ibid., op.cit., p.24 39 Knight, op.cit., 40 ‘Investigation on Neighbourhood Planning’, op.cit., 41 Beyond Consultation, op.cit., p. 23 38

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preserve of the initiated, it observes that this advantage has been a feature of every advanced neighbourhood plan, intimating it is one of the more effective methods of transferring expertise.

However, this method can result in the domination of the participatory planning process by established professional precepts as described above.

The Norland (in Kensington) neighbourhood plan is a good example of the risks of embedded expertise. The plan was the sixth to pass referendum in England, and the first in London. The neighbourhood forum is chiefly composed of an existing group called the Norland Conservation Society (the titles of these bodies are used interchangeably in the plan). The document consists almost entirely of restrictions to keep development in character – just six of the sixty-four references to development refer to opportunities rather than constraints, and one of these opportunities (in the vision for 2028) is the elimination of eyesores and ugly buildings, to be replaced with development more appropriate to the 136

surroundings42. The word ‘growth’, so central to the coalition’s aspirations for neighbourhood planning, does not appear anywhere in the document.

The Norland neighbourhood plan has been passed by a single interest group with the sole intention of conservation. While it contains an exhaustive history of the area, there is almost no vision of planning for future change - quite the reverse. The plan is simply heritage protection for which mechanisms such as conservation areas (already in effect in Norland) already exist. Although the plan was passed with a 74% majority (at a turnout of 26%) it seems unlikely that a neighbourhood’s only concern would be heritage; I would describe this as an example of a small group using significant expertise of the build environment to push through an package of their own views.

42

Norland Conservation Society, ‘Norland Neighbourhood Plan 2013-2028’, p. 12, http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/planningandconservation/neighbourho odplanning/norlandneighbourhoodplan.aspx

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However there is another example where embedded planning expertise has the potential to enable an altogether more participatory approach.

In the neighbourhood of Chatsworth Road in north east Hackney the forum is led by Euan Mills, and urban designer with an interest in neighbourhoods (I have cited his research earlier in this dissertation).

His interest in writing a neighbourhood plan is linked with the challenge of gentrification, which I have described as a potential inhibitor of development.

However, far from maintaining the status quo, he has championed the need to ‘promote the community and attract investment’ while being able to ‘pre-empt and influence change so the community can take a pro-active role in developments that are happening’.43 He has backed this familiar rhetoric with some initial ideas of his own, but the forum has also held a series of open workshops with the outcomes presented

43

Euan ills, ‘An Introduction to the Chatsworth Road Neighbourhood Plan’, Youtube 28-03-2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRkqSG2VTnc

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transparently on their website. The initiative taken by the neighbourhood of Chatsworth road receives special mention in Beyond Consultation. But further to that, the motivation for the plan seems to draw advantages from both the professional knowledge of planning and the situated knowledge of the local community. It is well illustrated and informed by trends in urban development, but also receptive to how neighbourhood society could be stimulated.

Unlike some of the plans I have described, there does not seem to be a preconception about what a neighbourhood ought to have. Instead there seems a genuine desire to establish what is required before carrying it out.

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Conclusion Our planning system in England is the product of one hundred and fifty years of formal development, and it works well enough. However I am not alone in believing that it can work a lot better, and that the improvement will not be brought about solely by refining the relationship between elected politicians and businessmen. That the public should have a role in the built environment is evident to anyone who takes joy in seeing the myriad improvements made to it by those outside the current planning system, from the conversion of rooftops into summer hangouts to the landscaping of concreted yards into beautiful gardens. The profit motive alone is not sufficient to bring our cities to life, nor is empirical need. For all that one may question the motives of the Localism Act, it is a step towards recognising that fact, and consequently I would like to see its principle of tapping into situated knowledge to produce bespoke solutions developed further.

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It is heartening that initial enthusiasm for neighbourhood planning has been high, and as it begins to take effect it can only serve to further the discussion on participation even where it fails. Case studies of its application begin to allow some insights into how participation can be made real.

The first is that the process can only be realised with general enthusiasm among members of a community. Despite the knee-jerk cynicism engendered by the bombastic rhetoric of empowerment, it is valuable for generating excitement about the potential of neighbourhood planning. The case study that in my view forecasts the biggest challenge of neighbourhood planning is that of Stamford Hill, resulting from a decision by some residents to reject the process rather than contribute to it. The second is that the value of the fields of architecture, urban design and town planning should not be overlooked in the rush to empower the community. The decision to devolve planning power is the result of much brilliant 141

research into the way cities work. If we dispense with the professional disciplines of the built environment, we not only risk missing out on useful insights, we risk making the same mistakes.

My conclusion is that the future of participatory planning lies in the participants embracing both its political and technical aspects. Certainly citizens must be given the confidence to take power over their own environments, and power-holders must develop the confidence to give it to them. Both must also be encouraged through doing to develop the skills in discourse necessary to use this power for collective benefit:

uf Architecture’s Is this what

you mean by localism is a good case study of how these skills can be developed from scratch. Yet equally important is that the established techniques of planning buildings are shared within these new power partnerships: the receptive intelligence of the Chatsworth Road neighbourhood forum show how expertise can contribute depth to the process of neighbourhood planning. In the short term this could 142

be assisted by promoting the inclusion of the technical professions within neighbourhood planning forums. There is indeed a ‘mass of sense’ in the general public, but they should be taught to use it and not simply empowered to. If participatory planning is to work in the long term, we must all become town planners

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Bibliography

Books

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