Smart Cities - a solution?

In October the government announced a Smart Cities Forum and research - both corporate and academic - is busy exploring the potential of ICT to enhance the sustainability of urban areas. Some of this is about using data and information more effectively, some about better service delivery through integration and client-responsiveness. The aim, from a sustainability perspective, is to reduce resource use through these and other means, all reliant on an extended ICT infrastructure. It is a tempting idea. It seems to embody the idea of a better future in technology-led, almost science fiction terms. We (mainly) love the benefits of better connectivity that current ICT infrastructure offers. So what is the down-side?
Smart Cities are undoubtedly seen as a commercial opportunity - hence the significant investment in this idea by major companies such as Microsoft and Samsung. Nothing wrong in that - that is what these companies are supposed to do. But turning this idea into a public policy direction may mean prioritising commercial enterprise over other concerns. As ever with growth-dependent planning approaches, the aim is that market-led investment in Smart Cities will also provide for quality of life, wellbeing, equity, social inclusion and sustainability (see, for example, the remit for the current Government Foresight project on the Future of Cities - http://www.bis.gov.uk/foresight/our-work/projects/current-projects/future-of-cities. But sometimes it is not possible to have it all; will some communities be left behind by the investment in Smart Cities? Worse, will they be displaced or have to suffer the negative effects of such investment? ICT investment sounds so neutral and clean and safe. But without a very strong commitment to inclusion, sustainability and poverty-reduction, it may prove to be commercial business-as-usual rather than a really different future.

This blog is now taking a holiday until the New Year. Season's Greetings to all readers!

Back to the High Street

Another launch that I am just catching up on is the publication of the Grimsey Review in September. This comes from Bill Grimsey, former Wickes and Iceland Chief Executive, as a response to the Mary Portas work on the High Street. His approach is rather intriguing. It suggests that high streets need to evolve to more multi-use spaces with less reliance on pure retail and incorporating public services, workspaces, social and cultural provision alongside some more housing. This view is based on the persistence of high vacancy rates across many individual town and neighbourhood centres and the country as a whole. To this evidence, he adds the changes occurring in shopping patterns with continued reliance on car-based trips together with more use of the internet.
The reforms needed to put the vision in place emphasise change of the business rates but also considers the planning system. Here the suggestion include changing the operation of the Use Classes Order and more imagination in the design and management of the public realm. But the more innovative ideas are creating 'town-owned investment vehicles' to create flats above shops, making the provision of affordable space compulsory in 'mega malls', and having strong plan-led policies for town centre uses including forced change of use for empty properties.
He sees the need for finance to back up some of his ideas and looks to crowdsourcing platforms, as I have done, but also considers the potential for local authorities to support small businesses from their reserves and even pension funds. As with any ideas for reform, discussion and testing out is essential. There are some tensions between deregulation and plan-led policies apparent here. And it may prove difficult to speak to the large corporates and small business interests in the high street at the same time. But there are some fresh ideas here worth exploring.

An innovative neighbourhood plan

Let's be up-beat! It does seem that neighbourhood planning is throwing up some interesting initiatives. After my lecture, I was told by someone that a neighbourhood plan in the vicinity of the Elephant and Castle area of London - an area subject to a long history of reliance on growth-dependent planning - now includes a policy stating that developments have to have regard to the specific needs of the local Hispanic community. This would be a fascinating departure, highlighting the need to plan specifically for local communities that might not benefit from the current development proposals.Indeed this community is at risk of losing vital local retail and commercial facilities from the redevelopment proposals.
Another exciting example comes from Kent where the neighbourhood of St. Margaret's at Cliffe (a walk along the cliff-tops from Dover) is using its community plan to move towards a low-carbon future. This village is already a Kent Low Carbon Community and hosts an eco-conference centre. It is now building sustainability into its draft neighbourhood plan with an emphasis on: sustainable local economic development; sustainable housing including affordable housing; energy efficiency for all the built stock; and decentralised low-carbon energy systems. This looks like another one to watch.

Marinaleda - an inspirational story

The Observer newspaper has recently carried a fascinating article about a new book - The Village Against the World published by Verso. This tells the story of Marinaleda, a village in Spain, which has responded to the turmoil of Spanish history over the last three or four decades in a quite distinctive way. It seems to be based in a particular form of socialist politics. The Mayor, Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo, has represented the village since 1979, standing for his own party, the Collective for Worker's Unity and originally winning 76% of the vote. Under his leadership, the village engaged in protest politics in the 1980s, a key claim being to land around the village belonging to the Duke of Infantado. In 1991 the Andalucian government granted the village 1,200 hectares of this land and this formed the basis of the village's collective farm together with facilities such as a swimming pool, sports centre, school, gardens and some 350 new homes (all 'mortgage-free' according to the paper). The collective basis of the local economy has meant that the villagers have survived even during the austerity budgets of the post-2008 period and the bond-crisis of the Spanish government. Unemployment is reported at 5% compared to the regional level of 36%.
Clearly this can be read as a triumph of oppositional politics and of separation from the capitalist economy. But the important elements, to my mind, of this story are twofold. First, there is the central role that the transfer of land-ownership played. Here we have community landownership underpinning local economic activity and housing development. This just reinforces how little we use this resource in the UK. Second, this is not a village in isolation from the wider capitalist economy. If it has managed to keep unemployment so low, it must be trading its agricultural products with that wider economy. Rather this story seems to fit well with many other stories from lower-income countries where the benefits of collective forms of economic ownership and production enable a 'third' economy - neither the formal economy nor the black economy - to operate successfully. We have often lost sight of this 'third' economy in European countries but it could be ripe for a revival.

Tottenham High Street

The Summer of 2011 saw the streets of Tottenham erupt in violence and looting in the aftermath of the shooting of Mark Duggan by the police. The subsequent plight of local businesses was highlighted in the press. But the long term future of the High Street area is bound up with the major urban regeneration plans of the local council, LB Haringey, intertwined with the redevelopment plans of the football club, Tottenham Hotspurs. Recent reports in the Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/oct/30/tottenham-new-stadium-local-business-demolition) suggest that this future is being strongly influenced by the growth-dependent planning paradigm. The new £400m stadium will bring with it major restructuring of the area including new shops, cafes, a library and a cinema as well as, centrally, a new walkway to the stadium for the 56,000 football fans which is supposed to act as a new public space on non-match days. To make way for all this a council housing tower block and rows of shops with flats above will be demolished. But will there be sufficient public gains from the development, from this replacement of the existing with the new? The concern here seems to be that the threat of Spurs moving out of Tottenham (voiced during the discussions over the future of the Olympic Stadium in Stratford) and the impact of the economic downturn has enabled Spurs in 2012 to renegotiate the planning obligation which was to provide affordable housing and provide community and transport facilities worth £16m. The economic power of the football club as local landowner and leading development partner puts the potential of this growth-dependent urban regeneration to deliver wider social benefits in question. To my mind, this is a case where a two-pronged approach is needed. There needs to be some holding of the line for planning gain arising from the development; not all the benefits can be assumed to arise from future local economic growth consequent on the development. And, second, there needs to be a strategy for those displaced by the development and perhaps left out of any positive spillover effects. Here a community-led approach could yield dividends as, indeed, has been shown to work elsewhere in the borough.

TCPA "Planning Out Poverty"

The Town and Country Planning Association http://www.tcpa.org.uk/ has just published a report which addresses the question: what role can planning play as part of wider policy interventions to tackle entrenched poverty? This is an important question to ask and try to answer. And I was interested to see the overlap with some of the arguments in The Future of Planning. The report makes four key points:
- the planning system can make a difference;
- but it too often fails to consider distributional impacts and outcomes, particularly for those most in need;
- this is partly because planning has de-prioritised social justice; and
- there are practical measures that can redress this.
It then goes on to make a set of twelve recommendations which can be found at: http://www.tcpa.org.uk/pages/planning-out-poverty.html. There is a strong emphasis here on integrating a concern with poverty reduction into the National Planning Policy Framework, just as I argue for just sustainability to be so-integrated. The publication of the NPPF - while there may be key concerns over its current content - does offer an opportunity for incorporating new principles to guide planning practice. Other recommendations in the TCPA report are perhaps rather generalised, calling for new planning visions and powers. But this emphasises that the time is right for a debate on exactly how the planning system should be reformed and, perhaps, an emerging consensus among many, that low-income communities and those in poverty need to be a focal point for that debate.

Town and parish councils

If community-based planning is to work at all, it requires an institutional base, a way of organising local communities so generate ideas for the local area, harness resources from within the community and maintain open and transparent lines of accountability. The Government has undertaken a consultation exercise on making it easier to create new town or parish councils. So are these the right institutions for community-based planning, management and action? Clearly, given the legislative changes implementing the Localism agenda, there are considerable benefits in having such a council in your neighbourhood. These councils have a General Power of Competence and can exercise the Community Right to Challenge and the Community Right to Bid (in relation to community assets). They hold the new neighbourhood planning powers and also will receive a share of the Community Infrastructure Levy from new development; they can even levy a local tax (or precept) although this will not raise much.
The concern with any such institution must be about its representativeness and transparency. One does not need to believe that everything in "The Archers" is fact rather than fiction to believe some of its portrayal of parish politics. Capture of such councils by a small minority is always a possibility and indeed, representing all elements of a local community (across age, gender, class and ethnicity) may be almost impossible. Consensus cannot always be generated and some form of leadership is necessary for change to be driven through. But the danger of focussing on the 'ease' of creating councils is that the dynamics that have to be put in place to make such councils effective and just may be forgotten.
It is not just about setting up the institution 'vessel' through which community planning will occur. It is also about creating, building, managing, resolving conflicts with the local people - residential and business - who make up that community or amalgam of communities. In the UK we put far too little emphasis on community building, assuming that it will somehow happen in civil society. But such community building can be a vital way of ensuring inclusion and justice in how such parish and town councils operate and we need investment in making this happen.

After the lecture - Q&As

After the lecture on the 24th October, the Bartlett Urban Planning students also held a seminar last week and the questions raised at both were thought-provoking. I think they can be summarised as follows...
First, there was the issue of how much would be achieved through adopting a community-based approach instead of a growth-dependent approach in various locations. Some could not see real improvements in the well-being and quality of life of low-income communities being tackled without much more structural shifts. Some raised a critique of the capitalist dynamics that create these societal inequalities. In the lecture I did state that a range of policy measures including a revived welfare state and a substantial programme of public sector housing provision were necessary to address societal inequality. I was not seeking to suggest that a community-based planning approach would be a panacea. Indeed I was trying to suggest, in passing, that we too often look to the planning system to solve all urban problems and that we perhaps need to be a bit more modest in our claims for planning. That does not mean we should give up on planning. It does important things but its efforts need to be seen in conjunction with other policies. What I was trying to indicated through the emphasis on community-based planning, is that a reformed planning system could make a small, but not unimportant contribution to improving well-being and quality of life in localities and communities that are largely ignored through the emphasis on growth-dependence.
Second, some raised the question of whether there were not elements of the current government's localism agenda that fitted into the community-based approach. My answer here would be - yes - to a degree. There are indeed elements that could be used as building blocks for the beyond-growth-dependence agenda but they fail for two reasons. The planning system remains attuned to promoting development rather than supporting community initiatives; any clash between the pro-growth stance of the NPPF and local initiatives for local communities are likely to be resolved in favour of the central government policy. And, secondly, there is no mechanism for financial community-based initiatives into the longer-term so that localism may offer much more to local communities with their own resources to invest.
Third, some asked if growth-dependence and community-based approaches were really alternatives. This is an interesting one. It brought home to me that growth-dependence, if successfully implemented, should not mean ignoring communities. Rather it can only really deliver benefits to all sectors of urban communities if such communities are fully involve in and buy into the growth-led plans. And there can be spin-offs from market-led development projects that meet community needs. I would not wish to deny that. I was more concerned to think about those places and communities where market-led development does not reach. Growth-dependence is not an alternative here because it is not being offered by the private sector.
So food for thought. I hope to be back blogging more regularly now that the lecture is done and dusted and the book finally out!

An agenda for planning reform

In the forthcoming book The Future of Planning: beyond growth dependence I set out, in the final chapter, an agenda for reform of the planning system to support more community-based approaches. There are three areas where change is urgently needed if alternatives to growth-dependent planning are to become a real possibility in the localities where this is needed. The first reform is change to planning guidance, which has such an influence on local planning practice. The argument here is that just sustainability needs to be embedded in such guidance. The second set of reforms focus around the need for new planning tools. As well as specific proposed changes to planning regulation and new fiscal measures, the role of landownership as a planning tool needs to be readdressed. This has been a major lacuna in UK planning, particularly as compared to many other European countries. And thirdly, new forms of community engagement needs to be put into practice. This agenda is set ou fully in the book but also summarised in a UCL Public Policy Briefing available at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/public-policy/public_policy_publications/Rydin_Policy_Briefing_September_2013.pdf

Lecture invitation 24th October at UCL

Sorry for blog silence but back from holidays and recovered form the chaos of the start of term. 

For those in London, you are cordially invited to a Public Lecture that I will be giving at UCL on Thursday 24th October from 17.30 - 19.00 with a wine reception afterwards. The location is the Gustav Tuck Lecture Theatre, Wilkins Building, UCL, London WC1E 6BT and you can book a ticket on Eventbrite at:

http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/planning/centenary-news-events-repository/centenary-lecture-yvonne-rydin

The topic will be The Future of Planning and I will be discussing some of the key themes of the new book as well as putting them in the context of current debates in planning theory. I look forward to seeing some of you there.

Advance notice of lecture

The Future of Planning: beyond growth dependence will be launched at UCL on Thursday 24th October at a reception following a public lecture by Yvonne Rydin. More details will be announced shortly but please keep the date in your diary if you can. 

This blog is now on holiday until 23rd September 2013.

Community pubs again

Community pubs are in the news once again as some 100 have been reported as achieving community asset status under the Localism Act. This sounds very positive. It gives local communities the right to delay any sale of the community asset for up to 6 months and gives them the opportunity then to raise funds to buy the asset and to do so as current use value, excluding any development gain from a change of use, say to residential. There is the prospects of the pub building be used not just as a hostelry but for a variety of local needs. But the sting in the tail is that funding for the purchase and subsequent running of the building still has to be raised. Only the wealthier communities will find it easy to find such funds. Elsewhere this potential will depend on much creativity and innovation in finding resources to make the building a true community asset. Where might such resources be found? Sweat equity is always a possibility, particularly for refurbishment. Community time banks might help with ongoing running of the asset. Crowd-funding and peer-to-peer lending  are two options that are making innovative use of the internet to provide small businesses and social enterprises with low cost loans. There are possibilities here but communities are going to need some basic business planning and financial advice to understand how to access them. A future of community-owned and managed assets is possible but it will require a clever and imaginative mix of expertise and ideas to become a reality.

Empty shops: is deregulation the answer?

Last week proposals were aired to loosen planning regulation so that empty shops can be converted into homes: see the Guardian article here: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/04/councils-powers-high-street-planning. Well, there is a pressing need for more homes. And my last post pointed to the changes in our high streets with many blank shopfronts. But is this the answer? It leaves all the decision-making to the market. So what kind of homes will result? Upmarket or for those in the most urgent need? Bought by owner-occupiers or a buy-to-let landlord? Domestic or overseas buyers? Who can tell? In a property market place, these decisions are left to myriad individual decision backed by purchasing power. And any conversion back from residential to another use would work the same way. If and when demand for retail activities goes back up, who is to say that the (old) high street is where the most profitable sites will be found. So this small shift in deregulation could lead to considerable change in our local areas. That does not mean it is a bad idea if you think that market decisions will lead to the outcomes that people need. My view is that they will and they will not. Some people's needs, demands and wants will be met; others will not. But the more interesting question is what is the alternative? In  a market economy, all those atomised decision-makers don't really need to cooperate beyond working out how to hand over the money. Any alternative will put greater demands on our ability and desire to cooperate. This lies behind the calls for greater community involvement - it assumes more cooperation within communities. The real problem to address is how to foster this without coercion. How can people in a locality be brought together to decide on the future of, say, their high street in a real and concrete way, not just consultation on a plan. How can they be encouraged to feel sufficient ownership of their area, an area full of privately-owned properties, to want to cooperate on the future of any individual property, on that empty shop? These are a tricky questions and deregulation can seem a much easier answer. But that does not make it the right answer.

The High Street

Those walking the (currently) sunny streets of our town centres will be aware of the increasing number of vacant shop fronts. It is therefore timely to note that a review of the Portas initiative has just been published:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/211536/Future_of_High_Street_-_Progress_Since_the_Portas_Review_-revised.pdf. For those who don't know about the Portas Review, it was an attempt by shopping guru Mary Portas to rethink what was needed to revitalise UK high streets. A mix of town management, financial measures and campaigns were proposed. In the event, the government established Portas Pilots in 27 towns with funding of up to £100,000, together with a mix of other funding pots for other areas. They also argued that their general deregulation strategy (for business and planning) would help. But the evidence of shop closures suggest that this is not working well. Is this just the current economic climate to too severe for such pump-priming of small retail businesses to work? Is the deregulation agenda an ill-conceived way to handle the nuanced needs of high streets? Or, perhaps, as a recent Local Government Information Unit briefing (by Majeed Neky, 18th July) suggests shopping streets are in the midst of a much more profound period of change. This is not a temporary down-turn but a sea-change in what such streets are for. In this case a broader debate is needed on what uses these premises can house and how they can meet local needs. As ever with this government, there is a tension between its localist rhetoric and its dependence on promoting market-led economic growth, with the latter usually winning out. Perhaps it is time to take the localist rhetoric more seriously to consider how the public spaces of the high street and the community assets of local retailing and services could be maintained in the absence of growth. This would require new and detailed attention to the mix of taxation and regulation that owners and occupiers of these properties face, with a view to thinking seriously about how to facilitate community-led activity.

From the Dublin conference

Last week planning academics from across the world met at the joint congress organised by UCD in a very sunny Dublin  for the European and North American associations of planning schools: http://aesop-acspdublin2013.com/. Around a thousand people attended so difficult to summarise the discussions or even the main themes! There was plenty of continuing evidence that market-led development often failed to deliver for local communities and, further, that it was running into problems as a strategy in current economic climates. But there were also a couple of interesting papers that linked very directly to the arguments and proposals in The Future of Planning.
A fascinating paper by David Adams, of Glasgow University, discussed urban land reform in Scotland - where he is advising the Scottish Government - and proposed a Community Right to Sell. This would be a measure whereby a community could force a plot of vacant or derelict land in their area to go to auction and be sold. The idea is that the auction process would result in the land being sold for a beneficial use even if this was a price below that desired by the current landowner. David's view is that often this lower price would enable communities to buy the land; even if they were outbid, land would be brought into use rather than being blocked by landowners.
Another interesting analysis was put forward by Peter Phibbs of the University of Sydney. His paper outlined the ACT Land Rent Scheme under which households are able to rent land and then buy a building to put on it, purchasing the land at a later stage to unify the two elements. There is an annual land rent fixed at 2% of the land value for lower income households and 4% for others. This seems an innovative idea which Peter describes as a government CLT and as having some significant success. He also points though to the opposition that it faced at the outset, a reminder of the need to build wide coalitions of support to challenge the existing growth-dependent paradigm.
Two ideas to watch....

Energy efficiency and house prices

One of the issues I explore in the forthcoming book 'The Future of Planning' is whether it is possible to improve properties and areas without triggering gentrification and the associated increase in property values. The key idea is that the stock of low priced housing and the local environment of low priced neighbourhoods often needs upgrading to improve the quality of life of residents; but the tendency for the market place to capture these new benefits in higher property values, while benefiting property owners, can often be disadvantageous for tenants and existing SMEs, who may face competition from people and businesses with deeper pockets. So the question is what kind of improvements enhance local people's quality of life without leading to upward property price moves and the wholesale shift in local communities (business and residential) associated with gentrification? It did seem that energy efficiency improvements were one answer to this question. Investment in such efficiency measures reduces energy bills and combats fuel poverty and, so it seemed, did not lead to much in the way of price movements. Recent research conducted for DECC suggests this may be changing:
www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-investigation-of-the-effect-of-epc-ratings-on-house-prices.
On average there seems to be an impact of £16,000 additional value from raising the EPC rating by two 'levels'; this equates to an average increase of 14% but the impact is much higher in low priced areas. The study has been done by real experts in this kind of analysis (McAllister, Fuerst, Nands and Wyatt) but as ever there are caveats: the analysis could not control of the condition of the properties or home improvements between sales. But taking the general finding as sounds, this raises important questions. This is good news for home owners and should encourage retrofitting. What how will this impact on tenants? Is there a differential take-up on efficiency measures that means that lower income households, includng home owners, are not getting the benefit of this price shift? An analysis of the social distribution of these price impacts and the take-up of public subsidies for retrofit would be very timely.

Social Impact Bonds

In my last post, I suggested that resources would be needed to support community action and that thought needed to be given to innovative ways of doing this. Social Impact Bonds are an interesting idea here. They are a means of raising investment finance for a new initiative, which could be promoted by community groups. Investors get a return from the government as the initiative produces certain desired outcomes. The idea is that these outcomes in some way save the government money and so they can use the money save to pay for the return on the initial investment (which may be from the public or private sectors). The Social Outcomes Fund currently contains £20 million for this purpose. So how might this work in a way that delivers just sustainability on the ground? First a community initiative that  benefits a lower income or otherwise disadvantaged group of households and contributes to social and environmental sustainability needs to be identified. Then a clear argument needs to be made about the costs that will not be incurred in the future by public services because of these benefits. Hopefully the future financial savings will then be sufficient to provide the desired return on the initial investment in the initiative. Food gardens promoting better nutrition and physical activity, childcare facilities providing 'green play', training activities in environmental services, community-based flood prevention landscaping would all seem potentially to be possible areas for SIBs. Whether they would fall foul of current 'rules and regulations' remains to be seen. At present the commissioning process looks quite onerous and would require support. But in principle this could be a way of resourcing community action that contributes to sustainability and benefits key social groups because - at the same time - it avoids future government bills.

Funding community action

Reports in the Sunday newspapers today - http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jun/30/big-society-network-grant - raise a question mark over the way that funds are being distributed to projects under the Government's Big Society agenda. The article raises issues concerning the selection of project, their effectiveness and business links with the key organisation, the Big Society Network and its charitable foundation. Such concerns clearly warrant investigation and discussion but it would be shame if this was used as an excuse for not funding and supporting community action. The problem is that community action is difficult, time-consuming and resource intensive. People involved are often doing projects for the first time and have no prior experience to fall back on. Business-style advice on 'how to get it done' does not neccessarily work in the different context of local neighbourhood relationship. There will be mistakes made. The key point is how community groups can learn from these mistakes and how such groups can learn from each other. Also vital is the input of resources and support to build community relationships and sustain these over time. This can look just 'too expensive' and the outputs may be small and take time to accumulate. But would this not be a better investment in the long run than, say, some major investment projects (HS2 to menetion no names!).

Resourcing community planning

One thing is becoming clear within the Localism Agenda - it costs to empower local communities to develop plans that are in line with their own desires for their locality. The Supporting Communities in Neighbourhood Planning programme announced in May this year that £9.5m was available but in relatively small units of up to £7,000 per neighbourhood: http://locality.org.uk/news/launch-neighbourhood-planning-fund/. This is just to pump-prime the neighbourhood planning. But getting the desired development to happen will cost more than that. The process of creating a Community Right to Build order that grants planning permission for community-planning development is more significant as the proposals are more detailed and there is the requirement for another referendum of the local residents. In early June, one parish council in Mid Sussex was granted £54,000 to prepare two such orders, one for 76 homes and the other for a community centre. But this is all resourcing going on the planning process itself - plan making and planning regulation. Yet the funding of the development requires resources and - without any other pots to tap - this will be reliant on private sector interest. In the Sussex case the idea was that 38 affordable homes and 17 self-build plots would be supported by the remaining market housing. Thus is seems that the new planning resources are being directed to communities where there is some market demand to support planning that facilitates new development. It would be interesting to find ways of channelling such funding to support other forms of community planning where the activities are less focussed on market-led development.

Politics of Markets

Last week I attended an excellent day conference organised by the University of Westminster under the title 'The Politics of Markets'; full details are available from http://www.westminster.ac.uk/csd/events/the-politics-of-markets-shaping-steering-and-evaluation. What was interesting was the mix of papers. On the one hand there was a real attempt to revisit some of the debates about politics and markets from before New Labour's Third Way muddied the waters and to develop a rigorous alternative to the neo-liberalism that seems to have been the Third Way's legacies. On the other hand, there were reviews of the very specific forms that new market construction was taking, particularly in relation to public services. The new quasi-markets for personal care and in the NHS more generally were subject to much discussion. Of particular note was the discussion of the role that third-sector, non-governmental and community groups can play. I was very taken with the account of how such groups were managing the supply chain with regard to agricultural products, presented by Liz Cooper of Edinburgh University: http://lizcooper.info/working-on-fair-trade-at-the-university-of-edinburgh/. Liz's talk really showed that markets are socially constructed and that small-scale actions by individuals and groups can shape what people get out of market transactions. The planning system can similarly construct land and property markets, opening up and closing down opportunities for urban development. The problem at the moment is that the focus seems to be almost entirely on opportunities for private sector development by major corporate actors. The question to address is how the planning system can be changed to offer more opportunities for community-based development as well.

Empty Homes

Just come back from an excellent BRE day event on empty homes. The BRE are linking up with the Greg Clarke campaign (following on from his C4 programme) to refurbish 100,000 empty homes and put them back into use. As well as the burning enthusiasm for achieving much needed change in low value urban areas, the event was notable for the different models of refurbishment that it put forward. One example was the bringing together of semi-retired building professionals with local young people, struggling with lack of qualifications and employment opportunities, to refurbish empty homes. This provided the young people with new skills - a form of apprenticeship - with a viable way of improving a property to a lettable standard. Another was the sale of council-owned empty properties for £1 to local people provided they were willing to do the homes up and live in them for 5 years. Yet another model involved financial institutions, such as life or pension funds, putting up the funds for improving a portfolio of properties for rent, based on the long term retention of the freehold or leasehold and a business case that was able to show a financial return over 30 years, say. All these examples show the potential for beyond the current dominant paradigm of market-led development supported by subsidy and regulated more-or-less weakly by the planning system. It suggests that there are other ways of achieving desired urban change. Empty properties - domestic and commercial - are explicitly discussed in the book, as you will be able to see in the autumn.

Does new development support local economies?

One of the claims of growth-dependent planning is that it supports growth in local economies - it works with local planning to deliver new built stock that meets economic demands and planning can shape that development to help build a robust local economy. Proponents of the green growth approach further see the potential for such development to foster a local market for green construction technology and development skills if the buildings and development sites are pushed and pulled into more environmentally-friendly directions. The issue here is the extent to which such new development produces benefits for the locality or whether they seep outside to the broader national or even international market. The New Economics Foundation has long been arguing for the importance of local economic development that produces a local multiplier effect because the money generated - say, here by the actual development activities - stays and circulates within the local area. In this context, it is interesting to see the contractor for new development at Birmingham City University's campus promising to spend £28 million of its £46 million contract on local firms within 20 miles radius of the project site. This is an promising approach and one that extends the commitments to sustainable, environmentally-certified and even fair trade product and services that are increasingly bound into contacts. Without such strong linkages between the development process and local business, particularly SMEs, and populations the claims of development projects to foster local economies can often sound rather hollow.

Community Infrastructure Levy

One of the key arguments for growth-dependent planning is that part of the wealth generated by market-led development can be siphoned off and used for social and/or environmental benefits. This has long been the claim made for extracting 'planning gain' (although that rather makes it sound like a bad tooth). However, governments - Conservation, Labour and Coalition - have also argued that too much planning gain can delay developments through lengthy negotiations, add costs through complexity and even deter development through excessive demans for such benefits. The Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) was intended to overcome some of these problems. Local authorities would decide on their infrastructure needs alongside the scale of development that they intended to permit over a given timescale. Divide the cost of this infrastructure alongside the amount of development and you have a tarrif to charge developers to fund it. Non-infrastructure social and environmental benefits would still be met through negotiating planning gain and Section 106 agreements as before. Yet the CIL system is already under reform before it is fully implemented. The tension between maximising the profit from private sector development and meeting locally identified social and environment needs does not go away. The point at which the scale of these benefits threatens the viability of such development remains ambiguous for many planning authorities; open books for the development are, not surprisingly, not the norm. The tariffs themselves seem a rather blunt instrument, a means of raising funds but not necessarily shaping the locality in the desired direction. But, above all, such planning gain - whether achieved through CIL or Section 106 agreements - only works at all where there is profitably private sector development. This restricts the ability of planners to plan for community benefits to specific sites and locations. A limited tool indeed.

More on neighbourhood planning

Neighbourhood planning has been with us for well over a year now, ever since the Localism Act was passed in later 2011. But it has taken time for the first neighbourhood plans to be prepared, voted in on local referenda and accepted as local development plan documents. In theory, this was a radical move towards greater involvement of local communities in the planning of their localities - a genuine form of bottom-up planning. Town and parish councils and newly-formed neighbourhood forums could emerge from a variety of local groupings and be given the authority to draft such a plan. Local residents would be given a final say through a referendum, although only a bare majority was needed to pass the neighbourhood plan; note, though, that local businesses are potentially eligible to vote on any business-led plan. But in practice, this seems less radical than at first hoped or feared. Any such neighbourhood plan has to be in conformity with the Local Plan which potentially heads off conflict between neighbourhood forums and local planning authorities but may also demotivate community action. These plans are primarily about where and how to permit new development in the locality, which is a rather restricted perspective on what local communities may actually want to do with their areas. Local visioning, of the sort I mentioned in my last post, may well go beyond this particular concern of the statutory planning system. Recent research by DEFRA (yes, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs not that for Communities and Local Government) found - at least in rural areas - the process of preparing plans was quite protracted and expensive. The demands on local authority planning staff can be considerable - particularly as they have to fit into the statutory planning system and be shown to be 'evidence-based'. So perhaps this is more business-as-usual that might be wished (as is often the case when one tinkers with the statutory planning system). But one interesting item in the DEFRA research is that at least one plan - in the tourist area of Lynmouth and Lynton - has been used to focus housing on meeting local needs through a 'primary residence' policy; if this is not the case, then the housing has to be offered for rent or sale as affordable housing. Quite how this will implemented will be interesting to watch.

Community-based visioning

One of the arguments of the book is that an important option in areas that are experiencing a lack of economic growth is to foster community-based planning using the valuable resources (non-financial) of local communities. There are an increasing number of community-based initiatives and one interesting example is Clear Village: www.clear-village.org
They operate on a 80:20 principle whereby local residents and external advisers are combined in the ratio of 80% to 20%. But the over-riding principle is that everyone is an expert; this is not a combination of lay people with external experts. Rather everyone is pooling their expertise. Clear Village see 'locals' as offering knowledge of the place and how it works in detail, while 'globals' bring their own specific expertise, often disciplinary  together with a 'fresh pair of eyes'. The aim is to jointly re-envision an area and then put in place initiatives for change. This is an appealing approach. Could it work for neighbourhood planning? Could local residents and businesses work with planners on a neighbourhood plan for their area in this way? The problem here seems two-fold. First, the initial wave of neighbourhood plans seem to be disproportionately located in areas of greater rather than less wealth and not being used to address problems of disadvantage. Second, it is clear that neighbourhood planning has to operate within the rules and guidelines for preparing a statutory development plan and that these can constrain the whole process. However, as I shall explore at another time, this does not mean neighbourhood planning could not be reformed to incorporate more of the spirit of the Clear Village approach.

Just Planning

It is interesting to see growing interest in the interface between the planning, sustainability and environmental justice agendas. In my book I pick up on the arguments that Julian Agyeman of Tufts University has put forward for 'just sustainability'. This seeks to overcome the tendency within some environmental debates to assume that any environmental protection is in the interests of us all equally. While the environment is a set of commons - global commons like the atmosphere and local commons like local nature reserves - we use them unequally. Some have more access to environmental resources and services than others and some bear more of the adverse environmental impacts than others. Just sustainability seeks to capture this by promoting more sustainable pathways that also address inequality. And Simin Davoudi, of Newcastle University, is ploughing a similar pathway in developing a framework for 'just planning'. You can find the full report where she develops these ideas at:
www.ncl.ac.uk/guru/news/item/environmental-justice-and-the-city-summary-report-published.
She follows the line adopted in environmental justice debates (as advocated by David Schlosberg and Gordon Walker) that sees justice not only in terms of outcomes but also participation, recognition, capability and responsibility. These are really interesting but also demanding criteria for a new planning approach. While this would seem ideal, I do wonder if we should not return to a focus on distribution first, particularly given the depth of social and environmental inequalities that we are faced with. After all, the big justice thinkers such as Iris Marion Young, Nancy Fraser and Brian Barry were clear that they were arguing for more procedural concerns to be incorporated into the justice agenda in addition to, or even after distribution being addressed. If fair distribution becomes one of five criteria for just planning, will it get the emphasis it deserves?

Responding to two-speed Britain

There was an interesting article in the Observer on Sunday which highlighted the gap in development activity and property market movement in London and the South East compared to the rest of the country. They pointed out that there were more cranes on the London skyline than the rest of Britain put together. This really raises the question of whether our current planning system is fit for purpose across the country. To date it is really only suited to either encouraging market-led development (where it can) or resisting development pressures (where they exist). This clearly does not describe great swathes of the country. In my forthcoming book I argue that there are alternatives using community-based development and management and thinking about the value that low-priced areas have for local communities. I present a number of reforms to the planning system that would support such an alternative approach. It is interesting to see that some of these overlap with some current government initiatives (although not the prevailing planning ideology which is firmly pro-market). I would point to the announcement of measures to re-use empty buildings, provide land for self-builders and put funding into high streets, sometimes through community ventures. These are clearly times of change and such change is not alway simple. Yes, the government are in favour of deregulation and promoting market-led development. Yes, they are weakening the negotiating power of local authorities through their reforms of planning gain. But there are also these smaller changes which perhaps are there because of the Localism agenda that could form the kernel of a different way of doing planning. What is needed is a broader programme of reform to build on this.

Debating the West End - do we always have to go for growth?

Yesterday there was an interesting discussion at the UCL Bartlett School of Planning about the report from the West End Commission (see last blogpost). One thing that came up was the way that always pursuring growth in a locality was seen as almost inevitable. The West End is undoubtedly commercially successful. Employment growth and new development has continued throughout this recessionary period. Indeed many of the difficulties that it faces could be argued to come from too much growth. And yet there is such resistance to planning for less growth of this area and diverting some of this activity to other areas across London. Why is growth of the Westfields seens as a threat rather than a spreading of economic activity? But seen as a threat it is. The argument is made that the West End is part of the growth machine that is London and that is at the heart of the UK economy. Thus any shifts that might reduce this growth are resisted. Indeed changes are currently being implemented to local government finance that will create greater incentives for local authorities to pursue economic growth. In London it seems likely that the report from the Travers Commision on London's finance (commissioned by the Mayor of London) will recommend greater tax raising power for the Mayor and the principle that a larger proportion of the tax-take from Londoners and London businesses being retained by the Greater London Authority. This will ramp up the growth machine of London yet further. Perhaps this machine works well in London but as a model for local government more generally it can create problems. How will the income of local authorities in low growth areas fare? Will there be less redistribution given that the totality of local government finance is unlikely to grow? This suggests again the need to think again how to plan in areas where growth - and now it seems enhanced central government funding - is not the norm.

London's West End

Last week, the report by the West End Commission, set up by Westminster City Council was launched. I was lucky enough to be involved in the fascinating process of discussions that led to this report. These revolved around the issue of how to ensure the future success of the West End and whether this future success was tied up with encouraging growth and development, dealing with the externalities of such growth and/or preserving what was already there and arguably made the area so distinctive. There was widespread agreement that the unique street morphology and historic buildings and places, the mix of land uses and social groups, the prevalence of SMES and the fine grain of the area were the things that made the West End what is was. So should preservation be the order of the day? Should existing clusters of land uses - as found in Cork Street and Savile Row - be specially protected?  Or would this inhibit future organic change that would provide the West End of the future? How to balance growth and conservation and yet work towards a low carbon future? The West End is though unusual across the UK. The report makes clear that is continues to experience economic success even during the recent downturns. Here growth-dependent planning can work if regulation is appropriately applied, if development is managed so that it does not kill off the distinctiveness of the West End and if some of the profits of development are used to support low carbon initiatives, place making and, above all, affordable housing provision. But we should not be deluded by this example; most places across the UK are not in this situation. And, if Larry Elliott in today's Guardian is correct, then the future may mean that the West End will be more and more atypical; see his article on 'What if, this time, the party is really over?' at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/larryelliott.

You can find details of the Commission and its report at http://www.westendcommission.com/ and I will be giving a talk on this at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL at 5.30pm on Wed 8th May; see http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/planning/events/lps-rydin-may2013 for details.

Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013

The Growth and Infrastructure Act has now received Royal Assent and become law. Among its various provisions is the potential for reconsideration of Section 106 agreements that have been negotiated between developers and local planning authorities to secure community benefits from new developments. The argument that has been put forward is that existing S. 106 agreements are rendering developments unviable and therefore holding up new build projects. Let these agreements be renegotiated to reduce the financial burden on the developer, and then these projects would go ahead. It has been suggested that the construction of 75,000 homes could be prompted by this measure. This could be seen just as a further move towards deregulation; I think this is wrong as it is more a restructuring of regulation to tip the balance of power towards the developer. But more interesting is the assumption explicitly built into the new legislation that planning has to operate within the constraints of the viability of private sector development. This builds on previous policy guidance from the Coalition Government to local authorities, as set out in the National Planning Policy Framework for example, that ensuring the viability of development must be a core principle guiding local plan making. The explicitness of this acknowledgement that current planning practice is reliant on the decisions and investment activities of private sector developers is at the heart of growth-dependent planning. But the move to allow S.106 agreements to be renegotiated also shows the limitations of this paradigm. Planners can no longer weigh up the costs and benefits of a development proposal with any certainty, as the negotiated benefits of planning gain may be open to reconsideration; broadly the community will get less for permitting the development to go ahead. The message seems to be that the local planning authority and local communities should be happy to get the development itself and little more.

The book's argument

Well, the book has gone off to the publisher and is scheduled to be out in September. So what is its key argument? Planning has, I contend, become explicitly dependent on the promotion of growth and market-led urban development. This can work in some situations: it requires an underlying pressure of economic growth, effective regulation through the planning system (and a willingness on the part of planning authorities to negotiate for broader community benefits) and support by local communities. However, there are two major problems with such an overwhelming dependence on market-led development to deliver on public policy goals. First, as we are all too acutely aware at present, economic growth cannot be taken as a given. Even where national economic growth has returned to positive figures of several percentage points, there will always be areas that are suffering from a lack of demand and growth. What kind of planning should operate in these areas and during periods of general downturn? Second, there are significant concerns about the environmental and social consequences of growth-dependent planning. It is not clear that this approach will lead to resource efficiency and social equity. So a new agenda is proposed - drawing on the concept of just sustainability- and the book explores elements of an alternative planning approach. This encompasses different types of development model (including community-based development), ways of protecting and enhancing areas with low economic value as measured by rents and property prices (areas that often play an important function for lower-income communities) and community ownership and management of common assets. The final chapter discusses how these two approaches to planning can be combined and sets out in detail the reforms to the planning system that will be necessary to make space for planning beyond growth-dependence.

Watch this space....

This blog will accompany a new book to be published in Autumn 2013 by Policy Press. It will be called "The Future of Planning: beyond growth dependence". It is hoped that this will be a site for debating the issues raised in that book. More to come....