Hallo, again!

There is now a video of my UCL lecture available at:
 http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/planning/centenary

I also was in Amsterdam last week giving a talk on the book to the City Master Development programme organised by Rotterdam University. Here is a link to the talk announcement:
 http://www.mastercitydeveloper.nl/actueel/greatbooks/the_future_of_planning/

And for the Dutch speakers among you, here is a blog on the talk:

http://www.gebiedsontwikkeling.nu/artikel/12065-the-future-of-planning-betoog-voor-een-alternatief-voor-growth-dependent-planning

I will also be giving a keynote address at the Planning Research Conference in Oxford in September:

http://planning.brookes.ac.uk/events/2014/planning-research-conference.html

Pausing for now...

Happy New Year! As I am on a term's research sabbatical, I am giving the blog a pause. I will be working on sustainability and non-prime commercial property, particularly in neighbourhood centres. As outputs emerge, I will return to let you know about them. In the meantime, if anyone wishes to get in touch about Planning Beyond Growth Dependence, just leave a comment and I will get back to you. Many thanks.

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.