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.