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.

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!).