Riba Think Piece Series: Digital Planning

used the approach to inform neighbourhood planning, and to feed into the context study for a Bristol Central Areas Plan.

Applications like this could be scaled up to create a successful digitised planning system that saves costs and money, and provides a platform for linking community participation to planning policy and guidance about the value of local places and their character. It could help create community-led incentives to inform community design statements, like in the case of Our Place. But it could also be used for many other projects to drive the creation of sustainable and socially productive places. Additionally, it could facilitate the planning process by quickly disseminating information (e.g. share draft documents and invite comments) and record and evaluate the process through social media. This would help share the community’s experience and encourage others to participate. These type of initiatives will have to be reliant on specialist local authority data managers to help create an efficient and effective system.

The approach would link the public back with the planning process, and is likely to appeal to local ward councillors who may see a digitised planning system as a way for local amenity groups to become proactive in shaping the future of their neighbourhood in partnership with their local authority.

If the already existing neighbourhood planning engagement tools, such as Our Place, could be rolled out to an LA level – and beyond – the results of neighbourhood-level planning projects could be seen in relation to each other, which would help widen the understanding of the distinctiveness of individual neighbourhoods and begin a collaborative placemaking process based on a thorough understanding of place.

The tools and data to achieve a digitised planning system already exist – now it’s a matter of connecting all the dots and rolling out the approach across Local Authorities to bring back character and local meaning to place creation.

Author Peter Insole has worked for Bristol City Council since 2007 in their multi-disciplinary City Design Group consisting of urban designers, conservation officers, landscape architects and archaeological officers. During this time he has managed the Bristol Historic Environment Record (HER), provided archaeological development management advice and contributed to the creation of the city’s heritage planning policies. In 2010 Peter successfully applied for funding to develop the web resource Know Your Place (www.bristol.gov.uk/ knowyourplace). This unique resource now underpins the council’s approach to the historic environment making archives more accessible and encouraging members of the public to share their own understanding of place.