BOOKS Two by Nicholas Phelps | reviewed by Nigel Moor; Social Lives of Urban Redevelopment in London | Ed Wall; When Britain Built Something Big | Dave Hill

Reimaging planning

Nigel Moor reviews two books by Nicholas Phelps

Dr Nigel Moor is a retired chartered town planner and a former town, district and county councillor

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of a conversation with Professor Nicholas Phelps, who is Chair of Urban Planning at the University of Melbourne. He was in Britain doing some planning research for his next book. Before moving to Melbourne, he was a Professor at the Bartlett School of Planning in London. His academic colleagues there included the late Professor Sir Peter Hall, who encouraged him to publish his book on planning and politics in Britain. It has some uncomfortable conclusions concerning the effectiveness of planning in this country.

Last year Nick published The Urban Planning Imagination, which in some respects is a sequel to that earlier book. More theoretical, it reminds us why urban planning has a value. To understand why it seems continually necessary to make this point, the first book An Anatomy Of Sprawl provides a salutary lesson in the failure of planning in the South Hampshire sub -region. This wide corridor on either side of the M27 motorway between Southampton and Portsmouth, has for more than fifty years seen a process of urban sprawl witnessed in the western and eastern seaboards of the United States. This has not been an exercise in Nonplan, for the corridor has been as enthusiastically planned as any in the country.

An area with a present population of around one million people, South Hampshire was identified in the South East Study 1961 – 1981 as a potential location for London overspill. To explore further its potential for South Hampshire, the then Labour government commissioned Colin Buchanan & Partners in 1966 to produce the South Hampshire Study, which examined the feasibility of major urban growth. The consultants went beyond their terms of reference to recommend that the area could accommodate a total population of 1,700.000. The recommendations were accompanied by a diagram with a linear grid of roads across the area, which at first glance gave the impression of a linear city of total development. Dubbed Solent City by its critics, it proved universally unpopular. Not only in local government circles, but also with central government. It avoided the potential solution of a new town and left the door open for continued administration of the growth agenda by local government.

Its failure is compared to the success of Milton Keynes that similarly originated from the South East Study. This new town was planned to embrace automobility and new patterns of work. It has been remarkably successful. Professor Phelps in a detailed, forensic analysis of the planning history of South Hampshire, demonstrates how this administration of growth by local government led to a scattered form of urban sprawl. Promoted in the interest of resisting a coalescence of settlements, it perversely created a continuous sprawling Solent City, with none of the advantages of Milton Keynes. Phelps reflects that this “muddling through” contrasts strongly with the record of Britain’s new towns, which stand as a triumph of strategic planning compared with the incrementalism that has been planning for growth in South Hampshire.

His conclusions are what he has described as the beast of Solent City has sprung while politicians, planners and the public in South Hampshire have been jealously guarding against it. Contributing to this failure has been the fragmented local government scene in the area. In his words “Local government fragmentation has generated a series of political fiefdoms with at times quite ridiculous claims to pre- eminence in the sub-region.”

In his forward to the book Peter Hall reflected on how this deeply scholarly work explodes the myth that the draconian powers conferred on planners by the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, have enabled us to avoid the dangers of urban sprawl that horrify visitors to the fringes of American cities.

Since leaving the Bartlett School of Planning, Professor Phelps has had time to reflect on this story of a collective failure of vision. His new book The Urban Planning Imagination is a rethinking of fundamental aspects of planning. In a significant comment contained in the author’s celebration of urban planning, he remarks that “its systems and cultures are nested within broader institutional and cultural frames while being an indispensable part of, or foil to them.” In support he quotes Magnusson (Politics of Urbanism Routledge 2011),” Planning has always been a way of

rationalising politics by rendering it governable.”

With this in mind, and reflecting on the government’s current ambivalence towards regional planning, this history of South Hampshire’s sprawl and lost opportunities should be a painful reminder. Could it persuade the new government to reboot the Oxford- Cambridge Arc (Leader, Planning in London Issue 121 April – June 2022).Pledges made during this summer’s leadership campaign to kick start a failing British economy, will amount to nothing more than empty rhetoric if this opportunity is lost. n

Nicholas A. Phelps An Anatomy Of Sprawl Planning And Politics In Britain 2012 Routledge Abingdon ISBN 978-0-415-59299-4

Nicholas A. Phelps The Urban Planning Imagination 2021 Polity Press Cambridge ISBN-13 978-1-5095-2624-6

ABOVE: The complexity of the local government structure in South Hampshire Source : Partnership for Urban South Hampshire (PfSH).

Social Lives of Urban Redevelopment in London

By Ed Wall –Author of Contesting Public Spaces –Social Lives of Urban Redevelopment in London published by Routledge and reviewed by Nigel Moor

£34.99 at Amazon

Author Ed Wall Contesting Public Spaces explores the public lives and landscapes at stake as large areas of London are transformed through urban redevelopment. Through research of neighbourhoods in Paddington, Elephant and Castle, and Trafalgar Square, the book focuses on the redesigned public spaces that are at the heart of such large-scale urban change. The book raises concerns for spatial justice as London's streets, squares, and neighbourhoods are reconfigured through planning decisions, design practices, political processes, and daily routines. Based on a series of interviews with individuals involved in planning, designing, managing, and using public spaces, the book exposes conflicts between planning officers and commerical developers who direct large urban redevelopment and communities, small businesses, and residents whose lives are tied up with the neighbourhoods being reconfigured. The research brings sociological methods to what are frequently considered architectural concerns to reveal challenges as London's public landscapes are designed, regulated, and lived.

Over the last three decades urban change in London has been directed by varying combinations of government and private led approaches. The book shows that through these different process of regeneration, the future of neighbourhoods and districts is being fought over and public spaces are a core concern. From market traders who livelihoods have been undermined to local businesses who have been evicted, the research highlights what is gained and lost as commercial developers - with supportive relationships with government agencies - transform neighbourhoods for profit. The book also describes how limitations of local authority and Greater London Authority planning systems are exploited by large-scale private interests, in particular, how planning negotiations conducted in private, between governments who have land assets and commercial developers backed by private investors, come to define the future of public spaces in cities like London.

Contesting Public Spaces shows that new public spaces are not consistently accessible, neither are they inclusive in the way that they are planned, designed, and managed. The public realm of London is transformed and managed through a vast range of different relationships between public agencies and large commercial interests. The latter, who include private developers, business improvement district teams, and corporate tenants, have an increasingly present role in the ongoing management of masterplanned areas, all that have public space at their core. Through maintaining control of London's open spaces both state and private interests have the opportunity to control the image of their developments. To reimage these areas, teenagers, students, and homeless people - or anyone deemed undesirable - are evicted from what become sanitised open spaces. Furthermore, individuals and businesses whose lives have been part of these public landscapes for decades are excluded. As the metropolitan and local government prioritises investment in different opportunity areas across London and private interests realise the potential of controlling its public spaces the publicness of London's shared spaces becomes increasingly challenged.

While large-scale urban change has been the focus of criticism for many decades, the research also furthers a critique of large scale masterplanning. It recognises that masterplans, whether state-led or commercially focused, limit the opportunity of local communities to continue to live and work in the parts of London where their families have been for generations. In some cases, masterplanning processes have been employed to exclude certain individuals and activities - such as street traders and low-cost markets - that undermine the new urban images desired by politicians, planners, and private landowners. The squares, parks, pavements, and canals of London become the focus of social cleansing, ensuring that spaces that foreground new shops, restaurants, and apartments facilitate primarily commercial ambitions. At the same time, neighbourhood scale masterplans are claimed to be one of the few options available to financially stretched local governments who are looking to regenerate their London boroughs. By combining their powers as planning authorities and their role as significant landowners,

When Britain Built Something Big

Olympic Park: When Britain Built Something Big by Dave Hill reviewed by Simon Ricketts

£18.90 at www.onlondon.co.uk When Britain built something big is the sub-title to Dave Hill’s book Olympic Park, which tells the story of how an Olympic park was created created in London’s Lower Lea Valley in time for London 2012. It is a detailed factual account, not just of the politics, planning, infrastructure engineering and deal-making that led up to that event, but of its implications in terms of urban regeneration and legacy.

I interviewed Dave about the book and its themes on 30th August 2022 on the audio social-media app Clubhouse, and you’re welcome to listen to the recording.

A number of things are striking to me, looking back.

The first is that huge things can be achieved if individuals and institutions collectively grasp a vision and secure the necessary buy-in. At a time when this country had perhaps lost its self-belief in being able to deliver a project successfully and on time, here we were setting ourselves up to fail - but we didn’t. By luck there was a new system of London regional government in place to facilitate London’s bid for the games (Ken Livingstone as mayor, not a sports fan at all but persuaded as to the regeneration potential of a London Games) with the full support (not easily secured by the indefatigable Tessa Jowell) of the Blair government, and with the

>>> local governments are attractive partners for private developers seeking to profit from large-scale masterplanning. Contesting Public Spaces concludes that the way we think about public spaces should be reconsidered. It argues that public spaces should be redefined through their social and spatial relations rather than more narrow focus on their architectural forms.

Such a reframing would allow London's public spaces to be understood in terms of their varying "publicness" rather than merely as in opposition to the city's private spaces. London does not have a binary of public and private spaces, but a myriad of spaces owned, managed, and used by varying combinations of state agencies, commercial interests, private landlords, and communities. The book closes by setting out three planning propositions for public spaces. The first proposition is to advocate for more transparent processes, especially planning negotiations, as large areas of London are reconfigured. The second proposition is to establish more inclusive practices of planning and design, where local communities and individuals who can be frequently overlooked are included in the processes of urban change. The third, and final, proposition is to establish an independent regulator for public spaces in London. Recognising that over the last three decades there has been a proliferation of forms, ownerships, and management structures that have resulted in highly uneven ways of making and remaking public spaces in London, a new regulator could represent public concerns for the shared spaces of the city and ensure transparent and inclusive practices during uncertain process of urban change. n individual host boroughs, with capable leaders, willing to come together as a Joint Planning Applications Team to determine massively complex planning applications within tight timescales.

The second is that there are inevitable tradeoffs if a project such as the transformation of this huge area of east London was to be achieved by what was an immovable deadline. When London secured the Games, the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 gave significant powers to unelected bodies, which has continued with the creation of the London Legacy Development Corporation in 2012. Many people’s homes and businesses were the subject of a compulsory purchase order, which was confirmed after a 41 day inquiry and which survived at least three legal challenges in the High Court. Should we have done it? Or should we have let community politics take their course?

The third is that whilst it is important to have the necessary statutory processes and a strategy, so much comes down to problem-solving, creativity and negotiation. Whilst the rights calls may have been made in the negotiations necessary with the Stratford City development partners (at times a fragile partnership due to the takeover of Chelsfield during the process), was money wasted in deciding to proceed with a stadium design that did not easily allow for West Ham’s subsequent use - and just how good was West Ham’s eventual deal?

The fourth is that engineering constraints and their lead-in periods can cause headaches - for example the huge commercial, logistical and regulatory challenge of undergrounding electricity lines and removing pylons - achievements which we then utterly take for granted.

The fifth is the need for cross-party consensus - long-term projects can’t be the punchbag of short-term party politics. So there was the unholy alliance between Livingstone, expelled from the Labour party, and the New Labour government, both then replaced before the Games themselves by Johnson and the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition and now the approach to various legacy aspects being the domain of Sadiq Khan.

The sixth is that surely we need to learn from what went well and what perhaps didn’t, and to apply it to the immediate challenges around us: climate change, including renewables and making existing buildings more energy-efficient; and indeed the challenge of delivering a new generation of affordable homes. What more broadly should we learn about how our planning system needs to adapt? n