town & country planning The Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association
July–August 2023
Volume 92
• Number 4
• Gavin Parker and Mark Dobson on planning in time and time to plan • The Chartered Planning in Academic Practice group on a future for planning • John Perry on assessing housing needs
information and subscriptions
Town & Country Planning The Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association ISSN 0040-9960 Published bi-monthly Volume 92 Number 4 July–August 2023
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Town & Country Planning is the Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA), a Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in England under No. 146309. Registered Charity No. 214348 Copyright © TCPA and the authors, 2023 The TCPA may not agree with opinions expressed in Town & Country Planning but encourages publication as a matter of interest and debate. Nothing printed may be construed as representative of TCPA policy or opinion unless so stated. Editorial and Subscriptions Office: Town and Country Planning Association 17 Carlton House Terrace London SW1Y 5AS t: +44 (0)20 7930 8903 Editorial: Nick.Matthews@tcpa.org.uk Subscriptions: tcpa@tcpa.org.uk Editor: Nick Matthews Contributions: Articles for consideration are welcome. Material should be submitted to the Editor, preferably by e-mail and in Word-readable form. Reproductionquality illustrations are welcome. Advertising: Rates (not including VAT): Full page £800. Inserts from £400 (weight-dependent). Half page £400. Quarter page £300. Ten per cent reduction for agents. Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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contents Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
• Volume 92 • Number 4
regulars
features
218 On the Agenda
230 Assessing housing needs — the housing crisis worsens The gap between national housing need and supply is growing, as John Perry explains
Fiona Howie: The latest long-term plan for housing? 221 Time & Tide Celia Davis and Hugh Ellis: Government must grasp the potential of planning to help address climate change 224 Off the Rails Robin Hickman: Discursive practice and transport planning in Plymouth 227 New Leaves Dannielle Sinnett: Green infrastructure and regeneration 278 Letter from Languedoc Graeme Bell 279 Going Local David Boyle: Snobbery, contempt and ochlophobia 281 Design Matters Matthew Carmona: 15-minute city — branding, conspiracy, and a surrogate for density 285 Earth Rights Martin Stott: Architecture and anarchy — another world is possible 288 Inside America Mike Teitz: Welcome to the Tunnel Tops
234 Planning reform in England — a proposal The Chartered Planners in Academic Practice (CPiAP) group set out a ‘manifesto’ on planning reform 243 Planning in time, time for planning, and time to plan — ‘timescaping’ and its implications for practice Gavin Parker and Mark Dobson on the impacts of time, its organisation and its control within the English planning system 248 Biography of an island foretold Nick Green on the evolution of settlement patterns in Britain in the 21st century, as seen from an imaginary standpoint in 2099 252 Healthy place-making in practice — a participatory approach Sarah Spanton and Razieh Zandieh on a participatory approach to the development of a healthy placemaking project in Woodhouse Park, Wythenshaw 258 Hillfields Homes for Heroes Pete Insole on the history of the pioneering Hillfields council housing estate in Bristol 262 Tenants and residents associations in England — activities and operation The LSE GV314 Group on the results of a survey of more than 500 English tenants and residents associations 272 Severn and Avon Vales Flourishing Floodplains project Peter Jones looks at floodplain conservation and restoration, drawing on outcomes from the Severn and Avon Vales Flourishing Floodplains project Cover: Gavin Parker and Mark Dobson on planning in time and time to plan, pages 243–247. Cover illustration by Clifford Harper. chcliffordharper@gmail.com Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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on the agenda TCPA Chief Executive Fiona Howie on key current issues in the policy landscape and the work of the TCPA
the latest long-term plan for housing?
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Fiona Howie
In a major speech on a long-term plan for housing in July, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities1 started by recognising that the quality of our homes and the communities in which we live determine our health, happiness, prosperity, and productivity. The profound impact of homes and places on people and the environment underpins all of the TCPA’s work, so the recognition of the importance of homes by the Rt Hon. Michael Gove is welcome. Inevitably, his speech reiterated the government’s emphasis on the need for places to be beautiful, but the need for places to be healthy was also recognised, as was the role of government in regulating, when necessary, to improve the quality of homes, including through the Decent Homes Standard. What all of this means in practice, however, remains slightly unclear. Much of what was covered is already set out in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill and the Renters (Reform) Bill, but much of the press coverage has focused on a desire by the government to review and extend permitted development rights so that large shops, takeaways and betting shops can be converted into residential use.2 This continued emphasis on deregulation seems to go against much of what the Secretary of State covered in his speech, including references to the importance of the ‘thoughtful stewardship’ of existing buildings and the value of masterplanning. However, there is an indication that ‘design codes might apply to certain [permitted development] rights’,3 and we await further information on how that might work in practice. It is easy to get demoralised by the continued use of language about the need to ‘unblock’ the planning system, but the TCPA remains of the view that we need to work with those who will listen to try to get back to more visionary place-shaping. That has been a focus of the Association’s Tomorrow 125 project,
for which we held a symposium in Bournville in mid-July. The project was conceived back in 2020 as part of our reflections on moving into a ‘post-Covid’ world. It then started in 2021, thanks to funding from the Lady Margaret Paterson Osborn Trust. It is clearer than ever that the types of places that Ebenezer Howard had sought to create through his Garden City experiments, where people had access to local green space and high-quality homes, remain both relevant and necessary. While the TCPA’s campaigning on the Garden City principles has led to higher standards in some places, there is clearly a disconnect between the radical vision for sustainable and socially just places and the quality of much of the new development that we continue to see today. But the term ‘Garden City’ has also been misused and devalued, and part of the motivation behind the Tomorrow 125 project was a desire to be more honest and open about acknowledging that.
Some of the Tomorrow 125 symposium participants on a Bournville walking tour
Nicola Gotts
on the agenda
Some of the participants in the Tomorrow 125 symposium held in Bournville
Perhaps one of the highlights of the symposium in Bournville for me was that, while part of its aim was to galvanise support for place-shaping that helps people and the planet to thrive, there was also an emphasis on practical action. The event showcased work in Belfast, London, Hull and other communities where people are taking action and pushing for change. Because, in the spirit of Howard, we need to seek to secure change even without government leadership. Of course we need government action, and we will continue to campaign for it; but there is an urgent need for change now, and we cannot sit back and wait for change to happen for us. July also saw the launch of a number of TCPA reports, including Spatial Planning for Climate Resilience and Net Zero, written, with the Centre for Sustainable Energy, for the Climate Change Committee (and considered elsewhere in this issue),4 and Living Locally: The Role of Housing and Planning within Local Councils,5 the latest report written by the TCPA as part of its collaboration with the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE). The Living Locally report focuses on complete, compact and connected communities and the multiple benefits that they offer, including those relating to tackling health inequalities, addressing
climate change, and enhancing local economies. The report aims to highlight the work that some local authorities are already doing, while also aiming to inspire other local councils to take action and highlighting the changes needed at national level to better support local efforts. The report highlights the policy in Scotland’s National Planning Framework 46 on ‘local living and 20-minute neighbourhoods’, which has a desired outcome of: ‘A network of high-quality, accessible, mixed-use neighbourhoods which support health and wellbeing, reduce inequalities and are resilient to the effects of climate change.’ We recognise that, for some, language about 20-minute neighbourhoods and 15-minute cities is now controversial. But this desired outcome feels like something that few could disagree about. And the report makes clear that the concept of a complete, compact and connected community, however policy might refer to it, is a useful framework and starting point to inform thinking about the future of an area. As the case studies set out the in the report highlight, the concept must be tailored for the local community, because the facilities and amenities that people need in order to live more Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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The TCPA’s vision is for homes, places and communities in which everyone can thrive. Its mission is to challenge, inspire and support people to create healthy, sustainable and resilient places that are fair for everyone. Informed by the Garden City Principles, the TCPA’s strategic priorities are to: Work to secure a good home for everyone in inclusive, resilient and prosperous communities, which support people to live healthier lives. Empower people to have real influence over decisions about their environments and to secure social justice within and between communities.
The APSE/TCPA Living Locally report
locally will vary from place to place. It is not a top-down idea to be imposed on places.
Support new and transform existing places to be adaptable to current and future challenges, including the climate crisis.
• Fiona Howie is Chief Executive of the TCPA. Notes 1 ‘Long-term plan for housing’. Speech by Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 24 Jul. 2023. www.gov.uk/government/speeches/long-term-plan-forhousing-secretary-of-states-speech 2 See, for example, S Delahunty: ‘Local plan reform and hike in developer fees part of PM’s promise to deliver on one million-home manifesto commitment’. Inside Housing, 24 Jul. 2023. www.insidehousing.co.uk/home/ home/local-plan-reform-and-hike-in-developer-feespart-of-pms-promise-to-deliver-on-1m-homemanifesto-commitment-82425?utm_source=dlvr. it&utm_medium=twitter 3 ‘Long-term plan for housing’. News story. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 24 Jul. 2023. www.gov.uk/government/news/long-term-plan-forhousing 4 Spatial Planning for Climate Resilience and Net Zero. Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) and the TCPA, for the Climate Change Committee, Jul. 2023. www.theccc.org.uk/publication/spatial-planning-forclimate-resilience-and-net-zero-cse-tcpa/ – and, in this issue, see C Davis and H Ellis: ‘Government must grasp the potential of planning to help address climate change’. Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, Jul.-Aug., 221-23 5 Living Locally: The Role of Housing and Planning within Local Councils. TCPA, for the Association for Public Excellence (APSE). APSE, Jul. 2023. https://apse.org.uk/index.cfm/apse/research/currentresearch-programme/living-locally-the-role-of-housingand-planning-within-local-councils/ 6 National Planning Framework 4. Scottish Government, Feb. 2023. www.gov.scot/publications/nationalplanning-framework-4/pages/1/
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TCPA membership The benefits of TCPA membership include: a subscription to Town & Country Planning; discounted fees for TCPA events and conferences; opportunities to become involved in policy-making; a monthly e-bulletin; and access to the members’ area on the TCPA website.
• • • • •
Contact the Membership Officer, David White t: (0)20 7930 8903 e: membership@tcpa.org.uk w: www.tcpa.org.uk
TCPA policy and projects Follow the TCPA’s policy and project work on Twitter, @theTCPA and on the TCPA website, at www.tcpa.org.uk
• Affordable housing • Community participation in planning • Garden Cities and New Towns • Healthy Homes Act campaign • Healthy place-making • New Communities Group • Parks and green infrastructure • Planning reform • Planning for climate change
time & tide Celia Davis and Hugh Ellis on research into how the planning system might better support climate resilience and net-zero goals, undertaken for the Climate Change Committee
government must grasp the potential of planning to help address climate change
Watt a Lot on Unsplash
The questions that people ask when they find out that you are a town planner can give a fascinating insight into how the public perceive the planning profession. Common grumbles about ‘soulless’ housing developments are often aired, or advice might be sought on the details of a neighbour’s planned extension. But some questions that come up time and again get to the heart of planning in England and its failure to address climate change. Why don’t new buildings have solar panels on the roof? Why are new homes not built to be more energy efficient? Why are we building houses where floods are more likely in future?
In simple terms, these questions resemble the matters that the Climate Change Committee (CCC) wanted to explore when it commissioned the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) and the TCPA to look at how the planning system might better address climate resilience and net zero.1 The CCC recognises that planning is a key tool for local authorities in taking action on climate change, but wanted to understand why progress is so varied across England’s local authorities. The research was undertaken through a literature review, stakeholder roundtables, a review of national policy, and four in-depth case studies. As the team undertook the research it became clear that many of the reasons that climate change is so rarely front and centre in Local Plans stem from inaction and confusion in central government. The findings and recommendations of the report go into some detail and are not repeated at length here; instead, some of the key findings are briefly summarised.
The public often ask why new buildings are built without solar roof panels, or why new homes are not built to be more energy efficient Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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Central Lincolnshire, the Planning Inspectorate judged that the 2015 WMS carried very little weight. Current rules and guidance around development viability are also hampering efforts to address climate change through local planning, and local authorities view development viability as a significant barrier to achieving net zero. The viability assessment process requires reform so that the long-term value of carbon mitigation and adaptation measures is recognised. There are many policy areas that require guidance on specific policy actions. On mitigation, there is currently no requirement for Local Plans to measure their carbon impact, and therefore no mechanism for understanding the contribution of development to carbon emissions (and assessing whether proposals conform with local and national targets). Local carbon budgets would enable local benchmarking, while a carbon accounting regime would ensure that plans and proposals conform with legally binding targets for emissions reduction. On climate adaptation, the research finds that a more holistic policy approach is required so that adaptation measures are more comprehensively considered and reflected in local policies. Flood risk guidance is directive and clear, but this is not replicated across other adaptation and resilience factors such as overheating and resource efficiency. In summary, the lack of detailed methodologies and guidance on how local authorities should address climate mitigation and adaptation is resulting in a patchwork of policy approaches, and an increased gap between the ‘vanguard’ authorities that have prioritised and resourced climate change in their planning teams and those that are lagging behind.
Benjamin Elliott on Unsplash
The research found that local planning has the potential to be a key public policy solution in mitigating and adapting to climate change. However, there is a significant gap between what is conceptually possible in planning for climate change and what is happening on the ground. The research concludes that this is a consequence of an institutional culture inside national government that perceives the planning system as a problem rather than a public policy solution, and therefore fails to give specific prioritisation to the role of planning in addressing climate policy objectives. These institutional challenges help to explain and contextualise the lack of action on climate change that were found at all levels in the planning system. At a national level, the legal and policy prioritisation and coherence given to climate change is weak and provides a confusing framework for practitioners. National planning policy on climate change is unclear, and climate change objectives are often presented as general considerations rather than clear requirements, which leads to climate change being de-prioritised against other policy outcomes. Two of the research case studies explored the confusion caused by the 2015 Written Ministerial Statement (WMS) on planning (and specifically the section on plan-making),2 which is now acting as a serious deterrent to local authorities seeking to bring forward ambitious policies, and highlights the uncertainty created by poor policy housekeeping at a national level. This outdated policy statement has caused net-zero buildings policies to be found unsound at examination on the basis of inconsistency with national policy in some cases,3 while in areas such as Cornwall, Bath & North East Somerset and
There is currently no requirement for Local Plans to measure their carbon impact
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There are some areas where there is a clear need to rethink the available powers to deliver. As discussed in this column in the last issue of Town & Country Planning,4 plan-making is not operating at the appropriate scales for long-term climate adaptation, nor do the necessary tools exist to co-ordinate the radical long-term change that is required in areas most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Local authorities are further constrained by the structures of government funding, which tend to be short term, poorly designed, and competitive.
‘Despite all the challenges
outlined above, the research unveiled some glimmers of hope and provides a set of recommendations that would transform the capability of the planning system’
All these challenges are of course exacerbated by the long-term crisis of skills and capacity in the planning service. Local planning authorities need to be resourced properly to meet the climate challenge and enable the planning system to generate more climate-resilient outcomes, but such resourcing must be aligned to much clearer expectations regarding the role of local planning in addressing climate change. Awareness, training and empowerment of other stakeholders must also be addressed. Lack of knowledge of climate change at the Planning Inspectorate is viewed by many authorities as a barrier to implementing net-zero emissions policies, while political and corporate leadership on climate change is a clear enabler for those more progressive authorities. Despite all the challenges outlined above, the research unveiled some glimmers of hope and provides a set of recommendations that would transform the capability of the planning system. Many of the recommendations could be implemented fairly quickly and could become a central tenet of planning reform. Hope is also to be found in the commitment, enthusiasm and expertise of those planners that are leading the way and demonstrating the clear potential for local planning to make a significant contribution to achieving net zero and climate resilience. Imagine what could be achieved if these authorities were enabled by a national policy framework, rather than having to work against it.
The Climate Change Committee’s latest progress report to Parliament on reducing emissions5 is clear that the UK is far from on track to meet its carbon reduction targets, and it calls for ‘a sustained high-intensity of action’ across all sectors of the economy. The planning sector has a clear role to play. Our hope is that the research report will provide the CCC with an up-to-date evidence base to inform its engagement with government on planning reform. It is encouraging to see the CCC’s progress report both reference the research and set out a clear priority action on updating the NPPF to be consistent with net zero.6 Government must urgently make the long-overdue changes that the planning system so desperately requires. Davis is a Projects and Policy Manager and •DrCelia Hugh Ellis is Policy Director at the TCPA. The views expressed are personal.
Notes 1 The full report of the research — Spatial Planning for Climate Resilience and Net Zero. Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) and the TCPA, for the Climate Change Committee, Jul. 2023 — is available from the Climate Change Committee website, at www.theccc.org.uk/publication/spatial-planning-forclimate-resilience-and-net-zero-cse-tcpa/ 2 Planning Update. Statement UIN HCWS488. Written Ministerial Statement by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Mar. 2015. https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/writtenstatements/detail/2015-03-25/HCWS488 For a fuller explanation of this issue, see The Application of Net Zero in Local Plan Policy. TCPA, Jul. 2022. www.tcpa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/20220714climate-statement-W-Ox.docx 3 For example, see Report on the Examination of the Salt Cross Garden Village Area Action Plan in West Oxfordshire (PINS/ D3125/429/7. Planning Inspectorate, Mar. 2023. Available at www.westoxon.gov.uk/media/ djkhe03s/salt-cross-aap-inspectors-report-main-modsappendix-final.pdf) and the inspector’s correspondence following the Lancaster Local Plan examination. (available at www.lancaster.gov.uk/planning/planningpolicy/local-plan-examination) 4 H Ellis and C Davis: ‘Notes from Fantasy Island’. Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, May/Jun., 148–50 5 Progress in Reducing Emissions: 2023 Report to Parliament. Climate Change Committee, Jun. 2023. www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ Progress-in-reducing-UK-emissions-2023-Report-toParliament.pdf 6 See priority recommendations R2023-155 and R2023-174 in Progress in Reducing Emissions: 2023 Report to Parliament (see note 4)
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off the rails Robin Hickman examines the current status of transport planning in Plymouth — how and why we have got here
discursive practice and transport planning in plymouth retail and commercial areas. Beyond the city centre, neighbourhood units were designated, each with their own local centre. There is a tale of urban deterioration in the post-war years, as the naval dockyard declined and little replacement employment was found. Plymouth, with a current population of just over 250,000 now ranks in the worst 20% of local authority areas in the UK for levels of multiple Discourse analysis, as inspired by Michel Foucault,1 deprivation. seeks to examine historic and current social practices, The growth in traffic was unexpected, with large with the aim of making more evident their injustice — growth in car ownership and use from the 1950s including dimensions such as power, ethics, truth, onwards. Pedestrianisation of the city centre in 1987 and knowledge. was very late in arrival, removing some traffic from Transport planning does not usually consider these the central areas, but the inner highway network issues — it is positivist in approach, perceiving that remains heavily traffic dominated. The current mode there is only one truth to be understood. Quantitative share for Plymouth shows the continued dominance analytical approaches are hence dominant, rooted in of the car, accounting for 61% of journeys to work, the natural sciences, and overlooking the complexities compared with the bus 11%, walking 14%, and of powerful actors, institutions, and individual cycling 3%.4 The defining image of the priority given to the car behaviours and contestation. But the history of over other street users, and indeed over the urban transport planning is not quite like this — it is not just a record of events, but more a question of how fabric, is provided by Charles Church, a church destroyed by fire following the bombing of Plymouth transport has been provided and why, including during the Second World War. The church was left who and what has been included and excluded.2 Let’s take Plymouth as an example. The city was unrestored as a monument to the casualties of the reconstructed in the years following the Second war but was subsequently surrounded by a traffic World War bombing of the city centre, using the roundabout, which gives a poor setting and ensures masterplanning of Sir Patrick Abercrombie.3 It is that pedestrians cannot easily get to see it. somewhere that all transport and city planners Public policy interventions have been completely should visit. It gives an illustration of modernist city inadequate in reducing the priority given to car use planning in application, with the medieval street on the city streets; indeed there appears to be no layout replaced and the car given priority in access, real debate or appetite for change among politicians with a grid layout, an inner ring road of two-three or the public. There are hardly any segregated cycle lanes in each direction, and generous car parking lanes and only limited bus services. A significant provision. The planning process was completed in proportion of residents have become reliant on almost complete secrecy, hoping to avoid land using the car for most of their journeys, despite low speculation, with no public participation used until income levels. Indeed, there is little demand for the plans were presented to the city council. transport provision beyond more space for the car. The city centre was assembled as a single site, Modern developments continue this practice (see with separate precincts developed for retail, offices, Fig. 1). For example, the Royal William Yard has been culture, and civic government. The central axis, redeveloped as an award-winning Grade I listed Armada Way, was monumental in style, providing a ex-naval victualling yard. The architectural quality of vista for over one kilometre in length, running south building refurbishment, including residential, retail, to Plymouth Hoe. The Royal Parade acts as the commercial and public space, is high. But there is second axis, running east to west, separating the little public transport or cycle connections to the rest 224 Town & Country Planning
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Fig. 1 Emerging urban development and transport in Plymouth
of the city and most journeys to and from the development will be by car. Sherford, a new planned neighbourhood to the east of Plymouth, with an envisaged 5,500 new homes and a population of 12,000, has only a limited bus service to the city centre, and the main connection is via the A38 highway. There is much street and open space given to the car, and car parking is freely available and free to use, even when on street. Journeys to and from Sherford will be overwhelmingly by car — contrary to the aspirations for a sustainable new neighbourhood. The new neighbourhood at Plymstock Quarry is even worse. This is located within the urban boundary and is a smaller development, with just 1,500 new homes. There are, again, limited public transport services, and most of the streets in the new neighbourhood are filled with on-street parked cars, and even the supposed central open space is partly
used as a car park. Again, the vast majority of journeys to and from the new neighbourhood will be by car. Hence, across Plymouth, transport remains a huge problem, with too much traffic capacity and priority across the city, too little reallocation of street space to other users, no traffic demand management, plentiful and inexpensive car parking, little high-quality public transport or bus priority, and few high-quality, segregated cycling facilities being considered or implemented. There is no effective plan for sustainable transport in the city centre or outer suburban areas, and hence travel behaviours will remain car dependent. The discursive practice is very important here, but poorly appreciated. A historically and culturally specific set of rules and procedures were developed to form the urban and transport planning disciplines from the 1950s onwards, helping to define knowledge in subsequent years and ultimately the social condition. Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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Power/knowledge (Charles Church): the mechanisms of power produce a particular built form and transport system — and a process of transport planning that is difficult to move beyond or counter
There is an ideological shaping and functioning of the science, and the process has been used, in this context and many others, to develop motorisation. The wider savoir (knowledge in general) coalesces around this mainstream technical view and the social practice that is provided, assuming that catering for traffic demand and giving the street mostly to the car is the ‘best’ way, indeed the ‘only’ way, to shape the transport system. Any counter to these views faces much opposition. The power is given to urban planners, developers, transport planners and traffic engineers, but simply provides developments that further motorisation, over decades. This is in direct opposition to public policy goals such as mitigating climate change and improving social equity — yet this remains largely undiscussed. The ethics of the history of urban planning and transport planning, including in the newer neighbourhoods, is to ignore the residents who do not wish to drive, and to not provide for participation and debate on different approaches to urban planning that might lead to more environmentally acceptable and socially equitable futures. The perceived truth and knowledge are shaped to further a motorised city. There are clear winners — the usual triad of the motor manufacturers selling the cars, the oil industry selling the petrol and diesel, and the development industry selling the new, dispersed neighbourhoods. The urban planning and transport planning professions 226 Town & Country Planning
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have been weakened over decades and cannot respond effectively. In the end, the residents lose out as they remain dependent on car usage, with all the associated adverse impacts of energy depletion, carbon emissions, traffic casualties, and inactive travel. Many are forced to use cars as there is little else on offer. Activity participation is limited for those remaining without access to a car. We can see a clear exercise in power in the historic and contemporary planning of Plymouth, indeed in most cities and towns across the UK — and unfortunately society is very uneven relative to who benefits and who doesn’t. Robin Hickman is Professor at the Bartlett School of Planning, •University College London. He is Director of the MSc in
Transport & City Planning. e: r.hickman@ucl.ac.uk. The views expressed are personal. Thanks are due to Professor Jon Shaw, University of Plymouth, for a tour and discussions on transport planning in Plymouth. Thanks to Jamie Quinn for mapping. Notes 1 M Foucault: The Archaeology of Knowledge. Tavistock Publications, 1972. English translation 2 R Hickman: Discourses on Sustainable Mobility. UCL Press, 2024 (forthcoming) 3 P Abercrombie and J Paton Watson: A Plan for Plymouth. Plymouth City Council, 1943 4 2011 Census. Office for National Statistics. www.ons.gov.uk/census/2011census
new leaves Danielle Sinnett on how green infrastructure has become a crucial element in brownfield regeneration schemes
green infrastructure and regeneration
Danielle Sinnett
The focus during that period in the late 1990s and early 2000s was very much on improving the aesthetic appearance of post-industrial towns and cities, as a way to increase inward investment, clean up the land, and provide amenity space for local people in areas that had relatively poor access to green space. Programmes — often led by the Regional Development Agencies or English In June I chaired a Government Events conference Partnerships, working with other government on brownfield regeneration which made me reflect agencies such as the Forestry Commission — on how much the relationship between green were funding new green spaces or community infrastructure and regeneration has evolved over woodlands on sites across the country. the last 20 years or so. It also reminded me of my In many places the scale of derelict land and motivation for researching green infrastructure. the lack of development meant that green space I studied environmental science in the late 1990s, establishment was seen as a cost-effective way to and during that time the New Labour government clean up land and improve the appearance of the established a suite of initiatives for greening derelict sites. It was also recognised that these new spaces sites. Although the reclamation of mineral extraction provided much-needed recreation opportunities, and landfill sites pre-dated this, it felt like there was means of water management, and biodiversity a shift in the scale, location and objectives for this enhancements; but, in my experience, these were greening. additional co-benefits as opposed to the main drivers.
Part of the regenerated Paintworks area of Bristol Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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reduced the time taken to achieve planning permission by around nine weeks. Similarly, the regeneration of 45 hectares in Leeds relied on a partnership between two developers and Leeds City Council. Although working with communities has long been a focus of green space creation on brownfield sites, it seems that these more recent examples are working more closely with local people, and much earlier in the process. Most of the presentations highlighted the importance of a partnership approach that includes local communities to develop a shared vision for the area. In several examples, engagement with young people and those from disadvantaged neighbourhoods proved to be key to this. For example, Gravesham Borough Council has been working with the local youth council in developing plans for the town’s regeneration. What came across from the case studies was the importance of green infrastructure to local people, and the fundamental part it played in the shared vision — not just the new green spaces, but also retaining existing trees and planting new ones, and greening the walking environment and wider public realm, as in the regeneration of Bristol’s Broadmead shopping centre and the Birmingham’s redevelopment scheme at Perry Barr,3 for example.
Phillipa Hughes
It was clear from the June conference that there is still this legacy of sites in need of regeneration, and often green space is still the most appropriate solution. For example, we heard about the work that the Land Trust has been doing to transform the former Avenue Coking Works site in Derbyshire from a derelict, heavily contaminated site into a parkland and nature reserve.1 Other familiar themes that came through the presentations and discussions included the importance of partnership, multi-disciplinary and multi-agency working to get sites redeveloped. These partnerships included those with expertise in contaminated land, but also other environmental professionals such as drainage experts and ecologists key to the delivery of high-quality green infrastructure. Buro Happold’s presentation about Mayfield Park in Manchester highlighted the key role that the Environment Agency played in delivering the site, bringing together colleagues from across the Agency (for example those working in flood risk management, and in contaminated land) in a ‘green growth and sustainable places’ team. The project has delivered a new 6.5 hectare park as the anchor to a larger, 9.7 hectare mixed-use development on former industrial land,2 and engagement with the team at the Environment Agency is estimated to have
Mayfield Park in Manchester, on which multi-agency working was highly beneficial
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new leaves
This wider consideration of green infrastructure, beyond green spaces, was a key feature of most of the presentations. This was interesting, as it wasn’t the focus of the conference specifically, but came up again and again as a mechanism for achieving objectives such as reducing health inequalities, flood risk and air pollution, as well as enhancing biodiversity, facilitating active travel, and adapting to the changing climate. For example, Leeds City Council’s scheme includes Killingbeck Meadows,4 a natural flood management project to increase the developable area of the site and mitigate flood risk to existing communities. This includes a 2 hectare wetland habitat, a 1 hectare wildflower meadow, and a 0.7 hectare woodland. An interesting feature of the regeneration is that the two developers pooled their resources to enable £1 million of green infrastructure improvements, and the council developed neighbourhood frameworks to improve the connectivity between sites and prioritise areas for this investment. In addition to some of the site-specific priorities, the role of regeneration and green infrastructure in achieving strategic objectives such as net zero and biodiversity net gain were also a common thread through the case studies. Another key development highlighted at the conference is the importance of good evidence, which has increased in availability and quality over the last 20 years. The case studies used evidence in two ways: to demonstrate both the scale of challenge in their areas and the potential social, environmental and economic impacts of the regeneration in tackling these challenges and delivering additional benefits. For example, Bristol City Council has used the Keeping Bristol Cool mapping tool5 to make the case for additional trees. The benefits were often presented in terms of social and economic value creation. This was estimated at £267 million from the regeneration of Perry Barr and £200–300 million over 30 years from the creation of Mayfield Park, in addition to an uplift in commercial rents. The Land Trust has estimated that around £950,000 of benefits could be delivered per year through the creation of a country park on the former Cronton Colliery in Knowsley, through benefits to health and wellbeing and gross value added from employment and training. The opportunities for brownfield regeneration to achieve biodiversity net gain were also highlighted — something that is really important in constrained urban sites which may already have relatively high ecological value. Mayfield Park is estimated to deliver 90% biodiversity net gain through the creation of 26 different habitats, involving the planting of 140 new
trees and 120,000 plants, and Gravesham’s plans for regeneration at Albion Waterside aim to achieve 271%. All the case study examples had relied to some extent on public funding and/or capacity to de-risk the development of brownfield sites. In many examples, the local authority took on a key role in developing a shared vision, pulling together multidisciplinary teams, securing funding and political buy-in. The research carried out by my colleagues at UWE Bristol,6 funded by the Planning Advisory Service, provided a comprehensive overview of the role of local authorities and the Brownfield Land Release Fund, for example. Other public funding streams included the Shared Prosperity Fund, Section 106 agreements, and the Levelling Up Fund. And aspects such as having a clear vision for placeled regeneration, innovation, going beyond building regulations and delivering other key objectives such as net zero and ensuring inclusive places were also highlighted in the presentation from the Local Government Association as key to securing funding from the Brownfield Land Release Fund. What was clear from the examples presented at the conference was that green infrastructure is key to successful (brownfield) regeneration projects. This involved much more than just encouraging inward investment and improving the appearance of the sites, with schemes truly recognising the multi-functionality of green infrastructure and the diversity of features required to deliver place-led regeneration at scale. Danielle Sinnett is Professor in Sustainable Built •Environments and Director of the Centre for Sustainable
Planning and Environments at the University of the West of England, Bristol. The views expressed are personal. Notes 1 See the Land Trust’s ‘Avenue Country Park’ webpage, at https://thelandtrust.org.uk/space/the-avenue-countrypark/ 2 See Buro Happold’s ‘Mayfield regeneration’ webpage, at www.burohappold.com/projects/mayfield-regeneration/ 3 See Birmingham City Council’s ‘Perry Barr 2040: A vision for legacy’ webapges, at www.birmingham.gov.uk/info/50253/perry_barr_ regeneration/2388/perry_barr_2040_a_vision_for_legacy/2 4 See Leeds City Council’s ‘Major flood alleviation scheme in east Leeds officially unveiled’ webpage, at https://news.leeds.gov.uk/news/major-flood-alleviationscheme-in-east-leeds-officially-unveiled 5 Keeping Bristol Cool mapping tool. Bristol City Council. https://bcc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/portfolio/ index.html?appid=986e3531099f48d393052fab91ceff51 6 See the Planning Advisory Service’s ‘Brownfield land regeneration’ webpages, at www.local.gov.uk/pas/ plan-making/d-case-studies/brownfield-landregeneration Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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assessing housing needs —
the housing crisis worsens
National housing demands are difficult to project, but that doesn’t mean that the gap between need and supply isn’t increasing, says John Perry One of the conundrums facing planners concerned with estimating housing needs is: ‘What is happening to the UK’s population?’ The very short answer is ‘nothing’, as population growth is close to zero and forecast to stay that way. Behind this answer, though, things are more complicated. As this year’s UK Housing Review1 points out, recent population estimates that take account of the 2021 Census results show that population growth over the last 10 years has been lower than previously thought. In mid-2021, the UK had an estimated population of 67.03 million, just 5.9% higher than in 2011, a figure that may be adjusted further once Census results for Scotland are known. Population growth over the decade was highest in England (6.5%) and lowest in Wales (1.4%).2 So far, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has not updated its 2020-based projection that the UK population will increase by just 3.2% to around 69.2 million by mid-2030. Growth is projected to be concentrated in England, with Scotland expected to see slight population decline. Numbers of births and deaths are virtually in balance. This means that by far the biggest driver of any growth (indeed, the determinant of whether there is growth at all) is migration. Over a decade, this is forecast to add 2.2 million to the population count. However, this is where the debate begins. Is such an outcome still likely, and how might it be shaped by the combination of government policy and worldwide events? Net international migration for the UK for the year to June 2021 (the relevant date for the projection above) was an estimated 173,000, well within projected levels of just over 200,000 annually, which the ONS expects to continue until 2045. 230 Town & Country Planning
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This fall was due to the effect of the pandemic on people’s ability to travel in 2020 and 2021. However, contrary to projections, there was a remarkable increase in net migration in the year to June 2022, which reached 504,000 — around 331,000 higher than the year before and nearly double the previous record. It was driven by a large increase in people from non-EU countries moving to the UK. Of the estimated total of 1.1 million migrating here during the year, 704,000 came from non-EU countries, over twice the numbers that arrived in the year to June 2021. By contrast, almost half of the 560,000 people estimated to have left the UK during the year were people returning to the European Union, resulting in a net fall in EU migration. Then, when the next set of figures were published on 25 May, something strange happened. It turned out that the real net migration figure for the year ending June 2022 had been much higher than reported, at 606,000. But stranger still, the estimate for the year to December 2022 was the same, 606,000. The ONS explains this by saying that it has now included asylum seekers in the figures for the first time, and that net migration peaked in September 2022, and then began to fall. These nuances were missed in discussion about larger figures, of course, although some heat was removed by the prior work of the spin doctors, who had suggested that the December 2022 total might be as high as 1 million. One has to sympathise with the ONS trying to reconcile very different datasets, including factoring in ‘small boat’ arrivals, knowing that the caveats to its figures will be lost in acrimonious political debate. Nevertheless, these changes confirm the Housing Review’s earlier judgement of the ‘uncertainty of future migration patterns’.
Figures on columns show ‘actual increases’
Percentage growth since previous Census
70
+2,900,000
60 50 40
+800,000
+2,500,000 +1,000,000
30 +400,000
20 +400,000
10 +100,000
0
1961
1971
1981
1991
2001
2011
2021
Fig. 1 Growth in non-UK-born population in recent decades
Source: Office for National Statistics, taken from UK Housing Review 2023 1
Sober commentators have also advised against assuming that 2022 represents a ‘new normal’. Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said:3 ‘These unusually high net migration levels do not have a single cause but result from several things happening at once: the war in Ukraine, a boom in international student recruitment and high demand for health and care workers. ‘It is very difficult to predict future migration patterns, because surprising developments can disrupt them. For example, a few years ago, none of the forecasts suggested migration would rise above 500,000 — not least because they did not anticipate the war in Ukraine. With that caveat, there is no reason to assume that net migration would remain this high indefinitely.’ The Census encourages us to consider long-term trends, and looking at the summary of how migration patterns have shifted does show that there can be significant ups and downs (see Fig. 1, taken from the UK Housing Review 2023 ). Oddly enough, while the decade that ended in 2021 was notable, with around 2.5 million extra non-UK-born added to the UK’s population as a result of net migration, the previous decade (2001–2011) was even more remarkable, with numbers increasing by 60% compared with the previous decade and totalling almost 3 million. Compared with other high-income countries this increase is average, however: the 33% growth in the foreign-born population in the last decade was
very similar to the increase seen across Western and Southern European EU-14 countries (see Fig. 2 on the next page). It takes the non-UK-born population share to 16.8% (for the whole UK). Despite the caveats about recent increases in net migration, it seems unlikely that levels will fall below the ONS long-term projection of 200,000 annually, despite the current Home Secretary’s ambitions. A number of factors are at play, including: • the continued demand for labour, with industry calling for a relaxation of the rules; • irregular migration; • a sequence of conflicts across the globe — most recently in Sudan — forcing people to move; and, of course, • the climate crisis. Global displacement for a range of reasons exceeded 100 million people in 2022, according the UN refugee agency.4 How do we make sense of this in trying to assess the housing needs that result from population growth? The short answer is ‘with difficulty’, since household formation depends strongly on economic factors. A poor-performing UK economy may suppress inward migration. But it will also make it more difficult for separate households to establish, especially if the housing market is configured against the entry of young households. There is plentiful evidence that this is the case in the UK, with (for example) the Census showing an extra 620,000 young people still living in the parental home, compared with 10 years ago.5 Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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There have been no post-pandemic updates in projections of household growth — in England, Wales and Scotland the latest projections are 2018-based, and in Northern Ireland 2016-based. When new ones are available, they will give a sense of realisable demand for new housing but not the demand from potential households unable to establish themselves, whether through renting or buying. These hidden needs are particularly important in assessing the need for social housing, as it provides the only route into a home for a significant proportion of potential households. Social housing effectively allows the formation of new households whose numbers would otherwise be suppressed as they share with others or, in more extreme cases, are homeless, sofa-surfing, living in hostels, or on the streets. The projected need in England, taking account of the backlog of people living in unsatisfactory conditions, was assessed by Glen Bramley in 2018 and partially updated in 2020.6 It judges that 340,000 new homes are needed annually: the social rented need within that is 90,000 homes, with a further
25,000 for low-cost homeownership. In Wales, the most recent needs assessment was in 2020, with a central estimate of need at 7,400 annually; in Scotland, a 2020 estimate projected a requirement of 15,300 annually; and in Northern Ireland the projected annual requirement from 2020 was 4,800 new homes. All of these assessments need to be revisited against the backdrop of 2021 Census findings and changing economic conditions and patterns of migration, post-Brexit, to provide updated projections of household growth. How does current output compare with these nowdated needs assessments? Very broadly speaking, supply is keeping up with demand in the three devolved administrations but continues to fall well behind in England. New housing supply in England had been increasing steadily, pre-pandemic. It then fell, of course, but it recovered in 2021-22 (see Table 1 on the next page). However, total output remains well below projected needs of 340,000 new homes annually, and falls short even of the government’s
90 80 70
Percentage growth
60 50 40 30 20 10
(u nt il
19 90
Fig. 2 Growth in foreign-born population, England and Wales and other European countries Source: Migration Observatory, taken from UK Housing Review 2023 1
232 Town & Country Planning
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G re ec e
Ita ly
Sp ai n
Fr an ce
Ire la nd
EU N 14 et he rla nd s Be lg iu m
FR G
) Fi nl an d Po rt ug al Sw ed en D En en gl m an ar d k an d Au W st al ria es (C en su s)
Lu xe fo m rm bo er te ur rr g ito Ge ry rm of an th e y
0
Table 1
Net additions to housing supply in England, 2015–16 to 2021–22 2015–16
2016–17
2017–18
2018–19
2019–20
2020–21
2021–22
163,940
183,570
195,390
214,410
219,120
191,820
210,070
+ Net conversions
4,760
5,680
4,550
5,160
4,340
3,410
4,870
+ Net change of use
30,600
37,190
29,730
29,300
26,710
21,470
22,770
780
720
680
970
860
640
780
– Demolitions
10,420
9,820
8,060
7,960
8,330
5,480
5,680
= Net additional dwellings
189,650
217,350
222,280
241,880
242,700
211,870
232,820
New-build completions
+ Net other gains
Sources: Housing Supply: Net Additional Dwellings, England: 2021 to 2022. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Nov. 2022. www.gov.uk/government/statistics/housing-supply-net-additional-dwellings-england-2021-to-2022/housing-supply-netadditional-dwellings-england-2021-to-2022 Summing discrepancies due to rounding
now rather notional 300,000 target. Of course, the economic situation has worsened again, so even if supply is shown to have held up in 2022/23 (when the figures emerge) it will almost certainly fall again during the current year. Even more worrying is the enormous gap between the need for and supply of social housing, particularly housing let at social rents. Again, the other UK countries are doing well in this respect, with Scotland in particular delivering nearly 10,000 homes in 2021–22, three-quarters of them for social rent. England’s performance in comparison is frankly abysmal, because, while the government is on target to build 33,500 social rented homes, this target extends over the full five years of the current Affordable Homes Programme. Looking at delivery just in 2021–22, England’s output of 7,528 homes for social rent barely exceeded Scotland’s, at 7,306.7 The planning system has a crucial role to play here, since 44% of affordable homes in England (whether for rent or low-cost homeownership) are funded through developer contributions, without government grant. Pretty obviously, with a likely decline in developers’ housebuilding, combined with changes to the planning system such as the introduction of the Infrastructure Levy, there is a huge risk of affordable output going down rather than up. The housing crisis is getting worse, the main ways of addressing it by building more affordable homes are failing us, and their deficiencies must urgently be addressed.
2 Population Estimates for the UK, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland: Mid-2021. Office for National Statisitics, Dec. 2022. www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/ populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/ annualmidyearpopulationestimates/mid2021 3 ‘The same but different… ONS finds net migration has ‘levelled off’ after two years of strong growth, reaching 606,000 in 2022’. Press Notice. Migration Observatory, University of Oxford, 25 May 2023. https:// migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/press/the-same-butdifferent-ons-finds-net-migration-has-levelled-off-aftertwo-years-of-strong-growth-reaching-606000-in-2022/ 4 See Global Trends in Forced Replacement 2022. UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), 2023. www.unhcr.org/globaltrends.html 5 R Booth and M Goodier: ‘Number of adults living with parents in England and Wales rises by 700,000 in a decade’. The Guardian, 10 May 2023. www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/10/numberadults-living-parents-england-wales-up-700000-decade 6 This summary is based on the UK Housing Review 2023, Commentary Chapter 2, where the sources can be seen in more detail. Previous years’ editions of the UK Housing Review also have commentary on earlier assessments 7 See Table 20a, ‘Affordable housing completions in England by tenure’, and Table 20c, ‘Affordable housing completions in Scotland by tenure’, in UK Housing Review 2023, available at www.ukhousingreview.org.uk/ ukhr23/compendium.html#demand
John Perry is Policy Adviser with the Chartered Institute of •Housing. The views expressed are personal. Notes 1 M Stephens, J Perry, P Williams and G Young: UK Housing Review 2023. Chartered Institute of Housing, Mar. 2023. www.cih.org/bookshop/uk-housing-review-2023 It is free to members of the Chartered Institute of Housing. Many of the statistics can also be accessed at the UKHR website — see www.ukhousingreview.org.uk/ Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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planning reform in england — a proposal The Chartered Planners in Academic Practice (CPiAP) group set out a ‘manifesto’ on planning reform, arguing that reforms to date have failed to properly address the excessive level of detail in plans, the management of uncertainty, and ways to connect central and local government — and proposing a strengthening of planning’s role as an integrating mechanism for supporting the country’s economic, social and environmental needs This paper asserts a renewed rationale for planning, calling for a genuinely plan-led system, and highlighting the key challenges confronting the development and delivery of such a system. It argues for a strengthening of planning’s role as an integrating mechanism for supporting the country’s economic, social and environmental needs as they impact on places and the use of land. It therefore sets out proposals to address the limited coverage and nature of approved up-to-date Local Plans in England and the endemic challenges to planning processes and practices. Our proposals do so without the damaging ‘tear it down and start again’ approach behind the 2020 Planning White Paper1 or the less dramatic, but still less than ideal, changes in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (LURB).2 In particular, we argue that planning reforms have failed to address key matters related to the excessive level of detail in plans, how to manage uncertainty, and the means of connecting central and local government through cross-boundary institutions. The government’s recent proposals are the latest in a long line of attempts at reform. Constant reform of the system has created instability in the Local Plan system while never meeting government expectations or goals. Nor have planning reforms been set within the wider context of changing policy, deregulation, inadequate resourcing, and 234 Town & Country Planning
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public misunderstanding of the purpose of planning. Attempts at radical change have generally ended in compromises and, at times, exacerbated the problems of reconciling different views and needs without resolving the system’s underlying purpose, its resourcing, or its policy culture. This problem is demonstrated by the recent consultation on changes to the National Planning Policy Framework.3 What is being proposed seeks to assuage the concerns of those opposed to new housebuilding, and now threatens the delivery of the new housing that is so desperately needed. Moreover, the local planning system has now become primarily a tool for delivering market housing sites and has lost many of the other integrating roles that it once had. This contributes to the distrust that communities now have in the planning process. Importantly, the planning system is in many areas plan-led in name only, with nearly 60% of local authorities in England having no up-to-date plan (i.e. adopted within the last five years). It is meaningless, despite the obligation provided by statute, to require that planning applications be decided in line with the relevant Local Plan if there is no plan in place. Without a plan, local authorities become little more than advocates of good practice, ad hoc decisions become widespread, and delay and uncertainty become inevitable. The result is that decisions often revert to central government through
Trayan on Unsplash
‘The local planning system has now become primarily a tool for delivering market housing sites and has lost many of the other integrating roles that it once had’
the appeal or call-in system, further reducing local prosperity of our country. The UK now has the communities’ confidence in their local planning highest levels of regional inequality among major system. The situation has produced a plan-less system. developed economies, reducing our productivity and economic growth. Indeed, there are echoes A system not fit for purpose today of the same challenges that have made Our starting point is that, wherever one sits on planning essential over the last two centuries: the political spectrum, there is general acceptance the health concerns arising from the slums of the that the planning system in England is not fit 19th century, and the need to address regional for purpose. The current state of planning is inequalities arising from inter- and post-war characterised by persistent delay, uncertainty, industrial decline. continual change, confusion, underfunding, and a These challenges persist and have become more collapse of professional and local political morale. pronounced. Just in terms of housing quality alone, The system has retrenched to bureaucratic over 3 million households in the UK are living in processes and is seldom a key agent and facilitator ‘non-decent’ homes.4 In addition, there are new threats to our communities arising from of deliberation or of the changes needed to climate change and biodiversity loss. Against this confront the challenges of the new era. background there is a growing list of new policy The current planning system therefore provides requirements to be met in plans, including, for neither an integrated, nor a long-term framework example, biodiversity net gain, nutrient neutrality, for managing the built and natural environment, or for meeting the immediate needs of communities and net carbon zero. We therefore have an ironic situation in which the list of government for decent homes and jobs. Those sceptics who would leave change to the market fail to acknowledge requirements being placed on our planning system that we face a growing number of challenges which grows while Ministers criticise it for its perceived delay resulting from their failure to resource it have spatial consequences and that planning, as a adequately. policy instrument, has a critical part to play in The context for planning is further changing as a addressing them, through the application of result of the emerging ‘mega-trends’ for life after evidence, analysis, policy, and projects. Covid-19 and other global challenges that will expose Indeed, the current state of the nation highlights further the weaknesses of our current system. This how vital spatial planning is to the health and Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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new era has been characterised by the UK 2070 Commission5 in the following terms: • An age of uncertainty: The limits on the ability to act with confidence. • Increased fears: The need for greater emphasis on safety as well as security. • Local empowerment: The demand for supported and not controlled devolution. • A renewed state: The need for a more proactive government. • Growing inequality: The increased need to tackle growing social and economic divisions and inequalities across the UK, including in ethnicity, gender, and health. • Beyond austerity: The need for a frugal economy, meeting the needs of society with lower consumption of resources and building on the increased importance of social capital. The continuing rationale for planning
interrelationships of development are more than local, the issues and challenges involved inevitably cut across administrative boundaries — and so must planning. The planning system should enable spatial visions of well designed places to be set out — visions that deliver sustainable urban forms and wellbeing for current and future generations. It should, and can: • Address externalities (i.e. enhancing good ones; limiting or avoiding bad ones). • Secure public goods which the market will not necessarily provide (for example biodiversity, open spaces, high-quality urban design, and the protection of heritage and landscape assets). • Resolve potential conflicts between the immediate needs of individuals and the longer-term goals of society (for example, to address climate change and promote genuinely sustainable development). • Redress the impacts on those who lose out from planning decisions (for example securing more objectively affordable homes in areas of high house prices where the supply of new homes is planning-constrained for good reasons). • Co-ordinate and integrate development with the infrastructure it needs in a timely, effective and efficient manner. • Provide a clear democratic framework for the making of planning policies and development decisions, including connecting central with local policy choices. • Safeguard the rights for all citizens to have a voice in policy discussions, whether they are promoting development or are otherwise impacted by it.
Despite the constant critiques to the contrary, we assert that planning has a major role to play in meeting these challenges. It has the potential to promote both efficiency and equity by stimulating and regulating land and property markets to meet the wider goal of delivering a just and green economic future for the UK. In dealing with externalities, for example, it can enhance people’s health and wellbeing. Planning also advances efficiency and equity by capturing for public benefit the uplift in the value of land (or economic rent) unlocked by planning permission, or by providing the infrastructure needed for new development and the affordable housing required to meet the needs of those priced out of the housing market, including The dilemma for discretionary planning We need not only a system for scrutinising and by the price effects of necessary planning constraint deciding on planning applications, but also reliable policies. intelligence about change and relevant policy frameworks (i.e. development plans) to enable us to The planning system should make these decisions consistently and transparently, and not on an ad hoc and incremental basis. enable spatial visions of well Nobody wants a ‘slow’ form of planning,6 nor designed places to be set one that fails to respond to new development opportunities or local desires. But incremental out — visions that deliver planning decisions only store up longer-term sustainable urban forms and opportunity costs for places. This is proving increasingly problematic in England because of the wellbeing for current and way that the system has been continually altered, future generations has lost strategic functions, and is inadequately resourced, as well as suffering from ‘gaslighting’ over its role and importance. Communities want to shape their own futures; Our planning system, however, operates within citizens are interested in change; and residents talk common law, where discretionary judgement is among themselves about local planning decisions. But the opportunities to use planning to make a real important, and not as a rules-based legal framework.7 But planning needs a stable system of plans for difference are just not there at the moment. And exercising this discretion when considering the there is confusion over planning consultations and merits of planning applications. Without it, more open forms of public participation, which are discretionary decision-making will be inconsistent, increasingly popular. We need visions of how our subject to local political exigencies, and have country and localities can evolve in ways that are unintended consequences. sustainable, efficient, and equitable. Because the
‘
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Yet plans must also be responsive to circumstances and be able to take account of changes that occur since the plan was adopted. International comparisons show that the contrast between rules-based and discretionary approaches are more imagined than real and that most systems are, in reality, hybrid. Plans need to provide real guidance and certainty while enabling flexibility to take account of the merits of development applications and changing circumstances. There are therefore two challenges that need to be reconciled in any attempt at planning reform. First, a plan-led system requires every community to have a plan which also takes account of both the wider area within which people live and work and the wider societal challenges. Secondly, a plan-led system requires plans which are kept up to date. Key challenges for making plans
The planning system has, over time, produced some influential plans which have resulted in transformational outcomes, creating ‘great’ places. It has been particularly good at project planning and management where the future is known and funding has been secured — as, for example, the RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence regularly demonstrate. But the current reality is that many local authorities lack the capacity to make plans and get decisions made in a timely manner. It also means that there is no safeguarding of third-party rights to participate, which in England are meant to be achieved through the Local Plan participation and inquiry process. We therefore need to be honest about the reasons why plan-making today is so difficult, slow, and cumbersome. It is not solely because visions and their manifestation in plans are contested and subject to debate — a sine qua non for any democratic society. It arises from a wide range of other challenges, including: • the downgrading of the role of the chief planner within local authorities’ leadership teams; • the reduction in local government finances, resulting in poor pay for those in local authorities, leading to difficulties in getting the staff needed to develop plans and deal with planning applications; • a lack of relevant data, resulting in a mismatch between data/intelligence collected by local planning authorities about local planning change and data/ intelligence collected by other agencies that relate to land, resources, and even commercial activities; • the lack of powers and finances to implement plans, for example through land acquisition; • increasingly litigious processes and a growing prevalence of ‘crowd-protest’, partly in the context of growing resistance to new developments (Nimbyism, etc.), so that planning now struggles to be a trusted guardian of the public interest; • the fragmented nature of government, which adds delay given that many of the new demands
on the planning system arise from the needs of government departments beyond planning — currently, these departments include Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), DCMS (the Department for Culture, Media and Sport) and DFT (the Department for Transport) generating policy, while DLUHC (the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) is ‘in the lead’; and • the electoral system in local government, which often brings changes in control on a very regular basis, creating instability in the political leadership of the planning system at the local level. These challenges to plan-making arise because of three more fundamental factors: • the search for certainty in development management through excessive detail; • flawed planning assumptions based on past trends and decisions, which can be disconnected from current national priorities; and • failure to address uncertainties, leading to insufficient flexibility to deal with the range of potential futures and present conditions that any community faces. Excessive detail
The level of detail required in plans has risen, with a focus on making lists of all the criteria needed to consider planning applications. This has been at the expense of developing visions for change. This has arisen for at least two reasons: • First, planning has become a matter over which there is much more disagreement in recent decades, with more likelihood of challenges; as a result, planners have tended to resort to increasing the level of detail to cover all eventualities. • Second, despite the government asserting that it wants to simplify planning, it has in fact added many additional responsibilities, such as introducing Neighbourhood Plans, requiring new development to enhance biodiversity, getting local authorities to introduce design codes, and capturing more land value to fund infrastructure and new affordable homes. Flawed planning assumptions
Current planning analysis is often driven by mechanistic and retrospective approaches. This is embedded currently in measuring ‘viability’ based on current market conditions. Yet plans, by their very nature, seek to transform market conditions. The system needs to change to allow plans to lead trends, not be led by them, whether this is by creating a ‘level playing field’ for investment or by creating ‘new markets’ which are at the heart of transformational regeneration projects.8 This requires us to move away from the current ‘viability test’ of soundness, for example, to ‘stress testing’ plans, as advocated by the National Infrastructure Commission.9 Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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This issue is a particular problem because most plans are based on a ‘predict and provide’ approach, especially in terms of official housing estimates. Not only does this reinforce the problems of overheated housing markets, but it does not provide for the redistribution of housing demand that is implicit in the levelling-up agenda to rebalance the economic geography of England.5 Uncertainty
The planning system seeks to guide development (in terms of scale, location, and quality) within a 15-year-plus timeframe. In doing so, it has to deal with both complexity and uncertainty. However, current policy guidance does not enable Local Plan policies to deal well with uncertainty, even though it permeates the operation of the land and property markets beyond the immediate future. Yet it is over the medium and longer term that plans have most influence. There is therefore a disconnect between the three-to-five-year timescale that governments and businesses use and the 10-15-year horizon of Local Plans. This challenge is exemplified by the tests of soundness around deliverability which require: ‘Confirmation from infrastructure providers that they support the solutions proposed and the identified means and timescales for their delivery, or a plan for resolving issues.’10
‘The fundamental lesson from
these debates and planning approaches is to make commitments only where we know what is needed (and where and when), while leaving open good options for a sustainable future, but without making irrevocable commitments’
The risks with which planners have to deal can be estimated, and mitigated to varying degrees. For example, the risks that infrastructure will not be provided on time can be managed by phasing and review processes. Uncertainty, however, is different from risk and needs to be built into how we ‘do’ planning. In attempting to create longer-term plans, we must deal with ‘radical uncertainty’.12 We simply cannot assume that the future is certain and knowable over the time periods involved. However much and however carefully we project, plans and planners must be able to deal with radical uncertainty. In other words, we are dealing with ‘wicked problems’, which are planning’s ‘central dilemma’.13 It is remarkable, for example, how infrequently the words ‘time’ or ‘uncertainty’ appear in planning literature,14 compared with words like ‘balance’15 — an inheritance perhaps of planning’s design and engineering foundations. Planning has been driven to prepare and to adopt plans which are based on unrealistic certainties. Yet we know that successful planning requires a combination of discretion to foster flexibility and rules to foster certainty. Our discretionary system facilitates flexibility by enabling departures from development plans when circumstances have changed since a plan was adopted. This should enable the planning system to address uncertainty as well as risk if it is genuinely plan-led, and not merely ad hoc. Lessons from the past?
The challenge of planning for an uncertain future is not a new one. This issue faced the drafters of the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act when they debated the level of detail to be offered in statutory development plans.16 Despite the initial conception of development plans as outline plans, supported by more detailed plans to be drawn up only where commitments were needed, the system evolved into detailed Town Maps covering everything, everywhere. As Delafons17 noted, these were remarkably similar to the zoning plans found across much of the rest of Europe, ones that were contingent on more rules-based legal systems. The Planning Advisory Group (PAG) report of the This has led to a situation in which most plans are mid-1960s18 also recommended separating longno more than a stock-take of what has already been term strategic (or structure) plans from immediate decided. This is essentially flawed since the plan, by its commitments via local plans. Likewise, the former nature, extends well beyond budgetary programmes Scottish Regional Reports system and the later and cycles. ‘The means and timescales’ for the statutory Strategic Development Plans19 adopted a delivery of a plan require an agreed plan to be in place similar approach. In an analysis of planning in Coventry,20 Friend and Jessop showed how to deal before commitment will be made by infrastructure with three types of uncertainty (environment, values, providers to servicing the planned development. and other agencies’ policies and programmes) by This has special relevance to ensuring that Local securing immediate commitments where needed, Plans take account of unavoidable uncertainty that while leaving open as many long-term options as is faced in policy-making. As the government has possible. recognised in its Resilience Framework, the risks Common to all these approaches was the separation that we face are complex, evolving, and sometimes of longer-term strategic questions from shorter-term uncertain, and this requires us to adapt systems tactical decisions based upon alternative future and incentivise risk-based decision-making.11 238 Town & Country Planning
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Benjamin Elliott on Unsplash
‘Successful planning requires a combination of discretion to foster flexibility and rules to foster certainty. Our discretionary system facilitates flexibility by enabling departures from development plans when circumstances have changed since a plan was adopted’
scenarios. The fundamental lesson from these debates and planning approaches is to make commitments only where we know what is needed (and where and when), while leaving open good options for a sustainable future, but without making irrevocable commitments.21 Good planning strategies should therefore have reference narratives, have alternative future scenarios, and have time-bound but regularly updated plans. In essence, a sound plan is robust and resilient to a range of plausible alternatives to which it can adapt as the future unfolds.22 A few examples exist of where has been integral to plan-making, including in the larger strategic plans for the Greater London and the Greater Glasgow regions, and in the work of the Glasgow and the Clyde Valley Strategic Futures Group.23 It is also important for scenarios to be ‘owned’ by all stakeholders, and not just the planning authority, which was the case with Glasgow and the Clyde Valley.24 Unfortunately, these are the exceptions rather than the rule, and scenario planning is generally inhibited by the different administrative geographies of the bodies involved.25 What we need is an ability to be nimble — learning and adapting to uncertain events within clear frameworks, rather than wasting time creating the
illusion of certainty by trying to predict and make overly detailed plans for a definitive long-term future. We should be detailed when dealing with clearly knowable and more immediate matters, but also think flexibly about longer-term futures.26 In this context we also note the growing debate around our responsibilities to future generations.27 This has always been at the forefront of planners’ thinking and something that features strongly in political philosopher John Rawls’ reflections on fairness as social justice and our obligations to future generations in his ‘just savings principle’.28 This approach is also consistent with Amartya Sen’s approach to social justice:29 that we should focus on solving current problems step by step rather than searching for what may be an illusory, difficult and long-drawn-out search for a perfect end-state. We also need adequate governance structures to deal with key cross-boundary issues on a functional regional basis. Without some form of sub-national governance and planning arrangements, these issues will always default back to Whitehall (i.e. they will remain centralised). The emergence of mayoral and combined authorities is a step in the right direction. However, we still have, despite the recent moves to more unitary authorities in England, an essentially two-tier structure of local government, in Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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which planning is the responsibility of the lower tier (and thus not strategic at all), coupled with weak (or non-existent) regional structures. The solutions to these challenges need to be linked to the debate about devolution and the proposals that were in the White Paper on planning reform and now in the LURB. Facing the future through plans
Every planning authority should be required to have an up-to-date planning futures report, setting out anticipated trends and ‘fixes’ on key matters (household growth, jobs, water resources, transport investment, landscape protection, regeneration, etc.) and identifying locations where development would be acceptable over the long term with a level of pre-planning and safeguarding. Planning authorities should also be required to keep a commitment plan under review, showing where development over up to five-ten years (the timescale depending on context, including uncertainties) would be accepted and promoted with confidence, and indicated on an OS-base. These commitment plans should be rolled forward every year. Locations should also include those that would be safeguarded as options for the longer term, helping to ensure that programmable commitments do not prejudice feasible and more resilient longer-term development. Our proposals are for the better co-ordination of policy, development and infrastructure through the following: • Robust pathways for the future: The framing of scenarios should be seen as a collaborative process, fostering a shared understanding of potential futures among all agencies that have a statutory responsibility for the development of strategy. These should evolve a common understanding of the potential futures and an ability to share relevant data and evidence: we must get away from each public agency having conflicting geographies of administration, assumptions, and time horizons. Inclusive and democratic processes: A planning • process will only be owned and legitimised by communities who feel that it includes clear opportunities for engagement and listens to their voices of concern and hope. That means creating spaces for both citizen and business discussion of places, and for their involvement in formal plan production in partnership with local planning authorities. This needs to be more proactive and dynamic than the tokenistic and reactionary opportunities for local planning involvement that have become a hallmark of the present planning system. • Plans that deliver: Plan-making must be explicitly linked to plan delivery mechanisms. Plans must also be related to funding mechanisms, including the use of land value capture mechanisms (such as 240 Town & Country Planning
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planning obligations or the proposed Infrastructure Levy) to help fund locally agreed commitments. Thus, an infrastructure delivery plan should run alongside the short-term commitment plans, with the planning authority using its convening power to secure funding commitments from infrastructure providers, including public transport authorities. These should be reflected in strategiclevel infrastructure budgets. • Creating places through a spatial programme: It is essential to identify where new delivery vehicles and funding mechanisms are required to open up longer-term structural urban change, and also where catalytic intervention is unlikely to be promoted by market mechanisms alone. These currently include innovation zones, new communities, and centres of excellence. • Strategic planning capacity: An important additional requirement must be to address the regional and sub-regional policy vacuum that currently exists between central government policy and Local Plans. This vacuum (which is also lamented by the development industry) creates significant policy uncertainty (for example about the numbers of new homes to be provided or the central funding available for necessary infrastructure to support new development). This problem has been exacerbated by the private ownership or fragmented management of key public interest assets that are vital to sustainable development — in particular, water, transport, energy and information and communication technology infrastructure, and educational and health infrastructure. Strategic enabling
Strategic planning frameworks are essential if Local Plans are to be prepared with the confidence that they will contribute to the wider national agenda and not be undermined by competing proposals elsewhere. This does not necessarily require the reintroduction of older types of planning, such as ‘top-down’ Regional Spatial Strategies. A multi-level governance framework sitting between central and local government could be delivered through existing mayoral authorities and the intended combined county structures (whose remits need to be extended to cover strategic planning). This framework, centred on new enabling bodies, could perform three important roles. First, it could maintain regional research and intelligence laboratories with geographic referenced databases on which local planning authorities could then draw, including when agreeing housing targets among themselves. Secondly, it could act as the regional body for infrastructure and other funding streams (for example the Shared Prosperity Fund) on which local authorities could then draw for relevant spending to implement their local planning strategies, including housing targets (aided by their own Section 106/
3 Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: Reforms to Infrastructure Levy funding). Thirdly, if linked to National Planning Policy. Department for Levelling Up, greater fiscal devolution and tax-raising powers, Housing and Communities, Dec. 2022. www.gov.uk/ mayoral and county combined authorities could help government/consultations/levelling-up-andto fund infrastructure, including that which helps regeneration-bill-reforms-to-national-planning-policy/ unlock new development sites. levelling-up-and-regeneration-bill-reforms-to-national-
Conclusion
These ideas would need to be more effectively reflected in legislation. All mayors or executive bodies of devolved or combined authorities should have a co-ordinating and facilitative planning role, working within a multi-level framework linking central with local government works everywhere. More fundamentally, we are proposing that our planning system reflects an appropriate subsidiarity; with central government devolving power to enable strategic decisions to be taken locally, where necessary through mayoral and combined authority bodies, while local government needs to remit some of its decisions to such mayoral/combined strategic authorities. This would allow strategic planning to play a vital evidential, democratic, managerial and operational role for both 21st century government and the needs of places. This paper has been drawn up by members of the •Chartered Planners in Academic Practice (CPiAP) network.
The CPiAP is a group of chartered planners who, as well as currently holding academic posts (including honorary appointments), have also been chief executives and chief officers of local authorities and/or hold appointments as trustees and non-executive directors of many housing, planning and regeneration organisations. CPiAP members come together to make responses to parliamentary and government consultations on planning and related policy matters, and in particular to help ensure that relevant research informs these policy considerations. CPiAP members are: Professor Mark Baker MRTPI, University of Manchester; Professor Matthew Carmona FAcSS MRTPI, University College London; Professor Tony Crook CBE FAcSS FRTPI (CPiAP Co-convenor), University of Sheffield; Professor Nick Gallent FAcSS FRTPI, University College London; Honorary Professor Vincent Goodstadt FAcSS MRTPI (former RTPI President, and CPiAP Co-convenor), University of Manchester; Visiting Professor Janice Morphet, FAcSS FRTPI, University College London; Kelvin MacDonald FaCSS FRTPI, University of Cambridge; Honorary Professor Kevin Murray FAcSS FRTPI (former RTPI President), University of Glasgow; Professor Gavin Parker, FAcSS FRTPI, University of Reading; Professor John Pendlebury, FAcSS MRTPI, University of Newcastle; Professor Malcom Tait, MRTPI, University of Sheffield; Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones FAcSS FRTPI, University College London; Professor Christine Whitehead, OBE FAcSS HonRTPI, London School of Economics; and Professor Cecilia Wong, FAcSS FRTPI, University of Manchester. Notes 1 Planning for the Future. Planning White Paper. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Aug. 2020. www.gov.uk/government/consultations/ planning-for-the-future 2 Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. Explanatory Notes. House of Lords, Dec. 2022. https://bills.parliament.uk/ publications/49201/documents/2676
planning-policy 4 English Housing Survey, 2021 to 2022: Headline Report. Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities, Dec. 2022. www.gov.uk/government/ statistics/english-housing-survey-2021-to-2022headline-report/english-housing-survey-2021-to-2022headline-report#introduction-and-main-findings 5 The UK2070 Papers. The Working Paper Series of the UK2070 Commission: Series 1. UK2070 Commission, Aug. 2020. https://uk2070.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2020/07/The_UK2070_Papers_Series_One.pdf 6 G Parker and M Dobson: ‘Planning in time, time for planning, and time to plan — ‘timescaping’ and its implications for practice’. Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, Jul.–Aug., 243–47 7 P A Booth: Controlling Development: Certainty in Discretion in Europe, the USA and Hong Kong. UCL Press, 1996; and P A Booth: ‘The control of discretion: planning and the common-law tradition’. Planning Theory, 2007, Vol. 6 (2), 127–45. doi: 10.1177/1473095207077585 8 D Adams and C Watkins: The Value of Planning. RTPI Research Report 5. Royal Town Planning Institute, Jun. 2014. www.rtpi.org.uk/media/1548/value-ofplanning-full-report-2014.pdf; and V Goodstadt: ‘Strategic planning in the Glasgow Metropolitan Region’. In H Dimitriou and T Thompson (Eds): Strategic Planning for Regional Development in the UK. Routledge, 2007 9 Anticipate, React, Recover: Resilient Infrastructure Systems. National Infrastructure Commission, May 2020. https://nic.org.uk/app/uploads/AnticipateReact-Recover-28-May-2020.pdf 10 Soundness Self-Assessment Check List. Planning Advisory Service, 2014, p16. www.local.gov.uk/sites/ default/files/documents/download-soundness-tool-w7e2.doc 11 The UK Government Resilience Framework. HM Government, Dec. 2022. https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/1131163/UKG_Resilience_ Framework_FINAL_v2.pdf 12 J Kay and M King: Radical Uncertainty: Decision Making for an Unknowable Future. Bridge Street Press, 2020 13 H W J Rittel and M M Webber: ‘Dilemmas in a general theory of planning’. Policy Sciences, 1973, Vol. 4 (2), 155–69 14 T K Das: ‘Time: the hidden dimension in strategic planning’. Long Range Planning, 1991, Vol. 24 (3), 49–57. doi: 10.1016/0024-6301(91)90184-P; and G Hutter and T Wiechmann: ‘Time, temporality, and planning — comments on the state of art in strategic spatial planning research’. Planning Theory & Practice, 2022, Vol. 23 (1), 157–64. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/ 14649357.2021.2008172 15 J L Grant: ‘ ‘A difficult balancing act’: What planning involves’. Planning Theory & Practice, 2002, Vol. 23 (5), 724-40. doi: 10.1080/14649357.2022.2109719 16 J B Cullingworth: Peacetime History: Environmental Planning. Volume 1. Reconstruction and Land Use Planning 1939–1947. HMSO, 1975 Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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17 J Delafons: ‘Reforming the British planning system 1964–1965: the Planning Advisory Group and the genesis of the Planning Act of 1968’. Planning Perspectives, 1989, Vol.13 (4), 373–87 18 The Future of Development Plans. Report of the Planning Advisory Group. HMSO, 1965 19 V Goodstadt: ‘Strategic planning in the Glasgow metropolitan region’ (see note 8); and G Lloyd: ‘Regional reports and strategic planning innovation: Lessons from Scotland’. European Planning Studies, 1997, Vol. 5 (6), 731–39, doi: 10.1080/09654319708720431 20 J B Friend and W N Jessop: Local Government and Strategic Choice: An Operational Research Approach to the Processes of Public Planning. Tavistock Publications, 1969 21 U Avin, R Goodspeed and L Murnen: ‘From exploratory scenarios to plans: bridging the gap’. Planning Theory & Practice, 2022, Vol. 23 (4), 637–46. www.tandfonline. com/doi/full/10.1080/14649357.2022.2119008 22 P Allan and R Plant: ‘Hacking: field notes for adaptive urban planning in uncertain times’. Planning Practice & Research, 2022, Vol. 37 (6), 721–38. doi: 10.1080/02697459.2022.2054566; and O Ibert, S Baumgart, S Siedentop and T Weith: ‘Planning in the face of extraordinary uncertainty: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic’. Planning Practice & Research, 2022, Vol. 37 (1), 1–12. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10. 1080/02697459.2021.1991124 23 Glasgow and the Clyde Valley Strategic Development Plan: Proposed Plan. Background Report 03: Strategic Futures Group Visioning. Glasgow and the Clyde Valley Strategic Futures Group, Jun. 2011. www.clydeplansdpa.gov.uk/docman/previous-strategic-developmentplan-may-2012-background-reports/92-br03-strategicfutures-group-visioning/file 24 V Goodstadt and G Buchan: ‘A strategic approach to community planning: repositioning the statutory development plan’. In G Cars, P Healey, A Madanipour and C de Magalhaes (Eds): Urban Governance, Institutional Capacity and Social Milieux. Routledge, 2002 25 ‘The UK’s incoherent state, levelling-up and the problems of English governance’. Blog entry. Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge, Nov. 2022. www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/ the-uks-incoherent-state/ 26 T J Dixon and M Tewdwr-Jones: Urban Futures: Planning for City Foresight and City Visions. Policy Press, 2021 27 W MacAskill: What We Owe the Future: A Million-Year View. Oneworld Publications, 2022 28 J Rawls: A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, 1999, Revised Edition 29 A Sen: The Idea of Justice. Allen Lane, 2009
TCPA Webinar
an introduction to planning and planning reform for elected councillors Wednesday 13 September 2023 10:00 am–11:30 am Online — via Zoom This introductory session will explain the current English planning system and outline how the proposed reforms to the system are expected to be implemented. It will take a high-level scan across the critical issues for local authorities, with plenty of time for Q&A. The webinar is essential for any councillor who is keen to get a better understanding of the English planning system or of what the proposed planning reforms are likely to mean in practice. And while the session will be geared towards elected councillors, it is open, and will be of interest to anyone who is keen to get a better understanding of the planning system — developers, consultants, business leaders, council officers, community groups, architects, designers and students. Tickets: TCPA members: Non-members:
£30.00 £54.00
For further information and to book a place, see www.tcpa.org.uk/event/an-introductionto-planning-reform-for-elected-councillors-4/
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planning in time, time for planning, and time to plan — ‘timescaping‘ and its
implications for practice
Gavin Parker and Mark Dobson consider the impacts of time, its organisation and its control within the English planning system, arguing that control of time spent in planning, in order to prioritise speed and efficiency goals for the sake of ‘growth’, can undermine the time needed to plan well in the service of inclusion, public interest and sustainable development goals Questions of resourcing in planning have been at the forefront of recent discussions about the future of planning in England.1 Funding has been the most obvious element raised as a challenge to effective practice. Clearly, adequate funding is critical, yet this article reminds us of the question of time in and for planning, and is positioned here as a too-often overlooked part of the question of resources in planning. Ultimately, the impact of time on process and outcomes, on people and policy, and on places and futures is critical to good planning practice. The significance of time in and for planning is, as Simone Abram2 noted, tied to the shaping of the future and is: ‘by definition, a temporal field, one that is concerned with transformation through time [and] close attention to planning practices indicates that such temporalities are doubted, contested, and mediated.’ The highlighting of the temporalities of planning is also linked to ongoing concerns to address EDI
(equality, diversity and inclusion) agendas, and efforts to ensure greater equity, diversity and inclusion are reshaping the orientation and activities of many institutions. Few, if any, would query the need to address EDI questions, and in this short piece about time in and for planning we also raise the issue of inclusion/exclusion, which is manifestly shaped by system design and the time afforded to process. In doing so, we rehearse how time pressure and other temporal interventions can have a deleterious effect on the profession and the practice of good planning. Given the above, there are two aspects we point towards here: the first is the inclusion/exclusion effects of time in planning, and the second is the time to plan well — i.e. time for planning. Timescapes of planning Attention to how time influences the study of planning and development has been raised in the last decade. This has been, in part, due to austerity conditions, and, moreover, in response to serial Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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attempts to use time measures to shape planning practice to promote specific agendas. Often it appears that ‘good planning’ or inclusion are not core considerations. In this light, we present some examples of how time is manipulated within the English planning system — where speeding up planning is very often posited in mainstream political and economic discourse as a mechanism to tackle ‘delay’. These examples serve to highlight how time use (and manipulation) create the potential for exclusionary times in planning, as well as timeframes that impinge on the capacity to undertake good planning. The problematisation of planning as slow, burdensome and unresponsive in England forms the basis of many narratives. There has arguably been a ramping-up of measures and proposals that either cite delay and speed as a justification, or overtly involve time limits, deadlines or other temporal markers that are to be applied in planning. Some call attention to development as a key manifestation of where manipulation of time is present, given that ‘time is a resource within the development process and that like other resources it represents a source of both power and control’;3 this point is emphasised further, in that: ‘the temporalities of planning lie at the heart of broader debates over contemporary forms of urban governance, democratic engagement, and policy outcomes. [ … ] temporalities are not just about time but about the socially and politically situated experiences of time embedded in specific power relations and conjunctions.’3 The political use of speed, delay and time as linked devices to legitimise reform seems, by now, commonplace, and indeed multiple ‘waves’ of reform of the planning system have been observed in recent decades. Ali Madanipour4 highlights the relation to markets and time in and for planning, where ‘an instrumental treatment of temporality, turning it increasingly into the subject of market pressures for speed, productivity and profit maximisation’ has prevailed. Alongside political moments that precipitated clear shifts in policy and structure, there have been almost continual minor iterations to the system and its timings as a process that has involved ongoing temporal choreography. Within this discourse, political and economic interests coalesce around time through temporally infused language. Some examples of the political rhetoric deployed in relation to the English planning system help to remind us of the positioning of planning as problematic. These may be associated to examples of ‘timescaping’ (as shown in Table 1) and have been repeated to justify reforms over the past 13 years — we have emboldened the overt temporal flags in the following quotes. In 2011, the then Prime Minister David Cameron characterised planners as the ‘enemies of 244 Town & Country Planning
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enterprise’ in lamenting the time that the planning process takes, and the Secretary of State Eric Pickles argued that: ‘our planning system is a deterrent to international investment, and a barrier to the expansion of home-grown enterprise. When planning acts as a brake on growth, and on the much needed new jobs and new businesses, reform is imperative.’ 5 This view was reprised as part of the ‘project speed’ agenda, reinforced with temporal cues by the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2020, who argued for a planning system that: ‘... is simpler, clearer and quicker to navigate, delivering results in weeks and months rather than years and decades.’ 6 A few weeks earlier, Johnson had also proposed that: ‘... time is money and the newt-counting delays in our system are a massive drag on the prosperity of this country. And so we will build better, build greener and we will also build faster and that is why the Chancellor and I have set up Project Speed to scythe through red tape and get things done.’ 7 At the same time, Robert Jenrick, then Secretary of State at the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, also argued that the system currently is: ‘… an antiquated planning system that is holding back our country’s enormous potential — a system that makes planning authorities judge every single development on a case by case basis — as inconsistent a process as it is slow. [ … ] We propose a clear and transparent set of regulations: one that is faster, more consistent and easier to navigate …’ 8 What these rhetorics (and the reforms and alterations they have aimed to justify) demonstrate is an attempt to shape and control the temporality of planning. Taken together, they form the ‘timescape’ of planning,9 which embraces a number of constituent factors, including timeframes, temporality, timing, tempo, duration, sequence, and temporal modalities (i.e. past, present, future). We present the idea of timescape as both the time-related rules and temporal regularities that are applied with the purpose of effecting control over practice. Indeed, this follows Pierre Bourdieu’s dictum that ‘practice [is] temporalization’,10 meaning that practice organises or ‘makes’ time. For us, the reverse also applies here: the way we plan is conditioned by time. The utility of this perspective is to reveal how time elements, actors and resources are aligned (or not) in the planning timescape and act to shape process and outcomes. A timescape is responded to variously by different actors, and scrutiny of how practices are organised
‘Control of planning
Clifford Harper
time to prioritise speed and efficiency goals can have negative implications for both the EDI agenda and the execution of good professional practice’
to deliver on particular priorities and accepted aims can be revealing. This is particularly so when attention is paid to how time is variously squeezed, sequenced, paced, and suspended. Time squeezes or binds have received significant scrutiny, not least because of work intensification and technological change. Experiences of time squeeze raise consciousness of a need to manage time (as a key resource) and whether or how this affects practices expected in rigid temporal routines. In this context, people develop temporal strategies to cope with the various calls on their time.11 This is not the specific focus here, but more work on that is clearly needed; instead, the overt use of time is illustrated below and through numerous policy iterations, actions and amendments that have embraced a set of temporal measures. A set of 10 examples in planning practice are provided in Table 1 on the next page to illustrate the key arguments here. It is notable that the examples, taken from across the English planning timescape, are predominately focused on housing and land release. These measures are largely deployed to support development over other substantive goals of plan-making and represent a key use of political/economic time. Similarly, decision-making in planning is organised and ‘kept to schedule’ through attempts to control outcomes in the system. Our assessment indicates how planning practice in England is hemmed in by a range of time-related means and assumptions. These measures and
underpinning priorities set up a timescape for planning action that variously rewards and withholds time. Time allocation and temporal cues are deployed to create alternative slower or faster planning determination timings which are often linked to the commercialisation of planning activity.12 The overtly temporal technologies deployed in the English planning system shape a timescape that performs as political time13 (seen, for example, through appeals to ‘project speed’ presented above). Time control may be regarded as one of the key resources used to exert power and regulate actors in planning. We link neoliberal views of efficiency, speed and growth as the dominant political time tropes achieved via temporal strategy applied to planning practice and effected by an ongoing process of major and minor reforms or iterations. Despite such interventions, it is notable that, for developers, their main interest in time is unlikely to be time taken, but rather the predictability of planning steps and outcomes needed for development to progress (i.e. control over shorter-term futures that impact on developer interests). Such recourse to time in the ways depicted seems rather crude, and, if underpinning logics were pursued fully and the further consequences considered, then it becomes apparent why aspirations to standardise and codify planning in England have been argued for in recent years. Those approaches proceed towards instantaneity in decisions, standardised policy, and a shortened, set time to Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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Table 1
Time cues and timescaping in the planning system Example
Type of temporal strategy and impact on practice/actors
30-month Local Plan production (proposed)
Speeding-up local policy-making by implementing a time-squeezed and ‘frontloaded’ Local Plan-making process that is time-bounded, rather than an open-ended one which creates risk and uncertainty over land allocated for development. And policy is used to shape decisions. Reduced time for public consultation, evidence collection and stakeholder engagement as the government attempts to speed up the plan-making process, reflecting development and growth timings rather than technical planning time and time for democratic participation.
Plan start times
‘Right-timing’ through suspending or slowing down announcing a specific official start point to accommodate significant prior work needed in order to meet the 30-month deadline; and/or strategic political timing to undertake a plan review, where politicians choose propitious schedules through the control of start points.
Plan monitoring and delivery
The local planning authority produces an Annual Monitoring Report (AMR) giving information on performance against the Local Development Scheme. Performance management over the release of sites/granting permission to keep up with the timing and quantum of planned development across the plan period (for example, five-year land supply and objectively assessed need). Government and developers hold the local planning authority to account for delivery.
Five-year land supply
Converting the quantum of housing need calculated for a local area into a housing temporality that requires local planning authorities to demonstrate an up-to-date five-year housing land supply. Applies pressure on the local planning authority and enables developers to propose other sites where delivery is not sustained.
Back-ending of housing delivery
Deferring targets and decisions into the future by suspending/delaying housing delivery to ease political tension over housebuilding locally. Pushing housing number targets later into the plan delivery period by allocating delivery of the lowest number units of the overall housing need figure at the start of plan period and the largest figures toward the end.
Pre-application discussions
Front-ending negotiations ‘off the clock’ before submission of a formal planning application. Enables developers to save time later on in the process by enabling a smoother application determination. Allows the local planning authority to provide up-front feedback and make this input time-chargeable.
Planning Performance Agreements (PPAs)
Exceptions to general determination rules timings that seek to create a mutual tailored tempo/duration by agreeing to suspend time limits for specific projects. Slowing down the process by pushing planning activity ‘off the clock’, or ‘parallel time’ is created that is agreed by the local planning authority and the developer.
Fast-tracking
Offer of a quicker planning permission process by agreeing to speed up/bypass elements of planning application testing where specific thresholds have been met and/or for an additional fee (for example the London Plan, where proposals that meet the 35% affordable housing threshold need not submit detailed viability information). Local planning authority commercialisation, and developers are incentivised to pay for a faster service.
Determination deadlines
Performance management of local planning authorities by setting a standardised national timeframe for decisions (i.e. eight or 13 weeks). Pressure on local planning authorities to meet statutory determination periods, resulting in decision-making delays. Some local planning authorities issue ‘EoTs’ — time extensions where there is a specific need/agreement for a more bespoke timescale (linking with PPAs).
Call-ins of planning cases by the Secretary of State
Government suspension or lifting out of the timeframe for decision-making so that the local planning authority and the developer have to await a decision from the Secretary of State. National government removes local control over determination rights and operates on its own (political) decision-making timescale.
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produce a Local Plan. Neoliberal policy-makers are gradually realising ideal (or near ideal) time(s) for planning, with speed and the targeting of supposed delay used as a substitute for certainty by government. This forms an important element in exerting control over the processes and outcomes of planning to fit political-economic agendas. Attempts to reconcile actor interests in political time act to sustain legitimacy, but the actual and likely success of this political work remains unclear when moving from ideology to policy and then practice. Time is not neutral but is an active part of the exercise of power. How time is organised shapes relations between actor groups, and as such time can be and is used to prefer some interests over others. If we accept that time is relational and socially constructed, rather than universal and objective, then we need to move beyond unconsciously accepted notions of ‘clock time’, infused with political and economic rationales for speed and efficiency. This is because we can already see the effects of allocated time in planning in terms of the potential for exclusion. Given that different actors will respond variously to changes in the planning timescape, some successfully, others less so, it is of significant interest to explore and understand how actors react to timescaping and what temporal strategies they provoke. Thus, our two key contentions for drawing attention to the relevance of time in planning practice: that time benefits actors differently, and that it shapes practice. In tying our two key points together, we argue that planning is an intrinsically deliberative act where time, alongside other resources, can be mobilised in service of inclusion, public interest and sustainable development goals, rather than the speed and efficiency goals that supposedly underpin growth. Time and its control become analogous with establishing certainty over practice. We see a clear risk that such a situation undermines the time needed to plan well — that is to disallow time for planning. Such a reflection on time can, in a hopeful concluding sentiment, account for a rethink and a range of normative goals, where planning can promote inclusivity of process and EDI on the one hand, and the effective, equitable management of sustainable development in outcome terms can be reclaimed on the other. We conclude that control of planning time to prioritise speed and efficiency goals can have negative implications for both the EDI agenda and the execution of good professional practice. Instead, there is an opportunity to craft and reflect ‘proper times’ that are understood and reconciled through the timescape, rather than a timescaping that acts to prefer one interest over another for the sake of ‘growth’. With a more critical understanding of time, the political work performed by powerful interests can be challenged. With that, greater consideration of the way that time, its organisation and its control
impacts all interests in planning is needed, so that planning ‘works’ for all, and ‘proper timing’ is understood as a pre-condition for good, just planning. Professor Gavin Parker is Chair of Planning Studies at the •University of Reading, and Dr Mark Dobson is Lecturer in
Planning and Development, also at the University of Reading. The views expressed are personal. Notes 1 M Dobson and S Platt: ‘Resourcing planning futures?’. In G Parker, M Wargent, O Linovski, et al.: ‘The future of the planning profession’. Interface. Planning Theory & Practice, 2020, Vol. 21 (3), 453–80. www.tandfonline. com/doi/full/10.1080/14649357.2020.1776014 2 S Abram: ‘The time it takes: temporalities of planning’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2014, Vol. 20 (S1), 129–147. www.researchgate.net/ publication/261675589_The_time_it_takes_ Temporalities_of_planning 3 M Raco, D Durrant and N Livingstone: ‘Slow cities, urban politics and the temporalities of planning: Lessons from London’. Environment & Planning C: Politics & Space, 2018, Vol. 36 (7), 1176–94. Available at https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10047030/ 4 A Madanipour: Cities in Time: Temporary Urbanism and the Future of the City. Bloomsbury, 2017, p.6 5 E Pickles: ‘Planning reforms boost local power and growth’. Speech by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, 4 Sept. 2011. www.gov.uk/government/speeches/planning-reformsboost-local-power-and-growth 6 B Johnson: ‘Foreword from the Prime Minister’. In Planning for the Future. Planning White Paper. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Aug. 2020. www.gov.uk/government/consultations/ planning-for-the-future 7 B Johnson: ‘Economy speech’. Speech by the Prime Minister, 30 Jun. 2020. www.gov.uk/government/ speeches/pm-economy-speech-30-june-2020 8 R Jenrick: ‘Planning for the future’. Speech delivered to the Creating Communities Conference, London, 23 Sept. 2020. www.gov.uk/government/speeches/ robert-jenricks-speech-on-planning-for-the-future 9 See M Dobson and G Parker: Slow Planning? Timescapes, Power and Democracy. Policy Press (forthcoming); and B Adam: ‘Of timespaces, futurescapes and timeprints’. Lecture presented at Lüneburg University, 17 Jun. 2008. Available at https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/ pdf/299655dfa3bb2563ad6f0d08db1ed59db59d9a21 10 P Bourdieu: Pascalian Meditations. Polity Press, 2000, p.206 11 See A Hochschild: ‘On the edge of the time bind: Time and market culture’. Social Research, 2005, Vol. 72 (2), 339–54 12 See G Parker, M Dobson and T Lynn: ‘Governmental logics in commercialised planning practices. The case of local authority pre-application negotiations in the English planning system’. Planning Theory & Practice, 2022, Vol. 23 (1), 60–80. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/ 10.1080/14649357.2021.2011388 13 For more on the idea of political time, see H Strassheim: ‘Knowing the future: theories of time in policy analysis’. European Policy Analysis, 2016, Vol. 2 (1), 150–67. www.researchgate.net/publication/303470134_ Knowing_the_Future_Theories_of_Time_in_Policy_ Analysis Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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biography of an island foretold Nick Green looks back from a viewpoint in 2099 on the evolution of settlement patterns in Britain in the 21st century This essay was originally published in December well in either town or country, although the social 2099 as the closing piece for a special issue of conditions in which they exist are quite different. Xxx Journal, on Britain’s planning history during Until the 2050s, transport and environmental the 21st century.1 planning was a mess. That Britain has managed to resolve that mess can to some extent be laid at Unlike the expert contributors to this special issue, the feet of a crisis which threatened to completely I am singularly unqualified to comment on the overwhelm Britain’s capital city and its surrounding political and technical machinations of Britain’s region. Britain’s South East of the country, the planning policy and history during the last century. butt of a cruel geo-climatic joke, found itself faced Yet these scholarly essays do seem to share a with simultaneous droughts and floods as the sea common view. They appear to reach a consensus level rose and periodic heatwaves left its towns and of sorts: that despite the numerous attempts by cities awash with filthy floodwater while starving politicians of all philosophical and ideological it of clean drinking water. For obvious reasons, persuasions to create some sort of ‘ideal’ planning people moved north, repopulating abandoned system, the built environment insists on the primacy towns and villages, spreading the population more of its own truculent logic. It seems to be a logic evenly across the island, which both lifted the which refuses to be gainsaid by any form of pressure on the South East and reinvigorated the ‘democratic’ intervention, a logic that bends with economies of the North. noisy reluctance only when compelled by forces The northern-most seaports had already grown much stronger than itself, and which reimposes dramatically to service the pan-Arctic trade routes, itself the moment circumstance permits. But it is open since the 2040s, and, for the first time in its a logic with which we must work, for, at its heart, known history, Britain’s distended profile worked as it is driven by human needs and desires. much in favour of its northern half as its southern While writing this essay, I revisited an old diary half. In geographical terms, the new Midlands of left to me by an aunt; I knew her as Charlie. It was Britain ran from Hull to Liverpool, flanked to the written around 30 years ago, either in the late 2060s north by the North Midlands, between Glasgow or early 2070s. It is a collection of thoughts about and Edinburgh, and to the south by the South how Britain changed during her long lifetime, and Midlands, between Lincoln and Hereford. In the I think many of the sketches she left behind were end, it seems, geography mattered. written with me in mind. Since it provides a firstThe inevitable but accidental asymmetry that hand account and a different perspective from mine, Britain endured for most of its inhabited history I have spliced in extracts from her diaries (without (a simple consequence of its southern end being further comment). So this essay is hers as much closer to continental Europe than its northern end) as mine… was ended only by the climate change which opened up the North Pole to create the pan-Arctic Over the last century, the functional distinction trade routes that we now take for granted, but between town and country has been eroded to which, historically speaking, are both novel and almost nothing. Live-work patterns have reverted profoundly anomalous. The Orkney islands and the to something like their 18th-century form, when towns along Britain’s northernmost coastline — many occupations could be carried out equally Durness, Scourie, Thurso, and John O’Groats — 248 Town & Country Planning
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have all grown and flourished as seaports, while the Scottish Highlands, like the English Pennines and the Cambrian Mountains of Wales, have become green oases for the surrounding towns and cities. Charlie’s Diary: 3 March
My nephew, to whom I have become close, told me that I talk too much. ‘You pontificate and reminisce,’ he said. ‘At length. Why don’t you write it in a diary? Describe some of the changes you’ve seen?’ ‘Who on earth would want to read it?’ ‘Well, I would; might. If it’s interesting.’ A small glass of Herefordshire wine, while I relax in the old, upright wooden armchair outside my cottage in northern England, a 20-minute walk, uphill all the way, outside a small town about six miles south of Hadrian’s Wall. Early Spring. Dusk presses down on a sky of deepening cobalt blue, and I watch the pipistrelles twitching and darting to and fro above my head, high-speed aerobatics in the service of a decent evening meal. The temperature is comfortably into the teens. Warm, yet still tinged with spring’s freshness. In the South East, they’re enduring their first real heatwave of the year, I think their earliest on
record. And after an especially miserable windswept, rain-drenched winter. Floods are a fact of life for many people, an obstacle to be tediously overcome. But they have adapted, either by moving to higher ground (if they have money) or by accepting that the ground floor of a house needs to be water-proofed; sealed external doors all round — and should failure strike that first line of defence, flood-resistant, capable of withstanding the sudden onrush of tons of filthy water, easy to clear before, easy to clean afterwards. I ought to be scared of these changes to the climate, in the weather; was once. Getting a message on my phone to prepare immediately, the hurried removal of anything not water resistant to higher rooms, shutting off the downstairs electricity just in case the flood waters somehow broke through the sealed external doors and rose above a metre and fused everything. Then the noise and the rising stink of the water swilling around the house, the continuous fear that door seals would fail, the fear of having left something precious downstairs; of not having sufficient food and drinking water for a few days while living upstairs. And the relief as the waters finally subside; the realisation that the seals held, the house stayed dry inside. Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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conditioning. It also encouraged biodiversity, and bans on pesticides helped to bring nature back into Britain’s towns and cities. Many towns and villages had developed thriving local food markets, rejuvenating the old market squares that had previously served as car parks, for The seat of England’s government moved the high cost of transporting food had made local northwards in the 2060s, and the finance houses produce the cheaper option. The longer growing likewise dispersed to other cities. London and its seasons and warmer weather as a consequence of hinterland found some sort of accommodation with climate change meant that a considerable variety the effects of climate change as people drifted north. of locally grown produce was available, not all of At first the flow was only a handful, moving away it native to this island. Many people had a small not because of climate change, but for economic vegetable patch in their garden that supplied much reasons, as London simply became too expensive for of their basic needs. the vast majority to meet the more basic human The global environmental collapse, and the needs beyond mere survival — like starting a family, or climate wars which lasted for a decade and trickle living in some sort of comfort. Perhaps many hoped on as insurgencies or ‘local unrest’, brought about to go back some day, but then saw London changing the changes that could usefully have been embarked into something they no longer quite recognised and upon at least half a century earlier, but were not. so chose to stay away and build their new lives The most important of these changes was that permanently in the North or the South West. inter-governmental co-operation on climate change Most settlements remained quite compact, for was much strengthened, as it was finally accepted every effort had been made to ensure that they did that on such global matters as climate change and not merge one into the other. If necessary, this was population movement any workable initiative would through the use of Green Belts, which, despite their necessarily be global in scope. flaws, could still prove effective at preventing closely The consequences for Britain have been spaced settlements from merging into one another. comparatively benign. A larger and more evenly Where space and topography permitted, green distributed population, and far smaller levels of wedges were preferred, which brought green space geographical inequality than have existed before. right into the centre of the settlement, and allowed The economic centre of gravity was pulled the settlement to expand between the wedges. northwards as the northern seaports opened up, both for trade and for passenger traffic en route to the Americas and Asia. The consequences for Britain The major cities still dominate their regions, a result of carefully considered regional devolution, and that have been comparatively seems unlikely to change in the coming decades, benign. A larger and more since each city now anchors a coherent network of towns and villages well connected by public evenly distributed population, transport routes and cycle lanes. Britain is probably and far smaller levels of more balanced in terms of its settlement patterns than it has been throughout its history, now that geographical inequality than London is neither more nor less important than have existed before other major cities. The urge to travel still exists of course, but is tempered by the fact that long-distance Suburbs, for so long the subject of deserved transport is expensive. criticism, were now also recognised for their good Even so, many coastal towns have suffered due to points. Houses with gardens, trees, grass verges, sea level rises and the increasingly violent storms broad pavements and well kept cycle paths, all that wreak so much damage as they hit the shore, and porous, became environmental saviours. Combined it seems doubtful that they will ever be resurrected. with multi-functional spaces that served both as Towns and cities on rivers and flood plains have recreation grounds and, where necessary, as flood likewise had to adapt, but the new regulations meadows, the suburbs as a whole could alleviate concerning building and environmental planning, flooding through the relatively large proportion of alongside careful interventions, have ensured that porous ground. Houses were given plenty of space, even older homes are far better protected against and all dwellings — apartments, houses — had floodwaters than was hitherto the case. multiple aspects, which meant that they could Charlie’s Diary: 18 October easily get a through-breeze, that simplest of hotLong stroll across the local fields. Warm, sunny, weather comfort-bringers. Alongside the green trees still in leaf. Nature acts as if it’s summer, but and blue infrastructure, this reduced the urban dawn and dusk claim autumn. Do seasons even heat island effect and the consequent need for air But compared with the relatively flood-free past, forever under threat of future disaster, the reality, the sheer banality of the practical measures we needed to adapt, is somehow easier to accept, because certain. Yet objectively worse.
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exist any more? For the first time in I don’t how long I saw no-one. Solitude, once easily achieved, now that rarest of experiences. Most people live in the towns and cities now in any case, so perhaps they don’t mind, or even think about it. Maybe the solitude of their flat or their room is enough. Even outside the cities it is a rare event to be alone outside one’s home. I’m glad to have experienced it. The last century has seen humanity’s fall from grace and its rise to some basic wisdom — the century when nature’s inevitable prevalence was finally conceded. But the question on which I am charged to write is the question of the future, not the past. Will these historically novel settlement patterns persist over the next 30 or 40 years, or will they somehow revert to the historical norm that saw most of Britain’s settlement patterns more or less fixed by the time of the Domesday book? Anyone who takes a look at Britain’s settlement patterns over a period of several millennia up to the present day will quickly grasp a simple fact. In terms of the locations of the settlements, they have changed comparatively little. Even in the prehistory of Homo heidelbergensis, archaeological deposits were situated at the southern end of Britain, where it was most accessible to the continent. That basic geographic question of accessibility did, it seems to me, determine Britain’s settlement patterns for its entire history until around 50 years ago, when the Arctic Ocean became fully navigable all year round, and Britain became as accessible from the north as it always has been from the south. And if basic geographical accessibility is indeed a major influence on Britain’s settlement patterns, then it is highly likely that Britain’s settlement patterns have changed permanently, at least by historical standards of time. London, now often awash and much smaller than it was, seems unlikely to regain the unchallenged pre-eminence it had enjoyed since the Romans founded it at any easily fordable point of the Thames. That leaves the stage to several historically smaller and less important cities distributed across Britain, sharing more evenly in an economy that is growing when measured per capita, albeit because the population both nationally and globally continues on the downward trend that it has followed since the mid-21st century. The climate is projected to stop warming by 2140, as a result of global policies agreed and introduced decades ago and mercifully adhered to by successive governments around the world. None wish to undermine the progress made for simple reasons of realpolitik: to do so would be self-defeating. Population, both globally and nationally, is projected to continue its decline. So, despite the environmental depredations of the last century-and-a-half, humanity’s ecological footprint is getting steadily smaller, and the environment is slowly recovering. Again, these
trends are projected to continue in the 2140s and 2150s under a business-as-usual scenario. The main risk is that complacency sets in, and that governments and populations alike assume that, because the situation is improving, there is no longer a need to make a special effort. But the environment is mending precisely because of the special efforts being made to heal it, and those efforts must continue for progress to continue. The 21st century, the middle especially, has been a torrid, war-struck epoch, uprooting people by their millions. It is possibly worse than the 20th was, even with its two world wars, although that is a question for the historians to argue over. Britain’s relatively good fortune over the last century, like that of other north-facing countries, has been its location. Far enough north to have escaped the worst effects of global warming, it has prospered from the unblocking of the pan-Arctic sea lanes. The upheavals, the changes they forced, have left Britain with a more balanced political structure and economic-geography than it has ever had. Equilibrium: long-sought, now realised; a footing for a hopeful future. Nick Green is a Senior Tutor in the School of Planning •andDrEnvironmental Management, University of Manchester.
This article is based on an extract from his recently published essay collection, Britain’s Settlement Patterns: Past, Present and Future Foretold in Eight Essays by Nick Green 2022 (Routledge, 2022), which explores the past, present and future of Britain’s settlement patterns. This is an abridged version of the book’s closing essay (pp.163-176). Reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group. The views expressed are personal. Note 1 This essay is obviously fictional, and is based on the closing essay in Britain’s Settlement Patterns: Past, Present and Future Foretold in Eight Essays by Nick Green (Routledge, 2022), reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group. The book is available with a 20% discount from the Routledge website (http://bit.ly/3OpkIG1), using the code FLE22. Those wishing to draw their own conclusions as to how the next century will turn out may find the sites listed below helpful starting points: Shell International has long since carried out scenario exercises, and all of its reports can be downloaded from www.shell.com/energy-andinnovation/the-energy-future/scenarios.html The work of the UK 2070 Commission is the latest in a long line of attempts to make the case for a national spatial strategy for England — see http://uk2070.org.uk The UK Government’s Foresight projects have explored the futures of a wide range of different issues — see www.gov.uk/government/collections/ foresight-projects Chatham House offers a wide range of publications exploring international issues both present and future — see www.chathamhouse.org/publications
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healthy place-making in practice —
a participatory approach
Waymarking CIC
Sarah Spanton and Razieh Zandieh explain how a participatory approach has helped the community to embrace their role as local experts in the development of a healthy place-making project in Woodhouse Park, Wythenshawe
Part of the Woodhouse Park area in Wythenshawe, Manchester
The question of how to improve the health of their citizens is one of the major concerns in our cities. There is now widespread recognition that the urban environment influences people’s health, and urban designers and planners are encouraged to create health-supporting places. The TCPA has taken a leading role in healthy place-making since 2012, through its ‘Reuniting Health with Planning’ work. However, creating healthy places is not easy and straightforward in practice, and urban designers and 252 Town & Country Planning
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planners face significant barriers in the process — including financial issues and public and stakeholder engagement.1 Public and stakeholder engagement has been one of the TCPA’s concerns in its healthy places work, and the collaboration between public and private sectors and wider stakeholders has been discussed in its reports.2 While the various public and private sector projects in England operate under a common national planning policy, their local physical and
meaningful voice in shaping the places where they live, work, play and learn’.8 Public participation is increasingly viewed as an Citizen control appropriate approach for reducing health inequalities 8 Degrees and improving health among disadvantaged groups.10 of citizen Delegated power Evidence shows that health inequalities are increasing power 7 and that on average the health of people living in Partnership more deprived areas is falling.11 It is very important 6 to hear voices of marginalised social groups and Placation to meet their needs in any new development. 5 Community involvement can result in improving Degrees of Consultation health among disadvantaged populations if the tokenism 4 approach is designed properly and implemented Informing through effective community consultation and 3 participation.12 Therapy It is generally assumed that greater public Non2 participation improves the chances of an intervention’s participation Manipulation success and sustainability. However, to be effective, 1 public participation should meet some key principles. These principles have been reflected in existing literature and reports. Recently, the TCPA’s People, Fig. 1 Sherry Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation Planning and Power ‘Practical Guide for Creating Source: S Arnstein: ‘A ladder of citizen participation’6 Successful New Communities’13 outlines 15 core practical principles that should be considered when social contexts vary, increasing the complexities and developing and implementing an engagement challenges of public participation and often leading strategy for the development of a new community. to tokenistic participatory approaches in healthy To help in devising novel participatory strategies, place-making work. Although a participatory approach this article presents a particular participatory applied in one project is not necessarily applicable approach applied in the Heart & Soul Woodhouse in another project, sharing the experiences Park project in North West England, and explains gained from in a particular location may help other this approach in relation to three of the People, practitioners devise novel participatory strategies Planning and Power guide’s principles: for their projects. As previous research has found, • a long-term commitment involving open and clear communication and participation continuing sharing case studies is one useful strategy in for the lifetime of the project and beyond, overcoming barriers to healthy place-making in especially ‘in the case of a new community, practice.3 In addition to providing a brief introduction on public participation, this article reports on a which, from conception to occupation, could take participatory approach applied in a healthy placedecades to complete, and will constantly evolve’ making project in Woodhouse Park, Wythenshawe, (the guide’s ‘principle 6’); Manchester. • ensuring capacity-building among participants, to enable them to understand the planning Public participation in urbanism refers to ‘any system and to be able to ‘collaboratively develop process in which members of the public are involved workable solutions’(the guide’s ‘principle 11’); and in the process of urban change’,4 and is known as being responsive, demonstrating actionable and one of the pillars of healthy place-making.5 It is • supported by theory (such as Sherry Arnstein’s visible results from participation activities so that ‘ladder of participation’6 — see Fig. 1) and is an community members feel they are not wasting integral part of good urban planning.7 Through this their time (the guide’s ‘principle 13’). approach, people learn information, provide valuable input, offer solutions, question assumptions related This article also discusses the relationship between to the project,8 and share their local knowledge — the applied participatory approach and Arnstein’s all of which can immeasurably improve the quality ladder of participation. of new development. Through participation in The Heart & Soul Woodhouse Park project was not urban projects, they also communicate with their about a new development, but applied a particular neighbours, thus strengthening community participatory approach to a community-based, cohesion and social capital, which are also valuable healthy place-making programme which took indicators of health and wellbeing.8 place in 2020-21 in the Woodhouse Park area of Public participation is also related to community Wythenshawe, Manchester. The case study empowerment and is consistent with notions of programme was commissioned by MCRactive,14 and its development and delivery was led by democracy.9 It has been considered as ‘the basis for a healthy democracy in which all people have a Waymarking CIC.15 It was part of MCRactive’s ‘Local Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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Pilot’ programme, which takes a ‘test and learn’ approach to tackling health issues and is about building on the strengths of existing local assets (including people), is committed to co-design processes, and aims to develop innovative partnerships. In this project, community members were recognised as local experts, with valuable knowledge about — and experience of — their neighbourhood. They undertook a facilitated researchbased workshop process to look at what could make Woodhouse Park a healthier neighbourhood. The area covered in the programme was selected to be within walking distance — for the community members taking part — from the Civic Centre from which the programme ran. The area was around 5 square kilometres in size and included residential areas in the electoral ward of Woodhouse Park, to the south of the Civic Centre and north of Manchester Airport (which lies in the southern area of the ward), and a small part of a neighbouring ward, Sharston (see Fig. 2).
In 2020 the electoral ward of Woodhouse Park had a population of 14,646.16 Socio-economic inequalities are evident across Woodhouse Park. In February 2022, 63.5% of the population were of working age and 48.5% of this working population were claiming benefits,16 the highest level in all the wards across Manchester. Moreover, based on Index of Multiple Deprivation data (2019), a large part of the area is among the 10% most-deprived neighbourhoods in the country.17 The Woodhouse Park neighbourhood was built after the Second World War, with work beginning in 1946.18 It is the southernmost residential area of Wythenshawe, which is Manchester’s Garden City/Suburb style development. Wythenshawe’s development began in the 1930s and continued into the early 1970s. The homes built there are described as utilitarian,19 and there was a lack of community infrastructure and facilities such as shops — for example, the Civic Centre did not open until 1963 (commenced in 196218). Residents experienced a
Present boundary Pre-1974 boundary Ancient townships Neighbourhood units Hall/house Site of hall/house Town Square — 1927 plan Re-sited Civic Centre — 1948 plan Site of first municipal airport — 1929 Conservation Area Projected Western Parkway Old saltway Industrial site Golf course
Fig. 2 Wythenshawe and, within the red border, the Heart & Soul project area, and, within the yellow border, the electoral ward of Woodhouse Park kilometres miles
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Base map taken from D Deakin (Ed.): Wythenshawe: The Story of a Garden City. Phillimore, 1989
Waymarking CIC
LEGEND Main roads Woodlands/parks/ allotments Lake/pond Shops Community facilities School and grounds Old bus depot Markets Train stops and line Manchester Green Trail & Black Path IDEA 8 Possible community garden spaces IDEA 25 Possible walking trail
Fig. 3 Vision Map produced under the Heart & Soul Woodhouse Park process
lack of local employment and poor connectivity to surrounding areas for many years.20 Wythenshawe as a whole is considered by some to be the ‘most comprehensive municipal undertaking on garden city principles’.19 However, it is not considered to have achieved Barry Parker’s original vision (dating from 1928) as a fully fledged Garden City, following Garden City principles in order to achieve all the requisite health benefits for residents. Waymarking CIC developed and delivered the project using a participatory facilitation method which takes an approach prioritising: • community members being recognised as local experts in their neighbourhood; • capacity-building; • supporting participants in listening to each other — leading to them finding common ground, meaning, and purpose; • using accessible language; and • the collective and equitable discovery of solutions. The approach aims to develop agency among participants to enable them to lead on taking practical action together. A Healthier Neighbourhood Framework, developed by Waymarking, was used to structure workshops, which enabled community members to undertake
focused discussion on healthy places and take part in research activities organised in eight themed groups: community; beauty and design; nature and environment; healthy food; high street and jobs; play and fitness; ease of movement; and connectedness. The framework has been devised by distilling the essence out of a range of research and reporting from a cross-section of fields, including the planning, urban design, place-making, community development, health, environment, economics, food, sport, play, and sustainable transport sectors. In particular, the framework makes key urban design concepts comprehensible to community members. This supports the People, Planning and Power guide’s ‘principle 11’ on capacity-building in relation to the planning system, so that community members are able to work collaboratively to develop practical healthy place-making actions, with the resulting research findings and recommendations valuable to both community members and place-making professionals. In June 2021 the Heart & Soul Woodhouse Park process began with participants undertaking conversations to find common understandings on each of the themes, and then gathering evidence for the research by going on local walks and answering theme-focused questions in situ. They were then helped to collectively analyse the evidence. They devised solutions to issues that they had Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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Waymarking CIC
ccccc
Some of the participants in a Heart & Soul workshop
identified in each theme area, by building on known positive assets. Finally, they generated 72 ideas to make Woodhouse Park a healthier neighbourhood. An illustrated ‘Vision Map’ was produced by Waymarking, presenting a final 26 condensed place-based ideas (see Fig. 3 on the preceding page). This community-based healthy place-making programme re-introduced the TCPA’s People, Planning and Power’s ‘principle 6’ to the Woodhouse Park neighbourhood, by embedding listening closely to community members in the approach taken (in recognition of their role as local experts) and encouraging a culture of listening to each other, so as to develop open and clear communication between all stakeholders. This approach enables community members to be part of the evolution of Woodhouse Park, nearly 80 years on from its first development, developing agency to revisit healthy place-making from a community-led perspective. The majority of the 26 ideas to make Woodhouse Park a healthier place were land and building based, focusing on green space, the temporary or permanent use of empty buildings, active travel and connectivity, sustainability, the local economy and social business development, and uses of public space. Examples include community-led regeneration of a local park, a walking and running trail, a community bike-hire club, re-purposing vacant civic centre units to social enterprise use, and enhancing the Civic Centre green space. In September 2021, a core group of eight participants formed the Heart & Soul Community Research Team, sharing the ‘Vision Map’ and gathering feedback in public spaces from 150 local residents and holding a celebratory community event in October 2021. 256 Town & Country Planning
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In relation to Arnstein’s participatory ladder,6 in order to enhance participant agency in communityled healthy place-making the case study facilitation approach aims to blend the top three ‘citizen power’ rungs of the ladder: partnership (step 6), where community members have direct involvement in decision-making; delegated power (step 7), where community members work with facilitators and other stakeholders to identify priorities and resources for change; and citizen control (step 8), where community members have an idea and set up a project themselves. This led to the Community Research Team continuing to be part of a further workshop programme in 2022, taking one of the vision ideas — the walking and running trail — and setting up a permanent 8.4 kilometre (5 mile) Wellbeing Walking Trail in Woodhouse Park.21 In 2021 feedback from participants revealed that they felt they had been given a voice, been valued, and been part of a meaningful process: ‘Being a resident I have identified several things lacking in the area and surrounding areas; and felt heard and valued’; ‘ … new ideas on how my community could be healthier’; and ‘I’ve learnt the process it takes to make projects come to life’. Such feedback demonstrates People, Planning and Power’s ‘principle 13’ in action: the participatory process has produced actionable, practical and visible results, thus ensuring that participants have not felt that they had been wasting their time. Heart & Soul Woodhouse Park has seen participants embrace their role as local experts, learn participatory research techniques, enthusiastically collect
valuable evidence, and equitably devise healthy place-based solutions. In conclusion, an in-depth participatory method was applied in the Heart & Soul Woodhouse Park project, with a view to supporting planning practitioners in considering ways to overcome barriers to engaging community members in healthy place-making. The approach applied in this project enabled participants to engage deeply and be actively involved in a healthy place-making process of urban change. Participants have felt empowered and have taken a lead in researching how to make Woodhouse Park a healthier place in which to live and work — as is evident in their feedback on the process. They are now beginning to take forward land- and building-based actions in partnership with local organisations, influencing and shaping the continued evolution of Woodhouse Park into a healthier neighbourhood.
•
Sarah Spanton is Director of Waymarking CIC, which supports local residents, organisations and businesses in undertaking community-led planning and regeneration in their neighbourhoods. Dr Razieh Zandieh is a Lecturer in Urban Design and Planning at the University of Manchester (https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/razieh.zandieh). The views expressed are personal. Notes 1 See, for example, Enabling Healthy Placemaking: Overcoming Barriers and Learning from Best Practices. RTPI Research Paper. Royal Town Planning Institute, Jul. 2020. www.rtpi.org.uk/media/5777/enablinghealthy-placemaking.pdf 2 Reports produced under the TCPA’s ‘Reuniting Health with Planning’ project are available at https://tcpa.org.uk/ resources/tcpa-healthy-place-making-publications/ 3 M Chang, C Petrokofsky, A Stimpson, et al.: Spatial Planning and Health — Getting Research into Practice (GRIP): Study Report. Public Health England, Oct. 2019. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/842840/ Spatial_Planning_and_Health.pdf 4 R Cowan: The Dictionary of Urbanism. Streetwise Press, 2005 5 H Barton and C Tsourou: Healthy Urban Planning: A WHO Guide to Planning for People. E & FN Spon, 2000 6 S R Arnstein: ‘A ladder of citizen participation’. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 1969, Vol. 35 (4), 216–24 7 S Lewis: Mental Health and Town Planning: Building in Resilience. Royal Town Planning Institute, Oct. 2020. www.rtpi.org.uk/practice/2020/october/mental-healthand-town-planning/ 8 AL Dannenberg, H Frumkin and R J Jackson: Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-being, and Sustainability. Island Press, 2012 9 S Kilpatrick: ‘Multi‐level rural community engagement in health’. Australian Journal of Rural Health, 2009, Vol. 17 (1), 39–44 10 S Carlisle: ‘Tackling health inequalities and social exclusion through partnership and community engagement? A reality check for policy and practice aspirations from a Social Inclusion Partnership in Scotland’. Critical Public Health, 2010, Vol. 20 (1), 117–27
11 M Marmot, J Allen, T Boyce, P Goldblatt and J Morrison: Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review 10 Years On. Institute of Health Equity, Feb. 2020. www.instituteofhealthequity.org/the-marmot-review10-years-on 12 S Cyril, B J Smith, A Possamai-Inesedy and A M Renzaho: ‘Exploring the role of community engagement in improving the health of disadvantaged populations: a systematic review’. Global Health Action, 2015, Vol. 8 (1), Art. 29842 13 Guide 11: People, Planning and Power. Garden City Standards for the 21st Century: Practical Guide for Creating Successful New Communities. TCPA. Mar. 2019. https://tcpa.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2021/11/GC_PracticalGuide_PPP.pdf 14 See ‘Local pilot in Manchester’. Webpage. MCRactive. www.mcractive.com/activity/local-pilot-in-manchester 15 See the Waymarking CIC website, at www.waymarking.org.uk/about 16 See Manchester City Council’s Area Profile Intelligence Hub (Manchester Statistics) (using Ordnance Survey and Office for National Statistics data), at www.manchester.gov.uk/info/200088/statistics_and_ intelligence/7611/intelligence_hub 17 Indices of Deprivation: 2019 and 2015. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. https://dclgapps.communities.gov.uk/imd/iod_index.html# 18 D Deakin: ‘The second wave 1945–64: Houses, houses, and yet more houses’. In D Deakin (Ed.): Wythenshawe: The Story of a Garden City. Phillimore, 1989 19 M Miller: English Garden Cities: An Introduction. English Heritage, 2010. https://historicengland.org.uk/ images-books/publications/english-garden-citiesintroduction/english-garden-cities/ 20 J Hopkins and M Hebbert: ‘Wythenshawe — Manchester’s Municipal Garden City’. In M Corbin Sies, I Gournay and R Freestone (Eds): Iconic Planned Communities and the Challenge of Change. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019, Chap. 14. Manuscript deposit copy available at https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10087415/1/ Wythenshawe%202019%20final%20ms.pdf 21 See the ‘Wythenshawe ‘Heart & Soul’ Project’ webpage. MCRactive. www.mcractive.com/news/heartandsoul
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hillfields homes for heroes Pete Insole looks at the history of the pioneering Hillfields council housing estate in Bristol and the events that were organised to celebrate its centenary
Hillfields Homes for Heroes launch event, as actors recreate with the community a 1920 visit by delegates from around the UK and beyond to the Fishponds Park (Hillfields) housing Demonstration Area in Bristol
Hillfields Homes for Heroes was a community learning project co-ordinated by Local Learning, a not-for-profit community interest company that has been delivering heritage projects in Bristol since 2005. The project at Hillfields, a suburb in north-east Bristol, aimed to work with local residents to research and tell the story of this important neighbourhood to help celebrate its centenary in 2019-20. Following the First World War, the government finally decided that urgent action was required to address the country’s housing needs. The Prime Minister at the time, David Lloyd George, called for 258 Town & Country Planning
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‘a country fit for heroes’, with housing appropriate for returning servicemen. Throughout the 19th and early 20th century there had been repeated calls to end the slum areas of Britain but only piecemeal action had been taken. In 1919, Parliament passed a Housing Act that encouraged local government to build housing for the working classes with financial aid from central government. The Act — the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919 — is also known as the Addison Act after Christopher Addison, the Minister of Health who introduced it.
C F W Dening’s original plan for the Fishponds Park housing estate, designed to follow many of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City principles — the block of houses at the top left of the estate would become the Demonstration Area Source: Bristol Archives, Ref 44666/1/17
competition, inviting several architects to propose suitable house designs. This was all undertaken prior to the Housing Act receiving Royal Assent on 31 July 1919. However, the Corporation’s approach largely followed the recommendations within the Tudor Walters Committee Report of 1918 that influenced the provisions of the 1919 Act. In this way, Bristol was well set up to implement the recommendations of the Act and meet the requirements to secure government subsidies. Thirty-nine architectural designs were submitted for the competition, with 10 winners being announced Hillfields and the Demonstration Area in June 1919. A Women’s Advisory Committee Even before the introduction of the 1919 Housing (WAC) had contributed to the assessment of the Act, Bristol Corporation (now Bristol City Council) competition entries on display at Colston Hall at the had decided to take action to address a recognised end of May. The WAC was particularly concerned requirement for at least 5,000 new houses in the with the size of the sculleries within the designs city. As early as 1917, the Housing of the Working and the need for hot water to help the ‘housewife’ Classes Sub-Committee had asked the City ensure a well cared for living environment for her Engineer to look for suitable housing sites. In family. 1918, the Housing Extensions and Town Planning Early in 1919, the Corporation had prepared a Committee was established to move forward on proposal to the Local Government Board and its the development of five new Garden Suburbs at President, Christopher Addison, in central government, Bedminster, Fishponds, Horfield, Filton, and who had suggested that the government would Westbury-on-Trym. C FW Dening was appointed as fund the construction of some experimental blocks advisory architect for the schemes. of houses at a ‘Demonstration Area’ on part of the The first of the estates to progress was the proposed Fishponds Park (Hillfields) estate. This project at Fishponds Park (Hillfields). The Corporation Demonstration Area in the north-west corner of bought the land and began designing the layout of Hillfields consequently contains the earliest Addison the estate in 1919. At the same time, it ran a Act houses in Bristol. Slums in Bristol
In Bristol, before 1919 there had been the usual piecemeal approach to addressing the issue of housing. In fact, in many respects Bristol had done very little to deal with the city’s slums and the lack of quality housing. During the 19th century, the population of Bristol had dramatically increased, and housing had been built largely by private enterprise with limited regulation. This had resulted in areas of the city where people were living in overcrowded, squalid and unhealthy homes.
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An architectural winning design by Mr Arnold Mitchell, showing a proposed semi-detached parlour house built on several streets in Hillfields and other 1920s estates Source: Bristol Archives, Ref Red Label Plans/22/2/28
On 5 June 1920 the houses at the Demonstration Area were visited by over 500 delegates from across the UK and beyond, including representatives from Europe, the United States, and the ‘Dominions’ (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa). These delegates arrived by train at Staple Hill station and were shown around the new housing by groups of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. The delegates looked around a set of houses that are now unique to Bristol, although these designs went on to inform the type of council houses built across the city before the Second World War. After visiting Hillfields, the delegates went on to visit works at Sea Mills and Knowle Park. All the houses built within the Demonstration Area were competition-winning designs by architects W H Watkins, Heathman and Blacker, Mr S S Reay, Mr Austin Botterill, Mr Wakefield, and Mr Arnold Mitchell. The original plans of these houses indicate that these homes had a living room, usually accessed from a small hall, and three bedrooms and a bathroom and toilet upstairs. A scullery to the rear was also provided, including a copper for heating water, a sink, and a larder. It is unlikely that the first residents of these houses in 1920 had ever lived in such a dwelling, with their own bathroom and flushing toilet inside the house. Before this, toilets for workingclass dwellings would often have been shared facilities outside in the back yard. 260 Town & Country Planning
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Other aims of the Demonstration Area were to explore parlour (a second ground-floor reception room) and non-parlour house types, as well as the number of bedrooms and short-terrace and semidetached types. A consideration at the time was that a parlour could be used as an additional bedroom when an occupant was an injured serviceman unable to easily ascend the stairs. Labour members within the Bristol Corporation were keen for more homes with parlours to be built, despite the cost of these larger houses and the resulting higher rents. The parlour house can be seen as one of the defining aspects of housing policy during the interwar period. More than half of the early estates like Hillfields and Sea Mills built under the terms of the 1919 Act have parlour houses, compared with only 15% of the similarly sized estate of Southmead, designed and built following the 1924 Housing Act. The most striking contrast lies in the south of the city. Over 70% of the Addison Act estate of Knowle Park are parlour houses, as opposed to less than 20% of the neighbouring larger Knowle and Bedminster estate built following the later 1920s and 1930 Acts. Many residents of these houses reported that the parlour was saved for ‘best’ or special occasions. Even today, this tradition of ‘best’ room or sitting room reserved for visitors persists in many households. Interestingly, even in non-parlour houses the ground floor living room was sometimes kept as the
Zed Photography
Travelling Kitchen provided cookery workshops at the celebratory event in June 2020
more house types than any of the other inter-war estates (about 30 individual types compared with the average of 15 for other estates). The house types built were almost all designed by eight different architectural practices that came from the original architectural competition winners. Within Hillfields, there are only a few blocks of houses designed by the City Engineers Department that form a larger proportion of house designs on later estates. Boys on the Hillfields recreation ground in about 1922 Image supplied by a local resident at one of the Hillfields sharing memories events
‘Christmas’ room, and communal family time was usually confined to the scullery / kitchen. Following the relative success of the Demonstration Area in 1920, Bristol Corporation continued with the construction of the estate. By the end of 1921, approximately half the estate was complete. However, this coincided with the Geddes Axe — a government review of spending, resulting in cuts to the Housing Act budget and a temporary hiatus in housebuilding. Some house construction did continue under existing contracts in 1922. The remainder of housing in Hillfields was not completed until the introduction of the subsequent Housing Acts of 1923 and 1924. Community facilities
At the time of the Geddes Axe, the only community facility built on the estate was the provision of a recreation ground between Thicket Avenue and Beechen Drive. Hillfields Junior School, now Minerva Primary Academy, was not opened until 1927, and the shops at Market Square, St Bede’s Church and the Baptist Church on Thicket Avenue were not built until the later 1920s or early 1930s. A community centre was built by the community themselves in the 1950s partly using a former Army Nissen hut. By 1930, nearly 1,500 houses had been built in Hillfields. Because the estate includes some experimental and unique blocks, the area contains
Hillfields centenary
In 2019, thanks to funding from Arts Council England, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Bristol City Council and Historic England’s Heritage Schools programme, Local Learning CIC worked in partnership to deliver a series of free activities and events to celebrate the centenary of Bristol’s first council estate. Hillfields Homes for Heroes formed part of a city-wide celebration of the 1919 Housing Act that included activities in Sea Mills and Knowle. The year of activities at Hillfields included heritage trails led by actors and local residents. Writing, photography and art workshops were also held to create an exhibition and legacy booklet about the project and the neighbourhood. The project culminated in a community celebration event in June 2020 that featured cookery workshops organised by Travelling Kitchen in the role of the Women’s Advisory Committee and an audio trail that had been created through drama workshops with residents and the local Girl Guides’ group. The result has been to raise awareness within and beyond the local community about this important place in our housing history at a time when housing shortages are again a national issue. Insole is Co-director of Myers-Insole Local Learning CIC. •ThisPete article is based on the Bristol Homes for Heroes story map that was created during the project (see https://arcg.is/0yzumv), and further information is available on the project webpages, at www.locallearning.org.uk/hillfields-homes-for-heroes/ The views expressed are personal. Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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tenants and residents associations in england —
activities and operation
The LSE GV314 Group report key results from a survey of more than 500 English tenants and residents associations that examined their activities, how they work, and the problems that they face Self-organising and independent groups of tenants and residents of a small neighbourhood or even block should interest us. One does not have to invoke cliché about politics being local to recognise that tenants and residents associations (TARAs) deal with issues of central, immediate and direct concern to citizens — the fabric and amenities of where they live, the state of their housing, the noise, traffic, and crime. Their roles can include representing local communities to government as well as private bodies, mobilising local residents as well as gaining the support of non-residents in issues of local concern, providing direct services to tenants and residents, enhancing community social and cultural life, and forming the basis for wider social enterprises. We do not know much about them. We do not even know how many there are. The Third Sector Research Centre simply points out that there are ‘thousands’ of them.1 Academic studies of TARAs have tended to focus on broader theoretical questions such as their transition over time from protest group to social network;2 their role in creating cross-class coalitions allied to working-class agitation,3 and more recently in furthering middle-class interests, as ‘homeowner activist’ associations;4 and the impact of TARAs on ‘social capital’, linking their development to the 262 Town & Country Planning
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community and benefits to individuals from the development of close interpersonal networks and associations.5 Without seeking to deny the importance of these broader questions about the role of TARAs, we lack much detail about what they actually do, how they go about it, and with what impact. The aim of this article is to report on a survey of 527 members of English tenants and residents associations, mainly in a leadership role, that casts significant light on their activities, how they work, and the problems that they face. Finding TARAs
One reason that we do not have much systematic knowledge about TARAs is that it is hard to define what they are with great precision. TARAs exist within an ecology of local organisations and informal groupings where the distinctions between types are not always clear. The ecosystem includes a host of ‘below the radar’ organisations as identified by the ‘micro-mapping’ exercise of the Third Sector Research Centre,1 such as youth groups, groups for particular ethnic groups, cultural and faith groups, groupings such as bridge clubs and radio hams, community and amenity charities identified by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO),6 the parish and community councils, and a range of
Table 1
Over-representation of TARAs in southern England Respondents
Index of As a percentage Percentage of of all respondents English population disproportionality in region
London
219
44
16
2.8
South East
110
22
16
1.4
South West
60
12
10
1.2
East
30
6
11
0.5
North East
10
2
5
0.4
East Midlands
18
4
9
0.4
Yorkshire & Humber
19
4
10
0.4
West Midlands
19
4
10
0.4
North West
18
4
13
0.3
Total
503
100
100
1.0
other sub-municipal bodies,7 as well as the host of local consultative forums run by businesses, publicsector organisations, not-for-profit organisations, and private landlords. While we are unlikely to come up with a clear watertight definition of what a TARA is, we can specify the criteria we used for defining what we sought to include or exclude from our study. We considered that TARAs are organisations focused on a community of interest substantially linked to the substance of residing in the locality, rather than from other commonalities such as a pastime or sporting interest. They have a ‘neighbourhood’ focus on localities smaller than a district or unitary local authority area. The association also has to be non-statutory, unlike a parish council, for example. It should be substantially run by the tenants or residents themselves, rather than being branches of a larger association such as a tenants union, a nationally organised association of tenants of a particular social landlord, or a consultative group organised by a landlord (whether private or social) or owner. Our definition of TARAs broadly as non-statutory organisations focused on a community of interest substantially defined by location is, of course, still rather loose. Contacting them poses further problems, since there are no central directories of these associations.8 To explore TARAs we needed to mail our survey directly to leading figures in TARAs and so used conventional search engines for groups going under the names of residents/tenants/ neighbourhood/community and/or association/group to get the contact details of their key office-holders from their websites and Facebook pages. We also used the lists of local TARAs that some councils compile. We examined where possible the available information about the groups to ensure that they corresponded to our understanding of a TARA. We
sent out questionnaires to 1,283 individuals, mainly chairs or other officers named on the TARA website or similar and, after two reminders, received 527 responses — a response rate of 41% (although some individual questions received fewer than 527 valid responses). We found TARAs predominantly in the southern areas of England (see Table 1), with more respondents than one would expect, proportionate to the population; elsewhere there were fewer. London had 2.8 times as many as one would expect, and the South East and the South West 1.4 and 1.2 times as many, respectively. The Midlands and the East of England had less than half, and especially under-represented was the North West, which yielded only 18 respondents compared with an expected 69 if responses were proportionate to population. One possible explanation for this imbalance is that the method we used to gain our sample has biased the sample towards southern England. Another is that southern England really does have proportionately more TARAs. These issues are more easily addressed once we know more about the nature of the different organisations in the sample. TARAs as organisations
Among the respondents, 40% represented memberships defined by housing tenure — with 19% representing tenants and leaseholders with public-sector landlords (two-thirds of which were councils, one-third housing associations), and with 21% private-sector tenants and leaseholders. The remaining 60% had residency-based memberships where place and not tenure is not a defining feature of membership. For the sake of brevity, we will call the former ‘tenants associations’ and the latter ‘residents associations’ where we have to distinguish between them. Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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Most TARAs have the legal status of an ‘unincorporated association’, a legal form that does not require registration like a company or charity but also restricts financial actions as they cannot make profits or invest savings. Other legal forms of association were represented by our respondents; 7% were registered charities and 12% were limited companies. Limited company status appears particularly predominant among smaller associations as the status is often used to manage the communal areas (such as gardens) of small estates of owner-occupiers. The size of the association varied greatly (see Table 2); a small number (7%) of respondents came from associations representing under 20 households, while the largest single size category (27%) was those respondents from associations with over 1,000 households. Tenants associations tended to be smaller than residents associations: 58% of respondents from residents associations had over 300 households compared with 29% of those from tenants associations. More difficult to gauge was the general level of activity of the association. As one respondent put it, ‘the association is not very active — has a few meetings a year and does the occasional tree/bulb planting’. At the other end, one has the association with, as its chair wrote, ‘920 households within this community [ … ] we work very closely with our local borough councillors and county councillor, various departments of the council and the police’. One indicator of the level of activity is the amount of time that office-holders spend on TARA business: 23% spent less than an hour a week, 38% between one and three hours, and 39% over three hours. The length of time per week spent is significantly related to the size of the association, as one would expect, with 67% of respondents from TARAs with over 300 households spending over 3 hours a week compared with 39% of those from smaller TARAs. TARAs are largely run by older people. If we take the major office-holders in the associations (chair, treasurer, and similar) that constitute the large majority (83%) of our sample, they were primarily (65%) aged 65 years or over, with only 11% aged 50 or under. The over-64s accounted for just 22% of the English population of over-14s in 2021. A large proportion (57%) had been members of the association for over 10 years, with few (11%) having been members for five years or less. Leaders of TARAs are also more likely to be men (57% of office-holders and committee members) than women (42%). Residents associations were marginally less likely to be run by men than tenants associations (55% as opposed to 61%) but more likely to be run by the over-65s (71% compared with 54%). One reason for the preponderance of older age groups might be the amount of time demanded of office-holders in TARAs, which is possibly more easily met by those who have retired from paid 264 Town & Country Planning
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Table 2
Households in respondents’ associations Number of households
Number of Percentage respondents of total
20 or under
37
7
Between 21 and 100
123
23
Between 101 and 300
103
20
Between 301 and 1,000
122
23
Over 1,000
142
27
employment. Nevertheless, there was no tendency for the relatively small number of under-65s to spend less time on TARA business or to hold office in smaller associations. For many respondents, running the association is a burden not widely shared. When asked a question about the willingness of residents and tenants to engage with the association, 30% of respondents agreed that ‘the majority of tenants/residents are keen to be involved in the Association’ and 40% disagreed (30% neither agreeing nor disagreeing). Those agreeing were marginally more numerous in residents rather than tenants associations (32% against 28%), but this was statistically insignificant. TARA meetings tend to be relatively calm affairs, according to our respondents. Only 10% agreed that ‘strong disagreements are common’ at TARA meetings, with 75% disagreeing. One potential source of discord, the different interests arising from owner-occupation versus renting where the freeholder is the same social landlord, did not appear to be particularly strong. Among the 101 respondents from social housing tenants associations only 25% agreed that there were ‘frequently differences between leaseholders and tenants in how they approach the issues discussed in our tenant/resident association’, while 42% disagreed. Tenants associations in social housing made up only 19% of our sample. Of these, 84% had constitutions approved by the council or social housing provider, 83% had representatives from social landlords at their annual general meetings, and 52% received funds from them. What TARAs do
There are several ways of finding out what TARAs do. We began by asking a question about the broad purpose of the organisation (see Table 3 on the next page), allowing respondents to choose the top two functions only. A large majority — 77% — chose as a main function the representation of the neighbourhood. Two subsidiary purposes were pursued by our respondents’ associations: giving advice and support to residents (46%), and building and maintaining communal facilities (34%). 93% of respondents belonged to associations that cited at
Table 3
Main purposes of TARAs Purpose
Number of associations Percentage of selecting this purpose respondents
Representing the interests of the neighbourhood and its residents
403
77
Giving support, advice or information to residents
241
46
Building or maintaining community spirit among residents
178
34
Providing communal facilities and/or services to residents
66
13
Promoting environmental protection and/or green issues
54
10
Looking after vulnerable and/or disadvantaged residents
20
4
Avoiding or resolving conflicts among residents
10
2
None of the above
19
4
Sample size = 527; up to two answers possible
Table 4
Respondents’ associations spending ‘a lot of time on’ specified activities Residents Tenants All Number of associations associations, associations, associations, % % % selecting this activity 51
Planning and licensing issues that affect our neighbourhood
216
42
30
Repairs and/or maintenance of buildings
133
27
49
11
Maintaining and/or developing communal facilities or spaces
121
24
26
23
Organising social and/or recreational events
109
22
13
28
Anti-social behaviour, crime and/or noise
99
20
25
16
Promoting green issues and/or environmental protection
87
17
12
21
Fire safety and/or prevention
50
10
19
4
Helping vulnerable and/or disadvantaged people
48
10
13
7
least one of the top three purposes in Table 3 as their main purpose. There was no significant difference between tenants and residents associations in answers to this question. A second way of assessing the activity of TARAs is to ask how much time they spend on a particular type of activity associated with TARAs (see Table 4). Respondents were asked how much time they spent on a range of activities, choosing from options of ‘a lot of time’, ‘little time’, or ‘no time’. Here, there are clear differences between tenants and residents associations. While TARAs in total spend the largest portion of their time on planning and licensing issues, with 42% spending a lot of time on them, tenants associations are less likely (30%) to spend a lot of time on planning and licensing than residents associations (51%). Instead, tenants associations are likely to spend time on issues relating to the repairs and maintenance of buildings (49%). Residents
associations are likely to spend more time on social and recreational events (28%) than tenants associations (13%), and while tenants associations tend to spend most time on repairs, planning and communal spaces (49%, as noted), for residents associations this is occupies less time (11%). We also asked respondents to identify the most important issue faced in the past five years. Respondents were free to write what they wished and we coded the results. The results were highly variable, including ‘a murder on the estate’, ‘stopping our local doctor’s surgery from closing’, and ‘obtaining the freehold of our block’. Table 5 on the next page presents the results of the discrete coded categories which more than one in 20 respondents (more than 5%) claimed as their biggest issue (the smaller discrete most-important issues are collapsed into the ‘other’ category). Again, issues connected with planning permission were the single most important issues for both Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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tenants and residents associations. However, the concerns of different types of association tend to reflect differences in the character of their memberships. The most important issues for residents are planning permission and parking — 60% of them cited these issues as the most important that they have faced compared with only 28% of tenants associations. Fire safety, disagreements with the manager, crime and anti-social behaviour and maintenance together was the top issue for 48% of respondents from tenants associations but only 13% from residents associations. TARAs as political actors
The concentration of activities around planning, licensing, building repairs and maintenance, as well as anti-social behaviour, noise and crime, suggests that TARAs’ external political activities are substantially developed through their relationship with the local council. When we asked our respondents how they had furthered the aims of their association in the past five years, almost all (93%) had contacted a councillor — slightly more residents associations than tenants associations did so (see Table 6). 64% worked together with other TARAs. A large percentage used other means
too — contacting an MP (55%), petition or protest (42%), and contacting the press or media (39%) — while a smaller proportion took legal action (17%), with legal action appearing to be more likely among tenants than residents associations. The relationship with the council is one of the most important characteristics of the association. We asked respondents about their relationship with their local district, borough or unitary council — whether the council responded well to what they say ‘on day-to-day issues’; whether the TARA is ‘consulted on important issues’; and whether they felt ‘what they said influenced the council’ (see Table 7 on the next page). Respondents were more likely to agree than disagree that the council responded well to day-to-day issues and that the TARA was consulted and had influence, but the proportions agreeing with these positive views were below a half, and only around a third agreed that they have influence. Moreover, the views of residents associations are more likely to be positive in this respect than those of tenants associations. Tenants association respondents were statistically significantly more likely than those from residents associations to disagree that they were consulted on day-to-day
Table 5
Most important issue faced by the association in the past five years (coded) All associations, %
Residents associations, %
Tenants associations, %
Planning permission
37
48
22
Parking and roads
10
12
6
Maintenance/refurbishment
8
3
16
Crime/anti-social behaviour
8
6
10
Disagreements with landlord/property manager
6
3
12
Fire safety
5
1
10
Other
26
27
26
Total
505
300
205
All associations, %
Residents associations, %
Tenants associations, %
Contacting a local councillor
93
97
88
Working with other TARAs
64
70
56
Contacting an MP
55
54
56
Petition or protest
42
42
43
Contacting the press or media
39
41
37
Legal action
17
11
26
Table 6
How TARAs further their aims Furthered aims by …
Sample size = 475
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Table 7
Relations with the council Agree, %
Neither, Disagree, % %
Council responds well on day-today issues
48
25
27
Council consults us on important issues
40
23
37
We have influence
35
34
31
Sample size = 513
issues (32% compared with 24%), that they were consulted on important issues (43% against 33%), and that they had influence (40% against 25%). Since they are statistically strongly related to each other, the three questions about the relationship between the association and the council can be usefully combined, so that for each of the statements with which the respondent agrees (the council responds well to day-to-day issues, consults on big issues, and is influenced by the association) we add one point to an index of council support. One-third (34%) score 0 on this index, 25% have a score of 1, 21% a score of 2, and 17% the top score of 3, with an average score for all respondents of 1.2. This index is significantly related to the size of the association, with smaller associations having lower average scores — the average score for associations with 300 households or fewer was 1.0; for larger associations it was 1.4. The index of council support also has quite important relationships with some of the other variables in our survey. Tenants associations have significantly lower scores (average 1.06) than residents associations (1.32). Consequently, those TARAs that spend time on tenancy issues such as repairs and maintenance have much lower scores (0.77) than those that do not (1.34); similarly the small group of TARAs spending a lot of time on fire safety have much lower scores (0.72) than those that do not (1.25). Conversely, associations spending a lot of time on planning and licensing tend to have higher scores (1.40) than those that do not (1.09). Dealings with councils on matters relating to their role as social housing providers tend to produce less positive attitudes towards the council than dealings on planning matters. The level to which respondents feel supported generally by their council has a wider impact on the association. It appears to encourage participation in the TARA. More (52%) of those scoring 3 on the index of council support agreed that their members were ‘keen to be involved in the TARA’ than those scoring 2 (31%), 1 (24%), or 0 (21%). Relations with the council appear to be related to the success of the association in achieving its
objectives, albeit we have to recognise that perceived success might itself shape perceptions of support from the council. If we look at the outcome of the most important issue that respondents’ TARAs have faced in the past five years, 22% reported that it had been resolved satisfactorily, 11% reported that it had not, a further 22% wrote that it had been ‘partly’ resolved, and 35% reported the matter was ‘ongoing’ (9% said ‘other’, which included responses such as the issue required ‘constant intervention’ or that a problem like ‘rising sea levels’ could not be resolved). There was no significant difference between tenants and residents associations on this measure of success. However, the mean score on the index of council support of those believing that their most important issue was resolved satisfactorily was 1.4, for those believing it was not it was 0.8 (for those saying it was partly resolved 1.3, and for those saying it was ongoing 1.2). The strategies used for seeking to fulfil their objectives also was related to the general index of council support. TARAs with higher indexes were statistically significantly more likely to further their aims by contacting councillors, contacting the press or media and working together with other TARAs, and less likely to pursue legal action. Our survey included one short question which sought to gauge the extent to which TARAs regarded councillor partisanship as significant for their association. Interestingly, 47% agreed that councillor party made a difference while 25% disagreed (38% neither agreed nor disagreed). Those that agreed had mean scores of 2.01 on the index of council support, and those that disagreed had mean scores of 0.43. Feeling supported by the council might be related to the perception of the council as a party-politicised environment since more active engagement with the council brings a stronger awareness of the political environment in which councils operate. As one respondent said: ‘Running a RA is very hard and unthankful work. Our association has been swamped with issues and residents only half engaged. We have to be non-political, yet work in a highly political environment where it’s clear which local councillors support us and those that don’t or don’t understand the issues of estate living.’ Another noted that: ‘Our ward councillors are a great support but they are bound by their political association.’ English TARAs as a southern phenomenon
We now have to confront the point that the survey covers predominantly southern England (78% of respondents), and in particular London and the South East (66% of respondents). The regional imbalance was apparent as we drew up our sample as we found it difficult to find email contact details Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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for TARAs outside the English south in the numbers we might expect. Birmingham City Council’s website (covering a population of 1.15 million), for instance, lists just 10 TARAs by name and, while suggesting that an additional 14 might exist, does not name them. In contrast, Camden in London (population 0.26 million) lists 300. As discussed above, our attempts to secure the help of councils outside the south and of national organisations to which some TARAs belong produced disappointing results. Our search for some distinctive features of southern TARAs that might help to explain this underrepresentation largely drew a blank. Public-sector tenants associations make up a larger portion of the London and South Eastern associations (20%) than in areas outside (18%), but this is not statistically significant. Neither are features such as the legal status (whether a registered charity or registered company) that might indicate a distinctive feature of the TARA ecology north of London. If we look at the functions filled by TARAs in the South East and outside, they are broadly similar tasks — of the priorities set out in Table 3, the only significant difference, and not a huge one, was that TARAs outside London were more likely (40%) to see ‘maintaining community spirit’ as a main function than those inside London and the South East (30%), and more likely (7%) to see their role as ‘looking after vulnerable people’ (London and the South East 2%). One possibility is that property values, higher in the South East, might create extra incentives for ‘Nimbysim’ and a certain kind of ‘homeowner activism’.9 Such an argument has at best only limited support from our survey. London and South Eastern TARAs are significantly but not spectacularly more likely to spend a lot of time on planning and licensing issues (48%) than others (34%). Yet, on the other hand, TARAs in London and the South East are also more likely to devote a lot of time to the traditional tenants’ issue of repairs and maintenance (33%) than elsewhere (17%). The same absence of a clear and strong regional ‘Nimby’ effect can be seen in the responses to the question of the biggest issue faced by the TARA in the last five years. While planning issues were cited somewhat more frequently in London (41%) than outside (27%), parking and roads are bigger issues outside London and the South East (15%) than they are within it (6%). One particular feature of London that might make it more likely to be home to TARAs is the fact that it is largely ‘unparished’, i.e. without parish councils — statutory representative bodies not included in our sample that can fulfil many of the representative and social functions of TARAs. London has traditionally been unparished, although since the introduction of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 it has been possible to set them 268 Town & Country Planning
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up. There is now (since 2012) just one: Queen’s Park Community Council. Moreover, ‘many local authority district councils adjoining London, such as Epsom & Ewell, Thurrock, Runnymede and Watford, have no parish councils’.10 If we take the nine traditional economic regions and correlate the number of community/parish councils per million inhabitants (as set out in the Oscar database11) with the respondents to our survey per million, there is a clear tendency for the parished areas to be under-represented in our sample (correlation of –0.48). Yet this is entirely due to London as an outlier: exclude London and the correlation turns positive, at +0.38. While it is widely accepted that TARA numbers appear to have been in decline throughout England (discussed below), the signs of organisational decline do not appear to be particularly greater outside London and the South East. TARAs in London and the South East were somewhat less likely to be run by older people (60% of respondents were aged over 65) than elsewhere (71%). They were no more likely to be female (42% compared with 41%). Covid did have a significantly bigger impact on the activity of TARAs outside London and the South East; within it 53% said their association ‘carried on as normal’ during the Covid crisis, compared with 33% outside. Yet the differences between TARAs in London and those in the South East are also at least as significant as the differences between those in London and the South East and those in the remainder of England. For instance, respondents from the South East are significantly more likely to be from residents as opposed to tenants organisations than London (68% compared with 50%). In short, none of the answers given in response to our questions suggest a different environment for TARAs in the south sufficiently strong to explain such a large over-representation in our sample. On the other hand, there are a reasons to take seriously the argument that this regional imbalance might not simply be an artefact of the way that the survey was administered and reflects a true regional imbalance. One is that, as discussed above, we made many unsuccessful efforts specifically to increase the numbers of TARAs from areas other than the South in our sample and among respondents. Another is that a finding of regional imbalance does fit with some less hard evidence available. Only 20 of the 66 associations set out in the membership list of the National Organisation of Residents Associations12 were located outside London, the South West, and South East. In interview the Director of the Federation of Private Residents’ Associations (with over 500 members) told us that ‘most of the members of the Federation are based in London and the South East’ and a northern-based secretary of a residents association who was a regional organiser for the Federation pointed out
Benjamin Elliott on Unsplash
‘TARAs exist within an ecology of local organisations and informal groupings where the distinctions between types are not always clear’
that ‘that there were very few members in the North of England’. Another reason is that there is some evidence from the NCVO6 that other kinds of voluntary organisations are more dense on the ground in London, the South East and the South West than one would expect on the basis of population, and fewer outside13 — albeit on a lower scale of overrepresentation than that set out in Table 1 above.
the smallest but we are still one of the busiest, providing services and events 50 weeks a year. In Sheffield during the Covid pandemic we were one of only two TARAs that stayed open.’
Covid provided a substantial barrier to the development of TARA activity. While 46% of our respondents told us that TARA activity carried on during the pandemic, 54% reported some disruption — half of those affected (27% of the The slow death of TARAs? sample) believed that the disruption was over by A range of commentators have suggested that the time of our questionnaire (February 2022), TARAs are in decline.14 Since we have no crossnearly half (26%) said that the disruption was still time data on this matter we cannot document a significant or severe, but only 2% said that the decline. disruption was likely to be permanent. Many of the freehand comments we invited at the If there is a decline, one of the prominent end of our questionnaire pointed to the respondent’s candidates for explaining it is the apparent change association struggling to survive. For instance, one in mechanisms of representation, from collective East Midlands respondent wrote that their TARA engagement through TARAs to more individual ‘is currently dissolved and trying to re-establish forms, where the ‘exercise of consumer influence but [there are] some difficulties with forming a and the expectation of service quality have been committee’, and even a respondent from a highly enshrined as new constitutional rights for the users active TARA in Sheffield pointed to increasing of public services’.15 Related to this is the argument that new technologies of consultation — social media, difficulties: the possibility of direct contact through emails, and ‘I have been involved with the TARA for 30 years easily constructed and delivered questionnaires, as … [I have] seen the demise of many TARAs well as online meetings — appear to be adopted as, because they have not adapted and embraced change. Also the Covid pandemic has closed a lot from the freeholder perspective, attractive forms of participation, making interactions ‘rather more of TARAs as they were run by Committees who were elderly (70 years plus) and because of being arms-length, relying on survey responses and data ‘stuck in their ways’ new, younger people are not analytics’ and at least introducing the suspicion that ‘reduced face-to-face contact risks losing touch getting involved. 30 years ago we were one of with the multi-dimensional complexity of tenants’ the largest TARAs in Sheffield; due to demolition day-to-day lives’. and changes on the estate we are now one of Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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kasto80/iStock
Changing modes of consultation may be a factor in the apparent decline in the number of TARAs
Moreover, there are now a range of different council- or housing association-run consultative mechanisms, including tenant representation on governing bodies.16 There are also changing modes of consultation, including incorporating tenants on governing boards of associations or a wide range of tenant and resident engagement forums.16 We would expect such changes to produce stronger declines in the numbers of tenants associations, compared with residents associations, although the latter share some other challenges with tenant bodies. It is instructive that we were contacted by a residents association from a Yorkshire city some months after our survey to tell us that their council had terminated its grant to support the running of the association with no notice or consultation and announced this as a ‘saving arising from the introduction of new approaches to resident engagement’. While some of the other candidates for decline are found in the comments of residents associations too (participation being an older person’s game and the difficulties of recruiting young people; an increasingly mobile population; the rise of Airbnb and second-homeownership), some of our evidence is consistent with a disproportionately stronger decline in public-sector TARA involvement. Publicsector tenants associations were less likely to have carried on during the Covid epidemic (31% compared with 41% in other TARAs), less likely to report enthusiasm of neighbours for their work (22% against 32%), and less likely to report a satisfactory outcome to their most pressing issue in the past five years (13% against 26%). Yet other aspects of our finding point in a different direction — public-sector tenants associations are less likely to be run by the over-65s (43% against 69% of other TARAs). While such public-sector tenants associations now seem to constitute a small portion of TARAs (19% of our respondents were 270 Town & Country Planning
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from them), their numbers are only held so high because of the larger number of such organisations in London (rather than London and the South East), where they constituted 26% of respondents: without London, public-sector TARAs made up only 14% of our respondents. The LSE GV314 Group is a group of final-year undergraduate •students at the London School of Economics and Political Science. For this study its members were George Garson, Yasmeen Hamade, Quido Haskovec, Rianna Heer, Romy Journee, Helene Koch, Lennard Metson, David Murugasu, Archana Pajaniappane, Louis Quah, Matthew Smith, Lewis Tansley, Grace Williams and Jerry Zhao. The corresponding author is Edward C Page (Sidney and Beatrice Webb Professor of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science — e.c.page@lse.ac.uk). The GV314 Group is grateful to Philip Cowley, Tony Travers and Gabriel Leroy for their help. The views expressed are personal.
Notes 1 PA Jones: Housing Scoping Paper: Tenants and Residents Associations and Community-Based Organisations. Briefing Paper 18. Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham, 2010. www.birmingham.ac.uk/documents/college-socialsciences/social-policy/tsrc/working-papers/briefingpaper-18.pdf 2 See the discussion in L Cairncross, D Clapham and R Goodlad: ‘The origins and activities of tenants’ associations in Britain’. Urban Studies, 1992, Vol. 29 (5), 709–25 3 See M Castells: The City and the Grassroots: A CrossCultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. University of California Press, 1983; and S Lowe: Urban Social Movements: The City after Castells. Macmillan, 1986 4 M Purcell: ‘Neighborhood activism among homeowners as a politics of space’. The Professional Geographer, 2001, Vol. 53 (2), 178–94; see also T Butler and G Robson: ‘Social capital, gentrification and neighbourhood change in London: A comparison of three South London neighbourhoods’. Urban Studies, 2001, Vol. 38 (12), 2145–62; and C Webster and R Le Goix: ‘Planning by commonhold’. Economic Affairs, 2005, Vol. 25 (4), 19–23
5 A Middleton, A Murie and R Groves: ‘Social capital and neighbourhoods that work’. Urban Studies, 2005, Vol. 42 (10), 1711–38; and N Williams, R Huggins and P Thompson: ‘Entrepreneurship and social capital: Examining the association in deprived urban neighbourhoods’. International Journal of Urban & Regional Research, 2020, Vol. 44 (2), 289–309 6 Civil Society Almanac 2022. NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organisations), Oct. 2022. www.ncvo.org.uk/news-and-insights/news-index/ uk-civil-society-almanac-2022/#/ 7 C Copus: ‘Decentralisation, democratisation and delivery: English sub-municipal devolution’. In N-K Hlepas, N Kersting, S Kuhlmann, P Swianiewicz and F Teles (Eds): Sub-Municipal Governance in Europe: Decentralization Beyond the Municipal Tier. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp.69–91 8 The national federations to which TARAs belong do not provide viable sources for compiling lists for surveying. A survey for the then Department for Communities and Local Government seeking to contact these associations (Regional and National Tenants’ Organisations. IRIS Consulting, for Department for Communities and Local Government, Oct. 2010. https:// assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/file/6325/1748286.pdf) managed to produce only 40 responses 9 Discussed in ‘Neighborhood activism among homeowners as a politics of space’ (see note 4) 10 M Sandford: Why Do Parish Councils Only Exist in Some Parts of England? Insight Paper. House of Commons Library, Jun. 2022. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/ why-do-parish-councils-only-exist-in-some-parts-ofengland/ 11 See the Oscar Parish Council Database, at www.oscar-research.co.uk/datasheets/parishcouncil 12 See the list of members of the National Organisation of Residents Associations at www.alan.shrank.freeuk.com/members.htm 13 G Jones and R Meegan: Measuring the Size and Scope of the Voluntary and Community Sector in the Liverpool City Region. European Institute for Urban Affairs, Liverpool John Moores University, on behalf of Liverpool Council for Voluntary Services, Jul. 2015. https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/6923/3/ Measuring%20the%20size%20and%20scope%20of%20 the%20voluntary%20and%20community%20sector%20 in%20Liverpool.pdf 14 The Regulation of Social Housing. HC 18. First Report of Session 2022–23. Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee. House of Commons, Jul. 2022. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/ cmcomloc/18/report.html 15 Q Bradley: ‘ ‘Putting our mark on things’: The identity work of user participation in public services’. Critical Social Policy, 2013, Vol. 33 (3), 384–402 16 J Preece: Understanding Approaches to Tenant Participation in Social Housing: An Evidence Review. UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence, Jul. 2019. https://housingevidence.ac.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2019/07/190725-understanding-approaches-totenant-participation-in-SH.pdf; and A Marsh: Social Housing Governance: An Overview of the Issues and Evidence. Social Housing Policy Working Group, UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence R2018_ SHPWG_03, October 2018. https://housingevidence.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/ R0218_SHPWG_03_Governance_Alex_Marsh.pdf
TCPA Webinar
hope for the future: why caring for green infrastructure is vital Thursday 21 September 2023 9:30 am–3:30 pm
Online — via Zoom This free online conference, with Lord Heseltine as keynote speaker, will discuss why the UK is falling behind its peers in the maintenance and management of green infrastructure. Public spaces that are well cared for, with mature trees and new planting, create a much-needed sense of hope — a feeling that someone cares and that the place will get better as time goes by. Visibly cared-for parks, green spaces and trees add to people’s sense of wellbeing — and generate significant economic value. Why, then, is the UK so bad at maintaining places — in particular green infrastructure? Why do some councils seem confident that no-one will mind if they chop down mature trees? Why are new places so often created with little thought about who will maintain them or how this will be funded? Is the UK particularly bad at this? What can be learned from abroad? How can the UK do better? Organised by the TCPA on behalf of the Green Infrastructure Partnership. Supported by the Lady Margaret Paterson Osborn Trust. Tickets are free.
For further information and to book a place, see www.tcpa.org.uk/event/hope-for-the-future/
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severn and avon vales flourishing floodplains project Peter Jones reviews some of the academic literature on floodplain conservation and restoration, and reflects on the characteristics of floodplains and the achievements of floodplain projects, drawing on outcomes from the Severn and Avon Vales Flourishing Floodplains project The Severn and Avon Vales Flourishing Floodplains project, which concluded in March 2023, aimed to restore ‘threatened wetland habitats in the farmed landscapes of the Severn and Avon Vales, helping to increase biodiversity, store carbon, improve soil and water quality, and connect people with nature’.1 This article highlights some of the characteristics of floodplains, reviews some of the academic literature on floodplain conservation and restoration, outlines some of the achievements of the Severn and Avon Vales project, and concludes with some reflections on floodplain projects. Floodplains
In simple terms, a floodplain is defined as ‘a generally flat area of land next to a river or stream’,2 which becomes covered in water when the river exceeds bank-full capacity. A floodplain consists of the river itself, sometimes called the floodway, and the flood fringe, which extends from the outer banks of the river to the edge of its valley. Floodplains are formed by both erosion and deposition. Erosion removes small areas of land, creating a wide, flat area on either side of the river, and, during a period of flood, material being carried by the river is deposited as the river loses its speed and energy. The material deposited on the floodplain is known as alluvium, and is rich in nutrients. In outlining some of the beneficial characteristics of floodplains, the European Environment Agency3 reported that natural undisturbed floodplains are areas of very high biodiversity, that they support 272 Town & Country Planning
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both habitats and species that have adapted to the environmental conditions provided by the cycle of flooding, waterlogging and drying, and that they often provide intermittent habitats for a range of water-dependent species. The European Environment Agency also reported that flooding and waterlogging create a wide variety of ecological niches that are in permanent exchange with the river and its catchment, and that these niches act to support ecological resilience over time. At the same time, floodplain soils often comprise peat with a high organic matter content. When waterlogged, peat has a high carbon storage capacity. More specifically, floodplains deliver a range of ecosystem services — such services can be classified as provisioning, regulating, or cultural. Provisioning services are the tangible products that people obtain from ecosystems. They are vital for the economy, and include biomass, water and fibre, and energy, and many have well developed markets and valuation systems. Regulating services embrace the ways that ecosystems control or modify the environment, and they include climate regulation. Cultural services are more intangible benefits and are linked, in a variety of ways, to human wellbeing. The European Environment Agency3 listed a wide range of ecosystems services provided by undisturbed floodplains. Here, provisioning services included flood control, agricultural plant production, and grazing; regulating services included flood control and the conservation of biodiversity; while in terms
iStock/jon666
Floodwater on a River Severn floodplain
of cultural services floodplains are used for a wide variety of recreational activities. However, the European Environment Agency has also described floodplains as ‘a natural system under pressure’,3 and suggested that two of the main pressures are hydromorphological and pollution. Hydromorphological pressures, often caused by channel straightening, drainage, and water abstraction, for example, include changes to water retention and flow, and changes to the physical characteristics of rivers and their floodplains. These changes often affect the ecology of the natural system, not least in that they can reduce or eliminate the lateral connectivity between the river and its floodplain, which can, in turn, reduce habitat quality and species diversity. Pollution from mining activities and manufacturing industry, as well as power plant cooling water, and waste water, also find their way into rivers. At the same time, nutrient supplements and pesticides, in widespread use in farming, are also moved into rivers and streams, either via groundwater or in surface run-off, and may cause eutrophication, which can cause algal blooms which block off sunlight and kill fish. There seems to be limited accurate information on the extent of floodplains in the UK. The European Environment Agency4 reported that the area of floodplain in the UK covers 13,188 square kilometres (which is roughly twice the area of Devon). Heritage et al.5 reported a total of 5,458 square kilometres of floodplain in England and Wales. In 2017 a report in
the Guardian newspaper suggested that natural floodplains cover about 5% of England, from upland areas and tablelands to low-lying marshes, such as the Somerset Levels and the Fens of East Anglia.6 Large parts of London are built on the River Thames’ tidal floodplain, but the highest risk of river flooding is in outer and west London, and comes from the tributaries of the River Thames or its non-tidal sections. By way of a contrasting setting, in the eastern part of the South Downs, the major river floodplains that run from the Arun in the west to the Cuckmere in the east form the base of valleys that have carved through the chalk uplands, and contain rivers flowing towards the coast. Literature review — floodplain restoration and nature conservation on floodplains
Entwistle et al.7 reported that river degradation had been quantified across Great Britain following adoption of the European Water Framework Directive — but noted that this classification process had concentrated on in-channel conditions, and had largely ignored floodplain presence, and argued that this lack of consideration would undoubtedly see floodplains further ignored as part of the, then, current Water Framework Directive driven restoration agenda. Nevertheless, floodplain restoration and nature conservation on floodplains in the UK have attracted attention in the academic literature in recent years, and three relevant interrelated themes — namely, floodplain restoration; the impact of restoration on Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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plant communities; and nature conservation on floodplains — can be identified within that literature. The aim here is to reflect the range and variety of this work, rather than to provide a comprehensive review. Firstly, some 20 years ago Acreman et al.8 investigated the impacts of floods on hypothetical changes to river channel geometry by the construction or removal of embankments to prevent water spreading onto the floodplain of the River Cherwell between Banbury and Oxford. Their results suggested that floodplain rehabilitation could be a valuable part of the flood management strategy, and that it could lead to increased inundation of the floodplain, which can be positive for ecological restoration. Ball9 reviewed selected floodplain restoration projects in the UK with the aim of examining their effectiveness, in terms of both environmental improvement and the decision-making of the planning and stakeholder groups that led to their implementation. The findings suggested that the most successful projects clearly communicated the multiple benefits of restoration, and that key stakeholders and landowners were involved at the planning stage. In noting that the extension of ecological restoration of river channels to include floodplains increased the complexity of the restoration process, not least because of the range and diversity of stakeholders and management institutions involved, Adams et al.10 drew on a survey of river managers in the UK to identify the institutional factors relevant to the success, or failure, of floodplain restoration projects. Their analysis led them to conclude that local stakeholders were critical to the success of restoration projects, that large institutional owners created the most favourable context for restoration, and that local communities could contribute very positively to the success of projects. Research by Moss11 on institutional drivers and constraints in floodplain restoration in Europe included a case study of the River Parrett in Somerset. Here, a restoration scheme launched in 2000 adopted an integrated approach to meet flood defence needs in a way that was designed to benefit wildlife and support the local economy. The support of local communities was important in accessing funding, in stimulating joint projects, and in initiating dialogue between stakeholders throughout the catchment area. Secondly, Toogood et al.12 examined the sensitivity of floodplain grassland plant communities to water regimes using the reciprocal transplantation of an inundation grassland and a flood meadow, within an English floodplain. The results from both communities showed substantial annual variations related to hydrology, but in general terms vegetation seemed to be responding to drier conditions following a major flood event. This drying trend was characterised by increased 274 Town & Country Planning
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species diversity, a greater abundance of competitive species, and fewer wetland plants. Rothero et al.13 claimed that despite 30 years spent looking to restore species-rich floodplain meadows, the extent and level of restoration success in the UK remained unknown. They reported on a threeyear project which, from 2016 to 2018, evaluated over 150 floodplain meadow sites across the UK. Restoration success was measured by floristic composition, species richness, site ownership, and the quality of ongoing management. The results revealed that 25% of restoration sites demonstrated successful restoration, while 60% of sites showed some signs of restoration. Further, the degree of restoration success showed no significant correlation to the state of the site prior to restoration, or to the method of restoration, while the ownership of the site and site management both positively influenced restoration success. Richards et al.14 studied the changing composition of plant communities at a number of sites in a restoration project designed to improve the quality of floodplain grazing marsh in the UK. The findings revealed significant differences in composition between the pre- and post-restoration stages, and plants with traits for moisture tolerance became more abundant, although there was no increase in floodplain grazing marsh species at the end of the project. Clilverd et al.15 sought to assess the spatial patterns of plant communities in relation to the physical and chemical conditions of the soil, and the impacts of floodplain restoration involving embankment removal, on the River Glaven in Norfolk. They found that, while the restored regime may be suitable for more diverse plant assemblages, such benefits could be overridden unless water levels were managed during the growing season. In conclusion, Clilverd et al.15 argued that hydrological modelling, combined with measures of plant water requirements, could provide practical and adaptive management tools to estimate the response of floodplain communities to changing water regimes. Thirdly, Rouquette et al.16 assessed the relative merits of various methods of valuing nature conservation interests in a case study of agricultural floodplains in England. Seven methods of valuing nature conservation interests were assessed and compared, but each emphasised a different type of conservation, and the authors concluded that, where objectivity was the key, assessment against independently defined criteria, or targets, should be the preferred method. Posthumus et al.17 explored changes in rural land use in floodplains by measuring the range of ecosystem services provided by different management scenarios. Six alternative floodplain management scenarios were developed to reflect different priorities for land use in lowland floodplain areas, and the results indicated that were both
Floodplains can, in theory, provide valuable ecosystem services, but in many places the opportunities for the provision of such services are limited or threatened
synergies and conflicts between ecosystem services delivered in these areas. The authors argued that their integrated ecosystems management approach would help to inform future policy, and practice, for floodplain management. Hill et al.18 noted that ponds were common landscape features on floodplains, where there was lateral connectivity with rivers, but research on the ecology and hydrology of temperate ephemeral and perennial floodplain ponds lagged behind that of other shallow waterbodies. With this in mind, the authors examined the aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity of 34 ponds on two unregulated floodplain meadows in Leicestershire. The results suggested that niche characteristics, rather than neutral colonisation processes, dominated the structure of invertebrate communities of floodplain ponds; that the maintenance of pond networks, with varying hydroperiod lengths and environmental characteristics, should be encouraged as part of conservation management strategies; and that this would support and enhance aquatic biodiversity at a landscape scale. The Severn and Avon Vales Flourishing Floodplains project
The Severn and Avon Vales are low-lying open agricultural landscapes along the Severn and Avon rivers, stretching from Worcester on the Severn and Stratford-upon-Avon, down to Slimbridge in Gloucestershire, while the Cotswolds to the east, the Forest of Dean to the south-west, and the Malvern Hills to the west form abrupt boundaries. The vales were once a connected mosaic of floodplain meadows, arable fields, marshes, and small wetlands, and the grasses and wild flowers found there provided a habitat for a wide variety of species, such curlews, newts and eels, and the scale of this landscape essentially made it more valuable than the sum of its constituent parts.
However, almost 90% of these natural habitats have either been lost or now have substantially reduced biodiversity. The arable land, which accounts for some 25% of the floodplain, is mainly made up of small fields, although there are also some large fields, and it is under low-intensity farming. The larger fields, including Upton Ham and Upham Ham, were managed as common land, and traditionally in these systems hay strips were allocated to parishioners and then, once the hay had been taken, the local farmers would put their animals on these unfenced areas, which were then grazed in common. The Severn and Avon Vales Flourishing Floodplains project, which began in 2021 and was supported by the Green Challenge Fund, was a partnership between the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, the Floodplain Meadows Partnership, and the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group South West. The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, established in 1946, is an international wildfowl and wetlands conservation charity. The Floodplain Meadows Partnership looks to give evidence-based advice to managers and landowners on floodplain meadow management, support and encourage floodplain restoration, undertake research on ecohydrology on floodplain meadows, and act as an advocate for floodplain management and restoration. Since 2008, the Partnership has received funding from a number of sponsors, including the Esme Fairburn Foundation and the Garfield Weston Foundation, and is hosted by the Open University. The Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group South West is a registered charity representing the region’s farmers and landowners in the delivery of wildlife conservation. Essentially, all the project partners were united by the vision of bigger, better, and more connected wetlands, providing a haven for wildlife, and helping local people to connect with nature. Between 2021 and 2023, the Severn and Avon Vales project embraced a variety of initiatives designed to restore floodplain habitats along the Avon and Severn and support wildlife within the farmed landscape. More specifically, the primary goal of the project was to create and restore healthy floodplain habitats to support a large range of dependent species. In the floodplain meadows, where the grasslands are cut for hay every summer, there has been a focus on the creation or restoration of a network of some 40 wildlife-rich ponds and small wetland features across a 4,000 hectare landscape. The project team were also involved in surveying 1,000 hectares of floodplain meadows, with a view to restoring some 20 hectares of this habitat, and in building the evidence base to help to assess the importance of floodplain meadows as stores for soil carbon. Pilot surveys were also undertaken to investigate the nutrient-rich food sources created by flying insects, including mayflies, damselflies Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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and midges, as they emerged from ponds in the summer, and to track their path through the wider food web. Initiatives designed to protect and conserve the 35 breeding pairs of curlews in the Severn and Avon Vales have also been an important element within the project. The Breeding Birds Survey reported a decline of over 40% in the breeding population of these birds in the UK between 1995 and 2008.19 A small number of curlews were fitted with global positioning tags, which enabled researchers to determine adult feeding areas, movements outside the breeding season, and the links between breeding and wintering sites. At the same time, some curlew nests were fitted with temperature probes and nest cameras, and careful nest monitoring provided valuable insights into the predation pressures faced by curlews and causing poor survival rates for their chicks. Researchers, along with citizen science volunteers, also surveyed over 100 ponds for the presence of the European eel, another endangered species. These eels were detected in over 35% of the ponds surveyed, and future research will focus on the characteristics of ponds favoured by the eels. Support from local farmers and landowners, local communities and volunteers has made a vital contribution to the Flourishing Floodplains project. For example, farmers participated in a number of events, including meadow walks, pond and wetland restoration visits, and workshops about regenerative farming practices. The project team made over 50 farm visits to offer detailed advice on soils, climate resilience, water management, and wildlife-friendly farming. Within the project farmers and landowners worked with the project team to restore some 36 hectares of floodplain meadow, sourcing speciesrich meadow seeds from traditional donor meadows, and in some meadows individual plugs of wildflowers were hand-planted by volunteers. Concluding reflections
The literature review of floodplain restoration and nature conservation on floodplains and the outline of the achievements of the Severn and Avon Vales Flourishing Floodplains project offer some valuable insights into the local management of floodplain environments. At the same time, four issues — the first two specific and second two more general — merit concluding reflection. First, while the Flourishing Floodplains project can rightly claim a number of positive achievements, both in valuable practical conservation work and in encouraging the active participation of farmers, landowners, communities and volunteers in the project, without continuing management many of its achievements may soon be lost. This is a worrying challenge for many conservation projects, not least for those with fixed-term funding which have made extensive use of volunteers. 276 Town & Country Planning
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Secondly, floodplains can, in theory, provide valuable ecosystem services, but the opportunities for the provision of such services within the Severn and Avon Vales project area are either limited or threatened. In addressing food production, for example, Natural England20 suggested that the mixed farming in much of the area was at risk from farm economics. In addressing water availability, Natural England20 suggested that low flow levels, due to over-abstraction, were detrimental to biodiversity, particularly during periods of low rainfall. In a more positive vein, in turning to cultural ecosystem services, Natural England20 reported that a sense of place was provided by the Severn and Avon rivers and their floodplains, not least by the remnants of unimproved meadow and gravel terraces that support fruit-growing Thirdly, and more generally, the Green Alliance21 claims that 90% of floodplains in the UK are not fit for purpose, in that the majority of them are occupied by urban development, arable farming, and improved grassland. Such areas are not only liable to flooding, but, as modified floodplains, they move water quickly downstream, thus creating flood hazards for communities. Looking to the future, the Green Alliance’s vision is one of an alternative use of floodplains, forming part of a broad nature recovery network of green corridors running through the countryside, linking existing natural habitats, and reaching into towns and cities. Here, the argument is that re-purposing floodplains can help to address the consequences of the climate and nature crises. In reality, current pressures to build more houses, and to intensify farming practices, appear to make this more of a green pipedream than an economic reality. That said, in posing the question ‘could our ancient floodplain meadows help to turn the tide on our nature and climate emergencies?’, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust22 raised the underlying issue of the role of floodplains in contributing to the transition to a sustainable future. In many ways the Flourishing Floodplains project is reminiscent of the traditional conservation slogan ‘Think global, act local’, not least in that, if it encourages people who have participated in the project to engage more fully with challenging global sustainability agendas, then that can only be to the good. However, the counterargument is that the restoration of floodplain environments within the UK can make but a very small contribution to the world’s pressing climate and nature crises, while unsustainable patterns of consumption hold sway. Finally, what is the current role of the planning system in floodplain management? While England’s National Planning Policy Framework23 asserts that ‘planning policies and decisions should contribute to and enhance the natural and local environment’, its single reference to floodplains concerns ‘managing flood and coastal erosion risk by protecting, restoring
and emulating the natural ‘regulating’ function of catchments, rivers, floodplains and coasts’. That said, floodplains receive more attention in Planning Practice Guidance on flood risk and coastal change24 (as they did in the now-withdrawn PPG25: Development and Flood Risk Practice Guide 25). Current Planning Practice Guidance advocates for the role of natural flood management techniques, and working with natural processes, to protect, restore and emulate the natural functions of floodplains, but the overwhelming thrust of the guidance is on accommodating development, particularly new housing development, rather than on conservation per se.
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Peter Jones works in association with the School of Business at the University of Gloucestershire. The views expressed are personal. Notes 1 ‘Flourishing floodplains’. Webpage. Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. www.wwt.org.uk/our-work/projects/ flourishing-floodplains/ 2 ‘Floodplain’. Website article. National Geographic. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/ flood-plain/ 3 Floodplains: A Natural System to Preserve and Restore. EEA Report No. 24/2019. European Environment Agency, 2020. www.eea.europa.eu/publications/ floodplains-a-natural-system-to-preserve-and-restore 4 ‘Floodplain statistics viewer’. Webpage. European Environment Agency, Mar. 2020. www.eea.europa.eu/ data-and-maps/data/data-viewers/floodplain-areas 5 G Heritage, N S Entwistle and S Bentley: ‘Floodplains: the forgotten and abused component of the fluvial system’. Presentation to the Third European Conference on Floodplain Management, 2016. www.e3s-conferences.org/articles/e3sconf/pdf/2016/02/ e3sconf_flood2016_13007.pdf 6 F Harvey: ‘Nine tenths of England’s floodplains not fit for purpose, study finds’. The Guardian, 1 Jun. 2017. www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/01/ englands-90-floodplains-not-fit-for-purpose-study-finds 7 N S Entwistle, G L Heritage, L A Schofield and R J Williamson: ‘Recent changes to floodplain character and functionality in England’. Catena, 2019, Vol. 174, 490–98. https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/3625/ 8 M C Acreman, R Riddington and D J Booker: ‘Hydrological impacts of floodplain restoration: a case study of the River Cherwell, UK’. Hydrology & Earth System Sciences, 2003, Vol. 7 (1), 75–85 9 T Ball: ‘Management approaches to floodplain restoration and stakeholder engagement in the UK: a survey’. Ecohydrology & Hydrobiology, 2008, Vol. 8 (2/4), 273–80 10 W M Adams, M R Perrow and A Carpenter: ‘Perceptions of river managers of institutional constraints on floodplain restoration in the UK’. Journal of Environmental Planning & Management, 2005, Vol. 48 (6), 877–89. www.researchgate.net/publication/227619754_ Perceptions_of_river_managers_of_institutional_ constraints_on_floodplain_restoration_in_the_UK 11 T Moss: ‘Institutional drives and constraints of floodplain restoration in Europe’. International Journal of River Basin Management, 2008, Vol. 5 (2), 121–30
12 S E Toogood, C B Joyce and S Waite: ‘Response of floodplain grassland plant communities to altered water regimes’. Plant Ecology, 2008, Vol. 197 (2), 285–98. www.researchgate.net/publication/225562209_ Response_of_floodplain_grassland_plant_ communities_to_altered_water_regimes 13 E Rothero, I Tatarenko and D Gowing: ‘Recovering lost hay meadows: An overview of floodplain-meadow restoration projects in England and Wales’. Journal for Nature Conservation, 2020, Vol. 58, Dec., 125925. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnc.2020.125925 14 D R Richards, H L Moggridge, P H Warren and L Maltby: ‘Impacts of hydrological restoration on lowland river floodplain plant communities’. Wetlands Ecology & Management, 2020, Vol. 28, 403–17. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11273-020-09717-0 15 H M Clilverd, J R Thompson, C D Sayer, et al.: ‘Simulated effects of floodplain restoration on plant community types’. Applied Vegetation Science, 2022, Vol. 25 (4), e12697. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/avsc.12697 16 J R Rouquette, H Posthumus, D J G Gowing, et al.: ‘Valuing nature-conservation interests on agricultural floodplains’. Journal of Applied Ecology, 2009, Vol. 46 (2), 289–96 17 H Posthumus, J R Rouquette, J Morris, et al.: ‘A framework for the assessment of ecosystem goods and services: a case study of lowland floodplains in England’. Ecological Economics, 2009, Vol. 69 (7), 1510–23 18 M J Hill, R G Death, K L Mathers, et al.: ‘Macroinvertebrate community composition and diversity in ephemeral and perennial ponds on unregulated floodplain meadows in the UK’. Hydrobiologia, 2017, Vol. 793, 95–108 19 ‘Curlew conservation’. Webpage. Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. www.rspb.org.uk/birds-andwildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/curlew/ conservation/#:~:text=The%20species%20is%20a%20 UK,declines%20in%20UK%20breeding%20numbers 20 National Character Area Profile 106: Severn and Avon Vales. Natural England, 2014. https://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/ publication/1831421 21 ‘Why we need to talk about floodplains’. Blog Entry. Green Alliance, Aug. 2021. https://greenallianceblog.org.uk/2021/08/27/why-weneed-to-talk-about-floodplains/ 22 ‘Could our ancient floodplain meadows help to turn the tide on our nature and climate emergencies?’. Webpage. Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, Jul. 2022. www.wwt.org.uk/news-and-stories/blog/could-ourancient-floodplain-meadows-help-turn-the-tide-on-ournature-and-climate-emergencies/#:~:text=We’re%20 hoping%20farmers%20and,polluting%20our%20 water%2Dsupply%20system 23 National Planning Policy Framework. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Jul. 2021. www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationalplanning-policy-framework--2 24 ‘Flood risk and coastal change’. Planning Practice Guidance. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Mar. 2014, updated August 2022. www.gov.uk/guidance/flood-risk-and-coastal-change 25 Planning Policy Statement 25: Development and Flood Risk Practice Guide. Department for Communities and Local Government, 2009. www.gov.uk/government/ publications/development-and-flood-risk-practiceguide-planning-policy-statement-25 Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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letter from languedoc Graeme Bell on economic, social and environmental issues across the Channel
Été Coming home to roost?
Our friend Claude lives in the next village. Larger than ours ‘but not quite as nice’, as he himself says. Over aperitifs we meet his two new friends — chickens, a gift from the Mayor. At the half-way point in his six-year term, the Mayor wanted to thank citizens for their continuing support. He hardly needed to do that for there were no other candidates for what Claude describes as a thankless task. The salary of about £1,000 a month hardly compensates for being at everyone’s beck and call, he says. Teachers never want to live near their school — to avoid the children they teach and, especially, their parents — but in a small commune a Mayor lives on his or her patch. Probably related to half the inhabitants in the village, he or she can’t leave home without bumping into someone with a complaint or a suggestion. Apparently, the Mayor’s assistant phoned every family in the village to offer them a pair of rescue hens. Is Claude happy? He beams as he shows us a bowl of freshly laid eggs. ‘Do you want a couple? Perhaps one from the left and one from the right? Or perhaps two from the centre left? You might want to avoid the ones on the extreme right.’ The hens are a hit with residents, and every time an egg is laid voters will remember it was the man in the Mairie who made it happen.
screened the installation have been cleared. A notice explains that it’s a coupe-feu or fire break, so now we have some huge ugly pipes in full view. A formal affiche has come from our Mairie, instructing everyone to tidy up their gardens and clear away dead vegetation in a débroussaillage. Fines can be levied for non-compliance. The regulation is understandable but, despite the fear of fire, there seems little appetite to comply. The zeitgeist here, as in the UK, is about re-wilding and letting nature take over. So there is a spectacular profusion of flowers with gardens and meadows a riot of colour — a waving sea of poppies, valerians, bougainvillea, marguerites and cornflowers which attract swarms of bees and insects. Dragonflies and butterflies dart about, closely followed by hungry swifts and swallows. We are at great risk of fires here, but few seem willing to sacrifice their own little bit of Heaven on Earth. Made in France
Jean-Pierre was looking chipper, as well he might. He explained that his company is now employed by EDF to work on Hinckley Point nuclear power station. He is a consultant ‘heavy engineer’, he explains, as he pats his stomach and laughs out loud. So is he moving to the UK, I ask? He shakes his head in a bilingual gesture. All his work will be in France and he can work from home for much of it. Apparently, all the clever kit will be made in modules near Marseilles, transported (about 1,000 miles, I guess) by road in a convoi exceptionnel and then assembled on site. J-P smiles: ‘This job will see me to retirement next year, and for the younger staff it represents 25 years’ guaranteed work.’ He could have added ‘which you the Brits will be paying for’ but he chose to spare my feelings. I tell him that our government has promised lots of local jobs building the new power station. ‘Bien sûr,’ he says. ‘Mixing concrete.’ Scorched earth — it’s official And his jovial face creases with laughter. A blisteringly hot summer last year and a very dry This is payback time for the French. When most spring this year has sparked nationwide action in of Europe said Nein Danke to nuclear, France, as France. Across the nation, zones have been declared ever, went its independent way. Low-carbon energy where special measures will be enforced to reduce generation has now hit pay-dirt and the UK must the risk of fires spreading; and we are at ground go cap in hand to the experts. We used to be the zero. Recent heavy rain (when the UK was basking workshop of the world, but, when it comes to in high temperatures) has hardly damped the keeping the lights on, the clever stuff is now made surface of the soil here in the Languedoc. in France. So verges on even the minor roads are being When we’re 64 close-mown to prevent fag ends tossed from cars It’s the not knowing. In France as in the UK, people causing a fire. This is a contrast to the UK, where councils have been only too keen to let things go, in are revolting. Cancellations, disruptions, street the name of sustainability, or rather to save money. marches, and demonstrations. Will my train run or my flight take off? The particular hazards in our rural Driving past a nearby gas compressor station we area are the tractor go-slows which can catch you out notice that all the trees and bushes that effectively 278 Town & Country Planning
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going local David Boyle on how the governed are too often viewed with contempt by the governing
snobbery, contempt and ochlophobia ‘Pensions: No to the Macron reform’
in a flash. But whereas in the UK we have workers striking to keep key services from collapse and to recover their steep fall in real wages over many years, here we have a controversial decision by President Macron to raise the retirement age to receive the state pension from an unbelievable 62 to, wait for it, 64. Of course many have occupational pensions and are not totally reliant on the ‘old age pension’, as we’d call it. But people have paid in and feel they’re now being cheated. What seems to have incensed people even more is the way it was made into law — by executive action. (This is possibly the equivalent of government in the UK raising the age of retirement through a Statutory Instrument.) The President clearly surmised that he would probably lose if the measure was put to a vote. I ask Claude what he thinks. He retired at 58 from his job at La Poste with the maximum 40 years’ pension. ‘It’s the principle,’ he says. ‘64 today, 66 tomorrow. And when we retire the jobs are there for the young people.’ I suggest that as we’re all living longer a modest rise is sensible. And I tell him my daughter will be 68 before she can claim a state pension. He recoils with horror. ‘Is it the same for men? Because women live longer, you know.’ I reply ‘The men are equal to the women’, and we both laugh. Whoever succeeds Macron will face a decision: to repeal this law and have to find the money to fund the added years, or keep their head down and thank the Lord that someone else took a difficult decision that governments are elected to make on behalf of us all.
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Graeme Bell OBE is a TCPA Vice-President and lives part of the year in the Languedoc. The views expressed are personal.
Some years ago, I wrote a pamphlet — originally for the Lib Dems but eventually for the New Economics Foundation — called Unravelling the Supplicant State. It claimed that the main problem with our over-centralised UK was that it reflected a: ‘decadent metropolitan snobbery. It is because the contempt that the City of London feels for industry and small business, and the contempt that the Civil Service feels for their local counterparts, has been swallowed whole by Labour and Conservative alike. That is the threat of the supplicant state.’ I was quite pleased with that at the time, which was June 2009, at the tail end of the New Labour government. But later on I worried a little that I had come up with very little evidence for either. The contempt that the City feels for small business and for industry is,nevertheless, pretty well documented, back to the Industrial Revolution, which they tried to sit out. We know about it partly thanks to John Maynard Keynes and the Macmillan Report of 1931, since when they have reverted to type. But what about the Civil Service? In the end, I need not have worried, because the evidence is everywhere — recently and notably to be found among Polly Toynbee’s fond memories of the former Head of the Civil Service, Bob Kerslake, who died in July, published in the Guardian.1 The Civil Service in Whitehall has been captured by a kind of snobbery, she says. Her article was followed by a letter from former Camden Council leader Jane Roberts,2 in which she remembered Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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being asked to talk to aspiring civil servants on their training programme: ‘I advocated for more autonomy for local government but also a requirement for senior civil servants to spend at least two years seconded to local government and/or the third sector, only to be told by one (I kid you not): ‘The trouble with you lot, is that if we give you more money, you’ll spend it on the mayor’s rose garden.’ It fairly took my breath away. Nothing has changed.’
it could turn their bodies into what they called ‘natomy soup’ — to feed the others. By the 1840s, there was Ebenezer Scrooge, worrying about the so-called surplus population. And there was the government allowing the Irish potato famine to take its course. There has always been a strand of British government that treated the governed with some disdain and fear. It is, perhaps, a fear of the mob. When it seemed that the government’s plan for treating the coronavirus was ‘herd resilience’ — She was not the only one. Tony Travers has been and it meant that 70% of the population needed to calling for more two-way traffic between central and be infected — that would have meant, at only a 1% local government. And Toynbee quotes Rob Whiteman per cent rate of mortality, losing half a million dead as saying ‘The Whitehall organ rejected us.’ The in a few months. To put that in context, that is twice former Chief Executive of Barking and Dagenham as many as died in UK cities during five years of Council was — like Kerslake — brought into the Civil blitz in the Second World War. Service by Gus O’Donnell. ‘Its antibodies attacked Oddly enough, I would characterise the attitude us. You don’t last there if you come in late from of the conspiracy theorists in the USA who believe somewhere else. Most of us didn’t last all that long. that the pandemic was designed by tech billionaires, The Civil Service sees you as inferior — not policy supported by the government, in order to kill as people like them, but practical.’1 many as possible, as part of the same problem. He talks of unconscious snobbery, says Toynbee: Once people start sensing that contempt from ‘I still talk like where I come from, a two-bed flat in central government, it isn’t a very great step from the East End. Bob didn’t talk quite like them either, the rumours of ‘natomy soup’. so the Oxbridges think you aren’t as clever as them.’
‘It seems to me that this kind of contempt must be born of a kind of fear. Central government’s attitude to ordinary people is a kind of enochlophobia — a fear of crowds’
Now, it seems to me that this kind of contempt must be born of a kind of fear. Central government’s attitude to ordinary people is a kind of enochlophobia — a ‘fear of crowds’. They are actually afraid of us. Maybe I actually mean, I’m told by Google, ochlophobia, which means fear of violent crowds. Because this must date back to the 1780 Gordon riots in London (immortalised by Dickens in Barnaby Rudge), when Lord George Gordon led an antiCatholic mob through London, after he handed a petition over in Parliament, and 450 people were killed. In the 1830s, there were riots in the back streets of London among the poor, who believed that the government’s intention was to let them die so that 280 Town & Country Planning
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David Boyle is the author of Tickbox (Little, Brown), •Oppenheimer (Sharpe) and, with Lesley Yarranton, Edge City UK (the Real Press). The views expressed are personal.
Notes 1 P Toynbee: ‘We laid Bob Kerslake to rest this week. Think of him — and give the civil service the respect it deserves’. The Guardian, 27 Jul. 2023. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/27/ bob-kerslake-civil-service-whitehall 2 J Roberts: ‘We must bridge the gap between local councils and the Whitehall elite’. The Guardian, 30 Jul. 2023. www.theguardian.com/society/2023/ jul/30/we-must-bridge-the-gap-between-local-councilsand-the-whitehall-elite
design matters Matthew Carmona on the surprising controversy surrounding the 15-minute city idea
15-minute city — branding, conspiracy, and a surrogate for density
Recently The Guardian published King’s College London Policy Institute analysis that examined conspiracy theory beliefs among the UK public.1 Among the top conspiracies was the belief that 15-minute city plans are an attempt by government to surveil people and restrict their freedoms. Quite unbelievably, a third of respondents felt that this was either definitely or probably true. It seems that the way we design our cities is finally reaching a
level of national consciousness. Unfortunately, it is doing so for all the wrong reasons! To pedal back a little, anyone likely to be reading this column is also likely to be familiar with the concept of 15-minute cities or the closely related notion of 20-minute neighbourhoods. Both argue for shaping urban environments in order to allow people to live lives that are supported by all necessary facilities and amenities within a walkable or cyclable distance from their homes. For such an entirely reasonable and, one would think, uncontentious idea to be caught up in the alternate realities of the conspiracy theorists is difficult to comprehend. This, the Policy Institute informs us, is a result of the manner in which we now consume news. Notably, an increasing number of us are choosing no longer to engage with media outlets that, to varying
The ‘great replacement’ theory 12%
20%
19%
19%
29%
Idea that white Americans and Europeans are being replaced by non-white immigrants 15-minute cities 12%
21%
17%
23%
26%
‘15-minute city’ plans are a government attempt to surveil people and restrict freedoms The terrorism ‘cover up’ 11%
23%
17%
25%
24%
Media and government are involved in a conspiracy to cover up information about UK terror attacks The cost of living crisis 11%
22%
10%
22%
36%
The cost of living crisis is a government plot to control the public The ‘great reset’ theory 10%
20%
23%
19%
29%
The World Economic Forum initiative is a conspiracy to impose a totalitarian world government Definitely true
Probably true
Don’t know
Probably false
Definitely false
Conspiracy beliefs among the UK public — Guardian graphic based on a Policy Institute survey of 2,274 adults representative of the UK population Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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degrees, attempt to air alternative viewpoints, in favour of those that only seek to represent narrow worldviews. Taking that path, one can all too easily disappear down a rabbit hole of interlinked conspiracy theories where even the most innocuous of policy approaches is seen as a sinister plot against personal freedoms. That, it seems, is where we have got to with 15-minute cities.
us. More likely, LTNs and 15-minute cities simply became conflated as both ideas rapidly gained traction in a post-pandemic world in which many of us have been opting to spend more time in our home neighbourhoods and rightly have come to expect more from them. As an idea, 15-minute cities and 20-minute neighbourhoods are nothing new, but are instead re-brandings designed to catch the attention of The idea of responsive neighbourhoods politicians; which they have done in spades. Perhaps In this post-truth world, in the UK the idea of the best known example is Paris, home of the 15-minute cities somehow became embroiled in originator of the term 15-minute city (Carlos Moreno) controversies over the introduction of low-traffic and where Mayor Anne Hildago made the concept neighbourhoods (LTNs). These attempts to reduce a centrepiece of her successful 2020 re-election street space and interconnectivity for drivers in campaign. This was clever politics, according to favour of pedestrians and cyclists have been viewed some, as Paris is ostensibly already a 15-minute by some as a direct attack on what they see as an city, making delivery of this election promise very inalienable right to drive wherever and whenever easy to deliver. And anyone who knows Paris they wish. Others have come to believe, quite also knows that this particular 15-minute utopia is literately, that the intention is no less that to pen hardly a dystopia of surveillance and control, as the populations into their neighbourhoods and not let conspiracy theorists would have us believe. them out! While many traditional cities, just like Paris, have Such mentalities may very well reflect a hangover tended to grow organically on a neighbourhood from the Covid lockdowns that, to varying degrees model, the idea of deliberately designing localities around the world, imposed such restrictions on in which there is good convenient access to
Paris 5-minute map from 2021, showing areas with a 5-minute walk to three daily convenience store types — a baker, a chemist, and a newsagent All three reachable in 5 minutes Two of the three reachable
One of the three reachable Areas where residents need to walk further than 5 minutes to reach at least one of the three (only 4% of the population)
Source: Apur 2
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In Edinburgh, a 20-minute walk will get you along the Royal Mile from Edinburgh Castle to the Palace of Holyroodhouse (or between most points in the city centre), while a 20-minute cycle ride will take you from Holyroodhouse out to Edinburgh Zoo (or between the city centre and many of Edinburgh’s suburbs)
meet all daily needs goes back to the origins of neighbourhoods as a planning idea. Famously, this included Clarence Perry’s influential work a century ago on ‘neighbourhood units’, which, just like the 20-minute neighbourhoods of today, contained certain critical elements: an elementary school, open and play space provision, local stores, and a configuration of buildings and streets that allowed all public facilities to be reached safely on foot. Even more famously, campaigning in the 1960s to preserve her equivalent of the 15-minute city — the mixed city — Jane Jacobs opened the world’s eyes to the critical social bonds that liveable localities can support. Her fight for traditional neighbourhoods and against the imposition of top-down Big Government programmes to re-shape cities in favour of the car was the polar opposite of what the conspiracy theorists argue today. For them, the hand of Big Government is seen in attempts to preserve the integrity of the small and the local by taming the car and seeking to transform neighbourhoods into liveable places. But instead of making their case through evidence and reasoned argument (Jacobs style), these new advocates reach for wild speculation and unsubstantiated rumour to make theirs.
Time as a surrogate for density
Underpinning the 15-minute city concept (or brand) is the use of ‘time’ as a simple surrogate for a whole series of factors that make for a good city. These include density, diversity, mix, and connection; all longheld shibboleths of the urban design cannon since the days of Jacobs. But, taken literally, time travelled can be quite a crude measure of place quality. Scotland, for example, is in the final stages of introducing Local Living and 20 Minute Neighbourhoods planning guidance.3 As the name suggests, this takes 20 minutes from the home as the measure to ‘meet the majority of […] daily needs’, ‘by walking, wheeling or cycling’ (wheeling meaning by wheelchair or mobility aid). However, where you can get to in 20 minutes on foot compared with 20 minutes on a bike is very different. The average pedestrian will walk around 3-4 miles per hour (say, 1 mile in 20 minutes); mobility aids may be slower or faster, depending on how propelled; while cyclists will travel about 12.5 miles per hour (say, 4 miles in 20 minutes). But as many people cannot or choose not to cycle for all sorts of reasons (particularly women), a 20-minute travel distance for one person on a bike will be a 1 hour 20 minute journey for someone walking, making the measure less than useful. Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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café and local health services within 10 minutes; larger town centres, emergency medicine, social facilities and a diversity of work opportunities within 20 minutes; and access to more specialist hospitals, universities, public administrations, and so forth, within 30 minutes (this final category traversed by any mode of sustainable travel). Ultimately, what this all really comes down to is density. Indeed, Carlos Moreno always heavily caveats his many presentations on the 15-minute city concept with the need re-shape cities around ideas of polycentricity, proximity, and diversity. Paris, for example, has an average density of 86 persons per hectare, explaining how much of it (as already illustrated) is a 5-minute, let alone a 15-minute city. London is less dense, but still has an average density of 69 persons per hectare, while across the UK the average urban density is 37 persons per hectare. The implication of this is 16-minute cities — cartoon adapted from Louis Hellman’s that, in most UK towns and cities, people will need original to walk roughly twice the distance that Londoners do to get to the sorts of amenities that are The great benefit of living in urban areas is that dependent on having a large enough population to they provide all the amenities we need, reflecting justify them, such as shops or a GP surgery. the fact that what will be a critical daily need for Outside of London, new suburban expansions are one person, such as a hospital visit, may not be for often built at considerably lower densities than this, someone else. The trade-off is that these needs will explaining why, in many cases, residents in such areas be met at different distances from our homes. The choose not to walk, and instead take the car (if they corollary of this is that, while we absolutely need to have one). At 37 persons per hectare, assuming focus on the local, it is not the be-all-and-end-all around 2,000 people are required to support a (as a 15-minute city may unintentionally imply). We corner shop, 54 hectares of land would be required also need to focus on those vital intermediate- and to house the population for a single shop. At such longer-distance needs that the good city should meet. densities, most facilities (including public transport) would most likely exceed a 15-minute walk.
‘Unfortunately, even the most
innocuous brands can quickly become toxic if enough disinformation is thrown their way’
Also, when we consider the local, rather than starting at 15 or 20 minutes, we should begin at 5 minutes from the home. Home Comforts,4 the Place Alliance study undertaken during the first UK lockdown, showed that people quickly became more dissatisfied with their neighbourhoods after a 5-minute walk distance had been breached. Thinking in this way, we might need access to parks and local shops within a 5-minute walk; primary schools, good public transport provision, personal services such as haircutting, a pub or 284 Town & Country Planning
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Time for a re-brand?
Unfortunately, even the most innocuous brands can quickly become toxic if enough disinformation is thrown their way. Despite its shortcomings, it will be a great shame if that happens to the 15-minute city idea, given the ability of this ‘mundane planning theory’ (as Oliver Wainright described it5) to cut through to policy-makers around the world. In England, many initiatives have tried to contain sprawl and build more densely, including, in recent decades, urban villages, millennium communities, urban renaissance, sustainable communities, eco-towns, garden communities, and gentle density. So, if that occurs, no doubt another similar brand will come along soon. The new Scottish planning guidance anyway notes that we need to be realistic in that remote rural locations may not be able to achieve the aspiration for residents to meet the majority of their daily needs within a 20-minute walk. In fact, without dramatic changes to their structure and density
design matters
earth rights Martin Stott on practical expressions of anarchist thought in the built environment
profiles, many suburban locations, including many of the UK’s suburban expansions of the last 30 years, also fall into this category. The challenge is therefore a more fundamental one than making provision for a few additional local facilities where they do not exist. Instead, where it is both possible and desirable (which isn’t everywhere), it is about connecting-up, retrofitting and densifying existing places. This is a much more wicked problem, and one (like LTNs) that is unlikely to have universal support! Perhaps we need a sexy brand to sell it — I know, how about 16-minute cities? Joking aside, as a starting point, ensuring that newly developed neighbourhoods are built at sufficient densities to support day-to-day needs locally, while connecting into wider sustainable transport provision for longer-distance requirements, must be a first step to creating decent, well provisioned, healthy neighbourhoods for all. Elsewhere, a strategy of gradual densification by stealth has much to recommend it: investing in public transport, densifying around nodes of activity, proactively bringing forward small development sites, building adaptably to allow changes of use at ground floor level, and gradually reducing parking, while all the time hoping that those conspiracy theorists don’t notice!
architecture and anarchy —
another world is possible
Sometimes a chance experience draws you in to exploring an idea. This happened to me on my first visit to my elder daughter’s new home in Edinburgh. I thought I knew the city well — I lived there briefly in the early 1970s — but she has a wee flat in one of Edinburgh’s ‘Colonies’, a distinctive housing Matthew Carmona is Professor of Planning and Urban •Design phenomenon for over 160 years. Locals recognise at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College them instantly, with their imaginative design and London. e: m.carmona@ucl.ac.uk. Twitter @ProfMCarmona build. The homes included gardens, kitchens and a The views expressed are personal. front door, often up a steep flight of steps, as in my Notes daughter’s case, in contrast to the multi-storey 1 R Booth: ‘Quarter in UK believe Covid was a hoax, poll living of the Old Town. on conspiracy theories finds’. The Guardian, 13 Jun. 2023. Aimed at working-class tenants generally in www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/13/quarter-inspecific occupations or trades (my daughter’s home uk-believe-covid-was-a-hoax-poll-on-conspiracywas built for railway workers, and is still bounded by theories-finds railway lines), their successes and failures have 2 Les commerces du quotidien dans le Grand Paris. recently been written up by Richard Rodger in his Note No. 188. Apur (Atelier parisien d’urbanisme— Paris Urbanism Agency), Nov. 2020. www.apur.org/ book Happy Homes: Cooperation, Communities sites/default/files/4p188_commerces_quotidien_grand_ and the Edinburgh Colonies.1 Over 2,300 houses paris.pdf?token=yHCUjnrZ were built by the Edinburgh Co-operative Building 3 See Local Living and 20 Minute Neighbourhoods — Company on 11 different sites on the outskirts of Planning Guidance: Consultation. Scottish Government, Edinburgh and Leith (hence their nickname ‘The Apr. 2023. https://consult.gov.scot/planningColonies’) between 1861 and 1911. The Co-op has architecture/draft-local-living-and-20-minutelong gone, but its spirit lives on in what are now neighbourhoods/ quirky, largely car-free, boho neighbourhoods. 4 Home Comforts: How the Design of Our Homes and Neighbourhoods Affected Our Experience of the My visit prompted thought on what Colin Ward Covid-19 Lockdown and What We Can Learn for the wrote about so much: anarchy in action, the values Future. Place Alliance, Oct. 2020. https://placealliance. of which are rooted in things we all do. Mutual aid, org.uk/research/research-home-comforts/ self-organisation and voluntary association are 5 O Wainwright: ‘In praise of the ‘15-minute city’ — the the underlying principles of anarchism, and find mundane planning theory terrifying conspiracists’. expression in people’s innate desires to share The Guardian, 16 Feb. 2023. www.theguardian.com/ time and space without expecting any financial commentisfree/2023/feb/16/15-minute-city-planningtheory-conspiracists remuneration, exemplified in allotments, children’s Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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playgrounds, free festivals, holiday camps, and housing co-ops. So it was with some delight that I came across Paul Dobraszczyk’s book Architecture and Anarchism: Building without Authority.2 Here in one book is a whole world of alternative and intentional communities, artistic experiments, expressions of dissent, and speculations about the future. Utopias of the mind and utopia as method. Dobraszczyk kicks off his book with a photo of the famous Headington Shark house installed by one of my neighbours, the late Bill Heine, in 1986 — his comment on the civilian casualties of American air raids on Libya by F-111 squadrons based at nearby Upper Heyford. The shark precipitated a protracted planning battle which he eventually won — propaganda of the deed. The book goes on to illustrate, through 60 other very diverse examples, anarchist values in action. They are grouped into eight categories — liberty, escape, necessity, protest, ecology, art, speculation, and participation — and are drawn from across the global north, mainly, and the last 50-odd years, mainly. Taken together, they significantly broaden existing ideas about what might constitute anarchism in architecture (to breaking point in some cases), but in doing so also argue strongly for its nurturing in the built environment. They point to anarchism offering a powerful way of re-conceptualising architecture as an emancipatory, inclusive, ecological and egalitarian practice.
‘Very diverse examples ... point
to anarchism offering a powerful way of re-conceptualising architecture as an emancipatory, inclusive, ecological and egalitarian practice’
Let’s turn to the anarchism before looking at the architecture. The importance of the built environment in anarchist projects was recognised by late-19century anarchist thinkers such as Élisée Reclus and Peter Kropotkin, who were also pioneers in the study of geography. Reclus in particular argued that it was only in cities that the full flowering of human diversity was possible. Kropotkin’s focus was on building networks of small-scale autonomous communities drawn from the libertarian socialist society imagined in William Morris’s utopian novel News from Nowhere, published in 1890. Both of these strands were important influences on the radical town planning of Patrick Geddes, who 286 Town & Country Planning
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stressed the importance of cities’ connectivity to their larger geographic regions and empowerment at a local level, in his Cities in Evolution (1915). But it was Colin Ward and his friend the American critic Paul Goodman who cemented the links between anarchism and architecture. Goodman’s 1947 book Communitas traced utopian visions of urban planning back to Morris and Geddes for American audiences, while Ward, in a huge range of books and pamphlets, most notably Anarchy in Action (1973), investigated a range of social practices that he regarded as anarchist — in housing, work and leisure, urban policy, architecture and design, not to mention everything from allotments to plotlands and how children perceive and engage with cities. This sets the scene for Dobraszczyk. He argues that French sociologist Henri Lefebvre’s 1967 essay The Right to the City (seen as prophetic of the 1968 uprisings in Paris and other cities) is onto something with its conceptualisation of organisation in cities, starting from the bottom up in the ‘holes and chasms’ of the city, i.e. spaces and structures that escape the control of the city powers, one example being abandoned buildings. These are places where experimentation is possible, the ‘seeds beneath the snow’. Dobraszczyk remarks: ‘In recent years there’s been a focus on how DIY or ‘guerilla’ urbanism has taken advantage of such spaces precisely in order to experiment with alternative approaches, examples of which include [ … ] the community urban gardens Agrocité in Paris, and Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin. But these might also be cooperative forms of housing, and business, community land trusts, self organized buying and selling; parkour, skateboarding, and urban exploration; reoccupied abandoned buildings; and the protest camps of the Occupy Movement and more recently Extinction Rebellion.’ Whether the creators of such experiments and initiatives would all consider themselves expressions of anarchist architecture is moot — re-conceptualising space, for sure; building without authority, only sometimes. However, spreading the net so widely does give a frisson of excitement and danger to the broad range of initiatives swept up in its architectural embrace. There are so many gloriously wayward and inventive projects recorded in Architecture and Anarchism that it is hard to know where to start, but, as its chapter titles suggest, their waywardness is contained within a structure that provides coherence. Perhaps the best known, and one of the most long-lasting examples of anarchist architecture, is the one that comes first in the case studies — Christiania in
earth rights
But such anarchic experiments are far from always expressions of escape or of faith. The barrios and favelas of great cities in the global south are expressions of self-build and self-organisation often born out of desperation, as city authorities either lack the resources or political will and wash their hands of responsibility for their burgeoning populations. Refugee camps that over time become permanent are another example, and the Calais Jungle is cited as one of those built from necessity. The domestic and the democratic aren’t ignored either, such as the Walter Segal inspired self-build homes in Lewisham, or the ‘Autonomous Terrace’ immortalised in Clifford Harper’s celebrated illustrations for the countercultural handbook Radical Clifford Harper’s ‘Autonomous Terrace’ illustration Technology (1976), published as a direct response to the Whole Earth Catalog, presenting various DIY Copenhagen. Founded in 1971 when an abandoned technologies as tools to democratise design. In army barracks was squatted, it is now home to contrast to the high-tech wizardry of Buckminster around 1,000 residents in a self-governing ‘free town’. Fuller, Stuart Brand and Drop City, Radical Technology Most live in the extensively converted barracks, but presented a communitarian approach to design, very others have individual homes, some ‘architect much a vision of subversion from within — a tactic designed’, others self-built (but ‘all architectural that chimes with Colin Ward’s writings and the oddities’), in the grounds or on the adjacent lake. British tradition of a more gentle and quotidian form Other projects include Burning Man, the festival of anarchism. in Nevada which attracts over 70,000 participants In a way this sums up the contradictions inherent in for a week in the desert and ends with a complete anarchism — the freedom-in-community promoted clean-up of all evidence of habitation and is finally in the Autonomous Terrace, a concept taken up with erased by winter dust storms. On a wholly different much success by groups such as the Fireside scale is India’s Kumbh Mela festival held every three Housing Co-op in Sheffield, which is starkly different years at different sacred riverside sites along the from the individualised libertarianism of Brand and Ganges. The 55-day festival can accommodate up other American writers and practitioners. to 5 million devotees and up to 120 million visitors. In foregrounding such examples (another is the It requires a level of planning and a timescale that work of Assemble in Liverpool), Dobraszczyk could hardly be described as anarchist in the acknowledges that the social vision that anarchism commonly understood sense of the term, but it is presents is embedded in the local, in already existing temporary, and the various religious groups who pathways towards greater autonomy, where attend organise their own camps autonomously, architecture is to be transformed from being a using lightweight low-tech materials that are easily product into a social process. He, Ward, Goodman erected and deconstructed. (as well as Kropotkin, Morris and Geddes a century There is an echo of this in a site like Slab City in earlier) and all the people who have taken their California, once a military camp and now inhabited ideas up and transformed them into the practical by a few hundred people except in the autumn, when examples set out on the pages of Architecture thousands of ‘snowbirds’ in their camper vans and Anarchy show in dozens of different ways that descend to enjoy the Southern California sunshine another world is possible. before moving back home as the temperature rises Martin Stott is a member of the Arts of Place research in the spring. Whether Henry David Thoreau would •network, based at the University of Birmingham. The views have empathised with this lifestyle in the cabin which expressed are personal. he built in 1845 at Walden Pond, Massachusetts, we cannot know, but the romantic longing for a Notes more direct relationship between humans and the 1 R Rodger: Happy Homes: Cooperation, Communities natural world connects them, as it does the and the Edinburgh Colonies. Word Bank, 2022 pioneers in England’s plotlands — families seeking 2 P Dobraszczyk: Architecture and Anarchism: Building without Authority. Paul Holberton Publishing, 2021 to escape overcrowded cities by buying a tiny space on the coast to build their own slice of paradise. Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
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Mike Teitz on a reminder of the power of citizen action and resolve — and of brilliant design — in San Francisco
welcome to the tunnel tops in 1989, after which the Embarcadero Freeway was demolished. But Doyle Drive survived, although potentially dangerous. However, in the intervening years the situation of the Presidio changed dramatically. Thanks to the end of the Cold War and outstanding local leadership by Congressman John Burton and local leaders such as Amy Meyer, the Presidio was declared surplus When the Golden Gate Bridge opened to traffic in and enfolded in 1972 into the Golden Gate National 1937, San Francisco solved one problem, only to Recreation Area (GGNRA), managed by the face another. The bridge opened a direct land route National Park Service (NPS). President Nixon to the Northern California coast, something that had signed the federal legislation. been long sought. Yet, at the same time, it posed Subsequently, in 1994 its heart, the Main Post, the problem of managing traffic coming south off was turned over to the Presidio Trust, a publicthe bridge. The southern exit opened onto the private federal agency that would manage central Presidio, the old military base on the bluffs that areas other than those governed by the NPS. The guarded the narrows of the Golden Gate. Minimal powerful Presidio Trust succeeded in generating roads through the base led south to the western resources to regenerate the Main Post, the old core part of the city, or eastward through the Presidio to parade ground, bringing in private businesses and the Marina District that was built on the remains of non-profit organisations. It also rebuilt the waterfront the 1915 Panama Pacific Exhibition. Roads were into a major tourist and local attraction. Thousands soon jammed with traffic that the military did not of people walk every day along the coast from the want. Even though the roads north of the bridge Marina to Fort Point at the southern base of the were few, people wanted to travel north and south. bridge. Highway engineers soon found solutions. A tunnel However, Doyle Drive remained as a noisy and through the heights of the Presidio eventually carried dangerous barrier between the Main Post at the top traffic south towards the western side of the city. of the bluffs and the shoreline below. Only the State However, the larger problem was that downtown could afford to rebuild Doyle Drive, which was now and routes to the East Bay were off to the southlikely, but the separation between the upper and east. The immediate solution was to build a major lower levels would remain. What form would it take? elevated roadway heading east from the bridge, The city of San Francisco established the Doyle isolating traffic from the Presidio. In 1936 Doyle Drive Taskforce with broad stakeholder membership. Drive was built on a viaduct almost at water level, Many solutions were offered, but none had cutting through the northern part of the base on succeeded in attracting sufficient support despite flat land at the foot of the bluffs. Although the road the efforts of local leaders and organisations such as was multi-lane, it had no central barrier. Soon, its SPUR, San Francisco’s oldest planning organisation. reputation led to the name ‘Deadly Doyle Drive’. The breakthrough came in 1995 when Michael Traffic piled up at the intersection with city streets. Painter, a local landscape architect, proposed Pressure for change led to the solution of the removing the elevated highway and putting it partly time, namely more freeways, driven partly by the into tunnels. Covering them with parks would allow fact that the Bay Bridge had already connected a direct connection between the waterfront and the San Francisco to the East Bay in 1933. So began the bluffs. Covering the entire road would not be possible, saga of the attempt to build a freeway from bridge but two tunnels might work. The idea was greeted to bridge, encircling the city’s northern and northwith enthusiasm and the great San Francisco east shorelines. Part of it was completed with a donor machine went to work. Some $98 million connection to the Embarcadero Freeway, north of was raised by the non-profit Golden Gate National the Bay Bridge. Years of discourse and dispute were Parks Conservancy, and a further $20 million was eventually resolved by the Loma Prieta earthquake secured from the Presidio Trust. The renamed 288 Town & Country Planning
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San Francisco Travel Association
inside america
Tunnel Tops Park, built on top of San Francisco’s Presidio Parkway tunnels
Parkway opened in in 2015, and the Tunnel Tops Park in 2022, in the midst of the Covid Pandemic. The westernmost tunnel abuts the Presidio National Cemetery, shielding it from the freeway and providing a 6 acre grassy slope down from the bluff. It remains open and quiet, as befitting the role. No longer will visitors to the Cemetery see traffic. To the east, at the Main Post, a larger 40 acre area allows a quite formal level park above the tunnel and just north of the Main Post. With native planted areas, grassy lawns, and informal seating of weathered wood constructed so that all seats face out to the Bay and the Golden Gate, it is now wildly popular. Food carts near the old Parade Ground permit visitors to eat informally on the seats and grass. People wander, gaze, and play bocce, while children run about. Beyond this area, the hill slopes down, with steps and ramp access to a lower level. There, a brilliantly designed playground and teaching area uses old equipment, ropes and other clever devices to capture children’s attention. Older buildings are repurposed for teaching and other uses. The design in both segments of the park reflect the role of James Corner Field Operations, the firm
that built the High Line in New York City. Tunnel Tops Park is now a major tourist and local attraction. At this time of deep concern for San Francisco’s downtown, with office buildings standing vacant, stores shuttered, and public transportation under threat, the Tunnel Tops is a reminder of the power of citizen action and resolve. We will need both again in the future, but for now we can enjoy the Tunnel Tops. Come and see it. Mike Teitz is Professor Emeritus at the University of •California, Berkeley. The views expressed are personal.
Town & Country Planning July–August 2023
designing new communities for the 21st century
new towns: the rise, fall and rebirth
New Towns: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth By Katy Lock and Hugh Ellis Published by RIBA Publishing, May 2020, HB, 192 pp ISBN 978 1859469286, £40
Often misunderstood, the New Towns story is a fascinating one of anarchists, artists, visionaries, and the promise of a new beginning for millions of people. New Towns: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth offers a new perspective on the New Towns record and uses case studies to address the myths and realities of the programme. It provides valuable lessons for the growth and renewal of the existing New Towns and post-war housing estates and town centres, including recommendations for practitioners, politicians and communities interested in the renewal of existing New Towns and the creation of new communities for the 21st century.
Available through the TCPA website £40 including postage & packing — 10% discount for TCPA members using the code MEMBER Visit www.tcpa.org.uk/shop/new-towns-the-rise-fall-and-rebirth