The people: Where will they go?

© 2021 Liverpool University Press. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.3828/tpr.2020.44Peer reviewe

Planning and affordable rural housing : the limits to rational policy

This PhD thesis looks at how UK Government policies to deliver more affordable housing in rural areas are being implemented – whether the policies are succeeding, and the social and micro-spatial effects of the policies. The thesis reviews literature which identifies that there is a particular problem with housing affordability in rural areas, and that since the introduction of national planning advice designed to increase affordable housing provision in 1991, delivery in rural England has been consistently and significantly less than the established need. Based on data from five case study local authorities in different regions of England, the thesis concludes that the shortfall in affordable housing provision is not just a technical problem with policy implementation, but in part due to the exercise of three dimensions of power by rural elites interested in the “containment of urban England”. Those rural elites exercise power as follows: 1) The first dimension of power: focusing on decision making, this strand of the thesis argues that decisions made with regard to planning for housing reflect the locus of power in the decision-making process, and that power lies with urban local authorities and anti-development rural elites. 2) The second dimension of power: focusing on non-decision making, this strand argues that the way that planning policy is made facilitates its domination by those urban and anti-development interests, at both the regional and local level. 3) The third dimension of power: focusing on how power is exercised by the shaping of needs/desires by the powerful, this strand of the thesis uses theories of social constructionism and discourse analysis to question whether the failures identified in strands 1) and 2) arise because society as a whole, and the planning system specifically, does not recognise at an ideological level that it is failing.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceEconomic and Social Research Council : Commission for Rural CommunitiesGBUnited Kingdo

Profit or public service? Tensions and alignment in private planning practice

© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/The growth of employment opportunities for planners working in the private sector has resulted in a rapid change in the composition of the planning profession in the UK, with over 40% of Royal Town Planning Institute members now employed in private practice. Existing writing on private planning practice is somewhat circumspect, with the private sector being associated largely with a profit-driven approach. Drawing on interviews with private sector planners, this paper argues that this fails to reflect the lived reality of private sector planners, and in so doing sets out an alternative and more nuanced characterisation of private practice.Peer reviewe

Sustainability trade-offs in Climate Change Geographies in England

©2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/The evidence that climate change is the result of human actions becomes yet stronger, as does the need to take action to limit the worst effects of climate change on the planet. However, politicians continue to equivocate and fail to address the trade-offs which are needed to deliver effective action. In this paper we report on the potential of bottom-up approaches to transport planning to address the trade-offs between the need to reduce car-based travel and the social consequences of poor mobility options in rural areas. Using theories of Sustainable Communities and Communi-ties of Practices, we analyze the implementation of the Robin Demand Responsive Transport service in the West of England, presenting new data relating to the effectiveness of this service in providing low carbon transport alternatives to rural residents. We find that the Robin is indeed effective, and that it has worked better in one location, where engagement with potential new users of the service has been prioritized. We conclude that such bottom-up transport options can be transformative, subject to the support of key stakeholders and integration with top-down systems of governance.Peer reviewe

Profit or public service? Tensions and alignment in private planning practice

The growth of employment opportunities for planners working in the private sector has resulted in a rapid change in the composition of the planning profession in the UK, with over 40% of Royal Town Planning Institute members now employed in private practice. Existing writing on private planning practice is somewhat circumspect, with the private sector being associated largely with a profit-driven approach. Drawing on interviews with private sector planners, this paper argues that this fails to reflect the lived reality of private sector planners, and in so doing sets out an alternative and more nuanced characterisation of private practice