Narratives of and in urban change and planning: whose narratives and how authentic?

Lieven Ameel's book The Narrative Turn in Urban Planning offers a critical examination of the role of narratives and story-telling in questions concerning urban planning in future deliberations of urban change. The discussion provides an excellent way to identify, define and construct our understanding about narratives in and of planning, including the construction of a typology for the first time. But narratives of and for planning tend to mask wider meta-narrative issues that will affect how places are shaped and are changed in the future. These drivers of change not only encompass a range of socio-economic and environmental challenges. They will also have profound implications for our use of technology, and for the way our democratic processes operate. Such dramatic changes will impact on the context and form of planning, wherever you are in the world. And we are likely to see greater polarisation in attitudes toward urban and regional change, some of which may not only be proactive, but deeply reactive, subjective and selective. If the narrative turn will become more prominent in planning, we need to be ready for the likely proliferation of disruptive and insurgent narratives that will emerge and reflect the deep-seated vested interests that possess stakes in how and whether places change on their terms

The Planning Polity

Planning is not a technical and value free activity. Planning is an overt political system that creates both winners and losers. The Planning Polity is a book that considers the politics of development and decision-making, and political conflicts between agencies and institutions within British town and country planning. The focus of assessment is how British planning has been formulated since the early 1990s, and provides an in-depth and revealing assessment of both the Major and Blair governments' terms of office. The book will prove to be an invaluable guide to the British planning system today and the political demands on it. Students and activists within urban and regional studies, planning, political science and government, environmental studies, urban and rural geography, development, surveying and planning, will all find the book to be an essential companion to their work

Neighborhood planning, participation, and rational choice

The focus of this article is the development of neighborhood planning in England, in particular its guiding principle of local people as rational actors. The article looks at neighborhood planning in its own terms; that is, it looks at the rationality of engagement in a new system that seeks to tip the balance of rationality in favor of communities following the UK government’s aims of overcoming local resistance to the development of new housing. While there is evidence that neighborhood planning is enjoying some success, this is a delicate settlement

Universities, economic development and ‘levelling up’ – how can universities make a positive impact on their local areas?

Based on the findings of a recent report into the ways in which higher education institutions contribute to the development of their local regions. Mark Tewdwr-Jones and Louise Kempton, discuss the complexity of aligning the goals of higher education to regional economic initiatives, such as the UK government’s levelling up agenda. They also highlight how good policy for productive regional engagements, is long-term, recognises diversity within regions and higher education and cuts a balance between universities as important, but not always central, actors in regional development

Covid-19 and the rise of digital planning: Fast and slow adoption of a digital planning system

COVID-19 has had a traumatic effect on both the way people live and work in their everyday lives, and the way places function. The rapid transformation of employment practices, including the necessity to stay at home for lockdown periods, has given rise to increased digitisation and technological use to enable people to continue to work and to remain in contact with friends and colleagues. Digital planning, and the enhancement of digital citizen engagement, has been one area that has started to inform local government’s online activity. This is coincidental to the UK government’s interest in transforming planning into a digital and map-based service. This article examines digital planning activity in English local planning authorities since COVID-19 hit the UK, reporting on two interrelated research studies that analysed statements of community involvement and planners’ perceptions of digital planning activity. The article shows that COVID-19 has certainly accelerated the adoption and deployment of digital planning, but it is an activity that has been developing in local planning incrementally for more than two decades

Co-Designing Urban Planning Engagement and Innovation: Using LEGO® to Facilitate Collaboration, Participation and Ideas

There is a growing academic interest in the idea of co-designing methods to achieve urban innovation and urban planning. As we see cities as “living laboratories,” beyond the control of elected city government, there is a momentum to develop and test shared responses to the social, environmental, and economic challenges present in contemporary urbanism. These living laboratories are a function of open innovation or “quadruple helix” actors, drawn from state, business, higher education, and community sectors. However, translating the often-good intention principles of working together through shared and co-designed arrangements in any major urban area is often a significant challenge and a topic neglected to date. This article addresses this gap through the case study of Newcastle City Futures, a university-anchored platform in the northeast of the UK, that sought to co-design collaborative urban research, public engagement, and innovation. Newcastle City Futures created novel working methods centred on participatory games to facilitate shared understanding and joint ideas for new urban innovation projects across established sectors. This article will examine one method that was successful in generating collaboration and participation: “LEGO® mash-ups.” Detailed empirical accounts of the development of the LEGO® mash-up method are used to illustrate attitudes to urban challenges, the fostering of a spirit of open collaboration, and the development of innovative responses through co-design. These are used to support the conceptual argument that the use of the quadruple helix as a form of urban innovation system needs to be accompanied by accessible, workable, and easily interpreted translation methods, such as games, by intermediaries

‘Disorganised Devolution’: reshaping metropolitan governance in England in a period of austerity

After 2010, the UK Government’s espousal of a Localist agenda reflected a rejection of the regional level as the most appropriate scale for sub-national governance. The development of a more explicitly city regional level of governance is illustrated in the creation of City Deals which have given some of England’s largest cities increased autonomy to allocate the dividend of local economic growth. More recently, Combined Authorities, within which larger city-regions such as Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool and the North-East of England have been tasked to undertake transport, economic development and other functions. In assessing this contemporary reshaping of metropolitan governance this article draws upon political economy, spatial and institutional approaches that highlight how austerity, competing spatial imaginaries and the historical evolution of central-local relationships within the UK state have combined to produce a particularly ‘disorganised’ approach to contemporary devolution in England. It contends that while the city region remains the dominant spatial narrative, the on-going process of rescaling at the sub-national state level falls well short of being a coherent, clearly thought-out and permanent transfer of powers and fiscal responsibilities to a uniformly defined scale of governance