critical place

Building Sustainable Futures

In a new book ‘Building Sustainable Futures‘ edited by Dastbaz and Strange and published by Springer 2015 I contribute a chapter on neighbourhood planning and sustainable communities.

The concept of sustainable communities has come to define a particular type of governance in which responsibility for ameliorating the impact of economic growth is devolved to place-based voluntary and community associations. The community provides a model of sustainability in which the economics of collective consumption and the politics of community action can be engaged in the planning and stewardship of local development. The strategies of sustainable communities that result combine the market zeal of spatial liberalism with themes of redistributive justice and equality.  In the concept of community they find both a model of resilience and self-reliance and conversely a dynamic of mutual aid and co-operation.

My chapter identifies these competing strands in government strategies for sustainable communities in England and particularly the programme of neighbourhood planning introduced from 2011.  Together with my co-author, David Haigh, I argue that through neighbourhood planning responsibility for achieving environmental and social sustainability was largely abandoned by the state and relegated to the domestic networks of the community.  We explore the definition of sustainability that emerged from communities and their neighbourhood plans, one in which the priorities of environmental quality and the welfare needs of social reproduction were pursued through a Hobson’s choice of economic growth or self-reliance. In attempts by neighbourhood planning groups to establish innovative strategies of participation and community management we evidence the continuance of claims of redistribution and spatial equality in the concept of sustainability and in this unequal geography of community initiatives, we chart the development of a new patchwork politics of place. Building Sustainable Futures chapter_Final

The policy intention of neighbourhood planning in England was to overcome community opposition to house-building. It was anticipated that neighbourhood plans would increase the number of sites allocated for housing by giving communities more influence over the shape of development in exchange for their compliance with a pro-growth agenda. By the end of 2015, with over 100 neighbourhood plans in place and a further 1700 underway, the government announced the success of the policy in increasing housing allocations by more than 10 per cent. Continue reading →

Around 40 people from neighbourhood planning groups across Leeds took part in an innovative knowledge exchange workshop organised by Leeds Beckett University’s Planning Network on 7 November.

20 Neighbourhood Planning groups attend workshop

The workshop was organised by Leeds Planning Network, a new research cluster set up by the School of the Built Environment and Engineering supported by the Centre for Knowledge Exchange.

Quintin Bradley, Senior Lecturer in Planning at Leeds Beckett University, said: “This workshop is the first in a series of events in which we aim to help local people in Leeds get a real say in the future of their neighbourhoods.” Continue reading →

Neighbourhood plans in England are creating new lines of political conflict in the relationship between central and local government.

The new Housing and Planning Bill (2015) grants neighbourhood planning areas a right of appeal to the secretary of state in cases of disagreement with the local authority. In addition urban neighbourhoods that have a designated forum will get the right to be consulted over planning applications.

These new powers bear witness to the antagonism that has developed between many neighbourhood planning groups and their local planning authority. The legislation is also evidence of government intention to establish the neighbourhood as a new political identity that can be used to circumvent or circumscribe the power of local councils. The neighbourhood is emerging as the potential ally or pawn of central government in its fractious relationship with local authorities. Continue reading →

In this post, I explore the traditions of self-management and community control behind the rise of neighbourhood planning in England.

The desire for autonomy, for self-organisation and self-management, has been a persistent thread in the history of community action in England, as it has been in social movements across the world. The foundation of self-governing communities by religious and political dissenters in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries found reflection in the co-operatives, communes and mutual aid societies that signalled the making of a working class movement, and the tradition of informal settlements and community self-build that has continued into the present day. This tradition of dissident autonomy has been consistently captured and incorporated into the institutional processes and structures of the state and the market relations of capital. In its manifestation as an active and engaged civil society it has been enlisted in the privatisation and outsourcing of public services, the fragmentation of organised labour, the policing of behaviour, and the rejuvenation of moribund hierarchies through the assimilation of local knowledge. Promises of territorial autonomy made to community organisations provide the populist accompaniment to the commodification of the local as the base unit of a reordered society; a self-governing entity liberated by the dismantling of welfare systems and the de-regulation of markets. The autonomous neighbourhood is a potent symbol for the cause of liberalism and for its dissenters. It remains a site of potential conflict over definitions of freedom and empowerment. Continue reading →