Spatial Planning and the New Localism

Graham Haughton, Philip Allmendinger, Graham Haughton, Philip Allmendinger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781134907717
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie urbaine

This book looks at the transition from New Labour's 'Spatial Planning' approach to the Coalition Government's preferred 'Localism' approach. Localism we are told will liberate local planners from the heavy hand of central government and allow planning to flourish at the local level. Alternatively, austerity cuts nationally mean planning faces cuts. In just two years the machinery of regional planning has been dismantled and local authorities are being asked to do more with less. Innovation is also evident, however, notably with the introduction of neighbourhood planning and Local Enterprise Partnerships. This collection contain chapters looking at the planning system overall, sustainability and planning, new approaches to infrastructure planning, and the critical interface between urban policy, local economic development and planning.

This book was published as a special issue of Planning Practice and Research. It also contains a brand new afterword, written by the editors: 'Localism, austerity and planning.'

Spatial Planning and the New Localism

GRAHAM HAUGHTON & PHIL ALLMENDINGER

Graham Haughton, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, UK.

Abstract

This special issue looks at spatial planning and the new localism, focusing on the recent changes to policy in England following the May 2010 elections when the Coalition government came to power. As Bas Waterhout, Frank Othengrafen and Olivier Sykes note in their contribution, changes in English planning seem to be more frequent and more dramatic than in many other European countries. Partly in consequence of this, planners and critics in other countries watch carefully the English experience for what they can learn about reforming planning systems.

It would be tempting to say this special issue appears at a critical time in the history of English planning, as fundamental reforms are being introduced which are reworking both the policy scope and the scales of planning. But actually, there have been several such moments in the past 30 years or so, as Phil Allmendinger and Graham Haughton demonstrate in the first of the substantive articles here, which looks at the ways in which new modes and motifs of neoliberal thinking have permeated each phase of planning restructuring since the late 1970s. It remains to be seen how significant the current changes will prove to be in changing the course of English planning practice, but they are certainly part of a pattern of repeated reform with various repackaged elements and arguments.

As Iain Deas notes in his discussion here of urban regeneration, ‘New Localism’ is not a new term—since the 1990s all incoming national governments have tended to talk about moving away from the centralizing instinct of central government and instead empowering local government or local communities (Haughton, 2012). Back in 1995 John Lovering provided a detailed critique of what he termed ‘New Localism’, in which he sets out a powerful argument for the way in which local success stories are converted to an almost anodyne recipe for national and local politicians wanting to build an argument that it was possible to restructure localities relatively painlessly to the demands of the emerging global economy. Drawing on a limited reading of the success stories such as high tech clusters in Silicon Valley, the M4 and M5 corridors in England, Emilia Romagna in Northern Italy and elsewhere, the redemptive powers of local activism and intervention were set out in an almost naı¨ve way as providing possible solutions to complex, deeply entrenched problems of local and global inequalities. In this context, the current English government’s calls upon the redemptive powers of ‘localism’ begin to look to be part of a long-standing pattern, and to have at their heart a series of contradictions about how the promises and the limits of this approach.

Over the 20 years since Lovering’s (1995) argument, there have been repeated returns to the appeal of some form of localism, evident in the community economic development agenda of the EU for instance (Haughton, 1999) and in various documents produced under New Labour. The results have been far from clear-cut. In the early days of New Labour, for instance, we were promised that giving more power to the devolved nations (Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales) and to the English regions would lead to a ‘double devolution dividend’, as power would continue to cascade down to local government. Instead much of the double devolution dividend went not to local authorities but to some of the ‘soft spaces’ of planning and regeneration introduced by New Labour, such as the meta-regional initiatives for the Northern Way and the Thames Gateway (Haughton et al., 2010). The ‘open source’ approach to planning advocated by the Conservative Party in the run up to the 2010 election was scathing of the New Labour model, claiming that far from empowering local actors it was ‘top-down’, bureaucratic and reliant on an unwieldy and counterproductive target culture. Their new ‘New Localism’ would be different we were promised. With every new government for the past 20 years proclaiming its supposed allegiance to greater local empowerment and repudiation of past centralist approaches, it is hard not to be skeptical about the current claims that are being made about radical changes in approach. Such skepticism is not assuaged by the none-too-subtle criticisms of planning as a ‘burden on business’ by some in Government, the dusting off of repackaged initiatives such as enterprise zones and the deployment of centralizing and growth driven policies under a thin veneer of localism in the National Planning Policy Framework (House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee, 2012).

In this special issue we have gathered together a range of authors to provide insights on different aspects of the planning process in recent years, analyzing both the legacy of New Labour and the new policy directions set out by the Coalition government. Richard Cowell takes the intersection of environmental sustainability, localism and planning as the starting point for his compelling critique of how planning has struggled to make a difference on this front, whilst pointing to some progress along the way. The picture he paints is of opportunities wasted but also of some substantive progress in providing opportunities at least for more informed and wider ranging debates about the trade-offs involved in reconciling development with the emerging environmental agenda.

Mark Baker and Cecilia Wong provide a detailed and nuanced analysis of how the more strategic dimensions of planning evolved in the past two decades, in particular the role of regional planning. This article again usefully highlights both the gains that emerged under New Labour’s emerging thinking on planning, and some of its shortcomings. Chief among the gains appeared to be the move toward evidence based policy, which is one of the potential areas of loss under the Coalition government’s proposals to reduce the ‘burden’ of planning, and to refocus it (yet again) on ‘delivery’, one of the motifs of the later period of New Labour planning reforms. Their analysis of the localization agenda for planning suggests that the localism trend may well lead to a strengthening of central direction, rather than a loosening of the prescriptive ‘top-down’ approach which it is ostensibly meant to replace. Likewise, the new government’s scathing critique of the target culture of New Labour, which seemed to imply this approach to central control would become history, is already being tempered as the new government begins to grapple with the realities of the needs of the development industry for a clear and consistent planning framework rather than local ‘freedom’, which in reality can become potentially quite anarchic.

One of the other notable features of planning in the UK in the past 20 years has been a growing concern to engage more effectively with infrastructure planning. This in part reflects a shift within neoliberalism, from earlier Thatcherite cuts to government capital spending to later approaches that have attempted to use both state and private finance to update the nation’s infrastructure as part of a broader approach to improving local and national competitiveness. Under both approaches, however, what was clear was that there was a compelling need to address the problems of infrastructure maintenance and ageing, and to address the needs of growing demand for new infrastructure, not least in IT, public transport, ports and airports. The result has been a period of what Tim Marshall refers to as infrastructuralism. In his contribution here, Marshall provides a detailed account of this emergent process, including attempts to integrate increased infrastructure spending with strategic spatial planning.

Mike Raco also takes infrastructure as the starting point for his contribution, providing a devastating critique of the impact of the Private Finance Initiative on the abilities of local communities and local governments to be more ‘localist’. Carefully tracing the rigidities and lack of local accountability of the PFI’s in one locality, Raco provides a depressing antidote to more aspirational accounts of the empowering potential of localism. Instead he points to how the global corporate entanglements of poorly managed state contractualism within a particular neoliberal ideological fix systemically undermine the capacity for progressive local reforms. The critical issue here concerns the inflexibilities involved once state authorities find themselves locked into very long-term legal contracts with corporations whose accountabilities are to their global shareholders in search of high returns rather than local communities in search of improved local services. There is a clear conflict here with democratic choice—in effect there is a ‘lock-in’ for a generation or more as a result of the decisions entered into at one particular moment in time—future generations and future politicians are rendered near powerless to bring about change in response to changing local needs and aspirations.

This all seems a long way from the aspirational goals of strategic spatial planning as a way of improving the accountability of planning, its capacity to integrate across sectors, and ability to think and act long term in pursuit of the public good. Whilst in much of continental Europe spatial planning is seen as a progressive largely technical movement, in the UK its rise was particularly associated with a distinct era of New Labour, from 2002 to 2008. For some commentators, not least ourselves, this has been problematic, as there has been an unhealthy elision of professional practice and party political agendas, such that when New Labour started to lose its electoral appeal, almost inevitably the English variant of ‘spatial planning’ also became subject to growing critique, over both its effectiveness and its political agenda (Newman, 2008; Allmendinger and Haughton 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012; Haughton et al., 2010; Haughton and Allmendinger, 2011).

The rise to power of the Coalition Government in 2010 has brought in a fundamental rethink about the purpose and processes of planning, mobilized around the vague notion of ‘localism’. Various announcements and policy initiatives, most notably the Decentralisation and Localism Bill published in December 2010, point toward a new era for planning characterized by a reduced central state presence, the shift from ‘top-down’ targets on housing, a deregulatory suite of proposals and a new sub-local, neighbourhood emphasis upon plan making and development, as Mark Baker and Cecilia Wong note. The implications of this agenda for urban regeneration are carefully unpicked here by Iain Deas, whilst Alan Townsend and Lee Pugalis perform a parallel dissection of the new localism in relation to local economic development, in particular the Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs) created by the new government. The dismantling of New Labour’s regional institutional architecture led to concerns about the ongoing need for strategic spatial thinking above the level of local government, leading the new government to introduce LEPs as a way of address this ‘vacuum’. Though there is value in pitching strategic spatial thinking at this ‘sub-regional’ scale, as Townsend and Pugalis argue, it is still far from clear that LEPs are the appropriate vehicle for this, given their limited financial and analytical resources, and uncertain responsibilities. It is already clear that if they are to retain the interest of private sector actors, there will need to be a radical re-think about the powers of LEPs and commitment of government resources allied to clearer responsibilities.

So do the new reforms being brought in under the banner of localism spell the end of spatial planning in England? There is nothing specifically contrary to the spirit and purpose of spatial planning in the Coalition’s proposals. Indeed, some of the themes and tenets of spatial planning, namely the emphasis upon collaborative processes and coordination across and between scales and sectors appear to be elements of the Government’s proposals. And as a professional discourse and worldview spatial planning is more difficult to dismiss, particularly given the discretion at the heart of UK planning and the current emphasis upon localism. If Localism means anything then it should allow for a range of approaches to exist alongside more traditional regulatory models of planning, including varieties of spatial planning. So rather than vanquishing it, Localism could yet prove to be the saviour of spatial planning by allowing the broad approach that it represents to evolve and adapt to meet the demands of different places and circumstances.

Notwithstanding this, there is not one mention of spatial planning in the Decentralisation and Localism Act—and neither Coalition nor Opposition leaders mention the term any more—it is always simply planning. The only adherents left appear to be the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) and planning academics, providing for a strange series of disconnects between the worlds of policy, politics and academia. Elements of the Coalition’s proposals, such as the abolition of Regional Spatial Strategies and Local Area Agreements would, at the very least, hint at a move away from some of the concerns of what was once known as spatial planning—an approach that was said to herald a more forward looking, integrative, participative approach to planning. However, separating ‘spatial planning’ as a political project from ‘spatial planning’ as a mindset and professional doctrine is not straightforward. Spatial planning as a doctrine of planning practice was always going to be loose fit with the priorities and policies of any government concerned with a winning elections and promoting a wide set of (sometimes contradictory) agendas. At best ‘spatial planning’ is in transition in England—it may be in its death throes, or it may be in a process of re-invention. One thing is clear however, whichever label we prefer to use: English planning now finds itself undergoing one of its periodic transformations from one paradigm to another.

It is interesting in this context to step back and look at the English experience as seen from the outside—not least because many other European countries have their own variants of spatial planning. In this light, the survival or failure of English spatial planning matters for other countries too, as the contribution by Bas Waterhout and colleagues demonstrates. A key question here concerns what, if anything, other countries can learn from the English experience. Did the fate of spatial planning become too closely linked to the approach to planning and governance under New Labour, such that it became too politicized as a project? Whatever the answer is to this question, in the short term planners need to rethink their role more fundamentally for new times and an age of a small state and public sector austerity. Planning academics in this context have a potentially valuable contribution to make in thinking through both the lessons of the recent past and the wider implications of the current reforms to planning. That is exactly what the contributors to this volume set out to do.

References

Allmendinger, P. & Haughton, G. (2009) Commentary. Critical reflections on spatial planning, Environment and Planning A, 41(11), 2544–2549.

Allmendinger, P. & Haughton, G. (2010) The future of spatial planning – Why less may be more, Town and Country Planning, July–August, 326–328.

Allmendinger, P. & Haughton, G. (2011) Challenging localism, Town and Country Planning, 80(7/8), pp. 314–317.

Allmendinger, P. & Haughton, G. (2012) Postpolitical planning: A crisis of consensuss?, Transactions IBG, NS 37, pp. 89–103.

Haughton, G. & Allmendinger, P. (2011) Moving on – from spatial planning to localism and beyond, Town and Country Planning, 80.4, pp. 184–187.

Haughton, G. (2012) Planning and growth, in: M. Ward & S. Hardy (Eds) Changing Gear – Is Localism the New Regionalism, pp. 95–106 (London: The Smith Institute). Available at http://www.smith-institute.org.uk/file/Changing%20Gear.pdf (accessed 15 June 2012).

Haughton, G. (ed.) (1999) Community Economic Development, The Stationary Office/Regional Studies Association (London: Routledge).

Haughton, G., Allmendinger, P., Counsell, D., & Vigar, G. (2010) The New Spatial Planning: Soft Spaces, Fuzzy Boundaries and Territorial Management (London: Routledge).

House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee (2012) The National Planning Policy Framework, 8th Report of Session (London: HMSO).

Lovering, J. (1995) Creating discourses rather than jobs: The crisis in the cities and the transition fantasies of intellectuals and policy makers, in: P. Healey et al. (Eds) Managing Cities: The New Urban Context, pp. 109–126 (Chichester: John Wiley and Sons).

Newman, P. (2008) Strategic spatial planning: Collective action and moments of opportunity, European Planning Studies, 16(10), pp.1371–1383.

The Evolution and Trajectories of English Spatial Governance: ‘Neoliberal’ Episodes in Planning

PHIL ALLMENDINGER & GRAHAM HAUGHTON

Graham Haughton, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, UK.

Abstract

English planning again finds itself in a transition from one paradigm—spatial planning—to another—localism. Whilst there is uncertainty and a debate over the significance of these changes and whether they represent a rupture or evolution, we argue in this paper that such change is best understood within the framework of neoliberalization. Seen from this perspective planning is a form of, or contributor to, neoliberal spatial gov...