Malcolm Tait

The Crisis of Trust and Planning

Trust, it has been argued, has been declining in government, institutions and professions. For some, this has become significant enough to diagnose a “crisis of trust”. Planning systems and planners have not been immune from this growing sense of mistrust which not only has implications for planners as professionals, but also for planning as an activity. This article explores the consequences of the “crisis of trust” for planning and planners. In doing so, it sets out to understand why this crisis has arisen, and identifies four main theses (the rise of the risk society, the rise of the pluralistic society, the rise of the rights-based society and the rise of advanced liberalism). Each thesis is discussed in relation to general changes in society and the implications for planning and planners. It is concluded that whilst narrow views of trust may help us focus on individual and community relationships, a wider notion of trust may be valuable for its focus on values and common goals. Furthermore, problems of the rise of auditing and systems of control especially within the context of advanced liberalism and the rise of the pluralistic society are identified as having particular purchase on both the decline of trust in planning and how we might seek to restore trust.

Travelling Ideas, Power and Place: The Cases of Urban Villages and Business Improvement Districts

Abstract A multitude of concepts and ideas have shaped practices in professions such as planning, urban design and urban management. Now, however, the speed and intensity with which these ideas travel seems historically unprecedented. This paper explores how some of these ideas are formed and circulated, often with unpredictable consequences. In order to understand the circulation and impact of these ideas this paper constructs an analytical framework which views these concepts within wider networks of social agents and institutions. Using insights from actor-network theory and discourse analysis we propose a framework that focuses our understanding of how ideas are translated into new spatial settings. The examples of the urban village and the business improvement district will be used to explicate the analytical framework. In concluding, the paper assesses the utility of the analytic framework in explaining the travel of planning ideas.

Constructing an Image: The Urban Village Concept in the UK

The concept of the urban village was first promoted by the Urban Villages Group in the late 1980s as a means to achieve more human scale, mixed-use and well-designed places. The term urban village has since entered the planning discourse, and a number of developments known as urban villages have appeared across the country. This article draws on ongoing research into the phenomenon of the urban village, and focuses on the origins, definitions, and meanings given to the term in the literature, in interviews with key players, in planning documentation and in the professional press. It appears that the urban village concept is variously interpreted and applied depending on the context in which it is used, and on the knowledge, role and interests of the individual reflecting on the term. The article will attempt to unravel the significance of this, while also drawing some conclusions about how concepts frame, and are framed by, prevailing discourses.

Room for Manoeuvre? An Actor-network Study of Central-Local Relations in Development Plan Making

This article explores some of the connections and tensions between central and local government as exhibited in the British plan-making process. Research into this topic draws on case studies of the plan-writing process in two locales and analyses these from an actor-network perspective. In particular, the processes of constituting both ‘central government’ and more ‘local’ networks are explored through comparing the two cases. Whilst it was found that a ‘central government’ network ordered much of the plan-writing activities in both cases, significant room for manoeuvre was created for ‘councils’ and ‘planning officers’ in particular. It is concluded, however, that this room for manoeuvre was not fully explored by these groups, and instead established procedures were replicated.

The Politics of Communication between Planning Officers and Politicians: The Exercise of Power through Discourse

The relationship between local government officers and elected members is central to the decisionmaking processes associated with planning, as with many other areas of public policymaking. Legal responsibilities and issues of accountability and legitimacy lie at the heart of the relationship between officers and members, with interaction mediated and constituted through ritualised communicative encounters such as committee meetings and associated reports, and less formally through ad hoc contacts. Given the importance of this relationship it is striking that there has been relatively little research into the influences on officers and members within everyday planning practice. In this paper we will explore the extent to which a consideration of the language used in planning practice can inform our understanding of the relationship between planners and politicians. Thinking within the planning field about the role of language as a mechanism for reflecting and constituting power has been dominated by the work of Jürgen Habermas and Michel Foucault. However, despite the increasing attention focused on the importance of language and communication, work within the planning community has tended to concentrate on normative issues of how planning ought to operate in society rather than situating these theories within the ‘real’ world of practice. The objectives behind the case study research evaluated in this paper are therefore twofold. First, to explore the role of language and discourse in reflecting and constituting relations of power in a planning authority on the south coast of England and, second, to explore the value of Foucaults and Habermass ideas as tools of research in planning. On the basis of this study we conclude that there are some important theoretical and methodological difficulties in connecting the ideas of Habermas and Foucault to the world of everyday planning practice.

Is There Space for Better Planning in a Neoliberal World? Implications for Planning Practice and Theory

Planning’s normative aspirations are open to criticism for their idealism and impracticality in the face of economic forces. The question underlying this article therefore is how far space—conceptual and practical—exists for better planning? The argument uses empirical evidence drawn from an unremarkable planning case not as a source of explanation but to probe how events (and hence planning) might have been different and therefore could be different in the future. What choices were overlooked? What questions might have been asked? What alternative outcomes were possible?

Trust and the Public Interest in the Micropolitics of Planning Practice

In neoliberal democracies, regulatory planning systems are often characterized by tension between (1) efforts to treat developers as consumers and (2) the regulatory aspect of planning, frequently involving decisions that sacrifice individual interests in favor of a collective but ill-defined “public interest.” This unresolved tension creates a crisis of trust, as the underlying values of the planning system are rarely made explicit. Using an ethnographic methodology to investigate the embedded nature of trust relationships in one planning office, this article suggests that the prerequisite for invigorating trust in planning is a careful and coherent theorization of the relationship of individual to collective interests.

Ontology and the Conservation of Built Heritage

The ontological status of historic buildings has until recently been little explored, particularly in relation to their conservation. This is curious, for the assumed status and existence of buildings have critical impacts upon our attempts to conserve them. Conventional conservation thought has conceived buildings as solid objects constructed under the gaze of a single architect and retaining exemplar properties worth preserving. This paper offers an alternative and novel conceptualisation of buildings in time and space, drawing on the naturalistic ontology of Jubien and combining this with actor-network theory to explore how buildings might be conceived as multiple things with variant but persisting properties (some of which may be worthy of conservation). Using the moment of post-1945 reconstruction, we explore conservation of the architecture and spaces of Exeter (UK) to consider three objects, their nature, persistence, properties, and formation. Doing so reveals the multiplicity of material and social objects that may become entwined in attempts to conserve these buildings. Things such as ‘views’ become reconsidered as multiply constructed, with variant nonessential parts. The paper concludes that conservation practice requires a more heterogeneous understanding of these objects, how they are formed, and the potential for their social and material hybridity.

Putting Localism in Place: Conservative Images of the Good Community and the Contradictions of Planning Reform in England

Abstract Over the past 5 years, the UK Coalition and subsequent Conservative governments have sought to develop an agenda of localism. Recent research has evaluated how this has played out in practice. This article takes a different approach, interpreting how the language of community and place in English politics has been mobilized in reforms of the country’s planning system. We do this by tracing how conservative traditions of political thought and imagery of place were used to advance localism. This reveals a range of contradictions within the English localism agenda and highlights the wider political challenges raised by attempts to mobilize the affective and morally charged language of the local.

Planning and the public interest: Still a relevant concept for planners?:

As I write this, the fallout from the decision to grant the first planning permission for fracking1 in the United Kingdom for 5 years rumbles on. The proposal to use an existing borehole to fracture the rocks 3000 m under the Yorkshire countryside was approved by the planning committee of the North Yorkshire County Council, despite them receiving 4375 letters of objection compared to 36 letters of support. Responding to the decision, John Ashton (2016), the former UK diplomat with responsibilities for climate change negotiations wrote,