Michael Lennon

The utilisation of environmental knowledge in land-use planning: drawing lessons for an ecosystem services approach

Proponents of ecosystem services approaches to assessment claim that it will ensure the environment is ‘properly valued’ in decision making. Analysts seeking to understand the likelihood of this could usefully reexamine previous attempts to deploy novel assessment processes in land-use planning and how they affect decisions. This paper draws insights from a meta-analysis of three case studies: environmental capital, ecological footprinting, and green infrastructure. Concepts from science and technology studies are used to interpret how credibility for each new assessment process was assembled, and the ways by which the status of knowledge produced becomes negotiable or prescriptive. The influence of these processes on planning decisions is shown to be uneven, and depends on a combination of institutional setting and problem framing, not simply knowledge content. The analysis shows how actively cultivating wide stakeholder buy-in to new assessment approaches may secure wider support, but not necessarily translate into major influence on decisions.

Green Infrastructure and Planning Policy: A Critical Assessment

Advocates of the green infrastructure (GI) concept claim it offers a progressive planning approach that facilitates synergies between economic growth, environmental conservation and social development. Although widely endorsed by both planning practitioners and academics, little academic literature exists critically evaluating what GI entails or the potential implications of its institutionalisation within planning practice. This paper addresses this deficit by critically examining the interpretation and representation of the GI concept in planning policy. The paper first critically analyses international interpretations of GI. Following this, the particular attributes of GIs interpretation in the Republic of Ireland are investigated. The paper demonstrates how the emergence of GI in Ireland relates to broader debates on attempts to reconcile environmental concerns with development aspirations in planning policy. It is deduced that GI may represent an approach to planning policy formulation wherein habitat conservation initiatives are primarily designed and justified relative to the ecosystems services they are seen to provide to society. The paper also cautions against the risks posed by confining GI debates to the deliberations of technical specialist. The paper concludes by identifying some issues that may arise in the implementation of a GI approach and suggests ways to enhance the potential benefit of the concepts use in spatial planning.

Urban Design and Adapting to Flood Risk: The Role of Green Infrastructure

This Practice Paper identifies and critically examines three alternative approaches and associated design philosophies in response to the problem of urban flooding. It traces the reasons why these three approaches have emerged and discusses the attributes of each. Following this, it examines the potential of the green infrastructure approach as a means to realize ‘evolutionary resilience’ in designing urban environments for enhanced drainage management. The paper then contrasts the three alternative approaches to flood risk management and identifies some implications of advancing the green infrastructure concept in urban design activities.

Contending Expertise: An Interpretive Approach to (Re)conceiving Wind Power's ‘Planning Problem’

Abstract We explore the complex and multidimensional nature of wind powers ‘planning problem’ by investigating the ways different knowledges and knowledge holders seek to accumulate authority over the ‘facts’ of a situation. This is undertaken through an interpretive analysis of how different parties to contentious wind farm debates in Ireland strived to mobilize contending realities wherein they were advantageously positioned as credible sources of knowledge. We advance a novel approach grounded in rhetorical theory that reveals and explains how the different parties to these debates deployed nuanced discursive strategies that constituted their character (ethos) by skilfully interlacing implicit and explicit portrayals of scientific objectivity (logos) with emotive subjectivity (pathos). In doing so, we identify the important role played by ‘rescaling’ in privileging and marginalizing different perspectives within both the contending discourses and the formal processes of planning application assessment. We draw conclusions from this analysis regarding broader debates in environmental governance and suggest how wind powers ‘planning problem’ should be reconceived.

Finding purpose in planning

This article presents a novel interpretive approach to advancing knowledge of how practitioners locate purpose in their practice and how this in turn influences their practice. The approach is formulated by drawing upon and integrating the moral philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre with the hermeneutical philosophy of Paul Ricouer. The article argues that this approach offers insight into the important role of narrative in producing self-understanding, rationalizing judgment, and justifying action. Original empirical material regarding a practitioner’s account of promoting a new planning concept is used to illustrate the elucidatory potential of the approach.

Nature conservation in the Anthropocene: preservation, restoration and the challenge of novel ecosystems

No sooner had we entered the twenty-first century than new words appeared to express an emerging re-conception of our place in the world. Foremost among these is the term “Anthropocene”. Since firs...

Explaining the currency of novel policy concepts: learning from green infrastructure planning

The ‘interpretive turn’ in policy analysis has greatly enhanced understanding of policy process dynamics. However, it has not afforded much attention to explaining the currency of novel concepts where open dispute appears absent in policy discussions. This paper seeks to address this lacuna by employing an innovative discourse analysis approach to examining the emergence of green infrastructure planning policy in the Republic of Ireland. Whereas the analysis accounts for the rhetorical force of language, it reveals that those advocating the green infrastructure concept were not passive actors in receiving a static discourse. Instead, it demonstrates that such agents actively sought to negate opposition and advance their policy objectives by exploiting the discourses flexibility and consensus-building potential, as well as strategically identifying and employing a range of dissemination opportunities. Drawing lessons from this case, a new framework for understanding the interpretive analysis of seemingly unopposed novel policy concepts is presented.