Paul J. Maginn

Towards more effective community participation in urban regeneration: the potential of collaborative planning and applied ethnography

Community participation has become the new orthodoxy within urban regeneration policy in the UK. Yet, it remains a perennial problem for policymakers, especially at the neighbourhood level. A major reason for this, it is argued, is that policymakers often set up local partnerships with insufficient knowledge of the ‘culture’ (i.e. structure, processes, practices, relations and agents) of the neighbourhoods and communities they seek to regenerate and involve in decision-making. Furthermore, policymakers also lack a critically reflective understanding of their own cultural practices. It is argued that collaborative planning theory and applied ethnography offer policymakers a way forward in realising more effective community participation. Collaborative planning and applied ethnography provide a governance and methodological framework that have the potential to promote inclusionary argumentation and consensus building, and give partnership stakeholders an opportunity to become more aware and critically reflective of their cultural relations, practices and processes, thus paving the way forward for more effective community participation.

Planning Australia : an overview of urban and regional planning

Part I. Frameworks: 1. What is planning? Susan Thompson and Paul J. Maginn 2. Planning and governance Peter Williams and Paul J. Maginn 3. Planning as a profession Nancy Marshall 4. An historical perspective Robert Freestone 5. Statutory planning Peter Williams Part II. Key Issues: 6. Planning and the natural environment Peter Williams and Rosemary Smart 7. The metropolis Peter Murphy 8. Planning for rural landscapes Ian Sinclair and Raymond Bunker 9. Planning for regions Paul Collits 10. Planning for diverse communities Susan Thompson 11. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians Ed Wensing 12. Community participation in planning Nancy Marshall and Christine Steinmetz 13. Urban design Stephen McMahon 14. Planning for heritage conservation and management Robyn Conroy 15. Transport planning Paul Mees 16. Healthy planning Jennifer Kent, Susan Thompson and Anthony Capon.

Deliberative Democracy or Discursively Biased? Perth's Dialogue with the City Initiative

Abstract The State Government in Western Australia has portrayed itself as a champion of revitalising local democracy and civic engagement. This can be seen in the plethora of community consultation/participation policy documents that have emerged from the Premiers Citizens and Civics Unit over the past five years. Dialogue with the City, a major participatory planning process that formed part of the development of a new strategic plan—Network City—for metropolitan Perth, has been heralded as an exemplar of deliberative democracy. This paper draws on deliberative democratic theory, performative policy analysis and institutional discourse analysis to interrogate the efficacy of this claim by examining the discursive practices leading up to and including the Community Forum, a major consultative and participatory event of the Dialogue Initiative. It is argued that, whilst the Dialogue Initiative was supported by rhetorical deliberative utterances from political leaders and planning experts and exhibited, superficially at least, a number of attributes associated with deliberative democracy, the overall process fell short of this ideal. The primary reasons for this were that the process was scripted and stage-managed and lacked sufficient space and time for citizens to engage in genuine inclusionary argumentation and social learning. Hence the Dialogue Initiative may be viewed as an exercise more reflective of a mix of consultative and participatory planning conducted widely.

Synergy in Urban Regeneration Partnerships: Property Agents' Perspectives

A major justification for urban regeneration partnerships (URPs) is that they provide synergistic benefits for their participants. Some argue that the major beneficiaries will be private-sector agencies. This proposition is examined in the light of evidence from a survey of property-related agencies. The opinions of developers and property consultants on the success of the partnership process in regeneration schemes with a significant property redevelopment component are examined. Many were found to have concerns about the URP model, centring on governance structures, decision-making, cost implications and time-frames. This suggests that synergy benefits may not actually exist. It is concluded that management and decision-making structures in partnerships need to be of greater concern in policy debate than is currently the case.

Urban Policy Analysis Through a Qualitative Lens: Overview to Special Issue

This special issue of Urban Policy and Research (UPR) marks the first ever issue in the history of the journal to deal exclusively with research methods and, in particular, the role of qualitative research (QR) in urban policy analysis. The idea for this special issue stems from a combination of inter-related factors. First, I have a personal interest in QR as a result of having been involved in a number of housing and urban policy-related research projects where qualitative methods (i.e. in-depth interviews, focus groups and/or (non-)participant observations) have been extensively employed (Paris et al., 1995; Murtagh & Maginn, 1995; Leather et al., 1998; Connolly, 1999; Maginn et al., 1999; Halliday & Cowan, 2003). For my PhD research I undertook a major ethnographic study, spending a year in three ethnically diverse neighbourhoods in London conducting in-depth one-to-one interviews, focus groups and observing community forum meetings and other community and program events, in order to examine the nature of community participation and power and the salience of ‘race’ within local urban regeneration partnerships (Maginn, 2004). Next, I noticed from my research that there was a lack of critical discussion on QR (and even quantitative) methods within the general urban studies literature. By urban studies I essentially mean urban planning, urban regeneration/renewal and housing studies. Discussion on research methodology tends to be relatively cursory in nature within journal papers, book chapters and policy evaluation reports. The only place where methodological issues are discussed at length would seem to be within PhD theses. The lack of scholarly discussion and critical reflection on our methodological endeavours in the research we conduct risks giving the (false) impression that research is an easy and linear process when in reality it is almost always fraught with some kind of dilemma(s). The lack of discussion on QR in urban studies goes against the grain in the social sciences more generally where it has come of age. This is reflected in the range of QR textbooks that have been published in recent years across a wide range of disciplines. Despite this general trend the urban studies

Planning and Governance

Key terms: urban governance; urban management; government involvement in planning; planning powers; panels; centralisation. Planning at both urban and regional levels across Australia exhibits several common features, shaped largely by the same challenges and managed through similar responses. Although they might seem numerous, the challenges for planners all relate to ensuring Australia’s environmental, economic and social sustainability– the so-called triple bottom line– at a time of global economic restructuring, environmental degradation and non-renewable resource depletion, rising levels of urbanisation and the apparent roll-back of principles of democratic government at all levels. At the same time, planners must also consider the needs, desires and expectations of current and future generations. The challenges that lie ahead for planners, politicians and Australian society are likely to be immense and increasingly complex given projected population growth– from around 22.7 million in 2011 (ABS 2011), to between ‘30.9 and 42.5 million people by 2056, and to between 33.7 and 62.2 million people by 2101’ (ABS 2008). There is an integral relationship between sustainability issues and population patterns in Australia that frames the specific nature of the challenges faced by Australian planners, while their responses are shaped by the urban governance and urban management structures within which they work. In this context, ‘urban’ should not be understood as signifying that governance and management are purely issues for cities. Rather, governance and management responses are consequent upon the impacts of broader human settlement or development activity, irrespective of whether this occurs in city or rural locations. The scope and effectiveness of contemporary urban governance in Australia is closely related to the constitutional roles and powers of different levels of Australian government (Forster 2004). This area of governance has been characterised by changes in decision-making agents and structures, and such changes have been accompanied by increased supervision and scrutiny of government action. As the chapter explains the development of the various arrangements and relationships that characterise contemporary Australian urban governance and planning, it draws attention to the debates that have attended these developments.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians

In Australia, the parlous state of wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples has been documented for decades.72 Key social and economic measures in areas such as life expectancy, poverty, employment, housing ownership, education, justice and health show that these populations are at substantially higher risk of poorer wellbeing and social exclusion compared with non-Indigenous Australians, and represent the most disadvantaged groups in our society. This situation is the result of the inter-generational impact of colonisation, dispossession of lands, lost and stolen generations and the attempted decimation of the cultures and languages of the peoples inhabiting Australia before 1770.73, 74 Therefore, for there to be a start to improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander wellbeing and „closing the gap‟, a process of genuine reconciliation, which acknowledges the past in light of the present, needs to be embraced across all sectors of society, accompanied by changes in attitudes, practices and the sharing of power.75,76

Negotiating and Securing Access: Reflections from a Study into Urban Regeneration and Community Participation in Ethnically Diverse Neighborhoods in London, England

In the United Kingdom, there have been a plethora of scholarly investigations into community participation in urban regeneration programs. The outputs from such studies have shed theoretical and empirical light on the structure, process, nature, and extent of community participation in urban regeneration partnerships. However, there has been little discussion within the urban policy literature about methodological issues surrounding the study of community participation. Specifically, there has been no analysis of the process of securing access to, within, and through urban regeneration partnerships. This article sheds some light on the process of securing access by looking at the authors experiences of trying to negotiate access into three ethnically diverse neighborhoods in London to study the nature of community participation and power and the significance of race within urban regeneration partnerships. The author shows that negotiating access can be a lengthy and complex process as it involves developing relationships and earning the trust of a wide array of informants via asserting a portfolio of identities.

A National planning agenda? Unpacking the influence of federal urban policy on state planning reform

Although primary responsibility for urban planning rests with the Australian states and territories, the Commonwealth government has from time to time influenced urban agendas and regulation. The most recent period following the election of the Australian Labor Party in November 2007 signified a new era of federal interest in cities and planning, expressed through the establishment of a Major Cities Unit, a series of State of Australian Cities reports and the development of a National Urban Policy. At the same time, a national reform agenda focusing on planning regulation and development assessment was building within the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) and its various working groups. In this paper we review the growing influence of national level policy agendas on state and territory planning reforms.

From a centralised to a 'diffused centralised' planning system: planning reforms in Western Australia

Historically, Western Australia has had the most centralised planning system at state level within Australia. Following the election of a Liberal-National state government in late 2008, it set about reforming significant aspects of the WA planning system. These reforms were premised on the need to ‘cut red tape’ and streamline decision-making in order to ensure sustained economic growth. This paper provides an overview of the basis and content of the reform agenda in broad terms. It then moves to examining in more detail two key planning reforms relating to the institutional and governance arrangements of the planning system: (1) the introduction of development assessment panels which were set up to ‘depoliticise’ and ‘streamline’ the development applications process; and (2) the establishment of a single redevelopment authority – Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority – that has extensive planning and development powers that override local government and WA Planning Commission planning schemes. These reforms have resulted in a more diffused, yet still centralised planning system.