Sue Brownill

Developing London's Docklands : another great planning disaster?

Introduction From Planning to Opportunism: Planning the Future of the Docklands Area The LDDC in Action Rhetoric and Reality The Housing Scandal Job Creation or Property Development The LDDC as a Local Economic Strategy Docklands Fights Back The Local versus the National Interest? The LDDC in the Dock The New Docklands Consensus Are we Back to Planning? Conclusions Postscript 1993 Not Just a Victim of the Recession

Why Bother with Good Works? The Relevance of Public Participation(s) in Planning in a Post-collaborative Era

The concern to ensure public participation or community engagement within and in support of spatial planning has been an ongoing and widely aired topic since at least the 1960s. The basis and justification, however, for academics and policy-makers in agonizing over this issue and the practices of participation has been variously questioned. Similarly, exhortations to understand the motives and limitations of different interests and their positions or relative power have also beenwidely debated. Works looking at participation have also ranged widely and many have been critical of the merits or benefits of participation in planning and more broadly in local governance. This special issue of Planning Practice & Research aims both to engage with these debates and to reflect on the direction of travel of current researchwithin the continuously evolving landscape of the theory and practice of participation. As such, this edition was prompted by several factors, starting symbolically at least with the 40th anniversary of two significant publications relating to participation: firstly, the Skeffington report on people and planning, which underscored the need for public engagement in planning in Britain (see, for example, Ministry of Housing and Local Government, 1969; Rydin, 1999); and secondly, Sherry Arnstein’s (1969) seminal paper that featured the widely cited ‘ladder of participation’ and highlighted a range of different participatory ‘opportunities’ and their conceptualization in terms of differential empowerment. These may simply be coincidental milestones yet 40 years on the paradox revealed by the juxtaposition of these documents between enthusiasm for participation and a questioning of its potential remains. Increasingly, reflections on participation are tempered by a recognition of the challenges that ‘meaningful’ participation faces and the limitations of much past practice. Moreover, the world has changed and is ultimately more complex, prompting a crisis of participation in some sense, underlined by the challenges of ‘seeing from the south’ and moving away from a western-focused perspective. Equally the lessons that are drawn or applied from

Increasing participation in planning: Emergent experiences of the reformed planning system in England

This article seeks to explore the emerging picture of participation under the New Labour planning reforms. In many senses this may appear as a familiar story of the gap between rhetoric and reality and the operation of persistent barriers to participation. However, we believe the situation is more complex than a focus on gaps would suggest, a view that is confirmed by accounts which both set out the limits to participation in planning under New Labour (Bedford et al., 2002; Kitchen & Whitney, 2004; Brownill & Carpenter, 2007a) and others which point to some potential for innovation (Doak & Parker, 2005). Instead it is the interplay between persistent barriers to participation and particular features of the governance of planning under New Labour that forms the basis of this article. There are twin dangers associated with typifying distinct eras of planning such as Thatcherite or New Labour. One such danger, as Allmendinger (2003) points out is that factors that continue whatever the particular ideology that is pursued can be ignored – hence our concentration on persistent barriers to participation. Second, as Hall (2003) argues, we may concentrate too much on the apparent coherence of particular approaches to planning rather than on the tensions and contradictions within them. The New Labour ‘brand’ of planning is no exception here and this article identifies a number of tensions as factors that are key to understanding the emerging patterns of participation. These tensions overlie and are likely to interact with the constant of barriers to participation. While focusing on the reformed planning system in England, the argument in this article is relevant to wider international debates about the restructuring of planning and the role of participation within this (Albrechts, 2002). Bearing this in mind the article begins by outlining debates concerning the limits to participation within planning. It then goes on to explore the post-2004 planning system in England and the narrative of participatory planning which informs it using a framework which sees these reforms as holding within them dynamic tensions between different modes of governance. Using information from literature reviews and a local case study of participation in Oxford, this framework is used to explore how the processes of modernization are emerging around particular aspects of participation under the new planning regime and in particular places. The article concludes by arguing that the continuation of an ever-present ‘participation gap’ is only a partial explanation of current events. Instead a dynamic and shifting picture is emerging as a result of the interaction between the continuation of persistent limits to participation and the particular tensions within the overall objectives of the reformed planning system and

The Dynamics of Participation: Modes of Governance and Increasing Participation in Planning

This article examines recent attempts to increase participation in planning. To this end a framework which focuses on the dynamics between the contrasting modes of governance which exist within such reforms is developed to understand and characterise emerging experience. In particular, the tension between participatory and representative modes of governance is highlighted. This framework is used to examine a local case study, Cowley Road Matters, in Oxford, UK. The resulting analysis suggests that a contradictory potential for participation is emerging as these tensions play themselves out on the ground. The article argues that a focus on the dynamics of participation can help move analysis away from dichotomous views on the prospects for participation and can provide a framework for exploring the range of likely outcomes in different places.

Approaches to Democratic Involvement: Widening Community Engagement in the English Planning System

Participation has become integral to the delivery of public services, as governments attempt to involve citizens in decision making through processes of consultation and engagement. This paper addresses the issue of community participation in the context of the English planning system, which has recently been restructured to focus more sharply on integrating communities in the planning process. It presents findings of research into the workings of the reformed planning system, in particular in relation to the objective of public participation, using the case of the Planning Aid service. The paper sets the discussion in the context of two different forms of democracy (representative and deliberative democracy) and associated strategies for participation. It then outlines the recent reforms in the planning system, highlighting the different approaches to participation that are being applied. The paper then examines the case of Planning Aid, a service that aims to involve disadvantaged groups in the planning system. The paper concludes that the outcomes from recent experiences of participation in planning are in part due to the “hybrid” approaches that are emerging within the system. While this provides the potential for more inclusive planning, it is argued that this “hybridity” needs to be acknowledged by policy makers and practitioners if strategies and mechanisms are to be put in place that respond to the demands of different forms of democracy.

Olympic legacies and city development strategies in London and Rio; beyond the carnival mask?

The need to ensure a lasting legacy has become an increasing part of Olympic rhetoric. While there is a body of literature which characterises legacy as part of the ‘carnival mask’ of neo-liberal urbanisation and evidence of a globalised urban policy, this article asks the question what can thinking with assemblage offer to a critical understanding of mega-events? The article addresses this question and responds to calls for urban theory to ‘see from the South’, by exploring how legacy has been assembled in two Olympic cities focusing on the role of ‘spatial practices of assemblage’, including city development strategies and global policy mobility. Drawing on empirical work in London and Rio, the article reveals that thinking with assemblage can contribute to a nuanced, yet still critical, understanding of legacy as a contradictory and contested concept which is constantly being made and remade through the contingent practices of Olympic city building. It can also suggest how legacy can be conceived and realised in ways that allow for alternative legacies and forms of urbanisation to emerge but that its potential can only be realised in conjunction with other critical perspectives.

From planning to opportunism? Re-examining the creation of the London Docklands Development Corporation

East Londons former docklands have been at the centre of planning and regeneration debates for the past four decades. The setting up of the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) has been variously interpreted as ‘3-D Thatcherism’ in action, a symbol of the death of comprehensive planning and the replacement of a corporatist, Keynesian era of urban policy with a more neoliberal approach. Moving away from simplistic and straightforward interpretations of the processes happening at this time, this article uses new archival and interview material to re-examine the setting up of the LDDC and its early years, revealing a more complex and contradictory picture than existing accounts suggest. It focuses on three themes: changing forms of state intervention; the uncertain ‘break’ in the post-war consensus as evidenced by the changes in approaches to the regeneration of Docklands; and the unintended, disordered process of actual policy change. As such we aim to reveal how shifting visions, modes of governance and practices could compete and co-exist in the midst of seemingly coherent ‘eras’, as Docklands as a place and as an approach to regeneration was constantly made and re-made – a process that continues to this day.

Local Governance and the Racialisation of Urban Policy in the UK: The Case of Urban Development Corporations

This paper examines the impact of changing patterns of local governance on black and ethnic minority influence over urban policy, focusing on Urban Development Corporations (UDCs) as one aspect of local governance. Evidence is drawn from a recent study of six UDCs. The paper concludes that a contradictory and variable pattern of black and ethnic minority influence is emerging, with processes of exclusion and inclusion occurring, and there is evidence that the emerging system of local governance is producing a marginalisation of issues to do with race. This suggests that it is important to look at the racialisation of policy and policy processes within UDCs, their localities and at a national level in an attempt to analyse and understand these emerging and diverging patterns.

New Labour's Evolving Regeneration Policy: The Transition from the Single Regeneration Budget to the Single Pot in Oxford

Regeneration policy under New Labour has been subject to a constant restlessness, evolving over time into a complex and diverse landscape. This paper explores how these policy changes have played themselves out in one city, Oxford, focusing on the transition from the Single Regeneration Budget initiative to the more regionally focused ‘single-pot’. In doing this it charts the continuing complexities in policy focusing on the tensions between the competitiveness and social inclusion agendas and around changed governance arrangements. It identifies the restructuring of activity around social inclusion towards more economic outcomes and the difficulties of retaining community voices within regeneration activity at the subregional level as two particular outcomes of these changes which require further responses from all sectors involved. The paper concludes that it is unhelpful to typify such changes as a shift from one policy era to another and instead argues for a focus on the complexities, continuities and contradictions that such change reveals.

Mega-events and their legacies in London and Rio de Janeiro

This issue of IJUSD is divided in to two sections. The first section is thematically focused on the legacy of mega-events in host cities and is the main subject of this editorial. It focuses on the experiences of London and Rio de Janeiro, particularly in terms of the urban transformations associated with legacy, governance and the mobility of policy between global north and south. The second section draws on experiences from Iran, Mexico and Singapore to provide new insights on the use of earthen dwellings, impact of urban agriculture on urban sustainability and sociotechnical approaches to facilitating sustainable behaviour. Debates about the impacts of mega-events were brought into stark relief by the popular demonstrations throughout Brazil in June 2013. People took to the streets to express their anger about the billions of relais being spent on stadia and infrastructure in preparation for the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016, while the cost of essential services such as public transport went up and investment in others such as education stalled. These events illustrate a number of key themes which this edition aims to explore. First, there is the increasing tendency for mega-events to be located in emerging economies. The holding of successive World Cups in South Africa, Brazil, Russia and Qatar, the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in 2010, the Winter Olympics in 2014 in Sochi and 2018 in Korea and the Summer Olympics in 2008 in China and Rio in 2014 are all evidence of this. This trend underlines the way that hosting mega-events is being seized upon and fought over by cities and nations north and south as a strategy to raise their global status and urban competitiveness (Gold & Gold 2011). The possibilities presented for transforming urban space, reconceptualising and promoting the image of places to capture global investment, boosting public and private investment and transforming the processes of urban governance of politics have made mega-event hosting into a ‘must-do’ for any aspiring global city. The general enthusiasm for sporting events amongst populations and the time-pressured nature of the delivery of venues and infrastructure has also served, until now, to largely marginalise opposition and to legitimise large-scale interventions in ways which have enabled mega-event hosting to become a major global catalyst for change in the configuration of urban space, politics and policy. This phenomenon also presents particular challenges to those researching mega-events. There have been frequent calls for urban studies to ‘see from the south’ ( Watson 1999) and to recognise the forms and dynamics of urbanisation as they occur away from the countries and cities which have provided the basis for urban theorising, and the locations of mega-events (Roy 2005; Parnell & Robinson 2012). This suggests the need to empirically and theoretically explore the interactions between mega-events and the processes of urbanisation in a variety of contexts and locations in ways which can account for a variety of forms of urbanisation. It also means thinking about how we can characterise and understand mega-events in a way which reflects this variety of experience. Tellingly, at a recent international academic conference, there were separate sessions on the Olympics in London and mega-events in the Global South happening in adjacent rooms at the same time. We hope in this edition to engage in a International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development, 2013 Vol. 5, No. 2, 105–110, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19463138.2013.856626