Tim Marshall

Barcelona—fast forward? City entrepreneurialism in the 1980s and 1990s

Abstract Since 1979 the city council of Barcelona has sought to guide the citys destiny by a variety of methods, most powerfully by securing the 1992 Olympic Games candidacy, but also by means of two strategic planning exercises, begun in 1988 and 1992. These strategies are examined within their political and economic contexts in order to understand how they relate to changes in Spanish and Catalan politics, in global/local economic shifts and in thinking on city guidance. Significant differences in the three phases of city promotion are identified. It is concluded that strategic planning within the context of the intense spatial economic competition of the late 1990s may be even more difficult for Barcelona than was its drive up to 1992.

Regional environmental planning: Progress and possibilities in Western Europe

Abstract The challenge of environmental thinking is putting extreme stresses on the imagination and techniques of planners, at least in those European countries where ecological issues are being taken seriously. Generally, city or regional planners, and academics as well, are only at the beginning of a necessarily rapid learning curve. It is argued here that a spatial planning approach to guiding environmental change could usefully complement other sectoral or financial instruments, particularly if focused at regional levels. Important dimensions of different approaches are analyzed, including the political economic model, the degree of development and wealth (north‐south variation) and the institutional framework in each country. The progress made so far is examined in case studies of the Netherlands, England and Catalonia. It is suggested that some aspects of the Dutch approach could form a useful basis, if suitably adapted, for regional planning elsewhere. But, above all, much more fundamental thinking...

After Structure Planning: The New Sub-regional Planning in England

Abstract The reformed planning system introduced in England in 2004 weakens the position of counties and unitary authorities. Regional bodies and central government have a larger say on the future shape of localities under these arrangements. In particular sub-regional strategies have a much bigger role within the new Regional Spatial Strategies. This paper examines the prospects for the influence of this new tier of planning, based on government guidance about sub-regional planning and on the evidence on emerging practice, particularly in the southern regions of England. The balance of influence of different actors is changing, both between government tiers and in wider governance relations. The prospects for integrated action in spatial terms are changing, as are the relationships to implementation.

The European Union and Major Infrastructure Policies: The Reforms of the Trans-European Networks Programmes and the Implications for Spatial Planning

Abstract The European Union (EU) has been involved in influencing major infrastructure in the fields of transport and energy mainly by means of the Trans-European Networks (TENs) programme begun in the 1990s. Other macro-planning and wider spatial planning exercises, including the European Spatial Development Perspective, made reference to such infrastructure systems, particularly in relation to the need for connectivity and mobility, but normally did not attempt to intervene in an area seen as one of the prerogatives of national states. Much more important have been the wider programmes of liberalization pressed by the EU since the 1980s, but these have had no specific geographical content. A revision of the TENs programmes since 2008 has led to proposals to increase the role of the EU, by drawing up continent wide schemas indicating needs for future investment in many fields of both transport and energy, and introducing new procedures to streamline decision-making by designating projects as of European interest. The initiatives in transport and energy are described here, including the two Regulations currently under discussion within the EU institutions. These include major proposals for cross-European multi-modal transport corridors within an EU core network, and regional schemas for energy drawn up primarily by energy industries and government counterparts. Both are likely to be of real significance for spatial planners throughout the continent, and have major impacts on the shapes of future infrastructure networks. These proposals are analysed, as cases of the rescaling and re-ordering of government, giving more force to the EU in these fields, and reinforcing sectoral- or silo-based decision-making. It is argued that somewhat different outcomes will result in the few areas, such as the Baltic, where long-term macro-regional collaboration has been present, from the rest of Europe, where these sectoral programmes may complicate further the mix of planning impacting on each region, making even more confused the accountability of governance. Suggestions are made for the careful assessment of these schemas by national and regional governments, and for the creation of some spatial planning analytical capability at the EU level, which could examine this type of proposals, with powerful spatial impacts.

Barcelona and the delta: metropolitan infrastructure planning and socio‐ecological projects

Abstract The delta of the Llobregat river is a natural expansion area for the city of Barcelona. It has been used first for agricultural purposes and then in the twentieth century for urban and infrastructural development. The history of the delta is examined, in order to trace the changing interactions between economic and political forces and ecological processes. This includes the influence of urban planning from 1930 onwards. The paper describes the effort made by the Spanish government from 1991 to co‐ordinate investment planning in the delta with the Catalan administration and local authorities. One municipality, El Prat, has offered a partial environmentalist challenge to the dominant economic development model of other administrations. It is concluded that it would be valuable to consider this key zone in relation to alternative projects for the socio‐economic and ecological development of Catalonia and Spain as a whole.

The Remodeling of Decision Making on Major Infrastructure in Britain

Abstract The UK government passed the 2008 Planning Act in order to reform the process for decisions on major infrastructure projects. Previously, this had been dealt with under the main town and country planning system, with the use of public inquiries, alongside sectoral consenting procedures. Here, the reasons for this legislation are explored, including revisions made by the Localism Act 2011, embedding this within an understanding of the broadly business friendly drives of all UK governments in recent years. Detailed assessment is made of the two main instruments used in England: national policy statements (NPSs) and the Infrastructure Planning Commission/National Infrastructure Directorate. This suggests that detailed implementation has generated certain contradictory or unexpected effects. A comparison is made with a very different approach in Scotland. An assessment is made of the significance of the law, given the political economic realities in which the new systems early life will be evolving.

Planning and New Labour in the UK

The period since 1997 is long enough to start to take stock of the experience of planning under the New Labour governments. It is long enough to be able to make some judgements about the successes and failures of planning during these years. This theme issue is designed to start this process. It seeks mainly to be a situating exercise, as the most important task now appears to be discussing the terms of debate. We are not in fact tackling, to any significant extent, the evaluative task mentioned above—that is beyond our means here. Our aim is much more modest, to bring together the two sides of the equation in the UK, New Labour and recent planning. We have found in setting about this task that very little has been written about this question. In comparison with the considerable reflection on Thatcherism/the New Right and planning that was emerging by the late 1980s, the absence of consideration of the relationships between this current pair is striking. Of course the present moment, in the midst of a major global economic crisis, may not be the best time to make any judgements about anything, as planning, along with everything else, looks to confront the new landscape emerging. These papers were written in their underlying forms before the unfolding of this crisis, so there is no risk here of any rewriting of the post-1997 period in the light of the crisis. This should be borne in mind in reading this theme issue. This introduction has four tasks. The last one, to sketch a few issues for further work, is predictable enough. (I will not try to summarize the papers here; the abstracts in themselves will give readers a flavour of where each is starting from and where it is going.) Before that, the three main tasks are to think a bit further about the situation we are in and the questions which orient this particular enquiry (certainly every planning academic and planner would approach this differently), to discuss briefly some of the issues missing from the following papers, and to pick up some of the cross-cutting themes arising from a reading of the papers. A separate commentary is provided by Klaus Kunzmann from an international perspective, giving a more distanced view of what has been going on in the UK backyard. This should prove a useful corrective to the insider views presented elsewhere in this issue.

Regional planning in Catalonia

Abstract After 1975 the main weight of Spanish regional planning passed down to the 17 autonomous communities. This has resulted in very variable territorial planning activity. Since 1980 the Catalan government, the Generalitat, has been preparing a territorial plan for the whole of Catalonia. A draft of the plan was issued for discussion in 1993. The history of the making of the plan is analyzed, before giving an account of the plans content. The plan received many criticisms and these are described and assessed. In particular, several paradoxes are considered: why has one of the most dynamically distinctive of Spanish autonomous communities, with a great commitment in 1980 to produce a plan, taken so long to complete the exercise? How is it that a centre‐right government has produced a plan with certain clear goals on such a long time‐scale—to 2026? And why has such apparently ambitious planning been criticized so strongly by professionals and authorities to the left of the government?

English regional planning: recent progress and current government proposals

Regional planning in England has experienced a revival since the decision of Chris Patten, when Secretary of State for the Environment in 1990, to require the then seven regions to prepare ‘Regional Planning Guidance’ (RPG) (Tables 1 and 2 summarise the key actors and instruments of regional planning; for accounts of regional planning in the 1990s, see Baker (1998), Marshall et al. (2002) and Roberts (1996).) The core function of such guidance has been since then to allocate required housing completions to regions and counties. Gradually, however, other purposes, in relation to transport infrastructure, economic development and natural resources in particular, have become more important. In the round of guidance prepared in 1991–1996, RPG was issued by government, after advice from local authority associations in each region, and changes made by Government Offices for the Regions (GORs), after the introduction of this more integrated central government regional presence in 1994. The Conservative Government only gave limited importance to the RPG process and to regionalisation as a whole. The Labour Government after 1997 put much more emphasis on building up the policy-making capacity of the English regions, in parallel with the autonomy given to Scotland and Wales. RPG was part of this, with a Planning Policy Guidance (PPG) Note specifically on regional planning, PPG11, produced in draft in early 1999, after consultation in 1998, with the final version in 2000 (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR), 1998, 1999, 2000). Other dimensions of regionalisation included the strengthening of the GORs, with a coordination unit in Whitehall, and the creation of Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) in 1999, to carry forward the regional economic agenda. At the time of writing the most recent element is the publication in 2002 of a White Paper, allowing the possibility for English regions to move to adopt elected assemblies, if their populations should so wish (Cabinet Office & Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR), 2002). This would further affect regional planning, and would interact with the reforms to the planning system currently passing through parliament, which replace RPG with Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs). English regional planning is therefore now 3–4 years into the PPG11 era. PPG11’s main aspiration was to bring in a more spatially focused and regionally owned form of regional planning. RPG was to be more like an overall spatial strategy, with the incorporation of transport and economic development elements as well as the more traditional policy guidance. Regional ownership was to be increased by encouraging wider involvement in the production of RPG and resolving more of the hard decisions at the regional level.

Infrastructure, planning and the command of time

Governments in many countries have sought to accelerate the time taken to make decisions on major infrastructure projects, citing problems of ‘delay’. Despite this, rarely has the time variable been given careful empirical or conceptual attention in decision-making generally, or in infrastructure decision-making specifically. This paper addresses this deficit by analysing decision-making on two categories of major infrastructure in the UK – transport and electricity generation – seeking both to generate better evidence of the changes to decision times in recent decades, and to generate insights from treating time as resource and tracking its (re)allocation. We find that reforms introduced since 2008 have done relatively little to alter overall decision times, but that there are marked and revealing changes to the allocation of time between decision-making stages. While public planning processes have their time frames tightly regulated, aspects led by developers (e.g. pre-application discussion) are not; arranging finance can have a bigger effect on project time frames, and central government retains much flexibility to manage the flow of time. Speed-up reforms are also sectorally uneven in their reach. This indicates how arguments for time discipline falter in the face of infrastructure projects that remain profoundly politicised.