Collaborative planning: Shaping places in fragmented societies

Book Reviews Brouwer begins by introducing the baldios (a legally defined area of common lands) and then discusses the emergence of modern forestry practice and its relationship to civil society in Portugal. There follow several chapters which explore society and economy in the parish of Campefi. The last third of the book covers the period since the revolution in the mid-1970s both locally in Campefi and also nationally. The volume concludes with chapters on the economic impact of the afforestation of the baldios and the place of forestry in state formation in Portugal. The author's approach transcends disciplinary boundaries and draws on a range of critical social science perspectives as well as legal history and forestry science. In consequence the book is much more than an account of recent state afforestation in Portugal. The historical connections between the rise of the modern Portuguese state and the place of the baMios is plotted in some detail, as is the role of forestry in the rise of the modern state. Comparisons with the emergence of forestry in other European states are also drawn. The result is a book which, through the window of the baldios and pressures for afforestation, offers a view into Portuguese history over the last several centuries. The dangers of such an approach can be anticipated: disparate themes that do not converge, loss of meaningful relationships between the state level and the Campefi parish. Largely these problems are overcome by careful structuring, although editing of some of the more extraneous comparisons would have improved the flow of the argument. The chapters which draw on the author's lengthy periods in Campefi provide a compelling discussion of local interpretations of external political pressures. The text flows backwards and forwards between abstraction and substantive detail in an assured manner, but the author who draws on a range of research methodologies is always sensitive to shortcomings in some of the oral research material. Reading the book as a geographer with an interest in forestry, I am struck by two of its features. One of these represents something of a shortcoming, the other extends its value beyond Portugal. In his discussion of Campe~ and the surrounding area, Brouwer makes considerable use of maps to indicate land use patterns, land tenure arrangements and the afforestation. He stops short, however, of explicitly acknowledging the extent to which the social processes he is analyzing also produce space rather than solely take place in space. On a somewhat different track more sophisticated maps may well have enhanced Brouwer's account. Brouwer's discussion of the forestry and state formation in Portugal raises questions about the role of forestry in other states, including New Zealand and serves as a useful example of exploring local-national connections. Future work in this vein may need to take greater cognisance of processes of globalization. In summary, a detailed analysis, but a book that is worth persevering with. MICHAEL ROCHE

Massey University PII: S0743-0167 (97)00054-5

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Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies, P. Healey, 338 pp., 1997, Macmillan, Basingstoke, £45.00 hbk, ISBN 0-333-49573-X, £14.99 pbk, ISBN 0-333-49574-8

The last 15 years or so have witnessed an academic surge in interest in communicative rationality as a social theory of action. Communicative action is the interaction of at least two subjects capable of speech and action and who attempt to establish interpersonal relations and reach an understanding. Stemming principally from the work of the German philosopher-sociologist Jurgen Habermas, planning theorists on both sides of the Atlantic have reinterpreted the philosopher's Late Modernist writings to suit a planning audience. Patsy Healey has been one of the foremost European protagonists of communicative planning theory over the last eight years. Collaborative Planning, Patsy's latest work, proposes a new framework for spatial planning that is rooted in institutional realities and which centres on forging new discourses between different groups, agencies and individuals in fragmented societies as a way of planning and 'making sense together while Jiving differently' (Forester, 1989). The book is divided into three parts. Part One, 'Towards an institutionalist account and communicative theory of planning', comprises three chapters and sets the scene for the book by highlighting the traditions of planning thought, introducing the concept of high Habermasian communicative rationality, and discussing spatial planmaking as a legitimate state activity and field of public policy. As an introduction to these sociological theories, the book offers a reader unfamiliar with the writings a useful and succinct discussion of relation-building, institutional capacity building and cultural embeddedness in societies. The strength of this section of the book lies in Patsy's ability to start pulling together various academic discussions in the fields of sociology, planning thought and economic geography. Theorists within these disciplines are actually starting to discuss many related arguments, albeit in different languages. It is extremely useful to gain an insight of the multifarious debates progressing simultaneously. Part Two, 'The changing dynamics of urban societies', is organized around three perspectives: the world of everyday life, the world of business life, and the world of biospheric life. The focus of this part of the book is to review the social relations of local environmental change and people's attitudes towards their local communities, by thinking about potential stakeholders, their stakes in local environments, and the meaning and claims for those attentions. Part Two of the book discusses social theories of action together with urban land markets and property and planning, in an attempt to root the discussion for collaborative planning in an institutionalist perspective. This is actually quite a challenging task for any author and, given the complexity of the arguments, cannot be justly debated in any serious depth within the confines of a few chapters. Nevertheless, as a way of combining debates, identifying common realities, and proposing transformations in social relations to achieve local and regional economic growth, the book does raise some interesting points, particularly with regard to dualist tensions between economic development and environmental protection; the protection of individual property rights and the promotion of innovative participatory democratic strategies in communities; and the residents within and meanings associated with communities.

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B o o k Reviews

Part Three, 'Processes for collaborative planning', searches for new forms' of governance to achieve a collaborative planning process in communities, by encouraging communities to generate new ways o( managing their local environments. Patsy's argument here is for a transformation in the formal structures of governance to enable the hard infrastructure of the state to constrain and modify existing power relations while permitting sufficient flexibility to allow consensus, mutual learning and social, intellectual and political capital to generate coordination and the flow of knowledge within social relations. Essentially, the book concludes by exploring the opportunities for more democratic forms of governance within communities (particularly in the UK's context) and through an assessment of what state institutional structures require redesigning to ensure that a more open and shared discourse in local environments can be promoted and developed. Consequently, it is within this section of the book that the greatest discussion of the nuances of the planning process, the forms of urban and rural governance, the nature and purpose of policies and plans, and complex legal and state machinery of administration occur. This latter debate had been distinctly lacking in the work of the collaborative planners until now so it is very pleasing to see the author begin to address these (difficult and problematic) implementation matters by diverting the discussion away from theory towards the practicalities of achieving more collaborative forms of spatial plan-making in society. I was interested to read about how important it is to identify the power relations in society if one is attempting to implement collaborative planning models. However, I was disappointed to find that the debate was restricted to cognition alone, rather than how to address and challenge power structures to achieve true collaborative action. This point actually lies at the root of the problem with the work. So much of the discussion centres on consensus as a panacea, by encouraging planners 'to build up trust and confidence across fractures and chasms, to create new relations of collaboration and trust, and shift power bases' (p. 263). The author seems to argue that so long as these consensus-building strategies are enacted and new relations are forged (i.e., an emphasis on procedures), the approach will generate new social, intellectual and political capital that will, in turn, foster more democratic forms of governance, create new forms of environmental management and redesign institutional structures. What is lacking in this discussion is the role of politics and power, for it assumes that all stakeholders will sign up to the new processes. Little if any discussion is devoted to what occurs if some stakeholders do not want to 'play ball' through the more open discourses, and prefer to enact more political, hidden or secretive ways of securing their arguments. Perhaps this is not so much a criticism of collaborative planning (or of Patsy's work in particular), since similar debates are absent in Habermas' own writing (Habermas, 1984). But there can be no doubt that the role of personal values, individual thought processes and the possibility of strategic behaviour could all potentially undermine collaborative action in spatial plan-making, no matter whether all relevant stakeholders sign up for a new framework of local planning or not. This aspect has been acknowledged by another influential communicative planning protagonist, John Forester, in the United States but is curiously absent from Patsy's work. This reviewer was hoping that the possibility of collaborative planning failure through the 'self question' would at least be

acknowledged in the book, but perhaps this is something to be addressed on a future occasion. 1 was also a little confused by Patsy's use of the word 'planner' within the book. To whom is the author referring? Is it the person employed by a local planning authority to coordinate the formulation of planning policies within plans and to control development (that is, the professional planning officer), or does the word refer to anyone involved in a collaborative planning exercise as a stakeholder? There seemed to be occasions in the book where the discussion referred to both. Certainly in the case of the former, there needs to be a parallel discussion on the role of professional expertise in collaborative planning since it seems to me that by implementing a truly inclusive consensus-building strategy where all voices are equal, a professional planner would not be required at all in the process. There would be no problem if Patsy was arguing for this (the professional status of planning has been and should be continually questioned in my view). But there seems to be a major argument missing in the book, namely a call to deprofessionalise planning in order to facilitate more open discourse in communities and to significantly reduce the possibility of power domination of discussions and ideas. It seems to me that a society could either have a political representative democracy employing professional experts in the administration, or else an innovative democratic process involving all stakeholders who come and make sense together and whose agreements are implemented by administrators. The role of professional planning within a collaborative planning model seems totally infeasible, and I would take issue with the prospect o f a professional planner acting as 'a knowledge mediator' (p. 309) or, in John Forester's terms, 'a critical friend'. I must admit that within the final section of the book I found a great deal to disagree with, but one should not immediately start to criticize on practical and values grounds a theoretically-coherent work of some stature that at least makes an attempt to address planning and policy implementation. Patsy should be congratulated for her warts-and-all approach to systematically identify and neutralize the barriers to practical implementation of collaborative planning approaches. The work had been ten years in the making and for those already familiar with Patsy's writings on communicative planning, there will be many arguments familiar to the converted. In this context, the book does not extend the debate sufficiently far, although as the first volume of a new Macmillan series that attempts to be both introductory and theoreticallyadvanced, this is perhaps a somewhat unfair criticism. For the reader interested in both assessing the state of play of spatial planning in a global economy and the opportunities for more localized participatory action by communities within this process, the book should prove to be extremely inspirational.

References

Forester, J. (1989) Planning in the Face of Power. University of California Press, CA. Habermas, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action

Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Polity Press, I~ndon.

Book Reviews MARK TEWDWR-JONES Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Wales, Cardifl

PII: SO743-0167(97)00052-1

in the European Union, F. M. Brouwer and S. van Berkum, 171pp., 1996, Wageningen Pers, Wageningen, NLG 98 pbk, ISBN 90-74134-39-4

CAP and Environment

There is now widespread acceptance amongst farmers, policy makers and academics that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) has had cumulatively damaging consequences for the rural environment. The monograph partially catalogues the evidence of these consequences across the Member States and assesses the EU’s agri-environmental policies developed to address them. The authors conclude that for most environmental concerns it is still too early to judge if the policies are having their desired effects and, in addition, there are as yet unresolved analytical problems in linking specific policy measures to indicators of environmental change. The monograph was commissioned by the DirectorateGeneral Environment, Nuclear Safety and Civil Protection (DGXI) and was carried out by two researchers from the Agricultural Economics Research Institute at The Hague. It is a desk-top study, relying entirely on published research and reports. The authors were advised on their sources by a limited number of organizations in each Member State (listed in an appendix) and their work bears the imprint of the particular interests and knowledge-bases of these national contact organizations. The result is a marked over-representation of research by agricultural economists and reports emanating from national ministries of agriculture. Research from other relevant disciplines, such as geography, botany, zoology and landscape ecology, is largely absent and the report would have developed a deeper consideration of research on the environment had one of the two authors been drawn from one of these disciplines. There are ten main chapters and, within the limits just mentioned, each is well informed, detailed and up to date at the time of publication. To begin with the authors provide a succinct and useful summary of the CAP in general before moving on to consider published research findings on the relationship between price policy and the environment. Much of the discussion revolves around econometric modeling of changes to farm inputs in relation to changes in the (supported) prices of outputs, but concludes that ‘it is difficult to assess empirically to what extent lower prices would induce a reduction in the use of inputs’ (p. 45) and that ‘it does not mean per se that a reduction of agricultural support will lead to an improvement of the environment’ (p. 50). The following chapter is again a most useful summary of the EU legislation affecting both agriculture and the

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environment, concentrating on the post-1992 ‘Ma&harry Reforms’ and with detailed examples of how Directives have been interpreted differently in the Member States. Market and price measures are subsequently related to environmental change on a product-by-product basis, set-aside holding an important place in the analysis of cereals. Supporting factual information appears as tables drawn from data in the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), although no ‘health warning’ is given about the limitations of this database. Chapters 6-9 then focus in turn on policy measures that concern Less Favoured Areas, structural policy, the 1992 ‘Accompanying Measures’ and Organic Farming, all as regards the relationship with environment and landscape. Most attention is given to chemical inputs (plant protection products and fertilizers), water for irrigation, supply of animal manure, soil quality (including erosion and overgrazing); there is very little on biodiversity, habitat loss and lanscape, especially in the sense understood by geographers and landscape ecologists. Thus, when the authors conclude that ‘assessments of the impact of CAP on the environment have been very scarce so far’ (p. 143) the limitations of the sources on which they rely is confirmed. Helpfully the authors provide a listing of their major findings in a final chapter and a summary of their whole monograph at the outset. They conclude that in several respects agri-environmental policy in its present financeincentive led form will not counteract deterioration to the is greater regulation environment: environmental required. They also advise that extensification of livestock production has been limited and certain products (grapes, pigs and dairy) do not yet include environmental conditions for their production (p. 1.50). One of the most helpful conclusions, as regards researchers considering their own input into the literature, is the absence of agreed ‘indicators’ of environmental change that can be employed across the Member States. Throughout their monograph, the authors are very conscious of national and regional differences across the EU as regards the nature and severity of environmental change; consequently they do not under-estimate the problems of devising and calibrating such ‘indicators’ for international comparative use. ‘Indicators’ for landscape are particularly needed. In sum, the monograph is to be recommended as a ‘stateof-the-art’ summary of the published literature drawn from the whole EU as regards the recent development and implementation of agri-environmental policy, but within the limitations already mentioned. It is a succinct yet detailed summary from which even the specialist reader will benefit. IAN BOWLER Department of Geography University of Leicester PII: SO743-0167(97)00051-X