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Countryside planning: The first half century
Journal 0
of Rural
1999 Published
Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 221-239,
by Elsevier
Science
Pergamon
Ltd. All Printed
0743-0167/99
$ -
1999
rights reserved in Great
Britain
see front
matter
Book Reviews Contested Natures, P. MacNaghten and J. Urry, 307 pp., 1998, Sage, London, pperf15.99 hbk, ISBN O-7619-5312-4
nature, and those spaces are not only what is called ‘countryside’ (making the third of the triad of relevant keywords with nature and landscape).
This is a valuable collation and multi-disciplinary critical review of numerous concepts, positions and contexts surrounding different knowledges elite, academic, popular concerning nature. Raymond Williams famously refers to nature, along with culture, as the most difficult words in the English language for which to establish ‘meaning’ (Keywords, Fontana, 1976). MacNaghten and Urry’s book does justice to this difficulty in the complexity it reveals.
Much of the later part of the book is preoccupied with focus-group considerations of feelings of risk and abstract attitudes to ‘sustainability’ (another keyword), in an empirically-based chapter ‘Sustaining Nature’. Perhaps the problem here is expressed by one of the authors elsewhere: ‘Participation requires effective institutions and mechanisms but it also requires an effective and common language. That language will ultimately be found in the way people talk, not in political doctrines’ (MacNaghten and Myers, 1998). We may seek to go beyond that, to say that talk is part of practice, and MacNaghten and Urry have directed our attention, rightly to practice in a wider, also embodied sense.
The cover of this book is metaphorically strong. It is a painting of a country harvest, seemingly neutral and, of course, natural: ‘Taking in the Harvest’. However, this is a cubist vorticist painting, with figures clear enough and close-up, but cylindrical, with shining surfaces to peasants’ bodies as they lift the sheaves of corn, tie them, and bale them. They wear colourful costumes that would not be considered ‘appropriate’ in the soft colours of older, British, artwork. They ‘look’ intense in their practice. What emerges is a leitmotif of something much more contested, and contested through diverse alleyways some of which are explored in this volume.
The debate that Urry and MacNaghten discuss remains, however, largely within these official and organized languages and their more detached practice, those networks that participate in an often detached and abstracted discourse on nature. That discourse is heavily contested across a wide population that, as Myers and MacNaghten argue, does not share this ‘networked’-only knowledge. Therefore, the prevailing debates, and official practices, remain unable to engage the wider population: they remain unable to situate themselves in everyday ways of knowing nature. Focus-group discussions over abstract notions of risk and environment meet with extreme difficulty in translation to actually where people in their everyday life ‘are’, how they ‘know’ nature. ‘Knowing this’ may reveal further dimensions of contestation, or in a more generous approach from the Knowledge Networks, a negoitated consensus.
In the book there is an exploration of ‘vision’ that is familiar in Urry’s recent work on ‘tourism’; but here the apparent dominance of vision is met with an exploration of other senses, in a fascinating chapter ‘Sensing nature’. The earlier chapter ‘Inventing nature’ errs towards the broader cultural contextualizations of twentieth century official and self-consciously alternative discouse groups such as the Donga Tribe (Twyford Down) - environmentalisms ‘natures’. More artistic cultural contexts such as those explored somewhat more exclusively historically by Schama (Landscapes of Memory, 1995) emerge in relation to vision and other senses. In this emphasis on the political the book reveals one of its key objectives, to engage theoretical critical insight and policy-makers and people in the environmentalist networks, several of whom are acknowledged as influencers on the book. Thus, predominant influences on ‘inventing nature’ are the movements and governments in the twentieth century that have shaped particular, perhaps more formalist versions of nature, including formal oppositions to dominant, Government norms.
MacNaghten, P. and Myers, Planning A, 30, 333-353.
G. (1998) Environment
and
DAVID CROUCH Professor Cultural Geography Anglia University PII: SO743-0167(98)00022-9
Nature and Time are given a particular focus because the book directs attention not only at contextual&y of prevailing cultural forms but seeks a reasoning of nature understood in everyday life. This aspect of the work is more preliminary. Developing Urry’s insightful notes in Consuming Spaces (Routledge, 1995) this book remarks on Bachelard and Bergsen in terms of ‘getting closer’ to ways in which people make sense of their surrounding space, which is interestingly where the book slides from ‘nature’ to ‘landscape’. There is plenty of room to take this debate further, in understanding and interpreting how people in their everyday life may patch together, through various experiences in different spaces, their knowledge of
Countryside Planning: The First Half Century, 2nd ed., Andrew W. Gilg, 1996, Routledge, London, 291 pp. Price: f15.99 paperback, X50.00 hardback (ISBN 0 415 05490 7 paperback) Since the publication of the first edition of Countryside Planning in 1978, Gilg’s examination of the countryside/ planning interface has been hugely popular with students of both planning and rural geography. However, on the author’s admission (p. viii), after seventeen years of Conservative government, the contents of the 1978 edition 221
222 were looking revamp.
Book a little
dog-eared
and
it was time
for a
The new Countryside Planning [The First Half Century] followed hot-on-the-heels of the 1995 Rural White Paper and has a broad remit, attempting to capture the full flavour of fifty years of planning-and related countryside issues-within just seven brief chapters. The revised text is concerned, principally, with the way in which policy development may be seen to follow an evolutionary path-the different frameworks in which policy strata may be scrutinised are assigned particular importance, and in each chapter, Gilg offers differently framed cause/effect interpretations. Essentially, the new book moves away from technocratic planning concerns-which were central to the first edition-and focuses instead on policy determinants and outcomes, viewing these within the context of an agencystructure discourse whilst emphasising how human irrationality impacts on structural forces. The author correctly observes that policy formulation is a value-laden exercise which may be ‘crisis driven’ and affected by unforeseen responses. Similarly, though diverse areas of policy may interact, formulation is poorly co-ordinated with little evidence of any corporate vision on the part of those charged with implementation. Despite the analytical and evolutionary complexities of a policy focus, it remains Gilg’s intention to produce a text which is universally approachable and which allows different readers to select and skip particular sections without losing the thread of the overall ‘narrative’. Moreover, Countryside Planning was intended as an holistic text for students of a range of planning, geography and related disciplines-providing an authoritative account of ‘policy evolution’, outlining different interpretations and evaluating long term ‘success’ (p. xii). The main body of the text begins topically enough, referencing the beliefs and assumptions which underpinned the 1995 Rural White Paper-viewed, for the purpose of the narrative as an evolutionary milestone. More fundamentally, Gilg reveals that it is the seminal work of Patrick Geddes-and his emphasis on cyclical process in planning-which pervades his own evolutionary model (p. 2). This model, at its root, is built on a recognition of successive value systems (from Christian ethics to public participation) which show both ‘planning’ and the ‘countryside’ (viewed from different points in time) to be socially constructed. A concern with how society ‘constructs’ is quickly followed up with a basic analysis of how ‘power’ shapes and re-shapes the countryside. In the same vein, the discussion moves forward to that most slippery of questions-why do we plan? His treatment of both planning’s rationale and the planning system, in general, is rather rudimentary-but then this is the second edition with its more holistic concerns. Analytical frameworks are viewed with marginally more reverence and the discussion moves from meta-narrative (the author’s principal navigational aid; p. 16), through regulation theory (p. 18) to post-modernism and its rejection of the modernist project (p. 19). However, the discussion is [necessarily] brief and there is no movement beyond the diversity of the post-modern. Rather, the discussion is conveniently compartmentalised and moves swiftly to the next point of reference. The opening chapter captures the essence of the entire text-key issues and debates are neatly presented (with
Reviews the author selecting certain discussion points for additional promotion in text boxes and excellent diagrams) and it is, as Gilg suggests, quite possible to jump backward and forward between sections whilst still maintaining a handle on the key issues. Re-reading it now, reminds me why I’m constantly responding to student questions by referring them to ‘Gilg’. The remainder of the text meanders through a range of ‘planning’ and ‘countryside’ issues. All chapters focus on presenting introductory concepts, establishing the ‘evolutionary path’, updating the reader on the most recent events and providing a ‘fifty year’ analysis. The first port-of-call is agriculture, which is given the same narrative treatment as all the subjects covered in the text. I should admit at this point that this is a style and format which I immediately warm to-and I’m sure this sentiment is shared by many readers looking for that once-a-month teaching/reference text. Sections like ‘The situation in 1995’ (p. 51) are muchloved by those approaching topics for the first time. Similarly, the production of a policy ‘checklist’ at the end of each chapter is a novel-albeit a little rigid-way to unravel the narrative. Less positive perhaps is Gilg’s peripheral treatment of Wales and Scotland-which, in policy terms, are often viewed a something of a detachable add-on. The third chapter appraises the role of farmers as managers of the countryside-from a position of prosperous prominence to one of declining influence as subsidies are withdrawn. This is a comprehensive introductory analysis which lays the foundations for more detailed examination of woodland and the ‘natural environment’ (Chapters 4 and 6) with its many intangibles (p. 185). The .‘built environment’ is certainly not assigned priority in Countryside Planning (the author clarifies his intention to focus on ‘countryside’ rather than ‘rural’ {built} planning early in the text; p. x) though the overview provided is concise and topical. The town and country planning chapter ends by questioning the overall impacts of urban compaction and European influences on land-use planning (p. 182)-issues which remain at the top of the policy agenda. Finally, as a student text, Countryside Planning is well conceived and formatted. This is demonstrated in the closing chapter, which uses the policy checklist to provide an integrated evaluation of the main strands of policy considered. Overall, few planning courses are likely to omit Countyside Planning from their core reading lists: it offers an excellent introduction to broader countryside issues and sits well with other, more ‘procedural’, planning text books. My only criticism is that the entire structure of the text (and not just the ‘overall verdict’ sections) gives the impression that Gilg is presiding as judge and jury over fifty years of countryside policy. This isn’t a problem in itself, but his ‘verdicts’ are generally glib-though I suppose quite attractive in a post-modern, Disneyland, sort of way. I draw inspiration from Gilg’s sporting dedication in concluding that Countyside Planning is in the premier league of teaching texts-it has a relaxed style, moves well across the field, and is likely to be a real crowd-pleaser. NICK GALLENT Department of Planning and Landscape University of Manchester Manchestel; UK PII: SO743-0167(98)00025-4
of Rural
1999 Published
Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 221-239,
by Elsevier
Science
Pergamon
Ltd. All Printed
0743-0167/99
$ -
1999
rights reserved in Great
Britain
see front
matter
Book Reviews Contested Natures, P. MacNaghten and J. Urry, 307 pp., 1998, Sage, London, pperf15.99 hbk, ISBN O-7619-5312-4
nature, and those spaces are not only what is called ‘countryside’ (making the third of the triad of relevant keywords with nature and landscape).
This is a valuable collation and multi-disciplinary critical review of numerous concepts, positions and contexts surrounding different knowledges elite, academic, popular concerning nature. Raymond Williams famously refers to nature, along with culture, as the most difficult words in the English language for which to establish ‘meaning’ (Keywords, Fontana, 1976). MacNaghten and Urry’s book does justice to this difficulty in the complexity it reveals.
Much of the later part of the book is preoccupied with focus-group considerations of feelings of risk and abstract attitudes to ‘sustainability’ (another keyword), in an empirically-based chapter ‘Sustaining Nature’. Perhaps the problem here is expressed by one of the authors elsewhere: ‘Participation requires effective institutions and mechanisms but it also requires an effective and common language. That language will ultimately be found in the way people talk, not in political doctrines’ (MacNaghten and Myers, 1998). We may seek to go beyond that, to say that talk is part of practice, and MacNaghten and Urry have directed our attention, rightly to practice in a wider, also embodied sense.
The cover of this book is metaphorically strong. It is a painting of a country harvest, seemingly neutral and, of course, natural: ‘Taking in the Harvest’. However, this is a cubist vorticist painting, with figures clear enough and close-up, but cylindrical, with shining surfaces to peasants’ bodies as they lift the sheaves of corn, tie them, and bale them. They wear colourful costumes that would not be considered ‘appropriate’ in the soft colours of older, British, artwork. They ‘look’ intense in their practice. What emerges is a leitmotif of something much more contested, and contested through diverse alleyways some of which are explored in this volume.
The debate that Urry and MacNaghten discuss remains, however, largely within these official and organized languages and their more detached practice, those networks that participate in an often detached and abstracted discourse on nature. That discourse is heavily contested across a wide population that, as Myers and MacNaghten argue, does not share this ‘networked’-only knowledge. Therefore, the prevailing debates, and official practices, remain unable to engage the wider population: they remain unable to situate themselves in everyday ways of knowing nature. Focus-group discussions over abstract notions of risk and environment meet with extreme difficulty in translation to actually where people in their everyday life ‘are’, how they ‘know’ nature. ‘Knowing this’ may reveal further dimensions of contestation, or in a more generous approach from the Knowledge Networks, a negoitated consensus.
In the book there is an exploration of ‘vision’ that is familiar in Urry’s recent work on ‘tourism’; but here the apparent dominance of vision is met with an exploration of other senses, in a fascinating chapter ‘Sensing nature’. The earlier chapter ‘Inventing nature’ errs towards the broader cultural contextualizations of twentieth century official and self-consciously alternative discouse groups such as the Donga Tribe (Twyford Down) - environmentalisms ‘natures’. More artistic cultural contexts such as those explored somewhat more exclusively historically by Schama (Landscapes of Memory, 1995) emerge in relation to vision and other senses. In this emphasis on the political the book reveals one of its key objectives, to engage theoretical critical insight and policy-makers and people in the environmentalist networks, several of whom are acknowledged as influencers on the book. Thus, predominant influences on ‘inventing nature’ are the movements and governments in the twentieth century that have shaped particular, perhaps more formalist versions of nature, including formal oppositions to dominant, Government norms.
MacNaghten, P. and Myers, Planning A, 30, 333-353.
G. (1998) Environment
and
DAVID CROUCH Professor Cultural Geography Anglia University PII: SO743-0167(98)00022-9
Nature and Time are given a particular focus because the book directs attention not only at contextual&y of prevailing cultural forms but seeks a reasoning of nature understood in everyday life. This aspect of the work is more preliminary. Developing Urry’s insightful notes in Consuming Spaces (Routledge, 1995) this book remarks on Bachelard and Bergsen in terms of ‘getting closer’ to ways in which people make sense of their surrounding space, which is interestingly where the book slides from ‘nature’ to ‘landscape’. There is plenty of room to take this debate further, in understanding and interpreting how people in their everyday life may patch together, through various experiences in different spaces, their knowledge of
Countryside Planning: The First Half Century, 2nd ed., Andrew W. Gilg, 1996, Routledge, London, 291 pp. Price: f15.99 paperback, X50.00 hardback (ISBN 0 415 05490 7 paperback) Since the publication of the first edition of Countryside Planning in 1978, Gilg’s examination of the countryside/ planning interface has been hugely popular with students of both planning and rural geography. However, on the author’s admission (p. viii), after seventeen years of Conservative government, the contents of the 1978 edition 221
222 were looking revamp.
Book a little
dog-eared
and
it was time
for a
The new Countryside Planning [The First Half Century] followed hot-on-the-heels of the 1995 Rural White Paper and has a broad remit, attempting to capture the full flavour of fifty years of planning-and related countryside issues-within just seven brief chapters. The revised text is concerned, principally, with the way in which policy development may be seen to follow an evolutionary path-the different frameworks in which policy strata may be scrutinised are assigned particular importance, and in each chapter, Gilg offers differently framed cause/effect interpretations. Essentially, the new book moves away from technocratic planning concerns-which were central to the first edition-and focuses instead on policy determinants and outcomes, viewing these within the context of an agencystructure discourse whilst emphasising how human irrationality impacts on structural forces. The author correctly observes that policy formulation is a value-laden exercise which may be ‘crisis driven’ and affected by unforeseen responses. Similarly, though diverse areas of policy may interact, formulation is poorly co-ordinated with little evidence of any corporate vision on the part of those charged with implementation. Despite the analytical and evolutionary complexities of a policy focus, it remains Gilg’s intention to produce a text which is universally approachable and which allows different readers to select and skip particular sections without losing the thread of the overall ‘narrative’. Moreover, Countryside Planning was intended as an holistic text for students of a range of planning, geography and related disciplines-providing an authoritative account of ‘policy evolution’, outlining different interpretations and evaluating long term ‘success’ (p. xii). The main body of the text begins topically enough, referencing the beliefs and assumptions which underpinned the 1995 Rural White Paper-viewed, for the purpose of the narrative as an evolutionary milestone. More fundamentally, Gilg reveals that it is the seminal work of Patrick Geddes-and his emphasis on cyclical process in planning-which pervades his own evolutionary model (p. 2). This model, at its root, is built on a recognition of successive value systems (from Christian ethics to public participation) which show both ‘planning’ and the ‘countryside’ (viewed from different points in time) to be socially constructed. A concern with how society ‘constructs’ is quickly followed up with a basic analysis of how ‘power’ shapes and re-shapes the countryside. In the same vein, the discussion moves forward to that most slippery of questions-why do we plan? His treatment of both planning’s rationale and the planning system, in general, is rather rudimentary-but then this is the second edition with its more holistic concerns. Analytical frameworks are viewed with marginally more reverence and the discussion moves from meta-narrative (the author’s principal navigational aid; p. 16), through regulation theory (p. 18) to post-modernism and its rejection of the modernist project (p. 19). However, the discussion is [necessarily] brief and there is no movement beyond the diversity of the post-modern. Rather, the discussion is conveniently compartmentalised and moves swiftly to the next point of reference. The opening chapter captures the essence of the entire text-key issues and debates are neatly presented (with
Reviews the author selecting certain discussion points for additional promotion in text boxes and excellent diagrams) and it is, as Gilg suggests, quite possible to jump backward and forward between sections whilst still maintaining a handle on the key issues. Re-reading it now, reminds me why I’m constantly responding to student questions by referring them to ‘Gilg’. The remainder of the text meanders through a range of ‘planning’ and ‘countryside’ issues. All chapters focus on presenting introductory concepts, establishing the ‘evolutionary path’, updating the reader on the most recent events and providing a ‘fifty year’ analysis. The first port-of-call is agriculture, which is given the same narrative treatment as all the subjects covered in the text. I should admit at this point that this is a style and format which I immediately warm to-and I’m sure this sentiment is shared by many readers looking for that once-a-month teaching/reference text. Sections like ‘The situation in 1995’ (p. 51) are muchloved by those approaching topics for the first time. Similarly, the production of a policy ‘checklist’ at the end of each chapter is a novel-albeit a little rigid-way to unravel the narrative. Less positive perhaps is Gilg’s peripheral treatment of Wales and Scotland-which, in policy terms, are often viewed a something of a detachable add-on. The third chapter appraises the role of farmers as managers of the countryside-from a position of prosperous prominence to one of declining influence as subsidies are withdrawn. This is a comprehensive introductory analysis which lays the foundations for more detailed examination of woodland and the ‘natural environment’ (Chapters 4 and 6) with its many intangibles (p. 185). The .‘built environment’ is certainly not assigned priority in Countryside Planning (the author clarifies his intention to focus on ‘countryside’ rather than ‘rural’ {built} planning early in the text; p. x) though the overview provided is concise and topical. The town and country planning chapter ends by questioning the overall impacts of urban compaction and European influences on land-use planning (p. 182)-issues which remain at the top of the policy agenda. Finally, as a student text, Countryside Planning is well conceived and formatted. This is demonstrated in the closing chapter, which uses the policy checklist to provide an integrated evaluation of the main strands of policy considered. Overall, few planning courses are likely to omit Countyside Planning from their core reading lists: it offers an excellent introduction to broader countryside issues and sits well with other, more ‘procedural’, planning text books. My only criticism is that the entire structure of the text (and not just the ‘overall verdict’ sections) gives the impression that Gilg is presiding as judge and jury over fifty years of countryside policy. This isn’t a problem in itself, but his ‘verdicts’ are generally glib-though I suppose quite attractive in a post-modern, Disneyland, sort of way. I draw inspiration from Gilg’s sporting dedication in concluding that Countyside Planning is in the premier league of teaching texts-it has a relaxed style, moves well across the field, and is likely to be a real crowd-pleaser. NICK GALLENT Department of Planning and Landscape University of Manchester Manchestel; UK PII: SO743-0167(98)00025-4