- Email: [email protected]
Planning, governance and spatial strategy in Britain
Book Reviews / Political Geography 21 (2002) 955–969
967
Planning, governance and spatial strategy in Britain Vigar, G., Healey, P., Hull, A., and Davoudi, S. London, Macmillan, 2000. pp x + 314. ISBN 0-333-77317-9 (pb) This book examines changes in core aspects of British land use planning in the 1990s, namely spatial strategy making. Subtitled “An institutional analysis”, the book also promotes, by example, a particular theoretical framework within which to understand these developments, an amalgam of Giddesian structuration theory, Habermassian-inspired communicative planning theory (as expounded, for example, in Healey’s Collaborative Planning (1997)), and the concern for social capital and institutional thickness in analyses of economic development. Barely twenty pages are given over to introducing this framework, and the primary effort (and eight times as many pages) is devoted to detailed case studies of planning in three parts of England (the authors are meticulous in not confusing England with Britain or the UK... except in the book’s title). Far too little rigorous, and extended, research is conducted into British planning, and this thorough and well-presented volume deserves a wide readership. The case study areas are Lancashire, the West Midlands, and Kent—their choice is not explicitly defended, but it is soon clear that they exhibit rather different kinds of relations between agencies involved in governance, and the institutions, the routinised practices, networks and expectations involved in governance, which display some variety. This is important, because this book wishes to analyse the way in which planning (and specifically, strategic plan making) has been affected by the changes referred to in the by now commonplace observation in accounts of recent British politics and public administration that there has been a shift from government to governance in recent decades. The alleged shift has many elements, and commentators can disagree about details (and even more about causes and significance), but some key (and related) features of the changes are: institutional complexity and fragmentation, as elected local councils and central government move from direct service delivery to becoming strategic authorities responsible for co-ordinating and enabling service delivery by others; a greater focus on issues and problems, and using legislation and regulations to address these rather than as definitions of areas of service delivery in their own right—this puts a premium on working across existing service, professional and bureaucratic boundaries, historically defined by the need to enforce regulations or legislation; finally, there is an increasing emphasis on involving “stakeholders” in decisions on priorities for governance and ways of meeting them. The authors of the book argue that these trends have tended to focus public policy attention on the quality of places—through questions such as what has this place to offer (to investors, visitors, residents...)? Does what it offers satisfy some principle of sustainability? Does it offer a safe, secure life—economically, physically and so on? These are the kinds of questions which “joined-up government” (once promoted by the Blair administrations, but now little talked of in those terms) is needed to address. And it is plausible to suggest that as these kinds of issues rise in prominence so should spatial planning become more important as an integrative tool of govern-
968
Book Reviews / Political Geography 21 (2002) 955–969
ance—for spatial plan making can be a process which transcends policy sectors and pulls out the implications of interweaving sectoral concerns for places. Moreover, in so doing, it may provide a focus for a more inclusive governance, a decisionmaking forum in which a broader array of stakeholders can be engaged. The prescriptions of the Urban Task Force, for example, included a bigger role for planning, in the sense of spatial integration (through urban design) of both policy and development to create better places. This book deals with a higher spatial scale, but the point is the same. So there are reasons for supposing that the nature of strategic spatial planning may have changed in the 1990s; the book reports on how much has changed, couching its analysis in terms of changes to policy discourses (understood as ‘a frame of reference within which specific policies are articulated and specific ‘interests’ are both identified and positioned’ (p. 224)). It looks at four land use planning sectors— identifying supplies of land for housing, identifying land for employment uses, waste management, and transport. Four sectors in three areas gives us twelve cases, and there is no shortage of material presented to the reader. What can we conclude from the research? First, and very usefully, the study gives another set of detailed examples of spatial variation in the organisational relationships which influence spatial planning. It becomes clear early on that the very different histories of these relations in the three case study locations opened up (and closed) different options in each. These are, of course, part of much more complex differences in local social relations, though on the whole these are not explored in the book, and there is a tendency for institutions, in practice, to be equated with organisations, and what we end up with is a rather traditional institutional analysis (of which more later). Second, it seems to me that the evidence points pretty overwhelmingly to there not having been any significant changes of the kind which we might have expected (and outlined above). The authors provide persuasive analyses of subtle changes in discourses, and are always interesting in their comments on contemporary governance and planning. But spatial strategy making, at least in the statutory planning arena, is no more central to governance than it was a decade ago, and while there may be a case for saying it should be (as the authors make out in their concluding section), their analysis provides no reason for believing this will occur. Notwithstanding the references to new institutionalism, what we actually have seems little different from a refined neopluralist account of sub-national politics; as a result, the book is good, and accurate, in defining the (often subtle) changes in organisations which are involved in spatial policy making and how this is reflected in discourse change, but offers little in the way of explanation as to why these changes occur. We get no feel for the way spatial planning is part of an intertwining of social relations (and political struggles) operating across a variety of spatial scales; we get little feel for politics at all. Consequently, while the evidence makes it clear that the broadening of the definition of “stakeholders” has done little to democratise spatial planning processes, we are given no framework to assess why this might be, and how it might be different. So, a good book, highly recommended for anyone interested in contemporary British planning, but one which offers only a starting point for our understanding of contemporary planning.
Book Reviews / Political Geography 21 (2002) 955–969
969
Reference Healey, P. (1997). Collaborative planning. London: Macmillan.
H. Thomas Department of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University Cardiff, UK E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S0962-6298(01)00087-7
967
Planning, governance and spatial strategy in Britain Vigar, G., Healey, P., Hull, A., and Davoudi, S. London, Macmillan, 2000. pp x + 314. ISBN 0-333-77317-9 (pb) This book examines changes in core aspects of British land use planning in the 1990s, namely spatial strategy making. Subtitled “An institutional analysis”, the book also promotes, by example, a particular theoretical framework within which to understand these developments, an amalgam of Giddesian structuration theory, Habermassian-inspired communicative planning theory (as expounded, for example, in Healey’s Collaborative Planning (1997)), and the concern for social capital and institutional thickness in analyses of economic development. Barely twenty pages are given over to introducing this framework, and the primary effort (and eight times as many pages) is devoted to detailed case studies of planning in three parts of England (the authors are meticulous in not confusing England with Britain or the UK... except in the book’s title). Far too little rigorous, and extended, research is conducted into British planning, and this thorough and well-presented volume deserves a wide readership. The case study areas are Lancashire, the West Midlands, and Kent—their choice is not explicitly defended, but it is soon clear that they exhibit rather different kinds of relations between agencies involved in governance, and the institutions, the routinised practices, networks and expectations involved in governance, which display some variety. This is important, because this book wishes to analyse the way in which planning (and specifically, strategic plan making) has been affected by the changes referred to in the by now commonplace observation in accounts of recent British politics and public administration that there has been a shift from government to governance in recent decades. The alleged shift has many elements, and commentators can disagree about details (and even more about causes and significance), but some key (and related) features of the changes are: institutional complexity and fragmentation, as elected local councils and central government move from direct service delivery to becoming strategic authorities responsible for co-ordinating and enabling service delivery by others; a greater focus on issues and problems, and using legislation and regulations to address these rather than as definitions of areas of service delivery in their own right—this puts a premium on working across existing service, professional and bureaucratic boundaries, historically defined by the need to enforce regulations or legislation; finally, there is an increasing emphasis on involving “stakeholders” in decisions on priorities for governance and ways of meeting them. The authors of the book argue that these trends have tended to focus public policy attention on the quality of places—through questions such as what has this place to offer (to investors, visitors, residents...)? Does what it offers satisfy some principle of sustainability? Does it offer a safe, secure life—economically, physically and so on? These are the kinds of questions which “joined-up government” (once promoted by the Blair administrations, but now little talked of in those terms) is needed to address. And it is plausible to suggest that as these kinds of issues rise in prominence so should spatial planning become more important as an integrative tool of govern-
968
Book Reviews / Political Geography 21 (2002) 955–969
ance—for spatial plan making can be a process which transcends policy sectors and pulls out the implications of interweaving sectoral concerns for places. Moreover, in so doing, it may provide a focus for a more inclusive governance, a decisionmaking forum in which a broader array of stakeholders can be engaged. The prescriptions of the Urban Task Force, for example, included a bigger role for planning, in the sense of spatial integration (through urban design) of both policy and development to create better places. This book deals with a higher spatial scale, but the point is the same. So there are reasons for supposing that the nature of strategic spatial planning may have changed in the 1990s; the book reports on how much has changed, couching its analysis in terms of changes to policy discourses (understood as ‘a frame of reference within which specific policies are articulated and specific ‘interests’ are both identified and positioned’ (p. 224)). It looks at four land use planning sectors— identifying supplies of land for housing, identifying land for employment uses, waste management, and transport. Four sectors in three areas gives us twelve cases, and there is no shortage of material presented to the reader. What can we conclude from the research? First, and very usefully, the study gives another set of detailed examples of spatial variation in the organisational relationships which influence spatial planning. It becomes clear early on that the very different histories of these relations in the three case study locations opened up (and closed) different options in each. These are, of course, part of much more complex differences in local social relations, though on the whole these are not explored in the book, and there is a tendency for institutions, in practice, to be equated with organisations, and what we end up with is a rather traditional institutional analysis (of which more later). Second, it seems to me that the evidence points pretty overwhelmingly to there not having been any significant changes of the kind which we might have expected (and outlined above). The authors provide persuasive analyses of subtle changes in discourses, and are always interesting in their comments on contemporary governance and planning. But spatial strategy making, at least in the statutory planning arena, is no more central to governance than it was a decade ago, and while there may be a case for saying it should be (as the authors make out in their concluding section), their analysis provides no reason for believing this will occur. Notwithstanding the references to new institutionalism, what we actually have seems little different from a refined neopluralist account of sub-national politics; as a result, the book is good, and accurate, in defining the (often subtle) changes in organisations which are involved in spatial policy making and how this is reflected in discourse change, but offers little in the way of explanation as to why these changes occur. We get no feel for the way spatial planning is part of an intertwining of social relations (and political struggles) operating across a variety of spatial scales; we get little feel for politics at all. Consequently, while the evidence makes it clear that the broadening of the definition of “stakeholders” has done little to democratise spatial planning processes, we are given no framework to assess why this might be, and how it might be different. So, a good book, highly recommended for anyone interested in contemporary British planning, but one which offers only a starting point for our understanding of contemporary planning.
Book Reviews / Political Geography 21 (2002) 955–969
969
Reference Healey, P. (1997). Collaborative planning. London: Macmillan.
H. Thomas Department of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University Cardiff, UK E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S0962-6298(01)00087-7