Conceptions of Space and Place in Strategic Spatial Planning (RTPI Library Series)

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Conceptions of Space and Place in Strategic Spatial Planning RTPI Library Series ; 17.17 Davoudi, Simin.; Strange, Ian. Taylor & Francis Routledge 0415431026 9780415431026 9780203886502 English City planning--England, Land use--England, Open spaces-England, Regional planning--England, Spatial behavior-England. 2009 HT169.G72C585 2008eb 307.1/2160942 City planning--England, Land use--England, Open spaces-England, Regional planning--England, Spatial behavior-England. cover

Page i Conceptions of Space and Place in Stritegic Spatial Planning The latter part of the twentieth century witnessed the resurgence of strategic spatial plans and perspectives at various scales, ranging from the European to the regional and local levels. This book examines the ways in which this new wave of spatial planning has been informed by the concepts of space and place and how these concepts have been used in the construction of plans. The authors, both academics and practitioners, provide an historical analysis of the different ways in which the notions of space and place have been adopted in planning thought and practice. Also, through an exploration of recent experiences of strategic spatial plan making in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, they consider the ways in which contemporary spatial planning practices employ ideas about space and place.

Using six illustrative case studies of practice, this book examines which conceptions of space and place have been articulated, presented and visualised through the production of spatial strategies. By bringing together leading planning researchers, it produces accounts of spatial strategy making that are theoretically informed, empirically grounded and practice relevant. Although there is widespread support for reorienting planning towards space and place, there has been little common understanding about what constitutes ‘spatial planning’, and what conceptions of space and place underpin it. This book addresses these questions and stimulates debate and critical thinking about space and place among academic and professional planners. Simin Davoudi is Professor of Environmental Policy and Planning and Co-Director of the Institute for Research on Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at Newcastle University. She is Past President of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP). Ian Strange is Professor of Spatial Planning at the Centre for Urban Development and Environmental Management in the School of the Built Environment at Leeds Metropolitan University. page_i Page ii

THE RTPI Library Series Editor: Robert Upton, RTPI, London, UK Published by Routledge in conjunction with the Royal Town Planning Institute, this series of leading-edge texts looks at all aspects of spatial planning theory and practice from a comparative and international perspective. Planning in Postmodern Times Philip Allmendinger The Making of the European Spatial Development Perspective No Master Plan Andreas Faludi and Bas Waterhout Planning for Crime Prevention Richard Schneider and Ted Kitchen The Planning Polity Mark Tewdwr-Jones Shadows of Power An Allegory of Prudence in Land use Planning Jean Hillier Urban Planning and Cultural Identity William JV Neill

Place Identity, Participation and Planning Edited by Cliff Hague and Paul Jenkins Planning for Diversity Policy and Planning in a World of Difference Dory Reeves Planning the Good Community New Urbanism in Theory and Practice Jill Grant Planning, Law and Economics The Rules We Make for Using Land Barrie Needham Indicators for Urban and Regional Planning Cecilia Wong Planning at the Landscape Scale Paul Selman Urban Structure Matters Petter Naess Urban Complexity and Spatial Strategies Towards a Relational Planning for Our Times Patsy Healey The Visual Language of Spatial Planning Exploring Cartographic Representations for Spatial Planning in Europe Stefanie Dühr Planning and Transformation Learning from the Post-Apartheid Experience Philip Harrison, Alison Todes and Vanessa Watson Conceptions of Space and Place in Strategic Spatial Planning Edited by Simin Davoudi and Ian Strange page_ii

Page iii

Conceptions of Space and Place in Strategic Spatial Planning EDITED BY SIMIN DAVOUDI AND IAN STRANGE

LONDON AND NEW YORK page_iii Page iv First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2009 selection and editorial matter: Simin Davoudi and Ian Strange; individual chapters: the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Conceptions of space and place in strategic spatial planning / edited by Simin Davoudi and Ian Strange. p. cm.—(The RTPI library series ; 17) Includes bibliographical references. 1. City planning—England. 2. Land use—England. 3. Open spaces— England. 4. Regional planning—England. 5. Spatial behavior—England. I. Davoudi, Simin. II. Strange, Ian. III. Royal Town Planning Institute. HT169.G72C585 2008

307.1'2160942—dc22 2008015688 ISBN 0-203-88650-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-43102-6 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-415-48666-1 (pbk) ISBN10: 0-203-88650-X (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-43102-6 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-48666-8 (pbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-88650-2 (ebk) page_iv Page v

CONTENTS List of illustrations

vii

List of contributors

ix

Acknowledgements

xiii

Introduction SIMIN DAVOUDI AND IAN STRANGE 1 Space and place in twentieth-century planning: an analytical framework and an historical review SIMIN DAVOUDI AND IAN STRANGE

1

7

2 Making Wales: spatial strategy making in a devolved context NEIL HARRIS AND HUW THOMAS

43

3 Identity and territory: the creation of a national planning framework for Scotland GREG LLOYD AND GRAEME PURVES

71

4 Space and place in the national spatial strategy for the Republic of Ireland JAMES A. WALSH

95

5 Building consensus in contested spaces and places? The Regional Development Strategy for Northern 125 Ireland MICHAEL MURRAY 6 Doing strategic planning differently? The Yorkshire and Humber regional spatial strategy GORDON DABINETT

147

7 Managing the metropolis: economic change, institutional reform and spatial planning in London NICK BAILEY

181

page_v Page vi 8 Asymmetric development in spatial planning: positivist content and post-modernist processes? SIMIN DAVOUDI

207

Bibliography

245

Index

269 page_vi

Page vii

ILLUSTRATIONS PLATES

1 The National Spatial Perspective and the Spatial Vision in the consultation and final versions of the Wales Spatial Plan 2 Fluid space? Time-distances to selected centres within Wales 3 Transmission system reinforcements 4 Strategy map 5 The Spatial Development Strategy for Northern Ireland, 2025 6 The Yorkshire and Humber Plan: Key Diagram 7 Greater London Development Plan Key Diagram 1976 8 The London Plan Key Diagram 2004

FIGURES

0.1 Location of the case studies in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland

2

4.1 Gateways and Hubs

116

4.2 Transport framework

117

5.1 The Belfast Regional Survey and Plan Proposals, 1963

128

5.2 The Northern Ireland Regional Physical Development Strategy, 1975–95

130

6.1 Yorkshire and Humber strategic planning areas

150

TABLES

0.1 Spatial strategies in the case study areas

2

1.1 Spatial strategies: key aspects of contents and processes

11

1.2 Criteria for analysing the contents of spatial strategies

40

1.3 Criteria for analysing the processes of spatial strategies

41

2.1 Key stages in the strategy-making process for the Wales Spatial Plan, 2000–2007

60

6.1 Socio-economic profile of local planning authorities

152

6.2 Spatial construction of the sub-areas of the Yorkshire and Humber Region

162

page_vii Page viii 6.3 Main steps in the preparation of the Regional Spatial Strategy

169

8.1 Spatial strategies and the changing political context in the case study areas

212

page_viii

Page ix

CONTRIBUTORS Nick Bailey DipURP (Oxford Polytechnic), MSocSci (Birmingham), MRTPI is Professor of Urban Regeneration in the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Westminster. He has led a number of research projects exploring the links between generic skills and higher education and has advised the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit, Regional Centres of Excellence and local strategic partnerships on learning and skills strategies. His particular research interests include partnership working in urban regeneration, community involvement and social enterprise, and the evolving agenda linking spatial planning and the construction of sustainable communities. He has recently completed a research project on mixed income communities sponsored by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Gordon Dabinett BSc (Heriot-Watt) MSc (Cantab) MRTPI, MIED, AcSS, is Professor for Regional Studies and Head of the Department of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield. He is Honorary Vice-Chair of the Regional Studies Association and Academician of the Social Sciences. Previously he was the CRESR Reader in Urban and Regional Policy at Sheffield Hallam University and worked in economic development for Cleveland County Council and Sheffield City Council. He is interested in and concerned with uneven spatial development and how alternative development practices might address such inequality, and has been involved in a range of applied and policy research projects for local and regional regeneration agencies, national government departments and the EU. He has recently completed an INTERREG North Sea action research project to develop models of city centre revitalisation through integrated spatial planning. Simin Davoudi BArch (Iran National University), MPhil (University of Newcastle), MRTPI, AcSS is Professor of Environment Policy and Planning at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape and Co-Director of the Institute for Research on Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at Newcastle University. Simin has held a Wibaut visiting professorship at the University of Amsterdam and the Presidency of the Association of the European Schools of Planning page_ix Page x (AESOP), has coordinated the Planning Research Network, which advised the UK government on its planning research priorities, and been a member of the Expert Panel on the UK government’s Housing Markets and Planning Analysis, the Research and Knowledge Committee of the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Expert Group for the EU DG Environment and DG Regional Policy, the Advisory Board of the Irish Social Science Platform, Swedish School of Planning at BTH, North East Region Academic Panel, and expert groups for Irish and Austrian EU Presidency seminars. She is a founding member of 21st Century Society: Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences , and was a member of the selection panels for the research council’s and the Irish Environmental Protection Agency’s doctoral studentship. Her research focuses on UK and European spatial planning, institutional relationships and governance, and sustainability and strategic waste management. Neil Harris BSc Hons, DipTP, DipSSRM, PhD (Wales), MRTPI is Lecturer in Statutory Planning at Cardiff University. His research interests relate to the statutory planning system in England and Wales and have focused more recently on strategic spatial planning in different European countries. He has undertaken research for a variety of government and voluntary organisations, including the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Welsh Assembly Government. He has published in a range of academic journals and has also written for popular and professional audiences. Neil is also Chairman of Planning Aid Wales and was formerly Chairman of the Welsh Assembly Government’s Stakeholder Group on Local Development Plans. Greg Lloyd BA (Sheffield), MSc (Aberdeen), MIED, ILTM, FRSA is Professor of Urban Planning and Head of School of the Built Environment at the University of Ulster. Prior to that, he was Professor of Planning in the Department of Civic Design at the University of Liverpool and Head of the School of Town and Regional

Planning, University of Dundee. He has undertaken numerous funded research studies, and is currently involved in research into reform of planning practice, national planning forms, and public sector modernisation. He publishes in a range of scholarly and professional journals and is Ministerial Independent Expert Advisor on Reform of the Land Use Planning System in Northern Ireland. Michael Murray BA Hons, MSc, PhD, MRTPI is Reader in Rural Planning and Development in the School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). Prior to joining the planning school at QUB in 2001, he worked as a Planner with Brady Shipman Martin, Dublin, and as a Lecturer at the University of Ulster and was a Visiting Scholar at Colorado State University, USA. He has published widely in books and journals and page_x Page xi in recent years has co-authored research reports for the Rural Development Council, Rural Community Network, Northern Ireland Housing Executive, Northern Ireland Economic Council, and North–South Rural Voice. In 2007 he was appointed Rapporteur for the transnational EU-funded European Citizens’ Panel initiative: What roles for rural areas in tomorrow’s Europe ? Over the period 2004–8 he has been the UK Coordinator of the Strategic Planning Action Network (SPAN), an interdisciplinary and trans-regional action research project funded under the INTERREG 111B North West Europe Programme. He is a Corporate Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute and a Board member of the Irish Social Sciences Platform. Graeme Purves BSC Hons (Aberdeen), Dip TP (Heriot-Watt), PhD (Heriot-Watt), MRTPI is Assistant Chief Planner in the Scottish Government’s Planning Directorate. He has many years’ experience in the development of strategic planning policy, development management and the environmental assessment of policies and proposals. He has a strong background in urban regeneration and rural development issues and has been active in encouraging community participation in environmental management. He has served as a member of a group of international experts advising on good practice in spatial planning in the Celtic and Baltic countries and is currently leading the team preparing Scotland’s second National Planning Framework. Ian Strange BA Hons (Sussex), MA (Sussex), PhD (Sheffield) is Professor of Spatial Planning and Head of CUDEM in the School of the Built Environment, Leeds Metropolitan University. His research and publications focus on the poli-tics of urban restructuring, urban governance, local economic policy, arts and cultural policy, and conservation and the planning and development process in historic cities. Ian has undertaken research for a range of organisations including the UK central government, local government, research councils, public bodies and the European Union. His current research is exploring the relationship between public art, regeneration and regional identity construction. He is also undertaking evaluations of a number of major publicly funded programmes designed to celebrate public art and architecture. Huw Thomas MA (Oxon), MPhil (UCL), MRTPI is Reader in City and Regional Planning at Cardiff University. He has also taught at Oxford Brookes University, and for nearly ten years was a planner at Cardiff City Council. Huw is a member of the RTPI’s Equal Opportunities (Race) Panel, and also on the Board of Directors of Butetown History and Arts Centre. His research interests include equal opportunities and planning, with a particular focus on planning in a racialised society. He has also researched the politics of planning and evaluated urban regeneration initiatives, notably urban development corporations. page_xi Page xii Current research projects include developing approaches to promoting community involvement in spatial planning. James A. Walsh BA, MA, DLitt is a Professor of Geography and Deputy President of the National University

of Ireland, Maynooth, where he was Head of Geography for ten years up to 2005. He is a founding member of the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) and was an advisor to the Department of the Environment during the preparation of the National Spatial Strategy. He has been appointed to several advisory bodies including the National Economic and Social Council. He is a keen supporter of the ESPON programme and was Ireland’s ESPON Contact Point for many years. He has produced over 150 academic publications, which include twelve books. He was Co-Chair of the Working Group that produced a Foresight analysis of Rural Ireland 2025. In 2007 he was editor and principal author of People and Place: A Census Atlas of the Republic of Ireland published by NIRSA. page_xii Page xiii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors of this book greatly appreciate the insights provided by planning practitioners who have been engaged with the preparation of the plans that are studied in this volume. Although the content of the book remains the responsibility of the authors, our special thanks go to Niall Cussen (Spatial Planning Unit, Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Republic of Ireland) for his insight on the internal processes of preparing the Irish National Spatial Strategy, and to officers of the Greater London Authority and former members of the Greater London Council and London Planning Advisory Committee for reading drafts of Chapter 7 (London) and providing valuable insights and additional factual material. We would like to extend our gratitude to Tim Richardson and Robert Upton, the Royal Town Planning Institute’s Series Editors, for their advice and comments on the proposed outline of the book, and Patsy Healey and Louis Albrechts for reviewing the outline. We also owe thanks to a number of colleagues who have read and commented on various draft chapters, including Brendan Bartley and Jeanne Meldon (NIRSA) on Chapter 4 and Ali Madanipour on Chapters 1 and 8. We are grateful to David Whitney, with whom we developed the idea of the book initially; those colleagues with whom we shared ideas about space and place during the summer of 2006, notably Mark Shucksmith, Jonathan Pugh and Patsy Healey; and colleagues participating in the roundtable debate in 2007 AESOP Congress in Naples. We would also like to express our appreciation for the work of Georgina Johnson at Routledge, who remained patient with our requests for extension of deadlines and helped us throughout the process. Finally, our thanks must go to Ali Madanipour and Susan Watkins for their support and encouragement throughout this project.

Copyright credits We are grateful to the following organisations for granting permission to reproduce the maps and diagrams that are included in the book: The National Assembly for Wales for Plate 1 and 2; 1 the Scottish Government for Plate 3 and 4; the Department for Regional Development in Northern Ireland for Plate 5; City of London, page_xiii Page xiv London Metropolitan Archive for Plate 7; Greater London Authority for Plate 8; the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly for Figure 6.1 and Plate 6.2

Notes 1 Copyright statement: Most of the material featured on the Welsh Assembly Official website is subject to Crown copyright protection unless otherwise indicated. The Crown copyright protected material (other than the Royal Arms) may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium without requiring specific permission. This is subject to the material being reproduced accurately and not in a misleading context. Where any of the Crown copyright items on this site are being republished or copied to others, the source

of the material must be identified and the copyright status acknowledged. The National Assembly for Wales is also content for users to establish hypertext links to this site. For further information on Crown copyright policy and licensing arrangements, see the guidance featured on HMSO’s website at www.hmso.gov.uk/guides.htm © Crown Copyright 1999–2006. 2 Copyright Countryside Agency: These maps are reproduced from Ordnance Survey material with the permission of Ordnance Survey on behalf of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office © Crown copyright. Unauthorised reproduction infringes Crown copyright and may lead to prosecution or civil proceedings. Defra, Licence number 100018880, 2005. page_xiv Page 1

INTRODUCTION Simin Davoudi and Ian Strange

Approaching space and place in strategic spatial planning The latter part of the twentieth century witnessed the resurgence of strategic spatial planning at various scales from pan-European to the local level. In the UK, this ‘spatial turn’ in planning was contingent on two significant developments which have come to epitomise the demand for new ways of conceptualising spatial planning and making spatial strategies in practice. The first of these developments was the Royal Town Planning Institute’s (RTPI) New Vision for Planning (RTPI 2001:1), which was built around the core idea of planning as Spatial, Sustainable, Integrative and Inclusive. The second impetus for change came from new legislation, in the form of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act in 2004, which, for the first time, defined a statutory purpose for planning, stating that planning should ‘contribute to sustainable development’ (ODPM 2004). These developments were complemented with the reform of planning education which placed the emphasis on ‘seek[ing] to promote critical thinking about space and place as the basis for action or intervention’ (RTPI 2003:1, our emphasis). It was this renewed enthusiasm for spatiality in planning that motivated us to embark on this book project. Although there is widespread support for reorienting planning towards space and place, there is little common understanding about what constitutes ‘spatial planning’ and what conceptions of space and place underpin approaches to spatial plan making. It is the latter question that lies at the heart of our inquiry. Hence, the aim of this book is to examine which conceptions of space and place have been articulated, presented and visualised in the making of spatial strategies. We do this primarily through an analysis of spatial strategy making in six case study areas. Here the various contributors to the book explore the potential tensions or synergies between different conceptualisations of space and place and the way these affect the mobilising power of the spatial strategies. The six cases have been selected to represent strategic planning at a variety of scales, ranging from a large conurbation (London) to regional (Northern Ireland and Yorkshire and Humber) and national (Ireland, Scotland and Wales) levels (Figure 0.1). We acknowledge that there are many ways to choose case studies; our choice has been to accept existing institutional boundaries to define the selected cases. page_1 Page 2

Figure 0.1 Location of the case studies in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. We have chosen this selection mechanism because, first, our focus is on analysing existing documentation (the spatial strategies), second, they represent a discursive expression of the spatial and place imagination being used in the strategy and, third, that imagination is designed to have specific material impacts and territorial outcomes. Furthermore, all cases represent a ‘new’ generation of spatial strategies whose formulation in the early 2000s has been welcomed as a sign of a departure from land use to spatial planning. The temporal overlap in their process of production, as shown in Table 0.1, is not accidental. Indeed, the impetus for their production has a degree of common ground related to a major Table 0.1 Spatial strategies in the case study areas Case study area

Spatial strategy

Date

Wales

People, Places, Futures: the Wales Spatial Plan

2004

Scotland

National Planning Framework for Scotland

2004

Ireland

National Spatial Strategy 2002–2020: People, Places and Potentials

2002

Northern

Ireland Shaping Our Future: Regional Development Strategy for Northern Ireland 2025

2001

Yorkshire and Humber

The Yorkshire and Humber Plan

2006

London

The London Plan: Spatial Development Strategy for Greater London

2004

page_2 Page 3 constitutional change in the United Kingdom, leading to devolution and regionalism, and the peace process in Northern Ireland, providing new perspectives on the multi-dimensional relationships between Northern Ireland, the island of Ireland and Great Britain.

Organisation and structure The book is structured around eight chapters, six of which are devoted to case studies. In order to provide an overall coherence and consistency between the case study chapters, a guiding conceptual framework was developed from the outset as part of the work undertaken for Chapter 1. The framework outlines our understanding of conceptualisations of space and place and their relationship to each other and to spatial strategy making. It is designed to guide each case study in its individual discussion of the spatial strategy productions and contents. The case studies examine the process of strategy making through an analysis of the institutional context and political/power relations within each locality. They also analyse the content of strategies, exploring which conceptions of space and place have been articulated and presented, drawing out the potential tensions and/or synergies between such conceptions. Whereas the latter is about what, the former is about how and why. A key set of objectives for the case study chapters has been to address questions such as: • How did certain conceptions of space and place come to dominate the plan? • Whose conception of space and place counted more and hence influenced the content of the plan? • What mechanisms, institutional frameworks and power relations were drawn upon to explore various conceptions? • What compromises/bargains were made and why? Overall, the thread running through the chapters is how conceptions of space and place have been deployed analytically to understand spatial change in different places. By adopting this framework our aim was to ensure both structural consistency and analytical coherence within and between case study chapters. Based on our understanding of the conceptualisations of space and place outlined in Chapter 1, we have identified a set of criteria for analysing the extent to which elements of these conceptualisations are reflected in both the content of the spatial strategies and their production. Each case study chapter uses both the process and content criteria to guide its analysis of the spatial strategy, drawing on each set of criteria to explore its individual case. The chapters do not necessarily explore each criterion (process or content) within their analysis, but rather page_3 Page 4 examine how each strategy’s spatial and place imagination is represented through the criteria, often varying according to cases, presenting a differentiated set of criteria for analysis in individual chapters. The case study chapters are not designed to be critiques of the success or failure of the strategies, or indeed assessments of their implementation. Rather, each chapter produces a critical and conceptually informed analysis (based on practical reflection) of how the content and process of the strategy production reflect different notions of spatiality. What we have been seeking to avoid is overly descriptive discussions of spatial strategy implementation. Instead, we aim to provide analytical critique of both the processes of production and the conceptualisation of space and place that underpin strategies. The intention is that each

chapter should produce a coherent storyline about the production and content of the strategy, reflecting a particular narrative(s) emerging from how space and place have been imagined and deployed in the specific circumstances of each case.

Engaging with practic The world of spatial practice is a rich tapestry where space, ideology and representation intertwine sometimes even when it is being woven or becoming unraveled. (Ligget and Perry 1995:11) From the outset, our intention was to engage fully with planning practice by inviting experienced practitioners who have been closely involved in the production of the selected spatial strategies to be the co-authors of case study chapters. Although the initial response to our invitation indicated a great deal of enthusiasm, this began to fade away during the writing process. For some it was the sheer volume of their day-to-day workload that discouraged them from taking part. For others it was the perceived conflict of interest that formed a barrier to co-authorship. A third group, however, remained committed to the project and played their part to the full. What mattered at the end and was valued by the contributors to the book was the continuing insight and support provided by colleagues from planning practice. In return, we hope that the book appeals to reflexive planning practitioners as well as the academic community. We agree with Gilles Deleuze that ‘practice is a set of relays from one theoretical point to another and theory is a relay from one practice to another’ (Foucault and Deleuze 1990:9). Seen in this way, theory and practice are relational and their continued viability depends on mutual referral. Although the book is frontloaded (deliberately) by clarification of theories and development of conceptual frameworks (Chapter 1), this is done to help us make sense of the rich tapestry of the world of practice. The contributions to this volume clearly confirms the view that page_4 Page 5 conventional categories of space, of symbolic meaning, and of practical use are not just the purview of academic speculation, nor are they discrete areas of inquiry; they are active components of ongoing political play and struggles to define and enforce social realities. (Ligget and Perry 1995:5) Strategic planning arenas are the key sites where these struggles are played out. Yet their significance has been systematically neglected in public policy with inadequate attention given to spatiality and strategies for place making. In the UK this was highlighted by the statement of the Permanent Secretary of the planning ministry (DCLG), stating that in recent years governments had concentrated on health, education, housing and other services rather than the place where they were delivered. ‘In the next few years, we will be thinking in a more rounded way about place.’1 This shows recognition of the need to move away from place-blind policy agendas towards more place-focused practices. Whereas the role of planning in place making has been reinforced, little attention has been paid to the widening gap between changing conceptions of spatiality and the policies and practices of planning. Hence, our aim in this book is to provide a grounded understanding of the changing conceptions of space and place, and to explore the extent to which and the ways in which such conceptualisations have shaped the current and emerging spatial strategy making and thinking. By bringing together leading researchers who work in the field of spatial planning, the book aims to expand and develop recent work on spatial planning (Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones 2006) and particularly on space and place in spatial plan making (Healey 2004, 2007). It aims to produce accounts of spatial strategy making that are theoretically informed, empirically grounded and practice relevant. Our analysis shows that the interpretive approach to intellectual inquiry has fundamentally reconceived ideas of spatiality and of socio-spatial processes and, hence, has advanced the understanding of how places and habitats are economically, socially and culturally produced. These relational conceptions of spatiality, developed most notably in human geography (Amin and Thrift 2002; Massey 2005) and sociology (Giddens 1984), see space not as a container but as something that is dependent on the processes and substances

that make it up. The emphasis is on fluidity, reflexivity, contingency, connectivity, multiplicity and polyvocality. These are far from the apparent reified fixities and certainties that are conveyed by the spatial imagery of traditional planning practices. Although it is true that planning systems have changed considerably in the last fifty years, in many respects their underpinning ideas have not, as will become evident from the contributions to this book. There is a broad concern that those engaged in place making, including the planning profession, have not engaged with this page_5 Page 6 agenda sufficiently (Healey 2007; Liggett and Perry 1995). This has led to a lack of faith in planning in many quarters and the frequent accusation that the planning profession is ‘outdated’. We believe that, if planning is to remain useful, it needs substantial strengthening of the theoretical and empirical foundations that underpin its intervention and action. It is to this end that we hope and believe that our book makes a contribution. However, whereas the focus of our inquiry is on spatial planning, its outcome has much wider ramifications. The conceptualisation of space and place has significant and tangible effects not only through interventions in development processes, but also with consequences for a range of government policies such as macroeconomic policy, regional economic policy, housing policy, sustainable communities, settlement, and transport policies. Such policy interventions may be premised on outdated ideas of socio-spatial processes because of inadequate knowledge development, poor connections between researchers and practitioners, or a lack of investment in translating new conceptions of space and place into practical knowledge. The development and communication of new knowledge and skills in this field are fundamental to an evidenceinformed society (Davoudi 2006a) taking better decisions about its future.

Note 1 Peter Housden’s speech at CIH Annual Conference in Harrogate, 2006. page_6 Page 7

CHAPTER 1 SPACE AND PLACE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY PLANNING An analytical framework and an historical review Simin Davoudi and Ian Strange As with terms like ‘society’ and ‘nature’, space is not a commonsense external background to human and social action. Rather, it is the outcome of a series of highly problematic temporary settlements that divide and connect things up into different kinds of collectives which are slowly provided with the means which render them durable and sustainable. (Thrift 2003:95)

The ascendancy of place Across Europe, the latter part of the twentieth century is considered as being the era when place and territory regained prominence as the focus of policy attention (Le Gales 1998; Vigar et al . 2000). The rediscovery of place and space was triggered by and reflected major changes in the political economy of Europe and other advanced industrial societies. For economic geographers this transition was articulated as the restructuring of economic organisation from Fordist mass production to post-Fordist flexible

specialisation (Jessop 1995; Piore and Sabel 1984), resulting in new cycles and patterns of space productions and consump-tions. Within this context, place has become seen as something that ‘adds value’ to economic development. Place-quality is thus viewed as an asset to be drawn upon to ‘pin down’ footloose companies that are working in an increasingly competitive global market (Amin and Thrift 1995). Political scientists have seen this transition as a shift from a post-1945 Keynesian welfare state to more market- and kinship-oriented welfare systems (Esping-Anderson 1990; Mingione 1992). For them, the focus on territory is therefore linked to the significance of individual and localised forms of service delivery which have increasingly surpassed nationally organised and universal forms of provision. Cultural analysts, on the other hand, have highlighted the growing diversity of lifestyles, household types and interests as the signs of a page_7 Page 8 transformation from modernism to post-modernism (Dear 1995). Within this perspective, the importance attached to the quality of places and place identity arises from their association with what has come to be known as the quality of everyday life. Another aspect of this transition is the changing scope and scale of environmental issues to embrace not only amenities but also ecological concerns, with localities and local actions playing a central role in sustaining the carrying capacity of biospheres and environmental systems (Davoudi and Layard 2001). Wrapped around and responding to these multifaceted socio-economic transformations has been the profound restructuring of the state and its changing role in governing the relationships between society and economy. In the last few decades, the system of political authority that emerged within European states has been giving way to a new order. National governments now look increasingly to regional economies, the private sector, urban partnerships and citizen activism for securing their position as key elements of advanced industrial society (Sellers 2002). This process has been conceptualised as a shift from traditional forms of government (understood as the formal organisations and procedures of the public sector) into governance (understood as the multiplicity of governmental and non-governmental organisations involved in mobilising and managing collective action) (Pierre 2000). In many parts of Europe, and particularly in Britain, this process has been facilitated by the neo-liberal policy agenda of the rolling back of state activities, deregulation/reregulation, and increased privatisation of service deliveries (Salet et al . 2003). In its normative sense, governance is defined as an alternative model for managing collective affairs. It is seen as ‘horizontal self-organisation among mutually interdependent actors’ (Jessop 2000:15), of whom government is only one and with only ‘imperfect control’ (Rhodes 1997:8). Whilst the process of transition from government to governance has led to the expansion of the policymaking space and engagement of a wider range of actors, it has also led to institutional fragmentation; complex webs of relationships; disparity of powers and responsibilities across different governmental and non-governmental bodies; and the increasing role of market forces in the spatial distribution of economic activities (Davoudi and Evans 2005). Hence, the challenge of governance is how to create new forms of integration out of fragmentation and new forms of coherence out of inconsistency. As Stoker points out, governance is ‘a concern with governing, achieving collective action in the realm of public affairs, in conditions where it is not possible to rest on recourse to the authority of the state’ (Stoker 2000:93). Availability of strategies of coordination to actors who are involved in governing of a locality is therefore a key concern. page_8 Page 9 The spatial turn in planning In this context, the emerging attention to place and space in public policy (Sellers 2002) is associated with

the significance of territory in providing a basis upon which such coordination strategies can be achieved. As Madanipour et al . (2001:3) have put it, ‘the new ways of “doing governance” need to be linked to new ways of thinking about space, place and territory’. Overall, these dramatic changes in the social, political, environmental and institutional context are a reminder that territory matters! Indeed, as Henri Lefevbre (1991) has argued, production and use of space is deeply embedded in the socio-political landscapes of a society. An inevitable outcome of this renewed appreciation of space and place was an increasing pressure on planning systems to become more spatial, and on planners to act spatially. For some, a focus on spatiality was the essence of a substantive domain for a planning profession; one that no other profession could legitimately claim as theirs. John Friedmann, for example, considers planners’ unique competence as having ‘a grounding in knowledge about the socio-spatial processes that, in interaction with each other, produce the urban habitat’ (Friedmann 1998:251). The emphasis on integrating space into planning was also stressed by Castells, who, in an interview published in Cities, highlighted the need for ‘the defence of locale, of their meaning, of their uses’ and the role of planners as ‘making new spaces, meaningful places with connecting capabilities’ (Cuthbert 1996:8). Yet, at the time when the centrality of space in social theory and in disciplines such as sociology, cultural studies and economics was on the rise, planning was slow to respond to this renewed enthusiasm for spatiality, despite the fact that space and place are at the centre of its disciplinary focus. This slow turn to spatiality was perhaps a product of the specific trajectory of planning practice in the late 1970s and 1980s. Planning had grown out of architecture with a particular interest in designed urban spaces, and in the 1960s and 1970s this evolved into a system of strategic planning. In the 1980s, however, planning practice began to retreat from its traditional concern with space, and abandon the conception of strategic development (Thornley 1993; Ward 2004). Instead, it became fragmented into a series of disjointed and project-based initiatives, and was stifled by bureaucratic regulatory procedures; a trend which continued well into the 1990s in the UK (Davoudi 2000; Vigar et al . 2000) and elsewhere in Europe (Boelens 2006). Some argued that the shift of emphasis was ‘fuelled not only by the neoconservative disdain for planning, but also by postmodernist scepticism, both of which tend to view progress as something which, if it happens, cannot be planned’ (Albrechts 2004:743). The late twentieth century, however, witnessed the resurgence of strategic spatial planning. In many parts of Europe, traditional conceptions of preparing plans began to give way to the proactive task of place making (Healey et al . page_9 Page 10 1997). As the evidence from the case study chapters in this volume shows, an important contribution to the spatial turn in planning came from the publication of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) by the EU Informal Council of Ministers responsible for planning (CEC 1999). The ESDP and its follow-up actions and research programmes not only raised the significance of a territorial focus in coordinating the EU sector policies but also contributed to the emerging spatial turn in planning in many EU member states (Davoudi 1999; Faludi and Waterhout 2002). Its conceptualisation of European space as an imbalanced core–periphery and its promotion of polycentric development to redress that and to achieve territorial cohesion (Davoudi 2005a, 2007) attracted the attention of not only European but also American planners (Faludi 2007). These concepts began to find their way into many emerging strategic spatial plans in Europe (see Town Planning Review 2005 special issue). Thus, by the end of the millennium, spatial planning became once again à la mode (Albrechts et al . 2003; Parr 2005; Salet and Faludi 2000). This change of emphasis was particularly striking in the UK and Ireland – the case study focus of this volume. Here, the transformation was manifested in a move from a land use planning tradition to a spatial planning practice, legitimised through a change in legislation in 2004. The focus on space and place became central to the ‘New Vision’ of the professional body for planning, the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI). The RTPI advocated that the planning system should be (RTPI 2001:1):

• spatial: dealing with the unique needs and characteristics of places; • sustainable: looking at the short-, medium- and long-term issues; • integrative: in terms of the knowledge, objectives and actions involved; • inclusive: recognising the wide range of people involved in planning. In its subsequent reform of planning education, emphasis was placed on ‘seek[ing] to promote critical thinking about space and place as the basis for action or inter-vention’ (RTPI 2003:1). It was stressed that ‘spatial planning education should be designed to provide a broad understanding of the main principles relevant to the making of place and the mediation of space and of alternative ways in which such principles can be applied in practice’ (RTPI 2003:3). Together, these developments have come to epitomise the demand for new ways of conceptualising spatial planning and making spatial strategies. They have also sparked a relentless search for defining what is spatial planning and how it can be implemented in practice (Healey 2006). Many argued, quite reasonably, that spatiality in planning was not new (Madanipour et al . 2001). Some suggested that the term was an example of ‘Euro-English’ referring variously to, for example, l’amenagement du territoire, Raumordnung, planificazione territoriale, and urban and regional planning (Salet and Faludi 2000). Others suggested that we can page_10 Page 11 have ‘too little or too much’ of spatial planning and pointed to ‘the dangers of spatial planning’ particularly when ‘the question of space and spatial organisation is treated separately from other considerations, or when it assumes primacy over these’ (Parr 2005:120). The main objective of this chapter, however, is not to dwell on these accounts, but rather to explore what conceptions of space and place have underpinned the evolving nature of the planning system in the twentieth century. The main thrust of this enterprise is not whether planning is spatial or not but what type of spatiality it conveys. The chapter provides a conceptual framework for addressing this question and analysing the ways in which space and place are articulated, presented and visualised in the practices of making spatial strategies. In the subsequent case study chapters, this framework is drawn upon to examine different and competing conceptualisation of space and place in contemporary spatial plan making in the UK and Ireland. Table 1.1 presents the key aspects of planning contents and processes which guide both the historical review in this chapter and the empirical analyses in the case study chapters.

Conceptualising space and place The notions of space and place have become important theoretical terms in a wide range of disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and literature. Since the mid-twentieth century, notions of space and place have provided a way of breaking free from the theoretical rigidities of using spatial units, such as ‘urban’, ‘region’ or ‘global’, as the application of spatiality, in a number of disciplines (notably human geography and planning). However, debates about space and place have a far longer history. Indeed, a focus on space is seen as the hallmark of modernity and its origins in seventeenth-century intellectual inquiry (Agnew 2005). A new view of the world was emerging which saw the universe as mechanically ordered and hence susceptible to scientific discovery of the causes and functions of its parts without having to be concerned about the purpose or meaning of the whole. Cartesian duality separated questions of why the world exists from Table 1.1 Spatial strategies: key aspects of contents and processes

Key aspects of the contents

Key aspects of the processes

Interpretation of spatiality

Perceived role of planners

Conception of place

Knowledge and skills employed

Spatial organising principles

Methods of engagement

Understanding of scale

Institutional/governance structures and power

Concept of future

relations

Treatment of time

Modes of implementation

Visualisation and representation page_11 Page 12 questions of how it works. The subsequent grand attempt which aimed to discover all nature’s secrets, including those of humanity, has become known as ‘the Enlightenment project’. It began with exploring the physical world and then grew into encompassing the social sciences in the eighteenth century. A significant part of the debate was related to the conceptualisation of space, and was associated with the work of Descartes, Newton, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Minkowski and Einstein. Although the primary focus of this chapter lies with the more recent conceptualisation of space and place within geographical and planning thought, we believe that our understanding of the multiple ways in which space and place are interpreted would be at best partial, and at worse confused, if we overlooked or bypassed the foundational contributions from philosophy, physics and geometry. Geometry has not only shaped the debate about space, but also remained at the centre of a fundamental distinction between an absolute and a relational view of space. We consider this in the next section. Absolute and relational space The absolute view of space has its roots in Euclidean geometry, an astonishing intellectual achievement which enjoyed a long uninterrupted sovereignty. Its role as a leading example of the use of a priori knowledge and intellectual intuition was forcefully supported by Immanuel Kant. For Kant, nothing that violates Eucli-dean principles could be envisaged as a space , in which objects are situated and through which they can move (Scruton 1996). For Kant, space is by nature unitary, three-dimensional and infinite. These are seen as precise features required if space is to be the frame of reference within which we locate the objects of our perception. It is argued that the spatial character of the world is imposed by our own cognitive capacities. Hence, we can know it a priori. It is only because our experience is ‘organised spatially’ that we have the conception of a world at all (Scruton 1996). Euclidean geometry was for so long accepted because ‘it had been covertly built into Newtonian physics,

which was in turn built into Euclidean geometry’ (Scruton 1996:361). The picture given by Isaac Newton was of space as an infinite container, in which objects could be situated at any point, but which had no boundaries. For Newton, the absolute character of space was bound up with its infinity; space just exists, everywhere and for ever and independent of any other fact. As suggested by Agnew (2005:83), In the Newtonian view, space is absolute, in the sense that it is an entity in itself, independent of whatever objects and events occupy it, containing these objects and events, and having separate powers from them. page_12 Page 13 Euclid’s geometry was challenged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on a number of grounds. First was the discovery of non-Euclidean, n-dimensional (as opposed to three dimensional) geometries by Riemann, Minkowski and Lobachewski. Second was the recognition that one cannot describe the geometry of the world without describing the forces that are at work in it. Finally, it was the recognition that one cannot describe physical space without considering the dimension of time. Agnew (2005:83) asserts that in the history of thinking about space it is only with Einstein’s space–time concept that space is finally considered as interdependent with the distribution of objects and events. As Harvey (1996:53, original emphasis) puts it, Space and time are neither absolute nor external to processes but are contingent and contained within them. There are multiple spaces and times (and space-times) implicated in different physical, biological and social processes. The latter all produce – to use Lefebvre’s (1974) terminology – their own forms of space and time. Processes do not operate in but actively construct space and time and in so doing define distinctive scales for their development. These challenges showed that the popular seventeenth-century image of space that conformed to a Euclidean geometry was indeed based on subjective assumptions masquerading as objective inquiry. Despite this, the legacy of Euclid, reinforced by a Newtonian view of spatiality, dominated geographical thought as well as planning ideas and practices in the first half of the twentieth century, and has remained influential to date (Graham and Healey 1999) to the extent that it has led John Friedmann to suggest that ‘the conventional concept of planning is so deeply linked to the Euclidian mode that it is tempting to argue that if the traditional model has to go, then the very idea of planning must be abandoned’ (Friedmann 1993:482). The relational view of space is often attributed to Einstein’s theory of relativity, and he in turn built upon the geometry of Minkowski. However, the idea that space is relative and not absolute is far older. It has played a large part in the development of Leibnitz’s philosophy; he suggested that ‘spatial properties are relational, and the position of any object is to be given in terms of its relation to any other objects’ (Scruton 1996:362). In the Leibnizian view, space is relational in the sense that it does not exist independent of objects and events but is constructed from the relations between them. Drawing on Leibniz, Harvey (1996) argues that space is not a container but something that is dependent on the processes and substances that make it up. These in turn are constituted from relations. Thus, ‘any kind of spatial “permanence” arises as a system of “extensive connection” out of processes’ (Murdoch 2006:19, quoting Harvey 1996:261). In Harvey’s page_13 Page 14 view, space is made not by underlying structures but by diverse social, economic, cultural and physical processes, which themselves are ‘made by the relations established between entities of various kinds’ (Murdoch 2006:19). An important feature of the distinction between an absolute (i.e. Newtonian or Leibnizian) and a relational

approach to space is the ways in which they conceptualise place. From a Newtonian perspective, space and place are seen as either synonymous or binaries, whereas a relational view of space considers them as internally related to one another. Amongst various attempts to relate these perspectives are those presented by Henri Lefebvre (1991) and his geographic interpreters, such as David Harvey (1989) and Ed Soja (1989) (both are particularly relevant to the analysis of spatial thinking in planning). In considering space and place as dialectically related, these writers focus on location and locale as the two central features of place in relation to space. In the relational view, the process of place formation becomes a process of carving out ‘permanences’ from the flow of processes [that are] creating spaces. But the ‘permanences’ – no matter how solid they may seem – are not eternal; they are always subject to time as ‘perpetual perishing’. (Harvey 1996:261) We will elaborate on these contributions and their implication for spatial planning later in this chapter. Naturalist and interpretative traditions of intellectual inquiry It is important to note that a conceptual framework based on the notions of absolute (or Euclidean, or essentialist 1 ) and relational geographies will be inadequate in interpreting the evolving contents and processes of spatial planning. For that purpose, we need to go deeper and draw on the more fundamental traditions of intellectual inquiries which underpin such variations in geographical and planning thought. Seen in this way, the absolute view of space belongs largely to a naturalist tradition, whereas the relational approach is embraced by an interpretive tradition. The former implies a single logic of explanation for all sciences. Indeed, what links naturalist thinkers – who are otherwise as diverse in their approach as Karl Marx (who believed in holism or the primacy of structures) and John Stuart Mill (who believed in individualism or the primacy of agents) – is a shared view that human beings and societies are part of the same natural order and hence a single method of inquiry can be employed for both natural and social sciences. Within the naturalist approach, however, a major distinction can be made between empiricism and rationalism,2 to which we will return later in this chapter. page_14 Page 15 The interpretive tradition has a profoundly different view of society, human life and social action from that found in naturalist conceptualisations. It rests on an interpretative or hermeneutic approach to social science. Its central proposition is that the social world must be understood from within rather explained from without. Instead of seeking the causes of behaviour, we are to seek the meaning of action. Actions derive their meaning from shared ideas, rules of social life, and are performed by actors who mean something by them. (Hollis 2003:16–17, emphasis added) Since the middle of the twentieth century, these naturalist and interpretive traditions have manifested themselves in the social sciences in three distinct trends: positivism, structuralism and post-structuralism (post-modernism), which we will use as the broad contour of our conceptual framework. We will draw upon these to structure the remaining parts of this chapter and more importantly to help us make sense of different ways of knowing and practising spatial planning over the last half-century. In the following sections, we shall explore how these different world views have informed and influenced spatial thinking and spatial practices (albeit not always self-consciously) within planning systems. In doing that, we will draw on historical analysis to identify major changes in spatial thinking but without subscribing to Kuhn’s idea of ‘paradigm shifts’ (Kuhn 1962), which has been one of the most commonly used approaches to document the evolution of various theoretical traditions. Within the Kuhnian tradition the development of new knowledge is seen to take place through ‘breakthroughs’ in thoughts that challenge and then supplant pre-existing ways of understanding. Within human geography this approach to understanding the conceptual evolution of space and place is most notably associated with the work of Johnston (1996), and his identification of the different intellectual developments that have dominated spatial thinking in specific

periods of time. However, as Hubbard et al . (2004) argue, such developments have seldom been unified or linear. In fact, as the case study analyses of the contemporary spatial strategies will demonstrate, approaches to space and place have remained concurrent rather than consecutive. New ideas have rarely erased previous paradigms; instead they have often remained in competition with them for capturing new audiences and new ways of shaping contemporary thinking about space and place. Hence, the order within which our account appears should be considered as loosely related to the genealogy of the emergence of these evolving ideas in geography and planning disciplines rather than an acceptance of a linear narrative of intellectual change. Under each ‘paradigm’, we will examine the implications of a positivist, structuralist or post-modernist conceptualisation of space and place page_15 Page 16 for the key aspects of planning processes and contents which are outlined in Table 1.1. Positivism: space as positivist science Positive science refers to an empiricist approach to scientific knowledge. This means adopting Francis Bacon’s second way of discovering truth, which is to start from the senses and the particular and gradually rise up to the most gen-eral axioms. It rests on observation as the moment of truth when hypotheses are tested against the facts of the world. Within social sciences, positivism refers to any approach that applies scientific method to human affairs, conceived as belonging to a natural order open to objective enquiry. A ferocious version of empiricism called Logical Positivism emerged from the Vienna Circle in the 1930s. This claims that we are not entitled to assert the existence of anything beyond all possible experience; that it can never be probable, let alone certain, that there are unobservable structures, forces, instincts or dialectical processes; and that, as David Hume suggests, there is a sharp distinction between ‘matters of fact’ and ‘relations of ideas’ (quoted in Hollis 2003:42). Positivism in spatial thinking Positivism has had a significant and enduring leverage in spatial thinking both in geography and planning. However, its interpretation in planning thought and practice has varied over time and in different places, taking multiple forms and representations. Its heyday in planning thought was undoubtedly the 1960s with its practical outcome coming to the foreground in ‘structure plans’ and ‘sub-regional studies’ of the 1970s in the UK. However, some of its key tenets, such as the primacy of observation and data gathering, can be traced back to the late nineteenth century, when Charles Booth undertook what is considered as the first modern social survey. His quantification of London’s social problems became a key trigger of the public health and housing acts: the predecessors to the postwar planning system in Britain. This and other forms of welfare legislation, which were enacted not only in Britain but also in other European countries, marked the beginning of what Osbourne and Rose (1999:73) call an ‘urban will to govern-ment’. This desire to create some form of spatial ordering became ‘inseparable from the continuous activity of generating truths about the city’ by employing ‘mundane techniques of gathering, organising, classification and publication’, and illustrating them on urban maps. Booth’s social map of London was a pioneering example of the nineteenth-century mapping techniques which, like the Ordnance Survey’s town plans, led to new ways of visualising cities on a ‘microscopic scale’, and based on the ‘omniscient view of the surveyor’ (Joyce 2003:52). page_16 Page 17 Planning content: survey before plan

A more commonly known example of an instrumental view of what today is called evidence-based planning (Davoudi 2006a) is Patrick Geddes’s famous aphorism: ‘Survey before Plan’. Although this was coined in the early twentieth century, it remained every planning student’s grand rule of ‘good practice’ for many decades. Geddes, influenced by French geographers and sociologists, insisted that ‘planning must start with a survey of the resources of (such) a natural region … ; in all his teaching, his most persistent emphasis was on the survey method’ (Hall 2002:147). He even created a local survey centre in his Outlook Tower in Edin-burgh. We will return to this later when we discuss the positivist approach to the process of planning, but first we turn to its implications for planning content. The planning movement began well before the upsurge of positivism in spatial thinking. It started with social reformist ideas in response to the horrifying squalor of the Victorian urban slum. The founding members of the Garden City Movement, such as Ebenezer Howard, were not physical planners; they were social visionaries. For them, planning the city was a way of creating a ‘peaceful path to real reform’; 3 it was as much an ‘art’ as a ‘science’. As Hall (2002:118–120) has documented, similar – though not quite the same – ideas were flourishing elsewhere in Europe. These are reflected in, notably, Arturo Soria Mata’s La Ciu-dad Lineal in Spain; Georges Benoit-Lévy’s Le Cité Jardin in France; Theodor Fritsch’s Die Stadt der Zukunft in Germany; and, later on, Le Corbusier’s La Ville Radieuse. Although these were utopian images based on their creators’ vision of how the future should look like rather than systematic scientific analysis and observations, their envisaged physical outcomes had elements of positivist interpretation of spatiality. Jacobs called it ‘the pseudo-science of city planning and its companion, the art of civic design’, which, as she argued, had ‘not embarked upon the adventure of probing the real world’ (Jacobs 1961:16). Within the ‘“clean sweep” philosophy of planning to which all the parties that were in any way concerned with the built environment subscribed’ (Ravetz 1980:23), space was seen as a neutral container, a blank canvas that is filled with human activity (Hubbard et al . 2004). ‘WE MUST BUILD ON A CLEAR SITE!’, said Le Corbusier (1929:232); ‘The city of today is dying because it is not constructed geometrically’. Similarly, the Garden City was to have a ‘fixed limit of … 32,000 people, living on 1,000 acres of land … It would be surrounded by a much larger area of permanent green belt, … 5,000 acres’ (Hall 2002:93), which would neatly separate it from the surrounding countryside. When the Garden City reached its planned limit, another one would be started, and so on. This tightly planned, neatly structured and linearly phased social and spatial engineering project would then create a polycentric agglomeration, which Howard called the Social City (Howard 1902). page_17 Page 18 Although Howard and some of his contemporaries were not physical planners, their ideas had elements of physical determinism. One of Le Corbusier’s radiant city’s principles was that ‘The plan must rule’ (Le Corbusier 1933:7). In Britain, this physical determinism was later reflected in the formal planning systems that followed. Hence, introducing Britain’s first 1909 Town Planning Scheme, the President of the Local Government Board echoed such physical design determinism by suggesting that ‘the object of this Bill is to provide a domestic condition for the people in which their physical health, their moral, their character, and their whole social condition can be improved’ (Gauldie 1974:305). Across the Atlantic, the pursuit of such social objectives was less of an issue. Instead, the New York Zoning Ordinance of 1916 (which marked a significant milestone in American city planning) was ‘primarily a static process of attempting to set and preserve … property values’ in certain neighbourhoods (Walker 1950:60). In a landmark court case, the middle-class residents of a dormitory village, ironically called Euclid, were guaranteed that their investment would not be threatened by new development. As Hall (2002:62) concludes, ‘far from realizing greater social justice for the poor … , the [American] planning-and-zoning system in the 1920s was designed to keep them out of the desirable new suburbs’. The conception of place and space as bounded entities and defined with clear physical and perceptual boundaries shaped the underlying orthodoxies of the post-war planning system, particularly the principle of

urban containment (Hall et al . 1973; Ward 2004). The desire to neatly separate towns from the country, to restrict development within city boundaries and to protect the countryside from urban expansion preoccupied the founding fathers of the UK planning movement such as Patrick Geddes, Raymond Unwin and Patrick Abercrombie (Munton 1983). In criticising Howard’s vision of town-country (misunderstood as the merging of their physical and cultural boundaries) Thomas Sharp’s following gendered view clearly reflects such a preoccupation: Tradition has broken down … Rural influences neutralise the town. Urban influences neutralise the country … The strong, masculine virility of the town; the softer beauty, the richness, the fruitfulness of that mother of men, the countryside, will be debased into one sterile, hermaphrodite beastliness. (Sharp 1932:11) The goal was not only to stop the extension of the towns and the flows of people into the countryside, but also to halt the flows of urbanites’ ideas and lifestyles, and the encroachment of what was seen as an ‘urban way of life’ (Davoudi and Stead 2002). Although ‘defining regions – largely through map comparison techniques – was at the heart of the [geography] discipline’s methodology; and studying regions was the ultimate purpose of a training in geography’ (Johnston 2005:53), page_18 Page 19 this did not mean having a focus on spatial interrelationships. The ‘region’ was defined and studied, at least until the 1960s, as a mosaic of areas with particular environmental characteristics and human activities; resembling Geddes’s perception of the ‘natural region’. Planners’ mode of representation was heavily influenced by the discourses of architects, engineers and surveyors along with the emerging theories of the modern movement. It resulted in displaying land uses and data on skilfully crafted two-dimensional maps. These maps ‘served (in Latourian terms) as an “immutable mobile”, an inscription that translated space into diagrammatic form, thereby reducing spatial relations to a single sheet of paper’ (Murdoch 2006:134). However, in the process of map making and making the city ‘legible’ (by clear delineation) a particular spatial formation began to emerge which ‘held some things constant (notably, buildings and streets) and removed others from view (notably, the movement and fluidity of urban social interactions)’ (Murdoch 2006:134). The outcome of the physical design approach of the 1950s’ master planning, based on the Geddesian survey–analysis–plan, was the production of blueprints for an end-state that would one day be reached. Planners’ imagined spaces were to be turned into a physical reality by an interventionist and resourceful state (Ward 2004) bolstered by an enthusiasm for reconstructing war-damaged cities and creating a ‘better Britain’ and, indeed, better places elsewhere in Europe (Boelens 2006). Planning process: the visionary planners However, the processes of planning and particularly the role of planners did not quite match archetypal positivist characteristics. Although the Geddesian approach can be seen as a typical linear view of the planmaking process, with strong elements of instrumentalism, it was profoundly different from its successor, rational planning, in two important ways: first, in terms of the type and quality of evidence, which was limited to physical description; and second, in terms of the role of planners, which was seen as not only being ‘expert’ and ‘apolitical’ but also imaginative and visionary and able to take a creative leap from the analysis of the survey to the making of the plan. The assumption was that ‘the survey naturally leads to the plan’ (Abercrombie 1933:132). This involved (not self-con-sciously) combining positivist methodology, symbolised by the ‘Outlook Tower’, with rationalist epistemology (Euclidean intuition). Hence, despite the rhetoric of the survey–analysis–plan, ‘plan and planning decisions were made largely on the basis of intuition or, rather, on the basis of simplistic aesthetic conceptions of urban form and layout which embodied physical determinist assumptions about how best to accommodate the diverse economic and social life’ (Taylor 1998: page_19

Page 20 15). As Eric Reade (1987) argues, town planning practice of the 1950s was not grounded in empirical research and theory. Furthermore, the goal of planning was to be developed intuitively and then fixed by planners themselves, who were seen as the ‘guardians of public interest’ (Hall 2002:324). The outcome was one single ‘plan’ rather than a number of alternative strategies, and the planning process ended with the production of the plan (Taylor 1998:66–67). For example, in early planning textbooks, such as those written by Abercrombie (1933) and Keeble (1959), no assumptions were made about the need for a learning process, or indeed a discussion on implementation and updating. It was, as Michael Batty called it, the golden age of planning when: the assumed certainty of the process was such that possible links back to the reality in the form of new surveys were rarely if ever considered … This certainty, based on the infallibility of the expert, reinforced the apolitical, technical nature of the process. (Batty 1979:30–31) Positivism at its height: a systems view of space and a rational perception of planning processes What happened next was little short of a ‘paradigm shift’ in spatial thinking and in the theory and practice of spatial planning. Within the discipline of geography, the late 1950s marked the emergence of positivist spatial science, challenging the earlier ‘empirico-physical’ conception of space (Hubbard et al . 2004). It reached planning in the 1960s, having its widest influence on planning thought in the first half of the 1970s. The hallmark of this paradigm shift was two distinct theories: the systems view of cities and the perception of planning as a ‘rational process’ of decision making. Whereas the former deals with ‘substantive’ planning theory and is about the object of planning, the latter deals with ‘procedural’ planning theory and is about the process of planning (Faludi 1973) and the role of planners in that process. The systems view of planning was derived from the science of cybernetics, which was developed by Norbert Wienner in 1948 and imported into planning through the work of Brian MacLoughlin (1969) and George Chadwick (1971). This view of planning conceptualised cities and regions as complex systems, or rather as spatially based sub-systems of larger systems. Seen in those terms, the concept of planning was considered as first, understanding such complex systems, and second, engaging in a continuous process of control and monitoring of these systems. Given that exercising intelligent control over a system requires a prior understanding of the system to be controlled, planning was conceived as a form of systems analysis and control (Taylor 1998:62). page_20 Page 21 Drawing on what came to be called a ‘quantitative revolution’ in geography (Barnes 2001), commentators attempted to construct ‘spatial laws’ on the basis of statistical scientific analysis. Using mathematical techniques and the data-processing powers of computers, a new, heavily engineering-based (Hall 2002) spatial science emerged that aimed to develop spatial interaction models capable of measuring and predicting patterns of spatial change, particularly in the area of transportation planning. Within geography too, leading practitioners, such as Peter Haggett (1965) and Brian Berry (1967), used such analysis to build ‘predictive spatial models’. The quantitative revolution in the 1960s stemmed from a desire to provide geography and planning studies with a firmer theoretical and scientific foundation and hence to improve their standing within the family of social sciences. In geography, Schaefer (1953) was urging his contemporaries to focus on identifying laws that underpin spatial arrangements, ‘adopting hypotheticodeductive “scientific method”’ (Johnston 2005:57), while, in planning, systems theory with its claim to scientific rigour, coupled with quantification methods, offered the hope for a way forward in changing planning from what was traditionally seen as an art to a science.

Planners were urged to move away from simple descriptive physical surveys represented in detailed maps and blueprints towards developing general hypotheses about spatial distributions that could be tested against the reality: the very essence of scientific method advocated by Popper, who suggested that ‘the criterion for the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability or test-ability ’ (Popper 1959:37, original italic). Writing about Popper in relation to policy, Bryan Magee (1973:75) claimed that ‘a policy is a hypothesis which has to be tested against reality and corrected in the light of experience’. Planning education had changed too (Davoudi and Whitney 2005) in order to incorporate greater social science input into planning courses and reflect the shift from a product-oriented physical approach towards a processoriented and social conception of space. Similar attempts to transform the planning system were also happening in other European countries. In the Netherlands, for example, Joel Meijer de Cas-seres, who introduced the Dutch term planologie in 1929 (referring to the study of surfaces or logicus planum ), suggested that ‘urban development should undergo a scientific extension in order to be transformed into urban planning’ (Boelens 2006:25). As Anthony Giddens (1994:58) put it, this ‘cybernetic model’ of planning, which was based on both systems theory and rational process, was closely associated with, and reflective of, the rise of modernism and its over-confidence in science and technology after the Second World War. Indeed, ‘it echoed the optimism and utopianism of the [previous] two centuries based on a linear conception of history as progress and a firm belief in the ability of the reason to page_21 Page 22 guide it’ (Madanipour 1995:22). A pioneering and highly influential example of the modern movement was the 1933 Charter of Athens: a modernist manifesto for large-scale transformation of urban areas into ‘functional cities’, whose four functions – dwelling, work, recreation and transportation – stood in a rational relationship to each other and to their city-region (Madanipour 1995). Searching for ‘spatial laws’ and the spatially ordered arrangement of human activities, planners, largely via geographers, discovered the works of German location theorists, notably Walter Christaller, and his 1930s central place theory. The assumption was that the messy dynamics of urban growth could be ordered in a nested hierarchy of settlement patterns based on uniform distribution of service centres in hexagonal arrangements. This was an attractive proposition which would enable planners to inject certainty, predictability and order into the disorderly reality of social and spatial relationships. A more rigorous attempt to develop a ‘science of human settlement’ was made by Constantinos Doxiadis, the influential Greek urbanist. His ‘Ekistics theory’ (Doxiadis 1968:317) is illustrative of employing scientific methods of inquiry in planning. Doxiadis states that, as a ‘normal process of thought, … we begin by observing facts, then we connect them to form laws, and gradually we come to connect these laws to form a whole system – a theory’. However, what Ekistics theory reveals most clearly is that, despite a painstaking collection of data and facts, the resulting theory emerges from rationalist intuition rather than empiricist observation, and is infused with physical deterministic prescriptions. Hence, Doxiadis’ ‘ideal Dynapolis’ – i.e. the growing dynamic city – has to be ‘uni-directional’ and ‘should be built on the basis of a rectangular grid network of roads’ (Doxiadis 1968:365). Within this emerging scientific paradigm, space was conceptualised as a ‘surface on which the relationships between (measurable) things were played out’ (Hubbard et al . 2004:4). Regular patterns were deemed to exist in the relationships between objects, which could be mapped and modelled and hence used as a basis for predicting future patterns. The complexity of ‘human settlements’ was reduced to a series of ‘orderly classifications’ of size, location and function (Doxiadis 1968:31–35). The focus on spatial patterns was complemented by an emphasis on spatial flows, which later led to the emergence of a new discipline, regional science. The key spatial organising principles were three interrelated concepts: direction, distance and connection. This was governed by an assumed principle of ‘least effort: people wish to minimise their travel costs’ (Johnston 2005:59) and businesses wish to maximise their turnover, reflecting a nineteenth-century view of Logical Positivism which saw economic agents as utility maximisers. Within this perspective, human activities and phenomena were ‘reduced to movements, networks,

page_22 Page 23 nodes or hierarchies’ (Hubbard et al . 2004:4). This conveyed a people-less view of place, which could be given meaning by delineating, measuring, defining and naming the physical objects within the space. One of the most powerful critiques of physical planning was Jane Jacobs’s seminal study – The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), in which she, like systems analysts, criticised a static view of cities as simple zones on a map and advocated a dynamic view of cities as complex clusters of interacting processes. However, contrary to systems analysts’ rationalist approach to capturing such urban diversity, Jacobs advocated an empiricist approach. She argued that planners should learn from life sciences and their concern for ‘organised complexity’ in dynamic systems, which requires working inductively, ‘reasoning from particulars to the general rather than the reverse … , and looking for unaverage clues which reveal the way larger and more average processes are operating’ (Jacobs 1961:454). Hence, like systems analysts, Jacobs acknowledged urban complexities but maintained a naturalist perspective that the functional ordering of life in cities could be revealed only if appropriate scientific methods were applied. The application of ‘scientism’ in planning was mirrored in other policy areas, where there was a ‘renewed faith in the application of “science” to policy making – not only in applying the findings of scientific research but also in relation to the policy making itself’ (Taylor 1998:69). Planning process was considered as a rational process of decision making in which technical professionals played a key role in advising politicians on the best course of action. This process involved a cycle of five logical steps: definition of problems and/or goal; identification of alternative policies/plans; evaluation of these alternatives; implementation of the preferred plans/policies; and monitoring and review of these policies. However, this ideal type rational process of how decision ought to be made (Faludi 1973) hardly matched the ‘disjointed’, ‘incremental’ process which characterised how decisions were actually made in practice (Lindblom 1959). The assumptions made in rational planning (and particularly rational comprehensive planning) of the 1960s and 1970s are not dissimilar to the assumptions made today in the instrumental view of evidence-based policy. Both conceive policy making and planning as ‘sciences’, in which scientific, value-free techniques are employed to solve well-defined and neatly structured problems. Both have their roots in a misconception about the nature of real-world decision making, which Nancy Shulock (1999) terms ‘the paradox of policy analysis’. This paradox arises from ‘the mismatch between notions of how the policy process should work and its actual messy, uncertain, unstable and essentially political realities’ (Young et al . 2002:218). page_23 Page 24 The failure of technical rationality The application of the systems approach through spatial interaction models spread across the western world. In the UK it became the hallmark of the sub-regional studies made for the fast-growing metropolitan areas, in which sophisticated computer modelling was used to generate policy choices at a strategic level. However, first, such levels of sophisticated analyses hardy reached the world of local planning in the UK. Second, many of these ‘system’ plans, including the structure plans of the 1970s, which were backed by detailed statistical ‘reports of survey’, had ‘a distinctly blueprint hint’ (Faludi 1973:146), resulting in the same ‘fixities’ that they were trying to avoid. It became clear that the scientific objectivity claimed by the systems school could not be applied to socio-spatial systems irrespective of how sophisticated the methods or the models were, as admitted by one of the most celebrated of all systems planners: Britton Harris (see Hall 2002). At a broader scale, the modernisation process prescribed by rational planning as ‘the road to progress’ proved to be costly and dysfunctional, leading to development alongside displacement, and pride alongside

misery (Ward 2004). One consequence of this was that ‘its functionalist reading of the city was questioned and its (avant-garde) solutions were one by one abandoned’ (Madanipour 1995:22). Technical rationality, which assumed that complex political and socioeconomic processes could be technicised, commanded and controlled, soon proved ambitious and naïve, particularly in the wake of the oil crisis and subsequent recession of the early 1970s and the inability of the state to turn planners’ ‘imagined places’ into physical reality. In the UK, public disillusionment with planning was reflected in the titles of books written at the time; for example The Evangelistic Bureaucrat (Davies 1972) argued that planners had run out of steam, leaving the country littered with half-completed urban motorways, unfinished slum clearance projects and partially redeveloped city centres. Similar disillusionment can be found across the Atlantic. For example, writing about the rising tide of motorway development in New York, Marshall Berman (1982:329) recalls the 1960s as a struggle between ‘the express way world’ and ‘a shout in the street’. Procedural planning theory, which dominated the field in the 1970s, and its positivistic conception of space and place were confronted with what Taylor (1998) considers as the ‘second wave’ of criticisms of post-war planning by commentators such as Scott and Roweis (1977), Camhis (1979) and Thomas (1979). As Taylor points out, a key difference between this and the ‘first wave’ of criticisms (by critics such as Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander) is that the first wave chided planners for their inadequate understanding of cities and how they work (i.e. the substantive content of planning), whereas the second criticised planners for their misunderstanding of planning and how it works on the ground (i.e. the page_24 Page 25 process of planning). However, as Taylor (1998:110) reckons, both generations were calling for ‘planning theory to be grounded in the empirical investigation of the real world’. The second generation of the criticisms of procedural panning theory consisted, according to Taylor, of two types: one criticising it for its lack of attention to the content and substance of planning; the other chiding it for its lack of attention to the impact and implementation of planning. We briefly outline the main thrust of these denigrations. Whereas the 1960s’ systems view of planning had developed partly in response to an earlier disparagement of planning and its lack of understanding of the places planners were planning for, in the early 1970s the systems view itself was confronted with similar criticisms. Planning theory was heavily criticised for its lack of attention to substantive matters; for being abstract and general; for being ‘content less’ and ‘vacuous’ and its ‘emptiness’ (Camhis 1979; Thomas 1979). The following quote from Scott and Roweis (1977:1116) sums up these criticisms: There is a definite mismatch between the world of current planning theory … and the real world of practical planning intervention. The one is the quintessence of order and reason in relation to the other which is full of disorder and unreason … Planning theory set itself the task of rationalising irrationalities … bringing … a set of abstract, independent and transcendent norms. As Taylor (1998:98) notes, ‘by the mid-1970s there were still few “nose-to-the-ground” studies of how urban systems … functioned’. In addition to these criticisms, planning was also condemned for ignoring the problem of implementation. John Friedmann (1969:312) advocated an ‘action-centred’ model of planning in which implementation would be an inseparable part of planning. The rational model was criticised for portraying a ‘top-down’ view of planning with little, if any, understanding of how plans were implemented and the nature of their impact. Some of the most influential critiques of the rational process were based on pluralist studies of American urban politics. For example, Meyerson and Banfield’s (1955) analysis of Chicago’s Housing Authority showed that plan-ning’s elitist view of public interest led to its failure to engage with the real power structure in the city. Planning was criticised on the grounds that it did not match the incremental, partial and disjointed reality of planning in practice (Lindblom 1959). The second wave of criticisms, however, was primarily concerned with planning process to the extent that the focus on theories of planning overshadowed the debate on theories in planning and the conceptualisation of space. Some consider this theoretical gap as the manifestation of a ‘paradigm crisis’ (Hall 2002)

page_25 Page 26 in planning, which led to a relentless search for ‘new theory … which attempts to bridge … planning strategies and the urban physical and social systems to which strategies are applied’ (Galloway and Mahayni 1977:66). As we will discuss later, in the following decades of the 1980s and 1990s, the debate continued to focus so much on distinguishing the planning process from what is planned that the latter became neglected and the gap between theory and practice of planning widened. Indeed, the main challenges to positivist approaches to space and place were emerging largely outside the planning field. Humanist geographers, drawing on philosophies of existentialism and phenomenology, began to challenge the ‘people-less’ approach of positivism and argued that space has history as well as location (Ley 1974); that ‘people do not live in a framework of geometric relationships but a world of meaning’ (Hubbard et al . 2004). Geographers began to define place subjectively and assert that that place was created and maintained through a ‘field of care’ (Tuan 1977) that is the outcome of people’s emotional attachment. While humanists focused on experiential properties of space, others began to question the ‘spatial fetishism’ of positivist approaches, arguing that determining spatial patterns would not of itself lead to an understanding of why such patterns existed and how they might change over time, and that, given this, positivist analysis failed to take into account underlying social and political processes (Kitchin 2006). This latter point became the gateway for structuralism to enter into spatial thinking.

Structuralism: space as a social construct Structuralism refers to a rationalist approach to scientific knowledge. This means adopting Francis Bacon’s first way of discovering truth. The seventeenth-century rationalist version of nature is one of an integrated system, a complete causal order veiled from the senses. Hence, the task of theoretical reasoning is to identify these hidden structures and laws and reveal secrets of the natural orders which lay beyond all powers of human observation (Hollis 2003). Hence, Euclidean laws of geometry and Newtonian forces of gravity were seen as examples of providing access to reality – which is denied to the senses – through rational intuition or a priori knowledge. Within social sciences, structuralists search for hidden structures and forces, whether psychological or social, which are seen as determinant of human behaviour. Epistemologically, rationalists believed that we have a faculty of reflective reason that lets us know what the senses cannot possibly tell us; that science casts light on a world existing independently of human exploration (Hollis 2003:38). As an intellectual movement, structuralism emerged in the discipline of linguistics in the early twentieth century through the pioneering work of the page_26 Page 27 French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (Smith 2001). However, its salience within the social sciences is attributed to Claude Levi-Strauss, known as the ‘father of structuralism’. In his anthropological studies, he drew on an array of ethnographical materials to show that ‘beneath the layers of cultural diversity lies some kind of underlying and determining structure’ (Murdoch 2006:5). As Smith (2001:97) points out, within the structuralist tradition, depth explains surface, and ‘beneath the level of perplexing and unique events are hidden generative mechanisms’, which themselves are ordered and structured. It is argued that such mechanisms generate phenomena such as cultures, actions and changes in the built environment. Like positivists, structuralists see analysts as objective and ‘detached scientific observers who are discovering some kind of truth that is not apparent to social actors’ (Smith 2001:98). Structuralism in spatial thinking The introduction of structuralism into geography and planning was largely through structuralist Marxism.

The Marxist perspective on societal development requires looking beyond the actions of individuals and into what lies beneath social formation, because ‘it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness’ (Marx 1859: Preface). On the one hand, the materialist dimension of Marxism argued that any real explanation of socio-spatial processes would lead to an economic account of social change. On the other hand, its dialectical reasoning focused on ‘analysing the relations between things, rather than the things themselves’ (Hend-erson and Sheppard 2006:59). Yet Marx remained remarkably uninterested in the question of space and place despite the fact that his close collaborator, Friedrich Engels, had made intriguing observations on spatial distribution of classes in mid-nineteenth-century Manchester. Thus, it took nearly a century for the highly influential works of geographers and sociologists such as Henri Lefebvre (1991, 1996), Doreen Massey (1984), David Harvey (1973) and Manuel Castells (1977) to apply a Marxist analysis to space and a structural reading of the city. Structuralism introduced a different interpretation of spatiality – conceptualising space as socially produced and consumed within the wider capitalist political economy and as an expression of capitalism’s inner contradictions. Harvey (1989:22), for example, suggested that ‘capital accumulation and the production of urbanisation go hand in hand’. He argued that reducing temporal and spatial impediments becomes a constant requirement for the efficient working of capitalism. In Harvey’s words, the pressure from capitalist competition leads to ‘annihilation of space by time’ (ibid.). In articulating the notion of space as socially produced, Harvey (1973:14) argues that ‘the question of “what is space?” page_27 Page 28 [should] … be replaced by the question “how is it that distinctive human practices create and make use of distinctive … space[s]?”’ This ‘socio-spatial dialectic’, as Ed Soja (1989:78) called it later, became a central feature of post-structuralist accounts. However, in the early structuralist analysis of space, it was the materialist feature of Marxism that became prominent rather than its dialectic relational aspect. So, for Castells (1977:124), for example, the ‘urban question’ was a question of going beyond the description of mechanisms of interactions between activities and locations, in order to discover the structural laws of the production and functioning of the spatial forms studied … There is no theory of space, but quite simply a deployment and specification of the theory of social structure. Some even argue that ‘Marxist theory mobilises a range of metaphors, but a notion of levels [such as base and superstructures] is carried in many of them’ (Law and Urry 2004:398), which gives rise to a Euclidean spatiality ‘associated with height, depth, size and proximity’ (Murdoch 2006:12). Using such Euclidean metaphors, structuralists ‘tend to enact and produce a Euclidean reality of discrete entities of different sizes contained within discrete and very often homogeneous social spaces’ (Law and Urry 2004:398). This notion of space as socially produced was given a new salience following the seminal work of Henry Lefebvre (1991). He rejected the idea of absolute or abstract space and argued that every society and every mode of production produces its own space. He proposed a ‘trialec-tics’ or ‘triple dialectic’ of spatiality consisting of ‘perceived space’ (of everyday life), ‘conceived space’ (of cartographers, planners and property speculators) and ‘lived space’ of imagination (of artists and writers). As Shields (2004) argues, his multidimensional space moved beyond the reduction of space as part of production exchange and accumulation that is portrayed in Castells’s earlier contributions (e.g. Castells 1977). Lefebvre argues that ‘space is a fourth and determining realm of social relations – one in which the production, exchange and accumulation of wealth and surplus value take place’ (Shields 2004:211). For Lefebvre then, the normative dimension lies in shifting the balance away from the ‘conceived space’ to embrace the ‘lived space’ as a mechanism for enhancing its potential in reorienting the ‘perceived space’ of everyday life. Lefe-bvre moved away from a debate about people and things ‘in’ space to present a coherent theory of ‘spatialisations’, an approach characterised by its focus on spatial patterns of social action and embodied routine rather than on the physical arrangement of things. Overall, Lefebvre marks the transition from structuralism to a new way of theorising space associated with post-structuralist thinking. His work was clearly influential in the shift of emphasis from materialistic to dialectic aspects of Marxism

which has featured in more recent contributions from strucpage_28 Page 29 turalist such as Castells and Harvey. Furthermore, his work can be seen as the early manifestation of relational thinking about space and place. Planning content: planning as an agent of the capitalist state By the mid-1970s, Marxists’ ideas about the underlying structural processes that shape places were widespread in the world of urban theory. However, their influence in the world of practice was more strongly felt in the area of urban policy than planning. They changed urban policy from ‘blaming the victim’ for ‘urban problems’ to searching for structural explanations of deprivation. A remarkable example of this sea change was the approach taken by the 1970s Community Development Projects in the UK, many of which came to the conclusion that urban poverty was an inevitable by-product of uneven capitalist development, arguing that ‘the problems of these [rundown] areas were firmly tied to much more structural problems in the society and that the solution … [should be] directed toward fundamental and far reaching social change’ (CDP 1977:5). Within planning, Marxist’s conception of space as socially produced did not change, at least not fundamentally, the way in which practicing planners produced plans. Neither did it change the content of planning. This is because, first, the spatial imaginary produced by structuralist Marxism was one of wellordered, highly structured absolute entities, albeit socially produced. Second, it was because ‘planning [in the UK] was a matter of providing for orderly development, and a question of town design’ (Cherry 1974:109); broader socio-economic considerations were not considered (Atkinson and Moon 1994). This, however, was not the case in countries such as France with a more firmly rooted egalitarian tradition and a concern with equity. Here, the tradition of amenagement du territoire, described as the ‘regional economic approach’ to planning (CEC 1997), has long focused on reducing spatial disparities and achieving social equity. However, within the Anglo-American context, what Marxism did was to strip planning of any claims to independence or the long-standing assumption that it was a major ‘agent of change’ in the process of land development and its distributive effects. Given the strong focus of Marxism on the role of state, a major contribution of Marxist analysis was related to the relationship between the state, planning systems and the market. Within this view, the city itself was the result of capital in pursuit of profit, and planning was part of the problem. Put in this context, Marxists rejected Hall’s analysis in The Containment of Urban England (Hall et al . 1973), suggesting instead that the power of planners and government officials was profoundly circumscribed by more fundamental and enduring socio-economic forces and ‘structures’. Ray Pahl (1975:234), for example, argued that: page_29 Page 30 the fundamental error of urban sociology was to look to the city for an understanding of the city. Rather, the city should be seen as an arena, an understanding of which helps in the understanding of the overall society which creates it. However, whereas some (e.g. Pickvance 1977) saw the market as separate from the state and the planning system, others (e.g. Castells 1977; Harvey 1973) considered planning and the state as an integral part of the political economic context of liberal capitalism. And, as such, planning was seen as ‘necessary to the ruling class in order to facilitate [capital] accumulation and maintain social control in the face of class conflict. Here urban planners specialised in managing the contradictions of capitalism manifested in urban form and spatial development’ (Fainstein and Fainstein 1979:148). Overall, as Low (1991:4) suggests, Marxism produced a ‘dissenting theory of planning’, being highly critical yet providing few alternatives to the

status quo. Planning process: planners as social reformers Structuralist Marxism played a key role in bringing to the fore the political and judgemental, rather than technical and factual, nature of planning. However, whereas some were calling on planners to become advocate planners and promote bottom-up planning (Davidoff 1965; Webber 1968–69), the Marxist view of planning had little space for such an advocacy role for planners. Indeed one of the most cherished concepts of planners as the ‘guardian of public interests’ was heavily challenged by the Marxist conviction that ‘there is no such public interest but only an interest of capital that projects or creates a state mechanism such as planning to help it continue and give the impression of public control’ (Allmend-inger 2002a: 68). Ironically, as Hall (2002) points out, all these prescribed roles for planners – the planner as an advocate, the planner as a disjointed incrementalist and the planner as an informed coordinator and catalyst – shared, at least implicitly, a continued acceptance of logical positivism. This is clearly manifested in Melvin Webber’s concluding remark in a paper that advocates the planner as a facilitator. He emphasises that ‘the burden of my argument is that city planning failed to adopt planning method, choosing instead to impose input bundles, including regulatory constraints, on the basis of ideologically defined images of goodness’ (Webber 1968–69:294–295). The cumulative effects of these criticisms meant that within a decade (from 1965 to 1975) British planners were stripped of the claim to any unique and useful expertise. They experienced a remarkable inversion of their role, caricatured by Peter Hall as follows: page_30 Page 31 in 1955, the typical newly graduated planner was at the drawing board, producing a diagram of desired land uses; in 1965, s/he was analysing computer output of traffic patterns; in 1975, the same person was talking late into night with community groups, in an attempt to organise against hostile forces in the world outside. (Hall 2002:366) A possible explanation for the limited take-up of Marxism in planning practices is the rise of the New Right, not only in the UK and America, but also in many European countries in the 1980s and 1990s. Inspired by the work of Friedrich von Hayek, the idea of state intervention and hence spatial planning were questioned by one of its politically most powerful advocates, Margaret Thatcher (see Thornley 1993). However, the inherent contradictions between the liberal and the conservative aspects of the New Right meant that, as with Marxism, its influence on the planning system was short-lived and was even less prominent in shifting the spatial imaginaries that were at work in planning.

Post-structuralism: space as culturally produced Previously we have distinguished between two traditions of intellectual inquiry, the naturalist and the interpretative traditions, arguing that the absolute view of space belongs largely to the naturalist tradition, whereas the relational approach is embraced by the interpretive tradition. The interpretative or hermeneutic approach to social science is based on the conviction that the ‘social world must be understood from within rather than explained from without. Instead of seeking the causes of behaviour, we are to seek the meaning of action’ (Hollis 2003:16–17, emphasis added). Post-structuralism belongs to this interpretative tradition in philosophy and the social sciences. Despite their significant ontological and epistemological differences, both positivism and structuralism are philosophical approaches rooted in a belief in modernity, particularly that their variants of modern social science reveal truths about the nature of the social world. From the 1970s, however, critiques of modernist society began to emerge that challenged the grand narratives of social theory offered by positivism and particularly structural Marxism. Drawing on philosophers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, an alternative approach to understanding social action emerged arguing that power resided no longer in ‘institutions or

the economy but … instead in codes, simulations and the media’ (Holt-Jenson 1999:133). The preoccupation of this post-structuralist theorising was analysing the way language works to construct knowledge (Barthes 1986; Derrida 1979; page_31 Page 32 Foucault 1977, 1980). The post-structuralist premise is that a structuralist view of the world (as being fixed through language) is contradicted by a recognition of language as unstable and constantly changing. This leads to the belief that: Subjects are made through language; the idea that life is essentially unstable, and only given stability through language; the irrelevance of distinctions between the real and simulacra … [and] … that there is nothing beyond the text. (Hubbard et al . 2004:349) Despite the varieties of post-structuralist thinking, what all have in common is their opposition to the idea that single underlying structures determine social action. Similarly, all assert that all forms of representation have shared meanings or discourses, and that these discourses ‘shape and create the world through the underlying assumptions … that they incorporate’ (Knox and Pinch 2000:5). Post-structuralist thinking has been highly influential in the social sciences. Indeed, in disciplines such as human geography and history the turn to representation and the search for ‘meaning’ and ‘assumption’ underlying the discursive practices of individual and collective actors have led to the analysis of ‘culture’ as a key aspect of post-structuralist work. This ‘cultural turn’ can be seen most visibly associated with post-modern theorising, linking poststructuralist insights with post-modernism’s incredulity about the meta-narratives of modernist social science. As Peet (1998:208) comments: There is no sharp difference between poststructuralist and postmodern philosophies. Generally however, poststructuralist philosophy criticizes the certainties of modern knowledge … its claim to coherence, neutrality and truth, while postmodern philosophy carries this further to an alternative discourse based on oppositional modes of understanding. Similarly, Best and Kellner (1991:25) assert that ‘poststructuralism forms part of the matrix of postmodern theory … we shall interpret poststructuralism as a subset of a broader range of theoretical, cultural, and social tendencies which constitute postmodern discourse’. But what does ‘postmodern discourse’ constitute and with what is it concerned? For Dear and Flusty (2002: xi) it is possible to characterise post-modernism as being about a series of distinctive cultural and stylistic practices; the totality of such practices, characteristic of the contemporary period (often referred to as post-modernity); and a set of philosophical and methodological discourse offering a challenge to modernism, notably the notion of the grand theory. Moreover, these authors argue that the post-modern debate has three constitutive elements: postmodernism as style; post-modernity as epoch; and page_32 Page 33 post-modernism as philosophy or method. Here, style refers the growing significance of literacy criticism from the 1960s/70s with its turn to deconstruction and arguments based on the ontological position that how we use language is intimately connected with the subjectivities that inform its use. This new style was quickly adopted by many disciplines, but none more than architecture as it searched for a way to challenge and rebut the ‘formalism and austerity’ of modernist design. In relation to post-modernity as epoch , the debate centres on the use of post-modernism as a term to define a distinctive break from modernism – as a period following modernity. Nevertheless, as Dear and Flusty (2002) make clear, however attractive the notion that we are in ‘new times’ may be, society is always composed of old, current and new or emerging trends. Turning to postmodernism as philosophy or method, Dear and Flusty’s conceptualisation focuses on

the ontological positions of post-modernism’s rejection of the universal truths and grand narratives of modernist rationality. As the authors state: postmodernism undermines the belief that theory can mirror reality, and replaces it with a partial, relativistic viewpoint emphasising the contingent, mediated nature of theory building. Metatheories and foundational thoughts are rejected in favour of microexplanations and undecidability. (2002:6) We agree with those commentators who suggest that things have changed in economic, social, cultural and political relations that is suggestive of some form of transition to being in ‘post’ modern or ‘new times’. However, how we interpret these changes is far from simple and, moreover, is widely contested and debated. Here, we do not wish to engage with these debates around interpretation, but we do acknowledge that continuing debate and discussion make any statement on thinking spatially or planning in post-modern times provisional and always subject to revision. Rather, our objective is to outline how spatial thinking and planning is responding to these debates. Post-modernism and spatial thinking In this section we aim to explore the way in which the turn to post-modernism has been taken up by those human geographers interested in conceptualising space and place and the implications for planning of postmodern ways of seeing. Indeed, as Holloway and Hubbard (2001) make clear, the terrain of an emerging post-structuralist and/or post-modern geography is uncertain and in the making. Yet, in the process of becoming, this geography is producing new and re-imagined ways of conceptualising space and place. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s the concerns of post-modernism, particularly in its guise of postmodernism as method, were embraced warmly within human geography. As Murdoch (2006: page_33 Page 34 13) infers, ‘post-structuralism enabled the creation of new spatial imaginaries, which seemed to stem from outside the closed worlds of spatial science and structuralist Marxism’. Much of the drive for this was based on the prominence of the concept of space in post-modern discourse with its rejection of the primacy of a modernist concern with time. Here the work of Jameson (1991) on post-modern culture was pivotal. As Dear and Flusty (2002:7) reveal: One of his [Jameson’s] most audacious claims was that existing time–space systems of societal organisation and perception have been fundamentally altered to accommodate the emergent relations of global capitalism; consequently, a new postmodern hyperspace has emerged, the time–space coordinates of which we can so far only dimly perceive. Jameson’s work is not the only source for the emergence of post-modern debate within human geography. For example, Henri Lefebvre’s analysis of the history of space and his notion of space and place as socially constructed was influential in developing arguments stressing the interwoven nature of cultural practices, representation and imagination in the production of space (Lefebvre 1991, 1996). Similarly, Michel Foucault’s work on discourse, language, knowledge, social order and power has helped shape how human geographers have sought to understand the relationship between power, knowledge and place (Foucault 1977, 1980, 1986). Social theorists such as Lefebvre, Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze and Jean François Lyotard have all (in differing ways) been the basis and inspiration for human geographical work on space and place tinged with post-modern and/or post-structuralist sentiments. It is not that post-structuralist or post-modern sentiments have overtaken human geographical ways of interpreting the world, making redundant all other interpretative positions. Rather, we would agree with those authors who suggest that ways of thinking are always ‘concurrent’ rather than ‘consecutive’ (Hubbard et al . 2004:11). Indeed, the application (or rather adaptation) of post-structuralist and postmodern analysis has been uneven, as different human geographers have employed, manipulated and moulded post-structuralist theorising in their writing (Hubbard et al . 2004). However, it is difficult to disagree even with those proponents of post-modernism in human geography who argue that we ‘live in an

era of postmodern consciousness’ that has witnessed the ‘reassertion of the significance and role of space in social theory and social process’ (Dear and Flusty 2002:11). 4 Perhaps the most prominent carriers of a post-modern consciousness in human geography have emerged from what has come to be known as the LA School (Dear 1988, 2000; Soja 1986, 1989, 1995, 1996). Although perhaps page_34 Page 35 not the first to engage with post-modernism from a geographical perspective, the writing of Dear, Soja and others brought to the fore the relevance of poststructuralist insights for interpreting urban life and structures. Their work focused on space and place as culturally produced, bringing with it recognition of the interaction of the material and discursive construction of space and place. For these writers space and place making was the outcome of cultural politics; a concern with the ways in which identity and difference were articulated across space. In their rejection of universal notions and definitions of place and their turn to representation and language, a new cultural geography was constructed. Places were conceptualised as ‘both real and imagined assemblages constituted through language’ (Hubbard et al . 2004:7). Overall, this post-modern geography exposed the contingent nature of space and place and the disintegration of binary oppositions. In its place it began an engagement with notions of reflexivity, ‘poly-vocality’ and acceptance of the fluidity of place identity. Much of this work also focused on the concept of scale and the transformation of place through globalisation, arguing that this was a defining feature of a postmodern debate on the relationship between space and place. There are two key strands in this debate that have implications for an understanding of space and place, both drawing on Castells’s (1996) dichotomy of space of flows and space of places. The first one is centred on global homogeneity – the global space of flows undermining local ways of life and place identity as a consequence of the logic of capital accumulation. The second asserts that places become more important in a period of globalisation through the identification of their local specificity and distinctiveness; as such, history, culture and environment become ‘crucial in perpetuating capital accumulation’ (Hubbard et al . 2004:9). The argument here is that we are witnessing not the ‘death of place’ or its ‘resurgence’, but the recognition of the constant making and remaking of space and place. Conceptualisation of space and place as ‘territories of becoming that produce new potentials’ (Thrift 2004:88, emphasis added) have their roots in Foucaultian and Deleuzian versions of post-structuralism, which according to Thrift (2004) moves beyond the text to engage with embodied practices and object worlds. Drawing on this, Thrift puts forward a ‘non-representational theory’ that promotes ‘relational rather than representational understanding’ of space and place (Thrift 1996:304). This theory ‘takes the world to be a kaleidoscopic mix of space– times, constantly being built up and torn down. These time–spaces normally co-exist … [but] Some space–times are more durable … Other(s) flicker out of existence’ (Thrift 2004:91). Within this perspective, space becomes ‘a meeting place … it is where relations interweave and intersect’ (Massey 1991). In Massey’s words, ‘space … is the product of the intricacies and complexities, the intertwinings and the page_35 Page 36 non-interlockings, of relations, from the unimaginably cosmic to the intimately tiny’ (Massey 1998:37). However, these meeting places are where ‘conflict can emerge just as consensual relations can be consolidated’ (Murdoch 2006:21), hence a ‘power-geometry’ emerges once relations meet in space. ‘Thus, spatial relations are also power relations’ and can ‘entrench confinement and exclusion’ (Murdoch 2006:22).

The relational perspective also shed new lights on the meaning of spatial scales , which is different from the duality of global–local promoted by the LA School, mentioned above. Indeed, here scale is conceptualised in ‘non-territorial terms’, as Amin (2002:391) suggests. Hence, in a relational perspective different spaces and places are not seen as hierarchical (global, national, local) but as ‘nodes in relational settings’. It is the ‘length of relation’ that defines the scale. ‘The significance and composition of the relations defines the significance of scale’ (Murdoch 2006:21). Overall, what the post-structuralist reading of space does is link social relations to spatial relations and focus on the point of cross-over between them. More specifically, it suggests that space is made not of structures but of relations. In this relational geography, ‘cities and regions are seen as sites of heterogeneity juxtaposed within close spatial proximity, and as sites of multiple geographies of affiliation, linkage and flow’ (Amin 2004:38). Planning content and process: planning in ‘new times’ Despite a generally widespread engagement with post-structuralist and postmodern sentiments and analysis in human geography, and its concerns with space and place, a less than hearty welcome has faced these approaches in relation to planning – both in research and in practice. The limited amount of discussion that has taken place has also been predominantly focused at a relatively high level of abstraction (Allmendinger 2001; Beauregard 1989; Dear 1986; Ellin 1999; Milroy 1991) with only occasional forays into empirical research, or research that specifies its connection with planning practice (Allmendinger 1998; Hirt 2005). Indeed, much of this work is as concerned with analysing post-modern urbanism as it is with writing about post-modern planning or ‘planning in postmodern times’, with its implications for the profession of planning ‘largely unrecognised’ (Hirt 2005:28). Our concern in this section is not to engage in debate about whether planning is or is not post-modern, or indeed is becoming post-modern. Rather our intention, given the general agreement that we live in ‘new times’ (whether that is defined as post-modern, late modern or something else) and that planning is commonly seen as an institution born of modernism, is to outline what current debate says about the implications for planning of ‘post-modern’. What, though, are the implications of post-modern analysis for planning? For some, the implication is a potential page_36 Page 37 and real mismatch between the post-modern times and planning as a modernist project (Allmendinger 1998). It is argued that post-structuralism and its relational conceptions of spatiality put the emphasis on fluidity, reflexivity, contingency, connectivity, multiplicity and polyvocality; qualities that are far from the apparent reified fixities and certainties that are conveyed by the spatial imaginaries of traditional planning practices. Furthermore, one of the key tenets of post-modernism is its insistence on the death of the grand narrative practices of modernity and its turn to post-structuralist theory in its critique of modernist forms of discourse and narrative (Allmendinger 1998, 2000). This has obvious implications for planning, characterised as it is as a product of modernity. According to Beauregard (1996:192), ‘the text of a postmodern planner, in fact, should be consciously fragmented and contingent, non linear, without aspiration to comprehensiveness, singularity or even compelling authority’. One of the key insights of the work of Dear (1986) was to highlight how planning knowledge has changed through the emergence of successive ‘planning discourses’ from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1980s. Critical here was how different modernist-inscribed conceptualisations of planning reflected particular ideological ways of knowing the city, resulting in specific forms of urban public intervention. Each knowledge discourse carried with it specific codes, texts and technologies designed to offer ‘professionally’ certified forms of planning practice. Dear’s conclusion was that contemporary planning was a ‘pastiche of practices’ that was an ‘ensemble of free floating, unsystematised “theories” … with discourse around planning theory … splintered’ (Dear 1986, quoted in Dear and Flusty 2002:166). For Dear (1986), the key discourse in any future of planning pastiche would be that which could support an ‘evolving postmodern hyperspace’ where atomised cities would produce pastiche built environments in ‘unsynchronised, aestheticfunctional disharmony’ (ibid.). Here, the planning role is ‘reduced to that of facilitator’, legitimising ‘actions

by the state and civil society in the mutualisation of the built environment’, in other words a post-modern planning of ‘filigree and decoration’ (ibid.). Whether one agrees with this analysis or not, it is clear that contemporary debate on ‘post-modern planning’ recognises that a number of key changes are impacting on the way we manage our environment; in particular, that by the end of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century, modernist assumptions embedded in planning and based on principles such as scientific rationality and rational order are being challenged by new ideas and sensibilities branded as ‘post-modern’ (Allmendinger 2001). Drawing on the analysis of Hirt (2005:28), we can outline those areas with which ‘post-modern planning’ might be concerned. These are: a growing interest in participatory planning; the search for place identify and cultural specificity; an page_37 Page 38 appreciation of the historicity of places and the turn to heritage; the primacy of mixed and flexible land use; and a return to the ‘human scale’, urban compactness and high-density development. In terms of postmodernism’s influence on spatial thinking and planning there are a number of issues that can be highlighted in relation to both the content and the process of planning. First, and in terms of content, postmodernism’s concern with space as culturally produced would clearly infuse planners’ interpretation of spatiality. We might expect here to see examples of a planning practice in which space is simultaneously perceived (mental), conceived (social) and lived (physical), mirroring Lefebvre’s notion of the ‘trialectic of spatiality’. In terms of the conception of place, post-modern influences would be found where we see examples of place being seen as created through imaginative visioning and learning through ‘story telling’ (Healey 2007:215), and as a key element of expressing identity and belonging. Spatial strategies would suggest that places were subject to multiple interpretations and that places were always in the process of being made through what Healey terms an interpretive epistemology that recognises multiple rationalities and values the encounters between them (Healey 2007). The treatment of time would be particularly innovative in a ‘post-modern influenced’ understanding of planning, in which ‘present’ and ‘real’ time would be acknowledged along with an understanding of the importance of the rhythms of everyday life. In describing what would be an ‘appropriate time and space of non-Euclidian form of planning’, Friedmann (1993:482) suggests that ‘The time of such planning is the real time of everyday events rather than imagined future time’, because ‘it is only in the evanescent and still undecided present that planners can hope to be effective’. However, he then adds that planners’ concern with the everyday does not mean the abandoning of concerns with an imagined future. Yet the notion of ‘future time’ might be characterised through the recognition of future uncertainty and risk, with policy developing in unexpected ways into an unknown and disordered future. ‘Scale’ would be conceived of in terms of interconnections, with places seen as elements in a web of contingent boundaries, constantly territorialised and open to political contestation. The organising spatial principle here would be one of multiple overlapping networks with continuous flows of people, resources and knowledges. Such networks and flows would be represented and visualised through the use of ‘scenarios’ and ‘fuzzy maps’ showing untidy and complicated flows, with spaced perceived as ‘lived’ and understood in terms of its description by both inhabitants and users. In relation to process, a post-modern perspective might produce a culture where the role of planners is one that involves exploring shared notions of place and common understanding of space, achieving negotiated consensus – what Healey has previously termed ‘collaborative planning’ through discursive deliberapage_38 Page 39

tion (Healey 1997). From a post-modern perspective the assumed professional knowledge of planners would lose its modernist-inscribed technocratic certainty, and would be merely one set of knowledge resources nestling amongst the distributed intelligence of urban life (Healey 2007; Sandercock 1998).

Conclusion The thread running through this book is how conceptions of space and place have been deployed to understand spatial change in different places. In this introductory chapter we have sought to outline the broad trajectory of western planning history and its relationship with wider social theory from a range of ontological and epistemological perspectives and traditions. What is clear is that planning in theory and in practice has been touched by a variety of intellectual debates. Our particular concern has been to explore the ways in which planning and planners have responded to changing understandings of concepts of space and place. Our analysis of planning as subjected to various ‘isms’ over the course of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries is suggestive of a discipline whose understanding of these concepts changes as new ways of seeing emerge but which can also remain stubbornly rooted in one or more interpretative traditions co-existing alongside new and often more complex ways of seeing and representing the spaces and places that planners and planning are seeking to ‘plan’. Although our analysis has followed a broadly chronological path exploring the impact of ways of thinking about space and place in planning, through broadly successive waves of social theory, it is not a path along which we see dramatic breaks with previous ways of seeing or radical paradigm shifts in planners’ understandings of what space or place means for planning. Instead we see a jumbling of perspectives in which new insights and methodologies sit alongside old ways of ‘doing’ planning – where positivist techniques rub shoulders with poststructuralist imaginations. Or, to be more specific, in contemporary practice, for example, an understanding of scale can be seen as both a nested hierarchy with fixed boundaries determined by movements, networks, nodes and hierarchies as well as an interconnected web with contingent boundaries, constantly territorial-ised, and a site of political contestation. Our analysis is therefore suggestive of an intellectual tradition in planning in which approaches to space and place are often concurrent rather than consecutive, and new ideas are rarely totalising in shaping the thinking about space and place. With this interplay of change and continuity in mind, our account so far should be read as relating to the genealogy of the emergence of ideas about space and place in geography and planning, rather than as a linear narrative of intellectual change. Our thematic focus on the three underpinning intellectual traditions page_39 Page 40 impacting on planning thought since the end of the nineteenth century has allowed us to explore the ways in which each has developed its unique perspective on space and place and how these have been interpreted within planning. Moreover, our analysis has allowed us to explore in detail the ways in which changing understandings of space and place have impacted on key aspects of the content of planning (interpretation of spatiality, conception of place, treatment Table 1.2 Criteria for analysing the contents of spatial strategies

Criteria

Positivism

Interpretation Space as Euclidean, a of spatiality neutral container, as positivist science

Structuralism

Post-structuralism/post-modernism

Space as socially produced and consumed

Space as culturally produced; trialectic of spatiality: perceived (mental), conceived (social) and lived (physical) space

Conception of Place as objective, place measurable, mappable, bounded, selfcontained locale

Spatial organising principles

Distance, direction, and connection; distance decay, proximity theories

Understanding Nested hierarchy with of scale fixed boundaries determined by movements, networks, nodes and hierarchies

Place as multiple intersecting of social, political and economic relations and locus of power geometries

Place as a particular form of space, created through activities and imagination, a key element of expressing identity and belonging, subject to multiple interpretations, always becoming

Functional zoning

Multiple overlapping flows and networks

Interconnected web with contingent Globalisation obliterating local scale, boundaries, constantly territorialised, site ‘places without place’, of political contestation emphasis on ‘urban’

Treatment of time

Time as ‘present’, real time, importance of Linear time/time order Time–space the everyday compression, annihilation of space by time

Concept of future

Capable of being forecasted, predicted, achieved as planned for, future as known and ordered

A social utopia to be fought for, future as known and ordered

Language, 2Visualisation 2-dimensional static dimensional maps maps, 3-dimensional and representation snapshot perspectives, computer models

Paddled with uncertainties and risks, emergent in unexpected ways, future as unknown and disordered

‘Fuzzy maps’ showing flows, space as lived and described by inhabitants and users (pictures), scenarios and storylines

page_40 Page 41 of time, understanding of scale, concept of the future, visualisation, and organising principles), and on the process of planning (the role of planners, knowledge and skills, methods of engagement, modes of implementation, and institutional structures). Based on this detailed discussion we are now able to crystallise the set of criteria for analysing the extent to which conceptualisations of space and place are reflected both in the content of spatial strategy making and in its production. These are summarised in Tables 1.2 and 1.3 respectively. These tables represent (as ideal-typical examples) what we might expect to see in spatial strategies and plans from a particular set of intellectual traditions and conceptualisations of space and place. So, for each criterion we provide (based on our preceding discussion) a way of imagining or practising planning grounded in the ontological and epistemological perspectives of positivism, structuralism and poststructuralism. This framework developed through our historical analysis of conceptualisations of space and

place and their relationship to planning is designed to guide each subsequent chapter of the book through its individual discussion of strategic spatial planning. As we outlined in the introduction, each case study will examine the process of strategy making to analyse the role of Table 1.3 Criteria for analysing the processes of spatial strategies

Criteria

Positivism

Structuralism

Post-structuralism/ post-modernism

Perceived role of planners

Predicting future development trends as a basis for controlling and creating order/ producing blueprints

Advocacy, community activists, defending ‘space of places’ against ‘space of flows’, producing alternative ‘people’s plans’

Exploring shared notion of place and common understanding of space, consensus seeking

Knowledge and skills employed

Expert scientific knowledge, Community empowerment, skills in quantitative modelling skills of social activist

Expert and experiential knowledge, visioning and mediation skills

Methods of engagement

Top-down tokenistic consultation

Discursive deliberation

Institutional structures/ governance/power relations

Corporatism, power of Hierarchical, formal government systems, enforcing structure power over private property rights, privileging of technical knowledge

Modes of implementation

Command and control through State-managed redistribution Implementation through land use regulation of resources and relocation of collaborative practices, social learning activities

Adversarial/public inquiry

Multi-level governance generating power to enable private and public action, power of agency

page_41 Page 42 the institutional context and political/power relations within which these conceptions have been articulated. They will also analyse the content of plans, exploring which conceptions of space and place have been articulated, presented and visualised as well as outlining the potential tensions or synergies between such conceptions.

Notes 1 As Graham and Healey (1999) call it. 2 This distinction was drawn out most clearly by the work of Francis Bacon, often hailed as the father of modern scientific method. He distinguished between two ways of discovering truth about nature and the character of Reason, or the proper method of science. One starts from the top, from ‘the most general

axioms’, now known as rationalism; and the other starts from the bottom, from ‘senses and particulars’, now known as empiricism; each representing significant ontological, methodological and epistemological differences. As de Fontenelle (see reference in Hollis 2003:69) put it, the aim of the rationalist is to go behind the scenes at the opera stage and see how reality causes appearances. The aim of the empiricists is to identify the regularities in the phenomena (appearances) without having to speculate on hidden causes. 3 This was the subtitle of Ebenezer Howard’s book as published in 1898. It was later republished under the more commonly known title of Garden Cities of To-morrow (Howard 1902). 4 A detailed discussion of the intellectual basis of human geography’s turn to post-modernism can be found elsewhere (Hubbard et al . 2004). Our intention here was simply to note that the theoretical antecedents of a ‘post-modern’ human geography are wide. page_42 Page 43

CHAPTER 2 MAKING WALES Spatial strategy making in a devolved context Neil Harris and Huw Thomas

Introduction Devolution to Wales in 1999 dramatically changed the political context for policy and strategy making in Wales. The establishment of an entirely new political institution – the National Assembly for Wales – is an important event in any institutional and policy landscape. New institutions are usually intent on making a difference in policy and implementation terms to the situation as it existed prior to their establishment. This often manifests itself in the issue of a suite of new policies and strategies, many of which aim to be ‘distinctive’ or ‘innovative’ in character. One of the more genuinely innovative aspects of the Assembly’s policy agenda since devolution has been its preparation of People, Places, Futures: the Wales Spatial Plan (WAG 2004a). This is a form of spatial strategy of a kind similar to those that have been developed previously or in parallel in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Nevertheless, like many of its other attempts at policy making, the Assembly has been keen to develop a distinctive approach to the preparation of its own Wales Spatial Plan. So, although the approach to the Plan has been informed by approaches elsewhere, it does have some particularly defining characteristics of its own as an approach to spatial strategy-making. This conceptually informed account of the Wales Spatial Plan adds to an existing literature focusing on various aspects of the Plan at its varying stages of preparation. The early stages, during which the merits of particular approaches to preparing a national spatial planning framework were debated, are captured in Harris et al . (2002). That particular piece of work also identifies the early emergence of the activity of spatial planning within a Welsh context. Further published work focuses on the Wales Spatial Plan at an interim stage in its development. Harris and Hooper (2004) focus in particular on the potential of the Wales Spatial Plan as a means of supporting and enhancing the spatial content of a wide range of different sectoral strategies and policies. Further exploration of the Wales Spatial Plan and its relationship specifically with regional development issues is addressed in Harris (2006a). More recent work, published following the issue of the final version of the Plan, addresses some of the political debate surrounding page_43 Page 44

the Plan and its appraisal in sustainability terms (Harris and Hooper 2006). In addressing the political debate that has taken place on the Wales Spatial Plan, that more recent work has also touched upon the potential of the Plan as a placemaking tool focused on the elaboration of the Welsh territory. Some elements of that approach are expanded on and explored in more detail in this contribution to the continuing account of the evolution of the Wales Spatial Plan. This account is therefore the first in which a full exploration of both the concepts of space and place used in the Plan and the processes of strategy formation that underpin these has been undertaken. The remainder of this chapter sets about applying the conceptual framework outlined in Chapter 1 to the Wales Spatial Plan. It initially outlines the political and economic context within which public policy initiatives in Wales must necessarily be understood. This account highlights some of the long-standing debates and features of Welsh public life within which present-day policy initiatives are developed. It explains briefly the significance of different ‘parts’ of Wales, and the very different socio-economic conditions that prevail within them. It also highlights how debates around these places sit alongside the political project of ‘constructing the nation’. Having established this context, the chapter addresses the process of preparing the Wales Spatial Plan, with its premium on working towards a consensual understanding of the challenges and suitable responses for different areas of Wales. It then explores the content of the Plan and identifies that the Wales Spatial Plan exhibits some aspects of a relational approach to planning, yet is principally embedded in traditional, positivist understandings of space, place and time.

The political economy of Wales Spatial differentiation and political intervention The danger in trying to provide a brief overview of the modern economic history of Wales is that we forget the economic and social variety within small areas – such as the fact that even poor areas have relatively prosperous people in them, and rich areas have people in poverty. Generalising, we can say that over the course of the nineteenth century industrial capitalism led to the explosive development of narrowly based extractive and heavy industrial sub-regions in the south Wales coalfield and north-east Wales, and a specialised slate-quarrying area in north-west Wales. These sucked in new populations and periodically pushed people out (especially to England and the white dominions) in recessions and depressions. By the early twentieth century 70 per cent of Wales’s population lived on the south Wales coalfield (Day 2002:29). One of the earliest regional plans in the page_44 Page 45 UK was the 1921 South Wales Regional Survey (Ministry of Health 1921), which considered where new, state-funded housing to supplement, and sometimes replace, the poorly planned coalfield settlements should be located. This was a plan in the positivist tradition. Its very title made this clear in relation to the planning process: here was a set of recommendations based on data, trends and the clear assumption that the future could be at the very least heavily influenced and managed (though it was acknowledged that there might be uncertainties about the precise nature of that future). The conception of space implicit in the plan was Euclidean: the focus was on economic and population trends, with south Wales as a container within which these trends were played out. At that time, continuing immigration was anticipated, though it was noted even then that the levels and nature of employment in coal mining were changing. The opportunities of the industrial areas, regular agricultural recession and technical changes in agricultural production produced steady rural depopulation. From the 1930s onwards, the coastal plains – along both the south and north Wales coasts – were usually more attractive (that is, profitable) locations for investment in new industries than the existing industrial areas with their older infrastructure, specialised and typically unionised labour supply, limited land, and pollution. So, replacing the employment opportunities offered by the now troubled and declining industries of the older established areas has been a preoccupation of government for over seventy years.

Turning to the last twenty years, parts of south-east and north-east Wales have achieved a degree of prosperity because of their being attractive to economic activity in sectors that remain competitive internationally and/or are responding to increased domestic demand (Lovering 1991; Day 2002). But these are in marked contrast to other parts of Wales – rural areas and the old coalfield areas for example – where activity rates are low, employment opportunities remain limited, incomes are low and ill-health is more common (Day 2002). In these circumstances, the idea that the ‘Welsh economy’ needs to restructure in order to shift out of (nationally and/or internationally) declining sectors into expanding ones retains its political force (Rees and Lambert 1981), as does the need for policy interventions – including planning interventions – to play a role in facilitating that process. Thus the economic development strategy of the Welsh Assembly Government (2002:1) has on page 1 the statement that ‘Wales needs to start on the task of economic transformation without delay’. Intervention is clearly part of the solution, if not the whole of it: The role of the Assembly Government and its public sector partners is to lead by example and provide the right conditions for the businesses, communities and people of Wales to grasp the opportunities which lie ahead. (WAG 2002:1) page_45 Page 46 And the nature of the analysis, if not its detail, would have been familiar any time since the 1930s: The Welsh economy has had to renew and re-invent itself, from one dominated by heavy industries such as coal and steel to a much broader base of modern manufacturing and services. Some 200,000 jobs have been absorbed from declining industries in the past 30 years. It is now re-inventing itself again in moving higher up the value chain, as assembly-line manufacturing is attracted to low wage areas in Eastern Europe and East Asia. (WAG 2002:4) For just over a decade from the mid-1970s such an analysis was given a structuralist, neo-Marxist twist by some academic commentators of planning based in Wales (e.g. Cooke 1980; Rees and Lambert 1981), but these ideas were divorced from the plan making undertaken by professional planners (see for example Alden and Essex 1999; Harris 2006b; Coop and Thomas 2007). The aforementioned economic processes bound economic activity in Wales in many different ways into economic networks and geographies extending far outside its boundaries. The phrase ‘the Welsh economy’ can be misleading when it implies a degree of interconnection (and even shared interests) that simply does not exist. Policy interventions by any level of government will therefore have different implications for different parts of the economy and, because economic life is spatial, for different places (Boyns 2005). That government should intervene to facilitate restructuring is an hegemonic idea in Wales (Rees and Lambert 1981), enjoying support across the political spectrum. Hence, even under radical Thatcherite governments there remained a degree of Welsh Office support for new initiatives (Rees 1997). But there can be, and has been, intense disagreement about the nature of appropriate support, and especially over the spatial distribution of support, and the spatial distribution of consequences of intervention. The notion floated in the 1930s that there should be planned reduction in the population of the south Wales valleys was widely opposed (Williams 1985:252). In the late 1960s and early 1970s there reappeared what was perceived by some to be a variant of the idea. There was intense debate and political conflict over government (Welsh Office) proposals to promote a new town in Llantrisant, some ten miles west of Cardiff and at the northern edge of the coastal plain. Justified by the Welsh Office as a location that could realistically be expected to attract investment and was still close enough to the coal field to provide job opportunities for residents, it was opposed by a combination of local authorities in the valleys, who feared it would suck out the resident population, and by Cardiff Council. The latter resented the growth of a competitor city so close that was not under its control and hence not necessarily complementing the city council’s promotion and planning of Cardiff (Cardiff City Planning Officer 1969; Welsh Office 1967). page_46

Page 47 These spatio-institutional rivalries are an important strand in Welsh regional planning. The terms in which they were played out revealed the continuing significance of the positivist legacy especially in its interpretation of scale, spatial organisation and time. Spatial hierarchies, towns and cities and their hinterlands, movement corridors and distance decay were among the key planning notions. And in their temporal dimensions, planning discussions and documentation into the 1990s privileged the economic rhythms of the British, and later global, economy. The economic and social relations associated with industrialisation in Wales from the eighteenth century onwards have tended to create and accentuate differences, and hence the potential for rivalry, within the country. Different economic, social and cultural spaces and networks (most extending far outside the country) continue to co-exist, overlap and interact. However, in public discussion, and especially in politics, these complexities have been simplified into a discourse of Wales as a country composed of very different kinds of places, with different, not necessarily compatible, needs. Meanwhile, a major political project for over a century has been the promotion of the idea of Wales as a nation, and the establishment of ‘appropriate’ cultural, administrative and political institutions for the nation as a whole. The subsequent tension between place-related suspicion and competition, on the one hand, and the need to continually work across political and socio-economic divisions to sustain a conception of Wales as a nation, on the other, is a central component of the context within which national spatial planning has been taking place. Spatial division and rivalry Industrialisation in Wales linked it to political and economic dynamics extending beyond the country, with flows of materials, capital and people to destinations outside, as well within its borders. As a consequence, different parts of Wales have a history of being bound into different kinds of economic and social networks, of being parts of different (albeit overlapping and interacting) economic and social geographies. An example of this on a sub-regional scale has been the economic and social difference between the so-called ‘Valleys’ of the south Wales coalfield, and the industrial towns of the south Wales coast. Among the sharpest differences in industrial south Wales is the contrast between Cardiff and the Valleys. From the late eighteenth century the natural resources of the coalfield (wood, iron ore and – increasingly – coal of various types) were exploited by a mix of largely external sources of capital and large (typically absentee) landowners. Distinctive new environments and new communities were created, both influenced by and in turn influencing the nature of the economic activity that dominated the area. The coalfield valley communities were (and remain) places with strong individual identities and fierce local rivalries, page_47 Page 48 and distinctive (albeit always changing) local cultures born out work experiences (including uncertainties in periods of depression) and the flow and mix of people from elsewhere in Wales, the UK and further afield as prosperity stimulated immigration and depression encouraged emigration (Adamson 1991). These communities regarded themselves as different from the coastal settlements with which they were economically tied, such as Cardiff. Cardiff developed over the nineteenth century from being an insignificant small town to becoming the largest town in Wales and being awarded city status in 1905. Initially, the city’s economic and demographic development was based on the export of iron and – later, and more dramatically – coal, with some complementary imports, for example timber for pit-props. It was embedded within the economic geography of coal production. From the late nineteenth century the port became less significant, and semi-detached from the city’s economic structure, as the city housed an increasing variety of industrial and service sector employment mainly in the public sector. This placed Cardiff within a geography of regional centres for organising and delivering various kinds of services within the UK (Thomas 2003; Hooper and Punter 2006).

These very different (though intertwined) economic and social histories have underpinned the different fortunes of Cardiff and the Valleys in the post-war period. Although the decline of manufacturing and extractive industries has meant unemployment in both places, the impact on the Valleys has been considerably greater than on Cardiff, which has had a broader range of employment, including in the service sector, even in the 1950s (Thomas 1989). With the decimation of the coal industry in recent decades and the long-standing decline of manufacturing, Cardiff has become a key source of employment for residents of the coalfield valleys, with railways that were laid to carry coal now carrying commuters and shoppers. Yet the distinctiveness of the Valleys communities and the need to protect them has been an important issue across party lines in Welsh politics The issue has consistently been understood in positivistic terms, the Valleys communities being conceived as mappable, spatially bounded locales, if not entirely selfcontained in practice then certainly self-contained in the collective imaginary (Rees 1997). The political project of constructing the nation Similar accounts could be constructed of the ways in which places in the rest of Wales have come to acquire senses of identity and difference, shaped by intertwined and interacting economic, socio-cultural and political processes (Day 2002). One politically potent strand in these constructions of place and difference has been the changing geography of Welsh speaking, with a shrinking page_48 Page 49 and fragmented ‘heartland’ emerging in rural areas in the west and north, only to be ‘threatened’ by immigration of monoglot English speakers and emigration of Welsh-speaking young people (Aitchison and Carter 2000). It is hardly surprising then that a consciousness of place and differences between places have been central to political and popular constructions of Wales in the modern period (Gruffydd 1999). Yet the construction of Wales as a nation, as a place with a coherent and distinctive identity, has also been a major political project since the late nineteenth century (Davies 1990). The idea that Wales is a distinctive social entity with particular needs and problems and that it makes sense to think in terms of a ‘Welsh dimension’ in politics, the arts, sport, and so on (Morgan 1985) is not some inevitable product of a Welsh ‘essence’. We agree with the argument of Jackson and Penrose (1993) that nations are not discovered but are created. That task of creation is the more difficult in a nation with little history of being a political or governmental unit and with a recent history of acute consciousness of place and rivalries between places. Nevertheless, the project has undoubtedly been successful in some respects. The establishment of successive tranches of administrative devolution of central government functions since 1945 (Grif-fiths 1996; Barry Jones 2000), the creation of a constellation of regional/national institutions – albeit at the cost of creating a ‘quango state’ (Morgan and Roberts 1993) – and the long-standing and continuing significance of national identification in sport and popular culture all testify to the grip of the idea of nationality in Welsh life, including political life. This does not imply that separatism has ever been popular, but the ‘distinctiveness’ of Wales has become a powerful idea. On the other hand, such gains cannot be taken for granted by their supporters – McCrone et al . (1998:630–631) highlight the contrast between allegiance to a non-British identity in Scotland and in Wales by quoting survey results showing that the ratio of those in Scotland giving a Scottish identity priority over a British one to those who would do the converse was close to 8:1. The corresponding ratio in Wales (in relation to Welsh identity) was 8:5. Moreover, the proportion of respondents giving priority to a Scottish identity was also considerably larger (61 per cent as opposed to 42 per cent in Wales). Osmond (1989) has argued that the nature of Welsh identity varies spatially, overlapping substantially (if not wholly) with different experiences of industrialisation over the last 200 years. He suggests a ‘Three Wales Model’, with largely rural west and north Wales (save for Pembrokeshire) defined as ‘Y Fro Gymraeg’ (the Welsh vale with a deeply rooted Welsh-speaking culture); the south Wales coalfield a culturally distinctive Anglo-Welsh ‘Welsh Wales’; and the eastern half of Wales, the south-eastern coastal fringe and Pembrokeshire constituting a ‘British Wales’. Such generalisations mask local distinctiveness and socio-economic changes, but it must be said that the model fitted quite well with the variations in the referendum on Welsh devolution in the late 1990s. page_49

Page 50 These politico-cultural complexities made the (ultimately successful) campaign for an elected national assembly anything but a foregone conclusion. A referendum in 1975 had decisively rejected a parliament for Wales; the success in the referendum of 1998 appears to have owed much to non-voting of people who were mildly antipathetic to the idea (Jones et al . 2000). Among the 50 per cent of the electorate who did vote the majority in favour could hardly have been smaller (0.2 per cent of the votes cast). This narrow victory fell short of a resounding vote of confidence in the new institution that was established as the National Assembly for Wales on 1 July 1999. The Assembly remains in a period of infancy as a democratically elected body and, as a result, is still engaged in a process of convincing the electorate of its legitimacy and worth. Part of the process involves claims to policy innovation to meet distinctive Welsh needs. Such claims score in two ways. First, they indicate that the Assembly is lively and alert enough to innovate. Second, they underline the significance of having a Welsh Assembly – that is, the claim that Wales has distinctive problems and approaches to addressing these plays its part in constructing the nation. The Wales Spatial Plan in its very title reinforces the significance of the politico-administrative reality of Wales, and from its early stages there have been hopes that it might illustrate an innovative approach to planning. Trying to live up to such expectations, amid established spatial rivalries and newer political anxieties about the devolution project, has been an interesting, challenging and contentious experience.

The challenge of consensus: the making of the Wales Spatial Plan The Wales Spatial Plan is an example of spatial strategy making that fits well with the principle that ‘the process is as important as the product’. In many ways, and fitting well with Healey’s (2007) analysis of spatial strategy-making processes, the Plan itself is principally a vehicle or frame of reference for a wider series of ‘discussions’ and debates about Wales and the various ‘places’ that form part of it. The content of the Plan, examined below, is of limited depth and complexity in comparison with certain other spatial strategies such as those for Ireland and Scotland. Yet it is not the content of the Plan that is especially significant, except for its function of facilitating collaborative and discursive processes outside of the Plan. This section of the chapter recalls the story of the Wales Spatial Plan, highlighting some of the key stages in the evolution of the Plan, and focuses in particular on the role of the Plan as a vehicle for generating dialogue and fostering consensus around the key issues facing Wales as a country, as well as the different ‘areas’ of Wales as defined in the Plan. The story of how the Wales Spatial Plan has developed from its initial inception to its approval and implementation phase is especially important, as the Plan has become something rather different page_50 Page 51 to what it was initially intended to be. Its status and its relationship to the land use planning system have changed quite significantly over the four-year period during which the Plan was being prepared. Some aspects of the Plan’s preparation have remained consistent, including the extent to which the Plan is seen as being a document that secures the consensual support of a range of stakeholders. The National Assembly for Wales engaged in a period of rapid and significant policy development upon its establishment in 1999. This period included the making of a series of commitments to the preparation of various plans, policies, and strategies for different sectors over the first term of the Assembly. Many of these were included in the Assembly’s first corporate strategy, titled Better Wales. One such commitment emanating from the Assembly’s Planning Division was for the Assembly to prepare a National Spatial Planning Framework for Wales by the end of its first term. This demonstrates an early commitment to the activity of strategic spatial planning in Wales, an activity that was thought to be necessary to address the strategic planning vacuum created in Wales following the reorganisation of local government in 1996 that witnessed the creation of twenty-two all-purpose unitary authorities (Tewdwr-Jones 1998). Various other documents and actions by the Assembly also identify that spatial planning became embedded in the planning agenda from the very earliest stages in the Assembly’s life. These included a research report

focused on the spatial implications of the Assembly’s land use policies (DTZ Pieda 2000). A further research report was also commissioned to advise on the establishment of a Wales Planning Research Programme and recommended spatial planning as one of three principal themes intended to structure that programme. One of the explanations for the new institution’s embrace of strategic spatial planning at an early stage is the personal and political commitment to spatial planning by the Assembly’s first Minister for Transport, Planning and the Environment, Sue Essex (a former planning academic). The Minister had engaged in preparatory work on the concept of a national spatial planning framework inspired by developments in Ireland and Northern Ireland, as well as the very recent publication of the European Spatial Development Perspective. Several important foundations were therefore established at this early stage that are of significance in the story of developing the Wales Spatial Plan. The first of these is that the concept of a national spatial planning framework relied very much on the personal and political commitment of an Assembly minister responsible for planning, transport and environmental issues. The second is that the initial support for a spatial planning framework was very much based in a professional discourse. Significantly, that professional discourse was framed principally within the context of the land use planning profession. This was to frame how the preparatory work for the National Spatial Planning Framework was undertaken over the following two years. page_51 Page 52 Knowledge and skills employed: the ‘hidden’ data and analysis of the Wales Spatial Plan The knowledge and skills utilised in developing the Wales Spatial Plan have been varied. Some of the earlier stages in developing the Plan fit well with the portrayal of positivism as outlined in Chapter 1, focused on the development of future scenarios based on quantitative methods and econometric modelling. Yet, in other stages of the Plan-making process, post-structuralist or post-modern forms of knowledge and related competencies have been prioritised. These include tap-ping into the experiential knowledge of local communities, mediating between competing demands and viewpoints, and assisting with the development of shared visions for places. Some of the quantitative, spatial data that formed the basis for developing the Plan in its early stages has ‘faded’ into the background and become ‘hidden’, or otherwise simplified and rendered digestible in much simpler form. The Assembly’s Planning Division was initially responsible for preparing the National Spatial Planning Framework and in 2000 commissioned a piece of research to advise on the approach or methodology for preparing the framework. The research focused primarily on reviewing spatial planning methodologies and approaches elsewhere, including in mainland Europe, in order to recommend an approach suited, or capable of adaptation, to the Welsh context. The various factors considered in the review included the purpose, scope and status of the strategy and its presentation, as well as the background research and extent of consultation on which the approach was based (Harris et al . 2002). Some preliminary GIS-based research was also undertaken as part of the research project, signifying that the framework would incorporate some technical aspects. However, the research report made a series of recommendations and advised against an approach based heavily on data collection, analysis, modelling and detailed mapping of information. Instead, an approach was recommended that was based on a series of high-level principles with broad-scale visual representation of key themes in a mapped form. The concept of a spatial planning framework at this stage was very much one that incorporated a series of issues and concerns beyond the regulatory land use planning system, but was still understood as a component of the planning system. Consequently, the principal stakeholders engaged in research workshops and for purposes of dissemination were members of the planning profession within Wales, as well as elected members with responsibility for planning within local planning authorities. Following the reporting of this research, the Assembly managed a consultation exercise on the scope, status, form and content of what had then been titled the Wales Spatial Plan. This phase of consultation enabled stakeholders to comment on what the Wales page_52

Page 53 Spatial Plan might be, the process by which it might be prepared and the data necessary for taking the Plan forward. This consultation exercise was accompanied at around the same time by the establishment of a small team of staff comprising the Wales Spatial Plan Unit. This perhaps signified the first steps on the path towards an enhanced political and organisational profile for the Wales Spatial Plan. The Unit, once established, was then moved from the Assembly’s Planning Division, signifying an important detachment from the initial land use planning affiliations of the spatial plan. The Wales Spatial Plan has since gravitated towards becoming a more corporate policy document of strategy rather than a strategic framework for the land use planning system. These developments and uncertainties over the status and scope of the Wales Spatial Plan framed a further piece of commissioned research on the development of a series of spatial scenarios for the future of Wales. That work, which has not been formally published, involved a series of further technical inputs, including econometric modelling of various sectors within Wales, and the further collection of spatial data within a GIS database. Some of this material informed the preparation of the full consultation draft of the Plan, and was also included in a CD-ROM of GIS and other data issued with the consultation version of the Plan. It was at some point between the commissioned research on spatial scenarios for Wales and the publication of the consultation draft of the Wales Spatial Plan that the Plan truly experienced a shift in political and organisational profile. The Plan became one of the principal strategies of the Welsh Assembly Government. In doing so, the relationship between the Plan and the land use planning system of which it had been expected to form a part was renegotiated. No longer could the Wales Spatial Plan be seen principally as a strategic document oriented primarily, but not exclusively, towards the land use planning system. The land use planning system had simply become one amongst a very wide range of different activities to which the Wales Spatial Plan had some relevance or significance. Methods of engagement: promoting dialogue and fostering consensus Methods of engaging stakeholders in the preparation of the Wales Spatial Plan focus on discursive deliberation. Engagement has certainly not been tokenistic or even necessarily ‘top-down’ in character. Likewise, the Plan has not been subject to any processes that could be defined as confrontational or inquisitorial, such as public inquiry or examination. Instead, engagement has been undertaken in a relatively informal yet structured manner with a premium placed on seeking a consensus among stakeholders. Traditional and formal opportunities to comment on full consultation drafts of the document have been provided. However, this has page_53 Page 54 been supplemented by a series of important workshops, seminars and conventions across Wales. This approach is detailed in the following paragraphs. The consultation draft of the Wales Spatial Plan was issued in October 2003, almost a year after the date by which the Assembly had hoped to publish the approved version. The delay can be explained by a number of factors, which include the increased political profile and attention the plan was starting to receive within and across the Assembly in its pre-consultation draft stage. The period after the issue of the consultation draft is one of increased speed of work on the Plan and is marked by a particular approach to the engagement of stakeholders. The consultation document itself and the means of engaging stakeholders were very much designed in order to try and secure a consensus among a wide range of different stakeholders. A two-stage consultation process followed the publication of the consultation draft with each stage facilitated by independent consultants. The first stage was undertaken immediately after the issue of the consultation draft in late 2003 and early 2004. This first stage comprised eight area-based participative workshops, one being held in each of the areas identified in the draft Wales Spatial Plan (see Plate 1). The second stage of consultation involved two conventions, with one held in north Wales and another in south Wales in July 2004. Each stage is reported here using consultants’ reports on each of the stages.

The first stage of the official consultation process was specifically designed to foster responses to the consultation draft of the Wales Spatial Plan published just a month or two earlier. It took the form of a facilitated workshop in each of the eight areas of Wales identified in the consultation draft. The consultation draft itself included a questionnaire to try and organise individuals’ and organisa-tions’ responses. Some 129 written responses were submitted to the Assembly and were reported in a summary and interpretation of consultation responses (WAG 2004b). Respondents to the Plan were principally other public sector organisations, including local authorities as well as regional and collaborative organisations. Over a quarter of written responses were submitted by a diversity of voluntary organisations, with relatively few submissions from business organisations and only a handful of individual responses. The overall message from the consultation report is that the approach to preparing the Plan, the vision, values and objectives it contained, and the data accompanying the plan were all widely supported and welcomed. In particular, support was expressed for the Assembly’s initiative in preparing a national spatial planning framework. Issues that generated more critical responses related to the role and status of the Plan, its identification of ‘zones’ and its definition of areas within Wales, and the identification of the mechanisms for delivering and implementing the Plan. Specifically on the role of the Plan, this was singled out as one the strongest criticisms, arguing that its role had not been specified in sufficiently clear terms. Other comments also picked up on and recognised that the role of Plan was now expressed in different terms from page_54 Page 55 the earlier scoping exercises. Likewise, some respondents expressed strong criticisms on the Plan’s not identifying clearly the mechanisms that would be used in its implementation. The concept of zones (see section on the content of the Plan) was responded to critically, leading to debates about whether the areas shared similar characteristics or were differentiated internally. However, the visions that had been developed for each of the areas were noted as not being subject to much comment. Various other criticisms and concerns were expressed, such as respondents wanting to see more detailed expression of areas of growth and restraint, as well as debates on the identification of functional versus administrative areas. The full range of different responses to the Plan cannot be covered here. Nevertheless, some of the more significant points have been captured. In overall terms, the principal message could be captured as the initiative and the approach being widely welcomed, yet with most respondents expecting further development of the Plan’s content. In this context, the consultation exercise also underscored the significance of collaborative working as a means of taking forward the Plan’s content at area level. The second stage in the formal consultation exercise comprised two national conventions and was again facilitated and reported upon by independent consultants (WAG 2004c). Over 300 delegates attended the conventions. The conventions were organised in July 2004 as the Wales Spatial Plan was being redrafted, with the final version of the document to appear some five months later. Each of the conventions included a ministerial presentation as well as a report on the sustainability appraisal of the Plan that had recently been completed (Forum for the Future 2004). The workshops themselves focused on delegates working as groups to evaluate a series of national propositions. Individual delegates were invited to ‘score’ the different propositions. The scoring allowed delegates to (a) support the proposition without modification, (b) support it subject to modification of the text or (c) reject the proposition. The summary of the workshops identifies that most propositions were supported, usually with some support for modification, with rejection of propositions usually around 2 to 7 per cent of respondents. This is perhaps not surprising given the rather generalised nature of the propositions. The manner in which the propositions were framed invited consensus, yet some did prompt a stronger reaction. Interestingly, the highest rate of rejection for any proposition was one related to implementation of the Plan. It proposed that ‘Assembly funding will be linked to constructive development of the Wales Spatial Plan at an area level’. This proposition, and the reaction to it, needs to be understood within the context of changed ministerial portfolios. Responsibility for the Plan, originally within a planning and environment portfolio, remained with Sue Essex on her moving to a new portfolio as Minister for Finance, Local Government and Public Services. The Plan was increasingly being seen either as a means of allocating financial resources to local authorities or other organisations, page_55

Page 56 or alternatively as a ‘Trojan horse’ for yet another round of structural reform of local government. A similar exercise was repeated later during each convention when area propositions rather than national propositions were scored and/or amended. The response to the different area propositions clearly varied with many detailed points raised. Of most interest here are those comments made on the depiction and characterisation of different areas within Wales. Some of the messages and responses expressed concern that the areas defined in the Plan did not reflect a functional, internally related area or that the character of the area had been misrepresented or not appropriately captured. Many comments also refer to the diversity that exists within the defined areas and that this had not been captured in defining certain places and their principal roles and trajectories. Importantly, the summary report of the conventions states that ‘most [area propositions] require some re-wording to secure the necessary support across different stakeholders’ (WAG 2004c: 34). This comment emphasises the extent to which the consultation exercise and the revisions to the Plan were focused on securing consensus with stakeholders. It is clear that the Plan itself, as well as the consultation processes involved in preparing it, has been centrally concerned with trying to secure consensus on a suite of policies, propositions and priorities among a wide range of stakeholders. The Plan may be interpreted as a vehicle for engaging stakeholders and securing their ‘buy-in’ to a collective agenda for Wales and its constituent parts. The Assembly has, in comparison with other, similar national policy statements, put a significant effort into trying to fashion a common agenda to work towards. Cer-tainly, most of the published material on the consultation process indicates that the Plan’s content has been based not so much on a testing of evidence as on whether a wide range of stakeholders were able to sign up to it. This point further emphasises the extent to which the Plan itself had moved on from being a ‘techni-cal’ form of document allied closely to the land use planning system. Perceived role of ‘planners’: the planner as facilitator of dialogue and broker of consensus The preceding section has made clear the significance of dialogue and consensus as elements in the engagement of stakeholders. The role of ‘planners’ in this process is very much influenced by this. This role corresponds very closely to the post-structuralist form of planning outlined in Chapter 1, with planners having a clear role in exploring shared or common understandings of places and seeking to carve out some consensus on the role of particular areas of Wales. So, some of the more traditional roles of planners within a positivist tradition – characterised in Chapter 1 as prediction, control and ordering – have not featured especially highly within the preparation of the Wales Spatial Plan. Likewise, the emphasis on page_56 Page 57 achieving consensus means that some of the potential roles for planners within a structuralist approach have not been developed either. Modes of implementation: elaborating the Plan through area working Like many similar spatial plans or strategies, the Wales Spatial Plan is not one that can readily be discussed in terms of implementation. In the Plan’s own words, it sets out a ‘direction of travel’ rather than a specific series of actions that could be implemented. As Faludi (2001) has discussed in relation to the European Spatial Development Perspective, the Wales Spatial Plan is a strategy that is ‘applied’ rather than implemented. The Plan’s essential function is the setting out of a common agenda for further application or elaboration. Indeed, the extended engagement and consultation process referred to above can be seen as an important part in the ‘application’ of the Plan. The Plan depends in large part on a wide range of organisations and stakeholders ‘buying in’ to the agenda as set out in the Plan. Healey (2004:45) reminds us that ‘strategic spatial planning efforts are demanding in terms of the institutional processes of their

articulation’. This is certainly the case in relation to the Wales Spatial Plan, which, in Healey’s terms, does a very significant amount of ‘institutional work’. Indeed, one possible interpretation of the document itself is that it is simply a convenient vehicle or tangible focus for the extensive work that takes place outside the Plan. Consequently, the fashioning of this shared agenda has an important role to play in the realisation of the Plan’s vision, aims and objectives. Nevertheless, concerns on how the Wales Spatial Plan will be implemented have been expressed at various stages in its evolution, including during the two-stage consultation exercises discussed in the preceding section. Indeed, the report following one of the key conventions states as one of its overall messages that ‘There should be increasing focus on how to make the Plan become an effective tool – through different mechanisms, but including area working among them’ (WAG 2004c: 34, original emphasis). The report went on to suggest that even the final, approved version of the Plan issued in November 2004 does not go very far in identifying how it will be implemented. Reference is made to area working as the principal mechanism for implementation of the Plan and this has been ongoing in each of the areas identified in the Plan since its publication. This area-working activity has been undertaken for each of the six areas and has progressed via a series of meetings with parallel ministerial and officer meetings (reflecting generally political and professional circles). The products of that work were emerging during early 2007, with the publication of Interim Statements. These statements are intended to signal the direction that the forthcoming ‘refresh’ of the Plan in autumn 2007 will take. Material available so far suggests a refinement of the propositions and actions for each area, as well page_57 Page 58 as a more detailed visual strategy identifying various places using the vocabulary of ‘hubs’ and ‘corridors’. The area work elaborates the initial strategy defined for each of the areas and signals the prospect of a more detailed Plan in its first ‘refresh’. Institutional structures and power relations The introductory sections to this chapter highlight some of the more important institutional changes that have occurred in Wales since 1998 with the advent of devolution. Key institutional relations – particularly those between the Welsh Assembly Government and local authorities – appear to be based very much on interdependence between levels of government. These structures and power relations further reinforce the approach to the Wales Spatial Plan, particularly the methods of engagement and the fostering of consensus. The Welsh Assembly Government has a key role to play as an initiator of the Wales Spatial Plan, as well as in relation to its capacity for directing financial and other resources to the various programmes that will support its objectives. However, it is very much dependent on local authorities as agents for the frontline delivery of plans, policies and programmes. The limited number of local authorities in Wales enables them to collaborate reasonably effectively via representative bodies, thereby strengthening their role in relation to the Welsh Assembly Government. This encourages the relationship of interdependence between levels of government and thereby inhibits the development of a formal, hierarchical system of governance relations. Nevertheless, the formal government sector is strong in Wales and, although there is a reasonably welldeveloped third sector within Wales (embracing various social, economic and environmental networks), the formal government dominates policy activities within Wales. Private sector interests, meanwhile, have been relatively underdeveloped in Wales as mentioned earlier. Summary: the strategy-making process in Wales The role of planners in the process of preparing the Wales Spatial Plan has diminished as the process has unfolded and as corporate and strategic policymakers have assumed responsibility for the Plan. In parallel to this, the various skills engaged in the process have changed. The Plan has become significantly less reliant on the technical skills of econometric modelling, GIS data collection and analysis and instead come to privilege skills in policy formation, stakeholder involvement, facilitation and, importantly, consensus building. As Healey (2007:244) identifies in relation to other case studies, planners are doing more ‘talking’ and less formal analysis. Skills in evaluation, rationalisation and argumentation

page_58 Page 59 have also become less important as the fostering of consensus and the securing of stakeholder support have been prioritised (see Table 2.1). However, there are some instances that provide an insight into knowledge differences. This has most clearly been represented in responses where local actors have found it difficult to identify with or make sense of how areas have been defined. Hence, they have challenged the interpretation and understanding developed for such areas at the national level. The process, as highlighted, is one focused on the development of consensus and this has become a strong feature of the Plan in its later stages of development. Several formal opportunities have been provided at different stages to shape the approach to the plan and its content. Use has been made of national and area-based workshops in which the public and voluntary sectors have played the most significant part, and these have again emphasised the development of consensus. The possible modes of implementation of the Plan have not been very clearly stated in formal terms. There are, of course, various means by which the Plan could be implemented, including through influencing the allocation of resources and funding. However, this has, as noted, prompted some caution and has not been very clearly supported in consultation workshops. The mode of implementation to date has been through collaborative working within the individual areas identified in the Plan and working to the agenda outlined in it. In terms of governance and power relations, the process by which the Plan has been prepared suggests several points. First, the consensual approach reflects the dependence of the Assembly on a wide range of other stakeholders for implementation of its programme and policies. In comparison with national planning policies within the framework of the statutory planning system, there are no real mechanisms for ensuring policy compliance with the Wales Spatial Plan, such as in the form of reserve powers or appeal processes. The policies and propositions contained in the Wales Spatial Plan have no ‘enforcement’ mechanisms and, until such time as the contents of the Plan are linked to some direct funding provisions, it is not clear how the Plan will come to be affected. Second, the process highlights some issues around the political remit of different levels of government in Wales. This manifests itself in debates about how to address issues and matters that are not of national significance, but nevertheless impact on several local authorities. Local authorities and their national representative body, the Welsh Local Government Association, will argue that it is for local authorities themselves to determine their own priorities for their areas, rather than have an agenda imposed on them by the Assembly. This political tension between the Assembly and local authorities places significant restrictions on what a spatial strategy in the Welsh context could be. In particular, it constrains how specific the Wales Spatial Plan can be in setting out areas of growth and restraint, for example. page_59 Page 60 Table 2.1 Key stages in the strategy-making process for the Wales Spatial Plan, 2000–2007

Stage

Date

Securing political May 1999 commitment and development of a research and evidence base Spring 2000

Key actions and issues The National Assembly for Wales assumes responsibility for all devolved matters A research report commissioned from consult ants is published, titled Land Use Planning Spatial Implications . The Assembly subsequently establishes a Wales Planning Research Programme with three overarching themes, one of which is ‘spatial planning’

Autumn 2000

The Government of the National Assembly for Wales includes a commitment in its corporate plan, www.betterwales.com, to prepare a National Spatial Planning Framework by March 2003

Spring 2001

The Assembly publishes a commissioned research report focusing on a possible approach to the preparation of the National Spatial Planning Framework

Pre-consultation phase and evolving scope and status of the Plan

September The Assembly issues a consultation document titled Wales Spatial Plan: 2001 Pathway to Sustainable Development. The document revises an already ambitious schedule and proposes that the Plan be completed by December 2002. The Assembly proceeds and publishes a further discussion paper –Wales Spatial Planning Framework: Key Challenges for Wales

Consultation

October 2003

A consultation draft ofPeople, Places, Futures. The Wales Spatial Plan is issued for consultation. It is supplemented by a first stage consultation exercise of 8 area-based participative events across the different ‘areas’ of Wales during late 2003 and early 2004

July 2004 A second stage consultation exercise is undertaken and comprises two ‘conventions’ in north and south Wales September The key messages from the conventions are reported and published making 2004 recommendations on which of the propositions in the consultation exercise require amendment Approval, implementation and review

November The first version of People, Places, Futures. The Wales Spatial Plan is 2004 published in its approved form. The document establishes an outline timetable for further work. This includes the development of indicators and monitoringmechanisms during 2005–6 and a ‘refresh’ of the Plan in 2007 2005–6

The Plan progresses through each of the six geographic ‘areas’ identified in the Wales Spatial Plan. An Assembly Government Cabinet Minister leads in each of the areas, with work progressed via parallel ministerial and officermeetings

Spring 2007

Interim statements issued, highlighting progress in each of the areas of the Wales Spatial Plan and incorporating more detailed ‘strategy’ diagrams. Work is said to be indicative of forthcoming ‘refresh’ of the Wales Spatial Plan due in autumn 2007 page_60

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Constructing the territory: analysing the content of the Wales Spatial Plan

Introduction and contextualisation In this section of the chapter, the approved version of the Wales Spatial Plan (WAG 2004a) is interpreted according to the conceptual framework established in Chapter 1. The analysis and interpretation of the Plan makes clear the strong effects on the content of the Plan of traditional planning concepts and approaches. In the following section, we explore how such concepts and approaches are reinforced by some of the political and organisational context for the preparation of the Plan, especially in respect of devolution in Wales. Yet we also draw out some of the tensions within the Plan that this gives rise to, most notably in relation to interweaving identity and cultural issues with objective materialisation of the Welsh territory. Interpretation of spatiality, conceptions of place and spatial organisation principles The Wales Spatial Plan, as a new form of public policy in Wales, provides within its pages an early discussion of the case for spatial planning and what it can contribute to the wider development and implementation of policy making in Wales. In making the case for spatial planning, the initial chapter points out that one of the tasks of spatial planning is ensuring that ‘there is co-ordination of investment and services through understanding the roles and interactions between places’ (WAG 2004a: 5). Places appear to be conceived here as bounded, self-contained locales interacting in a quasi-physical way, suggesting that remnants of a positivist conception of space remain influential in the plan’s overall approach and its underlying spatiality. This is further evident in the way in which the Plan defines its objects of intervention and consideration. The Plan clearly considers ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ as specific categories of different ‘types’ of place or domains, although there is recognition of the interrelationships between these, particularly in reference to key settlements within areas and the relationship to their hinterlands. The Plan also refers to several other spatial ‘units’, including ‘networked regions’ and ‘urban networks’, with implicit recognition of the interactions between places – yet there is a limited sense in which the Plan conveys these networks as highly fluid and evolving, with variable reach beyond the immediate geographic limits of a region. The plan’s challenge – as identified in the opening discussion – is the ever-increasing volatility of the context of places, and the complexity and density of interactions between them. What does not emerge is a notion that these places are constituted by the superimposition of relational webs each with its own page_61 Page 62 spatiality, or the idea of places as in a constant process of becoming. On the contrary, in relation to the latter notion, the Plan emphasises the importance of existing community identities and senses of place (WAG 2004a: 9, 33). The challenge appears to be to retain essential characteristics that already exist while managing the change which accompanies a respectful and open welcome to new residents. Similarly, in dealing with material on demographic change, the Plan addresses what might be termed ‘place effects’ – that is, it frequently focuses on outcomes and effects in particular places at particular times. It does not always adequately profile the reasons or causes of the underlying patterns of activity that give rise to these effects. This conveys and reinforces a sense of a ‘static’ plan, rather than one addressing ‘flows’ of activities between and across places. There are occasional hints of a break with the Euclidean and positivist conception of space, for example in the discussion of environment (WAG 2004a: 23). This identifies the complex spatial climatic relationships as significant factors in defining the environmental challenge facing Wales, with links recognised ‘to other parts of the world’ (WAG 2004a: 23). On the other hand, the potential of this shift is not really worked through in relation to other environmental issues. For example, the future of protected areas has an implicit emphasis on the significance of boundaries, and the interactions of places either side of those boundaries. The positivist understanding of space and place that is embedded in the Plan subsequently shapes the approach to intervening in the management of those places. For example, the Plan promotes a strong sense of the capacity to ‘order’ space in the manner of traditional planning approaches. This is most clearly evident in the Plan’s treatment of sustainable accessibility, one of the Plan’s key themes, which is predicated on ‘setting out a clear planning hierarchy for the location of public services’ (WAG 2004a: 29). Similarly, the

Plan often conveys the idea that physically proximate places can be developed in a relationship of complementary functions, particularly in terms of the provision of different services. At a more strategic level beyond Wales, there is clear representation in the Plan of how space and place are constituted through the identification of key physical relationships, with a focus on ‘the relationship between Wales and its immediate neighbours in the United Kingdom and Ireland’ (WAG 2004a: 6). This is continued throughout the plan with the privileging of relationships with immediate neighbouring areas and regions. There is a recognition in the Plan that ‘Our lives and social networks, environmental assets and transport infrastructure, do not stop at the Welsh bor-der’ (WAG 2004a: 37) – and in relation to housing markets ‘the border is entirely irrelevant’ – yet the Plan does not provide any great consideration of relationships that may extend well beyond immediately neighbouring areas. The text of the Plan, complemented by its selected images and graphic representations, might be expected to reveal the underlying principles on the organisation of space or the Welsh territory. The apparent conservatism of the Plan page_62 Page 63 in ‘sustaining’ existing communities in Wales has already been referred to. This may explain in part why the Wales Spatial Plan depends relatively little on using what is rapidly becoming an accepted spatial planning vocabulary. This emerging vocabulary of spatial planning – developed to assist with conveying spatial organising principles and ideas – will be recognisable to those people familiar with the suite of spatial strategies being advanced across Europe. Terms such as hub, spoke, gateway, corridor, link, network, connectivity, polycentrism and so on do not appear so frequently or centrally in the Wales Spatial Plan as they do in some of the other strategies prepared in other European countries. Such terms do appear in the Plan, with hub and corridor in use occasionally, although the Plan is otherwise expressed throughout in relatively simple and straightforward language. Its avoidance of excessive use of this spatial planning vocabulary means that the spatial planning concepts embedded in the Plan are not so obviously expressed. In fact, it can be quite difficult to discern what central spatial organising principles underpin the Plan. Nevertheless, one of the principles embedded in the Plan is that of ‘spreading prosperity’. There are various references in the plan to the relatively ill-defined objective of ‘spreading prosperity’ or ‘spreading development’ to particular areas, although expression of this objective as spreading prosperity to less welloff areas (WAG 2004a: 8) suggests that it has clear spatial dimension. This objective of spreading prosperity is often asserted to be capable of being delivered by ensuring improved physical connections between affluent or successful localities and less well-off areas (WAG 2004a: 41), rather than through more overtly redistributive policies. However, there is very little direct reference to the concept of ‘balanced regional development’ in the manner in which it is referred to in other documents, including the European Spatial Development Perspective, and the objective of spreading prosperity does not readily translate to the spatial principle of polycentricity. Where concepts similar to balanced regional development are addressed, as in the National Spatial Strategy for Ireland, they are interpreted more in terms of the realisation of each area’s potential rather than in explicitly redistributive terms (Walsh 2002b; Davoudi and Wishardt 2005). The Plan conveys a strong notion that each area identified in the Plan has a latent or intrinsic ‘potential’ that needs to be realised or unlocked by concerted policy action. Conception of the future and of time The Wales Spatial Plan expresses a fairly straightforward linear time-geography. This is most evident in its metaphorical expression of establishing ‘a direction of travel’, and is further expressed in its use of the terms ‘where we are now’ and ‘where we want to go’, with its implicit understanding of discovering how we get from ‘here’ to ‘there’. The travelling metaphor hints at degrees of uncertainty page_63 Page 64

over what the future may hold, as does the establishment of a ‘direction of travel’. Nevertheless, it does imply that a particular, linear trajectory is capable of being effected through policy intervention, and the published strategy looks forward to a time horizon of twenty years. The Plan itself is called a reflection of ‘our desire to prepare for the future’ and the fact that ‘we have to look forwards in time and outwards’ (WAG 2004a: 4). The future is largely depicted in the Wales Spatial Plan as something that presents a series of ‘challenges’ that will need to be addressed collectively by stakeholders if a certain development trajectory is to be maintained. In several cases, the content of the Plan formulates the future as a ‘shared’ or ‘collective’ one, such as in the case of environmental resources being preserved as ‘the foundations for our future’ (WAG 2004a: 23). Frequently, the Plan proposes ‘sustaining’ the qualities of places in the face of these challenges, in terms of environmental quality, culture, identity or other facets of their ‘distinctiveness’. Yet the Plan does not express ‘the future’ in a way that recognises it as replete with uncertainties, or capable of unfolding in markedly different ways. Instead, the Plan exhibits some confidence in what the future entails and that its challenges can be anticipated and responded to. Earlier stages in the preparation of the Plan did involve the exploration of a series of different spatial scenarios, again suggesting that certain elements of different futures may be anticipated, even if it is not known which of those futures may come to bear. The Plan’s measured uncertainty about the future is based on an implicit acknowledgment of the complexity of the variables that affect the country’s future and the limited capacity of government to influence all of them, rather than a post-modernist conception of planning. Far from being post-modernist, the Plan’s positivist thread displays itself quite prominently in the forceful discussion of the purpose of the Plan, such as ‘to prepare for the future’ (WAG 2004a: 4), and the focus on specific action points in relation to both themes and sub-regions of Wales. However, there is some indication that not only is the future something to respond to, but actors in Wales are capable of ‘using our knowledge to shape the future’ (WAG 2004a: 4), and that the response to these challenges will in some way determine the longer-term future (WAG 2004a: 9). Throughout, the Plan conveys in tone and word the impression that it amounts to a serious, evidence-based attempt to shape the future of the country; and one with every chance of achieving a significant proportion of its objectives. Visualisation and representation Some of the more important aspects of diagrammatic representation that relate specifically to the issue of representation of a particular scale have been discussed in earlier sections. It is clear that two-dimensional maps are particularly page_64 Page 65 significant within the Wales Spatial Plan’s representation, yet they are not the only means of illustrating the contents of the Plan and its key messages. The Plan makes only very limited use of icons or any other form of infographics, yet it does make generous use of photographic images in illustrating the Plan. These could be interpreted as simply making the Plan user-friendly and attractive to a wider range of audiences. Certainly, they help the Plan to appear as something more than a technical and rather dry policy document. However, further consideration of the images that are used in the Plan suggests that their use is more than incidental. The photographic images used include those of children, the elderly and ethnic minorities, as well as images of landscapes, iconic structures, industry, technology and transport. In addition, recycling and sustainable building design are also featured in photographs. Anyone broadly acquainted with the Welsh Assembly Government’s policies and priorities since devolution will recognise that these images resonate very closely with that policy agenda. The photographic images included in the Plan therefore appear to have been selected specifically to resonate with the Assembly’s wider policy agenda. This is in line with the conception of spatial planning alluded to earlier: spatial policy as a tool for securing coherence in policy delivery. The gallery of policy-related photographs underlines the role of the plan as a coordinating and distributive mechanism within a polity in which sub-regional suspicions and divisions are of long standing. The style of text used in the Plan is very much influenced by the consensual approach to the formulation of the Plan as described in earlier sections of the paper. The consultation stages in preparing the Plan were

focused to a large extent on whether stakeholders felt able to support certain visions and propositions for both Wales and individual areas. Indeed, the mode of consultation invited various minor amendments to the wording and phrasing of propositions in order to secure as wide a support and consensus as was possible. It is not surprising, therefore, to find the text has a collective sense of expression to it. The Plan’s text does not rely on conveying a robust and evidence-based argument as a means of achieving its ‘persuasive capacity’. It does not depend on the power of argument as a means to securing influence. Instead, the Plan appeals to a very broad consensus of challenges facing stakeholders in common. This might be captured in stating that the Plan aims to ‘carry’ stakeholders with it rather than simply influence and persuade them. In doing this, key terms and values invoked by the Plan include community, environment/landscape and the importance of the place of residence/‘fro’ – all of which tie in closely to widely held and necessarily ambiguous conceptions and myths of Welshness (Rees 1997; Gruffydd 1999). This is exhibited, for example, in the statement: ‘A strong sense of place is evident throughout Welsh communities’ (WAG 2004a: 33). This perspective is followed through into the way the economic characteristic of contemporary page_65 Page 66 Wales is portrayed. Central to this, according to the Plan, remains the continuing need for ‘modernisation’, as it has been for most of the twentieth century (Rees and Lambert 1981). Understanding of scale The scale represented in the Wales Spatial Plan is particularly significant in the context of devolution. It clearly focuses in diagrammatic form almost exclusively on a single spatial scale – a scale that aligns with the political and administrative boundaries of Wales. Practically all mapped illustrative materials are of Wales, with the only exception being a popular photographic image illustrating the Euro-pean territory. Analysing the Plan in terms of its representation of scale makes it absolutely clear that the document is a Wales-focused document. The Plan and the messages it conveys on scale support the notion of the Wales Spatial Plan as a project in the elaboration of an internalised territory. This is particularly visible in the desire to make progressive improvements to links between north and south Wales, improvements ‘which are important for connecting Wales as a country’ (WAG 2004a: 30). The coherence and internal accessibility of an area is clearly considered a relevant issue in terms of effective status as ‘a country’. There is no diagrammatic ‘positioning’ of the Welsh territory within the geographic context of either the United Kingdom or the European Union. Interestingly, there is a simple diagrammatic representation of Wales against a global backcloth. This communicates certain limited messages and is of particular interest in its distortion of scale. Once again, it serves to put the emphasis on Wales as the significant scale framing the preparation of the Plan. The emphasis on a singular scale, at least diagrammatically, continues with a lack of further depiction of the internal characteristics of the different areas of Wales that are defined rather loosely or fuzzily. So, while the Plan defines six different areas within Wales for the purposes of establishing a shared vision and a series of priorities, it does not represent these as a scale in their own right. The treatment of scale within the text of the Wales Spatial Plan is more sophisticated than it is in its diagrams and illustrations. The text recognises some of the interdependencies that exist between parts of Wales and the neighbouring regions of England and across the Irish Sea to Eire and Northern Ireland. The significance of other parts of the UK, such as London and the south-east of England, are also recognised. Some consideration of European influences is also to be found in the text, although these are rather underdeveloped and fuller consideration of European spatial policies is relegated to an annex. There is, however, some sense of internal hierarchy within Wales. Yet, by comparing the spatial visions expressed in the consultation and approved versions of the Plan (see Plate 1), it is clear that the notion of a hierarchy of settlements has page_66

Page 67 been significantly weakened in the process of finalising the Plan. The consultation draft identified a threetier hierarchy of settlements, portraying the capital, Cardiff, as well as a network of national centres in south and north-east Wales and a wider network of regional centres throughout Wales. The final, approved version of the Plan simply reduced this to a singular annotation of key centres across Wales. The only settlement to be differentiated remains Cardiff as Wales’s capital city, although this too is rather understated in the illustration and is not referred to in the key. The identification of key centres or national and regional centres does extend in both the consultation and approved versions to include significant centres in the neighbouring regions of England. This identification of ‘significant centres’ and the settlement hierarchy raises a further, related scale issue concerning the size and pattern of settlements across parts of Wales. The Plan connects successful economic outcomes positively with the size of settlements (WAG 2004a: 18) and aims to facilitate larger economic areas through the promotion of ‘networked regions’ (WAG 2004a: 29). This hints at consideration of ‘regions’ within Wales, a term that appears to have been avoided in many parts of the Plan, most notably in referring to internal areas within Wales simply as ‘areas’ as opposed to ‘regions’. This particular interpretation of scale also features in the Plan’s address of south-east Wales, an area defined in the Plan as ‘The Capital Network’. This area’s vision is painted as one that sees the area competing internationally by increasing its global visibility – with the intention of becoming ‘international yet distinctively Welsh’ (WAG 2004a: 49). The question of attaining a ‘critical mass’ of both population and activity is seen as central to attaining the vision set out for this particular area of Wales. The intention is that ‘the area will function as a single networked city-region on a scale to realise its international potential’ (WAG 2004a: 51). Summary: analysis of the content of the Wales Spatial Plan The preceding analysis of the content of the Wales Spatial Plan demonstrates a spatial strategy that retains very strong positivist tendencies, yet one that also exhibits some dimensions of post-structuralist or postmodern understanding. The essentially positivist character of the Plan is most clearly evident in the portrayal of places as bounded, largely fixed, and with emphasis placed on adjacency, proximity and distance decay effects. Nevertheless, its parallel emphasis on borders and boundaries in some instances, alongside indication of fuzzy boundaries to internal areas, suggest that the Plan does to some extent reflect relational conceptions of space and place. The Plan certainly falls short of a fragmented or splintered approach to understanding space and place (although see Plate 2 page_67 Page 68 from the consultation draft of the Wales Spatial Plan). However, there are underdeveloped yet important references to flows of activities and relations with more distant places. Its reliance on defining ‘areas’ of Wales as particular spatial ‘units’, as particular ‘places’, demonstrates an adherence to more traditional concepts, whereas its emergent practice in starting to construct ‘images’ of place qualities suggests some limited relational character to the Plan. On the materiality of the Plan, there are again some relational dimensions especially in respect of identity and culture, yet these are ultimately pulled back by strong, objective materialisation of places and the wider territory. The conception of the future and of time that is embedded in the Plan again exhibits positivist rather than post-modern tendencies. This is to be found in the measured confidence with which future challenges can be addressed collectively via concerted action, utilising the Plan as a vehicle for doing so. The Plan’s linear time-geography, as well as its premise of being able to spread increasing prosperity, shows its basis in traditional conceptions of development. Although challenges to a continuing growth and development trajectory are acknowledged, these are primarily framed as resolvable. In terms of visualisation and representation, the Plan relies on some fairly traditional representational forms, most notably on map-based illustration complemented by other image forms. The ‘spatial vision’ diagram itself, with its ‘fuzzy’ boundaries, hints at a recognition of a relational form of planning. However, the map-based visualisa-tions in particular reinforce key issues of scale in representing place and space. In relation to scale, the Wales Spatial Plan appears to be very firmly embedded in traditional conceptions of space and place, particularly in its representation of a dominant, national scale

and its implied hierarchy of settlements within the territory.

Conclusion: strategy-making in a devolved context An interesting observation emerges in bringing together the preceding sections addressing the process of preparing the Wales Spatial Plan and a reading of its content through the conceptual framework established in Chapter 1. The process of preparing the Wales Spatial Plan displays many of the qualities of spatial strategy making that are attributed to post-modern and post-structuralist approaches. The emphasis on achieving or seeking consensus, developing shared notions of place, and the integration of expert and experiential knowledge all point towards a characteristically post-modern process of strategy making. This stands in apparent contrast with the content of the Wales Spatial Plan, the analysis of which demonstrates the continuing force of positivism in framing spatial planning activity. The bounded, objective understanding of places and the emphasis on adjacency, page_68 Page 69 proximity and distance as primary factors in establishing relationships between places make clear the Plan’s dependence largely, but not exclusively, on ‘tradi-tional’ approaches. The interesting question is: what might explain this apparent co-existence of a post-modern process and positivist content? One possible explanation for this is to be found in an understanding of the political, economic and social context of Wales as outlined in an earlier section of the chapter. Healey (2004:47) argues that ‘The new relational geography also challenges notions of inherently coherent, integrated “territory-based” systems of relations’. Yet, as we have argued through our analysis of the Wales Spatial Plan, devolution and the project of ‘constructing the nation’ establish countervailing forces. That is, devolved governance actively promotes the establishment and reinforcement of a coherent, integrated territory. Emphasis is placed on internal connectivity and the ability to travel from one point within the territory to other points, rather than connecting with or recognising the complexity of interactions with different territories. Tensions between traditional and relational geographies should therefore be expected in the context of spatial strategy making in devolved contexts such as Wales. Spatial strategies of this kind may, then, focus on the carving out of a particular territory as the significant unit and then differentiating within it, with external factors recognised but perhaps played down in their significance. Yet, at the same time, the creation of a devolved political institution is premised on being ‘closer’ to its citizens and capable of being more responsive to their needs and interests. This fosters a culture of collaboration and consensus, and reveals itself in the process of preparing the Wales Spatial Plan. So, one possible explanation for the apparent juxtaposition of different conceptual foundations to the Plan is based firmly within the context of political devolution. However, a different explanation – and one that would need to be evaluated against other contributions in this volume – is that post-modern or relational practices are simply more difficult to articulate in the production of spatial strategies. Expressed differently, the practice of spatial strategy making has embraced post-modern sensibilities in terms of processes of engagement, fostering of consensus and inclusive practices, and has done so with relative ease – yet spatial strategy-makers have not been equipped with the vocabulary or understanding with which to express relational or post-modern ideas. The challenge facing both academic and practice communities is to assist with the development of the means for articulating the relational strategy in practical terms. page_69 Page 70 This page intentionally left blank. page_70 Page 71

CHAPTER 3 IDENTITY AND TERRITORY The creation of a national planning framework for Scotland Greg Lloyd and Graeme Purves

Introduction In 2004, the Scottish Executive published its first national spatial strategy – the National Planning Framework – as part of a deliberate programme of modernising the spirit and purpose of the statutory land use planning system in Scotland (Scottish Executive 2004a). In practice, the National Planning Framework is inextricably bound up with devolution and the creation of the Scottish Parliament and a Scottish Executive (now the Scottish Government). These institutions have distinctive legislative and tax powers which differ in breadth from those prevailing elsewhere in the devolved UK (McNaughton 1998). Devolution has fundamentally changed Scotland’s constitutional, political and institutional position and reflects, to some extent, the influence of a modern political movement which had progressively campaigned for greater relative autonomy for Scotland within the UK unitary state (Mitchell 1996; Ritchie 2000). Devolution has further changed the political and institutional context for policy making in Scotland and has allowed an opportunity for the devolved state to articulate its own distinctiveness in terms of planning and governance. The National Planning Framework may be considered totemic in these processes of change and thinking. It is significant that the (then) Scottish Executive gave early priority to addressing what were held to be distinctively Scottish issues, many of which revolved around different facets of the land question. This was not surprising given the iconic status of land, its tenure and ownership and control in Scotland’s history and cultural identity (Wightman 1999). Thus, as a consequence, land reform was given legislative effect in order to overcome the perceived rigidities and inefficiencies of prevailing feudal tenures and obligations. These were held to inhibit efficient land development and property investment and were not considered appropriate to a modern economy. In addition, Scotland’s first national parks were put in place in order to promote sustainable environmental and social development agendas in the designated areas (McCarthy et al . 2002). This was viewed as redressing a long-standing deficit in Scotland’s overall rural resource management. Moreover, page_71 Page 72 particular attention was paid to the regulation of specific developments which were held to generate significant local environmental and social concerns. This resulted in statutory land use planning controls being extended to the roll-out of mobile telephony infrastructure (Walton 2002), and to offshore marine aquaculture development (Lloyd and Peel 2006). A devolved Scotland has therefore sought to devise appropriate ways to deal with its distinctive planning and development agendas. In this context, the National Planning Framework represents a particular interpretation of spatial planning thinking and practice, which reflects a greater awareness of the need to facilitate a strategic dimension in planning and governance. In particular, the National Planning Framework must be located as part of a searching modernisation of land use planning. This itself nests neatly in the initial political agenda set in place to consider the Scottish land question. Fol-lowing Ascherson’s (2002) exploration of Scotland’s cultural history and identity, however, this chapter argues that the National Planning Framework draws heavily on earlier Scottish strategic planning traditions, whilst asserting a new planning and governance agenda to meet contemporary and anticipated developmental conditions. The chapter is based on insights drawn from the authors’ professional engagement in the preparation of the National Planning Framework (Purves 2006), and from applied research carried out into the changing nature of strategic planning in Scotland (Lloyd 1999), together with contemporary agendas of public policy reform and the introduction of spatial planning

in a devolved Scotland (Lloyd and Peel 2005, 2006; Peel and Lloyd 2006). The chapter is informed also by active collaborative working at different stages in the preparation of the National Planning Framework, and direct participation and engagement with the scrutiny processes of the nascent planning legislation which was conducted by the Scottish Parliament. This chapter examines the conceptions of space and place that underpin the preparation, aspirations and continuing evolution of the National Planning Framework in Scotland. Specifically, by drawing on the conceptual framework developed in Chapter 1, it explores the ways in which space and place are articulated, presented and visualised in the Framework. It argues that the preparation of the National Planning Framework represents an instrumental process to reach consensus through extensive consultation on the perceived weaknesses in land use planning practices, and to justify the introduction of a new national strategic planning framework. This was based on clearly stated political ambitions relating to securing economic growth and development, and to achieving the more efficient, effective and open administration of governance. The content of the National Planning Framework rests on a relatively traditional, positivist interpretation of space, place and time. In effect, the National Planning Framework carries page_72 Page 73 with it a powerful tradition of strategic planning engagement and an acknowledgement that direct action is required to devise a new planning system that meets the perceived needs of a devolved Scotland. Furthermore, the National Planning Framework is part of a shift to secure technocratic gains in the administration of the planning system, whilst creating greater consistency and certainty for decision-makers. Yet this is being crafted within a new form of governance and polity.

Political economy contexts Scotland’s economic history has involved a complex of industrialisation and urbanisation processes, and associated and wide-ranging demographic movements between east and west, highland and lowland and its rural and urban areas (Whatley 1997, 2006). Economic growth and development, industrial and corporate changes and population shifts have contributed to a distinctive spatial frame with, as a consequence, clear divisions between the constituent geographies of Scotland. These reflect the differentiated experiences including the postindustrial economic restructuring in Glasgow and Dundee, the concentrated North Sea oil and gas-related growth in and around Aberdeen, and the continuing concentration of economic, financial and political power in Edinburgh. The fortunes of the more recent cities such as Stirling and Inverness have changed, reflecting their positions in their respective regional economies. The hinterlands of the cities have undergone extensive physical land and property development pressures. Rural Scotland, including its remoter territories, has also experienced pressures through restructuring and has created a need for measures to promote economic well-being and community stability (Danson 1997). In particular, throughout the post-war period, Scotland experienced powerful processes of industrial and corporate restructuring, which have been driven by the escalating influences of globalisation and neoliberalism, and which have been mediated and facilitated through changing state–market–civil responses. These have led to long-term economic restructuring and, in common with many other economically advanced nations and regions, Scotland has experienced endemic decline in its primary and manufacturing industries and a concomitant growth in its service sector (Danson 1997). Manufacturing is strongly exportoriented and accounts for around 20 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). The economy has clear strengths in tourism, financial services, electronics, whisky, oil and gas. GDP per head is 115 per cent of the EU average. Scotland’s relative economic performance has lagged behind most successful European economies, particularly with respect to rates of unemployment, investment, new firm formation and economic growth (Purves 2006). page_73

Page 74 These restructuring processes have been evident for some time, and are reflected in a range of economic, social and community well-being indicators. Recent studies of the Scottish economy suggest that although it exhibits a relatively strong labour market it is weakened by low productivity to the extent that it achieves only a ‘middling’ growth performance by international standards (Ash-croft and Bell 2007). Here, the specific characteristics of its spatial economy, the contrast between highland and lowland Scotland, the particulars of its urban–rural morphologies, inherited settlement patterns and transportation networks, and the changing housing and labour market relations around its principal cities and city-regions assume considerable significance in devising appropriate planning and governance arrangements. Prior to devolution, the management of Scotland’s regional economic performance was articulated at two scales: Westminster and the (then) Scottish Office. Westminster put in place UK-wide policies to support regional industrial assistance (Tomlinson 2005), and Scotland was managed within this national territorial context. Regional policy was intended to encourage a more effective balance between labour demand and supply in Scotland by influencing both capital and labour mobility. Yet, over and above this, Scotland sought to devise its own distinctive responses to its specific economic and social conditions. The Scot-tish Office, for example, created a regional development agency to address the particular economic and social conditions in the remoter Highlands and Islands (Danson et al . 1993). This initiative was subsequently supplemented by a development agency for the lowland economies. These agency networks remain to the present and promote a distinctive approach to regional strategic planning which is sensitive to prevailing conditions in the different localities. Moreover, urban regeneration initiatives were devised to address particular points of economic and social crisis, and these were orchestrated through local development partnerships (McCarthy 2007). Significantly, these customised measures which were taken to address the relatively uneven performance of the Scottish economy and its constituent parts did not amount to an overall strategic planning frame of reference at a national level. There was no single, over-arching national plan or strategy yet there is evidence of an active search for devising a strategic framework (Rowan-Robinson 1997). In the late 1940s, for example, three major post-war regional plans were undertaken to guide post-war reconstruction, slum clearance and the development of new economic opportunities (Wannop 1986). An unsuccessful attempt was made to draw these together as the first stage in the development of a national plan (Purves 2006). Further attempts were made in the 1960s around the emerging regional plans, but again this did not result in a coherent national strategic planning framework (Purves 2006). As a consequence, planning was articulated through individual and localised interventions. page_74 Page 75 In the early 1970s, however, a seminal intellectual case was made for the preparation of a national strategic indicative plan in order to deal with the emerging processes of corporate and industrial restructuring, the economic downturn in terms of unemployment and investment, and the infrastructure implications associated with the development of the offshore oil and gas industry (HMSO 1972). Tellingly, a powerful advocacy was made for a national indicative plan, to be drawn up in close collaboration with all interested stakeholders. It was intended that this would set the strategic context for the then imminent preparation of the new structure plans. The key arguments rested on the perceived strategic benefits of such a national framework in coordinating sub-national plans, facilitating investment and the provision of infrastructure, and encouraging land and property developments, and in promoting Scotland’s international competitiveness. Significantly, the proposed national planning framework would have proposed those specific development patterns justified by need in the national public interest, and would have been supported by central guidance as to the required land allocation policies (HMSO 1972). In the event, this radical proposal was overtaken by political events, and an alternative – the National Planning Guidelines – was put into place, albeit representing a much weaker form of selective strategic guidance focused principally on land use

issues (Rowan-Robinson et al . 1987). The National Planning Guidelines remain an important part of the overall land use planning apparatus in Scotland, but do not provide for comprehensive spatial economic management (Lloyd 1999). Nonetheless, this line of reasoning pointed to a case for a national strategic perspective to supplement local land use planning and to meet Scotland’s specific structural, locational and social conditions. This forms an important imperative in the processes of making, and the nature of the content of, the National Planning Framework.

The making of the National Planning Framework Devolution created an opportunity for critical reflection around the appropriate forms of planning and governance for the new polity. In effect, the responsibility for the key levers required for territorial management passed to the (then) Scottish Executive. Moreover, there was now considerable discretion afforded to Scotland in addressing the management of its territorial space. This is illustrated by the Partnership Agreement subsequently set out by the Scottish Executive (2003a). It reflected the political ambitions of the (then) prevailing coalition of the Scottish Labour Party and the Scottish Liberal Democrats. It asserted a Scotland ‘where enterprise can flourish, where opportunity does exist for all and our people and our country have confidence to face the challenges of a global society’. This asserted a strong economic agenda complemented by priorities relating to enabling skills page_75 Page 76 and education, sustainable development, community planning, social justice and inclusion, area regeneration and investment in transport infrastructure. Significantly, the Partnership Agreement made an explicit commitment to improving the land use planning system in order to strengthen the involvement of communities, to speed up decisions, to better reflect local views, and to allow for quicker and public sector investment decisions (Scottish Executive 2003a). This statement positioned the modernisation of land use planning at the centre of a much broader economic, social and environmental canvas. It also implied the need for a clear examination of what was required to create a modern land use planning system. This thinking was reflected in its economic strategy customised to Scottish conditions, which set out to promote the long-term growth of the Scottish economy, encourage private sector investment and business activity, support improved productivity and foster an enterprise culture (Peel and Lloyd 2005a). Within the devolved governance arrangements, attention was paid to the requirements of promoting sustainable economic development, and there was an emerging awareness of the spatial realities of the Scottish economy. It is important to acknowledge, however, that there is an established tradition of strategic planning in Scotland, which was a direct consequence of, and response to, its changing political economy. Importantly, the clear emphasis is economic in character. The National Planning Framework is also part of the related post-devolution process of modernising the public sector at large and attempts to secure the better integration of public services (Lloyd and Peel 2006). In addition to the economic imperative, and reflecting the political priorities of the Scottish Executive, there was an emphasis on promoting greater social cohesion through community planning and securing the better integrated delivery of local services (Audit Scotland 2006). The programme of public sector modernisation included the arrangements for land use planning as it was perceived to demonstrate a number of weaknesses in terms of its administrative performance, relevance and delivery. The National Planning Framework was clearly located in the immediate post-devolution agenda to devise distinctive arrangements for Scottish circumstances and ambitions. This was explicitly driven by economic considerations. Thus, the National Planning Framework was intended in part to address the perceived operational weaknesses and inefficiencies in existing land use planning practices. Importantly, it was to lay down the foundations for a more effective strategic context to local planning, to achieve technocratic and democratic efficiencies through a more consistent and certain framework for public and private sector decision making and investment, and to secure economic growth and development. Significantly, reform of land use planning was advocated as a central way of addressing these issues and of

more effectively securing intended planning page_76 Page 77 outcomes for a modern devolved Scotland (Peel and Lloyd 2006). Indeed, the modernisation of the land use planning system was seen as offering an important delivery mechanism within the broader raft of public sector reforms and policy developments for community planning and regeneration. Significantly, the modernisation process has sought to address a perceived strategic planning deficit at the national level. A national spatial framework was seen to be an appropriate mechanism for providing the necessary strategic direction. A case was made for a strategic framework for public and private sector decision-making taking place across Scotland, often in very different planning, infrastructure and property developmental circumstances. The National Planning Framework is the direct consequence of this line of reasoning – it is an assertion of strategic intent for land and property developments. Furthermore it offered a symbolic representation of the positive and proactive management of change. Current thinking, for example, both asserts a new identity for Scottish national planning practice (Scottish Executive 2007a) and presents a clear statement of its distinctive purposes in ensuring intended strategic and spatial outcomes in land use planning activities. The National Planning Framework captures, reflects and builds on ideas about spatial planning which are drawn primarily from European discourses and practices. Spatial planning is associated with the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), which has stimulated fresh thinking around the promotion of regional competitiveness, territorial cohesion, and sustainability, and places considerable emphasis on cooperation and coordination (Faludi and Waterhout 2002). In its original non-statutory form the National Planning Framework was described as a framework to guide the spatial development of Scotland to 2025 (Scottish Executive 2004a). Essentially, it set out a ‘vision’ of Scotland in which other public policy plans and programmes would share, and, importantly, which these parallel arrangements would engage with and inform. This reciprocity is important to the concept of national spatial strategic planning in Scotland. In this respect the National Planning Framework presented a perspective – reflecting the influence of European spatial planning – and was intended to guide public policy at large and to inform land use planning practice by local authorities. Although not designed to be a ‘prescriptive blue-print’ it was intended to serve a very important operational role in land use planning as a ‘material consideration’ (ibid.: 1) in framing local planning policy and in determining local planning applications and appeals. From this, it is clear that the National Planning Framework was intended to serve an important strategic purpose for guiding, informing and facilitating traditional land use planning practices and related land development activities. This diverse range of influences was reflected in the preparation of the National Planning Framework. It was generally ‘top-down’, being managed and facilitated page_77 Page 78 by the Scottish Executive. The impetus was around the perceived weaknesses of the existing statutory land use planning system, and the associated strategic planning deficit that was held to require addressing in the interests of the devolved state. This represents a positivist, managerialist response to the deployment of spatial planning ideas and practices within a broader modernisation programme. The political impetus was clearly set out, and land use planning was perceived as inhibiting the ability of the new devolved state to realise this largely economic development agenda, yet land use planning with a spatial planning injection was also perceived as a delivery mechanism for these new intentions. Notwithstanding this central imperative, however, thinking around the National Planning Framework drew on various constituencies of interest. Consultation was extensive, and representations were canvassed from

a wide cross-section of places and people. The early ideas around the National Planning Framework were driven by a powerful and articulate professional discourse which was seeking to set out the changed political ambitions of the Scottish Executive. This was sensitive to the needs of stakeholders in the relatively small Scottish planning and development community. Following the centralised arrangements, however, the consultation was managed by the Scottish Executive. This affirms the perceived importance of addressing the weaknesses in the existing land use planning arrangements. Knowledge and skills An important starting point may be identified as the very transition to devolution. In 1999, the (predevolution) Scottish Office asserted the importance of land use planning in the forthcoming devolved public policy agenda. This hints at the critique that planning required reform and change. Its starting point was that, like many other aspects of local and regional governance arrangements in Scotland, the legislative and policy provisions of planning would come under close scrutiny in the devolution process. Essentially, it considered that its ‘fitness for purpose’ would be critically examined at a time of considerable institutional change and political expectations (Scottish Office 1999). A Consultation Paper was published at this juncture, which represents an important trigger for the subsequent debates around the purpose and nature of planning in a devolved Scotland. The Consultation Paper noted that, although there was general acceptance of the need for land use planning to reconcile the conflicting interests of development and conservation in the wider public interest, it tended to under-perform in practice. This was held to be a consequence of fundamental contextual changes. This was a relatively traditional catalogue of contextual changes, which were reported in a positivist manner. These included the sustained pressure on land page_78 Page 79 arising from new household formation; increasing car ownership and emerging forms of property development; a growing recognition of global and local environmental issues; the increased public awareness of planning and emphasis on protecting individual rights; the changing role of local authorities from service providers to enablers; a growing separation of plan making and implementation; the enduring effects of local government reorganisation and the removal of regional councils; and the growing impact of European legislation (Scottish Office 1999). The Consultation Paper argued that, although these circumstances did not directly challenge the fundamental principles of the land use planning system, the evidence suggested that greater efficiencies in practice were required with respect to development plans, land use policies, and procedures. As a consequence, it argued that the land use planning system needed ‘sound management’ at all levels in order to secure efficiency, effectiveness and wider public support. This was an acknowledgement also of the need for scalar sensitivity in planning for Scotland’s territorial space. This represented a specific interpretation of the spirit and purpose of any reform to the land use planning system. In effect, the origins of the National Planning Framework drew not only on its historical influences but on positivist evidence relating to economic development and change, spatial divisions and the perceived need to provide a strategic form of territorial management. Reflecting these lines of reasoning the Consultation Paper suggested three working rules should be invoked to inform land use planning practice following devolution. First, the established relationships between national policy priority setting and the exercise of local autonomy by planning authorities would continue to hold. This would offer an opportunity for strategic policy to guide and inform local autonomy and decisionmaking discretion. Second, there would be a greater emphasis on the coordination of the public and private sectors, and partnership working would contribute to a more effective planning system. This rule reflected established partnership practice and joint working arrangements for planning purposes. Third, the principal focus of attention for the modernisation or reform of planning would be at the strategic policy level. This assertion of expected central–local working relations set the tone for the subsequent deliberations, consultations and intellectual developments in land use planning. The Consultation Paper was generally well received across Scotland, and may be taken as an important expression of support for the case for action to

address the perceived lack of effective strategic planning (Scottish Office 1999). This provided an important level of critical understanding of the needs of land use planning when given an opportunity to take assertive political action for change. This was at a time when territorial differences were becoming more evident, particularly at urban scales. Here, in considering what was required for an effective page_79 Page 80 planning system, Scotland was reflecting on its previous experiences, and was seeking to make good the evident deficits in strategic planning. Methods of engagement Following devolution, the focus on the strategic planning deficit was addressed in a Consultation Paper that proposed a comprehensive review of strategic planning in Scotland (Scottish Executive 2001a). The Consultation Paper embraced a wide interpretation of strategic matters. At the national level, for example, it considered the possible rationalisation of different elements of planning and the promotion of stakeholder involvement in strategic thinking, and asserted the importance of monitoring and reviewing national planning policy performance. In parallel, at the local land use planning level, it addressed a review of development plans, their geographical coverage, development management matters, and the needs of the national spatial economy. In particular, the four major cities, their city-regions and the rural spatial economy were considered in terms of the appropriate forms of development plan (Scottish Executive 2001a). The Consultation Paper reflected a clear awareness of Scotland’s differentiated geography, particularly with respect to the differing characteristics of the constituent local communities, and the variations in the scale and nature of economic development and land and property development pressures (Scottish Executive 2001a). This suggested a need for development plans to be relatively more flexible and ‘responsive’ to change, whilst offering ‘certainty’ and a clear direction. In short, there was a case for a strategic framework for the lower-tier development plans to operate. The Consultation Paper acknowledged a need to respect appropriate levels of competency for decision making, and an ability to reflect national strategic priorities when and where appropriate. The consultation exercise precipitated a number of priorities to be considered, including the role, form, content and procedures around development plans and the arrangements for enhanced public and stakeholder participation in the land use planning processes (Geoff Peart Consulting 2002). The technocratic and democratic dimensions were evident in this unfolding debate, and the potential role of the National Planning Framework in the modernisation of land use planning was clear. Following the initial post-devolution exercise, the Scottish Executive (2002a) published its intention to instigate a number of changes. These may be categorised into two strands of action. The first was to be an attempt to reform national strategic planning arrangements in Scotland – what was subsequently articulated as the National Planning Framework (Scottish Executive 2004a). The second was a systematic review of attempts to address the detailed arrangements for land use planning, to simplify what was perceived as an overly complex and poorly page_80 Page 81 understood public regulatory service, and to promote greater opportunities for civil engagement. The concern with securing greater efficiencies and effectiveness in land use planning on a number of fronts was accompanied by a concern to further democratise the system. The remainder of this section briefly outlines the broad chronology of planning reforms that accompanied the National Planning Framework itself, which have sustained the momentum of modernisation in Scotland. The various strands of research, Consultation Papers and debates provided a layering of the case for, the composition of, and the breadth of a modern land use planning system.

The development of thinking reflects the tension between technocratic ambitions and democratic aspirations in contemporary land use planning practice. This duality was clearly demonstrated in a scoping research study conducted for the Scottish Executive on the possible content of a new Planning Bill. The options included the commitments already set out by the Scottish Executive with respect to land use planning, spatial planning, city regional development, economic development and sustainable development; a number of practical issues that were identified in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill for England and Wales and which were considered relevant to Scotland; a review of the previous proposals for change in the land use planning system that had not yet been realised; environmental and sustainable development issues identified by the Royal Commission for Environmental Pollution; and options raised by a number of key stakeholders in the land and property development communities of interest (Rowan-Robinson 2003). The scoping study represented a pragmatic approach to anticipate change and reflect critical lessons from elsewhere, and a list of discrete proposals for consideration by the Scottish Executive. In effect, it precipitated a subsequent cascade of thinking and consultation around specific issues. It confirmed that the modernisation of land use planning was a wide-rang-ing exercise, and this contextualised the emergent thinking around the National Planning Framework. The deliberations of the scoping research were debated publicly as part of the democratic approach to effecting land use planning reform. This reflected a marked interest in addressing concerns about the transparency and accountability of processes of land use planning (Scottish Executive 2001b). This centred on improving the practical arrangements for enabling more active public participation, deploying more effective consultation methods and securing greater community engagement in every aspect of the land use planning process. Here, there was an integral element of securing a more efficient delivery of the land use planning service by ‘frontloading’ civil engagement. Supplementary research was undertaken for the Scottish Executive to better understand prevailing public perceptions of land use planning, as well as the available techniques to attract the page_81 Page 82 contemporary citizen to engage with land use planning (Jenkins et al . 2002). This resulted directly in the publication of a White Paper dealing with public involvement in land use planning (Scottish Executive, 2003b). In parallel, the Scottish Executive (2003c) issued another Consultation Paper setting out related proposals to improve the examination and approval processes of development plans. Perhaps inevitably, a critical focus on public involvement arrangements raised questions relating to the possible introduction of third party rights of appeal in different aspects of the planning process (Rowan-Robinson 2003). A consultation paper was subsequently published setting out the range of arguments associated with the possible introduction of the measure (Scottish Executive 2004b). In the event, the introduction of third party rights of appeal did not form part of the subsequent reform of the land use planning system, emphasis instead being placed on greater opportunities for public involvement in planning decision making, and a more explicit sensitivity to scale. Many of these themes were brought together in a subsequent Consultation Paper that examined the possible options for development plans (Scottish Execu-tive 2004c). This drew also on the discussions associated with local inquiries and public involvement in land use planning. The Consultation Paper considered whether the existing two-tier development plan structure could be overhauled to create a single local development plan, except for the four city-regions, where the development would comprise the cityregion plan and the relevant local development plan(s). This fundamental proposal was intended to speed up plan preparation and approval processes; to engage individuals and agencies more effectively; to make plans shorter and targeted on key spatial issues; and to focus on delivery. It provides an important complement to the National Planning Framework and its spatial planning agendas. There was a clear attempt to assert a democratic dimension in the preparation of the National Planning Framework. This was evident in the consultation exercise taken at the outset of the review of strategic planning in Scotland (Lloyd and Peel 2005). The evidence shows that the responses to the proposed preparation of a national planning framework were overwhelmingly in favour (Geoff Peart Consulting 2002). The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, for example, suggested that such a national ‘overview should

express social, economic and environmental policy and provide a spatial framework for the sustainable development of Scot-land’ (Geoff Peart Consulting 2002:18). Further, it asserted that the purpose, content and process for preparation of this national framework would provide the necessary national counterpart to the local partnership working on strategic visions for social, economic and environmental wellbeing which is being developed through community planning. (ibid.) page_82 Page 83 This support provided an important reference point to the subsequent development of the idea. It was evident that the National Planning Framework was intended not only to support the statutory land use planning processes, but also to provide a means of bringing together other plans and strategies, and deciding spending priorities in different departments of the Scottish Executive (Scottish Executive 2004a). This particular interpretation of the National Planning Framework, as a form of spatial planning, echoed the earlier regional strategic planning measures that linked planning interventions explicitly to resource availability and priorities. It suggested that spatial planning in Scotland was to be concerned with articulating strategic development priorities and ensuring the sustained coordination of policies which have a spatial dimension. Under this particular construction, spatial planning through the National Planning Framework was expected to address integrating and aligning strategic investment priorities and informing interregional choices in the national interest. The broad support for the idea of a National Planning Framework extended across a plurality of stakeholders, including non-departmental public bodies, economic development and environmental agencies, the business community at large and specifically the property development industry. The expressed views of the different communities of interest illustrate general support for a national planning framework, tempered by different expectations in providing greater certainty and consistency for those involved, whilst simultaneously reflecting flexibility and sensitivity to place and local distinctiveness. An important tension turns on the commitment to promoting national economic growth in a global context, whilst, at the same time, addressing the realities of relative spatial economic and community performance across Scotland. The preparation of the National Planning Framework was informed also by a wide consultation process with a diverse range of stakeholders and interest groups engaged in land use planning and property development across Scotland. Relatively more conventional approaches to solicit written feedback on the proposals were complemented by direct consultation initiatives with specific interest groups. Echoing the earlier thinking of the Select Committee on Land Resource Use in Scotland, this process involved active dialogue with politicians and stakeholder groups, and included a series of regional seminars across Scotland. The principal purpose of the seminars was to identify the regional and local issues that were considered to be appropriate for inclusion by the participants in the preparation of the National Planning Framework. In general, throughout this initial phase of consultation, there was a general acknowledgement that a robust spatial framework would promote greater certainty for the public and private decision-makers concerned with strategic and local land and property development in Scotland. page_83 Page 84 Perceived role of planners Reflecting Keating’s (2006) observation that the civil service in Scotland is relatively more traditional and bureaucratic than that in England and Wales, the National Planning Framework was prepared at the centre of devolved governance. The Scottish Executive assumed responsibility for drafting the proposed policies and thinking of the National Planning Framework. Two points are important relating to ideas and values in the land use planning arena. First, the ethos of the National Planning Framework was designed to reflect

the immediate political ambitions of the Scottish Executive with respect to securing sustainable economic development and growth. It was also a clear recognition that attention was needed with respect to managing Scotland’s diverse economic and social geography. Here, explicit reference was made to the available evidence and policy arenas already in place; in effect, the National Planning Framework was a foil to strengthen the spatial aspects of these arrangements. Thus, for example, the National Planning Framework complemented the economic agenda set out in the influential Framework for Economic Development in Scotland (Scottish Executive 2004d). This asserts the importance of place and identifies priorities for investment in infrastructure in order to support the Executive’s objectives for economic development and area regeneration in Scotland. The National Planning Framework also built on the Review of Scotland’s Cities (Scottish Executive 2002b), which had examined the condition of the principal cities and their potential contribution to the country’s future. It highlighted the distinctive characters of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness and Stirling, and their important strategic role as drivers of economic activity across Scotland. The review resulted in a subsequent programme of city visioning, place branding and strategic urban development in the individual cities (Peel and Lloyd 2005b). Here, the outline of the National Planning Framework was being configured around the established strategic policy loci in Scotland. It would appear therefore that its early engagement was seeking to join up existing strategic centres for economic development and planning. This was an early expression of the city-region idea, which has assumed greater prominence in the National Planning Framework approach. Moreover, the subsequent policy for regeneration (Scottish Executive 2006) contained very evident spatial investment priorities at strategic and local scales. The explicit attempts to create greater integration around spatial planning agendas may be considered its technocratic form of engagement and expression of spatial planning. This has reflected an enduring undercurrent of thinking about the need for a national strategic perspective, reflecting the particular meso-corporatist influences and arrangements that have continued to characterise Scotland’s political page_84 Page 85 economy (Brown et al . 1996). This contributed to an acceptance of the need for managed partnership working to address key economic issues – such as those associated with regional economic development and urban regeneration (Moore and Booth 1989). Furthermore, Scotland’s geographic scale and relatively compact business and policy communities have contributed to a broader understanding of what was required to provide greater certainty for decision making. In particular, strategic approaches to planning and development matters were an explicit acknowledgement of the need to fuse land use planning with economic development considerations. On the other hand, however, these strategic experiments were not able to provide a consistent framework for strategic planning across Scotland, nor did the various attempts at strategic planning result in a comprehensive framework for managing space, sectors or policies in general. In particular, with the arguable exception of the Glasgow conurbation, there has been little consistent geographical focus for strategic planning experiments. As a consequence, at different times and in different ways, major strategic planning vacuums have emerged in Scot-land (Lloyd 1997a). These have resulted from changing ideological and political priorities, policy silo effects, and institutional fragmentation (Purves 2006). Local government reorganisation in the mid-1990s, for example, served to remove an established regional level of strategic planning, and created a further schism between land use planning and the provision of strategic infrastructure (Midwinter 1995). This took place at a time when strategic decisions on transport, energy and environmental matters were required. The National Planning Framework therefore reasserts the intrinsic strategic tradition in Scottish planning practices, draws on these earlier experiences and influences, and articulates a recognition of the need for a modern comprehensive framework for managed spatial development to meet stated political ambitions for sustainable economic development and greater territorial cohesion.

Modes of implementation This extensive process of engagement and consultation resulted in the publication of the White Paper Modernising the Planning System (Scottish Executive 2005a). The Foreword by Scotland’s First Minister clearly asserts the function of land use planning: The [Scottish] Executive’s top priority is promoting sustainable economic growth to create a modern and vibrant Scotland. A modern, up to date planning system is critical to achieving that objective. Sustainable growth requires development, and the role of planning is to ensure that this development is encouraged and managed in a page_85 Page 86 sustainable way. Planning also underpins all our high level priorities – stronger, safer communities; delivering excellent public services; and a more democratic, confident Scotland. A modern planning system is central to our investment in new schools and hospitals, providing water and sewerage facilities, waste installations to ensure the environmental impact is minimised, the regeneration of deprived areas, and providing affordable housing where it is needed. All of these critical developments depend on a modern planning system. (Scottish Executive 2005a: 4) In practical terms, the proposals set out in the White Paper were an attempt to redefine the remit of land use planning in a modern state, and specifically to introduce arrangements that were more sensitive to scale, development and locality in the context of devolution. The roles and responsibilities of users of the land use planning system were also realigned. Importantly, the intentions are to reduce the perceived complexity of the existing system; to refocus the priorities of the intended outcomes; and to reallocate the planning resource. In effect, the underlying rhetoric of the proposals seeks to rationalise this public service to better serve a modern public interest. The White Paper proposed a new development hierarchy, which was to comprise different scales of perceived national, major, local or minor significance. This was intended to stress competency in decision making, and to better reallocate the planning service accordingly. The national level was the locus of the National Planning Framework, which will be discussed in the following section. The major, local and minor scales of development were characterised in terms of an appropriate arrangements relating to decisionmaker, decision route and appeals. This proposal promoted the standing of the role of the National Planning Framework. The White Paper proposed reform of the development plans as set out in the Consultation Paper, thereby reinforcing the importance of the city-region as a strategic planning tool. It also proposed changes to secure efficiency gains in the administration of development planning by introducing a statutory requirement to update development plans every five years, and a requirement for one proposed plan, replacing the existing system of consultative and finalised drafts. In terms of planning regulations and decisions over development management (which was to replace development control), supplementary efficiency measures include, inter alia, the greater use of e-planning; clarification of planning agreements; and the introduction of standard planning application forms, a revision of the appeals system, and the strengthening of enforcement provisions. Particular emphasis was placed on the early engagement of the public both in the formulation of development plans, but also in discussions about specific development proposals. An innovative feature set out in the White Paper concerns the more frequent use page_86 Page 87 of hearings, which are intended to allow local people to express their views on planning applications before they are determined. These detailed proposals are intended to enhance the understanding and legitimacy of the land use planning system in local communities and stress performance with respect to outcomes of the planning system. The frontloading of civil engagement and public participation opportunities in the land use

planning system negated the provision of third party rights of appeal. Institutional structures and power relations It is important to recognise, however, that the modernisation of land use planning had been anticipated before political devolution took effect. This reinforces the general argument that, in devising new planning practices in the post-devolution period, Scotland was able to draw deep on its previous experiences and thinking. There was a clear awareness that devolution represented a novel form of governance, and that existing public sector activities would have to be compatible with it. More than that, though, devolution provided the opportunity to devise planning and development arrangements that better met the perceived needs of Scotland and its constituent parts. The Planning etc. (Scotland) Bill (Scottish Executive 2005b) was subsequently presented to the Scottish Parliament by the Communities Minister, who was responsible, amongst other things, for land use planning. The remit of the Bill encompassed provisions relating to the National Planning Framework, town and country planning; the introduction of business improvement districts; and various related matters. The provision for business improvement districts represents an emphasis on delivery in land use planning practice. It also integrates land use planning with wider urban regeneration policy agendas, which reflect both strategic and local dimensions for action (Peel and Lloyd 2005b). The Bill introduced a new duty to ‘contribute’ to sustainable development – with a commitment to provide further guidance on what this means in practice. The Bill would require both primary and secondary legislation; remaining matters were to be dealt with through strategic policy guidance. There followed due diligence in the Scottish Parliament through committee scrutiny and a debate. Following this Royal Assent was granted and the Planning etc. (Scotland) Act 2006 subsequently enacted these proposals. These developments in thinking and practice set the immediate context for the National Planning Framework. page_87 Page 88

The content of the National Planning Framework Interpretations of space and place The National Planning Framework published in 2004 was principally concerned with Scotland in its wider spatial and strategic context and did not seek to directly address local issues (Scottish Executive 2004a). It was essentially an early statement of the strategic issues facing Scotland’s spatial economy. In effect, it represents an audit of where Scotland was at that time with respect to social, economic and environmental conditions. This provided a positivist template against which policies in train could be assessed, resources identified to execute stated political ambitions and an integration of strategic thinking secured across different sectors, protagonists and policies. In effect it was an attempt to set out a strategic overview of the current conditions of Scotland’s spatial economy, and reflected the extent to which a strategic deficit existed. Importantly, it reflected the context against which the National Planning Framework was being initiated. This was a recognition that a devolved state needed an efficient and effective land use planning system. Its key spatial planning elements were: • to provide support for the development of Scotland’s main cities as the main focal points of the economy; • to seek to distribute the benefits of economic activity by promoting greater environmental quality and connectivity; • to enable the most disadvantaged communities to benefit from economic growth and opportunity; • to strengthen Scotland’s external links;

• to promote greater economic diversification and environmental stewardship; • to highlight Scotland’s long-term transport options and to promote more sustainable patterns of transport and land use; • to invest in water and drainage infrastructure to support development across Scotland; • to realise the potential of Scotland’s renewable energy resources; • to provide the facilities to meet waste recycling targets; and • to extend broadband coverage in every area of Scotland (Scottish Executive 2004a). The National Planning Framework drew together the evidence relating to Scot-land’s demography, and the likely implications for new housing and infrastructure. It examined economic performance and in particular geographical differentiation in terms of employment, unemployment and skills, investment, and North Sea oil page_88 Page 89 and gas. This evidence was linked to recorded disparities in wealth and economic activity and in patterns of social inequality and community exclusion. The National Planning Framework also catalogued the progress made with respect to economic development and regeneration initiatives across Scotland. In particular, the relative performance of the cities was documented in detail, and attention drawn to the differential decline of traditional industries, changing patterns of retailing and the centralisation of public administration and other services (Purves 2006). The National Planning Framework asserted the pivotal role of the cities as focal points of the Scottish economy; the need to support the development of knowledge economy clusters; the scope for spreading the benefits of economic activity by addressing issues of quality and connectivity; and the perceived need to link area regeneration and economic development (Purves 2006). Nine economic development zones were identified as the principal points for the development of key industries and knowledge economy clusters. The National Planning Framework stressed the importance of ensuring that these zones had sound internal and external links, and that the strategic business locations that they contained were well connected with each other and readily accessible from residential areas. Attention was paid to the infrastructure required to ensure that places could compete both domestically and internationally (Purves 2006). In particular, transport infrastructure was recognised as being of crucial importance to Scotland’s future development and the Framework highlighted the need to develop external links, to improve internal connectivity and to promote more sustainable patterns of transport and land use. The National Planning Framework identified priorities and opportunities for different parts of the country in spatial perspectives for the Central Belt, the East Coast, Ayrshire and the South West, and Rural Scotland. The spatial perspectives address strategic planning issues of national importance that cut across city-region and local government boundaries, to provide a context for land use planning by local authorities. Strategic agendas for action were identified. In Edin-burgh, for example, a West Edinburgh Planning Framework (Scottish Executive 2003d) was prepared to promote its potential for securing high-quality economic development and managing growth pressures. This active articulation of sub-regional strategic planning was an important element in the thinking in the National Planning Framework approach. In effect, the National Planning Framework idea was being put into practical terms as a form of ‘master-planning’ for a strategic locality under considerable land and property development pressures. For rural Scotland, the Framework places emphasis on economic diversification allied to a strong commitment to environmental stewardship. It stresses the importance of higher education, cultural assets, telecommunications infrastructure and renewable energy resources as drivers of economic and community renewal.

page_89 Page 90 The Framework identifies the need to address the particular challenges facing the Western Isles within the context of the wider programme for fragile areas that has been developed by Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Concepts of future and time Ambitions for the National Planning Framework have been dramatically restated following the Planning etc. (Scotland) Act 2006. An intimation of this emerged during parliamentary scrutiny of the proposed legislation. As noted above, the principal interrogation of the modernisation of land use planning was carried through by the Communities Committee. In parallel, the Finance Committee also conducted its own scrutiny of the National Planning Framework. Its deliberations provided a powerful vote of confidence in the idea of a national spatial planning framework. It concluded that there was a case for strengthening the National Planning Framework in order to deliver the required economic and physical developments across Scotland. The Finance Committee was unequivocal in its recommendation that the National Planning Framework could better secure the direction, coordination and prioritisation of public spending held necessary to promote Scotland’s economic aspirations. This reorientation of public policy through a spatial prism was carried through in the subsequent legislation. The National Planning Framework now assumes a more significant role in that it now has statutory authority, will be debated in the Scottish Parliament, sits at the apex of a new development hierarchy, and is a pivotal element in the modernised planning system. Following the Planning etc. (Scotland) Act 2006, the status and purpose of the National Planning Framework changed dramatically. It is intended that the second National Planning Framework be published in 2008 to inform spatial planning and territorial development in Scotland to 2030 (Scottish Executive 2007b). As a consequence of its new status, and in contrast to the first National Planning Framework, the second Framework is supported by a Participation Statement setting out how and when stakeholders will have the opportunity to engage in the process to inform both its vision and its content (Scottish Executive 2007c). Significantly, and reflecting its national and strategic remit, the final detail of the Framework will be subject to scrutiny by the Scottish Parliament. It is intended that the new National Planning Framework should set out the Scottish Executive’s strategic development priorities more precisely. It will play a key role in ensuring the sustained coordination of policies with a spatial dimension, integrating and aligning strategic investment priorities and indicating where interregional choices need to be made. It will place more emphasis on implementation than its predecessor, identifying responsibilities and outputs for services page_90 Page 91 and facilities in key policy areas such as health, education and affordable housing. There will be closer links to the Executive’s Infrastructure Investment Plan (2005) and the investment programmes of public agencies and infrastructure providers. Like its predecessor, the second Framework will focus strongly on priorities for the improvement of infrastructure to support Scotland’s long-term development. It will set out strategic priorities for investment in water and drainage capacity and waste management facilities, and consider the requirements of the next generation of high-bandwidth communications technology (see Plate 3). It will reflect the Executive’s policy commitments on climate change, sustainability and regeneration. The new role of the National Planning Framework will inevitably throw up difficult decisions. There will be challenges associated with the integration of different public policy sectors, making interregional choices in expenditure and investment, and identifying nationally significant development projects. The Planning etc. (Scotland) Act makes provision for the Framework to be used to identify certain projects as national

developments. It is envisaged that major transport, energy and environmental infrastructure projects may fall within this category of development. The Executive intends that identification in the Framework should be the mechanism for establishing the need for such developments, thereby providing the strategic context within which matters such as siting, design and environmental mitigation fall to be considered. In effect, the new National Planning Framework in responding to prevailing and anticipated territorial circumstances is seeking to devise new competencies in planning practice. The innovation in strategic planning can draw deep on Scotland’s previous experience. Visualisation, representation and scale The National Planning Framework produced in 2004 was a lavishly illustrated document, with clearly defined maps addressing key spatial planning matters, including the internal and external connectivities. The National Planning Framework was at pains to record the existing strategic evidence with respect to economic development, social exclusion and environmental qualities, including designated and protected areas. An important representation set out in the document concerned the visualisation of city-regions. These are central to the sustainable economic development strategy for Scotland, yet are set out in terms of the contiguous local authority areas around the main cities. This may represent the relatively early or immature thinking about the functionality of the proposed city-regions, yet it does not provide a clear representation of housing and labour markets, existing transport links and commuting flows. The National Planning Framework adopts a relatively simple representative form, and geography is expressed in linear, page_91 Page 92 abstract forms. There is an attempt to promote the idea of spatiality, however, with respect to the overall spatial planning strategy. This clearly promotes external links, as down the east coast towards Newcastle (see Plate 4).

Conclusions The idea of the National Planning Framework is now being further articulated with statutory authority following the commencement of Part 1 of the Planning etc. (Scotland) Act 2006. This legislation seeks to present the National Planning Framework in a more assertive form and to position it so that it can command appropriate political legitimacy and support. As a consequence, the National Planning Framework now sits firmly at the core of planning modernisation in Scot-land, and is intended to promote greater spatial awareness across the broader public policy agenda. This sits comfortably alongside current political priorities to promote greater integration in policy implementation, to facilitate more efficient governance arrangements and to promote greater flexibility in responding to social, economic and environmental change. Spatial planning in Scotland as set out in the National Planning Framework model of intervention and engagement is a direct consequence of devolution, modernisation and the perceived need to respond to a strategic planning deficit in a new nation-region. The National Planning Framework is an attempt to assert a new Scottish identity in managing its own territorial space, to build on its established land use planning and strategic planning cultures and to promote a distinctive approach to facilitating territorial cohesion. There can be little doubt that the existing economic, social and geographical differentiation together with a strategic planning deficit makes a powerful case for a spatial planning initiative such as the National Planning Framework. Importantly, it has emerged as part of an ongoing process of reform in the public sector and in the land use planning itself – and the need to join up planning agendas, institutions and localities can be accommodated in this interpretation of spatial planning practices. Spatial planning in Scotland is still evolving. The transition from the Mark 1 National Planning Framework to the Mark 2 version is important, as it also involves a stronger politicisation of the process. This will be important as political legitimacy is established and robust choices

over infrastructure expenditures and investments are made. The National Planning Framework has the potential here to provide a context within which these intraterritorial choices may be enabled. In its present form, however, the National Planning Framework presents a linear, simplified version of reality yet it is an explicit attempt to serve stated political objectives for sustainable economic development, and provide a coherent spatial approach to land and property development across Scotland whilst acknowledging the page_92 Page 93 inherited patterns of change. In essence, the National Planning Framework is a very traditional approach to land use planning practices, and offers a new strategic dimension. Devolution is held to have served as an enabling mechanism for a new territorial politics in Scotland (Jeffery 2007). This is a contested position, however, with tensions attendant on the changed governance forms (McCrone 1994). On the one hand, for example, it was anticipated that devolution in Scotland would enable a greater assertion of territorial identity and an ability to design policies held to be appropriate to the conditions of the Scottish economy (McGregor et al . 1997). On the other hand, the devolved administration was confronted by certain fundamental challenges. In particular, it was noted that: The Scottish Parliament has been born into this culture of contradictory expectations. In the first place, it is a devolved institution with control over ‘domestic’ matters, and without the even limited panoply of powers over macro-economic and constitutional matters, such as they are. Secondly, it comes into a world deeply sceptical of the political craft, and yet one overly demanding on its elected representatives to ‘do something’. (McCrone 2004) Notwithstanding this potential schism of raised expectations and limited capacities, devolution is part of a broader trend of reconfiguring governance arrangements to better meet the needs of national and cultural diversities, and to be better able to adapt to changing economic and social needs (Keating 2006). In practice, devolution has enabled a focus on matters that have been perceived as being distinctively Scottish (Lloyd and Peel 2005). This new political programme has involved a complex balancing or juxtaposition of technocratic and democratic agendas. On the one hand, devolution has provided an opportunity to redesign strategy, policy instruments and institutions to better address perceived Scottish issues and problems. This is evident in the attempts to restructure the arrangements for local and regional governance through the promotion of city-regions, and is the clear imperative driving the modernisation of the land use planning system. This is an important aspect to devolved governance, as it allows policy and expenditure priorities to be established around the issues that are held to matter. There can be little doubt, for example, that, understandably in light of Scotland’s economic history and performance, economic development assumes considerable significance in current political thinking. Here, devolution has provided an opportunity to reform the land use planning system and provide it with such new dimensions as spatial planning, and, at the same time, assert the acknowledged advantages of securing a strategic perspective on economic development and change. In this context, the National Planning Framework assumes an iconic status. On the other hand, there is a powerful commitment to promoting a democratic page_93 Page 94 renaissance in public affairs, and to enabling a deeper civil engagement in and with the devolved state. This is evident in the subsequent processes of consultation around, for example, the modernisation of land use planning and the introduction of the National Planning Framework, and the emphasis on an inclusive and participative development of policy priorities (Scottish Executive 2005b). This technocratic–democratic tension is evident in the overall devolution project in Scotland, and is fundamental to an understanding of the spirit and purpose of the National Planning Framework. page_94

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CHAPTER 4 SPACE AND PLACE IN THE NATIONAL SPATIAL STRATEGY FOR THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND James A. Walsh

Introduction The publication of The National Spatial Strategy 2002–2020 (NSS) in December 2002 with the subtitle People, Places and Potential was a significant milestone in the history of planning in Ireland. Just over fifteen years previously the Minister for the Environment had abolished the National Institute for Physical Planning and Construction Research (An Foras Forbartha) and also the nine Regional Development Organisations that had since the early 1970s been responsible for the preparation of regional development strategies. Even more remarkable is the fact that just four years after the publication of the NSS it became a cornerstone for the National Development Plan 2007–2013 with the subtitle Transforming Ireland: A Better Quality of Life for All (Government of Ireland 2007). In his Foreword to the National Development Plan the Minister for Finance provides an unequivocal endorsement of the NSS: our spatial strategy … is crucial to managing the challenges of the future and the potential for growth and development … spatial objectives are integrated within the goals of economic, social and environmental sustainability and our national and international responsibilities under these headings. (GoI 2007:13) The NSS was formulated against a background of unprecedented economic transformation in the Republic of Ireland. Over a relatively short period the country had moved from a position of very low levels of economic development compared with the core regions of western Europe, to becoming the state with the second highest level of per capita gross domestic product (GDP). The experience of economic convergence was, however, accompanied by increasing tendencies towards regional divergence within Ireland (Walsh 2000). The reality of unbalanced regional development in the context of increasing national prosperity was a major catalyst for producing the National Spatial Strategy. The goal of balanced page_95 Page 96 regional development was itself problematic in definition and brought to the fore some deeply ingrained conceptions of the distinctiveness and expectations of the residents of certain places in Ireland. The National Spatial Strategy was also prepared against the background of the changed political landscape following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland (see Chapter 5 in this volume), which opened up the prospect of closer economic links over the longer term between the North and South of Ireland. Chapter 5 in this volume provides an account of the initiative that was already under way to develop a regional development strategy for Northern Ireland. It was timely for the government in the Republic to consider the spatial dimension of economic development and how the emerging opportunities associated with a more stable political climate throughout the island might be utilised to the mutual benefit of both the North and the South. A further influence on establishing a receptive political climate for a National Spatial Strategy was the ongoing European debate that culminated with the publication of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) in 1999. Officials from the Department of the Environment in Ireland participated in the ESDP process, unlike their counterparts in Northern Ireland and Wales, through which they had become aware of the new spatial planning concepts and the vocabulary adopted for the ESDP. Taken together, the primary concern with balanced regional development, the emerging all-island dimension, and the awareness

of the territorial planning discourse at the European level provided a powerful synergy of pressures to prepare a Spatial Strategy for a new Ireland coming to grips with managing the fruits of success ‘while ensuring a high quality of life for all our people’ (DELG 2002:3). This chapter analyses the process of preparing the National Spatial Strategy using the conceptual frameworks relating to space and place presented in Chap-ter 1. The next section commences with a more detailed discussion of the context for the strategy, which is then followed by analyses of the strategymaking process and the content of the NSS before some general conclusions are identified in the final section. As there are linkages between context, process and content the sub-themes identified in Chapter 1 are interwoven across the sections. For example, the context includes a discussion of both the empirical socio-economic realities and also initiatives by a number of government departments and others that helped to create a supportive institutional environment for launching the NSS preparation process. Within the process there was a constant interplay between knowledge creation through research and the various modes of consultation. The approach adopted here is to examine the concepts of space and place as they are used in the National Spatial Strategy, to appraise the extent to which there is a shared understanding of the concepts, and to consider the methodologies page_96 Page 97 used by planners and others in the preparation of the Strategy. The conceptualisation of space has changed very much over recent decades. It includes the more traditional absolutist perspective that treats geographic space as a container of fixed or mobile objects and dynamic behavioural flows that are susceptible to analysis within the frameworks of positivism (Harvey 1969). More recently greater emphasis has been placed on structuralism and a relational perspective that space is continuously produced and reproduced through socio-spatial relations that include cultural, social, political and economic relations (Smith 1984; Shep-pard 1995). The conceptualisation of place has been extensively developed in a relational sense by Massey (1995, 1997) and by others such as Soja (1989) from a post-modern perspective that emphasises the importance of the personal sense of place, that places are relational and contingent, and are understood differently by different people. These varying conceptions of space and place are relevant to understanding how strategic spatial planning is approached and how that influences the content of the strategy. They are also important for understanding the range of methodologies and tools that are used by planners and others in the preparation of strategic spatial plans. Of particular interest is the extent to which alternative methodologies have been relied upon, including the rational comprehensive planning approach in which many planners were trained under the influence of Faludi (1973) and the more recent transactive planning practices involving participation, communication, abstract visualisation, negotiation, collaboration and institutional capacity building that are advocated by Innes (1996), Albrechts (2001), Allmendinger (2002a) and Healey (1997, 1998, 2006). The outcome from this review of the NSS process is an interpretation that identifies the co-existence of processes that are typically discussed within the traditions of positivist, structuralist or post-modern approaches to planning. The Irish experience is that processes and practices from each of the different planning traditions were necessary to ensure that a National Spatial Strategy could be produced which was sensitive to the needs of many different stakeholders such as the citizens, the business community, professional planners, senior officials across many departments of the civil service, and the elected political leaders. Reconciling the divergent conceptions of space and place, and the associated planning methodologies, held by influential stakeholders from different disciplinary backgrounds was a significant challenge for all involved in the NSS process.

The context for the National Spatial Strategy The spatial context for economic and social development in Ireland is still strongly influenced by a settlement pattern and transport networks that were initially put

page_97 Page 98 in place to assist in the territorial organisation and administration of a former colony. That legacy, which was historically guided by a relational spatial perspective coupled with a highly centralised public administrative system and an electoral model that encourages a strong sense of localism, continues to influence spatial development patterns even though the contemporary conditions are very different. Superimposed on the historical legacy are the locational imperatives of foreign direct investment, which is a key aspect of Ireland’s engagement with globalisation and has become the main driver of economic development over recent decades; a labour market catering for a highly educated and mobile workforce including many immigrants; and a more discriminating consumerist, but less cohesive, society that is increasingly attaching a higher premium to quality of life and broader environmental issues (Bartley and Kitchin 2007). Previous responses to uneven regional development The history of government engagement with the issue of uneven regional development in Ireland originates with the Undeveloped Areas Act of 1952 and can be broadly subdivided into three phases over the past fifty years (Boylan 2005). The first, which lasted until the late 1960s, was mainly characterised by an association between development, industrialisation and urbanisation. For Ireland, given the very weak indigenous manufacturing base and also the imbalances in the urban system, this meant a strong reorientation of industrial policy towards the attraction of inward investment and a strong preference among influential policy advisors for an urban-oriented strategy, which was most explicitly expressed in proposals for a regional development strategy based on growth centres (Buchanan and Partners 1968). However, this first phase also highlighted a tension, which has persisted, between the objectives for national economic growth and other objectives in relation to the regional and rural dimensions of development. The rational theoretical underpinnings of the growth centre model did not find sufficient political support and it was abandoned by the government in 1969. The perceived risks to the ‘efficiency’ of national development policies from a proactive approach to championing regional ‘equity’, along with the political challenges of promoting an urban-led approach to an electorate comprising a very large rural component, resulted in a move towards a regional strategy that became heavily reliant on the dispersal of inward investment in manufacturing, coupled with a restriction on supports for Dublin (Walsh 1989). The Buchanan strategy was a classic managerial or control-type intervention that was well grounded on a positivist analytical process but very weak on consultation, consensus building and customisation to meet the particularities of the Irish spatial context. The failure to have the Buchanan strategy adopted as government policy left a long shadow page_98 Page 99 over any future attempts to promote a new spatial development strategy. Indeed, one of the challenges faced by those preparing the NSS was to find ways of differentiating it from its failed predecessor, a challenge that was compounded by a lingering reluctance among some economic analysts to recognise that planning paradigms and the conceptualisations of space and place had changed significantly over the intervening years (see for example O’Leary 2001). The second phase covered the period from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. Government policy statements in 1969 and 1972 effectively identified the regional industrial strategy of the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) as the main instrument for achieving the goals of regional development. The 1970s was also a period of considerable expansion and improvements in farm incomes during the period of transition to the full guaranteed prices of the Common Agricultural Policy. The redistribution of employment in manufacturing along with the new prosperity in the more commercially oriented farming regions resulted

in a major demographic turnaround, whereby net in-migration, coupled with a high birth rate, resulted in a population increase of 465,200 (15.6 per cent) between 1971 and 1981. Most importantly the demographic change was experienced throughout most of the state (Horner et al . 1987). However, throughout this period there were also significant weaknesses in the government strategy for regional development. The effects of industrial restructuring in Dublin and other old industrial centres were largely ignored; elsewhere there was an overemphasis on inward investment without sufficient support for indigenous firms, and there was a policy vacuum in relation to the emerging services sector (Walsh 1989). More importantly, the spatial focus shifted to improving the position of the Republic of Ireland as a single region (without explicit reference to intraregional imbalances) within the framework of the EU regions. Furthermore the political divisions and the ongoing conflicts in Northern Ireland were not conducive to any consideration of an island of Ireland perspective on spatial development. A critical review of industrial policy in 1982 led to a revision of the role of manufacturing industry in regional development. This was followed by a government White Paper on Industrial Policy in 1984 that proposed a move to a policy of supporting targeted manufacturing sectors where they could make the greatest progress, which was generally regarded as the larger urban centres. The shift in the focus of industrial policy was further supported by the National Economic and Social Council in 1985 when it recommended that in future the designation of areas for industrial support should be based on criteria related to the potential rather than the needs of regions. This was the beginning of a return to a more urban-focused regional development strategy and a move away from the traditional needs or ‘regional equity’ approach. page_99 Page 100 In addition to the reorientation of industrial policy, the general stagnation of the Irish economy in the 1980s resulted in a significant reduction in the volume of inward investment and a greatly diminished capacity of the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) to influence the location of new investments, especially towards the weaker regions. Widespread losses in manufacturing employment, a faltering agricultural sector, a weak producer services sector and increasing unemployment all combined to bring about a return to high levels of net emigration from both rural and urban areas (Walsh 1991). These trends resulted in a mobilisation of local interests with powerful champions in the weaker rural areas (McDonagh 2001) that led to intensive lobbying of government for a renewed approach to securing balanced regional development. The foundations for a new era of economic development were laid in the mid- to late 1980s (NESC 1986), resulting in very rapid economic growth in the 1990s, during which the third phase in strategic spatial planning emerged. The transformation of the economy and society of Ireland since the early 1990s has been influenced by many factors including strategic repositioning by government and economic development agencies of Ireland as a space or investment territory in the broader context of the international economy (Breathnach 1998), which has resulted in the Irish economy becoming one of the most open in the world. Crucially, the transformation has been mediated through an unbalanced urban system that is dominated by the Dublin city-region (McCafferty 2007). The complexity and dynamic nature of the recent geography of socioeconomic development has been described by Horner (1993, 2000) who noted the emergence of city-regions; McHugh (2001) and Walsh (2007) have identified the intricate webs of relations that link rural and urban areas and also contribute to the construction of an increasingly complex rural spatial structure. These analyses, combining elements of both the positivist and post-modern traditions, can be contrasted with others more firmly rooted in the traditional bounded spatial approach (e.g. administrative regions) of some regional economists (Mor-genroth 2007). Collectively these studies confirmed the existence of significant interregional differences in economic performance, especially in relation to per capita productivity levels and also in the endowments of key resources that are likely to influence future development patterns. These resources include physical infrastructure, human capital and institutionalised knowledge creation and transfer mechanisms. By the late 1990s it had become evident that, while the macroeconomic indicators for Ireland were rapidly

converging with those for the most developed regions of the EU, there was also a strong tendency towards divergence on key socio-economic indicators for the Irish regions. Unbalanced regional development was reflected in widening differentials in productivity, new physical infrastrucpage_100 Page 101 ture investment, new employment opportunities, migration of the youngest and brightest from rural areas and small urban centres, and ultimately depopulation of extensive rural areas. At the same time escalating house prices in Dublin and other cities were forcing ever-increasing numbers into new housing located at very considerable distances from the main workplaces. This phenomenon of long-distance commuting (Wil-liams and Shiels 2002; Walsh et al . 2007) from rural areas in the outer hinterlands of the cities while other rural areas continued to stagnate has resulted in heated discourses between those concerned about on the one hand the implications of seemingly uncontrolled urban sprawl and on the other hand the depopulation of more remote rural areas. This issue, combined with concerns about the need to position Ireland advantageously in the EU and global economy and the unbalanced distribution of economic activity within the State, was an additional factor in establishing the case for a National Spatial Strategy. The heightened awareness of inter- and intraregional differences in the Republic of Ireland were brought into even sharper focus with the emergence of conditions to support a new era of political stability in Northern Ireland. Some economic leaders were quick to identify the possibility of a potential economic corridor linking Belfast and Dublin. For others it raised the prospect of an even greater spatial divide between the eastern and western parts of the island of Ireland, but it also provided opportunities to take a fresh perspective on spatial planning for the north-west and Border areas (Walsh and Murray 2006). For the government of the Republic it provided a unique opportunity to engage in a process of tentatively putting in place measures to support a more coherent approach to territorial development within the context of the territory of the entire island of Ireland, while fully recognising the political status of Northern Ireland as a region of the UK. This contextual dimension has particular relevance for understanding the conceptualisation of the Border areas in the NSS and more broadly for interpreting the key long-term proposal in the NSS for the gradual development of an Atlantic Corridor linking the main cities in the west and south. Related policy initiatives and other studies The trends just outlined emerged from a period during which the economic growth rates were much higher than anybody had anticipated and for which there was no overall spatial framework, nor were there appropriate administrative structures to ensure coordination and integration of policies and strategies. Serious concerns about the emerging spatial patterns of development were articulated in discourses around a number of related policy areas, which helped to identify the need for a policy initiative in the area of highlevel strategic spatial planning. In page_101 Page 102 addition, the case for a national spatial strategy was promoted by a wide range of powerful advisory bodies as well as by some organisations with a specific interest in regional development and spatial planning (Walsh 1999). The government’s strategy for sustainable development (GoI 1997) affirmed the centrality of the environment in the process of development and it emphasised the role of the physical planning system in sectoral integration on a territorial basis. The general thrust of the Planning and Development Act, 2000, which for the first time introduced the concept of sustainable development, is towards a comprehensive and

integrated approach to spatial planning extending from the local authority level through the regional to the national level so that the overall objective of balanced and sustainable development can be achieved in a manner compatible with the supranational perspective represented by the ESDP. The first White Paper on Rural Development, Ensuring the Future – A Strategy for Rural Development in Ireland, included a recommendation that the objectives for rural development should be addressed within a framework for spatial development that takes account of the relationships between rural and urban areas and also of the diverse functional roles of towns and villages for those residing in the countryside (GoI 1999a). In the area of enterprise development the national policy advisory and coordination board for industrial development and science technology published, in 1996, A Strategy for Enterprise in Ireland in the 21st Century, in which a forceful case was made for an urban-led regional policy (Forfas 1996). It was followed in January 2000 with Enterprise 2010, which recommended a spatial strategy that would ensure, inter alia, coordinated provision of access, communication and utilities infrastructure, serviced land at an appropriate scale for towns of different size and a good regional spread of educational and training facilities (Forfas 2000). The fist major opportunity to get the specific concept of a national spatial strategy inserted into the overall thrust of development policies came with the preparation of the third National Development Plan for the period 2000–6. The previous plans for 1989–93 and 1994–99 were particularly weak on regional development and spatial planning (Walsh 1993). In advance of preparing the National Development Plan for the period 2000–6 the Department of Finance commissioned a report by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) on the priorities for investment. Significantly, it recommended that a national spatial strategy focused on a hierarchical hub-and-spoke settlement model should be adopted as the framework for a massive investment programme over the medium to long term (FitzGerald et al . 1999). Contemporaneously with the preparation of the ESRI Report and ongoing work on the National Development Plan by the Department of Finance, the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) was also preparing an outline strategy for development for the first decade of page_102 Page 103 the twenty-first century (NESC 1999). It set out a new vision which included the objective of sustainable and balanced development between regions and between urban and rural areas. In placing considerable emphasis on a comprehensive programme of infrastructural investment to encompass economic, social and environmental dimensions the NESC Report strongly recommended a National Spatial Development Strategy. This was a crucial report, as the NESC is chaired by the highest-ranking civil servant and includes among its membership the most senior national representatives of each of the social partners as well as senior officials from key government departments. It is a key arena for consensus building at the highest level and its recommendations are normally taken seriously by the government. Finally, the National Development Plan 2000–2006 (NDP) published in November 1999 identified balanced regional development as a core objective. This was the first time that a National Development Plan gave such prominence to regional policy for which the following objective was identified: to achieve more balanced regional development in order to reduce the disparities between and within the two regions and to develop the potential of both to contribute to the greatest possible extent to the continuing prosperity of the country. (GoI 1999b: 43 (3.19)) In support of this objective the NDP identified Dublin, Cork, Limerick–Shannon, Waterford and Galway as ‘Gateways’ or locations where public and private investment would be prioritised in order to drive the development of their wider regions. Furthermore, the NDP committed the Department of the Environment and Local Government to prepare an overall spatial development strategy for the whole country, including the identification of a limited number of additional regional gateways to complement those already identified in the NDP. The contextual overview has demonstrated the importance of evidence-based empirical analysis, with a strong emphasis on visual representation as a tool to promote a shared understanding of the need for a spatial policy initiative. It has also illustrated that a consensus around the

need for an NSS only emerged after a lengthy process involving many seemingly unrelated initiatives. Much of the early public discourse was facilitated through conferences and publications of the Irish Branch of the Regional Studies Association (McCafferty and Walsh 1997; Walsh 1998) rather than directly through the professional planning institutes, which became active at later stages. Finally, an important feature of the process that led to the decision to prepare an NSS was the participation of a small number of individuals, who were unaffiliated to any of the major stakeholders, in almost all of the preparatory steps mentioned above, which provided a basis for maintaining consistency in relation to the overall objectives that an NSS should address. page_103 Page 104

The preparation process of the National Spatial Strategy The formal process of preparing the NSS was launched in spring 2000 following the establishment of a Spatial Planning Unit (SPU) within the Department of the Environment and Local Government. The SPU was a small cohesive group of only four professional planners who were assisted by a senior-level administrative civil servant. In recognition of the cross-cutting nature of spatial planning, a Steering Group of high-level representatives from all relevant government departments was established to assist the SPU. This was an important forum, which helped to negotiate a consensus across departments with potentially conflicting goals. In addition an Expert Advisory Committee, chaired by the former Chief Execu-tive of the agency responsibile for attracting inward investment to Ireland, was established. It included academic and other professional experts from different parts of Ireland, along with representatives from Northern Ireland and Scotland. Furthermore, the broader European reference frame was represented by a senior member of the ESPON programme management team. This Group assisted the SPU by critically assessing and refining at an early stage new concepts and approaches to planning, and also by ensuring that the NSS retained a clear focus on each of the three keywords: National, Spatial and Strategy. Collectively, the personnel of the SPU and the Expert Advisory Group brought a considerable amount of planning expertise and skills to the process, which provided the opportunity to develop the NSS in a way that went distinctively further in a conceptual and methodological sense than the NDP or any of the other strategies or reports mentioned in the previous section. The planning methodologies that became important in the preparation process included visual representations of the current and prospective situations based on best available evidence, extensive consultations guided by research, and negotiations aimed at achieving a politically acceptable and administratively workable set of proposals. The preparation of the strategy was guided by three parallel and complementary methodological processes. The first was an extensive programme of both proactive and reactive consultation, the second was a major research programme, and the third involved formal arrangements to secure buy-in across a number of government departments. Consultation Phase 1 From the outset, the Minister responsible for producing the National Spatial Strategy was determined to develop the strongest possible level of consensus about the need for a national spatial strategy and what it might contain. To this end, specialist communications experts were procured to assist the SPU team page_104 Page 105 in developing sophisticated techniques for both listening to the views of various groups and interests and communicating perspectives, conclusions from research and the finished product itself. Very quickly the SPU produced a scoping report that set out the objectives and methodology for preparing the strategy (DELG 2000a). The Scope and Delivery report sets out clearly the national and international context. In particular, it acknowledges the relevance of the aims and options contained in the ESDP. It then identifies the

following objectives for the NSS: • continuing national economic and employment growth; • continuing improvement in Ireland’s international competitiveness; • fostering balanced regional development; • improving the quality of life for all sections of society; and • maintaining and enhancing the quality and diversity of the natural environment and cultural heritage. In order to achieve these objectives through spatial planning the report identified ten key challenges that the NSS would need to address. Apart from the challenge of fully exploring the concept of ‘balanced regional development’, other challenges related to reconciling the potentially competing objectives of economic competitiveness with balanced development; developing the concept of Gateways that was initially proposed in the NDP; assessing infrastructural requirements; addressing areas of social exclusion; and ensuring that the NSS would build upon the relationship between the two political entities on the island of Ireland and between Ireland and its EU partners. This was followed by an outline of the methodology that would be adopted for the preparation process, which would include opportunities for participation by a broad range of stakeholders at different stages. The outline timeframe was very ambitious, with a target of completing the process by the end of 2001. The scoping report was widely disseminated and generally given an enthusiastic welcome for its level of detail and its commitment to facilitating participation while at the same time aiming for a relatively short timeframe. To the extent that there was any dissent it mostly related to concerns about delays that an extensive consultation process might incur. Targeting of key audiences was a key aspect of the consultation and communications strategy. The first large event was attended by approximately 300 invited ‘leaders’ from the public, private and voluntary sectors, and was addressed by ‘champions’ of the NSS proposal. These included the Minister with overall responsibility for developing the NSS, who was an enthusiastic advocate. This ‘Leaders Forum’ was followed by workshops organised with the assistance of the eight Regional Authorities. Other high-priority target groups included senior officials in national and regional development agencies, each of the social partners, page_105 Page 106 and national advisory fora such as the National Economic and Social Council and the National Partnership for Sustainable Development (Comhar). The consultation process was guided by presentations of findings arising from the ongoing research programme, and also at crucial stages by papers published by the SPU. The first, disseminated in February 2000, sought to elicit views on an indicative list of issues that were grouped under six broad headings (DELG 2000b): • urban Ireland and balanced regional development; • rural Ireland and balanced regional development; • people and balanced regional development; • communications infrastructure and balanced regional development; • management of the environment and balanced regional development; • delivery mechanisms and balanced regional development. Whereas the manner of listing issues around urban and rural Ireland might have conveyed a sense of a conceptualisation based on separate, self-contained and unconnected spaces, in practice the emphasis was

strongly on the relationships between areas, including an explicit reference to the international and national roles of Dublin, and an explicit recognition of the diversity of rural area types based on a specially commissioned rural typology study. The Department of the Environment received seventy-three submissions in response to the Issues paper from a wide range of sources that included local and regional authorities, other public bodies, and community-based groups and individuals. Among the key responses were widely held views that the NSS should be unambiguously recognised as the overarching framework for local and regional strategies, and that the interaction with other policy areas should be curtailed to the spatial dimension. Other concerns that emerged from the submissions were around areas such as quality of life, transport and accessibility especially in rural areas, employment prospects particularly outside the main cities, declining population in rural areas, protection of landscapes of national importance, and policies in relation to urban sprawl, ribbon development and single rural dwellings. From these responses it was evident that expectations were high with regard to the NSS and also that a strong social dimension needed to be included which had to be reconciled with the economic competitiveness concerns of the Department of Finance, representatives of the business community such as the Chambers of Commerce, and others. The overriding conceptual issue that emerged, however, was to do with balanced regional development, about which there was much confusion and uncertainty. Recognising the central importance of establishing an agreed perspective on how balanced regional development might be defined, the Issues paper was page_106 Page 107 followed in June 2000 by a Technical Working Paper on the concept of Balanced Regional Development (BRD). This paper was crucial to the direction that the NSS would eventually take. It was published early in the process, following deliberations by the Expert Advisory Group. Two competing interpretations of BRD were considered in which the distinction was between ‘balance as equality’ and ‘balance as full utilisation of potential’. Drawing on the report of the Study Programme on European Spatial Planning (Nordregio 2000) the SPU recommended the ‘potential’ interpretation and provided the following definition of balanced regional development: A structured spatial development approach, which seeks to ensure that no area or space is under or overdeveloped to the extent that this detracts from that area’s potential to contribute to realising the optimal performance of the country as a whole in economic, social, environmental and physical terms. (DELG 2000c: 3) The concept of ‘potential’ is a central component of the approach to BRD outlined above. This was defined as ‘the combination of socio-economic and locational factors and the interaction between them that create the conditions and possibilities for economic development’ (DELG 2000c: 4). The BRD paper brought the discussion a stage further by focusing on the concepts of space and place, which, following the SPESP report, were defined as follows: a ‘space’ is a territorial arrangement where any given place can be described by comparison with other locations within that territory, and a ‘place’ is any geographical location that can be described in comparison to other locations in terms of unique characteristics. (DELG 2000c: 4) The central task of the NSS was then presented as being about ‘spatial position-ing’ of any given ‘place’ in relation to a ‘space’. This rather abstract formulation provides some insights into the conceptual challenges faced by the members of the SPU. Although rejecting the traditional ‘needs’ or ‘regional equity’ arguments as the rationale for the NSS, the spatial translation of the alternative ‘potential’ approach was difficult to achieve with clarity. However, the difficulties in defining the concept of potential within a regional context that has roots in the ‘balanced competitiveness’ concept used in the ESDP may well have been helpful at that juncture in the preparation process. A clear rejection of the spatial equity approach could be justified from a rational analytical perspective, and this was necessary in order to maintain the confidence of

economic stakeholders in the process who feared that the NSS could lead to a weakening of the national economic performance by detracting investment from Dublin. This concern was acknowledged page_107 Page 108 from the outset by the Minister for the Environment when he addressed the first Leaders’ Forum, at which he confirmed that the NSS would ensure that the international competitiveness of Dublin would be maintained. The presentation of the ‘potential’ model was, however, for the most part rooted in conceptions of space and place that are close to the positivist tradition in that ‘space’ is used to describe territorial containers in which ‘places’ have locally defined and constructed characteristics. This approach does not adequately reflect the extent to which places in Ireland are economically and socially embedded in international networks of production and consumption. The Balanced Regional Development paper elicited many responses, with the majority supportive of the proposed interpretation. Not surprisingly, some of the more cautious responses were from representatives of areas that might have expected to gain more from the spatial equity approach, whereas on the other hand the most enthusiastic support came from the economic and business interests and representatives of Dublin. There was little response from the academic community of planners and related disciplines, so the opportunity for critical analysis that might lead to further refinement of the core concepts did not arise. The NSS research programme An extensive research programme was embarked upon in tandem with the first phase of the consultation process. The abandonment of regional planning for almost twenty years had left a major void in the knowledge base concerning the patterns, and underlying dynamics, of spatial development in Ireland. The SPU identified a list of almost thirty research projects that needed to be undertaken over a very short timeframe. In practice this mammoth task was shared between the members of the SPU and several consultancies, including university-based research units. This approach brought additional planning expertise into the process and resulted in an extensive body of new knowledge, which was publicised in summary format on the NSS website. A selection of the main outcomes from the research programme are summarised in Walsh (2004). The research projects provided a significant resource of new information on spatial patterns that were of direct relevance to the formulation of the NSS proposals. Although much of the new information was more descriptive than analytical in nature, which is not surprising given the very limited timeframe for this work, it was used extensively in the workshops in order to maintain the focus on high-level national issues and to avoid the risks associated with regional or local-level introspection. More generally, the research component highlighted that there were significant gaps in the knowledge base on contemporary patterns of spatial development, especially at a fine geographical scale, and there were even greater gaps in the page_108 Page 109 understanding of the underlying dynamics shaping new spatial patterns. For example, very little is known of the extent of the regional, national and international networks that places are situated within; the new types of rural–urban relations; or the functional roles of small and medium sized urban centres. It also became evident that there are serious deficits in the range and quality of easily accessible spatial data, and that the capacity for spatial data analysis and modelling was very weak. The scale of the challenges to be addressed within the timeframe of the NSS was estimated by reference to specially prepared population projections. Consultation Phase 2

The second phase in the consultation process commenced in September 2001 when the SPU published the final Consultation Paper: Indications for the Way Ahead (DELG 2001). The thirty-three-page document restates the purpose, vision and principles of the NSS. It then elaborates on the proposed approach to balanced regional development, which it suggests should be ‘a targeted approach based on the focussed strengthening of a small number of urban centres’ (DELG 2001:4). It also asserts that this small number of strong centres will: • energise the contribution that different areas can make to balanced regional development; • facilitate the development of North/South interactions; • counterbalance the pull of the Greater Dublin Area and the Dublin–Belfast corridor; • support complementary roles for urban and rural areas; and • lift the level of development of entire areas. In order to achieve these objectives five concepts were introduced: functional areas; potential; critical mass; gateways; and linkages. Taken together this set of concepts provided the basis for elaborating a more comprehensive approach to balanced regional development. The introduction of the concept of functional areas as an explicit alternative to thinking of territorial organisation in mainly administrative boundary terms was a major innovation in discussions about regional development and planning in Ireland. By focusing on the relationships between places the SPU selected twelve functional areas that covered the entire state. The boundaries of such areas were depicted as overlapping and imprecise, and were designed to convey a sense that in the latter phase of the NSS preparation the precision associated with formal empirical analysis needed to be modified to take account of additional informal knowledge derived in a somewhat ad hoc fashion from the collective wisdom of experienced planners and other spatial development researchers. According to the DELG (2001:15) the functional areas page_109 Page 110 typically tend to share common characteristics and issues, and they are spaces where people live their working, schooling, shopping and leisure lives and with which many can identify. This sense of identification spans the urban/rural divide and in places extends across county boundaries. Each of the areas contains an urban centre or a number of centres, which are central to the economic functioning of that area. The functional areas approach to balanced regional development relies heavily on the concepts of potential and critical mass. Potential is now defined as the capacity that an area possesses for development arising from its endowment of natural resources, population, labour, economic and social capital and its location relative to markets. Different areas have varying types and levels of potential. Critical mass is defined as the size, concentration and characteristics of populations that enable a range of services and facilities to be supported and that, in turn, can attract and support higher levels of economic activity. It is, therefore, an important concept in optimising local and regional potential. Critical mass can be achieved in different ways. It normally requires a concerted effort to develop a single town or city to play a larger role and deliver benefits to its wider hinterland. Alternatively, in some areas it might involve providing a package of supports to link a number of neighbouring towns in a polycentric network in order to collectively achieve a critical level of supporting infrastructures, facilities and services. Concentration of resources to achieve stronger centres and, thereby, the development of related areas is a crucial dynamic in bringing about more balanced regional development. The National Development Plan designated the five largest urban centres as Gateways. These centres are at strategic locations and they also possess good social and economic infrastructure and support services

including higher education institutions. The Indications paper signalled that there was scope for three or four additional Gateways though it refrained from identifying them. It further asserted that there would be a role for smaller centres, both individually and as components of regional urban networks. Rural areas for the most part were envisioned as constituting the hinterlands of urban centres upon which they depend for services and economic opportunities. This territorial perspective, which allows for adaptations in response to the profiles of different regions, seeks to distance the NSS discourse from the language of Growth Centres that was associated with the earlier Buchanan report. In doing so it relies upon a broader concept of sustainable development than one primarily oriented towards economic growth. Thus it promotes a territorial approach based on spaces (represented by the functional areas) rather than one based on a small number of places as was the case with growth centre strategies. The adoption of ‘spaces’ as the territorial units for page_110 Page 111 the draft NSS was a useful heuristic device in shifting the focus of most stakeholders from a short-term and absolutist spatial perspective to a more dynamic and longer-term approach whereby spatial positioning within Ireland and in the wider international arena became important. Finally, the Indications paper noted the importance of linkages between places or spaces, which are regarded as vitally important for building critical mass, enabling complementary strengths to develop in different places, and facilitating policies and strategies to promote development of a single island economy. The Indications paper was very widely distributed using a variety of media, and followed up by ten Consultative Forums, seven at regional level and three at national level, that were facilitated through the National Economic and Social Council, the National Partnership for Sustainable Development and a Professional Bodies forum that included planners, architects and engineers. The paper was also considered formally by most of the local authorities. This consultation phase took place at a sensitive time, as a general election was due to be held before summer 2002. For this and other tactical reasons the content of the Indications paper remained parsimonious on specifics, such as identifying additional gateways or potential hub centres. The focus was kept at the conceptual level. There were in total 259 written responses to the paper from a wide variety of organisational and personal interests. The overwhelming reaction was supportive of the approach and proposals contained in the paper. Half of the responses subscribed without reservation to the overall approach towards balanced regional development and another 39 per cent were also supportive subject to some clarifications. There were, however, some key areas that generated considerable discussion. The main focus of the new discourse was on the concept of functional areas (FAs), which was followed by comments on the Gateways and other settlement proposals, and also by suggestions in relation to implementation. The functional area concept and the accompanying map elicited some positive support, as a starting position, from the Irish Planning Institute and the Institute of Engineers in Ireland, but overall there were strong reservations with almost 30 per cent of the submissions stating that the concept of functional areas as outlined in the paper did not provide a useful explanation for the manner in which the country functions spatially. The main concerns were that the boundaries of the functional areas were not coterminous with those of the counties and regions. Particularly strong reservations were expressed by the local authorities in the Midlands and Southeast as the draft FA map suggested a distinctive FA located between these two regions. The emphasis in the Indications paper on the role of Gateways in developing the FAs was also a cause for concern among those representing rural interests. page_111 Page 112 In particular there was a view shared by many that the Strategy was likely to be urban-led, with potentially detrimental impacts on rural areas. Allied to this was a concern that planning issues in respect of rural

housing were not adequately addressed, which in itself is a discourse of contestation. A related issue mentioned by the Irish Planning Institute and other professionals was a need to identify and protect outstanding landscapes as components of the national culture and heritage, while also recognising that they may constitute significant economic assets especially in some of the more disadvantaged rural areas. A different concern expressed by the National Partnership for Sustainable Development was that the Indications paper did not explicitly attempt to integrate sustainable development with spatial planning. In summary the second consultation phase was characterised as a process led by the experts in the SPU and their advisors, which involved extensive well-targeted consultation and sought views on a number of key concepts that could eventually underpin the final version of the NSS. At a conceptual level the paper introduced a relational perspective on space, with spatial development considered as a dynamic process mediated through a hierarchical network of places. The precision of positivist analysis was replaced by somewhat fuzzy visualisation, and in keeping with the structuralist paradigm the roles of agencies such as local authorities, sectoral development bodies, key infrastructural providers and professional organisations as stakeholders in spatial development were recognised. The feedback from the consultation process necessitated a revision of some key concepts (e.g. functional areas) and a need to incorporate what may be described as post-modern concerns that acknowledge diversity and the multiple responsibilities of spatial planning such as sustainable development, quality of life, protection of outstanding landscapes, and maintenance of viable rural communities. This phase also emphasised the necessity for clarity and consistency among those responsible for developing the strategy on what ought to the be core issues addressed in the NSS, and what other contexts might be more appropriate for issues that do not strictly come within the scope of the NSS. The consultation process continued throughout the first half of 2002, though in a less visible manner as the place-specific sensitivities implicit in the National Spatial Strategy had to be carefully managed in the volatile context of a national election campaign. Although all political parties were in agreement on the broad objective of balanced regional development and on the need for better planning in urban and rural areas, it was prudent in the context of an election campaign to avoid any politically contrived debate on the roles that particular places might be assigned. page_112 Page 113 Modes of implementation The Indications paper provided several proposals in relation to how the NSS might be implemented. These included the establishment of a Managing Authority at central level that would be supported by an interdepartmental network representing all of the relevant government departments, and also mechanisms for ensuring coordinated actions by various state agencies and infrastructure providers. In this way it was envisaged that the implementation, or perhaps more appropriately the application, of the NSS would build on the partnership model of negotiated cooperation and collaboration that had been fostered throughout the preparation process. It was also proposed that in future all sectoral strategies would need to be consistent with the NSS objectives and overall framework, and furthermore that the application of the NSS would be supported in a consistent way by new Regional Planning Guidelines and county/city development plans while the City and County Development Boards would be required to provide frameworks for integrated development in accordance with the NSS. These proposals were generally welcomed and could be interpreted as evidence of support for a balanced approach that envisaged a combination of some elements of the positivist tradition of command and control by means of land use regulation, and also elements of the post-modern paradigm with its emphasis on participation, consensus building and shared governance in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions. In keeping with the overarching goal of greater coordination of spatial planning strategies between the two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland the Indications paper also suggested that the North/South Ministerial Council might assume a role in this area.

The content of the National Spatial Strategy

The final version of the National Spatial Strategy, which builds upon the feedback to the Indications paper, was published in December 2002. It is a substantial document written in a style that seeks to engage the various stakeholders in the expectation that there will be sufficient institutional and political support to ensure that the central messages distinguishing the NSS from other strategies are adopted throughout the public policy arena. Following a brief outline of the rationale and context for the NSS, Section Two provides an overview of the changing spatial structure of Ireland commencing with the external drivers and also summarising recent population and household projections. Section Three contains the core elements of the national strategy and sets out ‘how Ireland can be spatially structured and developed over the next twenty years in a way that is internationally competitive, socially cohesive and environmentally sustainable’ page_113 Page 114 (DELG 2002:38). This is followed in Section Four by a preliminary outline of how each region will participate in the NSS. Section Five sets out indicative policies on the spatial dimensions of policies related to enterprise development, housing, access to services, and environmental management. In relation to the last dimension, which was identified as a weakness in some responses to the Indications paper, there is an affirmation that ‘the NSS will be implemented within the framework of strong and ambitious policies for the protection of the environment and policies to integrate environmental considerations into sectoral policies’ (DELG 2002:114). Various aspects of implementation are taken up in Section Six. In this part the content of the NSS is reviewed in line with the framework set out in the Chapter 1 in this volume. Interpretation of spatiality, conceptions of place and spatial organisation principles The opening parts of Section One clearly establish that a relational perspective on the Republic of Ireland ‘space’ is being adopted. Figure 1 of the NSS (DELG 2002:21) illustrates graphically the links between Ireland and the UK, the EU core region and the wider global context, while the inset on the same figure captures some of the connections between the North and South of Ireland. Figure 2 of the NSS (DELG 2002:23) has four maps showing the cities and towns throughout the island of Ireland. Taken together the first two figures in the NSS establish that its proposals seek to address issues concerning the functional and physical connectedness of different places to spaces and places beyond the territory within which the NSS will be implemented. The first attempt to promote a functional spatial perspective according to the functional areas model in the Indications paper resulted in concerns that have been summarised above. It became clear that the draft functional areas map could not be relied upon as a tool in the NSS. In its place the NSS adopts an alternative functionalist interpretation of the strategic roles that are regarded as appropriate for each part of the country. Taking account of the vital national and international roles of the Dublin city region, the potentials of other cities and towns, and the different types of rural areas (DELG 2002:54), the NSS outlines five strategic spatial roles. Whereas these are illustrated as zones with fuzzy boundaries (DELG 2002:57) with each place assigned to only one strategic role, in practice it was envisaged that each of the roles could be applicable to different parts of each region. In broad terms the strategic roles are guided by the following principles to support a dynamic conception of spatial relations: • consolidating the Dublin city region; • strengthening the urban structure in a zone extending from Cork and page_114 Page 115 Waterford via Limerick and Galway to Sligo and Letterkenny/Derry as an alternative development axis to a potential east coast corridor linking the Dublin and Belfast city-regions;

• reinforcing the intervening parts of the Midlands by seeking to create the critical mass necessary to sustain an inland Gateway; • revitalising western areas through urban-led economic diversification and further exploitation of local potential based on land and marine resources; • cooperating in an all-island context with a particular focus on places either side of the Border. In order to give effect to these roles the NSS proposes a settlement strategy based on Gateways and Hub towns, which is complemented by proposals for other towns and the rural areas. A defining set of attributes, organised according to eleven headings, is provided for the Gateways and Hubs (DELG 2002:40). These places are conceptualised in a multi-dimensional and multi-functional way that goes well beyond the ‘agglomeration economies’ arguments of regional economists who prefer to think in terms of growth centres (O’Leary 2007). The NSS identifies four additional Gateways to supplement the five already named in the National Development Plan. Each of the new Gateways (Dundalk, Sligo, Athlone–Tullamore–Mullingar and Letterkenny–Derry) is located in the weaker Objective 1 region (see Figure 4.1). The conceptualisation underlying the Gateways and Hubs draws heavily upon ideas contained in the ESDP. For example, the Midland Gateway is presented as a polycentric model linking three towns, whereas in the north-west the proposal to develop Letterkenny as a Gateway is contingent upon developing closer functional linkages with the much larger city of Derry in Northern Ireland. Over the long term the NSS envisages the emergence of an Atlantic Gateway corridor linking Galway, Limerick, Cork and Waterford in order to achieve the critical mass to be a significant internationally competitive economic zone that will also provide an alternative to the east coast development. In order to promote balanced development within the regions nine Hub centres are identified, including two that are duo-centric, reflecting local complementarities in functional roles. The NSS further seeks to restructure the prevailing patterns of spatial relations through alterations to the transport network (see Figure 4.2). The main proposals include upgrading the strategic radial routes linking each of the Gateways to Dublin, and also by providing improved cross-radial linking corridors to facilitate greater interactions between and within the regions, especially in the western and southern parts of the country. In addition the NSS envisages improving the transport links to the north-west through a cooperative development of the route throughout Northern Ireland. It is also envisaged that enhanced international linkages by air and sea page_115 Page 116

Figure 4.1 Gateways and Hubs. Source: Department of Environment and Local Government (2002:58, Map 2). will be required, and in this regard the opportunities for enhancing accessibility through Northern Ireland are noted (DELG 2002:61). The role of the NSS as the national strategy is to provide a high-level overarching framework that is subsequently further elaborated at regional and local levels. Throughout 2003 and the first half of 2004 the Regional Authorities, with the assistance of planners from the Department, prepared Regional Planning Guidelines, which together with the NSS will provide the framework for future county and city development plans. Securing and maintaining a consensus on strategic spatial priorities at the local level is a major challenge. However, through a refocusing of spatial planning around more strategic issues it is anticipated that it will be possible to bring about a mindset shift away from traditional preoccupations with page_116 Page 117

Figure 4.2 Transport framework. Source: Department of Environment and Local Government (2002:61, Map 3). land zonings and parochialism, and that less reliance will need to be placed on regulation by central government, even though that option has had to be invoked on a few occasions over recent years. Although the NSS relies upon new concepts of spatiality it has been subject to some criticisms. For many professional planners, some regional economists (Morgenroth 2003) and especially representatives of the business community there are concerns that too many Gateways and Hubs have been proposed and that this will lead to a weakening of strategic focus on priority locations that could contribute most to achieving balanced regional development. There has also been criticism that the assumptions underlying the polycentric elements of the strategy may not be well grounded (McCafferty 2002). The absence of designated Hub page_117 Page 118 towns from some areas with extensive populations has been noted by Walsh et al . (2006) and recent analyses based on the 2002 Census of Population (published after the NSS) provide evidence for a more vigorous approach to implementation and revision of the population targets for the Gateways (Walsh 2007). For those concerned more with the rural dimension there is a concern that the NSS is overly reliant on urban-based potential and that it does not adequately deal with the prospects for rural areas. Many of these limitations have been addressed in initiatives involving core members of the SPU, which have resulted in a number of reports since the publication of the NSS. The initiatives include government strategies for transport and for science, technology and innovation (DETE 2006); a foresight study for Rural Ireland 2025

(Rural Foresight Group 2005); a framework for cooperation in relation to investment in infrastructure in Northern Ireland and the Republic (Inter Trade Ireland 2006); and detailed proposals in relation to developing the Gateways and Hubs (DEHLG and Forfas 2006; DEHLG 2006, 2007). In summary, the NSS is innovative in terms of its conceptualisation of space and spatial relations. Many of the concepts required further elaboration, which has been achieved through a continuation of the consensus-building approach that characterised the preparation process, and through the building of active networks involving key actors throughout the system of public administration, including cooperative engagements with counterparts in Northern Ireland. Despite the reservations expressed by some, the NSS has a high level of political and institutional support, as evidenced by the prominence it has received in the National Development Plan. The experience to date demonstrates that in order to develop and secure ongoing support for a challenging and innovative spatial strategy the conceptualisation and methodologies require a blending of traditional positivist expert-led analysis with an understanding of institutional structures and processes, and a methodology firmly grounded in post-modern approaches to negotiation, agenda setting and consensus building. Concept of the future and time The preparation of the NSS was informed by detailed assessments of recent trends in many spheres of activity that impact upon spatial development. The most important outcome for the NSS was a realisation that a new socio-economic context had emerged since the early 1990s, and furthermore that the change is likely to remain ongoing and will continue to be significantly influenced by emerging impacts from Europeanisation and globalisation processes. The impacts of these international processes, which are poorly understood, will be even greater in Ire-land than in neighbouring states given the exceptionally high level of openness of page_118 Page 119 the economy. Thus the NSS attempts to provide a twenty-year framework for an uncertain future. Although every effort was made to ascertain the most likely macroeconomic trends, and a set of population projections was prepared based on alternative assumptions concerning demographic indicators and macroeconomic trajectories, the Strategy opts for a future that is ultimately guided by a quasi-linear interpolation of the conditions at the turn of the century. The reasonably well-understood contemporary context is uncritically projected into a future sheltered from any radical or uncomfortable shocks. This is all that was feasible within the limited timeframe. With more time and resources the preparation process could have benefited from a foresight-type assessment that would have developed a number of alternative scenarios which could then be evaluated. Instead, the key future challenge is presented starkly by reference to future patterns of population distribution with or without the NSS. Despite the uncertainty concerning the future the NSS adopts a confident positivist approach that envisages a twenty-year planning framework designed to achieve a better balance of social, economic and physical development and population growth between regions. Furthermore, through closer matching of where people live and where they work, different parts of Ireland will in the future be able to sustain a better quality of life for people, a strong competitive economic position and an environment of the highest quality (DELG 2002:10). These statements fit very comfortably within the positivist tradition of plan making and a belief that the future can indeed be shaped through planning. In order to achieve its objectives the implementation section identifies structures and mechanisms that will be put in place to ensure that the desired outcomes can be achieved. Further work on mobilising key actors and on integrating the NSS approach into other plans and programmes was envisaged for the period 2003–6, after which implementation leading to tangible benefits will proceed. This phase will be facilitated by the investment programmes contained in the National Development Plan and its successors which tend to operate on a five- to seven-year basis. Visualisation and representation

In contrast to the positivist approach that underpinned much of the analysis and also the conceptualisation of the future, the use of imagery in the strategy statement, and also in some of the earlier presentations during the consultation phase, displays a distinctly post-modern approach. Each of the key maps is deliberately fuzzy at the edges and tends to be more suggestive than prescriptive. Among the key messages emerging from the maps are the importance of spatial differentiation, connectivity, complementarities and inclusiveness. The photographic imagery, although limited in its coverage, captures a sense of a country breaking page_119 Page 120 away from congestion and dull urban construction in the city to brighter, well-connected, free-flowing and energised regions inhabited by smiling happy children in sustainable communities and environments. The underlying messages are that the NSS can contribute to an enhancement of quality of life and sustainability throughout the regions by promoting a settlement framework that seeks to be inclusive without impinging on the established institutional and administrative physical and other boundaries. A notable aspect of the visualisation techniques is the extent to which they are used, as alternatives to narrative in some cases, to convey messages about strategic spatial planning in an island of Ireland context (Hoch 2007). The confidence of the political administration in the Republic in this regard contrasts with the more cautious approach adopted in the Northern Ireland strategy (see Chapter 5 in this volume). Understanding of scale The National Spatial Strategy, as the title implies, is primarily a planning framework for the state. However, various geographical scales that impinge upon spatial planning at the nation-state level are invoked. In the opening section that particular scale is correctly positioned within larger international contexts. A strong political economy perspective underpins the analysis of the relationship between the national and international scales with references to globalisation, the role of the EU, international obligations in relation to sustainable development, and the role of urban centres as places through which international forces are mediated and through which participation in international production, consumption and governance networks are secured. In relation to the island of Ireland scale, the narrative and visualisation falls more within the post-structural and post-modern traditions, as it is necessary to take account of the underlying political contestation and variable discourses that have influenced development patterns in the past, and also the variety of more recent political initiatives that may provide opportunities for new forms of territorial cooperation in areas related to economic development and provision of public services as diverse as healthcare and electricity. The presentation of the internal dimensions of the strategy confirms a nested hierarchical approach to scale in spatial planning that extends from the local through the region to the national level, and vice versa, and which is strongly grounded in the positivist tradition of spatial analysis. The hierarchical vision is elaborated further in the use of spatial categories such as Gateways and Hubs with polycentric networks being invoked to create additional critical mass at a number of scales extending from the Atlantic Gateway to the ternary Midland Gateway and duo-centric Hubs in the West and Southwest. However, the anticipated complementary horizontal integration to be achieved by means of the Regional page_120 Page 121 Planning Guidelines through application of the potentiality principle in pursuit of balanced development owes much to the post-positivist traditions of planning. In summary, in this area, as in so many other aspects of the Strategy, there is evidence of a plurality of conceptual approaches that are appropriate to the diverse objectives underlying the complex business of strategic spatial planning.

Conclusions The National Spatial Strategy for the Republic of Ireland was embarked upon after a lengthy period during which there had not been any framework for promoting balanced regional development. However, in the context of rapidly increasing prosperity, and the prospect of a restoration of peaceful conditions in Northern Ireland, a number of somewhat unrelated initiatives culminated in a government commitment to prepare a twenty-year strategy that would facilitate the promotion of balanced regional development. The first lesson that became apparent is that the context for preparing the NSS was completely different from that which prevailed when the last previous attempt was made in the mid-1960s. The strong welfare redistribution role of the state had been replaced by a more liberal and entrepreneurial ideology; the nature of the national and international socioeconomic realities and their underlying drivers of transformation were utterly different; and additionally the conceptualisation of space and place had also undergone a number of paradigm shifts as outlined in the opening chapter. Allied to the diversity of perspectives on space and place were new ways of thinking about development, government and governance. However, the conceptual shifts were not universally shared across disciplines, or among professionals in the areas of planning policy design and implementation, or among officials throughout different government departments. The review of the Irish experience demonstrates that a plurality of planning paradigms was used at different stages in the process and for different tasks. The traditional positivist-based expert knowledge and methodologies of professional planners and others were essential at crucial stages but they needed to be complemented by insights and methods from the structuralist and post-modern traditions. In particular there was a strong emphasis on consultation and developing a consensus based on partnership. It is also apparent that the NSS process and content were strongly influenced by the ESDP process. Reverting to the discourse in Chapter 1, the NSS experience demonstrates the extent to which the conceptualisation of space and place has shifted away from a Euclidean neutral container and objectively mappable perspective. There is now a greater recognition of the extent to which places are socially and politically constructed as nodes in global production and consumption networks. For page_121 Page 122 example, the role of certain locations in the Dublin city-region as points for connecting the Ireland space to the global economy became a key issue, whereas the assessment of rural areas illustrated that formerly weak and remote rural locations were increasingly assuming new roles as consumption spaces that are incorporated into wider national and international systems of demand centred on tourism, leisure activities and simply differences in lifestyle and values. Linked to the paradigm shifts are new ways of thinking about the organisation and representation of space. Although proximity, accessibility and distance decay effects remain important there is an increasing awareness of the role of the extent to which functional spaces are fluid and based on networks that are less place bound, and are also not congruent with administrative areas. These changes in the ways in which spatial relations are considered are particularly challenging for both analysts and practitioners trained in the positivist tradition and methodologies and can make the task of securing a consensus on fundamental issues quite difficult. This was evident in the debates that occurred around the role and number of Gateways and how they compare with or differ from the older concept of Growth Centres. The role of planners and other public servants within the process of spatial strategy formulation was vital. In relation to the NSS they had to combine the traditional roles of attempting to predict future development trends (for example population projections, housing demand, car ownership) while also seeking to achieve a negotiated consensus that required considerable consultation around draft proposals guided by expert analyses. The extent, depth and proactive nature of the consultation process were a crucial factor in securing the support of very divergent stakeholders in a policy area requiring some fundamental reassessment and abandonment of traditional thinking. At one level, the small size of the Spatial Planning

Unit made it easier to maintain consistency in the discourses with others and it was also able to keep a tight rein on the overall purpose and scope of the Strategy when at times issues were highlighted that could have posed a risk to the whole exercise (for example, a debate on rural housing based on flimsy evidence occupied the main focus of attention for a considerable period). At other levels, the work of the SPU was greatly aided by the evolution of a network of key high-ranking officials in other government departments and agencies that overtly took the form of the high-level interdepartmental steering group but over time has developed into a virtual cross-departmental team. The formal and robust exchanges between departments that might normally be expected as they forge new relationships in working with each other in developing the NSS were replaced by collaborative and cordial day-to-day working relationships as the new era of spatial planning and its relational aspects emerged. More critically, while the planners and officials involved in developing the NSS wisely avoided page_122 Page 123 sophisticated technical (positivist) modelling to produce alternative scenarios, the process could have benefited from a (post-modern) foresight-type exercise that would have provided an opportunity to think more widely outside the comfort zones of the contemporary world that we know. More generally, although spatial planners have comfortably taken on board processes of engagement and consensus building that fit with the post-modern perspective there are significant challenges in communicating relational and postmodern concepts and having them incorporated into spatial strategy reports. The experience in relation to implementation is that it is no longer sufficient to rely on a command and control approach through land use regulation. Much more can be achieved through an approach that seeks to promote a deeper understanding of the processes shaping territorial development. Of course, this requires sustained information sharing, a culture of cooperation and collaboration and a higher level of strategic capacity throughout different levels and strands of governance. Although the SPU was successful in building a supportive institutional context at all levels there is a need for ongoing reinforcement of the main elements of the strategy in a consistent way. The subsequent studies initiated by the SPU on developing the Gateways, and the report commissioned by Inter Trade Ireland (2006) on how best to coordinate infrastructural investments in the North and South, have been particularly helpful in keeping the core concepts to the forefront and in maintaining an engagement by key stakeholders (see also NESC 2005; National Competitiveness Council 2006). These initiatives are especially necessary when actions by others may unintentionally damage confidence in the process, as, for example, the government’s decentralisation programme, or at a different level some of the media commentary following the publication of the preliminary results of the 2006 census of population. Strategic spatial planning should be led by professional planners but the process needs to be better supported. The NSS experience brought to the fore the necessity for a systematic rolling research programme, means to overcome the very considerable gaps in spatial data, and the need to enhance the level of expertise among professional planners at all levels in the administrative system. For the future, there is a need for a greater level of discourse amongst planners, regional economists, other policy-makers and decision-takers on changing perspectives of space and place and to make more tangible the concepts associated with the relational and post-modern perspectives in strategic spatial planning. page_123 Page 124 This page intentionally left blank. page_124 Page 125

CHAPTER 5 BUILDING CONSENSUS IN CONTESTED SPACES AND PLACES? The Regional Development Strategy for Northern Ireland Michael Murray

Introduction In September 2001 the Northern Ireland Assembly approved the content of the Regional Development Strategy for Northern Ireland 2025, more popularly known as Shaping Our Future. This brought to an end the formulation stage of a strategic planning process that had commenced in 1997. Around that time the signs for a ‘new start’ in Northern Ireland were becoming very apparent following the paramilitary ceasefires in 1994, the participation of civil society in new area-based peace and reconciliation partnerships from 1995, and the signing of the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ in 1998. Strategic planning in this context, it could be argued, was charged with contributing to a negotiated consensus on emergent spatial relationships within Northern Ireland, on the island of Ireland, across the Irish Sea to Great Britain and beyond. Not surprisingly, these axes of endeavour reflect the political complexities of a deeply divided society with longstanding contested regional allegiances and identities. Linked with this overarching set of realities, the strategic planning process had to deal with issues of housing growth and distribution, economic development, environmental sustainability, the urban versus the rural, and spatial equity. In this regard, a case study constructed around the Northern Ireland regional development strategy offers some particularly interesting insights into the post-modern and positivist interpretations of contemporary spatial planning as outlined in Chapter 1. The political, social and economic milieu of Northern Ireland, since the enactment of partition and devolution arrangements in 1921, has a profound bearing on contemporary perspectives for spatial planning policy. This chapter commences by reviewing how the distinctive interaction between political context and contested representations of space and place has helped to frame strategic planning initiatives in Northern Ireland over time. The translation and reworking of that legacy in both the processes of preparing Shaping Our Future and in fashioning its content have been a formidable challenge. page_125 Page 126 More specifically, it is argued that the strategy processes can be appreciated primarily, though not exclusively, from a post-modernist perspective since the methodology was constructed around extensive and genuine participation by civil society, a desire to engage those whose remits go beyond conventional land use planning, and a negotiative search for a vision of the region that would provide inspirational leadership for the public, private and associational sectors. This adoption of a post-modernist process stands in marked contrast to the content of the strategy, in which Northern Ireland is treated largely as a container within which measurable and ‘mappable’ futures are articulated for places located on a fixed regional settlement hierarchy and connected internally by well-established axes of movement. Accordingly, Shaping Our Future is a document that resounds confidently with positivist interpretations of the technical planning toolkit (descriptive maps, key settlement designations and a forecast future), while arguably dealing less comfortably with issues of identity, segregation, interconnections and potential. In this regard the concept of the future is one that is ‘officially’ known and ordered, rather than one steered with sociocultural uncertainties and risks with potential to emerge in unexpected ways that parallel the maturing of political discourse within Northern Ireland and across the island of Ireland. The reestablishment of a powersharing executive in the Northern Ireland Assembly in May 2007 throws this analysis into sharp light. The formation of a new consensual alliance of contested ideologies around the external geographical connectedness of Northern Ireland has profound relevance for the continued validity of many of these positivist spatial organising principles. In the conclusions of this chapter, we revisit this debate and argue that it is now appropriate to re-align the content of the Northern Ireland regional development strategy to a

future that should be shaped more against post-modernist criteria.

The context Land use planning responsibilities in Northern Ireland are located outside local government and are (in 2008) shared between the Department for Regional Development (DRD) and the Planning Service of the Department of the Environment (Northern Ireland). Both are civil service organisations. At the risk of being reductionist, the former deals with the formulation of high-level policy, the latter with the preparation of development plans and the operation of development control. This twin departmental arrangement is rooted in the implementation of the 1998 ‘Good Friday’ political agreement that led to the establishment of a power-sharing executive and the need to fashion sufficient ministerial posts consistent with the election performance of political parties to a 108-member Northern Ireland Assembly. Political context is important, therefore, in seeking to understand the emergence and character of strategic spatial planning in Northern Ireland. page_126 Page 127 Prior to the suspension of the Northern Ireland Government and the introduction of direct rule in 1972, Northern Ireland was administered from its foundation by a legislature separate from Westminster. The region thus developed with many of the characteristics of an independent state with its own Parliament, Civil Service and a system of executive control of Prime Minister and Cabinet responsibilities. Devolved government, however, enjoyed the trappings more of pomp than of circumstance since its effectiveness, as suggested by Buckland (1981), was hamstrung by inadequate powers, especially finance, and by the key role assigned to local authorities. Political tensions thus operated on two distinct axes: outwards to the Treasury in London, with which there were frequent engagements by the local Ministry of Finance, and downwards to a mosaic of local government institutions. It was within this context that town and country planning emerged, with central government assuming responsibility for legislation and local government concerning itself with plan preparation and development control. A weak legal framework, compensation liabilities, the absence of professional planning staff, and small-scale local government that contributed to the existence of no fewer than thirty-seven planning authorities, all point to minimal interest over four decades in fostering an effective planning system within the region (Murray 1991). As noted by Greer and Jess (1987) the arrival of town and country planning proper in Northern Ireland is commonly taken to coincide with the appointment of Robert Matthew in 1960 to prepare the Belfast Regional Survey and Plan. The choice of the Belfast Region as the spatial focus for the plan says much, however, about the political economy of Northern Ireland at that time. The long-standing dominance of the heavy engineering and traditional textiles sectors within the industrial structure of the region was clearly changing and, by 1960, per capita output had dropped to 63 per cent of the UK average (Wilson 1990). These enterprises were heavily concentrated in the predominantly Unionist and Protestant eastern part of the region where unemployment levels tended to be lower than in the western and southern, more rural parts of the region, which were predominantly Nationalist and Catholic. Moreover, the 1961 Census recorded a total population in Northern Ireland of 1.425 million people with 39 per cent living in an expanding Belfast Urban Area. Thus Matthew was charged with bringing forward planning proposals that would accommodate the development of jobs and housing in the main towns of the region while helping to regulate the uncontrolled sprawl of Belfast. His final report was published in 1963 and recommended: • the imposition of a stopline around the Belfast urban area in order to limit its expansion into the surrounding greenscape and hold its population to around 600,000 by 1981; page_127 Page 128 • the development of a new regional centre, subsequently to be known as Craigavon, focused on Lurgan–

Portadown; • the designation of seven towns within the eastern part of Northern Ireland as centres for major development; and • the concentration of industry within the remainder of Northern Ireland into six key centres (see Figure 5.1). As observed by O’Dowd (2005) the Northern Ireland administration was ready at that time to embrace a policy of new towns, growth centre planning, and the development of roads and industrial estates, notwithstanding very considerable controversy around these locational decisions and the alleged neglect of the west of the region. Essentially this early strategic planning activity revealed a spatial focus on the eastern part of Northern Ireland, prompting Caldwell and Greer (1984:6) to comment: Slowly a reaction was to emerge against the lack of development opportunities in rural areas and the slogan ‘West of the Bann’ began to appear … These areas were devoid of any comprehensive development strategies at a time when resources were being predominantly directed to the generation of manufacturing jobs in the Belfast region. This early foray into strategic planning was very much a politically driven project and contrasted with the next major effort during the 1970s when the planning governance environment was quite different. The Macrory local government reform report in 1970 had advanced an analysis whereby a suite of regional-scale

Figure 5.1 The Belfast Regional Survey and Plan Proposals, 1963. Source: Matthew (1963). page_128 Page 129 public services including planning, roads, water and sewerage should be vested in a central Ministry of Development. This would be headed by a Minister who would be accountable to the Northern Ireland Parliament. A total of not more than twenty-six District Councils was recommended as a replacement for two County Boroughs, six County Councils, thirty-four Borough and Urban District Councils and thirty-one Rural District Councils (Murray 1991). New local government would have responsibility for a range of ceremonial, consultative, representative and much reduced executive functions that would be very different in composition from the rest of the United Kingdom. These recommendations were accepted by the government and were supported by legislation in 1972. In the interim, however, escalating violence and political instability in Northern Ireland generated deep concern in Westminster and, as stated above, the Stormont-based government and parliament were suspended in March of that year. Local government

elections followed in 1973 and established a single-tier structure of twenty-six District Councils. Planning functions were absorbed into the Northern Ireland Civil Service, within which it was appreciated that the preparation of development plans could not go ahead without an up-to-date regional planning framework. In 1975 the Department of Housing, Local Government and Planning published a discussion paper with heavily stylised spatial options related to a regional development framework for Northern Ireland. These options were configured along a concentration–dispersal continuum and a preference for a District Towns strategy was indicated. This would result in the targeting of growth to twenty-three towns in the region, while providing for managed growth in Belfast. The strategy closely followed the distribution of new local government headquarters and, not surprisingly, received District Council acclaim. The Regional Physical Development Strategy 1975–95 was issued in final form in 1977 (see Figure 5.2) and represented a second significant milestone in the history of strategic planning in Northern Ireland. Greer and Jess (1987) have commented that in theory, at least, a more equitable distribution of growth points had been established across the region and that the Matthew Plan, constructed around solutions for the Belfast city region, had been abandoned. Expressed more prosaically, the routines of a civil service planning bureaucracy wedded to impartiality, efficiency and effectiveness had secured a more balanced spread of urban-driven development opportunities between a predominantly Unionist east and Nationalist west in Northern Ireland. But, perhaps, not surprisingly in the context of the time, the Strategy said little about the deep sectarian divisions and social inequalities within the region, preferring instead to place reliance upon a methodology of statistical inquiry and evaluation techniques. Nor did the strategy, in common with its predecessor, have much to say with regard to wider spatial relationships beyond the jurisdiction of Northern Ireland. This was a strategy exclusively for the space of Northern page_129 Page 130

Figure 5.2 The Northern Ireland Regional Physical Development Strategy, 1975–95. Source: Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland (1977). Ireland and its places. It was based on regional population, housing, retailing and employment forecasts and was produced by civil service planners for civil service planners. It is a positivist legacy that has spilled over into the content of Shaping Our Future. Thirty years on from that era, the obligations of governance in Northern Ireland are substantially different and, as Neill and Gordon (2001:34) have argued, ‘difference and division can no longer be so easily ignored in official planning exercises’. Political progress related to a constitutional settlement, the ending of IRA terrorism, arms decommissioning, the early release of terrorist prisoners, criminal justice and policing reform, and human rights and equality safeguards now sits alongside the maturing of a better-informed and expressive civil society. It may seem a cliché, but a new start has warranted a new plan and in that regard the commitment in the 1998 ‘Good Friday Agreement’ to produce a regional planning strategy for

Northern Ireland is significant, albeit that work had already started by then on its preparation. It is worth noting that this appears under the section in the Agreement titled ‘Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity – Economic, Social and Cultural Issues’ and charges the British Government with making rapid progress on: A new regional development strategy for Northern Ireland, for consideration in due course by the Assembly, tackling the problems of a divided society and social cohesion in urban, rural and border areas, protecting and enhancing the environment, producing new approaches to transport issues, strengthening the physical infrastructure of the region, developing the advantages and resources of rural areas and rejuvenating major urban centres. ( The Agreement 1998:19) page_130 Page 131 But, just as the Agreement itself is the product of dialogue between political parties in Northern Ireland, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of Ireland and is watermarked by inclusiveness and equality, it is perhaps stating the obvious that an attempt should have been made to invoke similar values to underpin the preparation processes and content of that planning strategy. In summary it is necessary, therefore, to appreciate the importance of context and time when dealing with contemporary strategic spatial planning in Northern Ireland. This is a context that exposes deep divisions in society and that calls for a planning approach and content which moves far beyond the all too visible limitations of how previous initiatives have dealt with space and place in the region. It requires a move away from ‘a people-less view of place’, as suggested in Chapter 1, which was given meaning in those plans by delineating, measuring, defining and naming the physical objects within the space. But it is also a context that locates the responsibility for the formulation of Shaping Our Future within a departmental civil service environment, with its routines of rational decision making, albeit with an anticipated collective political scrutiny linked to best advice. The significance of time can be traced by shifts in the loci of policy with the different phases and preferences of territorial planning mirroring the governance arrangements in place. The next section of this chapter explores aspects of the process involved in seeking to build this new spatial planning consensus.

The process of plan making At first sight Northern Ireland may seem a strange place in which to find a collaborative, inclusive and discussion-driven approach to strategic spatial planning. Over the past thirty-five years bureaucratic government has overseen policy formulation and implementation processes on behalf of a society marked by deeply contested histories and cultures, bitter sectarian violence and endless constitutional wrangling. But, daunting as those circumstances have been, process-related innovation within the sphere of spatial planning has been able to harness the enthusiasm of locally elected representatives and the energy of civil society in the shaping of a new regional framework. In June 1997 the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Dr Marjorie Mowlam, initiated the task of preparing a regional strategy for Northern Ireland with the publication of an introductory paper that set out the rationale for the strategy and some key issues. The time horizon of 2025 was set down and confirmation was given that a project team had been established within the lead Department of the Environment, with progress to be guided by an Inter-departmental Steering Group involving wide representation from Government in Northern Ireland as well as inputs from expert external advisers. A linkage with other sub-regional strategies, not least that being prepared for the Belfast City Region, was canvassed. page_131 Page 132

In November 1997 a discussion paper titled Shaping Our Future: Towards a Strategy for the Development of the Region was published at a major stakeholder conference by the Department of the Environment (Northern Ireland) to stimulate public debate and to facilitate input to the planning process from multiple interests. It was indicated that further discussion around the Belfast City Region would be merged into the broader Regional Strategic Framework. This was followed in December 1998 by the publication of a draft version of the Regional Strategic Framework (RSF), which set out a series of planning guidelines related to strengthening regional cohesion; a spatial development strategy for Northern Ireland based on a hub, corridor and gateway approach; a balanced approach to regional growth with new housing targets to 2010 distributed across the three settlement groups of the Belfast Metropolitan Area, Derry/Londonderry and the Regional Towns, and the Rural Community; the development of a modern, integrated transport system; support for economic development; environmental management and the creation of healthy living environments. A public examination, the first of its kind in Northern Ireland, was convened in autumn 1999 to test, through discussion among invited stakeholders, the content of that draft document. In January 2000 the panel appointed to conduct the public examination reported to the new Department for Regional Development that had been recently formed under devolution arrangements and with responsibility for strategic planning in Northern Ireland. Its report was published the following month (Elliott et al . 2000), and further public input on the acceptability or not of the Panel’s recommendations was invited through to the end of May 2000. In April 2000 the DRD issued its own initial response to the report of the panel to assist interested parties in submitting their final views by the May deadline (DRD 2000). Thereafter the regional planning team, in consultation with the Northern Ireland Assembly, finalised Shaping Our Future for publication in September 2001. Institutional structures and power relations The initiation of Direct Rule over Northern Ireland affairs from Westminster in 1972 created a set of powerful civil service departments headed by ministers from Great Britain. Such an arrangement is regarded as contributing to a longstanding democratic deficit in the governance of the region, especially when new local government was obliged at that time to begin operating with very constrained responsibilities. Nonetheless, as the only democratically elected forum within the region, the role of local government and its elected representatives has become increasingly influential in its challenges to central government policy. In that regard the preparation process attached to Shaping Our Future encouraged interaction between the Department of the Environment (Northern Ireland) and page_132 Page 133 District Councils that, albeit far from being an easy relationship of dialogue, did drive forward the opportunity to create a consensus around the final content. One set of interactions between the different levels of government is illustrative of that productive tension, as outlined below. The publication of the November 1997 Discussion Paper produced a heavily charged environment, not least because of the perceived negativity of the expressed ideas towards rural living and working traditions. Rural interests were comprehensively critical of an implied strategic direction that heralded a return of the very selective growth centre bias of the Matthew Plan from the 1960s (McEldowney et al . 1999). As part of the response to this consultation phase, five District Councils agreed to join forces under an informal subregional alliance and to present themselves as a single voice. Under the compact of the West Rural Region, which comprises 38 per cent of the land area of Northern Ireland and accounted for 14 per cent of its 1991 population, the councils took the view that any meaningful input into a Northern Ireland spatial development strategy could best be achieved by collaboration. Work sessions with elected representatives and senior council officials were facilitated by academics from Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Ulster over a period of four months. These were rotated around each of the council offices and, at the insistence of the councils, a highly symbolic consultative plenary meeting was convened with senior planners from the Department of the Environment. The submission to government comprised a withering

analysis of the content of the Discussion Paper and also included an accompanying audit and development strategy for the region. The important point here is that this type of twin track assessment combined critical reflection and positive advocacy and probed much deeper into the living and working patterns of rural people than had been attempted by the Department of the Environment. The geographical scale of this collective political pressure did succeed in eliciting a reworking of the preliminary proposals. Moreover, following a public examination into the draft strategy in late 1999, at which the West Rural Region was a participant, rural Northern Ireland was accorded a chapter in its own right in the final version, with much of the language used at first sight being more conciliatory to rural interests. In short, contested power relations between central and local government have been a feature of the spatial strategy-making process but as a result have helped to moderate formal government tendencies towards command and control. Methods of engagement The timescale associated with the preparation of Shaping Our Future was considerable and required public participation at different stages over a period of page_133 Page 134 three years from 1997 to 2000. This style of ‘planning through dialogue’ was premised on an exhaustive search for consensus across a very wide range of stakeholders whose interests, influence and power vary. It is noted, for example, that the process comprised: • a total of 116 direct consultations by the Department of the Environment with District Councils, political parties, other parts of the government and regional organisations; • a total of 207 formal submissions from District Councils, political parties, elected representatives, business organisations and public sector bodies; • the appointment of a research consortium from Queen’s University Belfast, The Urban Institute at the University of Ulster, Community Technical Aid and Rural Community Network, which facilitated consultation with 477 community and voluntary groups; • the convening of two conferences attended by some 600 young people, which resulted in the submission of a Northern Ireland Youth Council Report. This style of planning fits well with the contemporary conceptual prominence in post-modernist conventions of spatial strategy making related to shared knowledges, civil society engagement, negotiation and harnessing the power of agency. Furthermore, it stands in marked contrast to the positivism of the expertinvented ‘blueprint’ regional planning prescription of Matthew for Northern Ireland in the 1960s and the forecast-driven rational comprehensive approach of the subsequent 1975–95 Northern Ireland Regional Physical Development Strategy with its tokenistic consultation. Instead, a prominent feature of the unfolding chronology has been the challenge of reaching agreement through inclusive discussion on the shape of over-arching policy implementation principles and their spatial representation out to the time horizon of 2025. One element of the methods of engagement deserves special mention, namely the formal public examination into the draft strategy. A public examination is designed to provide information through informed public discussion of certain matters relevant to policy decision making. It provides an arena within which different stakeholders can present facts and arguments to an independent panel whose task, in turn, is to make recommendations on the basis of the evidence to the sponsoring authority. Within Great Britain the public examination tool has long been associated with the preparation of Structure Plans and latterly has been adopted to test the content of draft Regional Planning Guidance. But within Northern Ireland that tradition of policy deliberation has not been a feature of physical planning, which has tended to rely on the conventional, adversarial public inquiry process to deal with land use and development issues associated

with page_134 Page 135 Area Plans. The decision to include a public examination was an important stage of the programme for the preparation of a Northern Ireland regional strategy. It can be viewed as a welcome innovation and an opportunity for engagement with a range of stakeholders, albeit that these were invited participants drawn from those engaged in previous rounds of the consultation process. The public examination into the draft strategy was convened over five weeks during October and November 1999. Over 170 participants attended on behalf of a wide range of organisations drawn from central government departments and agencies, District Councils, the business, community and voluntary sectors, and representative bodies. Their input was organised by the presiding panel to be in line with their previously expressed concerns and expertise, and, although a number of organisations appeared at more than one debate, any single debate did not usually have more than twenty-four participants. The formation of strategic alliances was very much encouraged by the panel and resulted, for example, in the coming together of several community organisations concerned, inter alia, with protection of the Belfast Green Belt under the umbrella of the Belfast Metropolitan Residents Group. A grouping of five local authorities banded together to represent their shared interests as the West Rural Region. A questionnaire survey of participants carried out immediately after the completion of the public examination hearings (Murray and Greer 2002) indicated that the public examination was a valued part of the participatory process associated with the preparation of a regional strategic framework for Northern Ireland. The majority of respondents regarded the themes selected for the fourteen debates as being adequate for their intended purpose, though there was a consistent body of criticism that cross-linkages with other areas of public policy were insufficiently developed. Moreover, a large number of respondents were less content with the scope offered for direct interaction with other participants, and with the answers received to questions when these were passed on through the Chair. A strong preference ran through the comments for more scope to challenge and debate rather than have people rely on prepared statements. Overall, the contribution of the Department of the Environment in facilitating the public examination, in preparing briefing papers, and in offering comment on various issues was well received by participants. The work of the panel in designing debate questions in advance was appreciated as a contribution to the thinking of participants, though opinion varied across respondents on whether these were interpreted too flexibly or imposed a constraint on the discussion. Finding a balance was obviously difficult and much rested, therefore, on participants being able to respond to appropriate steers from the panel during each debate. In this regard the interventions by the panel in the form of additional questions were a highly valued part of the public examination. The majority of respondents agreed that their participation at the page_135 Page 136 public examination had been worthwhile, that they did not feel intimidated by the occasion and that they were afforded sufficient opportunity to state their case. In short, the preparation of the Northern Ireland regional development strategy involved an intensive and lengthy discourse of challenging and reframing policy perspectives. This was far from being top-down tokenistic consultation. The engagement process as a whole did seek to champion inclusion and did bear the hallmarks of social negotiation as, over time, effort was directed at moving appreciation of the emergent content from strident adversarialism to quiet consensus. Information dissemination through conferences, the sharing of substantial written material, and consultative workshops on a cross-sectoral basis, culminating in the participation of key stakeholders at the public examination, assisted with that endeavour. There is evidence, as Healey (1997) has identified more broadly, that this activity allowed participants to learn from each other – on what they care about and why – through a combination of rational technical

arguments, anecdotal observations, emotional responses and moral advocacy in multiple arenas, both informal and formal. The totality of that engagement, at the very least, helped to enhance the legitimacy of the process. The perceived roles of the planners, knowledge and skills The project team for the preparation of Shaping Our Future at the time of its publication in 2001 comprised a group of fifteen planners based in Regional Planning Division in the Department for Regional Development. At least eleven of this group were members of the Royal Town Planning Institute or held a qualification in Planning. In that regard the preparation of the spatial strategy drew heavily on core planning skills (for example, the determination of settlement hierarchies and the spatial allocation of housing growth indicators). Although the team lacked an interdisciplinary focus, the input from an interdepartmental steering group, chaired by the Permanent Secretary of the Department for Regional Development, did allow other perspectives to be brought to its attention. Additional planning knowledge from an international panel of six experts provided advice and guidance on best practice in regional planning matters. Essentially this team of planners confined themselves to the collection of the data that served to inform the sequence of documentation that was published between 1997 and 2001. This included work on population forecasts and future housing requirements. Only a few of the team, however, were visible at stakeholder events and in that regard the planning team tended to keep a low profile and to leave much of the work related to tapping into experiential knowledge, visioning and mediation to externally appointed organisations, some of which had large constituencies. This information was then relayed back to the planning team. page_136 Page 137 However, within the process as a whole, there were other professional planners’ inputs that can be interpreted as lying close to the advocacy of a structuralist approach. Very powerful interest groups such as the house builders, retail investment and transport infrastructure hired high-profile planning expertise to represent their business portfolios, and most local authorities engaged planning expertise to assist with strategic planning matters related to housing growth, economic development and transportation. The skills of the legal profession, a frequent participant in development plan inquiries, were seldom called on. Community activists banded together, notably in relation to green belt protection within the Belfast Metropolitan Area. In short, planners had a key role not just within the project team, but also in paid advocacy for private and public sector clients. This contributed to the prediction of different futures related to whose interests were being served and accordingly placed added pressure on the Public Examination Panel to listen, interpret and recommend. Its skills set was broadly based, covering planning, transport and public administration and was finely tuned to search for openings towards a negotiated consensus on contested issues. Modes of implementation envisaged The Regional Development Strategy for Northern Ireland started out in 1997 with the ambition of creating a new vision for Northern Ireland that could effectively address ‘the Region’s critical economic, social, environmental and community problems’ (Department of the Environment (Northern Ireland) 1997a: 1). This was a strategy intended to go beyond land use planning, which would involve ‘elected representatives, the business sector, trade unions, the voluntary sector, environmental interests, professional and representative bodies and individual citizens as well as relevant authorities in the Republic of Ireland’ (ibid.). In the 2001 final document an entire chapter is given over to implementation and emphasis is placed on continuation of dialogue with these stakeholders on a partnership basis. The post-modernist attachment to building consensus through ongoing cooperation and collaboration is regarded as being very important for part of that future and underlines the value of a social learning process that is iterative rather than being content with the securing of a one-off and illusory agreement. Mention is made of sub-regional support and management to ensure that progress is made in each part of Northern Ireland. How this is to be achieved,

however, is somewhat vague and is left contingent on a review of public administration across the region. What is explicit is the perceived role of District Councils in advancing the way forward, which may say more about needing to manage centre–local relationships over the years ahead. Accordingly, and paralleling this mode of implementation, there are clear posipage_137 Page 138 tivist leanings that emphasise command and control through land use regulation. A core part of the chapter on implementation deals with the rationale for adjustment of primary legislation that requires development plans to be consistent with the spatial strategy. It is proposed to amend the statutory provisions to ensure that development plans and schemes are in general conformity with the regional development strategy. This point is important since it highlights that the core function of the spatial development strategy has arguably reverted to an embedded relationship with the land use planning process, with particular emphasis being placed on how development plans are to be brought forward. The command and control dynamic is further illustrated by a commitment to monitoring and review, the refining of sustainability indicators and the publication of new Regional Planning Policy Statements to guide development control decision making. Positivist tradition in the final analysis has recaptured the post-modernist emphasis of the process of spatial strategy making.

The content of the spatial strategy The strategy document (DRD 2001) runs to over 200 pages and comprises six sections made up of thirteen chapters and appendices. In all there are some forty-three strategic planning guidelines supported by twenty-three diagrams (see for example Plate 5), in themselves evidence of the complex policy arena within which land use planning is located. The document guarantees a long read to those who persevere, but embedded within the language of inclusiveness there are some very significant planning policy directions for the future. Following the framework provided in Chapter 1, the content of Shaping Our Future is critically reviewed . The narrative draws on the key documents published during the strategy preparation process since these constitute a valuable resource in tracking the evolving search for consensus around content. Interpretation of spatiality, conceptions of place and spatial organisation principles The spatiality of Northern Ireland is contested between being part of the United Kingdom and being part of Ireland. Although the current constitutional position underlines a conditional continuity of the former, there are very real citizen identities and political aspirations that favour the latter. In this complex world of differential belonging, the representation of space and place is powerfully loaded, words are carefully parsed, and images selectively chosen not least with regard to external linkages. Shaping Our Future has, therefore, tended to shy away from an analysis of spaces as culturally produced by opting for the relatively safer ground of space as a container within which there are real environmental issues regardpage_138 Page 139 ing how that particular space is consumed. It cannot, however, be regarded as a ‘neutral’ container, since choices and their representation are inspired ultimately by the power of serious politics. In the 1997 preliminary paper the legitimacy of a Northern Ireland focus was underlined by exhortations for collective engagement with the future of ‘Our Region’. The emphasis was on the togetherness of ‘We’. Any external reference points related to consultation with relevant authorities in the Republic of Ireland (not its citizens) and appreciation for the strategic potential of the economic corridor between Belfast and Dublin. The transnational positioning of Northern Ireland was hinted at with mention of the Atlantic Arc of European

Countries, into which the region must connect to networks of transport, telecommunications and energy. This safe representation of European spatial connectedness was taken further in the November 1997 Discussion Paper, and by December 1998 the planning vocabulary of the draft strategy confidently spoke of ‘Creating an Outward Looking Region’ with worldwide linkages and important European transport and air connections. This international spatial context features in the final 2001 strategy and indeed is cited in Chapter 4 ‘Strengthening Regional Cohesion in a Global Context’ as a Strategic Planning Guideline – ‘To strengthen and extend European and world-wide linkages’. Island of Ireland cross-border networks of economic cooperation and enterprise are paralleled by equal commitments for cooperation with neighbouring Scottish regions. The interesting point here is that Shaping Our Future, having dealt with this considerable geo-political awkwardness, then moves on to Chapter 5 and boldly announces ‘The Spatial Development Strategy for Northern Ireland’. This and subsequent chapters revert to the comfort zone of the region as container. The spatial organising principles that inform that content are sixfold: promoting balanced and integrated regional development; encouraging sustainable patterns of development; enhancing accessibility; making best use of regional assets; reflecting regional distinctiveness; and supporting a competitive regional economy. Within contemporary planning practice such principles will brook little criticism. They hint at notions of spatial equity, environmental responsibility, the importance of proximity, and the harnessing of territorial potential within an ordered region. But in working through the application of these principles within Shaping Our Future the content is vigorously supportive of urban-based development trajectories, with rural Northern Ireland, comprising its mosaic of small towns, villages and countryside, ascribed the bland and uncertain role of ‘Rural Community Potential’. The Strategy clearly reflects the urban comfort zone of its authors, and a situation in which the rural, notwithstanding its gratuitous title, is very much perceived as a different and socially empty spatial entity. It is a world with which the positivist toolkit and dogma of town and country planning cannot page_139 Page 140 connect. When considered as a whole, the content bears a close resemblance to the spatial calculus of the earlier Regional Physical Development Strategy 1975–95. Concept of the future and of time The evolution of the Northern Ireland regional development strategy is water-marked by the phrase ‘Shaping Our Future’, and in June 1997 the preliminary paper posed a challenging agenda of ‘Where will we live?’, ‘Where will we work?’, ‘What will be our quality of life?’, ‘How will we communicate?’ and ‘How can we support community life?’ The timeframe for meeting these challenges is pitched at ‘the next quarter century’ or more precisely 2025, and in developing the content of the strategy through to its finalisation (in September 2001) that headline date remains constant. However, at draft strategy stage in December 1998, a more immediate time horizon of 2010 was introduced for the housing targets. This by the final strategy stage was shifted out to 2015. This is the only element of the strategy content that is so precisely programmed; although there is sophisticated projection of the quantum of new housing development, the uncertainties around this shifting calculus are carefully hidden. This is a projected future that will in turn inform the preparation of Area Plans with their focus on land availability. Thus, the confidence displayed about forecast accuracy and the future as being known are essential attributes in maintaining credibility. It is interesting that in 2005, following extensive District Council dissatisfaction with the outworking of these previously agreed Housing Growth Indicators into the development plan system, the Department for Regional Development published a review of the predicted 2015 regional housing requirement, which led to further scrutiny at a public examination in February 2006. The proposed uplift of the 2015 figure to 200,000 dwellings from the 2001 figure of 160,000 demonstrates just how uncertain the planning world really is – though this is never easily conceded within the perceived certainties of positivist planning. Whereas Shaping Our Future presents itself as forward-looking, close scrutiny of the documentation produced demonstrates reliance on historic and contemporary data that give profile to a plethora of criteria.

Thus, for example, the spatial frameworks for the economy, for rural Northern Ireland, for tourism, for the regional strategic transport network, for natural heritage, for special landscapes, and for built heritage portray current spatial distributions in minute detail. But the absence of a comparable framework for healthcare provision is striking and points to an understanding (at interdepartmental level) that the concerns to be represented should be those largely embedded in the activities of the Department for Regional Development and the Department of the Environment. Description of the way page_140 Page 141 things are dominates over analysis of why things are the way that they are. The plethora of contemporary evidence is devoid of controversy, but then becomes a platform to argue implicitly that this is the way things should be by 2025. The construction of scenarios is avoided and indeed for much of Shaping Our Future the selected present is simply fast-forwarded into the future. Arguably, we are reminded more of a ‘Report of Survey’ that will quickly become dated, rather than being presented with a set of possible and contingent futures. Visualisation and representation The imagery of Shaping Our Future is strongly in line with the interpretation of spatiality as discussed above and underlines Northern Ireland as ‘a place apart’. The chapter introducing the spatial development strategy presents a satellite photograph of Northern Ireland and its trans-border territory to the west, which then becomes the outline for successive maps and diagrams of the region. Arguably this presentation of reality from space is meant to inform a subliminal endorsement of Northern Ireland’s spatial validity. However, in contrast with the previous Matthew Plan and the subsequent Regional Physical Development Strategy, which extracted the region from its immediate hinterland context, Shaping Our Future at the very least gives representation to the presence of the Irish borderlands, though there is a vagueness ascribed to the strategy map notation of ‘Trans-Regional Development Linkages and Opportunities’. Key transport corridors and part of the rail network penetrate across a visually defended frontier to places that are mentioned but which are conveyed by the maps as being distant. These are axes of movement out of a contained region where the vivid colours of the multiple mapping symbols contrast with the portrayed aridity of the Republic of Ireland (Plate 5). An extensive and often subtle portfolio of colour photographs has decorated the evolving content of Shaping Our Future. Thus, for example, in the June 1997 preliminary paper the imagery on the front cover is the side profile of a single child with emphasis on his/her left eye. The vision metaphor develops further in the November 1997 discussion paper by presenting three sets of couples, which hint at intergenerational search for a shared vision. By December 1998 the cover imagery has moved to active and happy citizens with the central image of two children, one of whom is at the wheel of a child’s car. Both children, however, are looking in different directions in line with the draft status of that document. But in the final approved strategy of 2001 the same photograph montage portrays both children looking straight forward. Shaping Our Future is now perceived as being on course and steered with a shared sense of clear purpose! Within the documentation the photographs that are used consistently reinforce page_141 Page 142 a normal and prosperous society. Progressive architecture, bucolic landscapes and elegant townscapes portray a reality that is selective and promotional. Only one photograph of an urban ‘peace wall’ reveals the place-based dimensions of a divided society and is linked with the text: ‘A framework predicated on the inevitability of a dysfunctional community would be sadly lacking in vision.’ This photograph and commentary appear in the November 1997 Discussion Paper (Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland 1997b: 14–15), but sadly do not re-appear in subsequent documents as a narrative, albeit

uncomfortable, of how things really are in a society that is deeply segregated. In the final 2001 approved strategy the existence of cultural diversity is acknowledged and both integration and separation are adopted as a dual approach to support community cohesion. The photograph used in this instance is a multiracial informal band on parade during the 1998 Belfast Carnival and is thus an image with international resonance in contrast to the disturbing images of violence accompanying contested band parades in Northern Ireland that were capturing global headlines at that time. Throughout the lengthy process of preparing Shaping Our Future great attention has been given to state management of the visualisation and representation content. A final matter on visualisation and representation relates to sponsorship and ownership of the spatial strategy. The strategy through to draft stage in December 1998 was clearly under the patronage of the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Dr Marjorie Mowlam. Her efforts towards brokering the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998 were acclaimed internationally and thus it is noteworthy that her photograph and a photograph of the cover of the Agreement illustrate that draft strategy document. However, in the September 2001 final strategy any reference to the Good Friday Agreement is excised, the ownership of the strategy is vested in the Northern Ireland Assembly with a large photograph of the institution in operation featured on page 2, and the Foreword is penned by the local Minister for Regional Development. Under the then current arrangements for devolution, government was not a collective enterprise and Ministers were empowered to operate largely in relation to their own departmental briefs. The Good Friday Agreement was not popular with the political party of this Minister, which may account for the apparent revisionism by his civil servants and the rationale for the spatial strategy being located instead within the 2001 Programme for Government in Northern Ireland. At an editorial level the shift from naming the second city of Northern Ireland as ‘Derry/Londonderry’ in the draft strategy to ‘Londonderry’ in the final strategy is again very symbolic of civil service sensitivity to high-level political preference. page_142 Page 143 Understanding of scale The scale at which Shaping Our Future is presented is consistently that of Northern Ireland, with no fewer than eighteen maps of the region being used to illustrate the agreed spatial strategy and a number of its key components related, for example, to the economy, landscape character and population density. As noted above there is careful positioning of the region vis-à-vis Great Britain and the island of Ireland, with additional spatial references to Western Europe and North America, but these are not central to the narrative of the strategy. The treatment of the settlement pattern of Northern Ireland features prominently throughout the evolving documentation and gives representation to a conventional nested hierarchy of cities and main towns that are located on key transport and link corridors. The two cities of Belfast and Londonderry are given special attention in the 2001 approved strategy as ‘Major Regional Cities’ with an ‘Inter-regional Gateway Role’. Each warrants a separate chapter (reflecting their competitive interaction) and has its own customised spatial framework for growth. In the case of the Belfast Metropolitan Area it is interesting that the functional analysis and indicative planning policy steers are scaled at the six constituent local authority levels. Each local government administrative area is showcased by way of detailed infographics, with additional thematic analyses related, for example, to waterfront development and regeneration being used to illustrate some shared potential. For the remainder of the urban settlement hierarchy, the twenty-one main towns of the region are divided into ‘Main Hubs’ and ‘Local Hubs’ based on previous analyses of population and functionality. Every local authority district has its place on the map, though in contrast with the previous 1975–95 Regional Physical Development Strategy, which did not differentiate between the District Towns, there are perceived ‘losers’ in this allocative determination. The status of ‘Local Hub’ has not rested easily with the few politicians in whose area that designation applies. The elaboration of broader spatial ideas around networking and clustering between places that are close in terms of distance has been avoided, lest the perceived dilution of fixed places with fixed futures should generate deeper local political opposition. Some insight into these place-based sensitivities had been gained following the publication of the November 1997 Discussion Paper,

which designated the elements of the same settlement configuration as having ‘High Growth’, ‘Medium Growth’ or ‘Low Growth’ development potential. The denoting of towns by the letters ‘M’ and ‘L’ spawned considerable local political opposition and set in train a growth-maximising process of argumentation that spilled over into subsequent debates on Housing Growth Indicators. The opportunity to employ a shared EU planning vocabulary of hubs, gateways and corridors provided some solace and moved the strategy content onwards towards consensus. page_143 Page 144

Conclusion Strategic spatial-planning frameworks at national and regional scales are much in vogue. As other contributions to this book illustrate, they have been formulated for Ireland, Scotland and Wales and are emerging in England as Regional Spatial Strategies under the provisions of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act, 2004. Other parts of Europe also show evidence of this approach to spatial policy (Albrechts et al . 2003; Healey 2004). This type of strategy at a generic level can perform a number of functions, which, drawing partially on Harrison and Todes (2001), can be summarised as comprising: • guidance for public sector investment in infrastructure and services; • the spatial allocation of public sector support to reduce spatial inequalities; • indicative guidance for private sector investment; • public/private collaboration in development; • rationalised resource allocations across space and within government policies and programmes; • a level of certainty and consistency in decision making within and across sectors; • spatial guidance for land use management, including the content of development plans and related development control decision making; • a long-term action plan for the implementation of the strategic vision. In other words, strategic frameworks within this strictly instrumentalist perspective should seek to represent the visible expression of the much-vaunted phrase ‘joined-up government’. Their visionary ambition should be matched by a depth of possibilities which acknowledge that contemporary governance is worked out through multiple stakeholders operating with horizontal breadth and at different spatial scales. Spatial strategies should deal comprehensively with the spatial implications of all public policy domains, and give clear locational guidance for investment and development. This is clearly a world in which the future is capable of being forecast and achieved as planned for. The history of regional planning in Northern Ireland since the 1960s is dominated by the use of projectionbased and allocative models and, as noted above, the content of Shaping Our Future continues this positivist tradition in relation to the prominence given to housing growth indicators. Moreover, in the wake of an unprecedented and welcome participatory effort to engage with multiple stakeholders outside government, it is somewhat ironic that the final form of Shaping Our Future demonstrates the reality of civil service governance conventions by being light on visible interdepartmental commitment. Thus, for example, although interdependence was maintained through the formalities of interdepartmental page_144 Page 145

coordinating meetings, there was no dedicated interdepartmental planning team to drive forward the formulation of the strategy. This limitation is underlined by the absence of any complete analysis of the objectives of other departmental strategies and their locational implications, as had been called for by the independent Northern Ireland Economic Council in correspondence with the regional planning team as far back as March 1998. The benefits of a hard-won public administration consensus were not secured by a forward-looking and integrated action agenda. Health, education and employability are scarcely mentioned largely because responsible departments had not accepted the idea that there is a spatial dimension to their work. Similarly, the implications for public expenditure are sidelined because the government allocates resources on a short-term basis, and there is no loudly stated and unequivocal commitment to actionoriented rural development within the parameters of multi-dimensional sustainable development. Against the strong remit given by the Good Friday Agreement, the consideration of border areas is minimised to an uncertain identification of ‘trans-regional development linkages and opportunities’ in a necklace of local territories between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The view of the present is overwhelmingly a view of a normal and decent society, rather than a society painfully emerging from bitter conflict. The articulation of a future constructed around community cohesion is an all too brief and confused statement of support for both ethno-religious integration and separation that is seldom returned to in the strategy narrative. In short, what we see in Shaping Our Future are strong positivist tendencies that convey the awkwardness of collaboration within formal government systems. From the outset important themes identified for this strategy were about ‘valuing people’, ‘bridging the divided community’, ‘celebrating distinctiveness’, ‘targeting social need’ and ‘improving educational attainment’, all of which go well beyond traditional land use planning (Neill and Gordon 2001). However, although the consultative and participatory arrangements put in place for the formulation of the spatial strategy were nothing less than exhaustive, as evidenced by the fact that the initial completion date of December 1998 proved impossible to realise, it is questionable whether the challenges of this new dawn have been able to be fully met by the stakeholders involved with Shaping Our Future. Part of the explanation must rest with the fact that planning and development in Northern Ireland have long had to deal with a suite of public policy-related tensions that surface as the relationships between Northern Ireland and the island of Ireland or the UK; west of the River Bann versus east of the River Bann (a geographical metaphor for expressing a perceived predominantly nationalist and rural periphery located beyond a unionist urban core); countryside development versus landscape protection; rural versus urban; top-down bureaucratic prescription versus bottom-up citizen-led involvement in the policy process; and departmental page_145 Page 146 independence within the business conventions of a long established and powerful regional civil service code. The deeper issues that these represent are about the persistence of seemingly intractable ethnoreligious divisions, spatial and social equity, how the rural is perceived, the relative weight to be given to new alignments of participatory and representative democracy, and the acceptable shape of public administration in Northern Ireland. There is in short an ongoing struggle between different modes of spatial strategy making and content outcomes. However, it could be argued that much of the apparent success of Shaping Our Future is its sophisticated combination of planning process and, at times, warm promise that has produced a visionary statement with a power to appeal to multiple interests. Blue-sky photographs of bucolic landscapes and smiling citizens seek to draw us into its welcoming embrace. The many detailed and essentially descriptive diagrams prompt us to identify our special places and special projects. There is something for everyone, but everyone does not get everything that they have argued for. As observed by Healey (2004:56) ‘its language and argumentation speak directly to particular audiences across the Province’ and indicate that within a mosaic of spatial diversity ‘all parts are to be encouraged to maximise their potential’. But what this broad-ranging and inclusive potential might be remains elusive and, arguably, constrained by development plan and development control policy. In this all too common retreat to development plan-related land use management, in general, and

development control, in particular, Shaping Our Future runs the danger of falling short of providing the necessary leadership for the spatial transformation of Northern Ireland. The strategy looks out to a time horizon of 2025 but its relevance and acceptability in Northern Ireland political and civil society could unfortunately fracture much earlier if implementation is dominated by quite narrow regulatory concerns related to the moulding of Planning Policy Statements, the preparation of Area Plans and the determination of planning applications. In this sense the Realpolitik of its crafted policy intent is carefully hidden. The dominant value set in the Regional Development Strategy is derived from the professional routines of traditional town and country planning and suggests that this, once again, is a positivist plan produced by planners for planners. Accordingly, promoting a genuine shift to transformative spatial planning that can engage the entire governance arena, including other government departments and all local authorities, that will demonstrate synergies with other sectoral strategies in order to inform integrated development programming, that is confident in dealing with the spatial outcomes of ethno-religious division, that can moderate a longstanding urban–rural tension by linking community preference with environmental responsibility, and that can appreciate the territorial potential derived from a deeper island of Ireland consciousness remains a pressing challenge for policy-makers in Northern Ireland. page_146 Page 146a

Plate 1 The National Spatial Perspective and the Spatial Vision in the consultation and final versions of the Wales Spatial Plan. Sources: Welsh Assembly Government (2003:23; 2004a: 8, Figure 2). page_146a Page 146b

Plate 2 Fluid space? Time-distances to selected centres within Wales. Source: Welsh Assembly Government (2003:25, Figure 6). page_146b Page 146c

Plate 3 Transmission system reinforcements. Source: Scottish Government (2008:34, Map 12). page_146c Page 146d

Plate 4 Strategy map. Source: Scottish Government (2008:83, Map 22). page_146d Page 146e

Plate 5 The Spatial Development Strategy for Northern Ireland, 2025. Source: Department for Regional Development. (2001). page_146e Page 146f

Plate 6 The Yorkshire and Humber Plan: Key Diagram. Source: YHA (2005a: i, Key Diagram). page_146f Page 146g

Plate 7 Greater London Development Plan Key Diagram 1976. Source: GLC (1976). Reproduced with the permission of the City of London, London Metropolitan Archives. page_146g Page 146h

Plate 8 The London Plan Key Diagram 2004. Source: LA (2004:50). page_146h

Page 147

CHAPTER 6 DOING STRATEGIC PLANNING DIFFERENTLY? The Yorkshire and Humber regional spatial strategy Gordon Dabinett

Introduction This chapter provides an insight into the part played by strategic spatial planning practices in the building of the English regions during the early years of the new millennium. This is undertaken through a critical analysis of the expressions given to spatiality in the preparation of a regional spatial strategy (RSS) in the Yorkshire and Humber standard region of the United Kingdom (UK), a process initiated by the 2004 Act and subsequent national guidance, Planning Policy Statement 11 (ODPM 2004).The main principles of the new arrangements were to deliver spatial policy better at the regional level by: 1 giving more weight to regional planning by replacing regional planning guidance (RPG) with a statutory RSS with which local development plans had to be in general conformity; 2 ensuring that these RSSs were produced on an inclusive basis of partnership working and community involvement; 3 making the RSS more regionally and sub-regionally specific with a focus on implementation; 4 better integrating the RSS with other regional strategies; and 5 requiring the designated regional planning body to contribute to sustainable development. The agencies responsible for the preparation of the Yorkshire and Humber Plan – i.e. the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly (YHA) – during the period between 2003 and 2006 were thus acutely aware of a need to do something different from the previous strategic planning process, the preparation of regional planning guidance (see Baker 1998; GOYH 2001; Marshall 2004; Marshall et al. 2002), stating that: ‘the RSS is part of a new approach to planning. Development of the strategy is already enabling questions to be asked about some of the challenges and investment choices that face the region’ (YHA 2004:4). page_147 Page 148 This attempt at innovative strategic planning was cast against: (i) a background of institutional uncertainty as the region explored different forms of regionalism (Haughton and Counsell 2004; Tewdwr-Jones and Allmendinger 2006); (ii) a fast changing policy environment, with attempts to re-scale the state being expressed through the promotion of the Northern Way (Goodchild and Hickman 2006); and (iii) a set of social and environmental and economic developments that were creating very different identities and functions from those of the immediate past, and creating uncertain spatial futures for many localities in the region (Gore and Jones 2006). The articulation of these place-specific concerns reflected wider debates about the scope and nature of strategic spatial planning within a European context (Healey 2004), an emergent and asymmetrical devolved governance structure in the UK (Pearce and Ayres 2006; Tomaney 2002), and fundamental economic restructuring processes that were creating new patterns of spatial justice in the region (Dabinett and Richardson 2005). The use of critical analysis does not attempt to judge if the regional spatial strategy was a good or bad plan, if the plan would bring about progressive and just outcomes, or even if the plan could achieve the

aims and objectives set by its authors and owners. Rather, the analysis seeks to build upon and apply the broad notions of spatiality explored in Chapter 1 through the constructs of positivism, structuralism and post-modernism. To do this requires sensitivity to the specific policy and institutional environment within which the strategy was being prepared. This was an environment that was in fact remarkably constrained given the demands for change in UK strategic planning with many proponents calling for more attachment with places and senses of spatial belonging (Hammond 2002; Harris and Hooper 2004; Vigar et al . 2005). The analysis also attempts to acknowledge the challenges that lie within the interface that exists between intellectual writings about power geometries, multiple meanings of space and time, relational geographies etc., and the freedoms of thought and action assigned to those charged with largely procedural, time- and resource-limited tasks, undertaken within pragmatic contexts that do not encourage, and can even prevent, the experimentation that is called for in grounding these new spatial concepts.

The territory of Yorkshire and Humber, a region? The Yorkshire and Humber Plan was formulated as a result of new central government legislation. This intended that each standard region of England should have its own regional spatial strategy setting out a statutory framework for the future development of each region. The spatial scale, spatial reach and boundary of the region to be planned, and hence the construction of territoriality, were solely page_148 Page 149 those of a particular administrative and political arrangement in a specific period of time determined by central government. This administrative construct can be grounded in the setting up of Government Offices in the regions in 1994 by the then Conservative national government, as a means of delivering and coordinating national policies in Great Britain (Mawson and Spencer 1997). Although this particular form of the Yorkshire and Humber Region had a longer history as a statistical unit, and indeed as a policy construct, the practices examined in this chapter are firmly rooted in the post-1994 regional arrangements. This part of the chapter seeks to examine the spatiality of this construct, in terms of wider debates related to regionalism. Specifically, it explores the merging of administrative and political structures represented in this standard region, focusing on the development of urban and rural spaces, economic and demographic changes as created by and expressed through urbanisation, and the cultural meaning and identity of the region that might emerge from the spatial outcomes of these processes Many history text books and novels consistently make reference to a place called Yorkshire as the largest historic county of Great Britain. This northern area of England can be mapped as a land area of some 15,000 square kilometres, 160 km from south to north, bordered on three sides by six other county areas, and to the east by the North Sea. Historically, this Yorkshire county was subdivided into three ridings, in the North, West and East (Gore and Jones 2006). These were used as a basis of administrative counties on the introduction of local government in 1888, although significantly many urban areas also had their own local councils. However the current arrangements owe less to this traditional expression of Yorkshire, and more to the arrangements set in place at the last major reorganisation of the UK local government system in 1974. At this point of time the former Yorkshire was divided into North Yorkshire county, including the city of York; the two metropolitan counties of West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire, based respectively on the major cities of Leeds and Sheffield; and the two estuary-based counties of Humberside (which included parts of Lincolnshire) and Cleveland (which included parts of County Durham). Collectively these county areas, with the exception of Cleveland, were to form the boundary for the Yorkshire and Humberside Region. The nature of these borders was contested, as illustrated by the ceding of small parts of the previous Yorkshire to Lancashire and Manchester in the west, and to County Durham and Cumbria in the north. The fluidity and tensions expressed through these administrative and political boundaries continued. Hence, in 1986, the West and South Yorkshire County Councils were abolished by the Conservative national government, and in 1996 the same government broke Humberside up into unitary districts, and made an expanded city of York an independent local authority. Thus, for the period over which the new strategic plan for this territory was drawn up, the Yorkshire and Humber Region

page_149 Page 150 consisted of one county council area covering seven districts, and fourteen uni-tary local authority areas (see Figure 6.1 and Table 6.1). Whereas the expression of Yorkshire and Humber Region might be articulated through these administrative arrangements, it would be an exaggeration to claim that this constructed territory was either a cohesive or a commonly shared spatial unit. Although there were examples of voluntary collaboration between the local authorities in the region, at both regional and sub-regional scales (Shutt 1996; Thomas 2000), there was also evidence of competitive behaviours and political conflicts grounded in local councils who regarded themselves as strongly independent (Herrschel and Newman 2002; Haughton and Whitney 1994). These positions were taken most strongly by the urban districts of West and South Yorkshire, and by the rural areas of North Yorkshire and former areas of Lincolnshire. This perception of local autonomy must also be countered by the fact that the local authorities were granted their powers by the national parliament, the resolution of boundary disputes was undertaken by a government-appointed body, and the central government set up the standard regions. These political behaviours highlight a need to examine carefully the definition and use of boundaries and any

Figure 6.1 Yorkshire and Humber strategic planning areas. Source: YHA (2005a: 4, Figure 1.2). page_150 Page 151 sub-divisions of the region within the Yorkshire and Humber Plan, along with the spatiality associated with these boundaries. Although the Yorkshire and Humber Region might have been a common construction of administrative and political convenience, the local authorities were responsible for a variety of spatial areas, not least in terms of the size of population they represented and the degree to which urban or rural development and

identities predominated. Table 6.1 illustrates this wide variety, with the cities of Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford and Hull accommodating 39 per cent of the regional population in 2004, whilst 21 per cent lived in rural local authority areas, including the sparsely populated upland areas of the north Pennines. A distinctive feature of the Yorkshire and Humber Region is a dispersed pattern of smaller towns such as Grimsby, Scunthorpe, Huddersfield, Halifax, Wakefield, Barnsley, Doncaster and York, with the local authority areas that contained these mainly urban communities accounting for 40 per cent of the regional population. This spatial pattern of development consequently led to extensive political arguments and debates over the years about the relative importance of Leeds as a regional centre and capital, about the role of Sheffield, and the balance between urban and rural interests. In the twenty years after the 1980s these debates gave expression to particular urbanisation and economic restructuring processes that overlaid the political– administrative construct of the region. The spatial pattern of urban development in Yorkshire and Humber linked directly to earlier periods of industrialisation, with cities and towns often associated with specific and specialised products or processes: Sheffield, Rotherham and Scunthorpe as steel and metals centres; Barnsley, Rotherham, Doncaster, Wakefield and recently Selby as centres of large coalmining areas; Leeds, Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield as textile and engineering areas. Hull and Grimsby were significant fishing ports. These patterns of industrial urbanisation served the purpose of reinforcing the rationale of the urban administrative areas as separate communities, and in political opposition to the rural north of the county. Urbanisation re-asserted the perception of municipal and urban autonomy, as any competition between urban areas was equally constructed around an industrial interdependence and shared working-class and socialist politics and identities. References were still made to the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire in the 1980s as the local authorities in this sub-region attempted to develop alternative political models and policies to those pursued by the rising Conservative-led neoliberal hegemony of that period. These alternative policies were mainly articulated in actions taken to protect public services and to support labourist causes in work-based struggles, rather than the development plans of the time. However, the rationale for much of this urban development and representation in civic politics was to be severely challenged, and arguably for ever changed, by the process page_151 Page 152 Table 6.1 Socio-economic profile of local planning authorities

Local authority

Population % population 2003 change 19822002

Housing affordability ratio 2003

% non-white Unemployment Deprivation rate 2005 concentration population rank 2004 2005

North Yorkshire Craven

53,700

+12.6

5.97

3.3

2.1

261

Hambleton

84,900

+13.1

6.83

1.4

2.6

278

Harrogate

152,800

+10.2

7.78

2.7

2.4

268

49,900

+10.1

5.90

3.0

2.8

302

Richmondshire

Ryedale

51,200

+17.1

6.48

1.4

2.3

311

106,700

+4.3

5.01

1.8

4.0

67

Selby

76,800

+25.2

5.62

1.8

3.3

215

York

183,100

+10.3

6.53

3.6

3.1

162

Barnsley

220,200



2.50

1.9

4.8

40

Doncaster

288,400



2.90

3.5

5.2

43

Scarborough

South Yorkshire

page_152 Page 153 Rotherham

251,500



3.08

4.3

4.5

56

Sheffield

512,500



4.02

11.1

5.3

30

Bradford

477,800

+1.9

2.80

24.4

5.4

11

Calderdale

193,200

+0.3

2.66

8.4

4.0

65

Kirklees

391,400

+3.2

3.58

15.4

4.3

68

Leeds

715,200

 

4.47

10.2

5.7

24

Wakefield

318,300

+0.6

3.86

3.3

4.6

24

West Yorkshire

Humber

East Riding

321,300

+16.9

4.66

2.1

3.8

153

Hull

247,900



2.23

4.1

7.3

6

Lincolnshire

157,400

 

2.58

2.1

5.9

31

North Lincolnshire

155,000

+1.8

2.88

3.3

4.3

76

5,009,300

+1.3

North East

Yorkshire and

4.7

Humber

Source: Adapted from YHA (2005a). page_153 Page 154 of deindustrialisation and economic restructuring that engulfed the Yorkshire region and the rest of the UK after the late 1970s. The Yorkshire and Humber Plan was therefore dealing with a region over a period of time when spatial development was facing extensive change and uncertainty. Major cities were beginning to develop new roles within emerging patterns of a service-dominated economy, smaller towns had to re-examine their interrelationships with the larger cities and their increasing dependency on wider patterns of economic development and demographic change. Even the rural areas were having to deal with crises arising out of specific events (outbreak of foot and mouth disease) and more significantly, structural shifts in agriculture and European subsidies. The region in this period was strongly characterised by uneven spatial development, whereas earlier it was more a collection of varied patterns of spatial development, each largely related to outcomes of specific economic activities. This intraregional and interregional unevenness created new patterns of spatial justice. During the Plan-making period of 2003 to 2006, the Yorkshire and Humber Region like the rest of the UK exhibited the outcomes of some fifteen years of national economic growth and, in particular, employment creation. In 2005, the unemployment rate in Yorkshire and Humber was 4.7 per cent compared with the UK rate of 4.9 per cent. The distribution within the region is shown in Table 6.1. This clearly shows the role of Leeds as a major site of economic growth, whilst Hull faced extreme unemployment, in particular for males, and the lowest economic activity rate in the region (71.7 per cent compared with 77.7 per cent in the region in 2004/5). Whilst Leeds was booming (Haughton and Whitney 1994), it still had pockets of deprivation and social exclusion, which were also evident in other communities, such as the former coalfields, large urban social housing schemes and some rural areas. Similarly, the regional development agency, Yorkshire Forward, and central government suggested structural weaknesses remained in the

region, in particular with regard to its national and international competitiveness, expressed through measures such as gross value added (GVA) and productivity (Yorkshire Forward 2005). The readjustments and outcomes of economic restructuring were also recognised by the European Union (EU) regional policy, which for the period 2000–6 designated South Yorkshire to benefit from Objective 1 Structural Fund Assistance, and made other parts of the region eligible for Objective 2 funding (Shutt 1996). A further insight into the expressions of spatial diversity and equity that were emerging in the postindustrial Yorkshire and Humber can be found in an examination of population change, housing affordability, ethnic minority populations and indices of deprivation shown in Table 6.1. These show the extent and potential of social and economic segregation in the region and its spatiality, and the possibility page_154 Page 155 of the multiple meanings that can be given to the region as a place. Despite this diversity, a view often articulated in the region highlighted a strong sense of common values: Yorkshire and the Humber has a major advantage over most other English regions – it has a strong identity. People know where it is and what it stands for. There is a strong sense of history and pride of place here. The culture of Yorkshire and the Humber is built on some fundamental virtues: clear thinking, plain speaking, business acumen, thrift, sporting prowess, literary and artistic achievement. (www.Yorkshire-Culture.co.uk) In this perspective, the possibility of segregation through spatial development becomes benignly articulated through processes of long standing multicultural change: The region has a strong heritage, and at the same time, a dynamic, living and changing culture. The region has had international links for four thousand years, and is still welcoming and embracing people from across the world. New and innovative ways of living are being created here in the meeting of cultures, technologies and traditions. (www.Yorkshire-Culture.co.uk) The rest of this chapter examines these articulations of the region through the content and preparation of the new regional spatial strategy for Yorkshire and Humber.

The Yorkshire and Humber Region: a spatial construction? The Yorkshire and Humber Plan as a regional spatial strategy The Yorkshire and Humber Plan was published in December 2005, a document of over 300 pages. The Plan fulfilled central government requirements that each English region should have a regional spatial strategy, a statutory development plan within which local planning authorities would then prepare their own local development frameworks and local transport plans, and take decisions on proposed investments in their areas. The Plan sets out the scale, priorities and broad locations for change and development in the region over the period to 2021. It provides a framework for where things go and how much development should take place; it includes a regional transport strategy. (YHA 2005a: i) page_155 Page 156 By the end of the Plan period, in 2021, it was intended that the Yorkshire and Humber would be a Region:

1 Continuing to change and adapt to meet new economic, social and environmental challenges. 2 Where all its cities, towns and rural areas are working together to the benefit of the whole Region. 3 With lively cities and vibrant towns and rural areas, fit for purpose in terms of the 21st century living, working and movement. 4 With an even stronger regional identity, whose special character and distinctiveness has been protected and improved. 5 With safe, attractive and high quality places offering a wide range of living, working and investment opportunities. 6 That is adapting to the threats and opportunities caused by climate change and its moving to a low carbon economy. 7 That has optimised the use of its land and infrastructure, offering a clear competitive advantage over the South of England. 8 That has reduced inequalities across its area. 9 Whose economic performance is closer to the UK average, with more and better jobs. 10 That is collaborating internally and externally to deliver a more sustainable, competitive and better performing North of England. (YHA 2005a: 30) The Plan contained sixteen sections, covering an overall Spatial Vision; high-level directional policies or a Core Approach; spatial priority policies, identified for seven sub-areas of the region; and thematic or specific topic-based policies for housing, economy, environment and transport. The Plan included a Key Diagram, which attempted to give a visual representation to the main strategic dimensions of the Plan (see Plate 6). Text in the Plan emphasised the significance of this diagram, by stating that other diagrams, in particular those used to visually represent proposed spatial development patterns in the seven sub-areas, did not form part of this key diagram in any way, but were illustrative only. Other maps, diagrams and photographs were also used alongside various tables to describe characteristics of the region and to map various policies that were being implemented there. Although the Plan was primarily drawn up as the regional spatial strategy in line with changes in English planning, it was also designated to be the spatial and land use expression of an already agreed regional vision – Advancing Together (Counsell and Haughton 2006). The RSS was expected to achieve ‘a more sustainable pattern and form of development, investment and activity in the Yorkshire page_156 Page 157 and Humber Region – putting a greater emphasis on matching needs across the Region with opportunities and managing the environment as a key resource’ (YHA 2005a: 30). Preparation of both the Plan and Advancing Together was led by the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly, which the central government had designated as the regional planning body under the provisions of the 2004 Act. Advancing Together was seen by the Assembly as a high-level vision which sought to create a Yorkshire and Humber that would be ‘a recognisably world class and international Region where the economic, environment and social well being of all our Region and its people advance rapidly and sustainably’ (YHA 2005a: 30). The first of these over-arching vision documents had been adopted in 1998 and was, in part, formulated to provide a cross-sector and strategic framework for other regional strategies (Regional Assembly for Yorkshire and Humberside 1998). This role took on greater significance following the publication of the Regional Economic Strategy by Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency established in 1999;

the Regional Housing Strategy by the Government Office for Yorkshire and Humber (GOYH) and the Regional Housing Board; and the Regional Cultural Strategy by Yorkshire Culture, a partnership of regional cultural interests supported by the central government Department of Culture, Media and Sport. Although the coordination of these many strategies clearly had a bearing on the creation and reproduction of any regionalism within Yorkshire and Humber (Counsell and Haughton 2006), the Plan clearly stated the ambition of the RSS to be a spatial expression of the region’s future vision as a place: as a regional spatial strategy the Plan is about managing places – the spaces where we live, work, spend time and move around. It focuses on where things take place, and on how much in terms of relative scales and priorities for development and investment. (YHA 2005a: 1) These concerns with place and space mirrored the same claims being made by the central government (ODPM 2003) and the planning profession (RTPI 2001) that a new spatial planning practice was required in England at this point of time. The space of the Yorkshire and Humber Region was defined within the context of the standard English regions, and reinforced as an administrative and quasi-legal space in that the Plan covered a collection of twenty-four local planning authorities, excluding small parts of Barnsley, Kirklees and Sheffield unitary authorities in the Peak Park National Park, but including small areas of North York Moors National Park and Yorkshire Dales National Park in the adjoining district authorities of Redcar and Cleveland (in the North East standard region) and South Lakeland (North West region) respectively. It could be argued that this adjustment of boundaries around the designated national parks had little to do with notions page_157 Page 158 of regional landscapes, or even regional environmental resources, but more with the need for statutory and legally binding boundaries to inform and support future planning decisions. However, it is also worth highlighting that the mappings and representations of the local planning authority boundaries were not used in the definition of sub-regional areas, as discussed later, and were not included on the Key Diagram. However, these boundary lines and areas often formed a base for mappings of activities and policies, such as river catchment and habitat enhancement areas, and in tables of quantitative measures and outcomes, such as waste, employment and housing land allocations. The Plan sought to create such a spatial form of the region by ensuring that all plans, strategies, major investment decisions and programmes in the region would, where relevant, aim to: i. Transform economic, environmental and social conditions in the older industrialised parts of South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and the Humber. ii. Manage and spread the benefits of continued growth of the Leeds economy as a European centre of financial and business services. iii. Optimise the opportunities provided by the Humber Ports as an international trade gateway for the region and the country. iv. Support towns as hubs for the rural economy and as service centres. v. Enhance the environmental character and qualities of the Region’s coast and countryside including for economic and social development. (YHA 2005a: 39). These spatial priorities refer to several types of places, and various scales of spatial construction. Clearly the choices made with regard to these expressions of spatiality within the Plan were likely to have been influenced by many considerations, not least the potential contestation that would have arisen out of the region being predominantly constructed out of the sum of the various planning authority areas. It therefore becomes necessary to ask how the notion of a region was then represented and constructed within the

regional spatial strategy of the Yorkshire and Humber Plan. The expression of spatiality is analysed through the conceptions of Yorkshire and Humber as a place, and the use of various spatial organising principles and the application of spatial scale; and through the visual and other forms of representation used in the Plan, and a critical examination of the concepts of time and future. The region of Yorkshire and Humber as a place The principle that Yorkshire and Humber was envisaged as a region was all too clear from the general discourse contained in the Plan, as illustrated in the overall page_158 Page 159 vision of the strategy, which claimed to be delivering a future in which Yorkshire and Humber ‘will be a recognisably world class and international Region’ (YHA 2005a: 30). Similarly, the Foreword to the Plan by Peter Box (Chair of YHA and Leader of Wakefield Council) and Steve Galloway (Chair of the Planning and Infrastructure Commission and Leader of York City Council), makes frequent reference to the whole region, the region’s assets, the aspirations for the region. However, this certainty about the region as a shared vision lacked equal clarity once the nature and characteristics of what the region might be as a place were articulated in further sections of the Plan. At the heart of this lack of a clear regional identity was a claim that the region as a spatial unit was both distinctive and diverse: Diversity is evident in its people, its landscape, settlements and historic environment, as well as in the varying pattern of economic and social well-being to be found over small distances. Yet the Region also has a strong shared identity and its varied environment reflects a long and eventful past and the large-scale legacy of generations of investment. (YHA 2005a: 8) But what spatial expressions were given to this claimed distinctiveness and diversity? Both characteristics of distinctiveness and diversity were given expression in the Plan through descriptions of landscapes and varied forms of spatial development. However, whereas descriptors such as cultural heritage (potentially highly diverse and post-modern) and social equity (potentially social class-based and structural) were also used in the Plan, the overwhelming spatiality of the region was constructed by using Euclidean and quantitative concepts. Thus heritage was portrayed as a resource that made a very important contribution to the region’s distinctive character, identity and sense of place, but in a way that portrayed the spatiality of the region as a passive container of artefacts and visual codifiers of past histories (Selman 2006): The secure hill-tops, fertile floodplains, mineral resources and navigable rivers have all contributed to the Region’s rich and varied heritage resource. This resource includes: the medieval castles and abbeys of North Yorkshire; the industrial buildings and landscapes associated with metal working and coalmining in South Yorkshire; the textiles mills of West Yorkshire; the lead and iron workings in North Yorkshire; many historic country houses and estates; a high number of places of worship; and in particular the nonconformist chapels in West Yorkshire and the coast; the City of York, with its unique Roman and medieval architecture, archaeology and street patterns; rural landscapes of great historic interest and beauty. (YHA 2005a: 233) page_159 Page 160 But what region of England does not contain similar representations of previous patterns of spatial development? They all do. Thus the attempt to define regional identity, culture and place in the Plan was largely based on its physical attributes and made no reference to socio-cultural ones such as shared values, beliefs, dialects or behaviours specific to Yorkshire and the Humber. Such non-Euclidean and relational conceptions of space might have led to the construction of a genuine regional distinctiveness or, if not, could have raised more critical concerns about the spatiality of the region as a whole, or some

representation of a regionalism (Keating et al . 2003). In a similar manner, diversity was treated and conceptualised through a series of quantitative measures and indicators, listed in the Plan as key facts under the five headings of the people, the economy, the environment, the transport and the quality of life in the region. Again the region was portrayed as a container, defined by statistical boundaries that coincided with administrative areas, where characteristics such as deprivation, housing affordability, soil quality, life expectancy and transport infrastructure could all be measured and problematised in standard ways to allow intraregional comparisons and, in some cases, comparisons with other regions of England as a whole. These constructs were strongly representative of the reductionist language and discourse of indicators, quantification and performance rankings (Wong 2006). The same analytical concepts of spaces then underpinned the central and highly significant use of subareas. The Plan claims that these ‘provide a functional basis for spatial planning across the region’ (YHA 2005a: 57). Separate policies were drawn up for each of the seven subareas, which critically gave expression to the region’s spatial diversity as being ‘areas where there are different needs and opportunities’ (YHA 2005a: 55). The nature and delineation of these seven sub-areas offers a number of insightful observations on the spatial representation given to Yorkshire and Humber in the Plan (see Table 6.2). Although the diversity of spatial development patterns in the sub-areas were clear in terms of their socio-economic characteristics and their built and natural environments, the spatial constructions of each area also exhibited a number of recurring spatial organising principles. These principles pointed towards how the sub-areas might relate to one another and other spatial areas, and how together they constructed a spatial expression of the region as a whole – a place which was not given explicit recognition within region-wide descriptions and statements. Four such spatial organising constructs can be drawn out from this analysis: the city region and polycentric urban development; a settlement hierarchy; strategic connectivity and location; and unique built and natural environments. The concept of a city region was applied to three urban localities in the seven sub-areas: Leeds, Sheffield and Hull. These three designations all had roots in the page_160 Page 161 pan-regional strategy of the Northern Way (Goodchild and Hickman 2006; Northern Way Steering Group 2004). However, the significance and meaning that can be placed on each varies, and consequently opens up critical observations about how the relationship between the Yorkshire and Humber Region and its dominant city, Leeds, was expressed and resolved within the Plan. It is significant that only Leeds and Sheffield were classified as regional centres in the Key Diagram., Furthermore, only the Leeds sub-area was actually named a city-region, in that it was argued that ‘the cities and towns form a functional City Region: there are strong links between places’ (YHA 2005a: 71), and Leeds was seen to ‘remain the most significant economic driver of the Region’s economy’ (YHA 2005a: 2). The inclusion of York and Barnsley within the sphere of the Leeds City Region’s polycentric urban development pattern, although themselves both subregional centres in adjoining sub-areas, expressed the scope of spatial influence given to this urban growth phenomenon in the Plan. In contrast, the South Yorkshire and Humber Estuary Sub-Areas were constructed as problematic spatial areas, and their form as city-regions was expressed only through references to the formulation of the Northern Way City Region Development Programmes. These were prepared as part of the Northern Way Growth Strategy, an informal, non-statutory and time-limited mechanism to apply political pressure on central government for additional public infrastructure funding, via the three northern regional development agencies. In the case of the South Yorkshire Sub-Area, the Plan acknowledged that: ‘Sheffield is the sub area’s main centre of economic activity and as a large core city of an extended city region it provides for a range of high-order services for a wide area’ (YHA 2005a: 85). However, the city region extended to five local authorities in an adjoining region, the East Midlands, and it was not seen appropriate to include these within the direct spatial concerns of the Plan. Furthermore, the areas adjoining Sheffield were portrayed as being characterised by a historic spatial pattern that had left ‘a significant dilemma for the spatial

management of the sub area’s smaller set-tlements’ (YHA 2005a: 85), a dilemma of spatial politics as revealed by an earlier South Yorkshire Spatial Study undertaken in 2001 (see Dabinett and Richardson 2005). This had shown that many settlements in these areas, in particular in the ex-coalfields, faced potentially uncertain and unsustainable futures. In the case of the Humber Estuary Sub-Area, the Plan acknowledged that this construct ‘approximates to the Hull and Humber Ports City Region in the Northern Way’ (YHA 2005a: 95), but then argued that the sub-area’s settlement pattern was powerfully influenced by the estuary, that it was not conventionally polycentric, and that the north and south banks had developed largely separate functions and settlement hierarchies with few interdependencies. However, the Plan did share an economic development construct with the city-region idea, if page_161 Page 162 Table 6.2 Spatial construction of the sub-areas of the Yorkshire and Humber Region

Plan subarea

Spatial construct of sub-area

The Leeds A functional city region and most significant economic driver of Region’s economy. City Region Strategically located on Leeds-Manchester axis, and at transport crossroads of north of England. Polycentric in its settlement form (regional centre of Leeds; sub-regional centres of Wakefield, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Harrogate, Barnsley; and strong relationship with York). Control growth to the north of the city region (area of high-quality environment) and promote growth to south (area of regeneration opportunity) The South Yorkshire Sub Area

That part of the Sheffield City Region that lies within the Region (excluding those areas in East Midlands Region). Competitiveness of settlement hierarchy (Sheffield as a regional centre; sub-regional centres of Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham; ten main towns identified by Settlement Assessment). Potential of location offered by Doncaster’s role as logistics centre and new airport, but historic settlement pattern problematic, such as ex-coalfield area of the Dearne Valley

A global gateway of the Humber ports to the Region, the North and other parts of the UK, The located on east-west multi-modal corridor (E20). Humber Estuary Sub The Hull and Humber Ports City Region, perpetually changing, with a settlement pattern that Area is not conventionally polycentric, and powerfully influenced by the Estuary (with Hull, Grimsby and Scunthorpe as sub-regional centres). Need to manage and minimise risk of flooding, and restrain development in rural areas and smaller settlements

page_162 Page 163 The York Sub Area

Defined by York as a regional sub-centre, and gateway to the Region’s range of iconic built and natural environments, principal service centres of Malton and Selby, and six local service centres in dispersed rural areas. Need to accommodate growth in a sub-area that overlaps with a number of other sub-areas, and to complement role and function of Leeds City Region. York as a key driver in the regional economy and as a key node for public transport services

The Vales and Tees Links Sub Area

Sub-area defined on the basis of its differences from the surrounding areas of North Yorkshire, with four principal service centres and five local service centres.

The Coast Sub Area

The sub-area includes the whole of the Region’s North Sea coast, north of the Humber Estuary, and has significant common issues (economic change; unique and important environmental assets; weak connectivity arising from peripherality and remoteness).

Area offers high quality of life and characterised by long-distance commuting to adjoining city regions with good north-south transport links

Scarborough, a sub-regional centre, as ‘Coastal Capital’, and small number of principal and local service centres with attractive settings and features The Remoter Rural Sub Area

Areas of upland character and environmental quality, of national, and even international importance, and to a very significant degree represent a major part of the Region’s identity. Comprises the Region’s two main upland areas, separated by The Vales and Tees Links Sub Area. Boundary based on areas where safeguarding important environmental designations underpins all policy approaches (National Parks; AONB; Special Protection Areas; Special Areas of Conservation; National Nature Reserves)

Source: Adapted from YHA (2005a). page_163 Page 164 not a spatial one, in that it supported the notion of a ‘national gateway’ – ‘there is an increasingly widely held recognition of the opportunities for growth and regeneration, and for the Humber Estuary sub-area to be regarded as a growing asset, not only for the Region, but for the whole UK’ (YHA 2005a: 96). The second significant spatial principle applied to all sub-areas, and utilised throughout the Plan and its various written and graphic representations, was that of a settlement hierarchy. The hierarchy consisted of regional centres; sub-regional centres; principle service centres; and local service centres. This hierarchy

drew on the findings of a Regional Settlement Study undertaken in June 2004, which developed a functional classification of over 230 settlements based upon their locations and physical relationships to other settlements; their service roles; their functions; and their levels of prosperity. This classification was significant not only in terms of the spatial expression that the hierarchy gave to various representations of the Plan (maps, diagrams, policy statements etc.). It also prioritised one settlement over another in quantitative measures such as growth. Thus, the two regional centres (Leeds and Sheffield) and thirteen sub-regional centres were designated as the prime focus for housing, jobs and services in region, in that the majority of new development would be concentrated in these. The thirty-two principal service centres were to be the main local focus for housing, jobs and services across the region’s rural areas. Thus, whereas the Settlement Study may have been constructed out of relational spatial interactions, the predominant use of settlement types within the plan reverted to prescriptive and highly instrumental allocative concepts, resembling Christaller’s Central Place theory, mentioned in Chapter 1. Within this nested conception of space each type of settlement became a sub-unit of the regional space container and the location for proposed housing, population and employment resources. The language and mapping used to represent these settlements was extremely vague within the Plan (see Plate 6), with no boundaries identified, no distinctive characteristics or activities described. In part the Plan was not expected to do this within the parameters set by the national guidance, with such detail and also specific meanings of urbanity and rurality etc. left to the formulation of local development frameworks by the designated planning authorities. The lack of meaning given to interrelationships, beyond those of spatially fixed proximities, ignored previous structural and political-economic relations that characterised the region, for example the mining village in South Yorkshire compared with a commuter village within the hinterland of Leeds. Instead relations between settlements and the urban form were largely reduced to common denominators such as housing markets, area-based policy designations, and connectivity and mappings of transport infrastructures. None laid bare the spatial fixes and segregation of, say, class and ethnicity. page_164 Page 165 The Plan, in accordance with national government requirements, also incorporated the Regional Transport Strategy. Movement, mobility and their spatial relationships were given several expressions within the Plan. However, a dominant construction of the region here was the reinforcement of the urban hierarchy through the promotion of compact urban development: ‘The policies in the Plan require a more concentrated pattern of development in the Region compared to recent times and a pattern that relates well to transport infrastructure’ (YHA 2005a: ii). The Plan’s core approach prescribed strengthening the role and performance of the Region’s main towns and cities that needed ‘to be regarded as the logical focus of local communities and efficient hubs of connected activity, accessible by public transport’ (YHA 2005a: 19). The notion of compactness, expressed through urban form and connectivity, was also given additional meaning and reinforced by the application of accessibility planning with distance measured and differentiated by travel times between spatially fixed destinations and origins. Thus destination accessibility measured the accessibility of the population to facilities, services and employment by public transport or walking, and origin accessibility measured public transport accessibility from proposed housing developments to facilities, services and employment. Once again the specific mappings and representations of these were not given in the Plan, but were to be applied by the local planning authorities. Mappings within the Plan remained limited to strictly Euclidean fixed forms of motorway, railway, waterway infrastructures, or broadly drawn corridors of public transport movements and main linkages (see Plate 6). The overwhelming portrayal of Yorkshire and Humber as a container, given meaning only as an administrative region, was no more obvious than in the treatment by the Plan of the potentially significant relational concepts of spatial scales, adjoining regions and the positioning of the region in broader terms of global connectivity and flows. Cities, such a dominant discourse in the Plan, act as the nodal points of unprecedented flows of resources, wastes, traded products and services, finance capital and labour (Graham and Healey 1999). Indeed, the reality of the Plan’s content sat beside the claims of the Assembly itself that ‘Yorkshire and Humber will be a recognisably world class and international Region’ (YHA 2005a:

30). This sounds an extremely hollow claim when the Plan discussed and represented the European dimension only as legislation and policies of the European Union, with vague mappings and references to Baltic Links and Trans European Networks. Hull and the Humber Ports were referred to in a figure of external connections as simply the ‘sea link to rest of Europe/World’ (YHA 2005a: 20). The nature and function of the many relations that shape what Yorkshire and Humber was as a place within these wider and larger spatial scales was not considered. page_165 Page 166 The region was seen as a place only so far as it was the outcome of these external relations, understood and expressed by the physical, proximity-based discourses of spatiality. Thus, ‘the key role of the Plan is to address the resulting spatial implications: that is the way that these issues [external relations] impact on places, people and movement within the Region’ (YHA 2005a: 19). The consequence of such discourses was a portrayal of the Humber estuary as a global gateway; of the region as a strategic transport crossroads for the north of England, with Leeds strategically located on an axis; York being a gateway to the Region’s iconic environments; and the coast and upland areas being referred to as remote. Whereas this imagery and description served to position the region as the centre of international links, the policies of other levels of government, such as the Northern Way, suggested a more peripheral area, adjacent to these links, and being an area of movements and flows and much less as a significant destination in its own right. The final spatial organising principle that ran through all sub-area sections of the Plan, and indeed the construction of the region as a whole, was a series of diverse and unique landscapes and distinctive built and natural environments. These ranged from the industrial heritage of South Yorkshire resulting from the action of human behaviours to those exhibiting natural factors such as the coastal and upland areas. The Plan used high-quality colour photographic imagery throughout the document to reinforce the visual representation of these places. The use of these environments was also reflected in such photographs, but policy designations and representations of biophysical and human processes, such as agriculture and recreation, were also used to reinforce the visual and functional characteristics. Once again this generated a strongly Euclidean perspective, a region containing a variety of assets that were largely regarded within a vacuum, in which the definition of their integrity and meaning through wider processes beyond their boundaries was not given full expression. These qualities and values, or meanings imputed by society, were not explored. Other than these landscapes being physically situated in Yorkshire and Humber, there was little exploration of the conflicts that exist over their use and meaning, or how associated cultural landscapes might be read as, for instance, sites of enjoyment or struggles (Selman 2006). The construction of a regional identity or distinctive sub-area identities remained that of an asset to be managed internally, rather than a relational landscape that could be used to define a region or even any other place. The ambition of the Plan for the rural and coastal areas was to see them enhanced and protected as attractive and vibrant places and communities, that is, containers for more limited development that would focus on meeting local needs for affordable housing and economic diversification. page_166 Page 167 Conceptions of Yorkshire spaces and places The foregoing analysis of the main content of the Yorkshire and Humber Plan illustrates strong traditional underpinnings, although the document itself did represent a significant change to the previous regional plans in many respects (see GOYH 2001). However, the predominant view of the regional space portrayed by the Plan was an absolute one, containing a collection of sub-areas and activities on which external forces had an impact. These activities, such as household formation and employment, were given quantitative attributes, measured and mapped within bounded, largely administrative and policy geographies. Although the past industrial structures were acknowledged, the process of economic diversification was largely seen

as a linear progression of these conditions. Conflict, struggle and power geometries were not elements of the Plan’s discourses. Culture and identities were similarly given expression only through visual and functional landscapes, and the division of the region into sub-areas furthered the illusion of selfcontainment of these environments. Since little or no recognition was given to the many and varied relations and interpretations that might be given to these largely urban spaces, say by different and diverse social groups, the region remained as a bounded and mapped container, rather than giving expression to many varied lives, experiences or imaginations to which relational and post-modernist constructs would give importance. The treatment of spatial scales furthers these arguments, as the region was constructed predominantly through language, discourse, mappings and diagrams in relation to the city of Leeds and in relation to the city-regions of the Northern Way. The Plan was unable to give expression to the interconnected web of spatial activities, with globalisation seen as an almost benign force of change within which the local would be capable of achieving expression through the fixed boundaries of an urban settlement hierarchy. In the same way that interregional spaces were captured within the policy framework and discourse of the Northern Way, the European scale was reduced to determined policy constructs and largely undisputed spatial ideas such as polycentric urban development and trans-European transport corridors. The future was seen as an internationalised urbanity, an ordered and known future within the parameters of quantitative forecasts of population and employment, contingent only on economic deterministic constructs such as competitiveness. The Plan contained little if anything that might have given expression to what the region might want, to the choices that might extend risk beyond the known (such as the implications of climate change), and to the articulation of any self-determined futures. This portrayal of the Plan as solely a positivist and Euclidean construct might be challenged when the visual representations of these concepts of spatiality are examined, for no other reason than that the Yorkshire and Humber Plan contains page_167 Page 168 such a variety of mappings, diagrams and imageries. The document itself placed emphasis on the Key Diagram, for statutory policy reasons, but a variety of expressions were given to spatial policies and spatial analyses. Of the 300 pages in the document, some 140 contained a strip of multiple colour photographs, or the insert of single photographs in the margin. The same images were repeated through the document, with most reinforcing visual natural landscapes, old and new built environments and transport infrastructures, supplemented with pictures of flooding and waste in appropriate sections. There were some ten Cartesian, two-dimensional colour mappings, using measurement and self-contained boundaries to show such characteristics as soil quality, environmental designations, and male and female life expectancies. However, in contrast to these static two-dimensional representations, the Key Diagram and the sub-area context diagrams exhibited extremes of fuzziness and appeared ill-equipped to represent complex notions of spatiality (Vigar et al . 2005). The blurring of spatial boundaries was one thing that was most different from representations in previous regional strategic plans, but was a feature shared with other strategies in the region.

The role of spatial strategy-making in the building of a Yorkshire and Humber Region Preparation of the Regional Spatial Strategy: 2003 to 2007 The Yorkshire and Humber Assembly was responsible for the preparation of the regional spatial strategy, the Plan, in its designated role as the Regional Planning Body. This designation was granted by the central government, as an expression of the government’s intention that strategies were to be produced on an inclusive basis of regional partnership working and were to be regionally specific (ODPM 2004). The Assembly was established as an element of New Labour’s post-1997 stated commitment to devolution and

regionalism in the UK (Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones 2006; Tomaney 2002). It consisted of thirty-seven full members, who were the elected leaders of the twenty-two local authorities that constituted the region, and representatives from other social, economic and environmental partners. Yorkshire Forward (the regional development agency), the Government Office for Yorkshire and the Humber, the Countryside Agency and the Environment Agency had observer status. The business of the Assembly was largely undertaken by an Executive Board of ten Assembly members, and a number of topic Commissions. It was one of these Commissions, for Planning and Infrastructure, that led the spatial strategy-making process, although the Regional Transport Forum supervised the preparation of the Regional Transport Strategy, an integral element of the RSS. The preparation page_168 Page 169 of the strategy was led by officers of the Assembly, funded by central government grant aid, supported by technical groups within the region and private consultancies. For example, the combined sustainability appraisal and strategic environmental assessment was carried out by the consultants Levett-Therivel and EDAW. Preparation of the new RSS began in July 2003 subsequent to the government’s introducing changes to the English planning system, but at a time when a review of the then current RPG was already under way (GOYH 2004). The main steps of the process are summarised in Table 6.3. The following sections examine this process by drawing on the conceptual framework provided in Chapter 1 and through the lens of the positivism, structuralism and post-modernism constructs. In turn, the role of the planner, planning knowledge and scope for action, and the process of engagement within the institutional setting of the region are examined as ways of assessing the building of regional spaces and regional governance respectively. Strategy making and the building of regional spaces The preceding analysis of the Yorkshire and Humber Plan concluded that the contents were strongly underpinned by traditional positivist concepts and constructions. The region was predominantly given expression by reference to a neutral geographical container, a collection of sub-areas and activities on which external forces had an impact. In turn, these activities, such as household formation Table 6.3 Main steps in the preparation of the Regional Spatial Strategy July to December 2003

Approval given for work to begin, and a series of road shows and public consultations held on an issue paper leading to a Project Plan, approved by GOYH

January to June 2004

PLANet Yorkshire and Humber published as an easy-read guide to RSS, work undertaken to discuss economic and housing issues and initial work with stakeholders to develop draft vision and options

July 2004 to Draft Spatial Vision and Strategic Approach published for consultation, alongside 25 topic spring 2005 papers covering spatial options, housing, economy, transport, environment, retail and leisure May to July 2005

RPIC consider responses to consultation and stakeholder meetings and agree key actions and secure GOYH approval for final timetable for submission of draft plan

September to Specific debates on housing and employment requirements, further stakeholder meetings and preparation of SA/SEA December 2005 December 2005

Publication of the Draft Plan, and submission to GOYH

2006

Public consultation on Draft (until April) and Examination in Public in autumn

Source: Adapted from YHA (2005a,b). page_169 Page 170 and employment, were given quantitative attributes, measured and mapped within bounded administrative and policy geographies. This might seem surprising given the many potential meanings and interpretations that could be placed on the patterns of spatial diversity and uneven development identified by the Assembly itself, and the brief statistical evidence presented in Table 6.1. However, the preparation of the Plan followed some five years of what Tomaney (2002) refers to as a growing but silent regionalism in England. Although not a process that would necessarily lead to a single consensus, it was a set of practices and ideas that centrally involved a number of key agencies and individuals within some form of technocratic regional vanguard. This was constituted of regional actors holding key policy and funding roles, with individuals from the trinity of the Assembly, Yorkshire Forward and the GOYH being central in this. Thus, Counsell and Haughton in a study of integration in this period observed that: the main regional institutions are sharing knowledge, information and language to a much greater extent, as they develop their capacity for joint-working. Data and research, for example, are increasingly being collected and commissioned to standardised formats, managed by Yorkshire Futures, the regional observatory. (Counsell and Haughton 2006:119) The prevailing culture of knowledge of this regionalism, asserted and largely determined by the central government, was that of evidence-based policy making and delivery. In practice, the Plan sought to ‘make provision for an increased rate of housing growth in the Region using a Plan, Monitor and Manage approach to housing delivery’ (YHA 2005a: 135). The regional housing requirements were based on Office of National Statistics population projections, applied within the Chelmer Population and Housing Model to derive household forecasts. This model was a demographic regional housing model developed by the Population and Housing Research Group of Anglia Polytechnic University and used nationally by local authorities. Links to economic forecasts were made by the consultants Deloittes using a housing model, developed by Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners for the YHA in 2003, to calculate housing provision figures and their distribution around the region by local authority district. The regional econometric model used to generate forecasts of total employment land use and full-time equivalent employment forecasts by districts was one developed for Yorkshire Forward and Yorkshire Futures. Thus the wider policy culture of performance measurement and target setting was clearly reinforced through the inherited positivist traditions in strategic land use and transport planning, and could readily be incorporated within the adoption of plan–monitor– manage as a model planning process. This core process, combined with similar positivist-based studies on setpage_170

Page 171 tlement patterns and accessibility, gave primacy to technical officers within the Assembly, the Technical Advisory Group, technical task groups jointly established with local planning departments and other organisations in the region, and consultants within private companies. The result was a process that gave little if any expression to the region as a place of many meanings or imaginations. Similarly the scope to advocate the multiple socio-economic relations and interests was curtailed within the generation of the options for the future. The Assembly tested three scenarios: responding to market forces; matching need with opportunity; and managing the environment as a key resource. These cannot be regarded as scenarios in the sense of providing hypothetical sequences of logical and plausible, but not necessarily probable, events. They fail to construct meanings that focus attention on causal processes and decision points. The Plan claimed that the chosen Spatial Vision reflected the aims ‘to address economic, social and environmental needs, influence (rather than just be directed by) the market and seek to try to share the overall benefits of regional growth’ (YHA 2005a: 30). Although this strategy-making process had strong positivist constructs, it could not be regarded as a traditional top-down process predicated solely on the production of blueprints based on predictions and modelling. Nor was it a bottom-up approach founded on community action and social or civic activism. The chosen Vision illustrated a search for institutional consensus, rather than one based on a shared notion of place and a common understanding of space. It was a regionally constructed consensus of least resistance, and significantly determined by the scope of implementation available to the Plan, and de facto, the Assembly. In this respect the Sustainability Appraisal Report was telling, in that it concluded that: Like all RSSs, much of the draft RSS for Yorkshire and Humber will work only if many things outside its control are also done. The draft RSS makes a good attempt to identify these and the ways other organisations can be encouraged to implement them, but has few teeth. Unless government intervenes vigorously, and empowers local authorities and other agencies to do so, this RSS (like the other RSSs) will not do any more than slow some unsustainable trends. (YHA 2005c: 9) It therefore becomes important at this stage to ask what modes of implementation conditioned and shaped the construction of the region within the Plan. What modes of implementation were prescribed for the plan, in particular through the regulation and control of land use and the redistribution of resources and the nature and location of major public investments? The RSSs introduced under the 2004 Act were deemed to be statutory documents, and therefore accorded more power than previous regional plans. However this authority must be seen in light of three important circumstances: page_171 Page 172 local planning authorities decided the outcome of the majority of applications for development, decisions principally determined by their Local Development Frameworks; the Assembly had powers to intervene only in development proposals of regional significance; the Assembly was unelected, resulting in the central government retaining considerable authority over the adoption of the Plan and its implementation. Similarly, major public investments at the time of preparing the Plan were considered in many forums that largely operated within rules and procedures managed by the central government (via the GOYH), such as the Regional Housing Board, the Regional Transport Board and the Regional Funding Allocations Co-ordination Board.1 These events furthered the finding by Counsell and Haughton (2006:121) that: in the late 1990s the new regional governance systems were being used very cannily by powerful alliances to pursue particular sets of interests in the differing arenas of planning and economic development. Since then, the process of joining up policy has begun subtly, yet quite distinctively, to rewrite the rules for those seeking to shape and engage with the new territorial structures at the regional level.

The importance of building this consensus and collaboration points towards the importance of the methods used in the strategy-making process to undertake consultation and the construction of spatial governance in the region arising from the strategy-making process. Strategy making and the building of regional governance The Yorkshire and Humber Assembly sought to secure wide-ranging involvement in the preparation of the regional spatial strategy. The Assembly had to pay close attention to the statutory requirements as set out in PPS11, the national government guidance on preparing regional spatial strategies, but claimed that it had sought not to satisfy this advice and the requirements of the Regulations, but exceed it by designing a process to maximise the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders and in particular, wider interest groups and individuals. The overall aim has been to secure a broad ownership and engagement in the whole process. (YHA 2005b: 4) The Assembly devised and updated structures to engage the region’s stakeholders and claimed that these worked effectively, but acknowledged that engaging wider networks and the wider public was more problematic (YHA 2005a). The YHA sought to meet this challenge by being pro-active through the use of newspage_172 Page 173 letters, its website and local media coverage. It also consulted directly with the twenty-two local strategic partnerships, the region’s Multi-faith Steering Group, the Voluntary and Community Sector, and the Regional Forum on Ageing. The quantifiable measurement of these activities points to impressive amounts of activity, with over 6,000 individuals logging onto the website and nearly 500 organisations and individuals being consulted during the two stages of consultation in 2004 and 2005. Despite the predominantly positivist constructs and processes that underpinned much of the knowledge and planners’ roles within the preparation of the RSS, the methods of engagement and the construction of institutional relations exhibited very different approaches. The methods used for consultation were not tokenistic as previous rounds of spatial strategy making had appeared to be (Marshall 2004), and might be seen as showing signs of relational, post-modern thinking. Indeed, the YHA went to great lengths in the Pre-submission Consultation Statement to provide a record not only of which individuals, stakeholders and organisations were consulted during the preparation of the Draft Plan, but also of the outcomes of these processes in terms of how the contents and proposals of the drafting changed. The preparation of the Draft Plan provided two specific periods of consultation. The first consultation sought views on the draft spatial vision and broad strategic approaches, and was undertaken in 2004. Responses were analysed and taken into account when drafting the plan. For example, the consultation raised a concern that the principles supporting the further development of Leeds focused on the economy with little reference to social aspirations and environmental assets. The YHA claimed that in the Draft Plan sustainable growth became expressed in terms of spreading growth to meet the needs of excluded communities while also achieving acceptable environmental outcomes. The second stage of consultation was structured around a series of topic papers, including one on Spatial Options. Consultation was held in 2005, and a total of 139 different respondents submitted papers. These fell into seven main categories: government departments and agencies; local authorities, including the National Park Authorities; national interest and environmental groups; partnership and voluntary groups; planning and property consultants; transport operators; and individuals. All responses were logged into a database, highlighting where there was clear agreement or disagreement with the approach suggested by the YHA in the Topic Papers (Jacobs Babtie 2005). Again the YHA indicated that these had influence on the Draft Plan, for example by considering housing land needs at a sub-area and district level and by promoting local affordable housing needs, alongside, in most rural areas and smaller settlements, restraint of new market house building (YHA 2005b). These processes cannot be seen as discursive, and it might be argued

that agency-to-agency negotiations beyond these page_173 Page 174 consultations had more influence. Thus, in the key areas of the economy and new house building, the YHA held more direct dialogues with Yorkshire Forward and housing stakeholders respectively. Without doubt regional planning was returning to the political agenda in this period but, as Stephenson and Poxon (2001:109) reflected, the approach could be ‘called governing without government and depends on cooperative action between key institutions and consultations with other stakeholders’. A fuller understanding of this strategy-making process lies in the institutional structures within which the Assembly prepared the Plan, and in the power relations of the YHA itself. The architecture of governance in the region, as in other English regions at this period, exhibited a constant reworking of powers and responsibilities between scales and across policy sectors (Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones 2006). Counsell and Haughton (2006:115) report that tensions arose over the Northern Way, a concept linking together the three northern regions and focusing on eight city-regions. The idea was launched by the central government ‘at a stage when the preparation of the new RSSs was well advanced, without any detail being provided about what it might entail for spatial development in the region’, and was largely prepared by the three regional development agencies without widespread consultation. A similar re-adjustment in positions and lines of power and influence between the national and regional scales of governance was also illustrated above by the account of the preparation of Regional Emphasis Documents in conjunction with the Treasury’s Comprehensive Spending Review, and subsequent institutionalisation of these within the Regional Coordination Board. The city-region construct within the Northern Way also highlighted the tensions inherent in the region between the local, sub-regional and regional scales of governance in Yorkshire and Humber at this time. Thus, it was a deliberate decision for the RSS sub-areas not to map directly onto local authority-based subregions, although in some cases they do, as in South Yorkshire. These sub-regions were at this point of time being promoted by Yorkshire Forward to improve investment planning of economic development projects and funding streams. In some cases informal partnership working had been established, such as South Yorkshire Partnership, which constituted very fragile arrangements, potentially in conflict with the Local Strategic Partnerships also being promoted by central government at this time. Hence, spatial strategy-making occurred within multi-level and partnership styles of governance, characterised by private and multiple public actors. The way in which the Yorkshire and Humber Plan was produced indicated that a major change had occurred in the structure, style and process of regional planning – ‘how planning is being both rescaled and its scope reworked in complex, non-linear ways’ (Counsell and Haughton 2006:119). Yet it also reflected one of page_174 Page 175 the characteristics of regional planning in previous eras: the absence of a settled system of regional governance and accountability (Roberts and Lloyd 1999). Constructing regional spaces and strategic relations The process of preparing the Yorkshire and Humber Plan was largely determined by the statutory basis of the spatial strategy and the prevailing governance behaviours in the region during the period. These factors determined processes, but did not do so in a singular or uncontested manner, and the strategic power afforded to the Assembly through plan preparation was used in a variety of complex and relational ways. The power of the strategic planning process to mobilise interests and to offer synergies between actors and agencies was evident, but the participative approach and consensual outcomes show more varied impacts when judged against the purpose of the RSS to develop policies to bring about sustainable regional

development. The independent Sustainability Appraisal concluded that the draft RSS policies were ‘particularly positive in terms of promoting employment opportunities for local residents, development in urban areas, providing accessible services, supporting public transport and environmental safeguards’ (YHA 2005c: 5), within a sub-area approach that was mostly coherent and took account of sub-regionally specific needs. It was judged to be less likely to be able to offset certain negative impacts arising from individual regional projects, or to counter wider negative trends in individuals’ behaviour and government policies. Therefore the power of the plan-making process to shape the region as a sustainable place was highly varied, partly as a result of the ambiguity arising from the designation of the Assembly as the regional planning body. The Yorkshire and Humber Assembly was the self-declared voice of the region, not only in Whitehall and Brussels, but more generally as a lobby to improve the quality of life for people living and working in Yorkshire and Humber. In its role in scrutinising the Regional Economic Strategy this voice had been used to give articulation to less powerful sector interests (such as environmental groups, voluntary and community groups, public transport advocates) and weaker social voices (such as faith and ethnic groups, the excluded, the ageing). This desire to advocate and defend disempowered interests was reflected in the participative approach taken in the RSS consultation processes, with additional efforts and approaches made to accommodate these interests. However, the Sustainability Appraisal concluded that the draft RSS inadequately incorporated social inclusion, equity and a participative approach within the potential effects of its policies. In contrast, the RSS was able to show positive effects from its focus on urban development and the meeting of local needs for jobs and housing, interests largely articulated through more positivist processes based on technocratic page_175 Page 176 and predictive mechanisms, or the mediation between privileged and powerful regional interests, such as Yorkshire Forward and house-building agencies. The RSS strategy-making process ultimately reinforced and replicated the complex but powerful spatial interests in the region – those empowered through regional economic development funding – and the statutory elected local planning authorities. Despite a clear intent to be participative and meaningful to the region, the process offered little genuine opportunity to create new arenas for the mediation of disparate and diverse notions of place, spatial development or the exploration of multiple visions and imaginations of the region. The statutory and administrative container remained largely shut.

Conclusions The purpose of this chapter, as with the other case studies in this volume, has been to analyse the ways in which space and place were articulated, presented and visualised in the practices of making contemporary spatial strategies, in this instance the draft regional spatial strategy for Yorkshire and Humber. The case study exhibited many of the characteristics raised by Chapter 1: a turn to spatiality in strategic planning; a rediscovery of the qualities of place in the promotion of economic development; the importance of localities to the understanding of ecological and environmental systems; and the seemingly endless confusion and fluidity in institutional arrangements arising out of a transition from government to governance. This analysis of the Yorkshire and Humber Plan has sought to explore how the broad notions of positivism, structuralism and post-modernism were deployed in the conceptions of place and space, and how they were expressed in the Plan’s modes of action during its preparation between 2003 and 2006. In Chapter 1 it was also argued that such processes do not so much operate in space, but actively construct space and time and in doing so define distinctive scales of development. In the case of Yorkshire and Humber, the drafting of the RSS offered an opportunity to gain an insight into the part played by the varied notions of spatiality in the building of English regions and the drift towards a quiet regionalism. The notion of spatiality that was weakest in the content of the plan, and within its mode of actions, was clearly that of structuralism. To attribute this to the outcomes of past or current neo-liberal regimes would be overly simplistic, and ignores the extent to which futures are not pre-determined and social systems

have scope to choose what they want to become. The YHA explicitly advanced itself as an agency that spoke for the most vulnerable in the region, and saw the structural conditions of the region itself to be the outcome of wider relations and spatial power geometries. However, analysis of social exclusion and equity across page_176 Page 177 the region was largely constructed around pluralist notions of justice (ethnicity, age, gender, peripherality etc.), and measured through quasi-positivist constructs strongly influenced by administrative performance indicators (deprivation, unemployment, GVA etc.). Despite deliberate choices to widen consultation to groups such as those that represented the ageing and multi-faith groups, the plan itself did not directly deal with social or economic inequalities, and their spatial outcomes through segregation. If structuralism requires the resolution of conflicts through the redistribution of resources and the spatial relocation of activities, then the Plan did not give expression to these courses of action. The absence of appropriate modes of implementation might reflect the outdated and singular notion of social class. However, given the purposive and future orientation of planning practice, this absence might reflect on a more general paucity of new ways of imagining change that is just, and futures that are less materialistic. In this sense, the building of a regional space was no more than the outcome of asymmetrical and evolutionary processes grappling with the management of new economic spaces (Brenner 1999). The region, and the Plan, did not offer an alternative to prevailing power relations, and there appeared little or no leadership or political will to do so. So, did the Yorkshire and Humber Plan and its preparation represent a challenge to the past principles based on scientific and modernist rationalities? In many ways the foregoing analysis does point towards a post-modern planning, if that is exhibited in a growing interest in participatory planning, the search for place identity and cultural specificity, an appreciation of the historicity of places and the turn to heritage. However, an argument that suggests that such concerns gave articulation to new and different conceptions of space, in particular that of a post-modern region, would be severely misplaced. The Plan showed little ability to construct notions of culturally produced, emergent and becoming spaces; struggled to give articulation to new ways of imagining multiple futures which might need to be expressed as uncertain and disordered; and failed to explore regional identity as something subject to multiple meanings and interpretations. The content of the Plan and the process of strategic plan making did explicitly seek to deal with the unique needs and characteristics of places, and these were most clearly given articulation in the use of sub-areas and the emphasis on varied landscapes. However, these conceptions were highly conditioned and shaped by what were seen as acceptable knowledges as expressed in prevailing practices and public debates. Thus, the construction of a specific place, say a village, as the product of language and imagination, as something being constantly remade, or as a construct of flows and fuzzy boundaries became problematic when planners did not have tools or instruments to articulate such notions, and the actual discourses were instead expressed in material terms such as house prices, access page_177 Page 178 to shops, etc. The use of a settlement hierarchy, the allocation of land for new housing and the visualisation offered by maps all reinforced certainties, albeit through images and representations that also reinforced particular interests and knowledges. The Yorkshire and Humber Plan was constructed upon multiple interpretations of space, and through its mode of actions exhibited varied strategy-making processes. However, positivist rationalities and conceptions dominated and had clear primacy over key aspects of the Plan: the prediction and allocation of land for employment and new housing; landscape values; accessibility and transport; and the strategic environmental assessment/sustainability appraisal. Simply, the region was reproduced through the spatial strategy as an objective, measurable, mapped, bounded, self-contained locale (see Chapter 1). The choices

to be otherwise were actually very limited and, within an overall pragmatic culture towards strategy making, the Plan was able to incorporate multiple practices but had to seek legitimacy through the privileging of technical knowledge and consensual deliberation. Despite claims and intent to do spatial planning differently, the behaviours of the YHA were critically bounded and conditioned by the interrelationship of the Plan with other regional strategies, within a central government-bounded construction of the region, and given articulation and power through a quasi-legal consensus of twenty-two local planning authorities. Each of these interrelationships was self-evidently constructed around political debates, but the unelected YHA sought power through acceptable and expert knowledge based on predictions, fixed hierarchies and quantifiable measures. These served the purpose of reterritorialising some political debates, but others have remained muted, such as the just allocation of resources, or excluded, such as notions of identity (Allen et al . 1998). Finally, it is useful to reflect on the application of the analytical framework. This has been problematic, mainly because of the discursive and critical methods used to analyse the case study. A holistic and historical approach might have given a fuller and more rounded consideration of the extent to which conceptions of space and place were being integrated into more general socio-spatial processes. More significantly, the framework did allow the analysis to reveal the multiple meanings, the multiplicity of knowledges, and the multiple interests that contested and constructed the imaginations of place and space at a particular moment. If anything, the analysis has reinforced the emergence and becoming of spaces that planners have to deal with, but also the constructions that become articulated in the face of multiple uncertainties. Positivist notions, aligned with statutory duties, were sought to deal with these uncertainties whereby known contestations and conflicts required future mediation and resolution (Tewdwr-Jones 2006). Given this, within this case study, we see the expressions of spatiality being heavily influpage_178 Page 179 enced by the framing administrative, political and legal constructs, in this instance entirely determined by the central government. The expressions of spatiality were those of the region, but not the region’s spatialities.

Note 1 The Housing Board advised central government Ministers on regional strategic housing priorities through the Regional Housing Strategy and the allocation of investment via a Single Regional Housing Pot. The Transport Board developed advice to the government on the region’s priorities for transport investment, and related to Highways Agency investment in major schemes valued at over £5 million on roads of regional significance, and local transport major schemes over £5 million. The Co-ordination Board was set up in 2005 to make recommendations to Yorkshire Forward and the Assembly on submissions to government Ministers on regional spending priorities for the economy, housing and transport up to 2015/2016. By 2007, these arrangements had evolved to a further stage, as the Boards replaced the previous YHA Commissions, and became fully embedded within the governance of the Assembly itself. page_179 Page 180 This page intentionally left blank. page_180 Page 181

CHAPTER 7 MANAGING THE METROPOLIS Economic change, institutional reform and spatial planning in London Nick Bailey

Introduction The introduction of the United Kingdom’s first spatial development strategy in London coincided with a unique set of circumstances in the last three years of the 1990s and the first three of the new millennium. Having languished for fourteen years without any form of metropolitan government, London emerged from a long period of political decline with the first elected mayor in Britain, a new and significantly different form of administration from previous approaches and a remit for spatial planning, in line with the emergent European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) published in 1999, which promoted the adoption of regional spatial development strategies (Hall 2006:167). The 1990s were also the start of London’s economic and demographic resurgence, confirming it as one of only three undisputed world cities (Newman and Thornley 2005; Hall and Pain 2006). Moreover, these reforms were introduced relatively early in the period of office of the New Labour government first elected in 1997, and represented just one part of a broader approach to ‘modernising’ local government and the emergence of ‘a new territorial governance’ (Roberts 2000; Tewdwr-Jones and Allmendinger 2006) throughout the United Kingdom. Few could have predicted that London’s fortunes could have changed so quickly and that by 2000 it would be piloting a new form of city government with a novel, and as then untried, system of spatial planning. However, although London’s statutory spatial development strategy has a number of original features, it is also embedded in London’s long history of experimentation with regional plans and metropolitan governance (Hall 2006). The introduction of a regional spatial development strategy, which provides a statutory basis for coordinated land use and non-land use action, can therefore be seen as one more stage in an evolving regional planning process. Although the post-war plans for London were primarily land use based, custom and practice, if not the law, left some ambiguity about what was, and what was not, a land use matter. Prior to 2004, London had been the subject of only three city-wide statutory page_181 Page 182 plans, each reflecting strongly the spirit of its time. The first was Forshaw and Abercrombie’s visionary County of London Plan (LCC 1943),1 which provided the basis for post-war reconstruction. The second was also produced by the London County Council – the Administrative County of London Development Plan – and thus covered only inner and central London (LCC 1951). It was subject to three years of public enquiry and ministerial deliberation and finally adopted in 1955. This was replaced by the Greater London Development Plan in 1969, prepared by the newly established Greater London Council (GLC 1969). Each in its way struggled to encapsulate an analysis of London’s needs and to apply the procedural tools available to steer the capital over a period of ten to twenty years. As will be noted later, as well as having substantial differences, the London Plan (GLA 2004) inherited many characteristics of its predecessors. London experienced a long period of relative stagnation after the Second World War with national policy favouring industrial decentralisation and the out-migration of the population, especially from the overcrowded inner boroughs. The population of the capital reached a peak of 8.6 million in 1939 and then declined for five decades to reach a low point of 6.8 million in 1983. London’s boundaries had been extended in 1965 with the creation of the Greater London Council (GLC), but the adoption of what some saw as increasingly strident left-wing policies in the 1980s meant that it became a target for abolition by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, along with other metropolitan counties covering the major

British conurbations (Travers 2004:30). In parallel with the decline in population, London’s economy was also changing rapidly. From the 1970s onwards London’s manufacturing industry was in freefall with the loss of 600,000 manufacturing jobs over a thirty-year period. This decline in manufacturing began to stabilise in the 1990s and its effect on overall employment was moderated by a rapid growth in business services, other service industries, retailing and tourism. These trends were enhanced by a series of macro-economic changes introduced by the Conservative government, which was determined to make London a world player in the global economy. Pressures to accommodate increasing numbers of international banks and financial services coincided with a boom in demand for office space in locations such as the City of London and London Docklands, the latter’s traditional role having been redundant from the 1960s onwards. London was becoming an increasingly important location for global corporations both for economic and fiscal reasons and because of its geographic location as a bridgehead for business between the United States and mainland Europe. Its demographic structure was also changing as it attracted in an increasingly younger and more ethnically diverse population. In the period before the 1997 general election there had been a gradual realisation in political, academic and business circles that London, and by implication page_182 Page 183 the British economy, was suffering as a result of the absence of a strategic authority for the capital city. London was no longer perceived as being in terminal decline and those engaged in business services, cultural activities and tourism in particular were increasingly demanding improvements in the delivery of transport infrastructure, the provision of housing and the promotion of a higher-quality urban fabric. A consensus was emerging that London’s growth was severely restricted by the lack of an institutional framework, based on local democratic accountability, that could take a strategic view of the capital. The preparation of the London Plan from 2000 onwards marked an important turning point in the capital’s prospects. The political map had changed significantly in just two decades, as had London’s role as the core of the wider south-east of England. It had become by far the largest regional generator of economic activity and tax revenue in the United Kingdom, accounting for two fifths of national gross domestic product (GDP). Its economic status had also changed so that by the beginning of the new millennium on several measures it was outranking New York and Tokyo as the pre-eminent world city (Massey 2007). The challenge facing the Mayor was to accommodate the growth in business activity and the projected population increase, whilst ensuring that transport and infrastructure were improved and that the needs of its diverse population were met. Moreover, underused capacity in the capital needed to be realised, leading to additional growth particularly in the eastern boroughs of the Thames Gateway. It was generally accepted that the former top-down approach to planning (Hall 2006:167) had to be replaced with one that would set out clear strategic guidelines and encouragement for development, as well as coordinating the delivery of infrastructure and related services, complementing and providing the context for actions best carried out at a more local level by the thirty-three London boroughs. However, more consultation was needed with the second-tier authorities, since it was the boroughs that in the past had often strongly resisted undue interference from the GLC (Young and Kramer 1978). In this chapter it will be argued that planning in London has responded to a number of overriding pressures which have heavily influenced the way space and place in the city are conceptualised. First, the national, regional and metropolitan economies have largely dictated the extent to which planning policies are promotional or restrictive. Second, the institutional framework of governmental legislation has determined the legal and organisational context in which policy is produced. Third, the perceptions of local and national business elites have influenced the ‘narrative’ of the city, determining whether London is perceived as, for example, a critical patient in need of radical surgery or a boom town where growth can be sustained only if adequately supplied with appropriate infrastructure. In responding to these changing pressures, it will be noted that, although the

page_183 Page 184 planning system has evolved and adapted to changing circumstances, continuity can also be observed in that many of the methods of allocation, designation and control in the planners’ toolbox remain unchanged. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first discusses the unique context of London in terms of its size, population and economic structure. It will go on to examine the political economy of London by reviewing the main economic trends and the growth of employment in key service industries. It will also demonstrate how the new institutional framework of an elected mayor and Greater London Authority responded to these issues. The second examines how the emergence of the new institutional framework gave rise to a number of constituencies arguing for sectional interests which were incorporated to varying degrees in the Plan. The third section discusses the content of the spatial strategy, explores the process by which the Plan was produced and examines the extent to which it embodies different philosophical interpretations. The final section reviews the extent to which the Plan might be defined in relation to positivist, structuralist and post-modern conceptions of planning as discussed in Chapter 1 and draws conclusions on how the case of planning in London reflects broader trends in spatial planning.

The political economy of London and the new institutional context London’s size and its dominance in all aspects of the British economy, cultural life and society have meant that the way in which it is administered has also been extremely contentious. For more than a century different methods of local representation and accountability have reflected the ongoing debate about central–local relationships in the country as a whole. The major issue of debate has been how far London should be permitted to manage its own affairs when it is also the seat of national government and the location for many of the essential command and control functions of the country as a whole. This debate has been accentuated by the political volatility of the London electorate, which tends to vote in favour of greater local determination but often against the political party in power nationally (Travers 2004). Thus the changing economic structure of London, its system of government and how it is planned are all closely related. The geographical definition of London has also proved extremely contentious, in terms of both the delivery of services and political control. London’s boundaries have undergone only two major changes in over 100 years. The boundary of the London County Council was drawn relatively tightly in the 1880s to cover the central area and the inner boroughs, which marked the extent of nineteenth-century expansion. This gave the Labour Party a built-in majority for thirty years from 1934. The appointment of the Herbert Commission in 1957 by a Conservapage_184 Page 185 tive government recommended that a new two-tier system of government should cover a much enlarged area of over 1500 square kilometres, which took London’s boundary up to the Green Belt in the surrounding counties. Recommendations proposed that the new Greater London Council (GLC) should acquire additional strategic planning, housing and related powers, while the lower tier would be made up of thirty-two boroughs, together with the historic Corporation of the City of London. London emerged from the Second World War as an overcrowded and congested city with an outdated infrastructure. Its economy was still largely dependent on manufacturing and its housing stock was deficient both in quantity and quality. Both the County of London Plan (1943) and the Administrative County of London Plan (ACLP) (1955) were heavily orientated towards relocating population beyond the Green Belt and into, for instance, the New Towns. The 1955 plan was the first and only London plan to be based on a system of land use zoning. The problems of infrastructure were largely perceived in terms of major road-

building programmes. The GLDP (1969) was designed to be a strategic plan that, until the regulations were changed in 1970, would guide and inform the preparation of borough-wide Structure Plans. This plan also contained major infrastructure proposals, such as the controversial Motorway Box around central London, as well as providing the basis for the GLC’s extensive house-building programme and for determining large numbers of strategic planning applications. Above all, the GLDP sought ‘balance’ between competing uses. For example, it promoted preferred office and industrial locations, identified ‘Action Areas’ to promote regeneration, and argued strongly for the protection of the historic fabric, open space and environmental quality. It also identified at least one strategic centre to provide retail, leisure and employment opportunities for each borough. The GLDP’s view on the London economy was also a balanced one, arguing that both manufacturing and services should grow and prosper so long as they were in the right locations and were not able to displace other uses, such as housing and community facilities. The GLDP was finally approved in 1976 and was very much a product of its time (see Plate 7). It had rejected the positivist zoning philosophy of the ACLP and had adopted a positivist approach which depended on designations and definitions of areas for single or mixed uses (for example, in strategic centres) or concerted action by the GLC (for example, in action areas) to create a balanced distribution of activities. Its conception of London was of a city where variety of uses and good planning would sustain the economy and benefit all its inhabitants. In 1984 the GLC published alterations to the GLDP (GLC 1984). These were partly an attempt to update the GLDP, but also a response to a major recession: unemployment in London had increased by 375 per cent between 1971 and page_185 Page 186 1984 (GLC 1984:6). The alterations also included a much wider array of policies on equal opportunities, energy consumption, waste disposal and the protection of ‘Community Areas’ – all well ahead of current planning thinking at the time. The designation of Community Areas, linked to additional funding for social housing and community facilities strongly influenced by community organisations, suggested a structuralist approach. Under powers given to the Secretary of State for the Environment, adoption never took place and abolition of the GLC followed two years later. However, much of the thinking about planning in London was sustained through the work of the London Planning Advisory Committee (LPAC) until the revival of London government in 2000. Prior to the 1990s, London was a beleaguered city with both a declining economic base and a decreasing population. Strategic planning was very much about improving infrastructure, protecting the industry and jobs that remained, and ameliorating the environmental impacts of poor housing and inadequate services. From the mid-1990s the tone of the debate began to change and the positive (post-modern) features of London’s emerging global role became apparent (see for example Simmie 1994). A new philosophy began to emerge, aided by Lord Rogers’ Urban Task Force report (1999). This report argued that a rapid growth in jobs, population and prosperity could be accommodated through increasing housing densities and improved (public) transport provision, all within the context of a high-quality urban environment. Richard Rogers was later employed as Chief Advisor to the Mayor on architecture and urbanism. London had always housed a relatively small financial sector, but it has played an important role over several centuries in underpinning the expansion of global trade and banking (Hebbert 1998). Its position as a global player amongst a limited number of other world cities was enhanced after a series of moves to deregulate the Stock Exchange and other financial services in the mid-1980s, characterised by the media as ‘the Big Bang’. By 2004 London accounted for 15 per cent of total UK employment and for 18 per cent of UK output in 2003 (GLA Economics 2005:45). Its economy has always been distinctive compared with the rest of the UK, with a much larger concentration of financial and related professional business services, and smaller proportions employed in manufacturing and the public sector. In particular, London’s size and density of companies and population mean that its economy is highly productive through the benefits of clustering, economies of scale and agglomeration effects. Indeed, by 2005 productivity per person was around 20 per cent higher than the rest of the UK (LDA 2005:9), while London’s economy grew by an average of 3 per cent per annum over the decade from 1994 to 2004, consistently exceeding that of the UK

as a whole (GLA Economics 2005:46). London’s economy is clearly well placed to compete in UK, European and world page_186 Page 187 markets but also faces significant challenges. Extended growth in key sectors, such as financial and businesses services, has created a two-speed economy bringing significant benefits to those with appropriate skills and qualifications. However, large sections of the population experience exclusion and relative poverty. London has the highest rate of unemployment amongst the English regions, together with lower rates of employment and participation in the labour market (LDA 2005). Unemployment rates are significantly higher amongst black and minority ethnic groups and London has the highest proportion of children living in poverty in Great Britain. It also has a larger share of deprived wards than any other region except the North East (LDA 2005:12). Inequalities of educational attainment, health and life expectancy vary significantly between areas of relative affluence and poverty. Moreover, the rapid inflation in average house prices in London in the past decade and the underprovision of social housing have created high levels of homelessness and housing stress. This in essence is the paradox that the new London agencies are addressing: to promote competitiveness in those sectors where there is growth potential, to use the benefits of growth to reduce deprivation and the underuse of human and other resources, while also creating an integrated, well-connected and sustainable city for all. As Gordon (2003) and others have noted, London’s economy is characterised by its size, its relationships with markets at a range of geographical scales, and above all by its complexity. By far the largest proportion of the workforce is employed by companies providing services locally, to London as a whole and to the rest of the UK. It is the ‘thick’ network of economic activity that provides the essential services to those global and world city functions which tend to grab the headlines. Complexity is the essential characteristic of the London economy, and it is this rather than any specific segment of demand which deserves to be seen as its key driver. But it is a very hard picture to represent, so there is a continual temptation to focus in on the most distinctive activities as though they were representative. (Gordon 2003:7) Global trends, competition from higher-value land uses and ineffective (and sometimes unrealistic) planning policies have all contributed to the decline of London’s manufacturing sector. For at least four decades after 1945 manufacturing in London was characterised by small workshops and factories in the central area and inner boroughs and a number of large concentrations in West London, in the Lea Valley and along the peripheral roads out of the capital. In 1971, 1.3 million were employed in manufacturing, making up one in four jobs. By 2003 this figure had declined to 267,000 manufacturing jobs or just 6 per cent of London’s page_187 Page 188 total workforce. Projections suggest that manufacturing jobs will halve again to 133,000 in 2026, or just 3 per cent of the total (GLA Economics 2005:41). The decline in manufacturing is almost exactly mirrored by the rise of finance and business services, which are likely to reach almost a third of all jobs by 2026. The total number of jobs in London has increased steadily from 2002 with a growth rate of more than 2 per cent in 2005, which for the first time exceeded that of Britain as a whole. These structural changes are echoed in London’s changing economic geography. Employment growth over the last economic cycle was concentrated in the west and, more importantly, the centre. Conversely almost a fifth of boroughs experienced a decline in employment and another fifth only a marginal increase – many in south and east London. Whereas over 60 per cent of future growth is expected to be outside the Central Activities Zone, its potentially uneven distribution if historic trends

continue is a major concern of the alterations to the London Plan. In essence, London’s economy is increasingly exposed to the opportunities and challenges of a highly interdependent global economy. More recently, central government has accepted that increased devolution of decision making to the ‘city-region’ enables cities to adapt to changing market opportunities and to maximise opportunities for innovation. As a recent Treasury report notes: Cities represent the spatial manifestation of economic activity – large, urban agglomerations in which businesses choose to locate in order to benefit from proximity to other business, positive spill-overs and external economies of scale. (HM Treasury et al. 2006:1) London’s changing institutional context While London’s economy was undergoing change in the 1990s, its institutional structures were also subject to political scrutiny. The Thatcher government of the 1980s took the view that London needed to become more competitive in order to compete in global markets and that economic benefits would trickle down to the population at large (Thornley 1993). With the abolition of the GLC, strategic planning for the capital was taken over by the Department of the Environment, advised by the thirty-three boroughs through the statutory London Planning Advisory Committee (LPAC 1988). Nominally informed by this body, the Secretary of State issued Strategic Planning Guidance for London (DoE 1989), which was implemented by the boroughs through their then new Unitary Development Plans (UDPs). With the re-election of the Conservative government in 1992 during a period of economic recession, a different strategy began to emerge (Bailey 1997). This marked a departure in government policy in recognising that the private secpage_188 Page 189 tor was unwilling or unable to take on the full burden of regenerating London’s economy and that public investment would be needed to underpin the capital’s economic revival. A Cabinet sub-committee for London was created, chaired by John Gummer, the then Secretary of State for the Environment, and composed of ministers from eleven government departments. London First was also established to represent over 200 London-based companies and the London First Centre took on responsibility for attracting inward investment to the capital. The local elections in London in 1994 resulted in a shift in control to the Labour Party, leaving the Conservatives in the majority in only four boroughs. This swing to Labour also enabled a merger to be created between the two party-dominated local authority associations, resulting in the establishment of the all-party Association of London Government in 1995. The same year the London boroughs had a minority role, with the institutions of business and central government, in the London Pride Partnership, which was invited by the Secretary of State to prepare a prospectus for the future development of the capital (London Pride Partnership 1995). Localism without direct democratic accountability was further enhanced by the establishment of the Government Office for London (GOL) in 1994, which brought together representatives of five Whitehall departments. GOL’s budget of over £1 billion a year was to be used to promote business, planning, transport and regeneration objectives, as well as promoting London’s interests in government as a whole. Despite these tensions, the Secretary of State sponsored LPAC research into London planning issues and showed himself more receptive than previous incumbents to the Committee’s new strategic planning advice for London (LPAC 1994), incorporating much of this in the revised planning guidance for the capital (GOL 1996). Its housing targets reflected borough parochialism and were not ambitious given the government’s broader commitment to growth. However, its approach to office capacity was sufficiently robust and flexible to accommodate significant fluctuations in the office market. While in opposition, the Labour Party came out strongly in favour of correcting what it argued was a ‘democratic deficit’ for the capital and in election manifestos for 1987, 1992 and 1997 was committed to creating a ‘Greater London Authority’. This was conceived in the traditional local government format with

members elected for wards and the majority party choosing a leader for the council (Travers 2004:44). However, when Tony Blair became party leader he promoted a very different model of local government and strongly supported the introduction of city mayors. In a speech Blair argued: Strong civic leadership could help restore some of the much-needed civic pride in London. It could provide vision and direction for London’s future, someone to page_189 Page 190 drive the development of the city, to pull together the partnerships needed to make things happen. (Carvel 1999:255) The introduction of an elected London Mayor had received limited support from a number of politicians from all parties but by 1997 public opinion appeared far more committed to the improvement of public services, such as transport, the health service and education. Moreover, the London Labour Party was far more committed to re-establishing an elected ‘voice for London’ than an elected mayor. As Carvel notes ‘A radical departure from the British local government tradition was imposed from the top down by a leader who had no political roots in local council politics’ (Carvel 1999:256). It was only a matter of months after the 1997 Labour victory in the general election that a consultative paper was issued on London government (DETR 1997) and a referendum on the constitutional changes was pencilled in for May 1998. A White Paper and a legislative bill followed soon after, culminating in the Greater London Authority Act of 1999. The Labour government in Westminster was clearly hoping that the post of Mayor would be filled by a leading national or business figure at some remove from party politics. These expectations were severely challenged when Ken Livingstone, formerly leader of the Greater London Council and a critic of many aspects of New Labour before resigning his parliamentary seat, proved most popular with the voters as an independent mayoral candidate. The public–private partnership proposed for London Underground before transfer to the Mayor was a particular bone of contention between Livingstone and the Treasury. The implementation of the legislation was largely delegated to the Government Office for London. The main separation of powers was created between the elected mayor, with his appointed cabinet and advisors, and the assembly of the Greater London Authority with twenty-five members, whose main function is scrutiny. The four functional bodies accountable to the Mayor are the London Development Agency, Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police Authority, and the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. In all cases, the Mayor appoints some members of the board of each agency and also sets an annual budget, subject to the approval of the assembly. The Spatial Development Strategy is one of eight strategies 2 the Mayor is required to produce, which are subject to the scrutiny of the GLA assembly. In the decade after the launch of the new ‘constitutional experiment’ (Rydin et al . 2004:55) in London the verdict of many commentators is that the Mayor and GLA have achieved much more than many pessimists in 2000 dared to expect. The Mayor is often commended for introducing Britain’s first congestion charge in a major city and for modernising and increasing bus usage. The London Plan is also acknowledged for providing strategic guidance to the development of the capital; page_190 Page 191 it has been broadly accepted by the boroughs and, especially after clarification of the issue of ‘general conformity’, is being incorporated in their development plans. The achievements of the Mayor were capped in 2005 through his role in helping to secure the Olympics Games in 2012. Moreover, the most dynamic sectors of London’s economy go on growing. Yet, as commentators demonstrate, the new institutional framework ‘is very weak, both formally and in terms of resources’ (Gordon 2003:4). As Travers (2004:210)

argues: To secure its long-term future, London will certainly need further reform. The mayor will need more powers and greater financial autonomy. The assembly will have to be given greater capacity to hold the mayor to account. There should be a transfer of power from Whitehall to the GLA. The relationship between the GLA and the boroughs will have to be reviewed. The continuous revolution in London government is, without doubt, continuing. All that has been said so far suggests that the new institutional framework represented the outcome of extremely complex forces at work in a particular economic and political context. The broad consensus amongst the corporate sector, the media and the electorate was that the democratic deficit needed to be corrected and that London needed to be represented nationally, in Europe and on the world stage. The business community was extremely critical of the evident failure of government at all levels to deliver the infrastructure, transport and adequate supply of housing that a modern city needed to compete effectively in the twenty-first century. London local government eventually joined this consensus but tensions remained over the form of the future strategic body, including the concept of an elected executive Mayor. The case for a more effective, regionally responsive strategic planning service was also made strongly by the London Planning Advisory Committee, chaired by Nicky Gavron, who later became Deputy Mayor. The Labour government, on the other hand, after its election in 1997, sought to avoid recreating what it saw as a heavy-handed bureaucracy in the mould of the GLC, which at one time employed over 10,000 staff. If London was to be granted devolved powers, these should conform with current thinking about the ‘modernisation’ of local government and the ‘Third Way’ (Thornley et al . 2005) . Above all, the GLA should be about working with stakeholders to steer the strategic direction of the capital at minimal extra cost to the tax-payer, rather than imposing another layer of expensive and bureaucratic service delivery. Many of these sentiments fed through into the London Plan, which embodied much of the then current thinking in policy and planning circles. Thus the coalition of forces that determined how London should be governed also influenced the way it was being planned. Many of the limitations imposed on the governance of London are evident in its planning systems. Nevertheless, although the page_191 Page 192 government was initially cautious about the Mayor’s role, by 2006 legislation was being prepared to provide additional powers to address the strategic issues facing London (DCLG 2006). These include the right to determine certain strategic planning applications, together with a coordinating role in relation to waste management, skills and training, and social housing investment.

The influence of four constituencies on the emerging context In the discussion of the ways in which the political economy of London influenced decisions about its administration it is worth highlighting the influence of four key sectors, especially in the formative period of the London Plan. The business sector was probably the most organised lobby, although by no means unanimous in its representations to government. Although the media, a number of academics, think-tanks and other policy specialists played important roles in the debate, we focus here on the corporate sector’s role, which most clearly reflected the changing political economy of London. The Mayor’s election manifesto drew on all these influences. Indirectly, the media, political parties, academia and London local government were also ‘players’ in preparing the Plan, together with the ‘LPAC bequest’. As might be expected from an independent mayoral candidate with a ‘rainbow alliance’ constituency, black, other minority ethnic and other groups together with those associated with different facets of the ‘green lobby’ were also influential. As the London Plan has matured from a single document to a process involving Sub-Regional Development Frameworks and a range of statutory alterations the concerns of these groups have assumed increasing public prominence. The business sector

Thornley et al . (2005) suggest that ‘business privilege’ led to the evolution of an ‘urban regime’ because of the strong mutual interests linking leading business lobby groups and the Mayor. From the early 1990s leading London businesses became convinced that the capital needed a strategic authority in order to enable it to enhance its competitive position and therefore set out to maximise its lobbying power. At least five organisations played a leading role in this process. These were the London Confederation of British Industry (LCBI), the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), London First, the City of London Corporation and the London Development Partnership (LDP) established in 1998 by leading business interests to pave the way for the London Development Agency. London First was set up in 1992 as a business campaign group based mainly on leading firms in the service and development sectors to ‘engage the business community in promoting and improving London, using the vision, energy page_192 Page 193 and skills of business leaders to shape and secure the capital’s future’ (www. london-first.co.uk). The City of London Corporation is London’s oldest political institution with a strong commitment to promoting the capital’s global role in business and finance. It developed a more strategic role beyond its own boundaries by managing open spaces such as Hampstead Heath after the abolition of the GLC, through its funding for the arts, by commissioning research on London-wide issues and by greater engagement in pan-London activities (Thornley et al . 2005:1959). The LCCI, drawing on local chambers in different parts of London, advocated the formation of a London Business Board to provide a focus for business interests. This, together with the LCBI and London First, published The Business Manifesto for the Mayor and the GLA in the period before the mayoral election. Close links between the administration and the business constituency continue (Thornley et al . 2005:1957– 1958). Thornley et al . ascribe the success of the business sector in promoting its agenda, through the various organisations outlined above, to two main factors. First, it was well organised and able to influence the new institutions as they were being established. Because agencies such as the London Development Agency were under pressure to become operational as quickly as possible, they were persuaded to adopt positions and policies already prepared, which could be operationalised without undue controversy. Regular briefings and well-researched reports meant that practical solutions were always available to key decisionmakers such as GOL and the Mayor. Second, the business lobby had been well organised since London government reorganisation was first on the agenda and had effective organisations, such as the London Business Board and the LDP, to lobby the incoming administration. Above all, the business community developed an astute strategy of accepting the need for the Mayor and the associated bureaucracy on condition that its case for competitive policies formed the foundation of the various strategic documents to be prepared for the capital. The incoming administration considered this lobbying in the context of its wider objectives and devised a strategy for promoting private sector investment and funding public goods. In 2001 the Mayor’s longstanding economic advisor, John Ross, set out his management philosophy, which underpins the London Plan. It argued that only an elected Mayor, subject to democratic control, could wring inefficiencies out of monopoly situations such as public transport in London. The political system must, however, ‘be maximally open and democratic in order to most effectively transmit consumer/electoral pressure. A combination of the greatest electoral democracy, and management institutions most directly expressing the pressure from the Mayor would … be optimal’ (Ross 2001:37). Ross demonstrated that the GLA’s approach was to seek efficiency gains in page_193 Page 194

the services it provided, whereas its socialist credentials lay in the extent to which these gains were used to improve the environment and to reduce poverty. For example, Ross argues that, to tackle housing and office supply-side shortages, planning policy might increase the ‘density of office development including high buildings in certain parts of the city, thereby increasing profitability, while tightening rules to increase the proportion of affordable housing’ (Ross 2001:41). Similarly, he suggests that the Mayor’s commitment to his equalities programmes and training meant that social exclusion would be reduced, but also that economic efficiency would be improved by increasing the supply of appropriate labour. London Planning Advisory Committee Established by the Act that abolished the GLC, strictly limited to providing only advice on strategic planning matters, and composed of borough nominees, LPAC was never destined for glory in the annals of London government. However, in the fourteen years to 2000 it was the nearest London came to a regionally accountable strategic planning body and can now be seen as the forebear of regional planning bodies elsewhere in the country. After fraught beginnings the Committee strove for consensus across the thirtythree boroughs, the achievement of which owes much to its chairs. For much of its life it was chaired by two borough politicians who went on to take leading roles within the GLA and had an influence on the preparation of the London Plan. The need to sustain this consensus, coupled with the spirit of the 1990s, meant that LPAC took a more pragmatic approach to accommodating the market than the GLC, but maintained a strong social imperative, notably in its approach to affordable housing. Not only were some of its proposals radical for their time, it was also able to establish a working political consensus, with over two thirds of boroughs often implementing its individual proposals. At the very least, through extensive consultation, it introduced a sense of local ownership of a pan-London strategy and engendered local debate over strategic planning issues. Learning from the experience of London and the South East Regional Planning Conference (SERPLAN), one of LPAC’s distinguishing operational characteristics was to maintain a secretariat and strategic policy development budget that was independent of local interests. Coupled with an entrepreneurial approach to levering additional research funds, this allowed it to develop evidence-based strategic policy which first challenged inherited GLC orthodoxy and, perhaps more contentiously, then set the foundations for much of what has evolved into GLA land use policy: ideas that London could and should increase housing provision substantially; that it should use the planning system more proactively to increase affordable provision; page_194 Page 195 on linking housing density to location, public transport accessibility, parking and design; on developing London’s role as a world city; on taking a plan, monitor and manage approach to office capacity; actively managing the stock of industrial land; on developing a flexible network of town centres; and on decoupling the spatial approach to deprivation from the Central Activities Zone and adding sub-regional nuances to broad pan-London policy. Initially these were perceived as constraining the business-driven growth agenda outlined above, as well as having too close associations with the former regime that the GLA was replacing. In the longer term, however, many of its policies were incorporated in the London Plan. Social and community constituencies Although Harrison et al . (2004) have suggested that the voluntary and community sectors were less effective than the business sector in lobbying to meet their needs during preparation of the 2004 Plan, in the Mayor’s vision for London the need for social equality is given equal weight to economic considerations. Moreover, as the London Plan has evolved, mechanisms for engaging with these constituencies have been refined to make strategic planning more responsive to their needs, and ways of tackling them have also been incorporated in the wider ‘One London’ agenda. This had its most public expression in the campaign to foster community cohesion, especially in the aftermath of the ‘7/7’ terrorism incidents in London, and can

be seen as part of a much broader approach to social inclusion. Social equality also underpins the reconfiguration of London’s sub-regions proposed in the further alterations to the London Plan. This is designed to help break down historic divisions between central London and the rest of the metropolis. The new sub-regions are seen as valuable mechanism in redressing the social exclusivity that was associated with what some perceived to be a ‘central area’ Plan, as well as providing a sounder functional basis for coordinating strategic service delivery. They are supported in the Alterations by stronger policies to address the needs of the suburbs in terms of improved access to employment opportunities, quality of life and engagement in London’s development as an exemplary sustainable world city. It is intended that the next round of Sub-Regional Development Frameworks (SRDF) should be prepared on the basis of the revised boundaries and will integrate and target London Plan, Transport for London and London Development Agency strategies, as well as providing a sub-regional context for community strategies. They will be the subject to further public scrutiny as they are incorporated into the boroughs’ Local Development Frameworks. page_195 Page 196 The environmental imperative Less coherently than those of business, concerns to address the ‘environmental imperative’ through the London Plan were expressed by a wide variety of stakeholders, ranging from large institutions such as the Environment Agency and Friends of the Earth, through well-organised ‘single issue’ lobbies associated with, for example, rivers and waterways, to more local civic and amenity societies. Environmental issues have an established history in London’s political economy, going back to campaigns against the GLC’s motorway proposals in the 1970s, and articulated in London governance during the 1990s by Nicky Gavron, through her role as Chair of LPAC. Unlike those of business, they have also become mainstream concerns of the electorate – a political status reinforced within the GLA by close working between the Green and Labour groups. Although receiving less attention from commentators, the 2004 Plan’s environmental objectives have equal weight to those of business in its vision for London. The underlying policies were sufficiently robust to support production of Supplementary Planning Guidance on sustainable design and construction (GLA 2006a), which is regarded as radical even though it is based on existing standards and merely articulates the need for a more sustainable approach to development. The Mayor’s concerns to secure London’s water supply and its future waste management arrangements on a more sustainable basis were recognised as both contentious and essential by the Examination in Public into the Early Alterations to the London Plan. Given local force by London’s position as an estuarine city, ‘climate change’ provides the impetus for the Further Alterations to the London Plan. The first Mayor made it clear that, together with transport infrastructure, climate change was one of his key political priorities. The prominence now given to environmental concerns thus raises the question whether the perceived ascendancy of the business lobby will continue to dominate the London Plan process, a better organised green lobby with a wider electoral base will continue to run in parallel with that of business or the two should find common cause. Despite some initial negative business reaction towards the short-term costs associated with adapting to and abating climate change, there is an emerging realisation that these costs cannot be avoided and there may be competitive advantage in learning how to address them.

The content of the London Plan My vision, which guides all my strategies, is to develop London as an exemplary, sustainable world city, based on three interwoven themes: strong, diverse, longpage_196

Page 197 term economic growth; social inclusivity to give all Londoners the opportunity to share in London’s future success; fundamental improvements in London’s environment and use of resources. (GLA 2004: xii) This statement from the first Mayor set out his vision for the eight strategies he was required to produce under the legislation and was reiterated at the beginning of the London Plan. This document is designed to set out the spatial development strategy for the capital and in many ways incorporates the other seven. The way that it is worded suggests that the London Plan goes beyond the traditional focus on land use and development and includes strategies towards the economy, social inclusion, environmental quality and the use of resources. In these respects it demonstrated all the hallmarks of recent conceptions of spatial planning. The main guidance for preparing the London Plan was set out in the Government for London Circular 1/2000 (GOL 2000). This clearly indicated that the Strategy should go well beyond traditional land use issues in order to bring together the geographical and locational aspects of transport, economic development, environmental and other strategic policies for London. ‘By doing so it should help to secure the effective co-ordination and targeting of activities and resources, and a consistent, holistic approach to the delivery of policy objectives’ (GOL 2000:6). It should also assist in the achievement of sustainable development, a healthy economy and a more inclusive society. In preparing the Plan, the Mayor was required to have regard to the ESDP and the Community Initiative on Transnational Co-operation on Spatial Planning (INTERREG). The Plan also has to take account of relevant national policy and must have regard to regional planning guidance produced by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions for areas which include or adjoin Greater London. The Plan should not be site-specific but should identify ‘broad areas of particular strategic importance as development opportunities. It may also need to identify broad locations that may be suitable for particular types of use’ (GOL 2000:9). The guidance then identifies twelve issues that the Plan should specifically address, such as sustainable development and transport. Following the establishment of the GLA there was something of a hiatus in preparing the Plan. Livingstone’s manifesto gave a clear indication of the way to proceed on housing but there were tensions between his business and economic agenda and the values perceived to be imbedded in the strategic planning team which he had inherited from LPAC. It was not until early 2001 that drafts of the statutory proposals for the spatial development strategy were produced. By then work was well advanced on preparing the Mayor’s Economic Development and Transport Strategies and these influenced the preparation of the London Plan. page_197 Page 198 Methods of engagement Newman and Thornley (2005:148) record that the draft proposals report submitted to the Mayor’s office was rejected ‘because it was too much influenced by the boroughs and did not sufficiently reflect the new Mayor’s agenda’. Responsibility for preparing the Plan was transferred to external management consultants and technical leadership passed to two external, independent planning advisors. The first statutory draft of the Plan was published in June 2002 for consultation with the Assembly and functional bodies. Following this, the public consultation draft was published for a three-month consultation period. The Examination in Public (EIP) was held in March and April 2003. Before the EIP took place, the London Assembly’s Planning and Spatial Development Committee carried out a detailed scrutiny of the draft Plan. The Committee’s final report (GLA 2002) drew attention to a number of factors which they felt could threaten the viability of the Plan. Although supporting the broad vision as expressed by the Mayor, the Committee was concerned that Londoners would not be able to compete in sufficient numbers for the new jobs being created because of skills deficiencies and that the planned public transport improvements would not come on stream in time. It also drew attention to the lack of clarity

between growth in financial services, which were largely focused on the City and Canary Wharf, and the far larger number of jobs in business services, which it claimed could be allocated more widely to town centres in the outer boroughs. Employment growth, the Assembly argued, was largely based on ‘predict and provide’, while the other parts of the Plan employed the ‘plan, monitor and provide’ approach. The Examination in Public provided for many objectors the first opportunity for two decades to air their views on pan-London planning issues. The broad thrust of many representations was that the Plan had ‘a centralising strategy, focusing development to serve London’s “World City” role in the central and eastern sub-regions, underplaying the potential of London’s other centres and leaving most of outer London to play a dormitory role’ (GLA 2003:2). The EIP report was submitted to the Mayor in July 2003. Although it broadly accepted the Mayor’s spatial strategy, it made over 180 recommendations. Those concerned purely with the spatial dimension wished to see a greater emphasis on London’s polycentric development, better coordination of London’s development with that of surrounding regions and clarification of the phasing of growth with increased capacity in public transport. Other major recommendations were concerned with strengthening the status of Sub-Regional Development Frameworks and clarifying the approach to flood risk. Particular emphasis was placed, as a matter of page_198 Page 199 urgency, on the production of early alterations to improve arrangements for waste management and mineral extraction and to replace the housing targets that the Mayor had inherited from LPAC. Interpretations of space and place The London Plan was formally adopted in 2004. Some see it as being unashamedly pro-growth and orientated towards enhancing London’s position as a pre-eminent world city. But, as has already been discussed, its strategy is a more demanding one: to harness growth in order to meet the needs of all Londoners, as well as establishing long-term sustainability. For example, Newman and Thornley (2005:159) suggest that ‘Since 2000 it could be said that a growth-orientated urban regime has evolved’. They do go on to ask, ‘Can the regime lobby successfully persuade central government to align its own resources behind the agenda?’ The lobbying power of this regime, and the extent to which central government, the Prime Minister and the business sector worked closely with the Mayor in securing the 2012 Olympic Games, perhaps demonstrates this coalition of forces most clearly. However, the context in which such questions are posed is set to become more complex as environmental concerns become more salient features in London’s political economy alongside established needs for additional infrastructure and housing investment. Indeed, this new environmental dimension to the mayoral agenda is already driving further alterations to the London Plan and, with the importance attached to sustainable waste management, also prefigured strongly in the earlier alterations. It will also feature strongly in any future planning work programme. Of five proposals for new Supplementary Planning Guidance, two are concerned with the environment (the ‘green grid’ and renewable energy) and three with aspects of a social inclusion/suburban agenda (children’s play, communities and town centres). Although the London Plan adopts a generic approach to the social, economic, environmental and physical aspects of London’s growth, it depends heavily on more traditional mechanisms and techniques for managing change. In doing this, the discourse is heavily reliant on spatial and strategic elements. The Plan states: The greatest challenge faced in this spatial plan is to accommodate significant growth in ways that respect and improve London’s diverse heritage while delivering the Mayor’s vision for an exemplary, sustainable world city. This will involve the sensitive intensification of development in locations that are, or will be, served by public transport. (GLA 2004:37) page_199

Page 200 Yet the approach underlying the strategy emphasises the need to allocate growth (in terms of additional jobs and housing in particular), to increase accessibility through public transport infrastructure and to ensure that planning offers strategic direction towards the broader principles of equity and environmental sustainability. Fixed and predetermined approaches to space and place are deployed, for example, through twenty-eight Opportunity Areas that have been identified, where opportunities for new jobs and homes can be maximised: Typically, each can accommodate at least 5000 jobs or 2500 homes or a mix of the two, together with appropriate provision of other uses such as local shops, leisure facilities and schools. These areas generally include brownfield sites with capacity for new development and places with potential for significant increases in density. Their development should be geared to the use of public transport and they are either located at areas of good access or would require public transport improvements to support development. (GLA 2004:41). In addition, fourteen Areas of Intensification are included, which ‘have significant potential for increases in residential, employment and other uses through development or redevelopment of available sites and exploitation of potential for regeneration, through higher densities and more mixed and intensive use’ (GLA 2004:41). Areas of Regeneration are also identified that target areas of deprivation where major change is required. These are very similar to Action Areas in the former GLDP: In their UDPs, Community Strategies and Neighbourhood Renewal Strategies, boroughs should identify Areas for Regeneration and set out integrated spatial policies that bring together regeneration, development and transport proposals with improvements in learning and skills, health, safety, access, employment, environment and housing. These policies and actions should state how they seek to achieve the government’s objective, which the Mayor supports, that no-one should be seriously disadvantaged by where they live within 10–20 years. (GLA 2004:42) In the period since the adoption of the London Plan, the GLA has carried out detailed consultations with the boroughs, Transport for London, the London Development Agency and other stakeholders in order to prepare the five SRDFs. These were published in May 2006 for North, South, East, West and Central London (see for example GLA 2006b and 2006c). The SRDFs are an innovative approach to spatial planning in that in the past the GLC relied on the planning page_200 Page 201 system to ensure that the boroughs’ plans were in conformity with the GLDP. They are non-statutory and adopt a ‘permeable’ approach to boundaries (GLA 2006c: 5). They set out detailed guidelines on how the growth elements of the London Plan might be allocated within the sub-region and phased to ensure even and sustainable development is achieved. For example, in Central London the SRDF sets out plans for an additional 240,000 jobs between 2001 and 2016 with approximately 60 per cent in financial and business services (GLA 2006c: 16). The SRDFs are designed to be integrated with sub-regional transport and economic development strategies and they flesh out possible approaches to Areas of Intensification and Opportunity Areas. Unlike the former GLC Action Areas, where very often development was led by the GLC, the SRDFs are designed to promote a partnership approach in which the expectation is that the GLA will operate as a ‘hands-off’ coordinator with a variety of other agencies (including the private sector) taking the lead. The former SRDF boundaries and the main spatial policies in the London Plan are illustrated in Plate 8. The new designation of SRDFs, to be adopted in the proposed alterations, divide London into five segments radiating from the centre so that each includes a proportion of the central area (GLA 2006d). This arrangement may suggest a political accommodation to the outer boroughs, which felt they were not getting access to the economic benefits of

the central activities zone. Concepts of the future and time One of the main purposes of spatial planning is to set out an agreed strategy, based on full public consultation, over a fixed period of time and in order to include maximum certainty to all stakeholders. Time is therefore a linear concept in planning and normally only one single and agreed ‘vision’ can be put forward. The process of public consultation and public hearings ensures that, at least in theory, all possible alternative scenarios are fully evaluated and rejected. The plan is therefore assumed to be achievable over an agreed period of ten, fifteen or occasionally twenty years and it is made manageable through the phasing of development and growth targets over time. These assumptions are made despite the fact that regular reviews will result in significant changes in the future. The London Plan adopts many of these assumptions and conventions and the first review is already extending the time horizon to 2025. There is no suggestion in the plan that economic and demographic growth might not continue and no alternative or fall-back scenarios are discussed. In this respect, the Plan adheres to positivist conventions about the linear, mechanistic nature of change and that all drivers of change are inherently controllable by appropriate policy. The recent page_201 Page 202 draft further alterations (GLA 2006d) have already signalled a conceptual change in planning towards a more post-structural emphasis on sustainability and climate change. Thus timescales, and associated targets, become more fluid and constantly extend into the future. Visualisation, representation and scale As Plate 8 indicates, the London Plan Key Diagram emphasises London’s fluid nature and its essential linkages to its regional context. London is no longer perceived as a stand-alone metropolis, as the GLDP strategy might suggest (see Plate 7). Yet, although the Plan acknowledges the importance of London in its regional and national context, there is little guidance to how this relationship should be perceived in terms of its economic, political and environmental impacts. The planning discourse largely focuses on London itself, rather than the complex reciprocal and relational aspects of London and its hinterland in an increasingly globalised world. As has already been noted, the current strategy was strongly influenced by the Mayor’s political priorities and the importance ascribed to the economy by business, tourism and related interests. Whereas previous plans tended to be dirigiste and top-down, the London Plan accepts that implementation will largely take place through the agency of others, and in particular the private sector. The philosophy underpinning the Plan is that London needs democratic accountability, strategic vision and a coordinating body able to set the agenda and ‘steer’ other partners in the required direction. The more post-structuralist elements of the Plan are the SRDFs, in which boundaries are permeable and there is an explicit acceptance that the boroughs and other stakeholders will have a major role to play in delivery. Meanwhile, area designations and the allocation of housing and employment growth targets reflect positivist approaches to planning.

Conclusions Although there was historical precedent in the evolution of regional planning in London, the governance of the metropolis underwent one of its periodic paradigm shifts in the late 1990s in response to broader national and international trends in thinking about regions and cities in a globalised economy. As this chapter has indicated, London is also experiencing a period of unprecedented growth and change in its economic structure, its demography and its expanding role as a world city. Thus the political economy of London not only reflected its changing economic role, but gave rise to pressures for change, which in turn influenced the way in which strategies for spatial development came to be defined. These are continuing as

the new environmental imperative emerges as a key driver of the page_202 Page 203 political economy and, in response, the London Plan evolves from a single document to a longer-term, iterative process. Spatial planning in London can therefore be seen as both a product of, and an influence on, the current political economy and institutional context. In reviewing spatial planning in Amsterdam and Cambridge, Healey draws on Scott (1998), who suggests that government inherently involves the mobilisation of ways of seeing, which he calls ‘seeing like a state’. She argues that this leads to the inevitable ‘simplifications involved in arriving at some kind of perspectival synthesis on which to base collective action, but also underlines the dangerous exclusions and oppressions that such necessary simplification can produce’ (Healey 2006:526). Following this line of argument, it is possible to see the London Plan as a simplified version of reality which promotes a particular and, as argued earlier, growth-oriented perspective of how the capital should be required to accommodate large increases in population and business activity. Because of the political and administrative constraints on boundary definitions, the network of connectivity with adjoining regions, the global flows of labour and capital, and the spatial implications of the growing dominance of London in the world economy have been acknowledged but not fully explored. Strong leadership in urban management, such as through an elected mayor, can also require simplifications and the exclusion of issues and interests that do not fit easily into the dominant political rhetoric (Healey 2004). Certain channels of communication become privileged while others are afforded token acknowledgement or are screened out. From her research in the Netherlands and the UK, Healey concludes: Current endeavours in strategic spatial planning seem thus to experience difficulty in translating an appreciation of relational complexity into a multiplex, relational spatial imagination … Instead, there is a strong tendency to revert back to traditional physicalist concepts about spatial order. These help in allocating sites for development and developing criteria for guiding changes to local environments. But they fail to capture the dynamics and tensions of relations with very different driving forces and scalar relations as these coexist in particular places and flow through shared channels. (Healey 2006:536) A review of the techniques applied in the London Plan confirms this analysis. Whereas the discussion of London’s economic and social trends reflects a post-modernist perspective whereby relational aspects of delivery are set out, for instance in the SRDFs, many of the planning methods apply conceptions of space and place which have always been in the planners’ armoury. The designation of Areas of Opportunity and Areas of Regeneration and the definition of page_203 Page 204 Town Centres and population projects and allocations of housing and jobs reflect the long-established positivist traditions of town planning. The new emphasis on climate change and sustainability perhaps reflects a post-modern perspective. Thus, although containing, managing and promoting change are major themes of the Plan, many of the management systems reflect the continuity of practice and the need to define space in positivist or structuralist terms. At least in part, this continuity was maintained by the planning staff involved in preparing the GLDP alterations, the LPAC Advice and the London Plan. The broad system of ideas and philosophies that underpin any plan come from a variety of sources: local circumstances, political filtering through dominant political parties, and national guidance and directives, which themselves embody dominant political philosophies, however watered down and simplified these might be.

Thus the current vogue for spatial planning, at least in the case of London, has given rise to new perspectives, new conceptions of the urban and a realisation that the city can no longer be seen in isolation from its wider regional, national and global context. New and complex relational networks have also evolved which are either incorporated into the dominant perspective or sidelined. Whereas new systems of management, planning and accountability have been created to provide guidance, promotion and accountability, the planning systems created to direct change are often restricted by administrative boundaries, positivist understandings of time and space and structural conceptions of social and economic priorities. Above all, the last decade has been a period of dramatic growth in London’s economy with far-reaching impacts on its society, environment and systems of governance. Spatial planning can be seen as an important element of this transformation and reassertion of its identity with many innovative features which no doubt will be adapted and extended in the future. But, as already noted, the complex re-engineering of the planning system has largely been superimposed on existing methods and procedures, rather than replacing them. However, as climate change and sustainability become an increasingly urgent political priority, the revised Plan to be published in 2008 may well set new environmental targets which go far beyond current national standards of, for example, energy consumption, the re-use of brownfield sites (the new target is likely to be 100 per cent), local generation of renewable energy and in achieving much higher standards of energy conservation and in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve these objectives, a new planning discourse may be required, which is currently not evident in the Plan. This chapter has sought to demonstrate how the interweaving of economic, demographic and environmental change has given rise to new institutional frameworks which in turn define the nature of the political discourse about space and page_204 Page 205 place. As Massey notes (2007:194), London has a duty to challenge the globalised production of inequalities and the negative effects of climate change, as well as responding to them within its own boundaries. Spatial plans are inevitably a simplified narrative about the essence of the place and its longterm aspirations which construct one dominant perspective. The narrative itself plays an essential role in building consensus and providing a road map for deliberation and collaboration (Healey 2007). This narrative can also be applied beyond the planning sphere, most notably in place marketing, social cohesion, negotiations with central government and capturing major investment opportunities such as the Olympic Games in 2012. The political apparatus of London has demonstrated exceptional skills in ‘selling’ the city but it is also apparent that the ‘mechanics’ of delivering the strategy remain very similar to previous representations, most notably the reliance on statistics, targets and the definition of areas for ‘opportunity’ and ‘action’. The post-structuralist conception of space thus relates far more to the agenda-setting and narrative-building process, rather than the delivery. But, as already discussed, the focus on implementation through SRDFs and the growing importance of addressing issues of climate change are possible indicators of how the ‘narrative of planning’ might evolve in the future.

Notes 1 Patrick Abercrombie also produced the Greater London Plan in 1944 for the Standing Conference on London Regional Planning, published by the Ministry of Town and Country Planning. This addressed London in its wider regional context by reasserting the importance of the Green Belt and the need to reduce congestion through the construction of New Towns. 2 The Act requires the Mayor to produce the following strategies: spatial development, transport, economic development, waste management, air quality, ambient noise, biodiversity and culture.

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CHAPTER 8 ASYMMETRIC DEVELOPMENT IN SPATIAL PLANNING Positivist content and post-modernist processes? Simin Davoudi As a form of applied geography, planning plays an important role in formulating ideas about space. Moreover, as a part of the state, planning has the opportunity to put these ideas into practice. It thus comprises a key means by which spatial imaginaries are ‘performed’ or ‘enacted’. (Murdoch 2006:156, drawing on Law and Urry 2004)

The spatial turn in planning and the meaning of spatiality One of the consequences of the remarkable social, environmental and institutional changes that have taken place in the latter part of the twentieth century has been an increasing recognition that territory matters! Indeed, we have witnessed a rediscovery of space and place in policy making. At the European level the significance of spatial policies and the need for territorial coordination of sector policies have been substantially elevated after publication of the ESDP and the subsequent dissection and examination of its spatial development principles through the ESPON research programme (Davoudi 2005b). An outcome of this upsurge has been a growing emphasis on the need for planning to become more spatial and to move away from a narrow regulatory system. Although the debate on the meaning and interpretation of this ‘spatial turn’ in planning is still ongoing and the gap between rhetoric and reality remains wide, the existence of energetic attempts by planners to implement it in their practice of strategy making is undisputed. It is this enthusiasm that inspired us to embark on this book project. The case studies examined in this volume confirm this view and clearly show that the final decade of the last millennium has witnessed a new generation of spatial strategies which exhibit many characteristics of a turn to spatiality. However, for the authors of this book the question was not whether planning has or has not become spatial but rather what type of spatiality is conveyed by it; what conceptions of space and place have underpinned planning in the last half-century; and page_207 Page 208 how these have changed in the spatial strategies which were emerging in the early 2000s. To explore these, we developed a conceptual framework as part of the work undertaken for Chapter 1. This was to help us analyse the ways in which space and place are articulated, presented and visualised in our selected spatial strategies in the UK and Ireland. Central to this framework is the notion of space, and more importantly the distinction between absolute and relational views of space. The former is rooted in Euclidean geometry and perceives space as a neutral container, whereas the latter is rooted in Leibnizian philosophy, which considers space as dependent on the processes and substances that make it up. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the absolute view of space belongs to the naturalist tradition of inquiry, whereas

the relational approach is embraced by the interpretive tradition. Since the middle of the twentieth century these traditions have manifested themselves in social sciences in three distinct ways: positivism, structuralism and post-structuralism (or post-modernism). We have used these three ‘isms’ as the broad contour of our conceptual framework and as a guide to structure the empirical findings from the case studies. They helped us make sense of different ways of knowing and practising spatial planning. Our aim has been to explore how these different world-views have informed and influenced spatial thinking and spatial practices both historically and as they were unfolding in the case study areas. In the following account, we will once again draw on the conceptual framework developed in Chapter 1 to structure our analyses of the planning contents and processes in the case study areas. Before that, we situate these analyses in the underlying contexts within which the six spatial strategies were emerging and to which they were responding.

The context: planning as identity building The context within which the spatial strategies were formulated is defined by five interrelated themes. These, listed below, not only contextualised the processes and contents of spatial strategies, but also shaped the conceptions of spatiality conveyed by them. • Continuing socio-economic transformations • Changing political and administrative landscapes • Spatial juxtaposition: diversity and unity • Emerging spatial planning concepts • Legacy of past practices and processes page_208 Page 209 Continuing socio-economic transformations The case study strategies were formulated against a background of a continuing social and economic transformation characterised predominantly by the decline of the traditional manufacturing industries (such as coal and steel in Wales and Yorkshire and Humber, engineering and textiles in Scotland) and the gradual rise of the new service economy. London and Ireland were witnessing economic and demographic resurgence of a magnitude that provided London with world city status and Ireland with a top position on the European league table. Yet in all cases these transformations were creating differentiated and often highly polarised patterns of spatial economies. In some places economic restructuring was reinforcing spatial disparities (as in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) while in others it was also creating new patterns of spatial justice (as in Yorkshire and Humber and Ireland). Across the case studies, periods of industrialisation and urbanisation had led to variable socio-economic geographies which in turn were fuelling deep-seated and place-related competitions at multiple spatial scales. Over time, these rivalries have created imaginary demarcation lines and manifested in spatial dualities such as Cardiff versus Valleys in Wales; rural Highlands versus urban Central Belt in Scotland; rural north versus urban industrial south in Yorkshire and Humber; Dublin versus the rest in Ireland; and west and centre versus east and south of the city in London. In Northern Ireland such dividing lines have been further sharpened by long standing ethnoreligious geographies, leading to a perceived dichotomy between a largely Nationalist, Catholic, and rural periphery west of the River Bann, and a largely Unionist, Protestant, and urban core east of the Bann. Changing political and administrative landscapes Another contextual factor that provided the impetus for embarking on a new round of strategy making was

the significant changes in the political landscapes. The most striking of these was the constitutional reform in the UK and the peace process in Northern Ireland, with the latter launching a new chapter in the multidimensional relationships between Northern Ireland, the island of Ireland and Great Britain. The constitutional change led to the devolution of power, albeit to different degrees, to Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Greater London. It also raised the expectations for the prospect of devolved regional powers in the form of elected regional government in England. Although this last did not materialise, it did lead to what is called a ‘quiet regionalism’. It also enhanced spatial planning powers in the English regions. In the devolved administrations entirely new political institutions were created, all intent on making a difference and putting their marks on policies and practices. However, whereas in London and page_209 Page 210 Yorkshire and Humber the desire to do things differently was conditioned by statutory requirements for conformity to national policy frameworks, in the devolved administrations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland such constraints, if they existed, were of little significance when compared with the drive to exhibit a territorial identity, uniqueness and difference. Across the Irish Sea, the peace process meant that such distinctiveness could indeed be applied to the island of Ireland as a whole, to help bring the close ties between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to centre stage. Furthermore, the changing political landscape has been paramount in maintaining the pace and profile of strategy-making processes. This is because, first, in all case study areas the spatial strategy making has been part of a wider process of governmental commitment to produce a series of new policies, strategies and programmes. In some cases such as Ireland, the spatial strategy was considered as a direct response to the National Development Plan. In Scotland, too, the NPF was seen as complementing the economic agenda of the Framework for Economic Development in Scotland. Second, initiating the process, sustaining its momentum and ensuring delivery became a priority for the new administrations and key individuals within them. In Wales, the personal and political commitment to planning of the Assembly’s first Minister for Transport, Planning and the Environment – a former planning academic who had been inspired by new European approaches to spatial planning – was seen as crucial in the Assembly’s embrace of strategic spatial planning. Similarly, the commitment of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland – who initiated the task of strategy preparation following the Parliamentary ceasefire in 1994 – was considered essential in elevating the significance of the emerging strategy in the context of a ‘new start’ for Northern Ireland. In Ireland, the making of the NSS was not only recommended by the National Economic and Social Council, chaired by the highest-ranking civil servant; it was also strongly advocated by the Minister for planning who was considered as one of the ‘champions’ of the NSS proposal. The London Plan, too, is seen as representing the Mayor’s vision and has had his continuing support. Similarly, in Scotland the formation of the NPF had the strong backing of the Scottish Executive, which considered the reform of land use planning essential in the delivery of its pro-growth agenda. Spatial juxtaposition: diversity and unity A key component of the context within which the strategies were produced was the tension between the internal place-related competitions and rivalries manifested in the spatial dualities mentioned above, and the pressure and desire to work across such divides to construct a conception of spatial unity with coherent page_210 Page 211 and distinctive identity for the whole of the planned territories. In the devolved administrations of Wales and Scotland, in particular, transcending internal divisions and presenting a united front was seen as paramount for the ongoing project of nation building. In this project spatial plans and their demarcation of territory were to perform a significant part. More importantly, the terms in which such a role was played

out both revealed and sustained the importance of positivist legacies and their efficacy in helping plans serve their often unspoken or intangible purposes. We will return to these subtle yet important differences when discussing planning contents. In all cases, however, making of the spatial strategies became an integral and indeed critical part of building distinct, and even unique, identities for the planned territories. Hence, the resulting identities which emerged should be understood as ‘a changeable product of collective action’ (Calhoun 1991:59), ‘not as its stable underlying cause’ (Brubaker 2003:235). In other words, plans’ stories and imageries were not simply representing a shared identity of the entire planned territories. They were actively constructing that identity by rescaling the imaginary demarcation lines up from the perceived territorial sub-divisions to the larger scale of planned territory and hence bringing to the foreground the conceived space of an ‘island’, a ‘nation’, a ‘region’ or a ‘world city’. Emerging spatial planning concepts In all case studies the political projects of constructing distinct identities became contingent on articulating difference. Hence, a sense of relentless search for distinctiveness runs through the narrative of all strategymaking processes. This is manifested in statements such as ‘devising responses to distinctively Scottish issues’; ‘a new start has warranted a new plan’ based on ‘celebrating distinctiveness’ in Northern Ireland; ‘becoming international yet distinctively Welsh’; ‘positioning Republic of Ireland as a single region’; ‘London’s economy has always been distinct’; and ‘doing something different’ in Yorkshire and Humber. Indeed, it was this desire for distinctiveness coupled with the turn to spatiality that motivated planners to search for originality and innovation in planning concepts and methodologies. One of the sources feeding the muchneeded inspiration was the gathering pace of spatial thinking at the European level and particularly the making of the ESDP. Case study strategies were prepared at a time when the ESDP process was in full swing, provoking new ways of doing spatial planning. Although all cases examined in this volume were clearly informed by it, it was the Irish National Spatial Strategy (NSS) that was most influenced. This is partly because, unlike other regions, those engaged in the preparation of the Strategy were directly involved in the ESDP and its follow-up ESPON research processes. An example of such an influence is the strong emphasis on developing a scienpage_211 Page 212 tific evidence base for the Irish NSS. As is the case in the ESPON programme (Davoudi 2007), this was understood largely by undertaking quantitative analysis of spatial trends. We will return to this when discussing the processes of strategy making. Legacy of past practices and processes As shown in Table 8.1, devolution induced a degree of temporal overlap in the process of strategy making and led to the emergence of a new generation of strategic spatial plans in the early 2000s. Table 8.1 Spatial strategies and the changing political context in the case study areas

Case study

Key changes in political landscape

Marker for the start of the strategy-making process

Publication date of the spatial strategy

Wales

1999: establishment of National Assembly for Wales

2000: research programme on spatial planning established by the Welsh Assembly

2004: Wales Spatial Plan (WSP)

Scotland 1999: establishment of Scottish Parliament 1999: publication of and Executive Consultation Paper on modernising planning by the Scottish Office

2004: National Planning Framework (NPF) for Scotland

Ireland

2000: establishment of a Spatial Planning Unit in a central government department

2002: National Spatial Strategy (NSS)

Northern 1994: paramilitary ceasefire followed by Ireland 1998: Good Friday Agreement 1999: establishment of Northern Ireland Assembly

1997: publication of an introductory paper by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland

2001: Regional Development Strategy (RDS) for Northern Ireland

Yorkshire 2004: new planning legislation giving statutory weight to regional spatial and Humber strategies. Prospect of an elected regional government

2003: consultation on Issue Papers published by YHA

2006: Yorkshire and Humber Plan (YHP) Draft for Consultation

London

1998: Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland

2000: establishment of the Greater London 2000: publication of the Authority and an elected Mayor Government for London Circular 1/2000

2004: London Plan (LP)

page_212 Page 213 Although their parallel timing and the coincidence with the ESDP preparation created a degree of commonality among them in terms of concepts and vocabularies used and processes followed, there remained intriguing differences between them. To some extent, such variations reflect the path-dependent and place-related traditions of strategy making, planning concepts and methods in the case study areas. Hence, another contextual factor that shaped the processes and contents of spatial strategies was the terms in which the tensions between innovation and continuity were played out. As we will see in the discussion of the process, often attempts to do things differently had to be compromised by procedural routines. New spatial thinking had to be situated in the inherited practices and their resistance to change. The sense of continuity is most apparent in the narrative of Scotland and London case studies. Here, the making of the new spatial strategies was seen as part of a chain of experimentations with a longestablished tradition of strategic planning. Therefore, London can boast that its boundaries have changed only twice in over 100 years. Indeed, many of the concepts introduced by the 1945 Greater London Plan, notably the Green Belt, have continued to shape a bounded conception of spatiality for London which sits uncomfortably with its complex web of relations that stretch not just beyond the Green Belt but also globally. Furthermore, much of the thinking about planning in London was sustained through the work of a London-wide planning committee (LPAC) despite a major institutional interruption in the 1980s. Similarly, Scotland’s National Planning Framework (NPF) is considered as the reassertion of the strategic tradition in Scottish planning practices and the enduring insight from the regional reports of the 1970s, the metropolitan planning for Glasgow city-region, and the joint structure planning for Glasgow and Clyde Valley. On the contrary, in Ireland – where the bitter taste of the past failure to adopt the 1968 Buchanan Strategy had spoiled the appetite for embarking on any new spatial plans – strategy making had to break with the legacy of past practices in order to gain legitimacy. There are also more subtle experiences of the

past that found their ways into the new plan-making processes. One such legacy is the lingering memories of spatial injustices perceived as being represented and reinforced by successive plans. This has been particularly acute in Northern Ireland. The new strategy has had to deal with the legacy of Robert Matthew’s 1963 plan, which focused on the Belfast region, largely neglected the rest of the territory and led to an enduring sense of spatial injustice, depicted in the ‘West of the Bann’ slogan. Together these interrelated themes defined the context for the spatial strategies and shaped their conceptions of space and place, as will become evident from the following analyses. These will be organised under the key aspects of planning content and processes that were presented in Table 1.1. page_213 Page 214

Planning content: the enduring legacy of positivism The dawn of the new millennium witnessed the emergence of a generation of spatial strategies that were hailed for their successful attempts to go beyond the traditional, regulatory land use planning to incorporate the ‘standard’ features associated with what had become known as spatial planning. The six strategies examined in this volume confirm this shift of emphasis, yet at the same time show that their content remained heavily influenced by positivist traditions with respect to: • interpretation of spatiality and conception of place; • spatial organising principles and understanding of scale; • treatment of time and future; • visualisation and representation. In all these substantive aspects, the case study strategies provide compelling evidence for the enduring legacy of positivism. However, such a broad brush conclusion would mask the intriguing differences between them. More importantly, it would say little about the multiple ways through which positivism was reasserted and the multiple purposes served by its deployment at different times and in different places. We will elaborate on such nuances using the key aspects of planning content as mentioned in Chapter 1 and outlined above. Constructing identity for a bounded space: Interpretation of spatiality and conception of place In Chapter 1, we established that a positivist perspective portrays an absolute, Euclidean conception of space. Space is seen as a neutral container that can be understood through positivist science, rather than something that is dependent on the social and cultural processes and substances that make it up. Positivism considers place as objective, bounded, self-contained and measurable. Although these positivist legacies can be detected in all case studies, their prominence varies in different cases. Furthermore, their presence often tells different stories in different plans, as discussed below. Space as a neutral container: depoliticising the socio-spatial tensions

The conception of space as a neutral container was particularly pertinent in Northern Ireland. Here, strategic planning was to grapple with a highly divided page_214 Page 215

society and contested territorial identities that conveyed differential yet simultaneous belonging to both the UK and Ireland. Planning was also situated in the context of a deep resentment to what was seen by many as spatial injustices of a planning system that had focused on ‘East of the Bann’ and neglected the Catholic, predominantly rural, west. In this highly charged context, defusing social and spatial tensions was seen as being contingent on a positivist conception of space as a container and planning as a technical process. It provided a seemingly safe ground upon which the Regional Development Strategy (RDS) could be built. Yet, whereas the RDS tends to shy away from the notion of space as socially and culturally produced, its representation of space is anything but neutral. ‘Words are carefully parsed and images selectively chosen’ with representation of space and place ‘powerfully loaded’ (Chapter 5). It is true that the RDS was lobbied away from the selective urban growth centre bias of the 1963 Matthew Plan to ascribe bland potentials to ‘rural community’ but it remained largely a reflection of the ‘urban comfort zone of its authors’ (Chapter 5). The rural, in this perspective, was perceived as different, socially empty spatial entities with little connections to the urban. Although the content of the Strategy bears a close resemblance to the positivist spatial calculus of its predecessor – the Regional Physical Development Strategy (RPDS) of 1977 – it does not carry through the RPDS’s explicit urban–rural distributional element, which was probably inspired by the structuralist tendencies of the 1970s. Furthermore, there remains an important difference in the way different aspects of positivism were drawn upon in the two plans. In the RPDS it was the technical rationality and the perceived impartiality of civil service planning bureaucracy which helped legitimise the Strategy’s ignorance of the sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland. In the new RDS, it was the notion of space as a neutral container that became instrumental in diffusing the spatial tensions that by then were acknowledged as a reflection of societal divisions. Hence, whereas the makers of the new RDS knew that ‘differences and divisions can no longer be ignored in official planning exercises’ (Neill and Gordon 2001:34), their conception of space as a neutral container made it easier to downplay these uncomfortable differences in the spatiality of the plan. Furthermore, such articulation, even if attempted, would have been considered as working against the portrayal of a harmonious regional space; a mission in which the Strategy was committed to play an important part. Place as bounded and self-contained: building identities

As mentioned earlier, constructing distinct identity for the planned territories was a recurring theme in all case study areas. Identities are not only promoted by cultural and language specificities and symbolised by flags and anthems. They are page_215 Page 216 also enhanced by carving out territories and sharply defining and protecting their boundaries. So, it is not surprising to see that in all case studies the conceptualisation of places as bounded and self-contained locales becomes indispensable, playing a significant, though differential, role in constructing distinct identities for the planned territories. Nowhere was this as prominent as in Wales, where the strategy making and its outcome were clearly seen as part of the project of nation building. Whereas in Wales the national space was defined by drawing on shared social and cultural history, in Yorkshire and Humber (YH) regional space was defined by the standard administrative definition and quasi-legal terminology. Given the imposition of these standard regions, which were initially established to assist with statistical calculations, the YH Plan finds it difficult to construct a regional identity. Hence, several representations of spatiality are drawn upon to give meanings to imagined reality of an imposed spatial unit. Unlike Wales, and in the absence of a strong socio-culturally driven regional identity, the YH Plan draws largely on the Euclidean, physical attributes of an elusive place called Yorkshire to project a commonly shared spatial unit: the region. Landscape and built heritage, rather than people and their experiences, are summoned to portray a distinct and shared identity for a region which is seen as a passive container of artefacts (Chapter 6). The distinctiveness of the planned territory is therefore expressed by a recourse to people-less notions of ‘secure hilltops, fertile floodplains, mineral resources, navigable rivers, medieval castles, … ’ (YHA 2005a: 233). Some of these physical attributes, such as the National Parks in Yorkshire, are articulated and presented as not only bounded but also legally binding places.

For the Irish NSS, applying the positivist notion of bounded national space was not so much culturally driven as in Wales, or physically based as in YH. Instead it was economically driven, associated with portraying Ireland as a single coherent economic space, eligible for European structural funds. Ever since Ireland joined the Union, the framework of the EU funding has been a defining feature of the way in which the spatiality of Ireland has been represented: a statistical spatial unit called NUTS II region qualified for Objective 1 Structural Funds. Even the more recent delineation of regional boundaries has been carefully drawn to maximise the extent of the areas eligible for EU funding (Davoudi and Wishardt 2005). This has reinforced the spatial imaginary of Ireland as a space for inward investment, which in turn has defined her engagement with globalisation. Paradoxically, it has also led to the increasing awareness of relational, rather than absolute, spatial perspectives albeit with a strong emphasis on economic imperatives. Economic imperatives play a significant role in the Scottish National Planning Framework (NPF), too. Indeed the NPF was seen as ‘an early statement of the strategic issues facing Scotland’s spatial economy’ as a whole (Chapter 2). The purpose was to formulate a ‘single, overarching national plan’ which assumes page_216 Page 217 ‘iconic status’, in the process of devolution and modernisation of public services. Emphasis is repeatedly placed on the need for comprehensiveness, understood as a total coverage of the planned territory, and strategic thinking, understood as having a higher-tier spatial framework for land and property development and linking land use to infrastructure investment. Whereas the NPF has all the hallmarks of the spatial turn to planning, its mission of dealing with ‘distinct Scottish issues’ revolves around land questions and extension of land use control to new areas such as offshore activities. It seems as if the devolution-induced new start has revitalised some of the old, post-war planning technologies related to land reform, wider access to rural Scotland and major new legally binding designations such as a National Park. Like the survey reports of the 1960s and 1970s, the plan is in effect a snap shot ‘audit of where Scotland is’; an overview of its spatial economy; a collection of ‘evidence’ particularly on demography and economy; and a ‘catalogue’ of the progress made. And, as in the ‘golden age’ of planning, the articulation of its spatial planning ideas is ‘put into practical terms as a form of master-planning’ (Chapter 2) for the sub-regional areas that are under development pressures. Acknowledging connectivity?

Although an absolute conception of space prevails in the case studies, there are some glimpses of recognition of relational spaces. An indication of this is the introduction of the concept of functional urban regions (FUR) in the Irish NSS, which moves beyond the administrative boundaries to consider the functional relationships and in particular the intricate, non-physical interactions between urban and rural areas. However, the concept of FUR and the methodology employed to define it has remained an urbancentric and economic-oriented understanding of functional spaces (Davoudi 2008). The same is true about the introduction of the city-region concept in the YH Plan, which, as with the FUR, is based on a single economic indicator of travel to work journey applied only to major urban centres. Elsewhere, boundary lines form the basis for mapping of activities and policies. Furthermore, even such a reductionist approach to represent the functional space does not extend beyond the imposed administrative boundaries of the YH region; as if ‘life stops’ at the regional borders. Similar attempts to move away from the positivist static representation of space are hinted at in the narrative of the Wales Spatial Plan. Here, such occasional breaks with the Euclidean conception of space appear in the discussion of environment, which identifies complex climatic relationships and considers them as linking the Welsh space ‘to other parts of the world’ (WAG 2004a: 23). Across the Irish Sea, Ireland’s attempt to look beyond the planned territory and to introduce an all-island dimension, represented, for page_217 Page 218

instance, in the Dublin–Belfast and Letterkenny–Derry corridors, is another example of making a relational incision in what is otherwise conceived as a bounded, absolute space of the planned territory. Such incisions are also made, though not followed through, in the transnational positioning of Northern Ireland in the Atlantic Arc of European countries. Among the case studies, London stands out as a place with the most widely recognised complex global relationships. Indeed, its promotion as a world city is contingent on such recognition. Yet, rather than showing signs of a relational perspective, London personifies a recurring theme in all case studies: recognition of the complex web of relations that affects the planned territories on the one hand, and failure to articulate these in the conceptions of space and place that underpins the strategic thinking on the other hand. The London Plan inherits many characteristics of its predecessors, with ‘methods of allocation, designation and control in the planners’ toolbox remaining unchanged’ (Chapter 7). However, the discourse that underpins its spatial construct has changed from considering London as a congested city with a declining economy and population to portraying it as ‘the largest regional generator of economic activities and tax revenue in the UK’ (Chapter 7). The city is seen as a money-generating machine in need of increasing its capacity to ‘accommodate significant growth’ (GLA 2004:37). The Plan’s central purpose is to make this pro-growth agenda happen even if its social and environmental, and even wider regional, implications are not fully explored. Following Peter Hall’s (2007:16) criticism of this agenda, such a progrowth strategy implies that ‘London is the engine powering the UK plc, so don’t dare tinker with it’. Whereas the conception of London as a bounded locale is accentuated with the strong physical representation of the Green Belt, the construction of its sub-divisions are more fluid with permeable boundaries and fuzzy contours. This is true of other case studies in which vaguely defined sub-areas sit alongside sharply drawn boundaries of the planned territory. Internal flexibility sits side by side with external rigidity. A bounded conception of the national/regional space as a unified whole remains in constant tension with the diversities and fluidities of the relations which cut across the imaginary border lines. Taming the space: spatial organising principles and understanding of scale As mentioned in Chapter 1, from a positivist perspective space and place can be defined and ordered by spatial organising principles such as distance decay effects, adjacency and proximity, whereas scale is understood as nested hierarchy with fixed boundaries. Within this perspective, planning is considered as a key means of not only demarcating territory, as discussed above, but also taming page_218 Page 219 the space through what Foucault calls ‘planning technologies’; ‘that is, the precise means by which [government] rationalities can be implemented in practice’ (Murdoch 2006:44). Traditional positivist planning used Euclidean geometrical dimensions to bring order to the perceived disorderly state of spatial dynamics. Following the representation of space as a complex yet controllable system, these physical organising principles were later complemented by structuralist functional attributes. Remnants of positivism and to some extent structuralism are clearly traceable in the case studies. Physical and functional organising principles are still essential components of planners’ toolkits for ordering space. In some cases these are legitimised by the positivist science of quantification and measurement (such as in Ireland), whereas in others they are based on softer discursive methods (such as in Wales). Although the spatial strategies have largely moved away from the people-less, design-based planning of earlier times and a concern with objects and forms, they are still spell-bound by two persistent concepts. One is the concept of well-ordered and balanced spatial development; the other is the concept of the neatly nested settlement hierarchies. The former is underpinned by structuralism and a social democratic policy objective of achieving social equity and territorial cohesion (Davoudi 2005a). The latter derives from positivist aspirations to create harmonious functionality across the planned territory. Both have a long and contested history in planning. Balanced development goes back to the distribution-based regional policies of the 1960s and 1970s, and settlement hierarchy is the legacy of Christaller’s Central Place Theory. We will

elaborate on these in turn. Ordering space into balanced development

Although most of the case studies exhibit an aspiration to ‘spread prosperity’ (as in Wales) or ‘spread urbancentred development opportunity’ (as in Scotland), it is in the Irish NSS that such aspiration is most explicitly and vigorously followed by adopting the concept of balanced development as the central plank of the Strategy. Here, paradoxically, a technical ‘Balanced Regional Development’ (BRD) paper was produced to clarify the concept and reduce the political tensions between economic competitiveness and social cohesion aspirations. The intent was to move away from the much discredited growth pole imperatives of the 1968 Buchanan Plan and disperse inward investments; a policy that was favoured by the strong rural electorates but not approved of by the sceptical economists. A well-crafted compromise, led by experts, was devised to satisfy both groups. Balance was to be achieved through potential-based rather than the traditional distribution-based policies; a shift of emphasis similar to, and inspired by, what was taking place in the European regional policy and advocated by the page_219 Page 220 ESDP (Davoudi 2003). In this reorientation of policy, two tenets of positivism were carefully crafted to serve two interrelated purposes and help achieve a political compromise. On the one hand, a rational analytic perspective was used to reject the spatial equity approach (i.e. distribution-based regional policy) and hence maintain the confidence of the ‘economic stakeholders’ who believed that such an approach would weaken the economy as a whole and particularly its power house: Dublin. On the other hand, the conception of space as a territorial container in which places have locally constructed characteristics was drawn upon to present the potential-based model and hence regain the support of the strong rural lobby, who for a long time had been demanding a more equitable spatial distribution of resources. Hence, ‘balance as equality’ was replaced with ‘balance as utilisation of potential’ (Chapter 4). More importantly, the outcome of this process reinforced the positivist perception of planning as being capable of forging balanced spatial order in the complex and messy world of global economic relations. The toolkit changed but the assumption about the ability of planning technologies to tame space remained intact. The desire to achieve some forms of spatial equilibrium is present in other case studies, too, in which historically plans after plans have prescribed ‘stylised spatial options along a concentration–dispersal continuum’ (Chapter 5). The most common approach for ‘spreading the wealth’, however, is based on improving physical accessibility, developing complementary functions between geographically proximate places, and privileging near, neighbouring relationship over the distant networks. The most striking remark reported in the Irish case study is that, although the authors of the BRD paper were fully aware of the complex relational geography of spaces and places in Ireland, they deliberately chose to conceptualise them in ‘the more tangible’ positivist discourses, because the ‘structuralist or postmodernist’ understanding and discourses were seen as too ‘challenging’ for planning practitioners. This confirms the point we made in the introduction to this volume that there is a yawning gap between the growing recognition of the relational view of space and its articulation in the world of planning practice. The nested scale of settlement hierarchies: the adjectival space

The second persistent positivist spatial organising concept is that of a neatly nested settlement hierarchy, advocated by Christaller’s Central Place Theory. Although in some cases such settlement structures were constructed on the basis of functional spatial interactions, their predominant use in the plan ‘reverted to prescriptive and highly instrumental allocative concepts’ (Chapter 6). Assigning predefined functions to places underpins all forms of spatial representations page_220

Page 221 articulated in the plans. In Yorkshire and Humber, for example, within the resulting nested conception of space, settlements were typologised into manageable sub-units of the regional spatial container, with some being given priority over others on the basis of quantitative measures. Thus, some are designated as ‘prime focus’ for houses, jobs and services; others as ‘local focus’; and the rest as their ‘hinterlands’. In London the Plan simplifies the complexities of spatial relations into ‘opportunity areas’, ‘areas of intensification’ and ‘areas of regeneration’, and in Scotland ‘economic development zones’ are designated. In Northern Ireland such allocative determinism led to explicit political contestation. Hence, first, Belfast’s functional analysis had to be scaled at six constituent local authority area levels, with clustering and networking of areas being avoided because they were perceived as undermining the identity of local authority areas. Second, the initial division of the remaining part of the planned territory into ‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’ growth areas (marked on the map by the letters H, M, and L) faced fierce opposition from local politicians and had to be replaced with the seemingly more benign terminology of ‘main hubs’ and ‘local hubs’. However, even this led to major political debate as the local hubs were considered as the losers from this allocative determination. The Irish NSS also proposes a nested hierarchical approach to scale which extends from the local through the regional to the national, and vice versa. This results in a settlement structure based on a set of ‘national and regional gateways’, ‘hub towns’, ‘other towns’ and ‘rural areas’, all encased within a single island space. In Wales, however, the notion of a hierarchy of settlements became weakened in the process of finalising the Plan. Instead of a three-tier structure, only one settlement, Cardiff, remained distinguished as a network city-region. This shows that, although the vocabulary for conveying the spatial organising ideas has changed in the case study areas (less so in the Wales SP) along with many other places in Europe, the ideas themselves have not. So, the extent to which this new vocabulary reflects a new, relational, understanding of space is questionable. In fact, as Beauregard (2005:25) argues, such a discursive construction of ‘adjectival city’ has the potential to reduce the inherent complexity and diversity of spatial relations to a single, universal characteristic such as ‘world city’, ‘sustainable city’, ‘polycentric city’, ‘edge city’ or ‘garden city’. The simplification makes complex spatial relations amenable to taming and ordering. This is particularly so when the adjectives are used as synecdoche (Amin and Graham 1997) rather than metaphors. Whereas metaphors ‘assert a similarity in a difference’ (Beauregard 2005:26), in synecdoche ‘the whole as a totality … is qualitatively identified with the parts that appear to make it up’ (White 1978:73). As a consequence, rather than considering the space in ‘its messy totality’, it curbs its complexity by distilling it into a ‘single and pivotal element … leaving aside what is (considered as) less important’ (Beauregard 2005:27). Hence the page_221 Page 222 danger of adjectival city discourse is not only its portrayal of an imagined space that may not match the experienced realities, but also its amplification of one aspect of that space and marginalisation of others. There is however an exception: the notion of network city, driven from Castells’s idea of the network society (Castells 1996) and some of its associated terms such as ‘hubs’, ‘nodes’ and ‘gateways’. The term ‘network’ seems to have captured the relational understanding of space, conveying the decentred, fragmented and discontinuous worlds of space–time. Its growing currency in planning discourses, however, relates to its ability not just to portray relational complexities but also to reconfigure these complexities into a more malleable and manageable form. As Beauregard (2005:30) put it: Discursively, the network city takes the disparate parts of the city or the complexity of multiple cities and brings them together in a single entity, the network. Then, by positing the network as open, fluid, and innovative, complexity is re-introduced. The city is simultaneously unpredictable and organized. The network metaphor allows planning to embrace a tamed complexity while at the same time avoiding its incapacitating tendencies. However, it is doubtful that its use in spatial strategies is based on a conscious recognition of its utility, as is evident in the case studies. For example, in the Wales Spatial Plan,

vocabularies such as urban networks or network regions are used but the interactions conveyed by them often remain limited to quasi-physical interactions. Their complexity and density are not represented in the Plan. ‘What does not emerge is a notion that these places are constituted by the superimposition of relational webs each with its own spatiality’ (Chapter 2) and each in a constant process of becoming. Despite the use of the network vocabulary, spaces are imagined by their relations to physical infrastructure. For example, although the YH Plan portrays the Humber estuary as a ‘global gateway’, it then presents the region as a ‘strategic transport cross-roads’; the City of Leeds as a location on ‘an axis’; York as a regional ‘iconic gateway’; and the coast and upland as ‘remote’ (Chapter 6), not being clear on remote from where! Privileging physical geography of proximity over the relational geography of connectivity is most clearly reflected in the positioning of the planned territories in international relations. Overall, the strategies show little attention or interest in these wider relations. Hence, the Welsh Plan remains a Wales-focused document with no diagrammatic positioning of Wales in geographic context of the UK or Europe. Similarly, the scale at which the RDS is presented is consistently that of Northern Ireland (with no fewer than eighteen maps of the region) with its careful positioning vis-à-vis Great Britain and the island of Ireland. References page_222 Page 223 to the EU and United States are made but are not central to the strategy. The Yorkshire and Humber Region is constructed predominantly in relation to the city of Leeds and the Northern Way. Globalisation is seen as a benign force of change with the European scale being reduced to undisputed ideas such as the Tran-European Networks (TENs). The only case study that reports a plurality of conceptual approaches to scale is the Irish NSS: first, a strong structuralist perspective underpins the analysis of national and international relations; second, a hierarchical positivist approach is adopted for internal spatial relations; third, in terms of the island of Ireland scale, the narrative and visualisation falls within the post-modernist tradition. Treatment of time and future The introduction of value rationality is thus a clear reaction against a future that extrapolates the past and maintains the status quo. It means that time flows from the ‘invented’ future, which challenges conventional wisdom, toward and into the experienced present. This means inventing a world that would not otherwise be. (Albrechts 2004:750) One of the most profound legacies of positivism in spatial planning is the treatment of time and future. All case studies, without exception, report that plans express a linear and measurable time geography in which future is an extension of present and present is seen as a definable instant. This, in Wales, has found a clear metaphoric expression in the form of a ‘direction of travel’ (where we are, where we want to go, discovering how we get from ‘here’ to ‘there’). In Northern Ireland, it is manifested in rhetorical questions such as ‘where will we live, where will we work, etc.?’ The timeframe for all this is often pitched at twenty to twenty-five years. These headline dates remain fixed irrespective of the time taken to produce the plan. The present, everyday, cyclical time-geography features less in spatial strategies. Planning technologies are considered not only as key means of demarcating territory and taming the space, but also as ordering time and manipulating change. In defining what planning is, Peter Taylor (2005:157) argues that ‘a planning exercise can be defined as any project that attempts to control social change over a specified time horizon’. So, planners’ toolkits contain not only spatial organising principles but also temporal organising concepts such as projections and phasing. And, as in the taming of space, these are often legitimised by the positivist science of quantitative forecasting of population and employment, contingent only on economic deterministic constructs. Underlying these efforts is a desire to ‘prepare for the future’ (as in Wales), ‘shape the future’ (as in Northern Ireland) and generally be in control of not only spatial but also page_223

Page 224 temporal changes. And, as in the treatment of space, the way to achieve this is often through reducing complex uncertainties and risks into predictable and measurable trends. Hence, in all case study strategies a reasonably well-understood contemporary context is uncritically projected into a future sheltered from any radical or uncomfortable shocks (Chapter 4). Emphasis is placed on scientific accuracy of forecasts in order to maintain confidence in, and credibility of, the plans. Positivism, once again, becomes indispensable irrespective of the fact that even the most carefully calculated projections, i.e. of housing need, tend to be challenged and revised several times during the preparation of the plans (as happened in Northern Ireland). However, ‘such uncertainties and approximations are never easily conceded in the perceived certainties of positivist planning’ (Chapter 5) because, apparently, ‘we have to look forwards in time and outwards’ (WAG 2004a: 4). Yet, despite the portrayal of a forward-looking prospect, the strategies heavily rely on historical data. ‘Description of the ways things are dominates over analysis of why things are the way that they are’ and in turn the conclusion is uncritically reached that ‘this is the way things should be in 2025’ (Chapter 5). Following Unger’s (2007) social theory, this suggests that plans’ concept of the future does not recognise the ubiquity of change and opening space for novelty and surprise. Little use of foresights or scenarios is made in the plans, and when they are used (as in Wales) they often exhibit confidence in what the future entails and in their ability to anticipate and respond to its challenges. Often, a known future that is ultimately guided by a quasi-linear interpolation of the conditions at the turn of the century is portrayed by fast-forwarding the selected present. The imagined future is far from a set of possible and contingent futures; futures replete with uncertainties, capable of unfolding in multiple ways. In the words of Taylor (2005:157), ‘all planning provides a solution to its problem as defined at a given time’. Yet, given the state of flux, problems change and hence responses to problems ‘progressively get out of date … Planning is condemned to solve yesterday’s problems’. Visualisation and representation All forms of representation are abstractions from reality which bring some aspects forward to the attention and leave some in the background or eliminate them completely. (Peattie 1987:112) We use the term ‘representation’ to move away from a positivist understanding of visualisation as a communication system. Furthermore, following Fischler (1995:23), we use the term to emphasise the interdependence between ‘the symbolic structures that frame what is being said, written and shown during planning procpage_224 Page 225 esses; and the political structures that frame interaction during those processes’. Although we acknowledge that symbolic (or cognitive) and political issues are inextricably interlinked, the case studies have not focused on teasing out such interdependencies. Instead, the emphasis has been twofold: to find out, first, what forms of representations have been used and, second, what forms of spatiality have been conveyed by them. Furthermore, although we acknowledge the significance of the plan’s text, metaphors and vocabularies in spatial representations, the case studies have mainly focused on the visual aspects of representation including cartographical and pictorial images, drawings and diagrams. It is evident from the case studies that the traditional, static, Cartesian maps (Duhr 2007) with twodimensional coordinates are still the dominant form of visual representation in the plans. This is sometimes irrespective of a clear recognition of the existence of complex relationships. In Scotland, for example, whereas city-regions are defined in terms of functional relations, their depiction on the maps is based on the Euclidean notion of contiguous built-up areas around the main cities. However, what seems to have changed is the way in which space and place is represented in these two-dimensional maps. The change signals a tentative move away from the positivist portrayal of space as absolute and fixed to one that is more fluid and dynamic, albeit not necessarily representing the complex layers of spatial relations. The shift

has been captured in the notion of ‘fuzzy maps’. What features less in the plans is the Euclidean focus on geometric accuracy of key maps that depict spatiality as a mosaic of land uses, criss-crossed with road and rail lines. In its place, the plans’ key maps show the spatial relations of the planned territory as fluid, with fuzzy boundaries. However, as we will see below, the question remains whether ‘fuzziness’ displays an intellectually driven attempt to make two-dimensional maps more conducive to post-modern representation of relational space or it displays a politically motivated endeavour to avoid controversies in the planning processes; or whether it serves both purposes. It is also evident from the case studies that, whereas mapping of the internal spatial relations is deliberately fuzzy at the edges, the external boundaries are sharply and distinctly defined. Moreover, neither the fuzziness of the internal boundaries nor the clarity of the external borders is incidental. Both serve a purpose; both have what Harley (1989) in his seminal paper ‘Deconstructing the Map’ calls ‘agency’ in the world. Harley, following Foucault and Derrida, argues that ‘the map works in society as a form of powerknowledge’ (Harley 1992:243); that, contrary to the ‘positivistic epistemology’ that considers map making as ‘scientific and ‘untainted by social factors’ (ibid.: 234), the ‘rules of cartography’ are influenced by the rules ‘governing the cultural production of the map’ (ibid.: 236); that ‘all maps are rhetorical’ (ibid.: 242) and their agency is their exercise of power. Hence, in the case studies the clarity of external edges reinforces page_225 Page 226 the project of nation building (as in Wales and Scotland) and identity building (as elsewhere) while the blurring of internal boundaries supports the quest for consensus and for transcending the internal divides. The latter is clearly reflected in the way in which the fuzzy maps of the Irish NSS help to overcome the dilemma faced by the Strategy in its depiction of the city regions. On the one hand, the Strategy aspires to map the quantitatively identified, functional reach of the main cities; on the other hand it is expected to avoid impinging on traditional physical and administrative boundaries. Blurring of the boundaries (both functional and administrative) appears to have offered a way out of the dilemma. By not having lines drawn on them, the maps remain more suggestive than prescriptive and hence avoid potential political tensions. Hence, whereas the ascendancy of the ‘fuzzy maps’ phenomenon signals a growing awareness of the relational space (albeit limited to economic-driven functional relations), it also signals the attempt to depoliticise the planning process by blurring the political boundaries on the map. Yet, in spite of such attempts to move away from the politically problematic geometric accuracies, the case studies confirm Harley’s view that maps fuse ‘polity and territory at different scales ranging from global empire building to the preservation of the nation state, to the local assertion of individual property rights’ (Harley 1988:281). Such fusion of polity and territory is also evident in the juxtaposition between clarity and ambiguity in other forms of visual imageries, such as those used in the Northern Ireland RDS. On the one hand the satellite photograph of Northern Ireland endorses the presence of Irish borderlands, particularly to the west. On the other hand, ‘the vivid colours of the multiple mapping symbols contrast with the portrayed aridity of the Republic of Ireland’ (Chapter 5), representing the uneasy relationships of the region with the island of Ireland and the UK. Contrary to this cautious approach, the Irish NSS uses visualisation techniques, as an alternative to narrative, to convey political confidence in the spatial planning endeavours in an island of Ireland context. All case study strategies are lavishly illustrated by, among other things, photographic images. Although these can be seen as articulating place identities, they are by no means based on a random collection of bright images chosen to liven up the text. They are indeed highly selective and promotional, conveying subtle messages. In Wales they resonate very closely with the Welsh Assembly’s policy priorities and depict the loosely defined characteristics of different areas in Wales. In Northern Ireland even greater attention has been given to ‘state management of the visualisation and representation content’ throughout the lengthy process of plan preparation (Chapter 5). This extended to the representation of the changing ownership of the plan. Whereas the 1998 draft version of the Plan is illustrated by a photograph of the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland – a key broker page_226

Page 227 of the Good Friday Agreement – in the 2001 final version her photograph and all references to the Agreement were excised and replaced with the photograph of the Assembly in operation. Planning content and the reassertion of positivism: summing up One way to understand the enduring legacy of positivism is to explore the often unspoken purpose of plans and their interrelationship with the wider socio-cultural context at a particular time and in a particular locale. The context within which spatial strategies were formulated and to which they were responding shaped the conceptions of spatiality that they conveyed. In the case studies a defining feature of the context was the tensions between two processes. On the one hand, the advent of devolution and regionalism and the emergence of new political and administrative institutions had aroused aspirations for territorial identity building and for doing things differently. On the other hand, the variable socio-economic geographies and their associated political rivalries had heightened imaginary demarcation lines and spatial dualities. Within this context an important purpose of the spatial strategies was to convey a conception of spatiality that transcended the spatial divides and portrayed a spatial unity that could display coherence and distinctive identity. A similar ambition underlined the process of plan making and was manifested in the emphasis on working across political divides and building consensus. So, if the content of planning was informed and shaped by the project of territorial identity building, the planning process was underpinned by the project of institutional consensus building. Although the two projects were clearly interrelated, it is intriguing that planning content drew largely on positivism for constructing spatial unity while planning processes were informed by post-structuralist approaches for constructing institutional consensus. The juxtaposition between spatial unity and spatial diversity became the hallmark of the spatiality conveyed by the plans. It informed almost all aspects of planning content. In this process two tenets of positivism were adopted to provide a seemingly safe ground and an apparently effective way of handling the tension. The first one was the positivist notion of space as a neutral container. This was drawn upon to mask spatial diversities and depoliticise socio-spatial tensions. The second one was its notion of place as bounded and self-contained. This was used to conceive a harmonious, unified territory with a distinctive identity. We elaborate on these in turn. Spatial unity – i.e. portraying the planned territory as a single and unified space – was seen as a prerequisite for the project of identity building. Yet this project itself was driven by different aspirations and was serving page_227 Page 228 different purposes in different case study areas. Whereas in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland it was upon the culturally induced project of identity building that positivism became contingent, in Ireland it was the economically driven motivation to position the territory as a single European region which made positivism apparently essential. In Yorkshire and Humber, positivism proved instrumental in the building of an English region and the construction of a physically based shared identity of ‘a place called Yorkshire’. These differences meant that in each plan some tenets of positivism became more instrumental than others. In the cultural project of identity building, conceiving Wales as a bounded and self-contained place was elevated, whereas in the physically based project of constructing shared identity it was the Euclidean, absolute conception of space that was given priority. In the economic project of European positioning, on the other hand, conceptualising space as positivist science became more pronounced. If the portrayal of a unified, bounded place was considered as essential in defining the external relations of the planned territories, the conceptualisation of space as a neutral container was seen as central to their internal relations. The strategies’ approach to spatial diversity within the planned territories was underpinned by a desire to down play spatial differentiations and defuse political rivalries. Positivism, with its claim to neutrality, technicality and objectivity, seemed to offer a safe and convenient ground. Within this perspective, it was perceived that the messy world of spatial relations could be neatly ordered; the

complexities of scalar interactions could be hierarchically nested; and the multi-dimensional nature of time could be simply phased out. Physical and sometimes functional organising principles, legitimised by either the positivist science of quantification and measurement or softer discursive methods, remained essential components of planning technologies. These were deployed to enact and perform planners’ well-ordered and neatly nested spatial imaginaries. The perceived ability of planning to forge order in the disorderly world of relational geography was indeed boosted by the emergence of the notions of balanced urban development, territorial cohesion and adjectival cities. The first two stem from a social democratic aspiration to redistribute wealth. Yet its spatial manifestations in plans often display a limited understanding of the complex global economic (and other) relations. Hence, the plans’ prescriptions for achieving balanced development are often limited to improving physical accessibility between geographically proximate places and privileging adjacent relationships over distant networks. Thus the physical geography of proximity continues to play a greater part in plans’ conception of spatiality than the relational geography of connectivity. Exceptions, however, do exist and are best presented in the case of the Republic of Ireland’s NSS, which adopts a plurality of conceptual approaches ranging from functional structuralpage_228 Page 229 ism in its national and international analyses, through hierarchical positivism in its internal relations, to post-modernism in its island of Ireland scale. The irony is that neither the positivist conception of space and place nor the techno-physical approaches to representation of spatiality delivered the objectivity and neutrality that the spatial strategies hoped for. Instead, the outcomes were highly selective; highlighting some forms of spatiality while letting others slip away. Furthermore, the positivist approach substantially limited the ability of plans to give expression to the fluidity and multiplicity of relations between these selected forms of spatiality. Although new vocabularies for conveying spatial organising ideas have pushed their way into plans, the ideas themselves have remained stubbornly the same. Predefined functions are assigned to places: so some areas are to be the prime focus, others the local hub, a third group areas of opportunities, and a fourth remote. This is complemented by a discursive construction of adjectival spaces (Beauregard 2005) such as hub towns and gateway cities. The problem is that they not only portray what Lefebvre calls planners’ conceived spaces, which may not match the perceived spaces of everyday life; they also amplify a single and neat element of the space and leave aside its messy totality. Even the concept of network city, which seems to have captured the relational geography, is a double-edged concept; allowing planning to embrace complexity without its debilitating tendencies; hence projecting an illusion of tamed complexity. Nowhere is this illusion as profound as in the treatment of time and future. The linear time-geography, in which future is an extension of present and present is a definable instant, is strongly articulated in the spatial strategies. Here again there is a clear link between the purpose of the plan and the enduring legacy of positivism. For contemporary planning practice – whose legitimacy lies in providing certainty and control over future changes – positivism and its promise of scientific forecasting becomes indispensable. Hence, in the spatial strategies temporal organising principles – such as projection and phasing legitimised by the positivist science of quantification and forecasting – often complement the spatial organising principles. Together they intend to tame not only space but also time. It is evident from the case studies that one of the most difficult concepts for spatial strategies to grapple with is the ubiquity of change and the constant process of becoming. Even more challenging is the representation of such flows and fluidities. As our case studies have shown, spatiality is still visualised by Cartesian, two-dimensional, static maps. However, although these maps are still the most common mechanism for representing spatiality, their portrayal of space and place has changed. The change is captured in the notion of fuzzy maps, which mark a departure from the Euclidean focus on geometric accuracy towards a focus on fluid relations and page_229

Page 230 fuzzy boundaries. However, in the spatial strategies the fuzzy internal boundaries stand against sharply defined external borders. This once again reflects the juxtaposition between spatial unity and diversity, which has shaped the ways in which spaces and places are not only conceptualised but also represented and visualised. The agency of the maps worked in two interrelated ways. The clarity of their external edges reinforced the construction of unity, identity and difference, whereas the blurring of internal boundaries supported the quest for transcending the internal divides. It was also instrumental in downplaying placerelated political rivalries. The question, however, remains why static, two-dimensional maps continue to be a major form of visual representation in plans. As the case studies have shown, the answer is not simply because the alternatives are either not there or not discovered by planners; it is rather because maps continue to play a major role in constructing both personal and social ties to the territories and times represented by them. They are used to give these territories and times a realness and proximity that they otherwise lack (Edney 2007). Cartesian maps by virtue of simplification and abstraction of spaces and places continue to provoke a seductive vision of planning power and its ability to control spatial change. It is this agency coupled with positivist conception of objectivity and certainty, rather than, necessarily, the lack of alternative forms of representations, that has sustained the dominance of two-dimensional maps in spatial strategies.

Planning processes: the emerging sways of post-structuralism As we mentioned earlier, contrary to the dominance of positivism in the contents of the spatial strategies examined in this volume, their processes show signs of a shift towards post-modernist approaches, with regard to: • perceived role of planners and knowledge and skills employed; • methods of engagement, governance structures and power relations; • modes of implementation. It is evident from the case studies that some aspects of the planning processes have embraced features that are affiliated with interpretative, post-structural traditions. This is particularly true with regard to methods of engagement and perceived role of planners. However, the move towards post-modernist processes has not been unqualified or universal. The emerging picture is a mixed one in terms of both different plans and different aspects of the planning processes. We will elaborate on these developments using key aspects of planning processes as mentioned in Chapter 1 and outlined above. Our aim is to substantiate the page_230 Page 231 move towards post-structuralism and the multiplicity of approaches adopted in the processes of strategy making. We do this by drawing on the narratives of the case study chapters. Planners as mediators: perceived role of planners and knowledge and skills employed One of the areas in which a clear change has taken place is the role of planners and the type of skills they deploy in the planning processes. The scientific, technical role played by seemingly value-free spatial scientists of the rational planning era has in many cases been either replaced by or mixed with poststructuralist approaches of consensus seeking through negotiation and deliberation, and by drawing on different forms of knowledge. Although in all cases the planning process began with the commissioning of new technical research, as we will discuss below, the significance of this in assisting the plan to perform its role fluctuated during the process of plan making and differed in various case study areas. In Wales for example, whereas the earlier stages of the strategy were heavily dominated by quantitative scenario

building and econometric modelling, in more advanced stages these positivist approaches gave way to qualitative techniques of visioning and utilisation of experiential knowledge of local communities. The change in methodology was based on the recommendations of the consultants who were commissioned by the Welsh Assembly to explore alternative approaches to plan preparation. The consultants were against a data- and modelling-driven approach and in favour of ‘a series of high-level principles with broad-scale visual representation of key themes in a mapped form’ (Chapter 2). Further work on technical spatial scenarios were commissioned but not published. By then, the Plan’s place in the wider project of nation building had been elevated to a principal strategy of the Welsh Government. It had become a corporatist policy document and a frame of reference for generating dialogue and fostering consensus around the key issues facing Wales. Hence at that stage whether its contents were scientific or whether it could predict the future and tame the space was of little significance. What mattered was the role it played in constructing a seemingly consensual conception of Wales as a unified, coherent and distinct national space. In this context, planners’ role was not to be that of a technical expert in charge of analysing and controlling spatial processes; neither was it to advocate socially motivated alternative planning. Rather, their role was to carve out consensus through dialogue about the role of particular places in Wales. Skills of policy formation, stakeholder involvement and facilitations were privileged over technical skills, as well as over rationalisation and argumentation skills. Planners were doing more talking and less analysis in Wales. page_231 Page 232 The Northern Ireland case reveals an entirely reversed role for planners. Here, civil service planners did more analysis and less talking. Although they played their role in data collection on population forecasts and quantification of future housing, they kept a low profile in the stakeholder consultation events and left much of the work related to tapping into experiential knowledge, visioning and mediation to externally appointed organisations with planning expertise. An interesting observation in this case is the continuing advocacy role played by planners, similar to what is promoted by structuralism, yet not confined to disadvantaged communities. Planners were engaged in paid advocacy for not only community activists but also powerful interest groups, predicting ‘different futures related to whose interests were being served’ (Chapter 5). The Irish case study tells yet another story. Here planners along with other experts were doing a lot of spatial analysis as well as a lot of talking. ‘Evidence-based empirical analysis with a strong emphasis on visual representation’ (Chapter 4) was deemed necessary for moving out of the long shadow cast by the failure of the Matthew Plan and for demonstrating the need for spatial policy initiatives. Hence, positivist spatial science, developed through a major research programme, was combined with ‘an extensive programme of active and passive consultation’ as well as ‘formal arrangements to secure buy-in across a number of governmental departments’ (Chapter 4). The emphasis on front-loading expert-led empirical research was reflected in the establishment of a high-level Expert Advisory Committee which consisted also of senior academics (not necessarily from the planning community) and representatives from neighbouring countries. The overriding challenge was the definition of the balanced regional development – the main thrust of the NSS – about which there was much confusion and uncertainty as well as political unease. A central task of planners was about ‘spatial positioning of any given places in relation to a space’ (Chapter 4); i.e. applying the concept of balanced development to the planned territory. Positivist science was deemed necessary to give what was inherently a political concept an appearance of objectivity and neutrality. An extensive research programme, with over thirty projects, provided a large amount of information on spatial patterns and development. Although the new information was more descriptive than analytical, it was used extensively in the consultation workshops ‘to maintain the focus on high-level national issues and to avoid the risk associated with regional or local introspection’ (Chapter 4). Hence, contrary to the approach adopted in Wales, consensus had to be achieved not just through poststructuralist discursive approaches but also through data-driven spatial analysis approaches of technical rationality. These analyses were seen particularly significant in relation to two groups: the economic stakeholders who were sceptical of the credibility of potential-based, balanced development approach, and those local politicians who saw themselves as the losers of this page_232

Page 233 approach. The former had to be reassured of the scientific rigour of the process and the latter had to be convinced ‘objectively’ that the approach taken was in the long-term national interest. To achieve this latter goal, however, it became evident that, as in Wales, the precision of the earlier empirical analysis had to be modified in the second phase of consultation ‘to take account of additional informal knowledge derived in a somewhat ad hoc fashion from the collective wisdom of experienced planners and other spatial development researchers’ (Chapter 4). Hence, the precise boundaries of the identified functional areas (considered as an innovative approach) had to be depicted as overlapping and imprecise. As the strategy making moved from the technical arenas of experts into the messy world of policy making, the hard edges of evidence-based functional areas had to be softened to become ‘politically acceptable and administratively workable’; ‘the precision of positivist analysis’ had to be ‘replaced by somewhat fuzzy visualisation’ (Chapter 4). In Yorkshire and Humber the process also began with information gathering. However, the intention was not to change the mindsets and promote new concepts such as those needed in the Irish case, but to comply with the rhetoric of the government-induced, evidence-based policy-making approach. The knowledge used in the process was mainly driven from population projection, econometric modelling and quantitative forecasting; i.e. planners’ familiar toolkits. This time, however, these had to be repackaged in the language of a new policy culture of performance measurement and target setting. The data collection was to serve the plan–monitor–manage model of planning process. Hence, technical officers (some of whom were planners) in the Assembly were given primacy, and a number of technical grouping were established to provide the required technical inputs. In London, the initial draft proposal report was rejected by the Mayor’s Office on the basis of not reflecting his vision for London. Hence, preparation of the Plan was transferred to external management consultants and the technical leadership was passed to two external independent planning advisors; a major departure from the traditional in-house plan preparation. The knowledge used in the Plan justified a ‘predict and provide’ approach to employment growth but a ‘plan–monitor–manage’ approach to other parts of the Plan, as argued by those objecting to some of the Plan’s proposals. Overall, there seems to be a recognition of the changing role of planners from a neutral spatial scientist standing outside political processes to one playing a full part as an interested participant. As Hoch (1994:105) argues, ‘planners do not uncover facts like geologists do, but rather, like lawyers, they organise facts as evidence within different arguments … all engage in persuasive rational arguments … focused and attached to value objectives’. The case studies clearly show that, although the emphasis on quantitative analysis versus qualitative visioning page_233 Page 234 waxed and waned in different stages of strategy preparation and in different case study areas, planners, at all times, were immersed in complex political sub-fields, orchestrating political processes with multiple actors, interests and viewpoints. The search for consensus: methods of engagement, governance structures and power relations Case study chapters are united in their message that planning processes have clearly moved away from the top-down, tokenistic consultations of the past towards a much more open, inclusive and extensive engagement with stakeholders. Indeed, the processes of strategy making in all case study areas are hallmarked with the pursuit of consensus. Yet the motivation for and the nature of consensus was not the same across case studies. Neither was the technique employed to reach compromises and agreements, which ranged from technical rationality (in Ireland and Scotland), through advocacy (in Northern Ireland), negotiation and deliberation (in Wales and Yorkshire and Humber), to formal consultation (in London). In Wales, the consensual approach to planning process stemmed from and reflected the relations of

interdependencies, rather than hierarchy, between levels of government; notably between the Welsh Assembly and local authorities. Whereas the former plays a key role in the making of the spatial strategy, the latter are crucial in ensuring its delivery. Hence, the process stayed away from the tokenistic consultation and the confrontational methods of public inquiry, and instead engaged the stakeholders through a series of informal, yet structured, workshops, seminars and conventions across Wales, some of which were facilitated and reported upon by independent consultants. In these processes, the plan itself became a ‘vehicle for engaging stakeholders’ (Chapter 2) and for getting them to sign up to the vision for these areas. However, as discussed earlier, any wider engagement became contingent on ‘the extent to which the Plan itself had moved on from being a “technical” form of document’ (Chapter 2) to a socially embedded emerging framework, reflecting multiple conceptions of a national space. In Yorkshire and Humber too, the planning process ‘could not be regarded as a traditional top-down process predicated solely on the production of blueprints … Nor was it a bottom-up approach founded on … civic activism’ (Chapter 6). Instead, the Assembly went to great lengths to secure a participative approach to consultation. For example, as the self-declared voice of the region, the Assembly tried to give articulation to less powerful sector interests such as environmental and voluntary groups. Here, too, the emphasis was put on achieving consensus, yet understood as ‘a regionally constructed consensus of least resistance’, determined by a pragmatic understanding of what can be implepage_234 Page 235 mented. As in Wales, the search for institutional consensus was partly because of the recognition of the interdependencies between the levels of governance. As in other English regions, the Assembly was experiencing a constant reworking of powers and responsibilities between scales and across policy sectors. Lines of power were constantly re-adjusted between tiers of government, with the position of the Assembly itself being described as ‘governing without government’. This in turn necessitated ‘cooperative actions between key institutions and consultations with other stakeholders’ (Stephenson and Poxon 2001:109). Nowhere was the challenge of reaching consensus across a wide range of interests by applying ‘the style of planning through dialogue’ greater than in Northern Ireland given its backdrop of bitter sectarian violence and endless constitutional wrangling. Here, strategic planning was charged with playing a key part not only in a negotiated consensus on emergent spatial relationships within the territory, but also in the formation of a new consensual alliance of contested ideologies around its external geographical connections (Chapter 5). Political tensions have long existed on two axes: outwards to the Treasury in London and downwards to a mosaic of local government institutions. The latter helped moderate formal government tendencies towards command and control and create more inclusiveness. An important sign of this move was the introduction of a Public Examination in the process of strategy making, an outcome of which was the formation of strategic alliances between local authorities and community organisations. Despite its inadequacies, the Public Examination was considered a valued part of the participatory process. As in other case studies, the process of plan making was far from top-down, tokenistic consultation. The methods of engagement sought to champion inclusion and social negotiation. The activities surrounding the Public Examination process ‘allowed participants to learn from each other – on what they care about and why’ (Chapter 5). Furthermore, an important purpose of the participation process was to gain legitimacy for the product itself: the plan. The significance of the product is most clearly illustrated by the Irish case study. Unlike Wales, where the significance of the plan’s contents and the technical evidence gradually faded away, in Ireland technical rationality had to be skilfully blended into deliberative processes to build consensus around the product (the plan) itself. Hence, multiple modes of engagement targeted at different audiences were deployed to not only secure consensus among interest groups and stakeholders at different levels of governance, but also convince the experts, particularly the economists, about the credibility of the plan’s central concept of balanced regional development. The two phases of consultation were expert-led (albeit not always plannerled), evidence-driven, carefully orchestrated and focused on extensive debate about a number of key concepts which underpinned the NSS. One of these concepts, the functional areas, introduced in the second

page_235 Page 236 phase of consultation, generated numerous responses, a third of which were not convinced that it provided a useful explanation of how the country functioned spatially. Those representing rural interests considered this approach, and hence the Strategy itself, as being urban-led. This highlights the problem arising from the methodology deployed for defining functional areas, which is inherently urban-centred and economicdriven (Davoudi 2008). Although the story of the Irish NSS may give the impression that the controversies were mainly related to technical rational debates on abstract concepts (such as how to define functional areas or potential-based approach to balanced regional development), it also shows that the assertion of the power of rationality has clear material impact on space and hence is deeply politicised. This is clearly reflected in the political bargaining that engulfed the planning process and was manifested in the debate on, for example, the number of designated gateways, the nature and boundaries of functional areas, the implications of the balanced regional development approach for those who may lose the flow of resources from the centre, and so on. Such controversies were given an even sharper edge in the volatile context of an ongoing national election campaign. Planners, and other experts, themselves were acutely aware of these political undercurrents and were consciously managing the consultation processes away from party political battles. A clear indication of such manoeuvring is their decisions not to assign particular roles and functions to particular places in Ireland. As Murdoch (2006:149) suggests, ‘planning is deeply embedded in a fully politicized space … Planning must be seen not as some normative idea … but as “immanently” enmeshed … in the socio-political processes it seeks to challenge’. In Scotland the process of plan making was an integral part of the modernisation or reform agenda which focused on ‘sound management’ of land use planning systems to secure efficiency and effectiveness as well as gaining wider public support. This twofold objective created a tension between technocratic ambitions of simplifying and speeding up the plan processes and the democratic aspirations of creating greater opportunities for civil engagement; a tension all too familiar in the current reformed planning system in England. The technocratic ambitions were reflected in the explicit attempts to create greater integration of sector policies around the spatial planning agenda and to align this agenda with strategic investment priorities. The democratic aspirations were evident in the frontloading of the consultation processes during the review of strategic planning in Scotland and the promotion of a debate about transparency and accountability of the planning decisions. Of particular relevance was the debate about possible provision of third party rights of appeal in planning. Although in the event this radical proposal did not materialise, probably because of the technocratic pull, more attention was paid to civic engagement. Hence, the conventional and technocratic approaches page_236 Page 237 to solicit written feedback on the Plan’s proposals were complemented by active dialogue with politicians and stakeholders, facilitated through regional seminars across Scotland. A recurring tension in these processes stemmed from the ‘scalar sensitivities’ (Chapter 3) and the conflict between promoting national economic growth on the one hand and addressing the variations in spatial economic performances across Scotland on the other. London stands out as an exception in what seems to be a move towards more collaborative, inclusive and discussion-driven processes aimed at reaching consensus across a wide range of interests. In London the plan-making process was carefully managed by the Mayor and his appointed advisors. The method of engagement did not go beyond the formal statutory consultation processes, which took place in a shorter period of time than in the other cases. This to some extent reflects the differences in the institutional structures and power relations in London as compared with other case study areas. As discussed earlier, in the latter the search for consensus stemmed partly from the diffusion of powers and responsibilities

between levels of governance, particularly between those in charge of plan preparation and their constituent local authorities. In London, however, the Mayor was represented as the elected ‘voice for London’. His acquired civic leadership role and expanded strategic planning powers had arguably raised him above borough-level politics. Hence, when the draft proposal report for the Plan was submitted to his office he could reject it on the ground that ‘it was too much influenced by the boroughs and did not sufficiently reflect the [then] new Mayor’s agenda’ (Thornley et al . 2005:148). Indeed, the London Plan is probably the only plan which starts with the words: ‘ My vision, which guides all my strategies, is to … ’ (GLA 2004: xii, emphasis added). However, despite this grand façade the coalition of forces that influenced the narrative of London as a world city and determined how it should be governed also influenced the way it was being planned (Chapter 7). In particular, the Plan’s growth-oriented perspective reflects the influence of the business elite to the extent that the Plan was seen by many representations during the Examination in Public as being ‘a centralising strategy, focusing development to serve London’s World City role in central and eastern sub-regions, underplaying the potential of London’s other centres and leaving most of outer London to play a dormitory role’ (GLA 2003:2). Whereas the formal processes of consultation were far from being extensive or discursive, the formative stages of the plan preparation were informed by other influential constituencies, notably those that were coalescing around environmental and social issues. To sum up, the command and control culture of the positivist and structuralist planning seems to be changing. Efforts have been made to reform the institutional arenas and structures to encourage genuine participation. Indeed, such page_237 Page 238 institutional reforms have involved the making of strategies themselves. Strategies are no longer seen as detached master plans but rather as processes of interaction between participants. Strategy making itself seems to have been renewed as ‘a process of “making storylines”’ (Healey 1993:103); a process most vividly represented by the making of the Wales Spatial Plan. However, whose storylines are front-staged and whose remain in the shadow is contingent on power relations. As Bent Flyvbjerg, using a Foucaultian perspective, suggests, ‘rationality is context-dependent and … the context for rationality is power’ (1998:2). Furthermore, although the planning processes have embraced wider participation and discursive methods of engagement, they seem to have offered little genuine opportunity to create arenas for the mediation of disparate and diverse notions of place and multiple imaginations of the cities and regions. Modes of implementation Positivism not only sees the relationship between evidence and policy as linear and unproblematic (Davoudi 2006a). It also considers the relationship between policy and action (or plan and its implementation) as straightforward and troublefree. Once policies and proposals are agreed upon and formally adopted, it is assumed that actions will follow. At the height of positivist planning the procedural planning theory saw implementation as synonymous with the control of urban systems with military precision. Remnants of such a simplistic view of implementation continue to haunt plans as ‘paper tigers’. This positivist perspective fails to recognise the alternative modes of implementation that can take place through fine adjustments and intangible processes of change over time, in which time is seen not as episodic change through event but as long-term slow movement of everyday life. The positivist view also fails to consider the tools of implementation as being not only regulatory and fiscal measures, but also collaborative practices and social learning processes. In this broader view of implementation the process of plan making itself plays a part in the application of the plan, as reported in the Welsh case study. Here, the Plan itself became a ‘convenient vehicle or tangible focus for the extensive work that was taking place outside the Plan’ (Chapter 2). Implementation was seen as setting out the ‘direction of travel’ rather than specifying a set of regulatory actions, given the Assembly’s lack of statutory power to ensure policy compliance. Hence, the mode of implementation, by design or by default, became reliant on establishing collaborative practices with local authorities. Although the Yorkshire and Humber Plan has been accorded statutory power, the Assembly itself – because

of its lack of political legitimacy as an unelected body – had even less scope for implementing its Plan than the Welsh Assembly. page_238 Page 239 In fact major public investment decisions were taken in fora outside the Assembly and managed by central government. Unlike Wales, however, the YH Assembly did not seem to use the full potential of the established collaborative practices for the application of the Plan. Meanwhile, the debate on the implementation of the Irish NSS focused on a mixed approach. On the one hand, emphasis was placed on building institutional capacity to pursue the Strategy’s policies through negotiated cooperation and collaboration: horizontally among various government departments and vertically among national and local governments. On the other hand, this post-modernist emphasis on shared governance was combined with the positivist tradition of command and control (with regard to local compliance with the Strategy and land use regulation). Yet, despite the careful crafting and institution building, some of the governmental actions that followed did not comply with the NSS’s proposals. A particularly revealing example is the decentralisation of the Irish public administration, which, rather than targeting the NSS’s growth areas (i.e. gateways and hubs), focused on the traditional county towns in an attempt to compensate them for not being designated as growth areas (Davoudi and Wishardt 2005). Although this action may be interpreted as an example of political expediency, it does point to a broader issue of the difficulty of dealing with uncertainty and the constant state of flux. As Murdoch (2006:155) puts it: Working with uncertainty … flows inexorably from engagement with heterogeneous materialities and all their complex and unpredictable interrelations. Thus, plans need to be recast in order to foresee perhaps multiple trajectories of change with the proviso that even this more complicated form of foresight is hedged with ambiguity and doubt. The RDS for Northern Ireland devotes an entire chapter to implementation and, as in the Irish case, combines post-modernist methods of consensus building and ongoing cooperation and social learning with positivist tradition of command and control through land use regulation and adjustment of primary legislation to ensure the conformity of statutory development plans with the Strategy. The positivist tradition is also reflected in the regime of indicator-based monitoring and review of the Strategy. It seems that positivism ‘in the final analysis has recaptured the post-modernist emphasis of the process of spatial strategy making’ (Chapter 5). Planning processes and the emergence of post-structuralism: summing up Contrary to a continuing dominance of positivism in substantive planning, planning processes show signs of a gradual shift towards post-structuralism. However, as mentioned above, this is not an unqualified and universal process. Whereas some page_239 Page 240 aspects of plan making have embraced post-modern approaches, others have remained traditional. The areas in which the shift has been particularly pronounced are the changing role of planners and the ways in which they are engaging with other stakeholders. Planners are seen less as value-free, spatial scientists of the rational planning era and more as negotiators, facilitators and mediators of a process of planning which is often heavily charged with building consensus. Yet, as this study has shown, within this broad trend there are a variety of practices not just between different localities but also between different stages of the planning process. Hence, whereas in Wales planners were doing more talking and less spatial analysis, in the Northern Ireland their role was the reverse. In the Republic of Ireland, meanwhile, they were doing both. More importantly, there seems to be a close relationship between the purpose of plan and the nature and role of its evidential basis. In Wales, for example, as the status of the Plan in the project of nation

building was elevated to that of a frame of reference for fostering consensus, the emphasis on its scientific basis faded away. What mattered most was the extent to which the Plan (and planners) could convey a consensual conception of Wales as a unified, distinct national space. In the Republic of Ireland, however, positivist spatial science was deemed crucial in not only changing the mindset of the economic stakeholders but also regaining the credibility of spatial planning itself. Such credibility was tested more explicitly in relation to the concept of balanced regional development. To give an appearance of neutrality and objectivity to this inherently political concept, the planning process drew heavily on the perceived rigour and objectivity of scientific analyses. Yet, as the planning process moved from the technical arenas of experts towards the messy world of policy making, it became evident that the precision of positivist analysis had to be mixed with, or even replaced by, a degree of fuzzy representation in order to defuse the political and social tensions. Overall, while negotiation and mediation skills are increasingly added to the planners’ traditional stock in trade, the upsurge in evidence-based policy has brought positivist spatial analysis back on the agenda. Whereas in some places, such as Yorkshire and Humber, this has led to a mere repackaging of planners’ familiar toolkits of projection and forecasting into the language of performance measurement, indicators and targets, in others, such as the Republic of Ireland, it has enhanced planners’ ability to orchestrate and manipulate complex political sub-fields in the process of plan making. In this process, as Davoudi (2006a) argues, evidence is drawn upon not so much to bring some scientific inevitability to rational outcomes but as one input, amongst many others, for better management of the decision-making processes; processes in which political and technical are blended together in new forms of social engagement. It is in this social engagement that planning has shown the sharpest turn towards post-structural approaches. It is evident from this study that the idea page_240 Page 241 of giving voice to all stakeholders in planning processes has been taken on board rigorously by practising planners. Although case studies are a testimony to planners’ attempts to engage in collaborative planning by opening up space for multiplicity in decision-making processes, they also show that such efforts routinely encounter strategies of manipulation and exclusion. Although the shift towards collaborative planning has led to ‘socialization of planning’s technologies’ (Murdoch 2006:145) with more deliberative processes of engagements, such a socially reflexive form of planning is far from being able to exceed the powers that produce planning decisions (Flyvbjerg and Richardson 2002). The case studies confirm Flyvbjerg’s (1998) view that planning processes are saturated with power relations that include not only conventional political powers but also the power of technical rationalities. The latter was used to its full potential in the strategymaking process in the Republic of Ireland. However, what is also evident is that technical rationality often has to be combined with discursive processes if consensus is to be achieved and conflicts are to be managed. In the spatial planning processes, rational technical arguments frequently intermingle with anecdotal observation, emotional responses and moral advocacy, in both formal and informal arenas (Healey 1997). The case studies show that, in the making of the strategies, technical and social, subjective and objective, and facts and values are intricately interlocked. They confirm that even those planning technologies that were promoted as being purely technical often had embedded tendencies to support particular outcomes (Owens et al . 2004). And ‘often implicit political choices were wrapped up in technical judgements to achieve particular ends’ (Davoudi 2006b: 694); whether the ends were the wider project of identity building (as in Wales), the reassertion of strategic spatial planning at the national level (as in the Republic of Ireland), the reinstating of London as a world city, the modernisation of land use planning to become more receptive to economic development (as in Scotland), the nurturing of regional solidarity towards a future devoid of violence (as in Northern Ireland) or the governing of a region without government (as in Yorkshire and Humber). Furthermore, what is often advocated as consensus building is more about institutional agreement rather than recognition of ‘various ways of knowing space’ (Sandercock 2003:76) and imagining places.

Conclusion

The first conclusion emerging from this study is the confirmation of our initial speculation that developments in spatial thoughts and practices have seldom been unified or linear; that approaches to space and place have remained concurrent rather than consecutive. It is evident from both the historical analyses in Chapter 1 and the detailed examination of contemporary spatial strategies in the case study chapters that new ideas about relational geography have rarely erased page_241 Page 242 the previous paradigms. Instead, they have remained in competition with them for shaping contemporary thinking about space and place. Indeed, this study has revealed the enduring legacy and resilience of positivism in spatial planning. It has also shown the failure of structural Marxism, even at its height in the 1960s and 1970s, to make a noteworthy difference to the content of plans. Furthermore, the case studies have illustrated the difficulties of translating post-structuralism, with its emphasis on relational, fluid and non-bounded understanding of space, into the realm of the contemporary planning practices whose spatial imagery is best characterised by fixities, certainties and bounded space. The second and more remarkable conclusion is that, although the planning content has remained a predominantly positivist construct, planning processes have shown a gradual and tentative shift towards post-structuralism. This in the last half a century has led to an asymmetric development in spatial planning thoughts and practices. It seems that, whereas the debate on the significance of relational geography has influenced how planners plan, it has failed to change, in a meaningful way, what planners plan. This seems to confirm Murdoch’s (2006:150) observation that ‘while planning incorporates spatial imaginaries (as governmentalities) it fails to incorporate space itself (as a complex set of interacting entities)’. However, within this overarching conclusion, what emerges is a more complex and diverse picture of the conceptualisation of space and place in contemporary spatial planning, manifested in a number of ways. First, within the predominantly positivist construct of planning content there are pockets of post-modernism as well as glimpses of structuralism. A clear example of relational incisions in what is otherwise an Euclidean conception of space is the introduction of the notion of functional urban region (or city-region) in the plans and the discussions around environmental and climatic relationships. However, the former has remained limited to a narrow, economic and urban-driven definition of functional relations and the latter is often detached from the economic and social relationships. Second, the move towards post-structuralism in planning processes has not been unqualified; nor has it spread to all aspects of planning processes. Third, positivism reasserts itself in multiple ways and, depending on what purposes it is expected to serve, some of its tenets become more pertinent than others, as the case studies have clearly shown. Despite these qualifications, our findings point out to a growing disjunction in the development of planning thoughts and practices, in which a predominantly positivist planning content stands alongside an emerging post-structuralist planning process. An important factor contributing to this asymmetry is that in the last four decades planning thoughts and education have focused largely on planning processes and procedures and paid little attention to the substantive aspects of planning. Whereas new ideas about how to do planning have benefited from and page_242 Page 243 been updated by the emerging social and political theories, similar developments have not taken place with regard to planning content. This is at the time when there has been a major conceptual shift in spatial thinking based on a wider conviction that science and social science cannot produce predictable models of the world based upon a closed-system understanding of space and time. Yet the interpretative approach to intellectual inquiry, which has fundamentally reconceived ideas of spatiality and of socio-spatial processes, has not influenced spatial planning practices in any meaningful way. The relational conception of spatiality, developed in other disciplines, has been rarely discussed in planning arenas and seldom influenced planning content. Hence, planners’ conceptual interpretations of the socio-spatial processes have remained

surprisingly similar to the ones formed in the mid-twentieth century by a positivist view of the world. Although planners are no longer seen as technocratic experts acting in the public interest in value-hidden ways, the plans that they produce still represent an attempt to impose spatial order on complex social processes. It is true that plans have embraced the turn to spatiality, but it is also true that the conception of space and place conveyed by them has remained that of an absolute, bounded and measurable space, represented by static, two-dimensional maps. Even when the complexity and multi-dimensional nature of spatial relationships are recognised, they are not articulated, captured or visualised in the plan. Although plans acknowledge and try to communicate the sense of place and identity, they have difficulty grappling with the notion of change and becoming. In the formulaic world of contemporary planning, there seems to be little room for novelty and surprise. There is, therefore, broad concern that those engaged in place making, including the planning profession, have not sufficiently engaged with the conceptual shift in spatial thinking. This has led to a lack of faith in planning in many quarters and the frequent accusation that the planning profession is outdated. If planning is to remain useful, it needs substantial strengthening of the theoretical and empirical foundations that underpin its conceptions of spatiality as well as its intervention and action. Nothing less than a paradigm shift is needed for translating the new relational, fluid and non-bounded understanding of space into the realm of planning practice. Despite the challenge, the transformation is vital for the planning profession, of all professions, which is solely focused upon the production of space and place as its raison d’être and acts upon it more directly perhaps than any other discipline. Such a ‘paradigm shift’ has implications more farreaching than the 1960s’ introduction of systems theory, which changed planning from a design-based to a social science-based profession. What those implications are for planning theory, education and practice, and how such a shift can be forged are questions for future research. page_243 Page 244 This page intentionally left blank. page_244 Page 245

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INDEX Abercrombie, Patrick 18, 19, 20, 205n1 about this book: contents of spatial strategies, criteria for analysis 40; frontloading 4–5; interpretive approach 5–6, 15–16; organisation and structure 3–4; place and space in strategic planning, approach to 1–3; policy interventions, decision-making and 6; practice, engagement with 4–6; processes of spatial strategies, criteria for analysis 41; selection of study areas 1–2; spatiality, changing conceptions of 5, 39–42; strategic planning arenas, significance of 5; study areas 1–3 absolute space 12–14, 218 ACLP (Administrative County of London Plan, 1955) 185 action: ‘action-centred’ planning model 25; action points 64; case for 80; collective action 8, 68, 203, 211; coordinated action 113; critical thinking as basis for 1; direct action 73; intervention and 6, 243; meaning of 31; policy action, release of 63;

political action 79; social action 7, 15, 28, 31, 32 Adamson, D. 48 administrative landscape, change in 209–10 Agnew, J. 11, 12, 13 Aitchison, J. and Carter, H. 49 Albrechts, L. 9, 97, 223 Albrechts, L. et al. 10, 144 Alden, J. and Essex, S. 46 Alexander, Christopher 24 Allen, J. et al. 178 Allmendinger, P. 30, 36, 37, 97 Allmendinger, P. and Tewdwr-Jones, M. 5, 174 Amin, A. 36 Amin, A. and Thrift, N. 5, 7 applied geography, planning as 207 area-working 57–8 ascendancy of place 7–8 Ascherson, N. 72 Ashcroft, B., and Bell, D. 74 Atkinson, R. and Moon, G. 29 Atlantic Arc of European Countries 139 Audit Scotland 76

Bacon, Francis 16, 26, 42n2 Bailey, Nick ix, 181–205 Baker, M. 147 balanced development 63, 139, 219–20, 228, 232, 235–6, 240; in Irish Republic 96, 100, 102, 103, 105–8, 109–12, 115, 117, 121

Barnes, T. 21 Barthes, Roland 31 Bartley, B. and Kitchin, R. 98 Batty, Michael 20 Baudrillard, Jean 34 Beauregard, P. 221, 222, 229 Beauregard, R.A. 36, 37 Benoit-Lévy, Georges 17 Berman, Marshall 24 Berry, Brian 21 Best, S. and Kellner, D. 32 Blair, Tony 189–90 Boelens, L. 9, 19, 21 Booth, Charles 16 boundaries 18, 38, 39, 40, 46, 62, 111, 150–1, 157; bounded place 215–17; bounded space 214; ‘fuzziness’ in 67, 68, 109–10, 114, 177, 225, 230; institutional boundaries 1, 89, 110, 158, 204, 216, 217, 226; of London 182, 184; page_269 Page 270 political boundaries 149, 226 Bourdieu, Pierre 34 Box, Peter 159 Boylan, T. 98 Boyns, T. 46 Breathnach, P. 100 Brenner, N. 177

Brown, A. et al. 85 Brumaker, R. 211 Buchanan, C. and Partners 98 Buckland, P. 127

The Business Manifesto for the Mayor and the GLA (London Business Board) 193 business sector, influence in London 192–4 Butler, Judith 34

Caldwell, J. and Greer, J. 128 Calhoun, C. 211 Camhis, M. 24, 25 capitalist state, planning content and 29–31 Cardiff City Planning Office 46 Carvel, J. 189–90 case study areas: planning as identity building in 208–13; political context in 209–10, 212; positivism, legacy of 214–30; post-structuralism, emergence in 230–41; spatial strategies in 2, 212;

see also Greater London; Ireland, Republic of; Northern Ireland; Scotland; Wales; Yorkshire and the Humber Castells, Manuel 9, 27, 28–9, 30, 35, 222 CDP (Community Development Projects) 29 CEC (Commission of the European Communities) 10, 29

Chadwick, George 20 change: climate change 91, 156, 167, 196, 202, 204–5; demographic change 62, 73, 99, 149, 154, 181, 182, 201, 204, 209; development and 79, 93–4, 202–3; environmental change 92, 204–5; institutional change 58, 207; intellectual change 15, 39; multicultural change 155; reform and 78; social change 27, 29, 223; spatial change 3, 21, 39, 230; uncertainty and 38, 63–4, 106, 119, 154, 232, 239 Cherry, G. 29 Christaller, Walter 22; Central Place Theory 219

Le Cité Jardin (Benoit-Lévy, G.) 17 Cities 9 communities: activism of 41, 137, 171, 232; business community 83, 97, 106, 117, 191–3; community cohesion 142, 145, 195; Community Development Projects (UK) 29; community groups 31, 106, 134, 175; community planning 76–7, 82; conflict and competition within 150; empowerment of 41; engagement with 81, 135, 139, 234; exclusion of 89;

identities of 63; influence of 195; involvement of 65, 135, 147, 235; stability of 73; well being of 74 concurrency of approaches to place and space 15, 34, 39, 241–2 connectivity 5, 37, 63, 88, 119, 163, 164, 165, 203; acknowledgment of 217–18; internal connectivity 69, 89; relational geography of 220, 222, 228; strategic connectivity 160 consensus: among stakeholders in Wales 53–6, 65, 68; Greater London, emergence in 183, 191, 194, 205; in Irish Republic, building of 98, 103, 104, 113, 116, 118, 121, 122–3; and making the Spatial Plan for Wales 50–60, 69; negotiated consensus in Northern Ireland 125, 131, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 143, 145; in Scotland, building of 72; search for 226, 227, 231, 232, 234–8, 239, 240–1; in spatial planning in Yorkshire 170, 171, 172, 178 consultation: on NSS in Ireland, first phase 104–8; on NSS in Ireland, second phase 109–12

The Containment of Urban England (Hall, P. et al.) 29 page_270 Page 271 content: balanced development 219–20; bounded space, identity construction for 214;

connectivity, acknowledgment of 217–18; future, treatment of 223–4; key aspects 11; of London Plan 196–202; of National Framework for Scotland 88–92; of NSS in Irish Republic 113–21; place, conception of 214, 215–17; positivism, legacy of 214–30, 242–3; positivism, reassertion of 227–30; representation and visualisation 224–7; scale and balance 218–19; settlement hierarchies, nested scale of 220–3; socio-spatial tensions, depoliticisation of 215–16; spaciality, interpretation of 214–15; spatial organising principles 218–19; of Spatial Plan for Wales 61–8; of Spatial Strategy in Northern Ireland 138–43; time, treatment of 223–4; visualisation and representation 224–7 context: administrative landscape, change in 209–10; for Development Strategy in Northern Ireland 126–31; diversity, spatial juxtaposition with unity 210–11; for NSS in Irish Republic 97–103, 121; past planning practices, legacy of 212–13; planning as identity building 208–13; political landscape, change in 209–10, 212; socio-economic transformation, continuity in 209; spatial juxtaposition, unity with diversity 210–11;

spatial planning concepts 211–12; territorial context, Yorkshire and the Humber 148–55; unity, spatial juxtaposition with diversity 210–11 Cooke, P. 46 Coop, S. and Thomas, H. 46 COSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) 82 Counsell, D. and Haughton, G. 156, 157, 170, 172, 174 County of London Plan (1943) 185 critical analysis, objectives of 148, 176–9

La Cuidad Lineal (Soria Mata, A.) 17 cultural analysis 7–8 Cuthbert, A. 9 cybernetics 21

Dabinett, G. and Richardson, T. 148, 161 Dabinett, Gordon ix, 147–79 Danson, M. 73 Danson, M. et al. 74 Davidoff, P. 30 Davies, J.G. 24, 49 Davoudi, S. and Evans, N. 8 Davoudi, S. and Layard, A. 8 Davoudi, S. and Stead, D. 18 Davoudi, S. and Whitney, D. 21 Davoudi, S. and Wishardt, M. 63, 216, 239 Davoudi, Simin ix–x, 1–6, 7–42, 207–43 Day, G. 44, 45, 48 DCLG (Dept for Communities and Local Government) 192 de Casseres, Joel Meijer 21

de Saussure, Ferdinand 27 Dear, M. 8, 34–5, 36, 37 Dear, M. and Flusty, S. 32–3, 34, 37

The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jacobs, J.) 23 Deleuze, Gilles 4, 34, 35 DELG (Dept of Environment and Local Government, Ireland) 96, 105, 106, 107, 109–12, 113–14, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119 Derrida, Jacques 31, 225 Descartes, René 12 DETE (Dept of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ireland) 118 DETR (Dept for the Environment, Transport and the Regions) 190 devolution: Scotland 71–3; Wales 43–4 diversity: cultural diversity 27, 93, 142; economic diversification 88, 89–90, 115, 166–7; lifestyle diversity 7; spatial diversity 146, 154–5, 159, 160, 170, 208, 221, 227–8; spatial juxtaposition with unity 210–11, 230; urban diversity 23 DoE (Dept of the Environment) 133, 134, 135, 137, 188 Doxiadis, Constantinos 22 page_271 Page 272 DRD (Dept of Regional Development, NI) 132, 138 DTZ Pieda 51 Duhr, S. 225

economics:

diversification in 88, 89–90, 115, 166–7; economic geography 48, 188; growth in Yorkshire and the Humber 154; inequalities in Greater London 187; processes in Wales 46; resurgence in Greater London 181, 182–3, 204; transformation in Irish Republic 95–6 Edney, M. 230 Einstein, Albert 12, 13 ‘Ekistics theory’ 22 Ellin, N. 36 Elliott, A. et al. 132 engagement: with Development Strategy for Northern Ireland 133–6; methods of 234–8; with National Framework for Scotland 80–83; with Plan for Greater London 198–9; with Spatial Plan for Wales 53–6 Engels, Frederick 27

Ensuring the Future - A Strategy for Rural Development in Ireland (GoI) 102 Enterprise 2010 (Forfas) 102 environmental imperative in Greater London 196 environmentalism 8 ESDP (European Spatial Development Perspective) 10, 77, 181, 197, 207, 211, 212, 220; in Irish Republic 96, 102, 105, 107, 115, 121 Esping-Anderson, G. 7 Essex, Sue 55–6 Euclidean geometry 12–13, 14, 26, 208, 225 Euclidean intuition 19

Euclidian spatial relations 28, 225 European Union (EU): Atlantic Arc of European Countries 139; ESDP (European Spatial Development Perspective) 10, 77, 181, 197, 207, 211, 212, 220; regional policy 154

The Evangelistic Bureaucrats (Davies, J.G.) 24 evidence-based planning (and policy making) 17–19, 23, 64, 65, 170, 194, 233, 240 existentialism 26 experimentation, London history of 181–2

Fainstein, N.I. and Fainstein, S.S. 30 faith in planning 6, 23, 243 falsifiability 21 Faludi, A. 10, 20, 23, 24, 57, 97 Faludi, A. and Waterhout, B. 10, 77 Fischler, R. 224 FitzGerald, J. et al. 102 Flyvberg, B. and Richardson, T. 241 Flyvberg, Bent 238, 241 Fontenelle, Bernard de 42n2 An Forfás, Ireland 95, 102, 118 Forum for the Future 55 Foucault, M. and Deleuze, G. 4 Foucault, Michel 32, 34, 35, 225

Framework for Economic Development in Scotland (Scottish Executive) 84, 210 Friedmann, John 9, 13, 25, 38 Fritsch, Theodor 17 functional-urban-region, notion of 217, 242 future, conception of 223–4;

Greater London 201–2; Ireland, Republic of 118–19; Northern Ireland 140–1; Scotland 90–1; Wales 63–4

Galloway, Steve 159 Galloway, T.G. and Mahayni, R.G. 26

Garden Cities of Tomorrow (Howard, E.) 42n3 Gauldie, E. 18 Gavron, Nicky 191, 196 Geddes, Patrick 17, 18, 19 Geoff Peart Consulting 80, 82 geography: applied geography, planning as 207; cyclical-time geography 223; economic geography 48, 188; GIS (Geographic Information System) technology 52, 53, 58; human geography 5, 11, 15, 32, 33–4, 36, 42; linear-time geography 63, 68, 229; ‘quantitative revolution’ in 21; relational geography and planning work 242; page_272 Page 273 relational geography of connectivity 220, 222, 228 Giddens, Anthony 5, 21 GLA Economics 186, 188 GLA (Greater London Authority) 196–7, 198, 199–201, 202, 218, 237 GLC (Greater London Council) 182, 185–6

GLDP (Greater London Development Plan, 1969) 185 GOL (Government Office for London) 189, 197 Good Friday Agreement (1998) 96, 125–6, 130–31, 142, 145, 212, 227 Goodchild, B. and Hickman, P. 148, 161 Gordon, I., 187, 191 Gore, T. and Jones, C. 148, 149 governance: devolved 69, 76, 84, 93, 148; hierarchical systems of 41, 58; planning and 71, 72, 74, 75; spatial governance 172; structures of 11, 74, 76, 78, 92, 93, 131, 148, 234–8; transition from government to 8 Government of Ireland (GoI) 95, 102 GOYH (Government Office for Yorkshire and the Humber) 147, 157, 167, 169, 170, 172 Graham, S. and Healey, P. 13, 42n1, 165 Greater London 1–2, 181–205; business sector, influence of 192–4; community constituency, influence of 195; content of London Plan 196–202; demographic resurgence 181; economic inequalities 187; economic resurgence 181, 182–3, 204; engagement, methods of 198–9; environmental imperative 196; experimentation, history of 181–2; financial sector 186; future, concepts of 201–2; GLA (Greater London Authority) 196–7, 198, 199–201, 202, 218, 237;

GLC (Greater London Council) 182, 185–6; GLDP (Greater London Development Plan, 1969) 185; GOL (Government Office for London) 189, 197; Greater London Authority Act (1999) 190; institutional context 188–92, 205–6; INTERREG (Initiative on Transnational Cooperation on Spatial Planning) 197; LCBI (London Confederation of British Industry) 192, 193; LCCI (London Chamber of Commerce and Industry) 192, 193; LDP (London Development Partnership) 192, 193; LPAC (London Planning Advisory Committee) 191, 192, 194–5, 204; manufacturing sector, decline in 187–8; Mayor of London, election of (and bodies accountable to) 190; Olympic Games (2012) 191, 199, 205; place, interpretations of 199–201; political economy 184–92; preparation of London Plan, challenge of 183–4, 203–4; regional planning, evolution of 181–3, 202–3; representation and visualisation 202; scale and linkages 202; SERPLAN (South-East Regional Planning Conference) 194; social constituency, influence of 195; space, interpretations of 199–201; SRDF (Sib-Regional Development Frameworks) 195, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205; stagnation, post-war period of 182; time, concepts of 201–2; visualisation and representation 202 Greer, J. and Jess, P. 127, 129 Griffiths, D. 49 Gruffydd, P. 49, 65

Gummer, John 189

Haggett, Peter 21 Hall, P. and Pain, K. 181 Hall, P. et al. 18, 29 Hall, Peter 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25–6, 30–1, 181, 183, 218 Hammond, C. 148 Harley, J.B. 225, 226 Harris, Britton 24 Harris, N. and Hooper, A. 43–4, 148 Harris, N. et al. 43, 52 Harris, Neil x, 43–69 Harrison, C. et al. 195 Harrison, P. and Todes, A. 144 Harvey, David 13–14, 27, 29, 30, 97 Haughton, G. and Counsell, D. 148 page_273 Page 274 Haughton, G. and Whitney, D. 150, 154 Healey, P. et al. 9–10 Healey, Patsy 5, 6, 10, 38–9, 50, 57, 58, 69, 97, 136, 144, 146, 148, 203, 205, 238, 241 Hebbert, M. 186 Heidegger, Martin 31 Henderson, G. and Sheppard, E. 27 Herrschel, T. and Newman, P. 150 hierarchies 23, 36, 39, 40, 47, 112, 178; governance by 41, 58; hierarchical positivism 223, 229; settlement hierarchies 136, 161, 219, 220

Hirt, S.A. 36, 37 HM Treasury, et al. 188 HMSO (HM Stationery Office) 75 Hoch, C. 120, 233 Hollis, M. 15, 16, 26, 31, 42n2 Holloway, I. and Hubbard, P. 33 Hooper, A. and Punter, J. 48 Horner, A. et al. 99 Horner, A.A. 100 Housden, Peter 6n1 Howard, Ebenezer 17–18, 42n3 Hubbard, P. et al. 15, 17, 20, 22–3, 26, 32, 34, 35, 42n4 Hume, David 16

identity: bounded space, identity construction for 214; building of 215–17; communities, identity in Wales and 63; and making the National Framework for Scotland 75–87; and National Framework for Scotland 75–87; planning as identity building 208–13 implementation, modes of 238–9; Ireland, Republic of 113; Northern Ireland 137–8; Scotland 85–7; Wales 57–8

Indications for the Way Ahead (DELG) 109–12, 113–14 Innes, J. 97 institutional structures:

in Greater London 188–92, 205–6; in Northern Ireland 132–3; in Scotland 87; uncertainty in Yorkshire and Humber 148; in Wales 58 intellectual inquiry: interpretive tradition of 15–16; naturalist tradition of 14, 15 internal connectivity 69, 89 interprative epistemology 38 INTERREG (Initiative on Transnational Cooperation on Spatial Planning) 197 Inter TradeIreland 118, 123 intervention 6, 10, 19, 74, 92, 98, 135, 243; critical thinking as basis for 1; planning intervention 25, 45, 83; policy intervention 6, 46, 64; public intervention 37; spatial differentiation and political intervention 44–7; state intervention 31 Ireland, Republic of 1–2, 95–123; consultation on NSS, first phase 104–8; consultation on NSS, second phase 109–12; content of NSS, analysis of 113–21; context for NSS 97–103, 121; Dublin city-region 100, 114; economic transformation, context of 95–6; FDI (foreign direct investment), key to development 98; future, conception of 118–19; Gateway Centres 110, 111, 115, 118, 122;

growth centre model 98–9; house-price inflation in Dublin 101; Hub Towns 115, 116, 117–18, 120; IDA (Industrial Development Authority) 99, 100; implementation of NSS, modes of 113; Industrial Policy, White paper on (1984) 100; inter- and intra-regional differences 101; National Development Plan (2000-2006) 102–3; National Spatial Strategy, 2002–2020 (NSS) in Irish Republic 95–7, 97–113, 113–23, 210–12, 216, 217, 219, 221, 223, 226, 228–9, 232, 235–6, 239; place, conceptions of 114–18; Planning Institute 112; policy initiatives 101–3; political climate, context of 96; preparation process for NSS 104–13; regional development, responses to uneven nature of 98–101; representation and visualisation 119–20; research programme (NSS) 108–9; scale in international context 120–1;

Scope and Delivery (Spatial Planning Unit) 105; spaciality, interpretation of 114–18; page_274 Page 275 spatial organisation principles 114–18; Spatial Planning Unit 104, 105–7, 108, 109, 112, 118, 122, 123, 212; spatial relations, dynamic conception of 114–15; strategic spatial planning, NSS experience and 121–3; sustainable development, strategy for 102; time, conception of 118–19; transport framework 117;

Undeveloped Areas Act (1952) 98; visualisation and representation 119–20;

see also Northern Ireland Irish Planning Institute 112

Jackson, P. and Penrose, J. 49 Jacobs, Jane 17, 23, 24 Jacobs Babtie 173 Jameson, F. 34 Jeffery, C. 93 Jenkins, P. et al. 82 Jessop, B. 7, 8 Johnston, R.J. 15, 18, 21, 22 Jones, R.W. et al. 49, 50 Joyce, P. 16

Kant, Immanuel 12 Keating, M. 84 Keating, M. et al. 160 Keeble, L. 20 Kitchin, R. 26 knowledge employed: developing National Framework for Scotland 78–80; developing Spatial Plan for Wales 52–3; perceptions of 231–4; in working Development Plan for Northern Ireland 136–7 Knox, K. and Pinch, S. 32 Kuhn, Thomas 15

Law, J. and Urry, J. 28, 207 LCC (London County Council) 182 LDA (London Development Agency) 186, 187 Le Corbusier (Charles E. Jeanneret) 17–18 Le Gales, P. 7 Lefevbre, Henri 9, 13, 14, 27, 28, 34 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 12, 13, 14 Levi-Strauss, Claude 27 Ley, D. 26 Ligget, H. and Perry, D. 4, 6 Lindblom, C.E. 23, 25 Livingstone, Ken 190, 198 Lloyd, Greg x, 71–94 Lloyd, M.G. and Peel, D. 72, 76, 82, 93 Lobachewski, Nikolai Ivanovich 13 Logical Positivism 16, 22, 30 London Pride Partnership 189 London see Greater London Lovering, J. 45 Low, N. 30 LPAC (London Planning Advisory Committee) 188, 189, 194–5, 204 Lyotard, Jean François 34

McCafferty, D. 100, 117 McCafferty, D. and Walsh, J.A. 103 McCarthy, J. 74 McCarthy, J. et al. 71 McCrone, D. 93 McCrone, D. et al. 49

McDonagh, J. 100 McEldowney, M. et al. 133 McGregor, P.G. et al. 93 McHugh, C. 100 MacLoughlin, Brian 20 McNaughton, N. 71 Madanipour, A. 22, 24 Madanipour, A. et al. 9, 10 Magee, Bryan 21 Marshall, T. 147, 173 Marshall, T. et al. 147 Marx, Karl 14, 27; structuralist Marxism 30–1, 34 Marxism (and Marxist theory) 27, 28, 29–30 Massey, Doreen 5, 27, 35–6, 97, 183, 205 Matthew, Robert (and Matthew Plan) 127–8, 129, 133, 134, 213, 215, 232 Mawson, J. and Spencer, K. 149 Meyerson, M. and Banfield, E.C. 25 Midwinter, A. 85 Mill, John Stuart 14 Milroy, B. 36 Mingione, E. 7 page_275 Page 276 Ministry of Health 45 Minkowski, Hermann 12, 13 Mitchell, J. 71 modernism 8, 37–8 Moore C. and Booth, S. 85

Morgan, K. 49 Morgan, K. and Roberts, E. 49 Morgenroth, E. 100, 117 Mowlam, Dr Marjorie 131, 142 Munton, R. 18 Murdoch, Jonathan 13–14, 19, 27, 28, 33–4, 36, 207, 219, 236, 239, 241, 242 Murray, M. and Greer, J. 135 Murray, Michael x–xi, 125–46

National Competitiveness Council 123

National Development Plan 2007–2013(GoI) 95, 103, 210 National Planning Framework for Scotland 2, 71–3, 75–87, 88–94, 212, 213, 216 National Spatial Strategy 2002-2020 (NSS) in Irish Republic, 95–7, 97–113, 113–23, 210–12, 216, 217, 219, 221, 223, 226, 228–9, 232, 235–6, 239 Neill, W. and Gordon, M. 130, 145, 215 NESC (National Economic and Social Council) 100, 102–3, 123 New Right 31 ‘new times,’ planning in 33, 36–9

New Vision for Planning (RTPI) 1 New York Zoning Ordinance (1916) 18 Newman, P. and Thornley, A. 181, 198, 199 Newton, Sir Isaac 12, 13, 14; Newtonian gravity forces 26 Nietzsche, Friedrich 31 Nordregio 107 Northern Ireland 1–2, 125–46; allocative models 144–5; Atlantic Arc of European Countries 139; Belfast Carnival 142; Belfast City Region 131–2;

Belfast Regional Survey and Plan 127–8; content of Spatial Strategy 138–43; context of Development Strategy 126–31; direct rule, introduction of (1972) 127, 132–3; Discussion Paper (1997) 133; District Towns strategy 129; divided society in 125; draft strategy, public examination of 134–6; Economic Council 145; engagement with Development Strategy for 133–6; Environment, Dept. of (DoE) 133, 134, 135, 137, 142; future, conception of 140–1; Good Friday Agreement (1998) 96, 125–6, 130–1, 142, 145, 212, 227; implementation modes envisaged 137–8; institutional structures, power relations and 132–3; ‘Inter-Regional Gateways’ 143; knowledge used in working Development Plan for 136–7; local government reform 128–9; Matthew, Robert (and Matthew Plan) 127–8, 129, 133, 134, 213, 215, 232; partition and devolution (1921) 125–6; place, conceptions of 138–40; planners, perceived role of 136–7; power relations and institutional structures 132–3; process of making Development Plan 131–8; projection-based models 144–5; public examination of draft strategy 134–6; Regional Development Dept. (DRD) 126, 136, 137, 140, 142; Regional Physical Development Strategy (1975–95) 129, 130; representation and visualisation 141–2;

scale in context of 143;

Shaping Our Future (NI Assembly) 2, 125–6, 130, 131, 132, 133–4, 136, 138–9, 140–2, 143, 144–6; skills used in working Development Plan for 136–7; spatial organising principles 138–40; spatiality, interpretation of 138–40; strategic spatial planning, experience in 144–6; time, conception of 140–1; ‘Trans-Regional Development Linkages and Opportunities’ 141; visualisation and representation 141–2;

see also Ireland, Republic of Northern Way Steering Group 161 page_276 Page 277

O’Dowd, L. 128 ODPM (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) 1, 147, 157, 168 O’Leary, E. 99, 115 Osbourne, T. and Rose, N. 16 Osmond, J. 49 Owens, S. et al. 241

Pahl, Ray E. 29–30 Parr, J. 10, 11 Pearce, G. and Ayres, S. 148 Peattie, L. 224 Peel, D. and Lloyd, M.G. 72, 76, 77, 84, 87 Peet, R. 32

People, Places, Futures (WAG) 43 phenomenology 26

Pickvance, C. 30 Pierre, J. 8 place: approaches to, concurrency of 15, 34, 39, 241–2; ascendancy of 7–8; bounded and self-contained 215–17; conceptualisation of 11–14; identity building 215–17; place-making and spatial thinking: space 243; region as 158–66; Yorkshire and the Humber as a 158–66 place, conceptions of 214, 215–17; Greater London 199–201; Irish Republic 114–18; Northern Ireland 138–40; Scotland 88–90; Wales 61–3; Yorkshire and Humber Assembly 167–8 planners: as mediators 231–4; in Northern Ireland, role of 136–7; perceptions of role of 231–4; relational geography and work of 242; in Scotland, role of 84–5; as social reformers 30–31; visionary planners, process and 19–20; in Wales, role of 56–7 planning: agencies in Yorkshire and Humber 147;

as applied geography 207; architecture and 9, 19; capitalist state, planning content and the 29–31; ‘clean sweep’ philosophy of 17; ‘cybernetic model’ of 21–2; education for 21; evidence-based planning 17–19; faith in 243; as identity building 208–13; intuitive goal-fixing in 20; ‘natural region,’ notion of 17, 19; ‘new times,’ planning in 36–9; New York Zoning Ordinance (1916) 18; past practices, legacy of 212–13; physical determinism 18; planning movement 17; principles for Yorkshire and the Humber 147; procedural planning theory 25–6; process and post-structuralism 230–41, 242–3; processes in the past, legacy of 212–13; project-based initiatives 9;

real time and everyday events 38; relational perception of 20–23; social reformers, planners as 30–1; space in planning practice 243; spatial turn in 9–11, 207–8; systems view of 21–2, 25; theories of and in 25–6; urban systems, function of 25;

visionary planners, process and 19–20 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act (2004) 1, 144 Planning etc. (Scotland) Act (2006) 90, 91, 92 policy initiatives Irish Republic 101–3 political climate in Irish Republic 96 political economy: Greater London 184–92; of Scotland 73–5; Wales 44–50 political landscape, change in 209–10, 212 political project, constructing Welsh nation 48–50 Popper, Karl 21 positivism: legacy of 214–30, 242–3; reassertion of 227–30; in spatial thinking 16, 17–19, 20–3; in Yorkshire and the Humber 148, 167, 169–71, 173, 175, 176, 178 post-Fordism 7 post-modernism 8, 242; modernism and 37–8; and spatial thinking 33–6; theorising in context of 32–3 post-structuralism: emergence of 239–41; in spatial thinking 31–6 power relations 234–8; in Northern Ireland 132–3; in Scotland 87; in Wales 58

page_277 Page 278 preparation: of London Plan, challenge of 183–4, 203–4; process for NSS in Irish Republic 104–13; of regional spatial strategy (2003-2007) 168–76, 177–8 process: consensus, search for 234–8; engagement, methods of 234–8; governance structures 234–8; implementation, modes of 238–9; key aspects 11; knowledge employed, perceptions of 231–4; legacy of past 212–13; of making Development Plan in Northern Ireland 131–8; past processes, legacy of 212–13; planners as mediators 231–4; post-structuralism, emergence of 239–41; and post-structuralism in planning 230–41, 242–3; power relations 234–8; role of planners, perception of 231–4; skills employed, perceptions of 231–4; visionary planners, process and 19–20 Purves, Graeme xi, 71–94

Ravetz, A. 17 Reade, Eric 20 Rees, G. 46, 48, 65 Rees, G. and Lambert, J. 45, 46, 66

refutability 21 relational geography: of connectivity 220, 222, 228; and work of planners 242 relational perception of planning 20–3 relational space 13–14 representation and visualisation: content 224–7; Greater London 202; Ireland, Republic of 119–20; Northern Ireland 141–2; Scotland 91–2; Wales 64–6 research programme (NSS) in Irish Republic 108–9

Review of Scotland’s Cities (Scottish Executive) 84 Rhodes, R. 8 Riemann, Bernhard 13 Ritchie, W. 71 rivalry and spatial division in Wales 47–8 Roberts, P. 181 Roberts, P. and Lloyd, G. 175 Rogers, Richard 186 Ross, John 194–5 Rowan-Robinson, J. 74, 81, 82 Rowan-Robinson, J. et al. 75 RTPI (Royal Town Planning Institute) 1, 10, 157 Rydin, Y. et al. 190

Salet, W. and Faludi, A. 10

Salet, W. et al. 8 Sandercock, L. 39, 241 scale: and balance 218–19; concept of 35; in context of devolution in Wales 66–7; in context of Northern Ireland 143; globalisation and 35; in international context in Irish Republic 120–1; and linkages in Greater London 202; settlement hierarchies, nested scale of 220–3; spatial scales 36 Schaefer, F.K. 21 scientism 23

Scope and Delivery (Spatial Planning Unit) 105 Scotland 1–2, 71–94; cities, pivotal role for 89; Consultation Paper (1999) 78–9, 80; Consultation Paper (2004) 82; content of National Framework for, analysis of 88–92; COSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) 82; customisation of regional policy 74; devolution in 71–3; differentiated geography 80; engagement with National Framework for 80–3; future, conception of 90–1; identity and making the National Framework for 75–87; implementation modes on National Framework for 85–7; industrial restructuring in 73–4;

Infrastructure Investment Plan (2005) 91; institutional structures and power relations 87; knowledge used in developing National Framework for 78–80; Land Resource Use in, Select Committee on 83; land use planning 76–7, 79, 81–2; national indicative plan 75; National Planning Framework 2, 71–3, 75–87, 88–94, 212, 213, 216; page_278 Page 279 Partnership Agreement (2003) 75–6; place, interpretations of 88–90; planner, role of 84–5; Planning etc.(Scotland) Act (2006) 90, 91, 92; Planning etc. (Scotland) Bill (2005) 87; Planning System, White Paper on Modernisation of (2005) 85–6; political economy of 73–5; power relations, institutional structures and 87; regional economic performance 74; representation and visualisation 91–2; skills used in developing National Framework for 78–80; social cohesion, promotion of 76; space, interpretations of 88–90; spatial planning elements of National Framework 88; strategy-making in devolved context 92–3; time, conception of 90–91; ‘top-down’ planning for 77–8; visualisation and representation 91–2 Scott, A.J. and Roweis, S.T. 24, 25 Scott, J.C. 203

Scottish Executive (now Scottish Government) 71, 75, 76, 77–8, 80–3, 84, 85–6, 87, 88, 89, 90–1, 94 Scottish Office 78–9 Scruton, Roger 12, 13 Sellers, J.M. 8, 9 Selman, P. 159, 166 SERPLAN (South-East Regional Planning Conference) 194

Shaping Our Future (NI Assembly) 2, 125–6, 130, 131, 132, 133–4, 136, 138–9, 140–2, 143, 144–6 Sharp, Thomas 18 Sheppard, E. 97 Shields, R. 28 Shulock, Nancy 23 Shutt, J. 150, 154 Simmie, J. 186 skills employed: in developing National Framework for Scotland 78–80; in developing Spatial Plan for Wales 52–3; perceptions of 231–4; in working Development Plan for Northern Ireland 136–7 Smith, N. 97 Smith, P. 27 social constituency, influence in London of 195 social construction of space 26–9 social reformers, planners as 30–1 socio-economic profiles, Yorkshire and the Humber 152–3 socio-economic transformation 8; contuinuity in 209 socio-spatial tensions, depoliticisation of 215–16 Soja, Ed 14, 28, 34–5, 97 Soria Mata, Arturo 17

South Wales Regional Survey (Ministry of Health) 45 space: absolute space 12–14, 218; approaches to, concurrency of 15, 34, 39, 241–2; balanced development 219–20; collectives of 7; conceptualisation of 11–14; construction of spaces and strategic relations 175–6, 178; cultural production of 31–6; functional-urban-region, notion of 242; neutral container 215–16; place making and spatial thinking 243; planning, spatial turn in 9–11; in planning practice 243; positivism in spatial thinking 16, 17–19, 20–3; post-modernism and spatial thinking 33–6; post-structuralism in spatial thinking 31–6; relational space 13–14; scale and balance 218–19; settlement hierarchies, nested scale of 220–23; as social construct 26–9; in social theory 9; socio-spatial tensions, depoliticisation of 215–16; spatial interactions (and models) 21, 24, 164, 220; spatial organising principles 218–19; structuralism in spatial thinking 27–9; systems view of 20–3 space, conceptions of: Greater London 199–201;

interpretation of spatiality in Wales 61–3; Irish Republic 114–18; Northern Ireland 138–40; political intervention and spatial differentiation in Wales 44–7; Scotland 88–90; Yorkshire and the Humber 167–8 page_279 Page 280 spatial organisation principles 218–19; Irish Republic 114–18; Northern Ireland 138–40; Wales 61–3 spatial planning concepts 211–12 spatial strategies: analysis of contents, criteria for 40; political contexts 212; processes of, criteria for analysis 41; regional spatial strategy 155–8, 177–8; strategy-making, role in region-building 168–76 spatiality: construction of sub-areas 162–3; diversity in Yorkshire and the Humber 154–5; interpretation of 214–15; meaning of 207–8; relational conception of 243; spatial interactions (and models) 21, 24, 164, 220; spatial juxtaposition, unity with diversity 210–11; ‘spatial laws,’ search for 22–3; spatial turn in planning 207–8

Spinoza, Baruch 12

Die Stadt der Zukunft (Fritsch, T.) 17 stagnation in London, post-war period of 182 Stephenson, R. and Poxon, J. 174, 235 Stoker, G. 8 Strange, Ian xi, 1–6, 7–42 strategic connectivity 160; construction of relations 175–6 strategic spatial planning: in devolved context in Wales 58–60, 68–9; experience in Northern Ireland 144–6; NSS experience in Irish Republic 121–3; regional spaces, building in Yorkshire 169–72; resurgence of 9–11; in Scotland’s devolved context 92–3; strategic planning areas in Yorkshire 150, 151

A Strategy for Enterprise in Ireland in the 21st Century (Forfas) 102 structuralism 242; in spatial thinking 27–9; in Yorkshire and the Humber 148, 169, 176–7

Study Programme on European Spatial Planning (Nordregio) 107 systems view of space 20–3

Taylor, Peter 19–20, 23, 24–5, 223, 224 technical rationality, failure of 24–6 testability 21 Tewdwr-Jones, M. 51, 168, 178 Tewdwr-Jones, M. and Allmendinger, P. 148, 181 Thatcher, Margaret 31, 182

Thomas, Huw xi–xii, 43–69 Thomas, K.. 150 Thomas, M.J. 24, 25 Thornley, A. 9, 31, 188 Thornley, A. et al. 191, 192, 193, 237 Thrift, N. 7, 35 time, conception of 223–4; Greater London 201–2; Ireland, Republic of 118–19; Northern Ireland 140–1; Scotland 90–91; Wales 63–4 Tomaney, J. 148, 168, 170 Tomlinson, J. 74

Town Planning Review 10 Transforming Ireland (GoI, 2007) 95 Travers, T. 182, 184, 189, 191 Tuan, Y.-F. 26

Unger, R. 224 unity, spatial juxtaposition with diversity 210–11 Unwin, Raymond 18 urban development 21, 84, 160, 161, 165, 167, 175, 228; spatial pattern of 151

Vienna Circle 16 Vigar, G. et al. 7, 9, 148, 168

La Ville Radieuse (Le Corbusier) 17 visionary planners, process and 19–20

visualisation and representation: content 224–7; Greater London 202; Ireland, Republic of 119–20; Northern Ireland 141–2; Scotland 91–2; Wales 64–6 von Hayek, Friedrich 31

Wales 1–2, 43–69; administrative devolutions 49; area working on Spatial Plan for 57–8; consensus among stakeholdres, fostering of 53–6; consensus and making the Spatial Plan for 50–60; consultations on Spatial Plan 54–6; content of Spatial Plan for, analysis of 61–8; devolution in 43–4; dialogue, promotion of 53–6; page_280 Page 281 economic processes in 46; elaboration of Spatial Plan for 57–8; engagement with Spatial Plan for 53–6; future, conception of 63–4; implementation modes on Spatial Plan for 57–8; institutional structures and power relations 58;

interim statements on Spatial Plan 57–8; internal hierarchy within 66–7; interpretation of spatiality 61–3;

knowledge used in developing Spatial Plan for 52–3; Llantrisant 46; place, conceptions of 61–3; planner, role of 56–7; political economy of 44–50; political project, constructing the nation 48–50; politico-cultural complexities 49–50; power relations, institutional structures and 58; representation and visualisation 64–6; rivalry and spatial division 47–8; scale in context of devolution 66–7; skills used in developing Spatial Plan for 52–3; spatial differentiation, political intervention and 44–7; spatial organisation principles 61–3; spatio-institutional rivalries 47; strategy-making in devolved context 68–9; strategy-making process 58–60; time, conception of 63–4; Valleys and Cardiff, different fortunes 48; visualisation and representation 64–6; WAG (Welsh Assembly Government) 43, 45–6, 54, 55, 56, 57, 61–2, 64, 65, 66–7, 218, 224; Wales Spatial Plan 2, 43–4, 50–61, 63–9, 212, 217, 222, 238 Walker, R.A. 18 Walsh, J.A. and Murray, M. 101 Walsh, J.A. et al. 101, 118 Walsh, James A. xii, 63, 95–123 Walton, W. 72 Wannop, U. 74 Ward, S. 9, 18, 19, 24

Webber, Melvin 30 welfare systems 7 Welsh Office 46 Whatley, C. 73 White, H.V. 221 Wienner, Norbert 20 Wightman, A. 71 Williams, B. and Shiels, P. 101 Williams, G.A. 46 Wilson, T. 127 Wong, C. 160

YHA (Yorkshire and Humber Assembly) 147, 179n1, 216; application of analytical framework 178–9; conceptions of spaces and places 167–8; construction of spaces and strategic relations 175–6, 178; place, region as 158–66; preparation of spatial strategy (2003–2007) 168–76, 177–8; regional governance, strategy making and building of 172–5; regional spaces, strategy making and building of 169–70; regional spatial strategy 155–8, 176–7; socio-economic profiles 152–3; spatial construction of sub-areas 161, 162–3, 164; strategic planning areas 149–50, 151 Yorkshire and the Humber 1–2, 147–79; change, uncertainty and 154; conflict and competition within 150; critical analysis, objectives of 148, 176–9; distinctive features 151;

economic growth, background of 154; GOYH (Government Office for Yorkshire and the Humber) 147, 157, 167, 169, 170, 172; innovative strategic planning, attempt at 147–8; institutional uncertainty 148; multicultural change 155; Northern Way, promotion of 148, 161; as a place 158–66; place, conceptions of Yorkshire in 167–8; Plan as regional spatial strategy 155–8, 177–8; planning agencies 147; planning principles 147; positivism 148, 167, 169–71, 173, 175, 176, 178; preparation of regional spatial strategy (2003–2007) 168–9, 177; regional governance, strategy making and building of 172–5; regional spaces, construction of 175–6; Regional Transport Strategy 165, 168; socio-economic profiles 152–3; space, conceptions of Yorkshire in 167–8; page_281