Soft contractualism? Facilitating institutional change in planning and development relations in Scotland

Devolution in the United Kingdom has involved the creation of different quasi-autonomous political administrations. As part of an attempt to encourage institutional learning, there has been a turn to concordats to facilitate cooperation on matters of shared concern, to communicate appropriately and in a timely way, to work in a helpful and open manner and to treat information in confidence. In parallel, the reform of statutory land-use planning systems in the devolved United Kingdom has involved debates around the need for a cultural change to implement a relatively more positive model of planning and development amongst the diversity of stakeholders which have similarly invoked new forms of public diplomacy. The Edinburgh Planning Concordat sets out in some detail the agreed step-by-step actions to be effected and the respective responsibilities of the local authority and developers at the different stages in the land-use planning process. Such anticipated cooperation and coordination in the land-use planning and property development community could suggest a stronger basis for decision making and the articulation of the public interest. Locating the discussion against the backdrop of devolution and planning reform in Scotland, and within theories of new contractualism, this article examines the rise of ‘soft’ forms of public diplomacy as a means to facilitate cultural change and planning reform.     

Changes in self-containment within Melbourne, 1966–1981

Abstract

This paper explores the issues of whether the post Second World War suburbanisation of jobs and residents in large Australian cities has facilitated opportunities for outer suburban residents to obtain local work rather than travel to jobs in the inner suburbs, as was the typical case prewar. Empirical data are provided to examine this question for the case of one major Australian city, Melbourne.     

Modelling the urban future: planning,slums and the seduction of growth in St Louis, 1940–1950

This paper considers the attempts by planners during and after World War II to forecast population change for the purposes of long‐range planning. St Louis is used as a case study to examine the social, economic and political contexts within which decisions about how to map the city’s future were made. At the heart of the problem is the adoption by the city of a growth model to justify a large‐scale slum clearance agenda at the very moment when the city was poised for catastrophic population loss. It is argued that planners allowed themselves to be caught up in the momentary crisis of a wartime population spike, ultimately ignoring their own frequent warnings about underlying trends toward population decline. Within this post‐war crisis of temporary overcrowding, planners made the critical decision to move ahead with slum clearance projects of unprecedented scale. Unfortunately, by the time their projects were complete, the city for which they had been undertaken no longer existed.     

State intervention in urban housing markets: A case study of public housing development and change in Melbourne, 1945–1980

Abstract

The paper analyses the three major public housing programmes which have been operating within Melbourne since 1945 within the framework of the theory of the state. The paper also reviews the functions and causes of state intervention and assesses the utility of the theory of the state.     

Brazilian city planners,American city planning? New perspectives on urban planning in Rio de Janeiro, 1930–1945

This article analyses the connections between the ideas and principles of American city planning from 1920 with those articulated by Brazilian city planners in the 1930s and implemented by the administration of the City of Rio de Janeiro, then the capital of Brazil, notably during the period of the Estado Novo [The New State] from 1937 to 1945. In a period characterized by the centralization of political power and the concentration of decision‐making in the hands of the president and the state, the City of Rio de Janeiro undertook a series of restructuring projects which utilized new forms of administration and organization. This article explores the links between urban planning in Brazil and the USA that were a notable feature of these projects. It examines particular requirements set down in city plans, city planning commissions and funding for urban activities, such as ‘excess condemnation’, by focusing upon articles and books written by four Brazilian engineers and proposals put forward by the American City Planning Institute, detailed in the proceedings of the National Conference on City Planning, in the periodical, City Planning and works by affiliated authors.     

Urban climate change mitigation and adaptation planning: Are Italian cities ready?

Climate Action Planning is one of the top priorities of cities in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthening climate-resilience, as pointed out by the New Urban Agenda and the Paris Agreement.This study aims at assessing the development of climate change mitigation and adaptation planning in Italian cities. To this end, we analysed the availability of Local Climate Plans (LCPs) in 76 cities, which are included in the Eurostat Urban Audit (UA-2015) database. In a further step, we analysed the content of the urban climate change mitigation and adaptation plans available in a smaller sample of 32 Italian cities of 2007 Eurostat Urban Audit database (UA-3), looking at the single actions undertaken for addressing mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Results show the almost total absence of comprehensive and stand-alone urban climate change adaptation plans in Italy (except for two cities, Ancona and Bologna), whereas we found that in 61 out of 76 cities municipal civil protection plans are the instruments that deal with local emergencies associated to extreme weather events. On the other hand, 56 out of 76 urban climate change mitigation plans (i.e. Sustainable Energy Action Plans) are being developed in the framework of the Covenant of Mayors, which is a transnational network of local governments created by the European Union (EU) in 2012. The results obtained on the mitigation side point out that, in absence of a national law that imposes Italian cities to develop LCPs, transnational networks are an effective boost to voluntary commitment to reach EU climate and energy objectives.     

Informal democracy in Patras,Greece: A mechanism for improved planning?

Greek spatial planning reality faces the problems like sprawl and illegal settlements outside the building zones, underpinned by the conventional self-financed real estate development model under the patronage of the national government. In case of transportation congestion problems, the formal planning proved to be even more ineffective and unpopular. Therefore, non-institutionalized supplement to formal planning is considered highly effective: informal planning relies upon the principles of collaborative dialogue, networks and trustful relationships among the relevant players. The article describes the informal planning procedure – the test planning method – analyzed against the theoretical background of communicative rationality, on the one hand, and critically assessed through the practical implementation in the case of Peloponnesian city of Patras on the other. As a result, the article highlights the successful phases of the test planning, nevertheless pointing to its shortcomings, which could be expected in the societies with a dominant political cronyism.     

City planning exhibitions in Germany, 1910–2010

This paper promotes the extraordinary events scheduled to be held in 2010 under the auspices of ‘RUHR 2010 Kulturhauptstadt Europas’ (‘The Ruhr: cultural capital of Europe’). The award of the accolade, ‘capital of culture’, to the Ruhr is unique, as a whole region has never before been honoured in this way. The Ruhr region contains 53 cities and towns, and 2500 events will take place in conjunction with this celebration, collectively named: ‘Wandel durch Kultur – Kultur durch Wandel’ (‘Change through Culture, Culture through Change’). These represent the climax of a series of cultural events held across the region from 2000 in support of efforts to regenerate the Ruhr, and they amount to a celebration of how planning, people and place have been addressed together in a new way. Full information about these events can be found at www.ruhr2010.de/veranstaltungen     

Towards Brasília and Ciudad Guayana. Development,urbanization and regional planning in Latin America, 1940s–1960s†

From a panoramic and comparative perspective, the article aims at reviewing the framework of regional and national planning in Brasília and Venezuela's Ciudad Guayana, while exploring their relationship with political and economic goals in the heyday of Latin America's modernism and desarrollismo (developmentalism). Although these projects have often been addressed in terms of their architectural value and urban design, this article's approach stresses their relationship, on the one hand, with national processes of industrialization and urbanization, and on the other, with regional models of development, already tested on the continent. Such an approach requires, firstly, the contextualization of Latin America's growing corporate states after the Second World War, while exploring the relationship with national apparatuses of North American-orientated planeamiento that progressively replaced the urbanismo fostered by European traditions since the 1920s. The case of Brasília is explained through the image of its original sin, in the sense that the city did not result from proper regional planning, a shortcoming that eventually reduced its capacity for adapting new functions and settlements to the original Pilot Plan. Ciudad Guayana's main hindrance was instead its feet of clay; in addition to the weakness of the industrial activity in the long term, both Puerto Ordaz and San Félix were remotely planned, without much attention paid to their integration and the absorption of the informal population.     

Citizen dialogue for whom? Competing rationalities in urban planning,the case of Gothenburg,Sweden

This paper analyses citizen dialogue in urban planning from a governmentality perspective. We focus on (1) how motives and goals connected to ‘citizen dialogue’ and the activities and practices initiated to accomplish these can be understood in light of competing rationalities and (2) how public officials and other actors involved in organising citizen dialogues understand and manage the tensions between competing rationalities. The analysis draws on a case study of urban development in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden. We suggest a critical approach to the use of citizen dialogue as a technology of government, an approach enabling an analysis of various functions and implications of citizen dialogues.     

Who lives downtown? Neighbourhood change in central Halifax, 1951–2011

The paper traces neighbourhood change in central Halifax, Canada, from 1951 to 2011 to consider how urban renewal policies and other factors may have influenced who lives downtown. In the 1950s planners advocated slum clearance and modernization to permit commercial expansion in the city centre. Subsequent decades saw central neighbourhoods decline. By the 1980s population began to rebound as planning policy increasingly promoted residential uses downtown. Over the 60 years central Halifax transitioned in character: three of the central tracts became increasingly affluent, while the fourth went from close to the city average to a low-income tract. The trajectories that neighbourhoods follow depend on several factors including societal changes, economic conditions, public policy interventions, and decisions made by other significant institutions (such as universities).     

Searching for effective and democratic town planning: the international travels of Sir Ernest Simon, 1936–1943

This article examines the international journeys made during 1936–1943 by Sir Ernest Simon, the prominent Manchester reformer and businessman, to investigate urban planning in Moscow, Zurich, Stockholm, and across the United States. The research uses Simon’s own handwritten notes and other archival sources, together with subsequently published material where he drew lessons from these places for Britain. It is a detailed case study of ‘policy tourism’ and ‘cross-national learning’ by an individual important in the town planning movement who was also part of a wider demand for economic and social planning being influentially promoted at the time by cross-party ‘middle opinion’. The visits formed part of his personal search for a form of town planning that was both as effective as that in the Soviet Union but also democratic and consistent with British political values. Switzerland and Sweden were judged as successful democracies, able to plan their most important cities effectively without recourse to totalitarian methods. The United States he approached with suspicions of its tradition of pervasive city corruption. However, he returned heralding the Tennessee Valley Authority and New York City’s express highways and parks as the world’s most outstanding examples of democratic planning.     

Public transport decline in Melbourne: A question of density or service?

Public transport systems in Melbourne and other Australian cities have experienced steady decline in usage over the past 50 years. Concerned commentators and policy makers have debated the likely reasons behind this downward trend. The most widely held opinion is that sprawling low-density, post-Second World War urban form is the best explanation for the low levels of usage. However, some other authors argue that low usage rates can be better explained by the poor level of service offered in most areas of the city. This debate has centred largely on comparisons between Melbourne and other cities. Whilst recognising the complexity of this issue, this paper is focused on an analysis of the effect that urban density and service quality have on the operation of local public transport services in Melbourne. The paper concludes that Melbourne's low public transport usage rates are best explained by the poor levels of service quality offered by public transport systems.     

War,planning and social change: The example of the garden city campaign, 1914–1918

The relationship between war, planning and social change is an intriguing one. In Britain, both the First and Second World Wars saw the evolution of an enhanced role for the State and the framing of new social welfare legislation. If this observation is in itself uncontentious, the extent to which the two processes, war and social change, are causally related, is, however, more problematic. Some historians have tended towards the view that war has a catalytic effect on society, overturning old ways and bringing in the new; while others have urged a more cautious approach, looking towards prewar practices and trends for the origins of radical change.

For the planning historian this is an interesting and important debate. Both world wars are significant chapters in the development of the modern planning system, and it is instructive to pursue the extent to which the progress that occurred in these periods simply evolved from what existed already, or whether it was primarily a product of unique wartime conditions. Various aspects of this debate have already been investigated, not least of all through studies of the ‘Homes for Heroes’ campaign that originated in the First World War and through the official histories of planning in the 1940s.

The intention of this paper is to contribute fresh evidence in the form of an analysis of the 1914–1918 lobby of the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association for town planning and, in particular, for the adoption of a national policy for garden cities. The paper takes the form of a summary of where the campaign stood before war was declared, prior to a review of what was achieved during the war years. It is concluded that wartime conditions undoubtedly served to draw governments towards an increasingly interventionist stance, coupled with a new sense of social urgency, but that the seeds of changes had already been firmly planted before 1914.     

Unfair odds? Factors influencing the distribution of electronic gaming machines in Melbourne

Since the rapid proliferation of electronic gaming machines in Australia during the 1990s, it has been recognised that regions of lower socio-economic status have experienced the greatest allocations of these machines. It has generally been argued that market forces are the main reason for this. This paper, addressing the case study of Melbourne, suggests that legislative, historical and cultural factors, among others, might also underpin and re-enforce the emergent spatial inequities.     

“Fight the towers! Or kiss your car park goodbye”: How often do residents assert car parking rights in Melbourne planning appeals?

At around 20 square metres per space and occupying over 30% of the ground area of many cities, car parking is an expected but unnoticed land use - pulling the proverbial devil's trick of “convincing the world it doesn't exist”. Recent poster slogans in Melbourne calling to “fight the towers! Or kiss your car park goodbye” imply that frustration over a lack or perceived future lack of parking space carries weight in planning conflicts over intensifying Australian cities. The research in this paper was motivated by a suspicion that fears expressed by existing residents about parking are a frequent and prominent but rarely examined planning issue in Victoria. The paper interprets residents' claims made about inadequate parking as conflicts over asserted rights, and their allocation and reallocation through planning. It is based on a content analysis of four months (325 cases) of published Victorian planning appeals from 2012. It is found that over half the appeals featured car parking as a significant issue, and that of these, nine out of ten involved third party objectors. The planning system is called upon to respond to issues arising from car rather than land use, and to do so by making further allowances for cars. This asserted “folk legality” of individual car parking rights is difficult to reconcile with growing literature offering critical perspectives on aggregate costs from “predict and provide” car parking policies. Differences between public and planning interpretations of the role of planning in balancing car parking rights and common good are observed. Ultimately, conflict over asserted parking rights in planning draw out fundamental tensions around who – or what – has the right to occupy space.     

Contestation and conservatism in neighbourhood planning in England: reconciling agonism and collaboration?

Neighbourhood planning was formally enabled as a statutory part of the English planning system under the Localism Act 2011. This element of formal planning has generated significant interest as it actively requires local communities to lead on producing a Neighbourhood Development Plan (NDP) and is widely recognised as formalising co-produced planning. The paper reflects on research undertaken with a sample of neighbourhoods active in producing a neighbourhood plan, and develops a critical discussion about the experience of those participants. The findings highlight that existing power relations, national priorities, the framing of neighbourhood planning regulations, local political tensions and local resource constraints affect the emerging practices of neighbourhood planners in England. Many groups have adopted conservative positions or are finding their NDPs are being limited by consultants, local authorities or examiners, often concerned with how the NDPs will fare in the contested environment of planning and development in neo-liberal times. While some have contended that neighbourhood planning can form part of a progressive localism and there is some hope for such participatory spaces, our view is that innovation is being constrained if not entirely suppressed. We conclude that reform to neighbourhood planning is needed if it is to realise the ambitions of inclusive, empowered and responsible planning at the very local scale.     

Bringing planning back into the picture – How can supply chain planning aid in dealing with supply chain-related problems in construction?

There are several supply chain-related problems facing the construction industry, such as poor construction site logistics, lack of communication and trust. These problems can jeopardize construction projects through delays and cost overruns. Supply chain planning, a part of supply chain management (SCM), can be used as a tool to deal with these problems. The purpose of this paper is to study how linkages between common supply chain-related problems in construction can be illustrated and to demonstrate how they could be resolved through supply chain planning. Firstly, we identify how the linkages between common problems can be illustrated, and secondly the role of supply chain planning in resolving these problems. A conceptual model is developed that was verified using three cases with Swedish gypsum and kitchen supply chains. The model is shown to be useful in illustrating how supply chain problems occurring at executional level on-site are related to problems originating in lack of planning at company/pre-construction level. The study thus demonstrates how supply chain planning can aid in resolving supply chain problems. The paper contributes by bringing planning back into the picture and by showing how supply chain planning can help to adopt SCM in construction.     

City planning in a revolution: Cuba, 1959–61

The general goal of city planning, as a profession and as an academic discipline, is to guide cities through continual conflicts created by the social and economic forces that support or oppose change. These conflicts are magnified during a political revolution, when a primary concern of city leaders and the supporting population is to determine which public policies will be preserved intact, which will be modified (and how), and which no longer serve the new conditions created by the revolution.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss events that took place during the first three years of the Cuban Revolution, 1959–62, in order to identify problems and opportunities that emerged due to the impact of new public policies upon city planning processes in the largest Cuban cities. Because these experiences are related to contemporary issues in education and professional practice, this analysis may be of special interest to institutions and professionals in Hispanic American countries. This paper has been written de memoire. It is my personal review of events in which I took part and of related circumstances. It is, in certain ways, similar to an oral history of events of this period. An annotated bibliography is included for readers interested in specific aspects discussed in the paper.