UNIV. OF MO COLLEGE PARK

~ III ~~l l lll l ljII I I I I I I11Ii ~ II I IIII II I IIII~ 11II1I11

(t~f;rtf! PLANNING· [NYI RON H[HT • (111[\

SCI;es Editors: Yvonne Rydin and Andrew Thornley

The context in which planning operates has changed dramatically in recent years. Economic processes have become increasingly globalized and new spatial patterns of economic activity have emerged. There have been major changes across the globe. not just changing admjnisu-ations in vaJ;ous countries but also the sweeping away of old ideologies and the tentative emergence of new ones. A new emironmental agenda emerged from me Brundtland Repon and the Rio Earth Summit prioritising the goal of sustainable devel· opmcnt. The momentum for this has been maintained by con­tinued action at international, national and local levels.

Cities are today faced with new pressures for economic competit­iveness, greater accountability and participation, improved quality of life for citizens and global environmental responsibilities. These pressures are often contradictory and create difficult dilemmas for policy-makers, especially in the context of fiscal aus­terity. New relationships are developing between the levels of state aClivity and between public and private sectors as different inter­ests respond to the new conditions.

In these changing circumstances, planners, from many back­grounds, in many different organisations, hare come to re-evaluate their work. They ha\'e had to engage with actors in go\'ernment, the private seClor and non-go\·ernmental organisations in discus­sions o\'er the role of planning in relation to the environment and cities. The intention of the Planning, Environment, Cilies series is to

explore the changing halUre of planning and contribute to the debate about its future.

The series is primarily aimed at students and practitioners of plan­ning and such related professions as estate management, housing and architecture, as well as in politics, public and social adminis­tration, geography and urban studies. It comprises both general texts and books designed to make a more particular contribution, in both cases characterised by: an international approach; extens­i\'e lise of case studies; and emphasis on contemporary relevance and the application of theory to advance planning practice.

Collaborative Planning

Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies Se ries Edi tors: Yvo nn e Rydin and Andrew Thornley

Published

Philip Allme ndinger Planning Theory Second Edition

PalSY Healey Collahorative Planning (2nd edn)

Pe te r .Newman and Andrew Tho rn ley Planrung World Cities

Michae l Oxley EcononUcs, Planning and Housing

Yvonne Rydin Urban and Environmental Planning in lbe UK (2nd edn)

GeoffVigar. PalSY Heale d A . . Planning G yan ngela Hull WIth SlInin Davoudi , ovemance and Spatial Strategy in Britain

Forthcoming Ruth Finche r and Kurt Iveson Planning for Difference, Diversity and En

T ed J{j tchen Skills for Planning Practice

OtlU!T tilies planned include

Introduction to Planning Urban Design 21st-Century Planning

counter

Patsy Healey Department of Town and Count,y Planning

University of Newcastle upon Tyne School of Architecture. Plmming and Landscape

palgrave rracrrll In

Contents

Lisl oj Figures Prefau to the Second edition Preface to the First edition Acknowledgements

PART I TOWARDS AN INSTITUTIONALIST ACCOUNT AND COMMUNICATIVE THEORY O F PLANNING

x XI

xii xvi

Introduction 3

I. Traditions of planning thought 7 The origins of planning 7 Three planning traditions 10 The interpre tive. communicative turn in planning thro~ W

2. Ao institutionalist approach to spatial change and environmental planning 31 The challenge 3 1 Beyond 'structure ' and 'science' 35 Modernity and the poslll1odern ' turn' 38 Transforming modernity: Giddens and Habermas 43 An instiLUtionalist approach 55 Cultural em beddedness 62 A normati\'c viewpoint 68

3. Spatial planning systems and practices 72 Spatial planning: from regu lating land use rights to

managing spatial organisation 72 Spatial and environmental planning systems 75 Spatial and environmental planning as a social process 83

vii

viii Contents

PART II THE CHANGING DYNAMICS OF URBAN REGIONS

Introduction

4. Everyday life and local environments The relations of socia l life People and households Identities. networks and lifestyles The power relations of social life Social diversity and social polarisation Community and everyday life Social life and local environmenLS

5. Local economies, land and property Spatial planning and economic life \Vhat is a local economy? Local econom ies. land and property markets and

planning regulation Local economic development strategies and spatial

planning Land and property markets and land use regulation Local governance and local economies: a pro-active role

6. Living in the natural world The environmentalist challenge Conceptions of the environment in spatial planning Debates in con temporary environmental policy The environmental debate and spatial planning The transfonnative power of the new environmentalism

PART ill PROCESSES FOR COLlABORATIVE PlANNING

lntroduction

7. Planning and governance Government and governance Politics, policy and planning Forms and styles of go\'ernance E\'olving forms of governance The u-ansformation of governance

91

9 95 99

103 112 119 122 126

131 131 136

144

151 156 160

164

169 175 186 193

199

205 205 211 219 231 239

Contents IX

8.

9.

te . es, processes and plans ". Str3 ~g as generating strategic conVlClion Plannm h .

· k·,ng as politics and tee IlIque trategy-ma . . k" through incluslOnary argumentauon

Strategy·rna mg . k. . ~ the institutional deSign of strategy-ma mg Quesllons or

activity . d ·cal idealism to 'common sense From ra I

· - titutional design for collaborative planning Systemic iDS · f aming and framing the instance SystemiC r .... .

A proaches to systemiC lI1.su.lUu~n~1 deSign . . T~e parameters of systemIC msutuuonaJ deSign fOl

participative, democratic governance Rigl1l5 and duties Resources Criteria for redeeming challenges Governance competences . Building institutionaJ capacity through collaborauve

planning

10. CoUaborative planning: a contested practice in evolution

Introduction The intentions of the book The contributions of the book Developments in ;institutionalist' therorising about

go\'ernance . Emergent practices of collaborauve gov~rnance. An e"ohing understanding of the planlllng project

Bibliography

Indtx

243 243 248 263

268 281

284 284

288 295 30 1 304 306

310

315 315 317 321

324 330 336

339

362

Introduction

In western societies th ese d ays, we are keenly aware o f the quali­ties of our environm e n ts. We worry a bout plane tary cond itio ns and global slistainabi lity. We e mpathise with the th rea ts to peoples and species across the glo be. ' '''e al'e concerned about changes to the local worlds in wh ich we a nd o ur children spe nd our daily lives. This a nxie ty partly arises because we know so much about what is happening all o,'e r th e place in our knowledge-rich worlds. It is reinforced by th e sense tha t we live in worlds of mul ti­ple forces , o\'er wh ich we ha\'e limited control ( Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990). At the supra-national and glo bal scale, this per­ception helps to mobilise the ac tivi ties of global pressure groups, sLich as Greenpeace a nd th e \<"o rldwide Fund fo r alUre, to protect endangered species and preve nt global po llutio n . At the level of locality - that is, the regio ns, settle ments and ne ig hbo ur­hoods where we live and work and whe re we ccrexiSl with each Olh er and o ther species - multipl e conflic ts ove r cha nges to local em'i ronmenLS are critical preoccupations of local social and politi­cal life. They fo rm a substantial part of th e agendas o f local newspapers, radio and televisio n programmes, and of daily con­versation . \Ve puzzle ovcr how to manage Ollf Co-exislc nce in shared spaces.

Spatial and environmen tal planning syste ms a re a t the hean of these local concerns. The fi gure of 'the planne r ' is bo th a n object of blame and hostili ty, a nd the subject of our ho pes fo r effective community regula tio n . Pla nn e rs a re attacked a t diffe rent times for allowing something to happe n o r fo r stopping it; a t the same time, they are loaded wi th respo nsibilities fo r safeguarding envir­onmental qua li ties a nd pro tec ting people 's ilHeresLS. Pla nning systems and praClices, howeve r much they may become rouunised in to unquestioned procedures, have the ir powe r and justificatio n in the role they p lay in he lping the poli tical comm u nities of places work out how to manage the ir collective concerns a bout

3

4 Institutionalist Account and Communicative Theory' of Planning

the qualities of shared spaces and local en\'ironments. Any evalu­ation and critique of their role needs LO engage with understand­ing of the social processes through which concerns about space, place and biosphere are generated, and with the political processes, or processes of governance, through which societies develop ways of managing their common affairs. The understand­ing and practice of planning is thus at the interlocking of the study of the dynamics of urban and regional change and the study and normati\'e practice of governance.

The hisLOry of contemporary planning ideas and practices shows just how difficult it has been both to conceptualise this terrain and to develop organisation al mechanisms to address it (Hea ley, McDougall and Thomas (eds), 1982; Hall , 1988; Boyer, 1983; Friedmann, 1987; Low, 1991)_ It comes up against powerful intellectual forces, which segment our understanding into disci­plinary fields - sociology, economics, politics, geography, ecology_ It chall enges the organisation of government programmes into functional sectors, such as social welfare policy, economic policy, education policy or environmental protection policy. It demands a territorial and spatial perspective, through which to perceive how the different activities we engage in as we go about our daily lives or conduct o ur businesses 'bump up' against each other, and exploit and trample over biospheric systems.

This territorial and spatial perspective has a new salience in the contemporary world. This arises partly as a result of our environ­mental concerns, as will be discussed in Chapter 6. It is being given added force by the economic recognition of the role of the qualities of places in promoting economic co mpetitiveness in trans-national and global contexts (see Chapter 5)_ Global con­siderations are promoting greater concern with the qualities of localiti es, of places and regions. As a result, in Europe at least, there is a new interest in the sU'ategic role of spatial planning systems (CEC, 1994; Healey, Khakee, Motte and Needham, 1996; Motte (ed _), 1995)_

However, this new interest needs LO be accompa nied by new understandings and practices. The planning systems in place across most westel-n countries were designed with conceptions of integrated and self-contained local economies and societies in mind, not the open and globally-reach ing relationships which characterise much of today's local economies and social life. T hey

Introduction 5

d in Europe atieast, that the state could 'take charge' and assume, . 1 -

_ I' spatial organisation and the location of de\'e opment, m 'conti 0 .. .

t to the current interest in the combmatlon of fleXible conlras bl - and regulaton' governance which permeates much ena 109 ' _. -ent thinking about public pollcy_

cU~his sets a new challenge for the design of instituti o nal mechanisms rnrough which political communities ca~ address their common problems about the management of enVIronmen­tal change in localities; that is, the design of planning s)'st~ms a~ld planning practices. It req~lires new ways of un.derstandmg wllh which to grasp the dynamiCs of urban and regional change and new ways of thinking about the institutional design o~ go~'en.lanc~.

This book addresses this challenge. It develops an mslliulLOnabst

Proach LO understanding urban and regional change, drawing ap - - I - d - I on recent de\'elopments III regJOna econ o miCS an SOCIO og)'. This focuses on the social relations through which daily life and business organisation are conducted, and the way social and bio­spheric relations interweave. It develops a commu_nicativeap~roach to the design of governance systems and practices. focuslllg on wa),s of fostering collaborati\'e, consensus-building practices. ~he institutional approach emphasises the range of Slakes which people have in local environments, and. the diversity o.f .ways we have of asserting claims for policy attention. It makes VISible and explains the dimensions of that diversity and helps to reveal the way power relations enter the finegrain of practices, structuring the public policy game and inh ibiting the assertion of many stakes. The communicative approach both offers a way fonvard in the design of governance processes for a shared~power world (Bryson and Crosby. 1992), and takes as a normati"e position an ethical commitmenlLO enabling all stakeholders to have a voice. It offers a way of mobilising for change through collective efforts in transforming ways of thinking. It thus presents a way forward in realising the practical meaning of participatory democracy in pluralist societies. This commitment is reflected in the use of 'we' in this book. to indicate situations and dilemmas we all share, as people in our planet.

Part I of the book sets the background ror these new ideas by reviewing the main lines of debate in planning thought. It intro­duces the institutionalist and communicative positions and some of its uleoretical u nderpi nnings and antecedents, and reviews

6 InstitutionaList Account and Communicative Themy of PLanning

spatial planning as a 'field ' of public policy. Pan II develops an institutionalist perspective on everyday life, the business world and the biosphere. Pan III focuses on governance processes and the challenge of institutional design for collaborative planning. It argues for attention at two le,·els, the soft infrastnulure of practices for developing and maintaining particular strategies in speCific places, and the hard infrastructure of the rules and resources of policy systems. Throughout, the discussion proceeds by locating issues in previous approaches, as a kind of 'ground-<:Iearing' exer­cise, to clear out conce ptions which have little place in the new approaches, but at the same time pointing o ut continuities and resources in earlier ideas, upon which new approaches can build.

1 Traditions of Planning Thought

The origins of planning

Every field of endeavour has its history of ideas and practices a nd its traditions of debate. These act as a store of experience . of myths, metaphors and arguments, which those within the field can draw upon in developing their own contributions. either through what they do, or through reflecting on the field. This 'store ' provides advice, proverbs, recipes and techniques for understanding and acting. and inspiration - ideas to play with and develop. It may also act as a foil, against which critiques are developed and new ways of thinking brought fonvard. Thus, such a store provides intellectual resources. But it may also act as a con­straint on intellectual innovation. by locking perceptions and understandings into particu lar moulds which are difficu lt to discard. The planning tradition itself has generally bee n 'trapped' inside a modernist instrume ntal rationaJism for many years, and is only now beginning to escape.

This chapte r reviews the traditions of planning thought, focus­ing on their development in a Euro pean and American context. The objective is firstly, to identify those elements of the tradition which provide resources upon which a transformation of plan­ning thought can build; secondly, 10 introduce the new commu­nicative planning theory as a foundation for a form of collaborative planning; and thirdly. to emphasise what needs to be discarded if the transformation is to be effective.

The planning tradition is a curious one, bui lt up through a mixture of evangelism, forma l institutional practice. scientific knowledge and , increasingly, academic development. It repre­sents a continual effort to interrelate conceptions of the quali ties and social dynamics of places with notions of the social processes

7

8 Institutionalist Account and Communicative Theory of Planning

of 'shaping places' through the articulation and implemenLation of policies. As John Friedmann has rcpeatedly poilHed out, it osci llates in its emphases between a radical, transformative inten· Lion, and a role in mainLaining the way cities function and gov­ernance works (Friedmann, 1973, 1987). T his leads lO an ambiguous relation to the social context of planning work. Planners in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s saw themselves as being a t the forefront of a transforming effort, building the welfare states which would deli\'er a reasonable quality of life to the majority of citizens, after the horrendous experiences of war and of the economic depression before it. They were a t the van­guard of a transforming effort (Boyer, 1983; Davies, 1972; Ravetz, 1980). Their successors, in contrast, often feel themselves operat· ing within a complex and often uncomfortable. political and economic context, within which room for lransformati\'e manoeu· v.-e seems slight.

Cities ha\'e been planned in one way or a notller, in the broad· est sense of the management of organisation of space, of land a nd property rights and the provision of urban services, for as long as they have existed. Students of planning are sti ll sometimes taught a history of urban form, from the Greeks and Romans, throug h European city-slates. to tlle present industrial and post-industrial metropolis (Mumford, 1961). This emphasises planning as the management of a product, the physical shape and form, thc mor­phology and spatial organisation of the urban region.

However, the culturc of planning as it has evolved in the past century is rooted in a much broader philosophical and social transformation, the inteHectual sea change which we now label in the history of Western thought as the 'En lightenment' (Hall and Gieben, 1992). Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a whole body of ideas seemed to develop together, in science, phi­losophy and economics. This body of thought emphasised the value of scientific knowledge, empirical inquiry and acti ng in the world to impro\'c it, a deliberate opposition to religious dogma and monarchial attitudes, upheld by a religious preoccupation with the inner life (Sennet, 1991). Enlightenment thinkers argued for the importance of individuals, as knowing subjects wi th righLS and responsibilities, as against power through the 'divi ne right ' of kings and barons. They stressed th e value of an open environment for business and commerce, as opposed to the

Tradilions oJ Planning Thought 9

.. I nlanagement of the empires and city-states of Europe at pohuca .

_ Contemporary western concepnons of democracy, based the ume. . I . If · d··d I

th ·ndividual franch ise, t le rig liS 0 111 IVI ua s to pursue

on e I. . Ii k· If . I·\.es and livelihoods, and the primacy of pro t-see ·mg, se -theIr I ····Ii I I d . h· . ted economic organ lsallon were Slglll cant y slape 111 t IS Intcres . .

. d (Hall and Gieben, 1992). Out of thIS chmate of thought, pednothe marriage of science and individual freedom to industry d f· . d .

d Olnmerce came the great surge 0 1I1vennon an expanSIOn an c ' . . . k 1 as the lndusu-ial RevolutIon. It also witnessed tlle rise of ' nO\\'I . . democratic states, displacing autocratic states across westcrn SOCI-

. though there \\'ere intermittent periods of totalitarian eues, . regimes. It is this intellect~al movement which these days we refer to as the project of modernIty (see Chapter 2). .

The complexity of the political and economic processes whICh resulted, with their mixture of positive advances in terms of wealth generation and the spread of benefits combined with gr~ss social inequalities, systematic exclusions (of class, gender. ethlllc­ity and race). environmental pollution and periodic collapse in market processes, led to a growing in terest in the management of the social-spatial relations unfolding within states and cities. Faced by these dynamic and contradictol1' forces, arguments began to

build up in favour of planning the trajectol1' of the future, ratller than being perpetually vulnerable to the volatility of markets, or to the power of the big capitalist companies. The key resource for this project of planning was seen as scientific knowledge and instrumental rationali ty. Scientific knowledge could provide an objective basis for idcntifying present problems and predicting future possibilities. Instru mental rationality focused on relating m~ans (how to do things) to ends (what could be achieved), in logical and systematic ways. Impartial reason could be used as the measure of just actions (Young. 1990). In this way, the irrational­ities of market processes and of political dictatorships could be replaced with a new rationality. planning as the 'rational mastcl1' of the irrational', as Karl Mannheim put it (Mannheim, 1940).

The systematic planning of economies, of cities and of neigh­bourhoods thus became a growing preoccupation of national and local governments faced with the burgeoning problems gen­erated by dynamic and often \'o latile economic and political con­ditions. It offered a 'transformative mechanism' with which to

change and maintain a new, more efficient and effecti\'e order to

I 0 Institutionalist A CCOunt and Co """' mmumcatwe 71leory 0' Plan "

~ nzng the management of urban regions and to " generally" economic m',mlge"" ,.

Three planning traditions

The cUlture of spatial pi " " b annmgasilhasa . d "

cen woven together 0 t f h rnve In Our times u 0 1 fee strands of th h

grown up in the context of th'. . DUg 1 which economic planning whl"ch' IS mh e ntan ce. The first is that

• alJns to manag I o f nations a nd regio I ' . e Lle prOdUCLive M ns. 1 IS th Is for f I

ann h e im had prim 'I ' . mop a nning I . an y III mmd link d .

\V lIeh together would f; th • e to SOcia l The second strand is t~~~of ~h~:ework of a 'welfare developlllent of towns h " I anagement of the P'''Y'''cal

. W Ie 1 promotes health IlICnce and beauty in urban ' • economy, Kee ble, 1952; Adams 1994) Thsettmgs " (Abercrombie, 1933, P bl ' '. e third IS II •

U lC administration and oli . ' lC managemen 1

both effectiven ess and effi P, cy ~nalyslS •. whic h aims to achieve b cJency III meeu ng I" pu lic agencies. exp IClt goals set for

i:.conomic planning

The tradition of economic I . . .. materialist and rational' p anlll~g IS a VIVId expression of the TI 1St conceptIon of a I d

Ie processes of production and d' . . p anne social order. to e nsure efficient prod ' Istnbutlo n had to be plan ned

uc tJon and con tin . some protagonists of economic I . ulIlg growth , and, for benefir.s of growth It P an~ lIlg, a fair distribution of the

. . was preoccupIed 'th b failures of capitalis tic m k WI oth th e econ omic

TI ar er: processes and th ' . Ie interest in teo . la . elr SOCial costs.

. nomIc p nnmg arose i fi cntique of the processes of ind . n ~an. rOm a general mounted a devastating atta k ustnal capitalism. Karl Marx d I C' on the social f ' eve opment driven by th '. cosr.s 0 IIldustrial

. e stnvmg of capi tar maxIm ise profits in c . . 1St e ntrepreneurs to I b ompetHJVe markets b I ' , a Our and d estro),!'ng re C" y exp o ltmg people's

H ' Sources ( Iddens 1987 Ki h IS analys is of capitalist ,; tc ing, 1988),

h processes ofproductio d' 'b exc ange was immensely IT I n, IStn ution and

. powe u because it b ' d percepUon with intellectual h com me empirical deeply humanitarian concenl ~~;~nce, and was informed by a

e recovery of human dign ity,

Traditions of Planning 7/!Oug"t I I

ttacked and degraded by the production processes I' h he saW a

"lie d' 1 Il'llleteenth-century England (Kitching, 1988), His bsefve II

he 0" ' ulated as a political programme in the Communist er arllc ans\~., was to replace the marketplace and the processes of lIa niftsto. , " , , ' th ' . driven by capitahsuc compeuuon WI a governance Producuon , , II "

h"ch was run by the people. IllIua y, and III order to sVslem \~f I k

he power of capitalis ts on governance, Marx argued that brea t h Id ' • I I '

r S representing labour s ou engage III c ass strugg e lhe lorce . \,iLh the objective of taking con ~rol of the s~te. ~~lImately, the

should wither away, leavlllg economiC acuvIlY and gover-state LOO ..

to be managed by local commullllles. nance . . .. ~Iarx's political strategy underplllned the commulllst pohucal

mO\'ement, which gained e normous leverage in the early part of the twentieth century as labour movements across the world strug·

led to improve work in g conditions. But where communist ;egimes or socialist regimes, inspired by simi lar ideas of class struggle, came to power, they tended to reinforce the state, and the original Marxist idea of withering away was forgotten. In the economic arena, capitalist production processes we re replaced with centralised planning and programming by the state, with indi\·idual enterprises driven by centrally-established produc tion targets rather than the drive for profitability. Economic activity was typically seen to consist of a number of production sectors, usually based on a conve ntional division between primary, sec­ondaryand tertiary, or service industries. Co-ordination in space was subordinated LO rela Lively independent development pro­grammes of the different national ministries, representing econ­omic sectors. In theory, production targets were to be infonl'led by scientific research and techni cal understanding. In practice, building up an adequaLe knowledge base at the centre proved enduringly difficult and the logic of effective and efficient pro­duction quickly gOt replaced by a ' politi cs of meeting targets ', Further, such a concen tration of economic and political power at the apex of a national system not only encouraged forms of gov­ernance unresponsive to people's needs. It also provided many opportunities for corrupt practice (Bicanic, 1967). As a result , centralised 'command and control' planning was in creasingly dis· credited, from the point of view of economic efficiency, de mocra· tic practice a nd social welfare. Those who criticise planning still often have this model of planning in mind.