VISIONARY AND AMBITIOUS PLAN-MAKING lessons learned report 3
VISIONARY AND AMBITIOUS PLAN-MAKING
creating better places for people
From 2009 to 2011, A+DS has engaged with Planning Authorities across Scotland to explore approaches to delivering ‘visionary and ambitious’ plans consistent with the spirit of the reform of the Planning System. The purpose of this series of three short reports set out lessons learned. The series has been written and edited by Andrew Guest [a journalist who writes about design and the environment] following a review of the outputs of the visioning processes, consultation with the Planning Authority staff and engagement with A+DS. The three reports in the series comprise: •
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Report 1: Key Characteristics of the Visioning Process This report summarises the processes, techniques, skills and values of the visioning processes tested at a range of scales from Strategic Development Plan to small town level Report 2: Case Studies - this report The case studies set out a short précis of the visioning processes in the five locations. These include visioning at Strategic Development Plan [SDP] level with Tayplan; visioning at the small city scale in the new Local Development Plan [LDP] process in Stirling and Inverness; visioning at the district scale and area guidance level at Edinburgh Waterfront, and; visioning at the small town scale in Neilston, East Renfrewshire. Report 3: Overview and lessons learned This report is a set of reflections by Andrew Guest on what worked and what could be improved from the evidence of the case studies. It is set in the context of the objective of achieving better places in Scotland, the issues and challenges this presents, and how visionary plans can help.
VISIONARY AND AMBITIOUS PLAN-MAKING creating better places for people
Lessons leaarned
Introduction
‘...we cannot make better places unless we radically change not just our language but the way we do things’
Any overview of the visioning work supported by A+DS – in relation to the production of the TAYplan Strategic Development Plan, the preparation of Local Development Plans in Stirling, Inverness and Neilston and of an Area Development Framework for Edinburgh Waterfront and Leith (summarised in the KEY CHARACTERISTICS and CASE STUDIES documents) - must consider three major issues: 1. The political and cultural context in which this work is taking place and which provides the background to the ideas and values that lie behind it. This is often referred to as ‘the place-making agenda’. 2. The work itself – does it result in better places, more visionary plans that will lead to better places in the future or people with a new understanding that will in time feed out into better plans and/or better places? 3. How this approach might become common practice amongst planning authorities. A+DS worked closely with the five authorities as described in the case studies in order to demonstrate the process, but are clearly unable to do this with every planning authority in Scotland, although they might have a role in supporting this approach to planmaking.
1 The political and cultural context - the place-making agenda In the last 5-10 years the words ‘place’ and ‘place-making’ have come to the forefront in the language of regeneration/built environment/ architecture/urban design. The words are used particularly by politicians, civil servants and government advisers, but less by the public or by built environment professionals.
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Place-making (or placemaking) is still not included in the Oxford English Dictionary (other than the campanological meaning of ringing the changes on two bells in a way that makes room for a third). While plenty people still call themselves architects or urban designers, or residents or inhabitants, there is no one yet who calls themselves a ‘place-maker’. This all indicates that the language of place-making may have run ahead of the practice of place-making. But place is a good word – we use it to describe a rounded feeling of the quality of an experience of the natural or created world as in ‘I went to this beautiful place on holiday’; ‘I have found a great place to eat’. Its usage in built environment language has grown partly because talking about ‘architecture and design’ is thought to be only talking about objects, and from a specialist point of view, whereas to talk about ‘place’ is to include people in this discussion and include other factors such as landscape, planning, economy. In Scotland the word ‘place’ has a particular traction as it recalls the phrase Patrick Geddes used to describe his holistic approach to regeneration and planning - ‘Folk, Work, Place’. Perhaps we also talk more readily about place-making in Scotland because, due to our small size, different interests should be able to get together to look at the same thing from a holistic perspective. But does all our talk about place-making (particularly if the word is not commonly understood) obscure the fact that we are not actually doing anything different than when we used to talk about planning, architecture, landscape separately? If we truly care about places, we cannot make better places unless we radically change not just our language but the way we do things. Is there a more fundamental reason we talk more about place now? In her ground-breaking book The Lure of the Local – senses of place in a multi-centered society (New York, 1997) Lucy Lippard says that we talk so much about place because of our growing awareness of the damage we are doing to the world’s ecology: we have destroyed what she calls ‘our home in the world’, and the more we become disconnected from the world the more we damage it. Our obsession with place is about trying to re-create our ‘home in the world’ – putting back our place in the world. Seen from this angle, it is clear that making better places or better ‘homes in the world’ has to be about both re-creating these connections to our environment and ceasing to render it inhospitable, and is therefore a much bigger, wider project than designing streets or towns or cities, and certainly very little to do with the style in which we do this.
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‘...place-making has to be a different process which prioritises people over objects ... skills, empowerment and communication are therefore essential ingredients’
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To re-make these connections, we have to challenge some of the current assumptions and values under which we operate and organise ourselves as a society, and in particular how we approach the built environment. These are: • • • •
the primacy of the national (or the international) over the local or the regional the assumed unique value of the professional expert the superiority of technological fixes to human or natural changes the superiority of the standardised solution or component over the individual
All of these notions are central to the thinking that has dominated western culture for centuries, initially under the banner of ‘modernism’, and which has exerted a particular stranglehold on architecture and design thinking since the 1930’s. Despite being extensively discredited after massive cultural and social changes over the last 40 years, it has never been replaced by a coherent alternative and consequently continues to dominate our cultural and environmental thinking. Although we want to make places which are distinctive and have meaning, try to create towns and houses that do not all look the same and cities that are not over-run by supermarkets and cars, we have not yet developed the cultural approach or the supporting skills or systems to achieve this. If we genuinely care in a holistic way about making better ‘homes in the world’, place-making has to be a different process, which prioritises people over objects, individual solutions over standard, local ways over universal ways, and involves professionals promoting their individual professionalism less, and their ability to engage with other interests more, and perhaps designing processes rather than products. Skills, empowerment and communication are therefore essential ingredients in this ‘non-modernist’ world if we really care about the quality of the places we live in.
2. The work itself - visioning and plan-making process followed in the five different places A true assessment of the impact of the visioning process on the preparation of these plans could only be made by judging the ultimate effect of these plans on development. Although it is too soon to be able to do this in the case of the five plans concerned, some conclusions can be drawn about the approach to the plan-making process supported by A+DS, the key aspects of which are summarised in the KEY CHARACTERISTICS document, with the detailed work described in the CASE STUDIES of the five projects.
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The plans do have a new value
‘...what kind of place do we want to be?’
All five authorities clearly felt that the plans or parts of plans that resulted from the visioning process had a particular value that was new to them, which would have a lasting value, and which accrued to the plan as a direct result of the particular process that was followed. The particular characteristics of the process that had given these plans its value were the more imaginative, forward-looking approach to the plan’s preparation, the fact that they involved a wider range of voices in this process, and the more general language in which they were able to talk about the process and in which the plans were written. It is important to design the right process for the right scale. The TAYplan process probably represents the most focused and rounded process in terms of a tight, well-planned process followed by a small group, but one that was still shared across a broad professional network. At the other end of the scale, the Neilston Town Charter comes across as the most convincing document. It is well-argued, clearly written, succinct, tangible, and clearly expresses the degree to which it is owned by the community. The quality of the Charter comes from the fact that several organisations, all independent of the Council, worked together on its production, with the full collaboration and engagement of Council officers and of the 150-strong Town Team, backed by the driving force of the Neilston Development Trust. Unlike all the other Councils in these case studies, East Renfrewshire Council moreover were able to contribute a significant amount of funding to the whole process. These factors – local scale, excellent engagement of local public, grassroots leadership, focused tangible outcome, successful collaboration between independent bodies and the Council, and a Council able to take its own share of the leadership - seem to be key to the success of the results in Neilston. They also match the key factors of a ‘non-modernist’ approach as indicated above. Public engagement Apart from TAYplan (which saw a breaking down of professional barriers, but where there was no occasion for direct engagement of public) all of the case studies throw some interesting light on what is possibly the most challenging aspect of a different approach to planning and placemaking and which is often considered by developers and planners in a purely token manner. The degree of engagement in Neilston demonstrates the greater ease with which engagement can be convincing at a local level, and also the benefits of a recognised local body (in this case the Neilston Development Trust) that is in a position to promote and lead such engagement.
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Although the engagement in Edinburgh took place at a similarly local level in terms of scale, there was no body equivalent to the Neilston Development Trust, the process of engagement was much more passive, with a much narrower process of invitation to participate compared even to Stirling or Inverness. The degree to which in Edinburgh the process failed to engage the key group of the landowners and in another part of the city unravelled altogether, suggests the lack of a pro-active policy towards public engagement in the City of Edinburgh Council. When ‘engaging’ at a larger scale, such as in Stirling and Inverness, clearly you cannot engage with everybody, so there has to be some process in place for bringing into the process as wide a range of relevant interests as possible. Both Stirling and Inverness seem to have worked hard at this, with Inverness in particular attracting a good diversity of participants, and with the events in Inverness being attended by a much smaller average proportion of Council staff/members to non-Council (17%) than the events in Stirling (35%). But engagement needs to extend beyond specific events – those invited need to feel they are part of the process, that the process is genuinely collaborative, and, through communication, that it extends to the wider community. Much has been written about community engagement in planning but more work could be done on recommending good practice for local authorities to engage their citizens in this kind of plan-making. Visioning is a process, not a statement As Stirling admitted, answering the question ‘what kind of place do we want to be?’ is not easy. And the resulting attempts at an answer can come over as misty-eyed, occasionally trite and potentially applicable to almost any place. The vision statement in Stirling’s Draft City Vision report reads – ‘A small, compact, intimately scaled, walkable and sustainable city surrounded by beautiful and sustainable villages in a world class landscape; a place which celebrates its natural and historic heritage; a learning, university city with excellent knowledge, research and culture assets; An exemplar of sustainable thinking and doing; a smart place that uses its assets well; a place that nurtures people; a place to live, to learn, to love, to be. A people place.’ Who wouldn’t want their place to be like that? But also how useful is this as a framework for action and development? Inverness’ statement [typography preserved from the original] reads – ‘can-do INverness’: where individuals and communities are enabled to fulfil ambitions that benefit them, their city and the wider area; where passion is matched to potential, and every action generates the best possible outcome
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But the question ‘what kind of place do we want to be?’ is still an important one for a local authority to ask. The difficulty in coming up with a convincing answer only confirms that the real value of visioning lies not in the end product of the vision statement, but in the process of working towards it and using it. A distinctive value of this process is that it engages council staff and members and people who live in that place in a positive, forward-looking discussion about values, and confirms that their voices count in setting values. It is hard to sustain attitudes like this in the process of planmaking and development: this underlines the need for a Council to be continuously pro-active in terms of engaging its residents, and not to see the publication of a vision or a document as job done. The fact that visions are primarily a process rather than a product is demonstrated by the paragraph that follows the statement from Stirling’s Draft City Vision given above: ‘To ensure a successful sustainable future Stirling must develop its strong sense of character and identity. Sprawl must stop, amenity must be improved, options and choice must be enabled, the “knowledge economy” must be encouraged, traffic must not dominate, and the city must become more cohesive and connected. This all needs to be captured in an integrated guiding vision, as part of the LDP process, which will shape the city’s future.’ This is more tangible, is focused on Stirling, gives a guide to action and confirms that the real meaning of ‘vision’ is not misty-eyed dream, but a practical plan that sets out a direction and can lead people in this direction. Story In place-making talk, professionals often use the word ‘narrative’ and of the importance of communities ‘telling their own story’, or of a plan telling a clear story. Although it is sometimes difficult to see how this translates into action, the word story does bring with it some key notions that are worth highlighting as part of a new approach to plan-making. To talk of a ‘story’ implies having a clear view of the process you are engaging in – something that has a beginning, middle and an end. To write or tell a story is also a creative act. Telling a story implies both story-teller and listener, and presupposes a clear language. Many stories also rely on pictures or images. Clarity, creativity, communication – these are all key ingredients in a successful visioning and engaging process.
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‘...it engages people who live in that place in a positive, forward-looking discussion ... and confirms that their voices count’
3. Spreading the practice The processes advocated and demonstrated by A+DS clearly have a value in relation to the process of preparing new plans. A+DS is however unable to work with every planning authority in such a direct way, so what needs to be done to enable planning authorities to do this work on their own and what role could A+DS play to spread this work as well as support it? Given its role as ‘Scotland’s national champion for excellence in placemaking, architecture and planning’, A+DS’ prime role must be to work with Government to convince planning authorities of the value of a process like this, and illustrate how this can be done. This is part of the purpose of this document and its companion papers. Local authorities may not have the full complement of skills in-house to undertake this process, but these additional skills can be brought in, the case studies show that the process can be carried out over a short time-scale, and that there is sometimes an advantage in having an external contribution to this process. Planning authorities however need to plan how they incorporate this work into their overall programme, and have to set aside the time and be prepared to fund the work. The case studies show how Edinburgh did possess such skills (and Highland Council may also have), but chose not to deploy them to the visioning process. The smallest local authority that A+DS worked with, East Renfrewshire, did not have the skills, but they (alone of all authorities) were prepared to buy in the skills of the Urban Lab and Urban Design Skills, within an overall process that the local authority were fully engaged with. Even if local authorities are not going to be in a position to have more design skills in house, they need to learn how to manage the overall process, learn how to inspire and engage different interests to contribute to the process, commission and work with urban design and planning consultants and produce the necessary reports and documents. A+DS are in a unique position to support this work – • • • •
They are a national authority with a national perspective, based on their knowledge of strategic and local plan-making, and current practice in Scotland They have a national and international overview of the context of planmaking related to place-making and architecture, planning and design They are independent of planning authorities They can point to sources of appropriate expertise and knowledge
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This indicates the kind of role that A+DS could take to promote and support this approach to plan-making – • • • • •
Show Government the way, and help Government persuade local authorities of the value of this process Promote the process and its value to planning authorities, for example through workshops for planning managers Maintain an overview of programmes and processes, and promote good practice, perhaps through a knowledge network Provide back-up information, e.g. lists of consultants, references to sources of information and support Do further ‘good practice’ research on aspects of this approach e.g. public engagement
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4. Conclusion While this study has made some caveats regarding the application of this approach to plan-making and its ability to be adopted more widely, the work piloted by A+DS clearly shares some of the characteristics of a culture that moves beyond the out-dated strictures of modernism and is able to care truly and holistically about the quality of place. Such a culture demands – • • •
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Processes that work well at local and regional scales, and can be supported by appropriate authority and responsibility at the appropriate scale Processes that delegate and spread responsibility from a narrow group of professionals to a wider group of voices, for both input and for decision-making Processes that do not always seek a technological solution, but that might instead consider ways in which behaviour might change, new relationships might be formed, and which re-make healthy connections between people and their environment Processes that are prepared to back individual, distinctive, one-off solutions
Amongst the talk of place-making it is clear that there is a growing interest in such a culture, but it will take the acquisition of different skills, the application of new processes and the spreading of a new approach, supported by political leadership, to create the system in which such a culture can flourish. An efficient planning process, skilled designers and architects and creative developers all have a part play in making better places in Scotland and providing better ‘homes in the world’ for its people; but all of these should be the servants of the thoughts and feelings of those people as to what kind of place this should be. A visioning process is one way of asking this question and involving people in providing the answer. The process continues in then putting this answer, and these people, at the forefront of the practice that then develops and maintains that place. Andrew Guest August 2011
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