Conference report: Planning Resilient Communities in Challenging Times, UK/Ireland Planning Research Conference, Birmingham, 12–14 September 2011

Abstract

The 2011 UK/Ireland Planning Research Conference (UK/I PRC), jointly organised by the University of Birmingham and Birmingham City University, was held at the Birmingham Business School, located in the pleasant university surroundings of the city's leafy Edgbaston district (Figure 1). The conference came at a time when the Coalition Government's proposed changes to the English planning system had been experiencing substantial coverage in the national press, and so this left no shortage of topics for discussion. The 2011 conference theme was based around the increasingly vogue subject of 'resilience'. The University of Birmingham is currently running a major crossdisciplinary initiative on resilience and urban living, and so the conference theme is partially an outcome of a continuing research focus at the university. The organisers hoped the concept of resilient communities in the face of changing contexts would provide a broad thematic overview for discussions around various current issues in planning. As usual, the UK/I PRC brought together researchers with a wide variety of interests related to planning, governance and the environment. The participant list for the conference contained 203 names from a variety of institutions (Figure 2). Thirtynine of the delegates had travelled from outside the UK and Ireland, coming from 14 countries, including Russia, Canada, South Africa and Australia. Opening session The 2012 conference was opened by the geographer Adam Tickell, in his role as Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Birmingham. In a short welcoming address he drew upon Birmingham's industrial development history in advocating the suitability of the city as the location for a planning research conference. Mel Lees (Head of the Faculty of Technology, Engineering and the Environment, Birmingham City University) also welcomed delegates, referring to the 'great post-industrial city that is Birmingham'. Peter Lee (University of Birmingham) spoke of the 'very deep' foundations of Birmingham's local governance. Bringing the discussion closer to the present, he cited the city's current major regeneration projects - a new central library and a revamped New Street railway station, including the proposed HS2 high-speed rail line to London. However, recent riots and the dropping of the city from the Lonely Planet series of guidebooks (which had in previous years featured Birmingham as a contemporary 'chic' destination) were indications of the challenges still being faced. Plenary keynote addresses Simin Davoudi (University of Newcastle upon Tyne) gave the first keynote address, opening her presentation by suggesting that planners in England were currently experiencing a 'particularly heightened sense of [...] uncertainty', with attacks on the value of their professional contributions to society, and contended that planning is facing a crisis. She then explored the specific theme of the conference and delivered a scholarly exploration of the concept of 'resilience', its etymological origins, definitions and role in contemporary public policy debates. Resilience has recently begun to replace 'sustainability' as the latest planning 'buzz' word, she suggested - indeed, citations in the social sciences literature increased by 400 per cent between 1997 and 2007. But, like its predecessor, the precise meaning of 'resilience' when used in such a context remains 'slippery'. Drawing upon the conceptual apparatus of complexity theory, Davoudi then highlighted how resilience often implies the ability of something (or somewhere) to 'bounce back' from negative external perturbations. But this is often seen as a 'return to normal without questioning what normality entails'. Drawing a contrast to this common view, she outlined the concept of 'evolutionary resilience', where there is not a 'return' to a pre-defined normality, but instead an ability to adapt, transform and evolve in response to disequilibrium. …