Introduction: Place shaping, spatial planning and liveability

Abstract

The articles contained in this special issue are evolved versions of papers presented at a workshop held at University College London (UCL) in March 2008, and supported by the Regional Studies Association. The papers and discussions at UCL explored the potential of the new planning system in England to deliver a broader 'place-shaping' agenda with a view to achieving enhanced 'liveability' within more 'sustainable' communities, eco-towns, and regenerated neighbourhoods. It took as its main focus 'place and place shaping', the emergent processes of the spatial planning approach in England, and liveability as a central goal of the sustainable communities agenda. It mixed contributions from both researchers and planning and urban design practitioners. Of the 13 papers presented at UCL, eight are included in this special issue, covering the principal themes of the workshop. Although the term 'place shaping' has become strongly associated with recent planning and local government reforms in England - and with the desire to establish a mode of 'holistic local governance' able to deliver on several fronts and effect comprehensive and positive change in local communities - the term is not new. The idea that different processes come together to 'shape' environments is a central theme in human geography. However, coupled with a concern for urban governance in the 1990s, interest arose in how collectively urban actors organise the 'production flows', linked to the 'wider structuring dynamics of the economic and political relations in a society' (Hull, 1998, 327) that result in different spatial outcomes. From here, it was only a short leap to the idea that 'spatial planning' should play a more central role in influencing the actors and hence these flows: that whilst it should not abandon its traditional focus on land-use control (see below), it should look to new ways of 'shaping places'. In the last ten years, 'place shaping' has become the leitmotiv of planning in England, although many commentators contend that planning only shapes urban and rural places by virtue of its central position in the processes of holistic local governance (Owen et al., 2007). The term's use in policy circles has become common-place since the Lyons Inquiry's call to promote a 'wider strategic role for local government' (Lyons, 2007, Para. 14) that involves the 'creative use of powers and influence to promote the general well-being of a community and its citizens' (Lyons, 2007, Para. 2.43). In policy terms, 'spatial planning' is often understood as the fusing of powers to effect direct control over the physical environment (through its armoury of policy tools) with the broader power of local government to facilitate change by working closely with other actors: a return, essentially, to comprehensive planning. Place shaping, conflated with the idea of strategic spatial planning, is viewed as the antithesis of the un-ambitious, incremental planning of recent decades that had retrenched into regulation and lost sight of long-term goals (Cullingworth, 1996): place shaping might be considered a return to 'planning with vision'. Indeed, the key criticism of the planning process in recent years has been its claimed inability to 'shape' places, mainly because the forces and processes of change are frequently beyond the control of conventional planning intervention. What does this mean in practice? The UK planning system, as instituted in 1947, was concerned with 'plan-making' and 'development control': the business of drawing up land-use plans and policing development (i.e. material changes in land use) in accordance with these plans. But some things - the structuring dynamics combined with production flows (organised by other actors), that 'shape a place' and influence the vibrancy of its economy; generate social mix; or sustain environmental quality - cannot be steered directly by this form of planning (Wong et al., 2006). Land-use planning can create or deny opportunities (in some circumstances), but in order to directly or indirectly shape outcomes, other individuals and groups have to be engaged - often on a voluntary basis - and their programmes and investments brought in line with a vision shared by a range of partners. …