Public Engagement and Education (In)Justice Within the Planning Process
Abstract
Our proposal is concerned with the current planning process, and how we believe it is not a collective, knowledge just, transparent, equitable, or sustainable, model. Our solution, the Planning Collective, aims at resolving these issues through radicalising and empowering community input — or, put simply, by democratising engagement.
The Planning Collective is a national independent body, funded by not for profit grants, investments into planning, and tax revenue. It proposes two main interventions within the planning network and system.
The first part of the proposal is the creation of an independent advisor role for the community, the planning mediator. The planning mediator acts as the intermediate body between local authority and the community. Their role is to advise the community, and the local authority, on each other’s thoughts and queries surrounding projects and feedback. They would also attend events, such as public consultations, as mediators in order to ensure helpful discourse is had; this mediator would also take minutes to upload to the project’s planning portal in order to keep those in the community who could not attend up to date.
This role would be assisted by the Planning Collective’s online resource facilities. These would include: a database of the current available resources, and an online resource publication explaining the planning process and pertinent planning laws in standard terms. The standard terms publications would also be available physically within relevant planning and council buildings.
The second part of the proposal is the inclusion of a community assembly within the public consultation process. The community assembly is a pool of individuals from the local community, representative of the community demographic. Their role is to organise the community’s response, and consult with stakeholders and the local authority. The community assembly would be considered as a service to the local government, similar to jury service, and the individuals would be compensated for their time, and assigned as a rotation.
With the addition of these interventions, the planning network and the wider community would be able to have more meaningful conversation and debate, and the non-professionals would also be able to understand how their concerns might be relevant, and be able to articulate them more clearly. Through the planning mediator, education, and/or translation, the public would also be encouraged further to participate, allowing for more representation within the process. Through the community assembly, a more equitable community voice could be reached; voices that might be currently unheard or pushed down by a privileged majority could be able to represent themselves and the issues they face.
Introduction
In particular, this essay’s scope lies within the proposal’s addressal of the current education and knowledge injustice, and the advantageous relationship between the professional and the non-professional, found within the planning process. Through exploration into how public engagement and education appear in the planning process, the consequences of the current system can be explored.
There are, currently, limited ways in which the public interacts with the planning process, which can create divides between the proposed built environment, and the communities that inhabit these spaces and neighbourhoods post-completion. These divides can include: the construction of ‘unnecessary’ programmed projects, the demolition of existing used spaces (for private economic gain, or otherwise), the gentrification of areas and subsequent removal of existing residents, ‘bad architecture’, perceived misuse of council funding, etc. Architectural, civil, etc. projects also create both physical and felt boundaries within the areas they inhabit, which means there must be a level of responsibility for the creation of these objects as well. Not only is the community’s perception of their own territory important, but so too is the area’s economic prospects, market prices, and amenities available. All of these reasons should make the public an incredibly important stakeholder within the planning process, and yet, this is currently not seen in the way they are interacted with.
The main two ways in which the public can affect change in the built environment are through attendance of public consultations, and responding to planning applications (and pre-applications), both organised through Local Planning Authorities.[1]
Public consultations have been used across disciplines over the past 100 years, mainly when enacting policy changes in local governance. In architecture, the first large scale public consultations occurred in the 1930s and 40s, with regards to post-war reconstruction and housing solutions.[2] They used not only public opinion questionnaires, but more radical forms of public engagement (for that period of time), such as social mapping, public exhibitions, and social surveys.[3]
More recently, in 2011 while under the coalition Conservative-Liberal Democrat Party leadership, the Localism Act was introduced.[4] The Prime Minister, David Cameron, and Deputy Prime Minister, Nicholas Clegg, wrote of this intention in 2010, ‘the time has come to disperse power more widely in Britain today’.[5] This act was created to introduce measures to ensure: new freedoms and flexibilities for local government, new rights and powers for communities and individuals, a more democratic planning process, and local decision making.[6]
Currently, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) recommends, in its Plan of Work, that consultations and engagement with public stakeholders occur in stage 1 through 3, though this is only enforced in projects which meet certain criteria, such as location, size, notoriety, etc.[7] It is the Local Planning Authority’s duty to publicise the proposal, and determine the specifics of the publicity — whether or not a consultation is required, how much time is given for feedback, how widely leaflets, emails, etc. are circulated, etc.[8 9]
At a standard public consultation there is usually the attendance of the project architect, the planning consultant, the communications consultant (if hired), the client liaison, and the general public. The feedback gained from public consultations is recorded and published. Alongside public consultations, feedback is gathered in the form of comments through the local authority’s planning portal and this is given a time frame of 21 days or more.[10]
To summarise, public consultations are used in order to garner public feedback, and have been used historically in the same manner, with the same tools of information gathering. They are used either at the discretion of the client and planning team or used because they are a requirement for a specific project’s planning application. These consultations are in-person events, and only run for certain periods of time.
The Flaws Surrounding Current Public Engagement
Despite the history of public consultations being relatively unchanged and uncontroversial, they are currently seen as widely unhelpful for all parties involved. This viewpoint has been attributed to multiple shortcomings, which will be explored in the coming paragraphs. These include: their late occurrence within a project timeline, the physicality and time needed to even attend, the reluctance to change a design because of additional cost, delays to schedules, and/or client motives, and the inherent bias within the framework of the public consultation.
As mentioned previously, public feedback and consultation is recommended by the RIBA to occur through stages 1 through 3 — this is referenced as gaining information on ‘public stakeholders’. (In stage 0, there is mention of researching other projects which have gained approval, or disapproval, in order to decipher what these stakeholders might want or need, but no mention of actual public involvement.) With engagement and feedback usually occurring after crucial design decisions have been made, such as programme, economic viability requirements of size, scale, and number, project scope, etc. the community can feel like their input will have little or no value. This is known as the DAD method — decide, announce, defend — which describes minimal participation and forced acceptance of a current scheme.[11] This leads to distrust in the planners, and disenfranchisement.
With COVID-19 affecting in-person events across the world, the pitfalls of physical public consultations can be seen more clearly than ever. In the past, attendance of public consultations required the privileges of having spare time, access to transportation, or the affordance of being able to take time off of work, have a babysitter for children, etc. This means that the attendance of public consultations is inherently skewed towards those living directly next to the venue of choice, those who have flexible work hours, and/or funds, etc. which narrows conversations and portrays an incorrect picture of the community.
Finally, there is an inherent bias towards the economic benefactor — the client — through the planning process. It is in the client’s best interest, whether private or governmental, for a smooth planning process without delay to programme or timeline. Changes to applications caused by public engagement can cause large delays to these, which in turn can create massive increased cost to the project.
However, even if the issues mentioned above were to be addressed, could the public engage with the planning process meaningfully if they cannot understand it in the first place?
In 1969, Sherry Arnstein wrote of citizen participation and involvement in the American planning process and created this ladder, shown above, as a diagram showing where the power lies within democratic decision-making.[12] At the top, citizens are given control with their decision making, and at the bottom, the participation is made redundant by convincing the public that the idea is correct without engagement or discussion. The current consultation process, at best, can be described as placation — the consultations being difficult to interact with, leading to inequitable feedback — and at worst, informing — DAD, and the use of informative leaflets instead of a proper consultation process.
When examined further, this ladder’s display of power imbalance is only additionally exacerbated by the education injustice and knowledge gap we see between the public attempting to engage with the planning system, and the professionals working for the clients and the planning authorities.
Public consultations are exactly that, for the public, and yet are not framed around the public. As mentioned previously, these events are allowed to be hosted by both client-backed architects and client-backed planning consultants, both of whom have a vested interest, economic and otherwise, in pushing a project through planning. This puts the general public at an immediate disadvantage if they have problems with the project they would hope to be able to resolve through discussion.
Further to this, the client has access to their team of professionals in order to guide them through the entire planning process, not just through the public consultation stages. Through using a planning consultant, power is created in favour of the client through the existing relationship network with planners, etc. and through knowledge of the planning system and its loopholes. From the public’s perspective, it is hard to make a well formulated argument if you do not know what you are arguing against, which also further discourages participation.
Lastly, the planning process is not streamlined or transparent. Many of the decisions made are also subjective, which makes speculating on the built environment even more difficult.
The government has provided multiple ‘plain English’ guides with regards to the planning process — which have been referenced within this text — but it requires looking through an absurd number of websites and tabs in order to gain the full picture.
New Modes of Public Engagement and Knowledge
In order to better understand the public consultation experience, and the discrepancy and power imbalance in knowledge between the professionals and non-professionals, a survey was conducted with participants from and outside of the built environment industry. The main body of these interviews can be found in the Appendix, while the main points will be summarised here.
The survey found that, even when involved within the built environment industry, planning and public engagement is still too convoluted to follow. Most conversations discussed in public consultations seemed to be less engaged, or less detailed, than they could be, pointing to overall problems but unable to articulate why, how, or more specifics. Engagement and feedback also seems to be felt as limited, with only one case reporting minor follow-up.
Following the survey’s results, research was undertaken into current ‘radical’ modes of public consultation and education, with consideration of the points raised in the survey’s answers. The three case studies each seek to solve, or alleviate, different problems within the engagement and education topic.
The ‘urban rooms’ planning movement attempts to democratise the urban planning of towns and cities and educate the general public on the built environment. This movement advocates for each town and city to have its own ‘urban room’, a physical space in which the community can come together to discuss the built environment, planning, and the future of the urban fabric.[13] The urban rooms themselves are not prescribed or have set requirements for what or who is a part of them — some house tables for discussion, others house education resources, and some even have large 3D small-scale models of the area in question. In this way, whatever is felt necessary for useful conversation is used. Popularised recently in 2014 by Terry Farrell, research and interest into urban rooms has once again come to the forefront of planning, with lectures from UCL, and Croydon’s urban room shortlisted for the Planning Awards 2020.[14 15 16] Urban rooms have been praised for their education and involvement of the public within urban planning, but are also under threat from lack of funding.
Planning Aid England was set up as an independent charity in 1973, to provide planning advice and support to both individuals and communities engage with the planning system and the planning process.[17] It is still running to this day, with around 200 volunteers.[18] The aim of Planning Aid England is still to help the general public to understand their position within the planning process, and guide them through the process, similar to how a planning consultant might do for a client. This helps to solve the knowledge gap between the professionals and the non-professionals, while not burdening the general public with the responsibility of educating themselves on top of existing responsibilities. However, as it is charity-run and volunteer-led, it can only be involved with so many projects.
PlanX is a tool used to simplify planning enquiries for applicants, allowing them to check whether their project needs planning permission, and how much they will have to engage with it.[19] Applications can also be automatically submitted to councils, eliminating the usual difficult steps of navigating through online planning portals.[20] By working collaboratively with councils and their planning authorities, PlanX are also able to update their systems for changing policy guides easily, allowing for a more streamlined planning process.[21] The intention is to make the planning system more transparent by having its policies in a singular place, determining which are necessary through a flowchart. By making the system easier to traverse and understand, more people are likely to want to be involved in discussions surrounding it, and more people can hold it accountable.
Proposed Intervention
It is clear through research that public engagement and education regarding the planning process needs to be revised. Currently, the system is skewed towards those with economic power, whether that be clients who can afford consulting professionals, or those who have the time to give to public consultations, leaving communities frustrated with their thoughts ignored, or completely unheard.
Within the Planning Collective’s scope, it was propositioned that there would be two meaningful changes to the public consultation process to make it more knowledge just, accessible, and transparent. These were, the creation of an independent advisor role for the community, the planning mediator, and the curation of a database of educational resources, planning portals, policy documents, etc. These changes were proposed to give more power to the voices of the community through translation, education, and organisation. The planning mediator is to attend events alongside the community, on behalf of the community, and translate planning and architectural jargon into ‘plain English’. The mediator would also drive the conversation through the main points and relevant topics in order to keep conversation on track and relay these conversations to the wider community who could not attend. The Planning Collective’s archive would prevent the public from having to trawl through the depths of the internet in order to find a specific document, keeping relevant materials in a centralised database.
Through looking at Planning Aid England, it is clear that the Planning Collective would need to be an independent body, like them, to avoid the turmoil of shifting politics within councils. However, it would function as a non-profit organisation instead of as a charity in order to have salaried workers and not volunteers. This would also allow for more projects and communities reached, as it would not be hindered by limited volunteering time or efforts. As the mediators would only be needed for (relatively) short periods of time in the RIBA stages of work, this position could be freelance, with those in the built environment industry able to lend their expertise while maintaining a career/academic interests/teaching/etc.
Like PlanX has shown, the streamlining of resources available can massively improve the perceived transparency of the system, and stop redundant enquiries from wasting time. By collating and curating documents, videos, etc., research into the planning process would not be as daunting, and would encourage helpful conversations surrounding the build environment outside of the professional sphere.
Urban rooms have also raised the topic of incentivisation of engagement. Even with all of these educational resources provided, they might not be used if the general public is not incentivised to engage in the first place. This could direct the Planning Collective into how engagement is encouraged further than equitability, through fun activities, exciting spaces, and an increased emphasis on public engagement throughout the RIBA stages, instead of being limited to a couple.
Under current planning processes, a public consultation may only be held once. In our model, it is proposed that public engagement occurs at multiple points throughout stages 0 through 4, with planning mediators present, while education and materials remain available throughout.
Conclusion
Through attempting to resolve some of these issues within the planning process, the Planning Collective would help communities prevent bad and unwanted buildings from being constructed, and start conversations surrounding the current urban realm and its future, better use of space, and better design.
This has been seen already in the explored current modern examples of radical forms of engagement and education, but not to the scale at which it might affect towns and cities.
Through education, engagement, and organisation, the community holds a more powerful, equitable, voice to use for its own good. By levelling the knowledge gap, more useful discussions can be had surrounding the future of the build environment, with players that might not have necessarily been involved before. Finally, through public collaboration with design disciplines, future-proofed sustainable town and city urban plans, with the residents put first, can be made.
Appendix
The following questions were posed to a series of people involved with the planning system or the built environment in some way. They were asked to comment on any they felt were relevant to their experiences, and to add any extra thoughts they may have.
1. What has been your overall experience at public consultations? Positive/negative?
2. Do you feel attendance at public consultations affects meaningful change of proposals post-feedback?
3. Do you feel public consultations are advertised well and accessible?
4. Do you feel well-equipped with knowledge of the planning process, project itself, or network of power within planning, etc.?
“I’ve been to them as a guest, and been to them as a practitioner, so I’m not sure in which capacity I should be answering. We had one [a public consultation] for a very contentious church project in Lancaster, which only the church community attended, therefore probably was not well advertised in order to get only positive feedback from people invested in the project already. We had another for a Jesuit novitiate in Harborne, where many people attended from the nearby area, (the Jesuit novices had been out in the area handing out leaflets) and had absolutely no architectural input — the only comments being increased traffic, noise etc. during construction — so we assumed architectural apathy meant it was an okay proposal. Finally, our skyscraper project in Greengate was the most well attended, but mainly by the architectural aficionados at skyscrapercity.com and people at Place North West wanting to get the scoop on the plans for the media, so it felt more like a press release than a consultation. Again, it was advertised very well by Renaker [developer], except they perceive consultation as a box ticking exercise when it’s too late to make material design changes.
I remember though attending as a guest when I was an architectural student and being terrified of the public consultation. There happened to be a lot of shouting at the one I went to!”
Male participant, 34, Architect, Manchester
“I’ve never been to one, never been advertised to for one, and haven’t ever heard something significant coming out of one! It’s currently just a step in the RIBA work stages, in my eyes.”
Male participant, 21, BA Student, Preston
“I never went to any for work, but I’ve been to a few in Stratford out of curiosity. There ended up being nothing meaningful to them, though I did get mail about it though in my flat later, asking for feedback, so at least there was follow up regardless of whether or not anything came of it.
But I do recall having to colour the rooves a different colour in a green belt masterplan in preparation for a public consultation. I worked on to make it look less same-y — felt like a very specific comment that could’ve been made.”
Female participant, 23, Part II Architectural Assistant, London
“I’m currently involved in a planning application for an extension to our house in East Sussex, and there’s been a lot of reliance on our architect and his team. Thankfully it’s only small, so the only worry is neighbours kicking up a fuss because of National Park area status, construction, etc. but otherwise it’d have been difficult to manage without someone in the know.”
Female participant, 57, Lewes
“I think the way consultation is employed nowadays is more of a courtesy; there’s no real consulting as the design is already a fait accompli. Although you could argue it’s not much of a courtesy to inform people and deprive them of the ability to comment meaningfully.”
Male participant, 22, MArch Student, Cambridge
“Thinking about it, I’ve never been to one, which is a little weird! There was one for a hotel project I worked on and people were concerned about the height but that didn’t change the design. We just made more emphasis on why it was that height and not lower in the planning document.”
Female participant, 23, Part I Architectural Assistant, Manchester
Citations
[1] Planning Portal. About the Planning System, Getting Involved [Online]. Available at: https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200127/planning/102/about_the_planning_system/2 (Accessed on: 27 December 2020)
[2] make:good. (2017) A History of Participatory Design [Online]. Available at: https://make-good.com/a-history-of-participatory-design/ (Accessed on: 27 December 2020)
[3] make:good. (2017) A History of Participatory Design.
[4] RIBA. (2011) ‘Part two: Getting community engagement right’ Guide to Localism Opportunities for architects [Online]. Available at: http://www.fluidoffice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/0420-RIBA-Guide-Part-2.pdf (Accessed on: 28 December 2020)
[5] HM Government. (2010) The Coalition: our programme for government [Online] Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78977/coalition_programme_for_government.pdf (Accessed on: 28 December 2020)
[6] Department for Communities and Local Government. (2011) A plain English guide to the Localism Act [Online] Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/5959/1896534.pdf (Accessed on: 27 December 2020)
[7] RIBA. (2020) RIBA Plan of Work 2020 Overview [Online] Available at: https://www.architecture.com/-/media/GatherContent/Test-resources-page/Additional-Documents/2020RIBAPlanofWorkoverviewpdf.pdf (Accessed on: 28 December 2020)
[8] Department for Communities and Local Government. (2015) Plain English guide to the Planning System [Online]. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/391694/Plain_English_guide_to_the_planning_system.pdf (Accessed on: 27 December 2020)
[9] The National Archives. (2015) The Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 [Online]. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/595/article/15/made (Accessed on: 28 December 2020)
[10] Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government. (2020) Guidance Consultation and pre-decision matters [Online]. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/consultation-and-pre-decision-matters#Public-consultation (Accessed on: 27 December 2020)
[11] Forester, J. (1999) The Deliberate Practitioner: Encouraging Participatory Planning Processes. London: The MIT Press
[12] Arnstein, S. (1969) ’A Ladder of Citizen Participation’, Journal of the American Planning Association, 35(4), pp. 216–224.
[13] The Urban Rooms Network. About us [Online]. Available at: https://urbanroomsnetwork.wordpress.com/about/ (Accessed on 3 January 2021)
[14] Frearson, A. (2014) Architects ”don’t affect things very much” says Terry Farrell [Online]. Available at: https://www.dezeen.com/2014/03/31/terry-farrell-interview-the-farrell-review/ (Accessed on 3 January 2021)
[15] Tewdwr-Jones, M. (2020) Lunch House Lecture: Urban Rooms: How Stories of Place Can Unlock Engagement and Research, lecture [Online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAQr-I6nPgU (Accessed on 4 January 2020)
[16] Planning Awards 2021. (2021) Croydon Urban Room [Online]. Available at: https://www.planningawards.com/finalists/croydon-urban-room/ (Accessed on 7 January 2021)
[17] Royal Town Planning Institute. About Planning Aid England [Online]. Available at: https://www.rtpi.org.uk/planning-advice/about-planning-aid-england/ (Accessed on: 27 December 2020)
[18] Royal Town Planning Institute. About Planning Aid England.
[19] Open Systems Lab. (2019) PlanX beta [Online]. Available on: https://www.planx.uk/How-it-works (Accessed on 27 December 2020)
[20] Open Systems Lab. (2019) PlanX beta.
[21] Open Systems Lab. (2019) PlanX beta.
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