Sheriffs and outlaws: in pursuit of effective enforcement

Compliance has emerged as a key component of regulatory control, but has been subject to limited research. This paper examines compliance in relation to planning control in the jurisdiction of Northern Ireland. It draws upon a review of practice and procedure used to deal with planning enforcement cases and interviews conducted with professional planners. Many of the options considered emerge from the Review of Planning Enforcement System in England published by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (2002). The findings are incorporated with theoretical perspectives of regulatory compliance and provide a platform for more effective control of development.

Scheduling and Platforming Trains at Busy Complex Stations

We consider the problem of train planning or scheduling for large, busy, complex train stations, which are common in Europe and elsewhere, though not in North America. We develop the constraints and objectives for this problem, but these are too computationally complex to solve by standard combinatorial search or integer programming methods. Also, the problem is somewhat political in nature, that is, it does not have a clear objective function because it involves multiple train operators with conflicting interests. We therefore develop scheduling heuristics analogous to those successfully adopted by train planners using ''manual'' methods. We tested the model and algorithms by applying to a typical large station that exhibits most of the complexities found in practice. The results compare well with those found by traditional methods, and take account of cost and preference trade-offs not handled by those methods. With successive refinements, the algorithm eventually took only a few seconds to run, the time depending on the version of the algorithm and the scheduling problem. The scheduling models and algorithms developed and tested here can be used on their own, or as key components for a more general system for train scheduling for a rail line or network.Train scheduling for a busy station includes ensuring that there are no conflicts between several hundred trains per day going in and out of the station on intersecting paths from multiple in-lines and out-lines to multiple platforms, while ensuring that each train is allowed at least its minimum required headways, dwell time, turnaround time and trip time. This has to be done while minimizing (costs of) deviations from desired times, platforms or lines, allowing for conflicts due to through-platforms, dead-end platforms, multiple sub-platforms, and possible constraints due to infrastructure, safety or business policy.

Collaborative Planning in an Uncollaborative World

The purpose of this paper is to expose the concept of collaborative planning to the reality of planning, thereby assessing its efficacy for informing and explaining what planners 'really' do and can do. In this systematic appraisal, collaborative planning is disaggregated into four elements that can enlighten such conceptual frameworks: ontology, epistemology, ideology and methodology. These four lenses help delimit and clarify collaborative planning's strengths and weaknesses. The conceptual debate is related to an empirical investigation of planning processes, ranging from region-wide to local and from statutory to visionary in an arena where special care has been invested in participatory deliberation processes. The final analysis provides a systematic gauge of collaborative planning in light of the extensive empirical evidence, deploying the four conceptual dimensions introduced in part one. This exposes a range of problems not only with the concept itself but also regarding its affinity with the uncollaborative world within which it has to operate. The former shed light on those aspects where collaborative planning as a conceptual tool for practitioners needs to be renovated, while the latter highlight inconsistencies in a political framework that struggles to accommodate both global competitiveness and local democratic collaboration.

A New Concept of Interprofessional Education in Planning Programmes: Reflections on Healthy Urban Planning Project

Although widely debated, some of the defining professional characteristics of planners appear to be competencies in co-ordination, mediation and multidisciplinary working. Despite this, there is little pedagogical reflection on how interprofessional skills are promoted in planning programmes. This paper reflects on the experience of bringing together undergraduate students from medicine and planning to explore the concept of Healthy Urban Planning in a real life context of an urban motorway extension. This reveals a number of unexpected outcomes of such collaboration and points to the value of promoting interprofessional education, both as a way of increasing interest in some of the key challenges now facing society and in order to induce greater professional reflection amongst our students.

A New Concept of Interprofessional Education in Planning Programmes: Reflections on a Healthy Urban Planning Project

Although widely debated, some of the defining professional characteristics of planners appear to be competencies in co-ordination, mediation and multidisciplinary working. Despite this, there is little pedagogical reflection on how interprofessional skills are promoted in planning programmes. This paper reflects on the experience of bringing together undergraduate students from medicine and planning to explore the concept of Healthy Urban Planning in a real life context of an urban motorway extension. This reveals a number of unexpected outcomes of such collaboration and points to the value of promoting interprofessional education, both as a way of increasing interest in some of the key challenges now facing society and in order to induce greater professional reflection amongst students.

Bridging top down and bottom up: Modelling community preferences for a dispersed rural settlement pattern

This paper explores the scope to bridge top-down and bottom-up perspectives on spatial planning by drawing on EU-funded action research in relation to rural settlement planning in Northern Ireland. The empirical work is located within a review of planning theory that exposes a long running tension between the technocratic stances of government planners and the aspirations of engaged citizens. It demonstrates the operation of a large group planning methodology that delivers community preference with environmental responsibility as a participatory input into planning policy formulation. Transferable insights into the dynamics of spatial planning are identified.

A framework for assessing the vulnerability of food systems to future shocks

Modem society depends on complex agro-ecological and trading systems to provide food for urban residents, yet there are few tools available to assess whether these systems are vulnerable to future disturbances. We propose a preliminary framework to assess the vulnerability of food systems to future shocks based on landscape ecology's 'Panarchy Framework'. According to Panarchy, ecosystem vulnerability is determined by three generic characteristics: (1) the wealth available in the system, (2) how connected the system is, and (3) how much diversity exists in the system. In this framework, wealthy, non-diverse, tightly connected systems are highly vulnerable. The wealth of food systems can be measured using the approach pioneered by development economists to assess how poverty affects food security. Diversity can be measured using the tools investors use to measure the diversity of investment portfolios to assess financial risk. The connectivity of a system can be evaluated with the tools chemists use to assess the pathways chemicals use to flow through the environment. This approach can lead to better tools for creating policy designed to reduce vulnerability, and can help urban or regional planners identify where food systems are vulnerable to shocks and disturbances that may occur in the future. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Creating Shared Public Space in the Contested City: The Role of Urban Design

This paper examines relevant characteristics of the ‘contested city’ and the concept of ‘public space’ in that problematic context. It offers an appraisal of the historical and contemporary role of urban design in shaping social space and interrogates the feasibility of using urban design to facilitate more integrated cityscapes. It presents detailed case studies of two ‘contested cities’, Nicosia and Belfast, based on content analysis of policy and planning documents, extensive site analyses in both places, interviews and seminar discussions with policy makers, planners, community and civic leaders. The paper comprises four dimensions—conceptual, descriptive, analytical and prescriptive—and in its final section identifies core values and relevant policies for the potential achievement of shared space in contested cities.

In pursuit of parrhesia: an investigation into knowledge selection in inquisitorial planning practice

Drawing upon interviews with procedural actants from Public Inquiry and Examination in Public fora, I draw upon relevant theoretical frameworks to evaluate modes of discourse in inquisitorial planning practice. In the investigation, which is based primarily upon an empirical study, I focus upon the role of evidence, the selection and handling of multiple knowledges, the behaviour of participants, and the methodology underpinning the process. It is established that such arenas can be effective mechanisms for testing complex evidence; and suggestions are made for improved practice, procedure, and future research. I conclude by raising serious ethical questions concerning participant behaviour, particularly on the part of advocates and especially chartered town planners.

Re-imaging the Periphery: The Reproduction of Space in Cairo

This chapter examines Cairo’s path towards reassembling a modern spatial order in one of its oldest quarters, Bulaq Abul Ela, and the implications of this on the spatial experience of its inhabitants. The ambitions of space reproduction in Cairo are revealed during the attempt to engender a debate as to how this vision affected Bulaq’s riverfront zone as its periphery; how it was spatialised and to what extent the planners’ conception of urban space actually responded to the people’s needs when creating a new spatial reality. It uncovers the peripheral/central position that residents assume with regards to their living spaces to reveal new meanings, images, stories and places to replace the increasingly undesirable authentic fabric of Bulaq.