Beyond tokenism? Community-led planning and rational choices: findings from participants in local agenda-setting at the neighbourhood scale in England

The article confronts some key issues raised in the literature on public participation via a series of interrogatory questions drawn from rational choice theory. These are considered in relation to the design and process of public participation opportunities in planning and wider processes of local governance at the neighbourhood scale. In doing this, the article draws on recent research that has looked in some depth at a form of community-led planning (CLP) in England. The motives and expectations of participants, the abilities of participants, as well as the conditions in which participation takes place are seen as important factors. It is contended that the issues raised by rational choice theory are pertinent to emerging efforts to engage communities. As such, the article concludes that advocates of public participation or community engagement should not be afraid of responding to the challenges posed by questions of motive and reward of participants if lasting and worthwhile participation is to be established. Indeed, questions such as 'what's in it for me?' should be regarded as legitimate, necessary and indeed standard, in order to co-devise meaningful and durable participation opportunities and appropriate institutional environments. However, it is also maintained that wider considerations and capacity questions will also need to be confronted if participation is to become embedded as part of participatory neighbourhood-scale planning.

The engagement of territorial knowledge communities with European spatial planning and the territorial cohesion debate: a Baltic perspective

Recent, dramatic spatial development trends have contributed to the consolidation of a unique territorial governance landscape in the Baltic States. The paper examines the transformation of this evolving institutional landscape for planning practice and knowledge, which has been marked by the disintegration of Soviet institutions and networks, the transition to a market-based economy and the process of accession to the EU. It explores the evolution of territorial knowledge channels in the Baltic States, and the extent and nature of the engagement of actors' communities with the main knowledge arenas and resources of European spatial planning (ESP). The paper concludes that recent shifts in the evolution of these channels suggest the engagement of ESP has concentrated among epistemic communities at State and trans-national levels of territorial governance. The limited policy coordination across a broader spectrum of diverse actors is compounded by institutionally weak and fragmented professional communities of practice, fragmented government structures and marginalized advocacy coalitions.

Integrating science into humanitarian and development planning and practice to enhance community resilience

There has been an increased emphasis upon the application of science for humanitarian and development planning, decision-making and practice; particularly in the context of understanding, assessing and anticipating risk (e.g. HERR, 2011). However, there remains very little guidance for practitioners on how to integrate sciences they may have had little contact with in the past (e.g. climate). This has led to confusion as to which ‘science’ might be of use and how it would be best utilised. Furthermore, since this integration has stemmed from a need to be more predictive, agencies are struggling with the problems associated with uncertainty and probability. Whilst a range of expertise is required to build resilience, these guidelines focus solely upon the relevant data, information, knowledge, methods, principles and perspective which scientists can provide, that typically lie outside of current humanitarian and development approaches. Using checklists, real-life case studies and scenarios the full guidelines take practitioners through a five step approach to finding, understanding and applying science. This document provides a short summary of the five steps and some key lessons for integrating science.

‘Pre-plan mapping’, networks, capital resources and community strategies in England

In this working paper we discuss current attempts to engage communities in planning policy formulation in the UK. In particular we focus on the preparation of Community Strategies (CS) in England to inform local public policy and the wider proposals recently published by the UK government to move towards enhanced community engagement in planning (DTLR, 2001). We discuss how such strategies could be operationalised with a conceptual framework developed following ideas derived from ANT (cf. Murdoch, 1997, 1998; Selman, 2000; Parker & Wragg, 1999; Callon, 1986, 1998) and the ‘capitals’ literature (Lin, 2002; Fine, 2001; Selman, 2000; Putnam, 1993). We see this as an expression of neo-pragmatic planning theory, (Hoch, 1996; Stein & Harper, 2000) to develop a form of ‘pre-plan mapping’.

Bottom-up planning and the future of planning education in India

The article discusses normative guidelines for reorienting planning education in India within the context of the immensely influential Constitutional Amendment Act of 1993. First, it briefly sketches the status of planning education at present in India, in relation to the role of planners in planning practice. It then descibes the changes that have taken place in general, following the Constitutional Amendment Act, dwelling more on the specific changes within the State of Kerala. The implications of these for planning education in general are then discussed normatively, highlighting three areas that need immediate attention from the planning academic community.

The relationship between well-being, future planning and intentions to utilise intervention programmes: what can be learned from homeless service users?

There has been an increasing interest in the impact of individual well-being on the attitudes and actions of people receiving services designed to offer support. If well-being factors are important in the uptake and success of service programmes it is important that the nature of the relationships involved is understood by service designers and implementers. As a contribution to understanding, this paper examines the impact of well-being on the uptake of intervention programmes for homeless people. From the literature on well-being a number of factors are identified that contribute towards overall well-being, which include personal efficacy and identity, but also more directly well-being can be viewed as personal or group/collective esteem. The impact of these factors on service use is assessed by means of two studies of homelessness service users, comparing the implementation of two research tools: a shortened and a fuller one. The conclusions are that the factors identified are related to service use. The higher the collective esteem – esteem drawn from identification with services and their users and providers – and the less that they feel isolated, the more benefits that homeless people will perceive with service use, and in turn the more likely they are to be motivated to use services. However, the most important factors in explaining service use are a real sense that it is appropriate to accept social support from others, a rejection of the social identity as homeless but a cultivation of being valued as part of a non-homeless community, and a positive perception of the impact of the service.

Public values and community energy: lessons from the US and UK

This paper examines some of the normative aspects of community energy programmes — defined here as decentralized forms of energy production and distributed energy technologies where production decisions are made as close as possible to sources of consumption. Such projects might also display a degree of separation from the formal political process. The development of a community energy system often generates a great deal of debate about both the degree of public support for such programmes and the values around which programmes ought to be organized. Community energy programmes also raise important issues regarding the energy choice problem, including questions of process, that is, by whom a project is developed and the influence of both community and exogenous actors, as well as certain outcome issues regarding the spatial and social distribution of energy. The case studies, drawn from community energy programmes in both the United States and the United Kingdom, allow for a careful examination of all of these factors, considering in particular the complex interplay and juxtaposition between the ideas of 'public value' and 'public values'.

Stakeholder perceptions of event attribution in the loss and damage debate

In 2013 the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for loss and damage (L&D) associated with climate change impacts was established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). For scientists, L&D raises ques- tions around the extent that such impacts can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change, which may generate complex results and be controversial in the policy arena. This is particularly true in the case of probabilistic event attribution (PEA) science, a new and rapidly evolving field that assesses whether changes in the probabilities of extreme events are attributable to GHG emissions. If the potential applications of PEA are to be considered responsibly, dialogue between scientists and policy makers is fundamental. Two key questions are considered here through a literature review and key stakeholder interviews with representatives from the science and policy sectors underpinning L&D. These provided the opportunity for in-depth insights into stakeholders’ views on firstly, how much is known and understood about PEA by those associated with the L&D debate? Secondly, how might PEA inform L&D and wider climate policy? Results show debate within the climate science community, and limited understanding among other stakeholders, around the sense in which extreme events can be attributed to climate change. However, stake- holders do identify and discuss potential uses for PEA in the WIM and wider policy, but it remains difficult to explore precise applications given the ambiguity surrounding L&D. This implies a need for stakeholders to develop greater understandings of alternative conceptions of L&D and the role of science, and also identify how PEA can best be used to support policy, and address associated challenges.

Adaptive project planning and management based on best practices - COBRA system

Planning a project with proper considerations of all necessary factors and managing a project to ensure its successful implementation will face a lot of challenges. Initial stage in planning a project for bidding a project is costly, time consuming and usually with poor accuracy on cost and effort predictions. On the other hand, detailed information for previous projects may be buried in piles of archived documents which can be increasingly difficult to learn from the previous experiences. Project portfolio has been brought into this field aiming to improve the information sharing and management among different projects. However, the amount of information that could be shared is still limited to generic information. This paper, we report a recently developed software system COBRA to automatically generate a project plan with effort estimation of time and cost based on data collected from previous completed projects. To maximise the data sharing and management among different projects, we proposed a method of using product based planning from PRINCE2 methodology. (Automated Project Information Sharing and Management System -�COBRA) Keywords: project management, product based planning, best practice, PRINCE2

An application of life-cycle assessment for environmental planning and management: the potential environmental and human health impacts of growing genetically-modified herbicide-tolerant sugar beet

Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used to assess the potential environmental and human health impacts of growing genetically-modified (GM), herbicide-tolerant sugar beet in the UK and Germany compared with conventional sugar beet varieties. The GM variety results in lower potential environmental impacts on global warming, airborne nutrification, ecotoxicity (of soil and water) and watercourse enrichment, and lower potential human health impacts in terms of production of toxic particulates, summer smog, carcinogens and ozone depletion. Although the overall contribution of GM sugar beet to reducing harmful emissions to the environment would be relatively small, the potential for GM crops to reduce pollution from agriculture, including diffuse water pollution, is highlighted.

Arthropod diversity and community structure in relation to land use in the mekong delta, vietnam

Declining biodiversity in agro-ecosystems, caused by intensification of production or expansion of monocultures, is associated with the emergence of agricultural pests. Understanding how land-use and management control crop-associated biodiversity is, therefore, one of the key steps towards the prediction and maintenance of natural pest-control. Here we report on relationships between land-use variables and arthropod community attributes (for example, species diversity, abundance and guild structure) across a diversification gradient in a rice-dominated landscape in the Mekong delta, Vietnam. We show that rice habitats contained the most diverse arthropod communities, compared with other uncultivated and cultivated land-use types. In addition, arthropod species density and Simpson's diversity in flower, vegetable and fruit habitats was positively related to rice cover in the local landscape. However, across the landscape as a whole, reduction in heterogeneity and the amount of uncultivated cover was associated, generally, with a loss of diversity. Furthermore, arthropod species density in tillering and flowering stages of rice was positively related to crop and vegetation richness, respectively, in the local landscape. Differential effects on feeding guilds were also observed in rice-associated communities with the proportional abundance of predators increasing and the proportional abundance of detritivores decreasing with increased landscape rice cover. Thus, we identify a range of rather complex, sometimes contradictory patterns concerning the impact of rice cover and landscape heterogeneity on arthropod community attributes. Importantly, we conclude that that land-use change associated with expansion of monoculture rice need not automatically impact diversity and functioning of the arthropod community.