Planning problems of town, city, and region; papers and discussions.

"Twenty years of city planning progress in the United States [by] John Nolen": 19th, p. 1-44.

Augmenting public participation : enhancing planning outcomes through the use of social media and web 2.0

Social media and web 2.0 tools offer opportunities to devise novel participation strategies that can engage previously difficult to reach as well as new segments of society in urban planning. This paper examines participatory planning in the four local government areas of Brisbane City Council, Gold Coast City Council, Redland City Council, and Toowoomba Regional Council, all situated in South East Queensland, Australia. The paper discusses how social media and web 2.0 tools can deliver a more engaging planning experience to citizens, and investigates local government’s current use and receptiveness to social media tools for plan making and community engagement. The study’s research informed the development of criteria to assess the level of participation reached through the current use of social media and web 2.0 in the four local government areas. This resulted in an adaptation of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Toolbox to integrate these new tools which is being presented to encourage further discussion and evaluation by planning professionals.

Supporting mindful planners in a mindless system: Limitations to the emotional turn in planning practice

Despite widespread acknowledgment within planning scholarship that emotion – both present in knowledge and a form of knowledge – is integral to lived experience and the judgement of planners, it is often sidelined within planning practice. The extent to which mainstream planning has been able or willing to accommodate emotions remains constrained and the emotions of planners and the public remain an unacknowledged but pervasive presence. Antonio Ferreira recently highlighted in this journal the importance of attending to emotions at the level of the individual planner through the concept of mindfulness. We argue this approach must be complemented by an acknowledgement of the structural and institutional limitations of including emotions in planning practice. Drawing from the emotional geographies literature to describe a social-spatial conceptualisation of emotion, we highlight ontological and practical tensions associated with the achievement of the ‘emotional turn’ and advance a more purposeful engagement with emotion in mainstream planning practice.

Residential Differentiation, Housing Policy and Urban Planning in the Transformation from State Socialism to a Market Economy: The Case of Tallinn

The thesis examines urban issues arising from the transformation from state socialism to a market economy. The main topics are residential differentiation, i.e., uneven spatial distribution of social groups across urban residential areas, and the effects of housing policy and town planning on urban development. The case study is development in Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, in the context of development of Central and Eastern European cities under and after socialism. The main body of the thesis consists of four separately published refereed articles. The research question that brings the articles together is how the residential (socio-spatial) pattern of cities developed during the state socialist period and how and why that pattern has changed since the transformation to a market economy began. The first article reviews the literature on residential differentiation in Budapest, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw under state socialism from the viewpoint of the role of housing policy in the processes of residential differentiation at various stages of the socialist era. The paper shows how the socialist housing provision system produced socio-occupational residential differentiation directly and indirectly and it describes how the residential patterns of these cities developed. The second article is critical of oversimplified accounts of rapid reorganisation of the overall socio-spatial pattern of post-socialist cities and of claims that residential mobility has had a straightforward role in it. The Tallinn case study, consisting of an analysis of the distribution of socio-economic groups across eight city districts and over four housing types in 1999 as well as examining the role of residential mobility in differentiation during the 1990s, provides contrasting evidence. The third article analyses the role and effects of housing policies in Tallinn s residential differentiation. The focus is on contemporary post-privatisation housing-policy measures and their effects. The article shows that the Estonian housing policies do not even aim to reduce, prevent or slow down the harmful effects of the considerable income disparities that are manifest in housing inequality and residential differentiation. The fourth article examines the development of Tallinn s urban planning system 1991-2004 from the viewpoint of what means it has provided the city with to intervene in urban development and how the city has used these tools. The paper finds that despite some recent progress in planning, its role in guiding where and how the city actually developed has so far been limited. Tallinn s urban development is rather initiated and driven by private agents seeking profit from their investment in land. The thesis includes original empirical research in the three articles that analyse development since socialism. The second article employs quantitative data and methods, primarily index calculation, whereas the third and the fourth ones draw from a survey of policy documents combined with interviews with key informants. Keywords: residential differentiation, housing policy, urban planning, post-socialist transformation, Estonia, Tallinn

Third Party Rights of Appeal in Planning: Reflecting on the Experience of the Republic of Ireland

The potential introduction of third party planning appeals in the UK as a result of the Human Rights Act 1998 has increased interest in those countries that have established third party appeal procedures. The closest of these is the Republic of Ireland, which has had a third party right of appeal since 1963. This paper describes the impact these appeals have had on planning in the Irish Republic by explaining the appeal process, describing past trends and providing background information on the parties that engage in third party appeals. An overall assessment of the Republic’s experience is given and the paper concludes with a few comparative remarks relating this to planning and rights discourse in the UK

Regulatory Planning for Economic Development in the Countryside

This article examines the interaction between development control and economic development in the countryside within the context of contemporary debates on shifts in the agricultural sector from productivism to multi-functionality. Using planning application decisions from the case of Northern Ireland for the period 1994–95 to 2005–06, together with insights from high-level key informants with planning, economic development and environmental management expertise, the article critiques a perception that regulatory planning is in line with rural development ambitions to foster a multi-functional countryside. While the quantitative data indicate a high approval rate for economic development projects, the qualitative evidence points to limitations within the policy content and operational practices of the planning system. The article argues that regulatory planning must engage more deeply with rural development objectives.

Efficacy and ethics:An investigation into the role of ethics, legitimacy and power in planning

The main thrust of the article is to consider the role of ethics, legitimacy, power and evidence-based policy in planning practice. The laboratory for the investigation is provided by developments in policymaking and implementation in the jurisdiction of Northern Ireland. In this context, each of the key themes is developed to establish a conceptual framework and the emerging issues are subsequently explored in an empirical investigation which deals with policy formulation and implementation, enabling lessons to be learnt about the motivations, tactics and strategies of the various participants in the process.

Sexing up the city in the international beauty contest: the performative nature of spatial planning and the fictive spectacle of place branding

This paper responds to recent calls for more academic research and critical discussion on the relationship between spatial planning and city branding. Through the lens of Liverpool, the article analyses how key planning projects have delivered major transformations in the city's built environment and cultural landscape. More specifically, in concentrating on the performative nature of spatial planning it reveals the physical, symbolic and discursive re-imaging of Liverpool into a 'world class city'. Another aspect of the paper presents important socioeconomic datasets and offers a critical reading of the re-branding in showing how it presents an inaccurate representation of Liverpool. The evidence provided indicates that a more accurate label for Liverpool is a polarised and divided city, thereby questioning the fictive spectacle of city branding. Finally, the paper ends with some critical commentary on the role of spatial planning as an accessory to the sophistry of city branding.

In pursuit of regulatory compliance: a study of planning enforcement structures in Northern Ireland

As devolution expands across the UK, Northern Ireland (NI) is witnessing the development of new architecture to devolve planning powers. With serious criticism targeted at the legislative provisions for enforcement, this investigation endeavours to assess the robustness of the planning framework through a synergy of theory, law and practice. The paper demonstrates the value of theory in not only supplying a lens that allows both legislative frameworks and praxis to be deconstructed, but also in enabling the identification and scrutiny of underlying problems that pervade the system.