Community Planning Philosophy to Policy 2010

Nicola Headlam8th March 2010

Lecture Structure

PhilosophyPlanning Theory The Policy Process

Some stories about policy…• Policy 1: Open Source Planning • Policy 2: CLG and the Community Empowerment White

Paper • Policy 3 : The Sustainable Communities Act

A Case Study : East Oxford Action

Handouts/references

Chapter 10 of Smith, Lepine & Taylor (2007)

Chapter 7 of IPPR Public Services at the Crossroads

Open Source Planning Conservative Green Paper Feb 2010

References : Allmendinger and Brownill

Nicola

• 4th year PhD student • Research interests; governability of

the Greater Manchester city region, policy transfer and innovation in regeneration and economic development, LAAs, MAAs

• Previously worked in Social Inclusion in Oxford

• Doctorate sponsored by CLES

Philosophy 101

• Ontology = what exists• Epistemology = how you can make claims

about it • Empirical = what you argue you

demonstrated about what exists• Action (including policy making) contains

implicit ontological, epistemological and empirical assumptions

• Unpacking and challenging these can keep you busy for a lifetime

Changed Perspectives…

Reality as a social construct

A Changed Perspective

(b) “state” as asocial system

(a) Dynamic systemsin a spatial dimension

The state as part of an overall system

Governability (Kooiman)

Roots

• Jurgen Habermas Theory of Communicative Action

• Jan Kooiman Governability

• Michel Foucault Genealogies, Fragments

These oppositions recur throughout philosophy and are differences primarily in ontology.

Governmentality• The semantic linking of governing ("gouverner")

and modes of thought ("mentalité") indicates that it is not possible to study the technologies of power without an analysis of the political rationality underpinning them. But there is a second aspect of equal importance. Foucault uses the notion of government in a comprehensive sense geared strongly to the older meaning of the term and adumbrating the close link between forms of power and processes of subjectification. While the word government today possesses solely a political meaning, Foucault is able to show that up until well into the 18th century the problem of government was placed in a more general context. (Lemke, 1992)

POWER

“Power may become the acid test of planning theory”

Flyvberg and Richardson, 2002, in Planning Futures, New Directions for Planning Theory, pg. 44

Habermas, Healey and Forester

Foucault and after

Understanding of knowledge generation based on

Communicative theory

Governmentality theory

Views on relationships between different ways of seeing the world

Powerful stakeholders are under moral duty to empower all stakeholders and find consensus

Powerful stakeholders attempt to frame that ways in which “neighbourhood renewal” is understood and to dominate other ways of seeing the world

Who is learning/changing

Everyone Those who see the world differently

Typical abstract system views

Constructionist/realist Positivist/realist

What are typical knowledge-generation strategies?

Deliberative and participative evaluation methods

Performance management and audit, centrally controlled evaluation

Question 1 – 5 min discussion

Which of the two approaches;1) Governability – communciative

action2) Governmentality Do you think rings

most true of your experience with power and authority and why?

Feed back with examples please…

So what?

• These very different ontological positions regarding what exists

• Belief that reality is socially constructed and therefore subject to influence

• By whom?• Leads inevitably into different strategies

for production of (valid) knowledge• Leads to different behaviour (on the part

of the planner)

The Policy Process

Social Learning…

• Who is learning? / changing? • What is the most appropriate

juncture for community involvement?• What do you want to change? Why?

“Do you think that the treasury is a learning organisation?”

Planning Policy

• Connects with LGMA, localism, public sector,

• Important as defined relationship where market and state meet one another

• And who else is involved… • “Stakeholders”

Question 2 – 5 mins discussion

• Who are the stakeholders in the planning system?

Whose “versions” are best or least supported and resourced?

Localism?

• “We are all localists now”• NuLabour LGMA as centralising process• IPC, etc• Subservience of UK local govt.• Structural problems

• “Postcode lotteries” • Equity and local discretion

Communities in Control

Hazel Blears : personal mission

Participatory budgeting etc.

Widely dismissed as gimmicky

Short tenure as Secretary of State

Open Source Planning

Page 8 section on “a new system of

collaborative planning”

“A truly local plan”

“Mandating collaborative democratic methods”

Sustainable Communities Act

Special

Case

Sustainable Communities Amendment Act

• The Sustainable Communities Act Amendment Bill will do the following things:• 1. Create a rolling programme for proposals so that more councils and citizens

can be involved in the Act’s process. There is great public interest in this.• 2. Involve Parish and Town Councils by formally including them in the process

when their Local Authorities choose to use the Act and by also allowing them to• put forward suggestions for government action via their County Associations. Very

many Parish and Town Councils were involved in the campaign for the Act but• are now becoming disillusioned that they have been omitted from the process. The

new Bill will prevent that.• 3. Involve citizens further by empowering them to petition their Local

Authorities to use the Act. Many citizens have been unhappy about the fact that they

• can only be involved in the Act if their Local Authority chooses to be. The Bill will give them the power to petition their Local Authorities to get involved, so that

• residents in their areas can too. Petitioning is already government policy.• 4. Proper publishing of the Local Spending Reports (LSRs). The former Minister

(Phil Woolas) said the LSRs would require government to publish a local• breakdown of spending and proposed spending by all public bodies, so people can

see how their money is spent. But the LSRs currently contain information• mostly about local government bodies. The new Bill would put this right.

So What? #2

• Decision -making• How are decisions taken?• How are views sought?• What are the mechanisms in play?• What are the interests?

(Bit of a) Case Study

• East Oxford Action SRB scheme• Read Sue Brownill paper Brownill, S.

(2007). "New labour's evolving regeneration policy: The transition from the single regeneration budget to the single pot in Oxford." Local Economy 22(3): 261-278.

• “Official version” http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/G02149.pdf