Future Planners: Navigating a Changing Planning Landscape

1. Future Planners – Notes for Intro • Kill the plan. • The exciting, creative responses are at street level. The planning system is incapable of scaling these up, of letting this emergence express itself. • People already extend into their back gardens. Where are the other spaces that these real-time expressions of creativity and interest can happen? • Talk of ‘engaging communities’ in planning is a democratic imperative. But it is one that risks being undermined without an exploration of what the democratic processes of the planning system look like. It needs an understanding of the communities of interest that feed into those processes – of their composition and their networked, unpredictable nature. • Tensions in the planning system and the planner’s interiority to it have led to shifts in planners’ knowledge advantage and autonomy. The planner’s complicity in the system, and that system’s links to a failing democratic model, mean that their position is politicised and they are unfairly blamed for the systemic unresponsiveness. • Where now for the planning profession?

2. Low-responsiveness of planning National interest Global interest Planner Plan Local Authority Private interest Community interest

3. Notes For - The Context - ‘crisis’ for the Planning Profession • Shift in Knowledge – away from expert technical knowledge / factual knowledge towards system knowledge. Legitimacy of on-the-ground, upstream factual / identity knowledge rises and shifts reliance on planner as expert. • Democratic shift: A move from collective to autonomous democratic ideals that feeds rights of diverse interests. Current democratic model not sufficient to cope effectively with that shift – it doesn’t satisfy any of the interests we have identified: Global, National, Local, Private and Community. • Loss of Autonomy – Professional used to be defined by its independence from the state interests and independent expertise. So now the knowledge-dependence shift and autonomy crisis leave the planner with potentially low level of agency. • Position in relation to L.A. • Constraints of government policy. Centralisation vs. local discretion. Political relationships. • Planning as ‘compliance’ • Development frameworks and how flexible they are relative to the unpredictability of all interests. • Kate Barker review - responsiveness • Relation to Planning system • Interiority – The professional has been internalised, a process which is perhaps a function of the representative democratic system and consultation model.

4. Legitimacy and the politicised role National / Global Command and Control Collective / Representative planning system democracy in planning Choice Participatory ‘Local’ Planning system Planning system Loss of Autonomy of Planner - Interiority

5. Notes For - Legitimacy and Politicised Planning System • Planning has become set into the space shown in the diagram. Not fully satisfying any of the interests and with the planning system absorbing the planner, the chances of working towards bridging vision gaps between these are slim. • The planner’s complicity in the system, and that system’s links to a failing democratic model, mean that planners are unfairly blamed for unresponsiveness to divergent needs. Each sector sees the fault lying in firstly obstructive planning system and secondly conflicting and obstructive visions of other interests. • The interests remain ‘disjunctures’. • With the shift towards autonomous democracy and the absorption of the role of the planner into the planning system, that planner becomes this politicised figure.

6. Unpredictability, the Plan and Probs of ‘Compliance’ Policy and Interest Divergence Private • Liquid free market interests • Resistance to regulation • Difficult to express Policy • Disinvestment from geographic community • ‘Imagined’ communities – geographic also imagined. • Fluidity in movement and unpredictability of ‘investment’ • Legacy of modernist planning on ‘competing’ cultural identities Community National Global • Population fluctuations • Policy change Unpredictability Agents' investment in that future is ill-defined and precarious • Boundary unpredictability • Ill-defined - Lack of articulation of single ‘ecosystem’ interests – Democratic failure actor time Responsiveness

7. Planning as ‘opportunity’ rush. • Divergent interests with potentially divergent visions of opportunity. • Currently there an ill-defined relationship between planning system, government policy and the planner. • Democratic model has irreconcilable tensions between national, local and global interests all loaded onto the planning system and planner, which is then seen as a failure. • Networks and Communities • These are ‘complex systems’ • Interests (private, community, national or global) draw on different histories to define themselves • The extent to which the command and control of city and rural planning has shaped peoples’ investment in their space / networks (geographic as networked too). • When talking about ‘community’ in terms a single interest one presumes it has a coherent self-image. This is problematised by what we know about unpredictability etc. • The relations of power between each interest mean that drawing equally sized shapes is for diagrammatic ease only. Democracy The current democratic model of planning is failing to address divergent global, national, community and choice agendas. Without an appropriate framework to reconcile diverse interests, we have defaulted to a disproportionate emphasis on "participatory" residential democracy, and evolved a planning system which is essentially non-responsive to macro and micro agendas. The project seeks to investigate alternative geographic management models which are able to accommodate the principle of autonomous democracy, self-rule at the level of the individual, through recognising the democratic legitimacy of choice, whilst reconciling autonomy with its causalities such as impacts on future communities and national / global ecologies. This project seeks to contribute to a debate on future planning through acknowledging the legitimacy of autonomous democracy and the co-existence of multiple divergent ethics and interests.

8. Knowledge Shift From Excellence to ‘Best Practice’ and Relevance. Systems knowledge- Networks, ‘tacit’ knowledge of planning system. Wisdom. The Planner ‘Excellence’ ‘Relevance’ Knowledge – Spatial planning ideas, spatial development. ‘Best practice’ The ‘planned for’.

9. Implications for Planning / Planner of knowledge shift • Knowledge 'required' to define interests potentially dispersed – cultural, geographic, economic. These are the building blocks of planning. Factual knowledge increasingly dislocated from experts. • Tensions between national and local interests – The 'local' doesn't feel the responsibilities to the national interests. Vice versa. • Monopoly over these interests dispersed. • Whilst this factual knowledge remains, the political conditions within which that knowledge exists still apply.

10. What has led to these interest being so divergent? In the spaces left by that legacy is the chance to tell new stories that question each interest’s histories and plans. Global National Private Local Community Planner People and relationships Horizontal and Vertical Knowledge Organisational

11. The planner could re-establish autonomy by using its systems and actor knowledge to operate horizontally across interests, playing a Socratic role. • Dislocating profession from planning system. • Rethinking its knowledge advantage / base and re-establishing its legitimacy and reputation. Moving horizontally across these interests. ‘Embedded’ knowledge of the inter-relationships between and within interests. For example, of how the ‘community’ interests are constituted; the political and power relationships between the two. To define these is to open up spaces to question, compare, disrupt and arbitrate.

12. Future of Planners (Maybe this slide could just feature the key words and the paragraph that follows the slide could feature the details filled in here – So, eg The slide could have ‘Socratic Planner’ but the paragraph the explanation) • New Spaces and Roles For the Planner • ‘Mediator’ and ‘Enabler’: Withknowledge of the political systems and agents in play, the mediator planner could use the system knowledge to facilitate the interest group to develop their visions and possible futures. ‘Embedded knowledge’ will be central. • ‘Judge’ – a ‘troublemaking arbitrator’. The ambivalence of the planner’s ‘neutrality’ could be used to place them as a ‘why’ agent with arbitration responsibilities. Their legitimacy and independence would have to be paramount. • ‘Socratic’ planner – A Socrates minus the answers. A ‘Why Agent’ - in the knowledge dispersed world, answers are easily found but a certain monopoly on prescient questions remains. Rethink divergent interests – move away from ‘inherent’ differences to retelling stories about commonalities and legacies that brought them about? (Points re Nimbyism vs Open systems) This is like a‘de-optimising’ agent – a ‘viral’ programme that deconstructs networks and opens them up to reworking and reordering. • ‘Public Entrepreneur’ – A ‘doer’, someone who can not just consult and • Knowledge • Systems knowledge – Being able to define and influence the networks • ‘Tacit’ knowledge • Actor knowledge • Traces of factual and technical knowledge although movement is towards this other knowledge which is ‘real-time’, on the ground and unpredictable. Vertical and Horizontal Knowledge • Move from geographic and technical knowledge towards network or system knowledge. • 'Tacit' knowledge of political networks, relationships in and between networks. • Embedded knowledge – the experience of the political systems at play across the various interests becomes crucial. • Autonomy • Building back autonomy through new defining new ‘space’ • Professional norms – independence, distinction from interests, national policy and local authority. • ‘Depoliticisation’ of the planner. • Dislocation from the planning system and particular interests. • Through becoming independent the planner can define and explore the systems and interests in play.