| PNUK
Launch Conference: Reflections
PNUK held
its first official meeting on 6 December 2006, at Oxford
Brookes University, and was well attended. The following
notes, compiled by Libby Porter, give an account of
the day’s events, and include some of our agreed
actions.
Opening
Plenary
We were very
pleased to welcome to the conference Hugh Ellis from
Friends of the Earth, Huw Morris from Planning magazine,
and Michael
Edwards from the Bartlett School of Planning. Unfortunately
Heather
Campbell from University of Sheffield was unable to
join us, as was Drew
Stevenson from the GLA.
Huw Morris
provided some thought-provoking opening remarks about
the
current level of ‘white noise’ emanating from
government which is posing
significant challenges for practitioners in terms of
implementation of a
new and ever-changing system. Huw threw down the challenge
of
communicating planning’s core values, and reasserting
these in the face
of challenges from both within and outside of government.
Hugh Ellis
also presented some challenges to pnuk and asked the
wider
planning community to respond to the ‘residualisation’
of planning into
dark regulatory corners. He challenged pnuk to find
ways of being an
alternative voice to corporate power, and to find political
defenders
who can help articulate planning’s core values
in the face of this
residualisation.
Michael Edwards
responded with some critical thoughts on the approach
of
‘defending planning’s patch’ and argued
that some of the neoliberal
arguments about planning being the cause of many problems
are in fact
right. He called for a more critical understanding of
the history of UK
planning and how it has, in some instances, exacerbated
social and
economic inequities. Michael challenged pnuk to find
what was
supportable in the raft of reform agendas currently
underway in the
planning system and see reforms such as the Barker report
as an
opportunity (as well as a threat).
The discussion
following these opening statements enabled participants
to explore some issues more fully. Many interesting
points and
questions arose, including:
•How do we pick the areas of ‘fightback’?
•Find critiques of neoliberalism and find the fractures
within this
supposedly dominant paradigm, and exploit them
•Why don’t we think of ‘planning’
when we think of environmental and
social justice?
•There is hope at the local level and in local
activism – let’s tap into
local energy
•We must make the right connections and allies
Workshops
After some
discussion about how the day might proceed, we split
into two
groups, one to focus on short term responses to the
coming challenges
(notably the Barker report), and the other to look at
longer term issues
and strategies. Both groups produced ideas and recommendations
and
reported back to the whole symposium in the closing
plenary.
Closing
Plenary
Short-term
(Barker response) group:
The group discussed what might actually be worthwhile
within the Barker
report, and that there should be some focus on recommendations
that are
supportable. The group also reminded us that Barker
is just one more
mechanism to ‘chip away’ at planning, and
we should keep our eye on
higher level initiatives and agendas. The group asked
what is the
distinctive contribution that pnuk can make to this?
Two specific areas
for action were recommended:
1.produce a planning balance sheet – by highlighting
the ‘winners’ and
‘losers’ of reforms/challenges to highlight
principles of redistributive
justice
2.look at the spatial implications for particular places,
for example
Barnsley vs Banbury – what will Barker’s recommendations
mean, what
impact will they have in different local areas? (potential
here to focus
on particular political constituencies for additional
impact).
The group
also noted that in our response to Barker we need to
take more
fundamental stock of the assumptions that the report
is based upon – for
example, the question of climate change is absent from
the report.
The group
determined four areas for immediate action as follows:
1.A Parliamentary briefing is planned for February (co-organised
by FOE)
at which pnuk could have a presence in order to present
responses and
alternatives
2.write an immediate response through a press release
and submit to Huw
for publication in Planning, and then do a further,
more detailed
response for the February briefing.
3.all pnuk members will need to provide material to
assist in this process
4.also seek to submit a longer article to Planning on
response to Barker
Long-term
group:
The group discussed a series of issues in which it was
felt pnuk should
be interested. Broadly, the group supported the idea
of planning as a
collective political activity, that should seek to challenge
the
corrosive nature of many contemporary agendas. Such
agendas include
individualism and the declining ‘publicness’
of public services, the
ideal of choice (and challenging the ‘mantra’
of choice by exposing who
doesn’t have choice), the use and abuse of ‘community’,
the dominance of
all things economic and especially the dominant use
of economically
derived measures to understand the world, undermining
of local
democracy, contemporary society’s obsession with
consumption, and the
‘flattening’ of planning by uni-dimensional
views of the world and of
what planning should be. The group asked a series of
challenging
questions: where are ‘we’ when an expert witness
is needed to support
marginalised voices in planning settings? how can the
network be an
alternative voice for planning? How can we revitalise
the social,
political and environmental significance of planning?
The group
commenced work on a statement of principles and objectives
for
pnuk as follows:
1.What are we trying to do in pnuk?
•NOT be a talking shop and NOT be cynical
•Provide an alternative voice to the market driven
view of planning and
specifically to revitalise the social, political and
environmental
significance of planning
•To provide an independent, critical perspective
on mainstream dogmas
•To promote principles of justice (etc) and ensure
that such principles
are on and remain on political agendas
•To provide an umbrella under which people can
act and debate
•To fight Treasury and corporate agendas when necessary
•To re-energise meaningful community or grass-roots
planning
•To express critical concerns, and provide a forum
for critical debate,
on key issues
•To set new (?) agendas, and expose hidden agendas
•To defend marginalised people (those who may lose)
•Re-inspire public interest in planning
2.How are
we going to do it (with no money)?
•Communicate better than ‘we’ have done
(as a planning community) in the
past (website?)
•Have a long-term strategy of action, or an umbrella
for action
•Get our hands dirty
•Write the alternative planning story, or the alternative
to Barker
•Challenge assumptions of the broadside attack
on planning, of which
Barker is merely the sharp end
•Undertake research to expose good examples, deficiencies,
assumptions,
agendas, winners and losers, inconsistencies etc.
•Prepare an advocacy strategy
•Set up a speakers panel available to anybody who
wishes to hear an
alternative voice for planning
•Set up an expert witness planning, to assist marginalised
groups (those
with little power in the process) to have access to
expertise (would
need to work with Planning Aid here).
•Find allies and high profile friends, and make
sure we work with others
eg RTPI, developers, politicians – find fractures
in monoliths like
‘neoliberalism’ and exploit them.
•Set up a campaign group for action
3.Things to do now
•Build a better website, and link to the website
other sites, plus get
ours linked to others (eg RTPI)
•Pnuk members to put pnuk web address at the bottom
of their email
signature address so that the network is more widely
known
•Set up a speakers and expert witness panel
•Get Progressive Planning magazine in all our University
libraries.
•Find allies and high profile friends
•Write the alternative story for planning –
set this up as our ‘principles’
•Prepare an advocacy strategy (possibly different
strategies for
different publics?)
•Publish pnuk related stuff soon in Planning Theory
and Practice (eg
Interface?), or possibly Planning Practice and Research?
•Get a profile – media, schools, planning
magazine.
•Have annual events (meetings for pnuk members,
but also wider events)
•Seek a meeting with DCLG and Treasury regarding
our concerns
•Think further about research agendas
•Think further about teaching issues
Following
these reports back from the smaller groups, the closing
plenary made a series of decisions. A steering group
and three
sub-groups were established. Their membership and areas
for immediate
action are set out below.
PNUK STEERING
GROUP
Members: Tim Marshall, Libby Porter, Andy Inch, Eeva
Berglund, Francesca
Sartorio (Andy will convene)
Tasks
•Organise six monthly pnuk meetings (June and December)
and during every
second one of those events (ie every 12 months) include
an ‘action’ (eg
visit a particular area, assist in a campaign etc)
•Write the alternative story for planning and prepare
statement of
principles
•Continue to coordinate the email list
•Build links with external bodies, practitioners
and so on
•Coordinate any additional overarching PNUK issues
EDUCATION,
RESEARCH AND COMMUNICATION SUBGROUP
Andy Inch, Nigel Taylor, Yas Beebeejaun, Francesca Sartorio,
Navshad
Tahsildar, Kurian (Yas will convene)
Tasks
•Set up a speakers panel, and advertise it, plus
an expert witness panel?
•Get a speaker at the Planning Summer School
•Coordinate, update etc the website
•Set up a wiki open blog for pnuk members via the
website
•Look at student membership and representation
from Universities
•Prepare FAQ sheet for professionals
•Run a student competition to generate debate and
critical ideas (prize
to get published in Planning)
•Prepare resources for students about critical
planning
•Get a profile for pnuk – schools, media,
Planning magazine?
•Think about research agendas for pnuk
•Think about teaching issues for pnuk
CAMPAIGN
AND ADVOCACY SUBGROUP
Members: Libby Porter, Katie McClymont, Massimo Andreis-Allamandola
(Libby to convene)
Tasks
•Help Barker response group with getting press
releases prepared and
distributed, and help coordinate the Parliamentary briefing
in February
and pnuk’s representation to this
•Prepare an advocacy strategy
•Coordinate getting Progressive Planning magazine
in library
•Find allies and high profile friends
•Seek a meeting with DCLG and Treasury regarding
our concerns
•Investigate the publication of pnuk related stuff
soon in Planning
Theory and Practice (eg Interface?), or possibly Planning
Practice and
Research?
•General publicity stuff
BARKER
RESPONSE GROUP
Members: Michael Edwards, Susie Nelson, Bob Colenutt,
Hugh Ellis, John
Glasson, Juliet Carpenter
Tasks
•Coordinate and organise pnuk attendance at the
Parliamentary briefing
in February to present responses and alternatives to
Barker
•write an immediate response through a press release
and submit to
Planning, and then do a further, more detailed response
for the February
briefing
•all pnuk members will need to provide material
to assist in this process
•also seek to submit a longer article to Planning
on response to Barker
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