This paper draws on a study of the politics of development planning in London's South Bank to examine wider trends in the governance of contemporary cities. It assesses the impacts and outcomes of so-called new localist reforms and argues that we are witnessing two principal trends. First, governance processes are increasingly dominated by anti-democratic development machines, characterized by new assemblages of public-and private-sector experts. These machines reflect and reproduce a type of development politics in which there is a greater emphasis on a pragmatic realism and a politics of delivery. Second, the presence of these machines is having a significant impact on the politics of planning. Democratic engagement is not seen as the basis for new forms of localism and community control. Instead, it is presented as a potentially disruptive force that needs to be managed by a new breed of skilled private-sector consultant. The paper examines these wider shifts in urban politics before focusing on the connections between emerging development machines and local residential and business communities. It ends by highlighting some of the wider implications of change for democratic modes of engagement and nodes of resistance in urban politics.EXTRACTO Este artículo se basa en un estudio sobre la política de planificación del desarrollo en el South Bank (la ribera sur del Támesis) de Londres con el objetivo de analizar cuáles son las tendencias generales en la gestión de las ciudades actuales. Se evalúan las repercusiones y los resultados de las denominadas nuevas reformas localistas y se argumenta que somos testigos de dos tendencias principales. En primer lugar, los procesos de gobernanza están cada vez más dominados por máquinas de desarrollo antidemocráticas que se caracterizan por nuevas agrupaciones de expertos del sector público y privado. Estas máquinas reflejan y reproducen un tipo de política del desarrollo en la que se hace más hincapié en el realismo pragmático y una política de realización. En segundo lugar, la presencia de estas máquinas tiene un efecto importante en las políticas de planificación. No se considera que la participación democrática sea la base de nuevas formas de localismo y control comunitario. Más bien se presenta como una fuerza potencialmente disruptiva que debe ser gestionada por una nueva especie de consultores expertos del sector privado. En este artículo se analizan estos cambios generales en la política urbana antes de centrarse en las conexiones entre las máquinas de desarrollo emergentes y las comunidades residenciales y comerciales de ámbito local. Para concluir, se resaltan algunas de las repercusiones generales del cambio para los modos democráticos de la participación y los nodos de resistencia en la política urbana.RÉSUMÉ Ce présent article s'inspire d'une étude sur la planification du développement dans le quartier de South Bank à Londres pour examiner les tendances plus larges quant à la gouvernance des grandes villes contemporaines. On évalue les effets et les conséquence...
In the UK, there has been a noticeable increase in public space management arrangements based on transfer and contracting-out of managerial responsibilities to organisations outside the public sector, whether in the shape of community or private trusts, tenants organisations, Business Improvement Districts, private companies or voluntary sector organisations. Recent cuts in local authority budgets have accelerated this process. Underpinning it there is an underlying assumption that publicness, however defined, can be guaranteed by means other than public ownership, funding and management, and that public sector ownership and direct control might not be in themselves essential features of spaces that are public. This paper reports on a case study research tries that investigates the impact on public spaces of the transfer of management away from the public sector. Based on nine case studies of public spaces in London under a variety of different management arrangements, the paper discusses how publicness is affected by the various contractual forms of transfer and what the main implications of this process are for different stakeholders and for the public realm as a whole. The paper suggests that contracted-out management of public space might not necessarily affect publicness negatively. However, it requires judiciously designed accountability mechanisms and clear decisions by all key stakeholders, including local authorities, about whose aspirations will be privileged and how other aspirations should be protected. In a climate of austerity and spending cuts, this requires a different kind of public management and of policy.
Although housing crises are rooted in both demand-side pressures and supply-side blockages, perceived regulatory impediments to building new homes are the softest target for policy reform. Critics argue that the English planning system's case-by-case consideration of development applications hands excessive power to existing homeowners, who regularly veto those applications, thereby generating uncertainty for the development sector, impeding supply, and amplifying wealth inequalities. Drawing on interviews with planning and development actors, this paper explores the potential of rules-based zoning, in which consultation is restricted to planmaking and compliant applications proceed 'automatically', to address the supply sub-component of the housing crisis.
In this article we examine the probable impact of moving towards 'up front' planning permission for housing schemes in England, on development pace and future housing supply. That examination draws on interviews and focus groups with planning professionals, house builders, land promoters and others involved in land development. We begin by exploring the apparent effect of planning and 'regulatory risk' on development, before examining strategies, including upfront 'permission in principle' (PiP), that claim the potential to reduce that risk and deliver greater certainty for the development sector. The broader focus for this article is how those compliance-based strategies might operate in England's otherwise discretionary planning system, in which the power to scrutinise and make decisions rests with local government and elected politicians, and what benefits they might bring.
This paper reports on a case study on the forms of urban public spaces governance that are emerging in the UK out of a rearrangement of governance responsibilities between local government, communities and private interests. Based on cases of public spaces in London under a variety of different governance arrangements, the paper critiques the dominant explanations of those processes and suggests a far more complex picture in which empowerment and disempowerment of stakeholders of various kinds happen at the same time, along complex lines defined by geography, strength of stake and representation of that stake in a formalised governance transfer contract. As the paper suggests, the resulting 'localisation' of governance, the devolution of governance responsibilities to those local actors with the stronger stake on them, does not intrinsically reduce the publicness dimension of public space, but it reshapes that notion towards one with a variety of 'publicnesses'-with their own governance dynamics and positive and negative consequences.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.