Planning in a Pickle

On the ResPublica blog (not a place I visit often) there is an interesting and accessible blog concerning the planning system. Written at the back end of last year, and therefore before the Localism Bill was published, it remains nonetheless a helpful contribution to understanding the dilemmas of 'localising' the planning system yet somehow avoiding the worst aspects of nimbyism, as well as how to encourage developers to engage in meeting local need more successfully than the claimed simplistic housing quotas. For instance, one comment about the blog suggested that Eric Pickles, by abolishing targets for new house building had simply stopped house building. 


One paragraph of the blog in particular caught my attention from an appreciative inquiry point of view:

"Yet when local people, politicians, planners and developers do engage successfully, before proposals are formulated and presented as a fait accompli, the process can be incredibly energising, reducing risk and increasing certainty for developers and communities alike. To empower local people and to fulfil the political ambitions Eric Pickles is shepherding, national and local government needs to invest in devising a new regime and new methods for engaging local people and economic interests in a process which is open, accessible, enticing and a prominent and valued part of how we live. There are models in Europe and some in the UK for an improved process. The problem is it takes increased resources which are unavailable to local authorities at present. There is also a case for independent means to be used to facilitate this engagement, which could be funded by interested parties in major development proposals. There also needs to be a clearer separation between the “ideas” and “visioning” stages and the consideration of actual proposals – the latter occupy most of local politicians and planners’ time when they are largely matters that could be dealt with by regulation, not political consideration. Public meetings need to be more successful and frequent, and the availability and communicative quality of information needs to be much improved."


This call to new "methods for engaging local people," "independent means to facilitate this engagement" and separation between ideas and vision just screams Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to me. The desire to have a high engagement, low cost, integrated means of shaping local development could be massively influenced for the good by using appreciative conversations to create strong topics, e.g. improving process, developing the local capacity to shape proposals or build consensus. These topics and the material from the conversations could then form the centre-piece of an appreciative conference, where the classic four stages of Discover, Dream, Design and Destiny, would frame a series of activities to achieve the twin goals of better process and strong planning proposals.


Elsewhere in the ResPublica blog's comments there are the familiar suggestions that engagement is not a good use of time and developers avoid it - perhaps with those twin deficit perspectives so strong, they become self-fulfilling prophecies in the current system. AI challenges this deficit paradigm and offers practical, well structured, proven methods to shift the conversations from problems to opportunities, from dividing lines to collaboration and strongly links dream to design and eventual destiny, i.e. delivery of change for an area or organisation(s).


None of this need be either expensive, time consuming in real terms nor an impediment to progress. In fact, the eventual outcomes are likely to be stronger, more sustainable and 'bought-into' by participants than other more formal and static types of consultation, which don't really 'engage' - I speak from experience here. Probity of course must be guaranteed


The independence required can be created by using an external facilitator, not of the key players, yet strongly allied to their goals for the process.The eventual formal decision-making will still, one presumes, be carried out by an elected body (?), though with a body of 'evidence' of a much more collaborative and appreciative nature as well as the usual technical matters.


The original blog post can be found here: http://www.respublica.org.uk/blog/2010/09/planning-pickle