The New Spatial Planning Providing a critical examination of how devolution has influenced the ways that practices of planning have evolved, this book looks at how planning has sought to become more strategic, more spatial and better integrated with other policy sectors. It challenges traditional views of what planning is about and how best to study it. The book highlights the new spaces of planning – the devolved nations of the UK and a variety of new sub-national spaces. Arguing that the reality of spatial planning is that it is producing better quality paper plans whilst still delivering poor quality physical development on the ground, this book takes a provocative tone questioning whether spatial planning is having the kinds of impacts its advocates would wish. Original research undertaken across Ireland and the devolved nations and regions of the UK is the base of the book, which emphasises the divergence of planning practices that devolution has allowed to unfold. Separate chapters present cases of spatial planning experience in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and two English regions – the Thames Gateway and the Leeds City Region. New insights into spatial planning, regeneration and territorial politics are clearly presented here, resulting in an invaluable source book on the first decade or so of planning experience post-devolution for researchers and students interested in urban and regional studies, geography and planning. Graham Haughton is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Hull. His research is in the areas of spatial planning, sustainable urban development, local and regional economic development, and urban and regional regeneration. Phil Allmendinger is Professor of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge. His research is in the area of planning and development. David Counsell is Lecturer in Planning and Sustainable Development at University College Cork. His research is in spatial planning, sustainable development and planning and environmental planning. Geoff Vigar is Director of the Global Urban Research Unit at the University of Newcastle. His research focuses on governance explored through analyses of both spatial planning practice and infrastructure policy. The New Spatial Planning Territorial management with soft spaces and fuzzy boundaries Graham Haughton, Phil Allmendinger, David Counsell and Geoff Vigar First published 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Graham Haughton, Phil Allmendinger, David Counsell and Geoff Vigar All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The new spatial planning : territorial management with soft spaces and fuzzy boundaries / Graham Haughton ... [et al.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Regional planning–Great Britain. 2. Land use–Great Britain–Planning. 3. Social planning–Great Britain. 4. Decentralization in government–Great Britain. 5. Regionalism–Great Britain. I. Haughton, Graham. HT395.G7N46 2010 307.1’2—dc22 2009022361 ISBN 0-203-86442-5 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0–415–48335–2 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–48336–0 (pbk) ISBN10: 0–203–86442–5 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–48335–3 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–48336–0 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–86442–5 (ebk) Contents List of figures vii List of tables viii Preface and acknowledgements ix 1 The new spatial planning: territorial management and devolution 1 2 Rethinking planning: state restructuring, devolution and spatial strategies 24 3 Irish spatial planning and the Cork experience 55 4 Spatial planning in Northern Ireland and the emergent North West region of Ireland 81 5 Spatial planning in a devolved Scotland 111 6 The Wales Spatial Plan and improving policy integration 133 7 English spatial planning and dealing with growth in the Leeds City Region 161 8 Congested governance and the London Thames Gateway 194 9 New planning spaces and the new spatial plannings 228 Appendix: method matters 249 Notes 255 References 258 Index 271 Figures 1.1 European ‘regions’ 21 2.1 A typology of planning approaches 37 2.2 Different planning phases in England, 1932–2004 39 2.3 Scalar flux and increasing governance ‘congestion’ in English planning 44 3.1 National Spatial Strategy: key diagram for the South West Region 64 3.2 Cork Area Strategic Plan (CASP) diagram 72 3.3 Derelict railway station site at Midleton, 2006 73 3.4 New-build, low-density sprawl close to the new Midleton rail station 74 4.1 The Spatial Development Strategy for Northern Ireland 87 4.2 The Spatial Framework for Derry and the North West 98 4.3 Fields of bungalows, near Letterkenny, Donegal 108 5.1 Scottish Parliament building, Edinburgh 112 5.2 National Planning Framework 1 key diagram 114 6.1 Wales Spatial Plan key diagram, illustrating fuzzy regions 136 6.2 Wales Spatial Plan: connections to other strategies 139 6.3 Key stakeholders for the Area Groups 146 6.4 North East Wales strategy 154 7.1 Different policy streams, Yorkshire and the Humber 175 7.2 Yorkshire and the Humber subregions and Leeds City Region 180 7.3 Annual growth in West Yorkshire from 2008 183 7.4 New development and access road, High Royds former psychiatric hospital site in Menston 186 8.1 London Plan, 2004, key diagram 198 8.2 Local delivery structure in the Thames Gateway 204 8.3 Aerial view of the Greenwich Peninsula 212 8.4 Greenwich Millennium Village 213 Tables 1.1 Comparative data on population and economy 13 1.2 Selected milestones in devolution and the decentralisation of planning, UK and Ireland, 1989–2006 14 1.3 Summary of devolved and retained powers and responsibilities 16 2.1 Differences between land use and spatial planning 28 2.2 Selected key changes to the scales and styles of English planning, 1932–2005 34 5.1 Key economic statistics, Scotland 116 7.1 Major government reviews and White Papers, 2004–2007 169 9.1 Governance innovations in planning post-devolution 232 9.2 Direction of travel for some of spatial planning’s key features 247 Preface and acknowledgements Several years ago now two of us attended a seminar at the offices of the main government department responsible for planning and local government. One of the speakers there was a senior civil servant who talked about the need for devolution to deliver if it was to continue to attract political support. From his perspective, devolution allowed the opportunity ‘to let a thousand flowers bloom’ in the post-devolutionary sun. If it worked well, then the hope was that successful experiments in one place could be learnt from and used to help create better policies elsewhere too. If it did not work, the opportunity might not come again for several generations and the likelihood of further devolution would be undermined. This, it seemed to us, created an important research challenge. We had already been working on an idea to look at the integration agenda and spatial planning; we felt we had a reasonable theoretical context in place. What we gained from this seminar was a sense that a wide-ranging comparative piece of empirical research on the various devolved systems of planning then being unleashed would now be extremely timely. Another central feature of our approach is that we wanted to decentre the analysis away from focusing largely on the role of professional planners and instead trying to think about the networked and relational forms of place- making now emerging within the state apparatus. By the state we mean here not ‘government’ but instead the broadly constituted institutional ensemble through which strategic directions and structural contradictions are struggled over as diverse actors seek to establish a stable regime for growth. In this understanding the state is not the source of strategic direction of itself but rather the site of contestations through which new understandings emerge (see Chapter 2). Planning provides just one small piece of this institutional context, albeit one which has a particular role in determining the spatial dimensions of future growth. Our understanding of spatial planning evolved over time, but from the start we were clear that we wanted to understand how spatial planning operated x Preface and acknowledgements as a networked activity which involved a rethinking of both bounded space and also the boundaries of various professions that might be implicated in broadly constituted processes of place making. Spatial planning it seemed to us would inevitably involve trained, professionally recognised planners, but we wanted to allow for the fact that it might not necessarily revolve solely or even largely around them. This approach proved helpful in developing our conceptual and methodological approach – and indeed the results justify our approach. There is considerable porosity in the workings of the new spatial planning, where many ‘non-planners’ are taking a lead in spatial planning activities, while many ‘planners’ are bringing their skills to the development process from outside the regulatory system of planning. One of the key findings of this book is in fact that innovation in spatial planning is often driven by those not trained as planners and involves a wide range of people thinking creatively about spatial and corporate development.