Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies Volume 4: Issue 2 The Spaces of the Nation: Strategic Spatial Planning in Scotland and the Island of Ireland AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen JOURNAL OF IRISH AND SCOTTISH STUDIES Volume 4, Issue 2 Spring 2011 The Spaces of the Nation: Strategic Spatial Planning in Scotland and the Island of Ireland Published by the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen in association with The universities of the The Irish-Scottish Academic Initiative ISSN 1753-2396 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies General Editor: Cairns Craig Issue Editor: William J.V. Neill Associate Editor: Michael Brown Editorial Advisory Board: Fran Brearton, Queen’s University, Belfast Eleanor Bell, University of Strathclyde Ewen Cameron, University of Edinburgh Sean Connolly, Queen’s University, Belfast Patrick Crotty, University of Aberdeen David Dickson, Trinity College, Dublin T. M. Devine, University of Edinburgh David Dumville, University of Aberdeen Aaron Kelly, University of Edinburgh Edna Longley, Queen’s University, Belfast Peter Mackay, Queen’s University, Belfast Shane Alcobia-Murphy, University of Aberdeen Ian Campbell Ross, Trinity College, Dublin Graham Walker, Queen’s University, Belfast International Advisory Board: Don Akenson, Queen’s University, Kingston Tom Brooking, University of Otago Keith Dixon, Université Lumière Lyon 2 Luke Gibbons, Notre Dame Marjorie Howes, Boston College H. Gustav Klaus, University of Rostock Peter Kuch, University of Otago Graeme Morton, University of Guelph Brad Patterson, Victoria University, Wellington Matthew Wickman, Brigham Young David Wilson, University of Toronto The Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies is a peer reviewed journal published twice yearly in autumn and spring by the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. An electronic reviews section is available on the AHRC Centre’s website at: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/issjournal.shtml Editorial correspondence, including manuscripts for submission, should be addressed to The Editors, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, Humanity Manse, 19 College Bounds, University of Aberdeen, AB24 3UG or emailed to: [email protected] Subscription information can be found on www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/publications Cover image: William McTaggart, ‘The Coming of St Columba’. Oil on canvas. Copyright National Gallery of Scotland CONTENTS Editorial v National Spatial Planning and Scotland’s cities 1 Greg Lloyd Scotland’s Planning System: A Return to the Vision of Patrick 15 Geddes? Anne-Michelle Slater and Aylwin Pillai Deciding the Fate of a Magical, Wild Place 33 Cllr Martin A. Ford Conflict and the Modern in Scottish Urban Space, 1800 – 1914 75 R. J. Morris Current directions in the creation of space: the Regional 103 Development Strategy for Northern Ireland Mike Warnock The Imagery and Language of Spatial Consciousness in 115 Planning Within Northern Ireland Michael Murray New spaces for the island of Ireland? Post-conflict geography, 131 planning and politics in Northern Ireland Brian Graham Spatial Planning in the Republic of Ireland: Progress and 149 Potential Niall Cussen Politicians and the Irish Planning Process: Political culture and 159 impediments to a strategic approach Berna Grist Reflections on Alterity in Irish and Scottish Spatial Planning: 173 Fragmentation or Fugue? Janice Morphet Notes on Contributors 195 EDITORIAL The articles collected in this special issue have all been drawn from the contributions of those who participated in a conference 12 – 13 June 2009 at the King’s College Conference Centre , University of Aberdeen. Under the auspices of the Irish Scottish Forum the title of the conference was ‘Spaces of the Nation: the Planning of Space in Ireland and Scotland’. This brought together the interests of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies and the Centre of Planning and Environmental Management at the University of Aberdeen. Participants bridged the academic/ practice divide with leading representatives from all spatial planning professional institutes in the three territories alongside key practitioners and members of the academic planning community, especially at Queen’s University Belfast, Ulster University and NUI Maynooth. Focus was on the recently revised National Planning Framework for Scotland (NPF 2), the soon to be revised Regional Development Strategy for Northern Ireland and the outlook for the National Spatial Strategy for the Republic of Ireland under changed economic conditions. These strategic planning documents, while they may not always recognise it explicitly, are related to the vexed issue of identity and belonging and creating a future in these more peripheral geographical extremities on the edge of the European continent. Strategic spatial planning is more than making space. It is also, whatever the concentration on making a living, and in common with planning at other spatial scales, about making meaning. This is the common thread which binds the articles here. While the spatiality of identity and its relationship to place takes many forms from the poetry of Burns , Heaney and Yeats to the appropriation of space through parading practices , national anthems, language and flags, the spaces of the nation are no less articulated and created in the more mundane world of spatial planning. What spaces of the nation is strategic spatial planning creating and to what degree are they contested? Before providing an overview of the contributions of the authors some mention of the changed economic context for strategic planning cannot be avoided. While planning at all levels works in the manner of spatial regulation vi Editorial it is at the more macro scale that the dominant role of the market in the making and unmaking of place has lately been laid bare as the beast which planning tries to charm. Sometimes, in its very nature, the beast bites back. In 2007, Alex Salmond as Scottish First Minister looked to the Celtic Tiger economy of the Republic of Ireland as a learning model for the equally small nation of Scotland with aspirations to be a Celtic Lion.1 The idea that Ireland has a template to ‘show what is possible’ is now less credible. While the flagship Royal Bank of Scotland, in many ways a commercial symbol of Scottish financial acumen and identity, foundered on a lust for growth and lack of probity in assessing the value of foreign assets , the Irish banking sector has foundered on feeding a domestic speculative property bubble and development industry. Here, as Grist suggests in her contribution to this publication, the spatial planning system and its mediators failed to charm the Celtic Tiger, whose new spaces of the nation were for a while linked to a new sense of identity and confidence. The result has been a patchwork of overdevelopment and property bust that extends to Northern Ireland. Ghost Estates have been abandoned by developers and bankers all over the island, with one in five new houses in Ireland uninhabited.2 Estimates of toxic property assets held by Republic of Ireland financial institutions in Northern Ireland are placed somewhere upwards of 5 billion Euros, reflecting the fact that former Celtic Tiger developers took advantage of easy credit and spiralling property prices.3 The assets have been taken over by the Republic of Ireland’s so called ‘bad bank’, the National Asset Management Agency, which holds upwards of 60 billion Euros in bad loans made by Irish banks to the property sector. In this context a review of the added value of strategic spatial planning is timely. The articles present Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in turn. In the context of a post-devolution Scottish government led by the Scottish Nationalist Party, where the Scottish Executive has been rebranded as the Scottish Government ( the former term communicates a weaker claim over place), Lloyd describes how the emergence of new city-regional identities and collaborations hold central place in the revised National Planning Framework. These city-regional structures are identified as the key components of an economic growth agenda which also endorses the ethic of sustainability. This 1 The Herald, 13 October 2007. Quoted in Graham Walker, ‘Boosters and Begrudgers’, Scottish Review of Books, Vol 4, No 32 (2008), 11. 2 Anne Simpson, ‘Bloomin’ Ireland’. Scottish Review of Books, Vol 6, No 2 (2010), 8 – 9. 3 Symon Ross, ‘Republic’s Bad Bank takes on Province’s loans’, Belfast Telegraph, May 15 2010. Strategic spatial planning in Scotland and the island of Ireland vii is backed up by the legislative endorsement of key infrastructure projects which will be the backbone of a national vision, albeit within the confines of a challenged but still hegemonic neo-liberal economic regime. Strategic planning is a driver of economic development and the bolstering of national virility and esteem. The following article by Slater, evoking the environmental respect central to the approach of Scotland’s formative planning theorist and practitioner, Patrick Geddes, asks whether the modernising planning regime in Scotland, including the NPF2 , in its evocation of ‘sustainability’, is true to the vision of Geddes. The answer is ambivalent, or two cheers at best. Sustainable development as a legally nebulous concept can be fraught in application with different definitions used in government policy and with actual codification of sustainable development very limited. While the Scottish Government through the NPF and in development policy generally, promotes sustainable economic development as an objective, the case study outlined by Ford presents in a dramatic way how these values can clash with dramatic material change to the spaces of the Nation. The controversial planning decision, ultimately by the Scottish government, to give permission to the American businessman Donald Trump to build a links golfing leisure resort on a site of Special Scientific Interest just north of Aberdeen perhaps stretches the meaning of sustainable economic development into an oxymoron.