Can We Make Our Planning More Transparent and Accessible to Public?
Introduction
The gist of our community-based model OurSpace.CoOp is to encourage the development of public space projects to reflect the true needs and values of the actual users. One of the key aspects we looked into is how can we establish a co-design planning process that enables local communities higher transparency and accessibility. Rising public involvement and bringing early community consultation is vital to the success of public space management.[1] The opinions from the public and actual users will help in ensuring that the proposal will be integrated well with its community socially. [2] Moreover, public participation in planning leads to a more sustainable outcome which will benefit the environment and society in long term.[3]
However, public voices are normally ignored or squeezed out by more influential voices such as stakeholders as they hold the financial capitals to back the development of one project. Even if public voices are taken into consideration, there are more barriers that pull the community away from the planning process subconsciously.
Some of the community groups have been treated with the attitudes of ‘check-box’ from local authorities and there’s no genuine involvement. Some also remonstrate that local communities are more likely to get informed with street and small-scale public realm improvements instead of large-scale physical changes.[4] Moreover, the lack of transparency and asymmetry of information is another common difficulty. The pre-planning application is normally made behind doors and thus the public can only view once they have submitted to the local authority, yet the planning jargon would impede understanding.[5]
Within the rapid development of technology, there are some profitable companies and emerging community groups who try to embrace digital data and intelligent system to clear the obstacles and get involved with one project’s planning process as much as possible, such as integrating the complex policies, helping developers and citizens gain easier access to planning documents and decode professional languages.
By analysing the current planning framework and the example of Kings Cross Central development, the essay will unfold the elusive system and explore if the current system has failed in involving the local communities and their real demands in public space projects. Following that, the essay will analyse how the current intelligent system can help in improving the transparency and accessibility within one project’s planning process in relation to social, economic and environmental justices, stating with examples of Urban Intelligence, Concrete Action and VoiceYourView. Moreover, the common criticism about allowing public involvement will de-professionalise the decision-making process will also be taken into account as it is the key issue that most developers, politicians and planners are arguing about.[6]
Through the series of evidence and critical examination, my goal is to question whether we can implement an online intelligent system within the process of planning which can balance the engagement of local communities and the interests of the stakeholders in public space projects, in order to shape a satisfying outcome for public space jointly.
The Planning Framework
According to the “Plain English guide to the Planning System” by Department for Communities and Local Government in England, planning includes both planning applications and the legal structure of national, regional, local and neighbourhood development.
All planning applications have to comply with the legal structure of planning, which can be divided into four levels:
• National Planning Policy Framework
• City / Council / Borough Plan
• Local Plan
• Neighbourhood Plan
The National Planning Policy provides a balanced set of regulations covering the economic, social and environmental aspects of development which regional, local and neighbourhood plans must consider in deciding planning applications. The City / Council / Borough Plan covers multiple local planning authorities which Local Plan must be in line with. The Local Plan enables local planning authorities to set out a clear vision and guidelines for the future development of the area and individual planning applications, meanwhile provides a degree of certainty for investors, businesses and communities. The Neighbourhood Plan is claimed as a new right for communities and empowers them to develop a shared vision for their neighbourhood. However, the instructions about the means and degrees of public participation are vague and not legally enforceable. All neighbourhood plans need to go through a referendum by the local community but their plans will only be put to a referendum when it’s considered as appropriate and complies with national and local strategic policies.[7] The community infrastructure levy (CIL) is deemed as new real incentives for local communities to commence the right for the levy charged from developers or landowners, which will be used to support public infrastructure development.[8] But again, the power of who gets to invest is not in the hands of local residents and there’s a strong hint of exclusivity in the groups who collect the levy.
The planning process can be divided into three stages:
• Pre-planning Application
• Planning Application
• Post-planning
Pre-planning application is the initial stage where lots of stakeholders who work with developers start to emerge, there will be architects, urban designers, property companies, marketing teams, etc. Planning decisions at this stage are normally made behind doors which local residents probably won’t know and thus there’s no way to get engaged with. The planning application is the official public submission of a development to the council. This is the chance for local communities to raise a voice but an entire counter-proposal or significant objections is already impossible. It is also difficult to fully grasp the knowledge from application documents as they are either complicated to dig out or hard to understand plainly. In the stage of post-planning, the planning application will have been granted and the development will be implemented soon. The public participation will be reduced to a minimum and no major or physical suggestion can be made at this point.
King’s Cross Central
King’s Cross Central has been featured with many prestigious titles since it’s been built, it is “one of the places which is used to sell London to the world”, as well as “an urban exemplar for a sustainable world city”, and has also been received the attainment of many high profile awards.[9]
One of the major success that Argent is proud of is the active community involvement and they have made it explicit in “Principles for A Human City” (2001) that the key intent is to create a lasting new place for people. In the document, Argent group and St George ltd claimed that they wanted to provide people with information of the project and build an effective communication with public participants.[10] What they created is an asynchronised feedback means which encourage public to send comments on the document and get in touch with them to gain more information, and they have listed their contact information from telephone/fax number to email address.[11] There’s no denying that the first step has constructed a positive responding mechanism with local citizens, but it seems like the feedback system can only be applied to slight improvements and the actual public participation remains in a low sense of presence in decision-making process.
In the official documents, the King’s Cross Central development has been actively engaged with local authorities and communities. The development’s partnership with local authority was through the use of Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act of 1990, an agreement which was related to counteract the effects of the large-scale development and it’s surrounding communities.[12] The Section 106 agreement enables Camden council to receive over £2.1 million fund that they can use on investing local infrastructure and community services including new green public spaces, landscaped squares, accessible streets, leisure centres, etc. It was also recorded that there were over 4,000 meetings with local communities during the planning process to ensure that local communities will gain benefits from the development both socially and financially.[13] Nevertheless, the meaning of “local” here is blurry, does local equal to the actual users or affected residents? One controversial discussion exists here is that Islington is the closest borough with King’s Cross Central geographically and yet Camden is receiving the major share from S106 gains.[14]
“I specifically want to know whether the new Camden Leisure Centre will be offered at a reduced price to Islington residents who border the redevelopment. To me this is fair since we have had to deal with years (myself lived here 9yrs) of basically living in a construction site and I am very concerned that key benefits have been made available solely to Camden and Camden residents — most of whom don’t even live in the area.” [15] — One of the comments from the King’s Cross Development Forum in 2014
It is clear to see that an active public participation is trying to be brought into the development and a weighing of local benefits against developer’s profitability, in return, the public involvement has assisted in achieving a better result in high-quality public spaces and long-term market value. But it’s also apparent that there’s a strong exclusivity in the selection of local communities and authorities, as well as the actual involvement that public participants own.
Based on the aforementioned analysis for the planning process and King’s Cross Central, there’s still a number of barriers that keep the actual users of public space projects away from the planning process. To name a few:
- Vague definition of means and degrees of public participation;
- Intricate and opaque planning documents and jargon;
- Involving public consultation is merely for formality;
- No early involvement for local communities;
- Exclusive when defining who should be involved in public consultation and obligation…
The Current Intelligent System
While the massive application of digital technology has changed our ways of live, work and play, the planning system in England stays relatively unvaried. Some planning authorities (e.g. London Borough of Southwark: the first council in London that requires applicants to submit a 3D model as part of the application) and companies (e.g. Plainview Planning: a company that collects relevant application information for their clients to de-risk the planning process) have started developing new services for the submission of planning application and new methods of collecting information of planning contributions, yet the change is patchy.[16] The current digital transformation is developed in an uneven rhythm which may leave many other planning authorities behind, meanwhile it’s focused on serving the developers and land owners only which ejects the participation of public.[17] However, there is still developing intelligent system that can be potentially used for conjunct interests.
Urban Intelligence[18]
As discussed before how intricate and difficult it is to find and understand different planning policies and information regarding the development potential of property, Urban Intelligence has realised these problems and established the company in 2014. Urban Intelligence imagines themselves as a single repository and search engine of UK planning policies and aims to provide planners, developers and citizens with easier access to the planning related documents. Their database covers a lot of information from ownership, geographical & political context, planning & environmental constraints, sustainability to development options, though at a cost of £25/month.
The digital platform definitely helps in making positive and efficient decisions for the developers, and opens an easier window for public who are keen to find out planning policies and related information on condition that they are willing to pay. However, the advanced concept of collecting and digitising innumerable policies is a key value in making the planning process more transparent and accessible for local communities.
Concrete Action[19]
The online platform Concrete Action is undoubtedly a rebellious example here. It was established in 2015 by a group of architects, journalists and researchers. The platform allows those working in building design, planning and construction to leak critical and confidential information on proposed developments anonymously, as well as decoding the planning framework for local citizens who aim to resist their local developments. Moreover, it also links professionals who are willing to offer educational and design knowledge to those who are negatively affected by project development.
Concrete Action is clearly straddling the legal line but it shows a cruel fact that the lack of transparency in planning process is a real problem. When local citizens find out that they have been evicted from what they should know, they will gather any legal flaw in order to resist and this is the consequence when industry gatekeepers try to hide their knowledge behind doors.
VoiceYourView[20]
VoiceYourView is an experiment conducted in 2010 which aims to encourage the public to comment on the design of public spaces with a real-time feedback system. The hypothesis is that a public space can be improved if constructive feedback can be provided on how the public use the space and what the public likes and dislikes. There are a few key values extracted from the experiment, firstly, the feedback system is achieved through a kind of intelligent kiosk, the kiosk allows public to comment through speech input and gain real-time feedback through intelligent natural language speech output. The use of verbal communications instead of text messaging not only allows a more interactive feedback but also involves a wider demographics especially the elderly group. Secondly, the system focused on creative commentaries on designs of public space rather than simple issue reporting, which enables a more effective communicating course. Thirdly, the intelligent system also imposes a 30-second time limit for each comment as it helps to promote a more efficient observation as well as helps stakeholders to easier navigate through the large database.
Overall, despite technological issues such as the intelligent feedback is not 100% accurate and some people find it uncomfortable talking to an answering machine, the 6-week experiment clearly shows that public is able to provide creative and useful input on public space using digital system and the processed data can be utilised by decision makers for better development. Moreover, VoiceYourView is not costly as the computer captures and processes the valid comments without requiring the presence of staffs, which sounds cost-effective to developers and stakeholders.
The aforementioned intelligent system has inspired my hypothesis in many ways, as well as reflects many restraints and issues. In order to formulate an articulated hypothesis that a better outcome for public space projects can be shaped in planning process through a collaborative intelligent system, it should consider the following factors:
- The system should act as an integrated database for planning policies and related documents for the convenience of search and summary;
- All the policies and planning information especially jargon should be presented in a readable way for the benefits of non-professionals;
- It should bridge an interactive communication among local users, developers and other stakeholders to ensure prompt responses can be heard by each side;
- There should be requirement towards commentary input to make sure that public participants are creative and useful observers than mere information seekers.
Conclusion and Moving Forward
Implementing technology in the process of planning can lead to a two-way benefit. For public space users, not only does the intelligent system open a more transparent and accessible path to public engagement, it is also an environmental-friendly way as no consumption of paper questionnaires or numerous tedious meetings will be needed. Furthermore, a wider demographic can be involved as everyone has the access to comment on the project online. The local “community” is not subject to any registered local group or organisation anymore, it can also be any keen local/new resident who is looking to collaborate on social public space project. For stakeholders, using the hypothetical system is a way to reduce manual work that is spent on gathering innumerous information or grasping constructive suggestion from public consulting meetings. Besides, the intelligent computing will assist developers in framing a better judgement when making proposal decisions.
There are also limitations which may be detrimental to the system if they are not enforced by authorities or law. Calling for early public engagement is nothing new, however, it is hard for developers to share project information in pre-planning stage with local communities not only for confidential reasons but also it is an opportunistic period to hide controversial information behind doors. Both the funding and data collecting for the system can be problematic too as they are embedded with intertwined interests across all the planning authorities in England.
A website prototype is imagined as showing in the diagram below. The website aims to cover all the concerned points as discussed above and it will keep exploring other potential issues beyond the essay in the future. Digitisation of the planning process has an inherent flaw of excluding anyone who can’t use computers, but it is an inevitable result in the digital-driven society. The current proposed intelligent system will continue to develop to balance the public involvement and stakeholders’ interests and there’s no excuses to hide away from it, on the contrary, we should take active actions to update the current planning environment before technology compels us to.
Footnotes
[1] Planning and Housing Committee, Public life in private hands: Managing London’s public space (London: Greater London Authority, 2011), p. 31.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Michael Pacione, ‘The rhetoric and reality of public participation in planning’, Urban Development Issues, 63 (2019), 5–15 (p. 6).
[4] Planning and Housing Committee, Public life in private hands: Managing London’s public space (London: Greater London Authority, 2011), p. 32.
[5] Government Technology, ‘Can we make planning more transparent?’ <http://www.governmenttechnology.co.uk/features/digital-tools-can-make-planning-more-transparent> [Accessed: 28 December 2020].
[6] Ibid.
[7] Department for Communities and Local Government, ‘Plain English Guide to the Planning System’, 2015, p. 7–11.
[8] Department for Communities and Local Government, ‘The Community Infrastructure Levy‘, 2010, p. 1–2.
[9] Marco Adelfio, Iqbal Hamiduddin & Elke Miedema, ‘London’s King’s Cross redevelopment: a compact resource efficient and liveable global city model for an era of climate emergency?’ Urban Research & Practice, p. 7.
[10] Argent St George, LCR & Exe, ‘Principles for a Human City,’ 3rd edn, July 2001, p. 8.
[11] Ibid p. 28.
[12] PPIAF, ’Case Study: London King’s Cross’, The world Bank, 2017, 453–465 (p. 459).
[13] Ibid p. 464.
[14] King’s Cross Environment, ‘Development Forum set to meet — community gains from N1C on agenda’ < https://kingscrossenvironment.com/2014/01/30/development-forum-set-to-meet-community-gains-from-n1c-on-agenda/> [Accessed: 28 December 2020].
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ian, ‘Digitising the planning system — how technology can streamline the planning process’ <https://plainview.co.uk/news/digitising-the-planning-system-how-technology-can-streamline-the-planning-process/> [Accessed: 28 December 2020].
[17] pbctoday, ‘How the planning system can adopt new technologies to improve efficiency’ <https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/planning-construction-news/digital-planning-manifesto/66046/> [Accessed: 28 December 2020].
[18] Urban Intelligence <https://urbanintelligence.co.uk/about/our-company/> [Accessed: 28 December 2020].
[19] Concrete Action <https://concreteaction.github.io/> [Accessed: 28 December 2020].
[20] Jon Whittle, William Simm, Maria Ferrario, Katerina Frankova, Laurence Garton, Andrée Woodcock, Baseerit Nasa, Jane Binner, Aom Ariyatum, ‘VoiceYourView: Collecting Real-time Feedback on the Design of Public Spaces’, Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference on Ubiquitous computing, 2010, pp. 41–50.
