There is a welcome and long overdue attention to the need for Britain to have a planning system that works. The government has said it wants to return to "first principles" and there are hints that those near to the top of government recognise that planning systems act as a drag on the economy. Various think tanks have published reports looking at planning reform (and, in a related way, how we might fix Britain's housing problems). We can categorise these reports and their recommendations as follows:
1. Those who don't see the planning system as the problem but argue it's about 'financialisation' and the lack of 'social' or 'affordable' housing. These problems can be fixed through a mix of massive government subsidy for building those social and affordable homes, modern rent controls, and regulations to limit 'speculation' and foreign investment.
2. Those that recognise the problems with the planning system but reject its wholesale reform in favour of tinkering with the local plan approach ('we need more strategic planning') and the granting of land seizure powers to government or government agencies. A feature of nearly all of these proposals is 'land value capture' where local government or development agencies seize development land so as to 'capture' the value uplift consequential on allocation for housing in a constrained system
3. Those who see densification as the solution, preferring the maintenance of strategic constraints on land supply (such as green belt) combined with greater flexibility in development control. Some advocate a now traditional Le Corbusier 'cities in the sky' model while others want a new tenement model dubbed 'create streets'. Critically this approach focuses on house prices and rent levels plus the quantum of house building (regardless of factors like social infrastructure) rather than land supply and land value. It seems to be popular with a lot of government technocrats.
4. Those who see planning reform at the national level with the need for a wholly different planning system. The argument is often that this isn't deregulation (hinting that somehow this is bad) but "correct regulation". Most commonly these approaches want to replace our current system with some sort of zoning - Japan is a popular model.
5. Those who reject the premise of a planning system - the 'first principle' that government should be the arbiter of how landowners use their land. This is an argument for deregulation that replaces the presumption that you need a planning permission with an assumption that unless some sort of valid protection that can't be mitigated exists then the landowner is free to develop.
This typology is limited but I hope it helps understand why any planning reform debate is fraught. We can also appreciate that the planning system is hated and distrusted by nearly all those who have to work with it - local councillors, developers, homeowners, builders, environmentalists and housing organisations all loathe the experience of dealing with the planning system. Yet, at the moment when changes are proposed, we see the same people leaping to the system's defence.
At the heart of all this is something that really matters but that we don't ask often enough: Why do we have a planning system? What is its purpose? We sort of shuffle our feet, um and er a bit before, usually with some platitudes, we say something along the lines of "well you have to have some sort of system don't you?" This, of course, doesn't help very much at all even when the intelligent person um-ing and er-ing can cite Ebenezer Howard or quote Jane Jacobs. There's a sort of emotional attachment to the idea that cities, highways networks, towns and even the countryside cannot operate well without a benign planning system.
The biggest justification for planning, of course, isn't about Ebenezer Howard or Jane Jacobs (let along Le Corbusier with his 'human robots' systems) but rather the commonplace desire not to let your neighbour do something you don't like. You'll recall from your geography lessons at school ideas such as 'ribbon development' and 'urban sprawl' were presented to you as problems, things that (in some unspecified way) were bad and needing control. You might, if you studied geography beyond 'O' Level or GCSE, have encountered Central Place Theory and that tidy, Germanic model developed by Hitler's favourite geographer, Walter Christaller. Geography needed to be ordered, structured and directed so the bad things (sprawl especially) didn't happen - hence a consistent and state-directed planning system would decide where the houses go, where the factories go and so forth. These vital development questions would in the parlance of planners be 'controlled' or 'managed' rather than left to something as vague and nebulous as the market.
Three thoughts dominate modern planning (other than how to get the system to actually work):
1. The Howard model of development, that everything happens at the level of community and that therefore we should 'plan' those communities using an ideal model
2. Jane Jacobs' commentary on city living with its focus on density, 'eyes on the street', walkability and (in a contorted adaptation of her ideas) that cities should be planned and structured as activity-filled, dense environments
3. Having a hierarchical strategic 'national' or 'regional' plan where the need for residential, commercial and industrial space is mapped in a manner lifted pretty much straight from pre-war German and Italian (plus a little bit of Soviet) models.
If we return to 'first principles' it has to be in order to challenge these three presumptions - planned communities, densification and strategic direction - plus the mistaken idea that it is the state's place to decide on how land is used. We must ask instead how we get closer to the ideals of strong communities, walkable places and an effective spacial map without in doing so making it more difficult for the market in land and development to operate efficiently. Plus an urban environment that reflects how people actually live. We should note, in thinking about this system, less regulation always benefits the economy but that we may have other considerations (safety, environment, heritage) that might not survive a purely market-led approach.
What is clear, however, is that the objection to 'sprawl' is largely down to emotive snobbery rather than any negative effect from that sprawl. Today, the first objections to suburban development in England are environmental: either 'you're concreting over green fields' or 'you're promoting a car culture'. To this we can add the sudden recognition that wildlife exists (it's amazing how suburban fringe residents suddenly become incredibly keen on orchids, bats and badgers when there's a housing development), and tearful paens to a lost bucolia for fields and hedgerows.
For the urban planning elite, nodding to their architect friends, there's a persistent 'suburbia is naff' theme within the preparation of plans. There's a frisson of sexiness to talk of 'city living' and London and New York based housing thinkers get excited at Edwardian terraces and Brownstone row houses - 'we can build like that again, real streets with dense housing, it'll be great'. Except that this forces on people a lifestyle (no car, flat living, no private outdoor space) that frankly they don't want.
Others trawl the world over looking for places to emulate. Fans of zoning as a planning system wax lyrically about Japan's system but ignore some core geography in doing so (Japan doesn't build houses to last a long time because Japan has lots of earthquakes and Japan has a declining population making its numbers of empty properties very high). We'd be much better looking at Houston or Ile de France if we want a zoning system that operates well in places with a growing population and a less problematic geology. But Houston and Paris, of course, have vast and distant suburbs featuring dispersed employment, poor public transport systems and a car-dependent culture. Even without mentioning the dreaded word 'sprawl' we can see that, while these systems work, they don't work in a way that fits the predetermined, dense city model that the zoning fans want.
The main problem with planning seems to be that planners want to direct people towards different behaviours (walking not driving, commuting to CBDs not fringe business parks, living in apartments and using parks rather than having a house and garden). So long at this is the manifest purpose of the planning system, then not only will it fail to support economic growth and fail to meeting housing need but it will also continue to be very unpopular with everyone except the planners.
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