The RTPI is wrong, poor places don't create poor people

****

Planners have, inevitably, a primary focus on matters geographical - or 'place' as the trendier ones like to call it these days. So I get it when the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) rolls out a slightly whining piece about place and poverty:

Trudi Elliott, RTPI chief executive, said: ‘Many of the root causes of deprivation and social inequality are bound up in the poor quality of neighbourhoods - places that have no employment and lack community amenities, are poorly connected or simply run down.

‘Good planning is the one tool in our hands that can make places increase people's opportunities and help lift them from poverty.’

The planners go on to complain that:

...national welfare policies place too much emphasis on the individual factors behind poverty—poor education, for example—and not enough on physical environment.

The problem is that the planners are wrong. Not completely - there is some small evidence linking environmental or physical environment to poverty - but almost completely. To use a famous example, people live in Easterhouse because they're poor, they aren't poor because they live in Easterhouse. And if we look up and down the country we will find similar places - in every large conurbation - where, as the last group of poor, often immigrant people move out, they're replaced by a new group of poor, often immigrant people. My wife's uncle, the son of Russian Jews, was born - in poverty - in Whitechapel but ended his life in Alwoodley a wealthy suburb of Leeds. There aren't many Jews left in Whitechapel but the place still has poor people - Bengalis, Somalis, Roma - living there.

Even where we are speaking of the 'indigenous' UK population, the truth about poor places is that they stay that way because they are places where poor people can afford to live. Whether a place has high levels of private rental property or concentrations of social housing, their poverty is sustained by people moving into those places not by those places making people poor. When Bradford Trident (based in Little Horton and West Bowling two of Bradford's poorest places) studied what happened during its ten year regeneration programme, what it found was that people who did well - finished school, got a job, were in a settled relationship - moved out of the area. They didn't go far - half a mile or so to Wibsey or Great Horton, for example - but they moved away. And the low rent, poor quality place they left behind was occupied by another generation of poverty.

So we should guard against the argument from planners that says they can somehow fix poverty by fixing places. Over the years from 1997 billions was invested in many of the poorest places - through 'decent homes' investment, through the Single Regeneration Budget and through the neighbourhood renewal programmes. And at the end of these programmes those places were still poor places - better places for sure with better schools, better access to health care and lots of community support programmes but still places where poor people go to live. The root causes of poverty, inequality and deprivation are not rooted in places or their physical environment but rather in those individual factors - health, education, lifestyle - that the planners dismiss.

The truth is that, as JRF showed a few years ago, the poorest places in England in 1968 remain, overwhelmingly, the poorest places in England today. Despite approaching fifty years of regeneration.

....

Don't laugh, really...don't laugh

****

The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) thinks planning is needed for technology development:

‘City planners are uniquely placed to mediate and bring together the conditions that are attractive to technology and AM firms, such as highly skilled employees who prefer a more social lifestyle and proximity to workplace, broadband connectivity, good transport, physical compactness.’

Given the planners' record on housing might I suggest we keep them as far away from all this economic development stuff as we possibly can.

....

Perhaps the RTPI might like to provide some evidence that planning supports growth?

****

As part of their "myth-busting" campaign the RTPI are banging away at the lunatic idea that somehow planning helps the economy:

However rather than act as a barrier, the planning system can positively contribute to the Government’s long-term plan for sustainable economic growth in the UK. 

For a minute I shall suspend credulity and give the planners a listen - after all, with all their vast resources, with all those planning academics, all those think tanks, they might just present some evidence in support of their contention. It appears that this is about it - a quote from the RTPI President is all the evidence they can muster:

“It’s not said often enough or strongly enough that planners will be essential to sustained economic recovery. If they are not involved buildings will be constructed without the necessary infrastructure, development will not be sustainable, our environment and heritage will be put in peril and our communities will risk becoming socially dysfunctional. Far from being the enemies of enterprise, planners are critical to business development and economic growth.”

Without the benign guidance of planners all civilization will end. And we won't get wonders like the Aire Valley Enterprise Zone which is apparently:

"...an area of economic underperformance, where the planning process is key to re-establishing the area as the economic heart of the City (e.g. through infrastructure provision)."

That's it - that is the totality of the planners' argument  - essentially that planning is good for economic growth because they tell us it's good for economic growth.

Planners don't "deliver" anything - they control the development process. And in doing this they act as a drag on that development. So the economic benefits that come from planning must outweigh this negative impact on development and the additional cost to business involved in running the planning process (a direct cost in fees, a cost in lost time and an indirect cost in higher taxes and land prices).

This isn't to say that planning isn't needed or that planners do not do something of value. But it is to say that, ceteris paribus, planning has a negative impact on growth. Maybe there is some hard evidence - so research rather than the opinion of a planner - that says I'm wrong but until the RTPI produce that evidence, I'll continue to believe what my eyes and ears tell me. That planning makes it harder to do business, harder to develop and harder to grow the economy.

....

Things that shouldn't surprise us...

****

From Planning Magazine:

More than one in ten town centre shops were vacant in May, according to a survey published by membership body the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

OK there's a recession on and that has accelerated the problem but the real issues are:

Sales through town centres grew by just 0.2% in 2010, underperforming out-of-town and non-store retail, which both achieved significant uplifts.

While out-of-town increased by 1.6%, non-store sales achieved exceptional growth, up by 10.4%. Town centre is less convenient and more exposed to discretionary sectors.

You see that? Town centres as locations for comparison retail - other than a limited number of regional centres - are finished. And as Datamonitor point out in their 2011 review of town centre retail (from which the above statisitcs come):

The role of the town centre is set to change, moving away from a predominantly retail channel to a more leisure-based centre. Coffee houses and restaurants are taking up a greater proportion of space in the town centre as they have the resources to continue growing.

And the answer doesn't lie in aggressive and restricting planning rules - try applying them to on-line and mail order retailing! Watch as the planners drive all those warehousing and distribution jobs to somewhere else in the world - somewhere with planners that believe in promoting development and creating jobs.

Yet that's what  the Labour Party want us to do! And the RTPI - the planners union - they don't even mention "non-store sales" in their programme for a conference on town centres and retail and barely mention leisure and pleasure either!

....

Planners aren't anti-business. Oh no...

****

Both Civic Voice and the RTPI are concerned that government amendments to the Localism Bill in May, which would allow neighbourhood forums to be created solely for "promoting the carrying on of trades, professions or other businesses in such an area", will give business too much power to create neighbourhood plans to suit their needs other those of local communities.

Got that folks - the planning system cannot be used positively to promote business - or that's what the Royal Town Planning Institute want. And they say they're not anti-business?

...

Planners, Big Society and how grazing horses isn't allowed in the 'green belt'

I have a soft spot for planners. Partly through a continuing love affair with maps and plans and partly because planners get a raw deal – they don’t set the rules (although at times they implement them with unwarranted gusto) after all.

Despite this I know that the Director of Planning at the Department for Communities and Local Government is shouting at the deaf when she says:

The profession had "a big role in the Big Society", she said. "You already know the communities - you already have an 'in'," she said.  "Central government is devolving an enormous amount to you. We are less concerned than ever about processes and more concerned about making things happen".

I recall sitting – right back at the early days of the localism debate – in a meeting discussing rural development and hearing the comments of a Director of Planning from a large rural authority:

“Giving Communities rights to influence planning is the thin end of the wedge.”

This view more accurately characterises the approach of planners than does the exhortation of the DCLG’s planning boss. Here’s the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) on the subject of the ‘Community Right to Build’ a core element on the localism bill:

“Proper planning scrutiny has served us well whereas this proposal appears to disempower local authorities by removing their right to determine development proposals and may mean that new housing built as a result may conflict with existing wider community priorities, and will only have to meet nationally prescribed minimum standards, even if the local authority wishes to see higher design standards in its own area”

What they mean here is that local communities might actually decide for themselves what housing development that want to see and where. Without needing the scrutiny of the RTPI’s members!

Many planners see themselves as guardians of sacred texts – PPGs, PPSs, rUDPs and a legion of other documents drawn up, it seems, more to confuse the layman than to allow a genuine role for local communities in determining what developments happen on their patch. As a councillor, I take a pretty simple view, if there’s no substantive opposition to something it should be allowed. Planners, on the other hand, believe differently.

I’ve been to two planning meetings in recent weeks – on both occasions regarding developments in the ‘green belt’. Now, I’m not going to bore you about ‘green belt’ policies – if you want to know more it’s all in PPG2 – but suffice it to say they are ridiculous and contradictory. The first of my two visits to planning concerned the further development of an industrial rendering plant located in the ‘green belt’ between Denholme and Thornton (North West of Bradford).

The Committee – despite my eloquent arguments – voted to allow a huge trailer store at this plant, ostensibly to allow 24 hour operating while reducing the stench that comes off the rotting animal by-products that feed the plant. Maybe they were right but, and this is important, the whole plant (a significant industrial process) has been constructed in the ‘green belt’.

Go forward a couple of weeks to my second visit. This time I’m with a local resident who wants to build a modest hay store to support her grazing horses. Foolishly, this resident had believed it when a planning officer gave a verbal OK to the construction of the hay store with the result that, shortly following the commencement of building, enforcement notices were issued. Subsequently an initial planning application was refused and the resident submitted a second application – this time taking proper planning advice and providing support from horse nutrition specialists.

In contrast to the rendering plant – a stinking, noisy intrusion into the ‘green belt’ – this modest proposal (again despite my eloquence) was refused. One Councillor described the half complete building as an “abortion” while others clambered up onto high horses proclaiming the sanctity of the Council’s ‘green belt’ policies. A complete contrast to the discussion about the extension to the rendering plant where members – the same members – had fallen over each other to explain “more in sorrow than anger” how necessary a huge store for trucks was and that this justified a massive development in the ‘green belt’.

What I also know is that, had my local resident want the barn to store feed for sheep, pigs or cows, she would not have needed planning permission. After all, grazing horses isn’t an allowable land use in the ‘green belt’. Go figure!

....