Places aren't made by government, they're shaped by enterprising, creative people

The places we love (and indeed the places we don't love but which are loved by others) are shaped by hundreds of influences. Most important, of course, it is shaped by what Kipling called "mere uncounted folk, of whose life and death is none report or lamentation". These are the men who built the houses, the carts and horses guided along tracks and by-ways that became our roads, the farmers, cattlemen and shepherds who set the fields and styled our landscapes. And amidst all these are the people who wanted it to look good, who did little things of beauty, planted gardens, erected memorials and raised churches. In our towns those people built little walls and fences, tended allotments, carved their love into features of homes and built the pavements, roads, sewers and bridges.

Our world is shaped by what we do not made by the actions of planners. Yet such people - planners, directors, councillors - persist in believing that places are, in some way, made by their actions: by the instructions of the benign state without which all would be untidy, unsafe, chaotic, crazed. Here, in a modern mash-up of this hubris is Local Government Association along with assorted plan fans:

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), Local Government Association (LGA) and Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) have launched Future Place: a joint, two-phase initiative which will unlock place-making potential at local level through quality in design, future thinking, and knowledge sharing.

The programme has been designed to promote best practice and the potential of innovative delivery, design and funding models, cross-sector collaborations capacity building, and knowledge sharing at a local level.

At the heart of this 'two-phase initiative' is the idea that places are made bu architects, planners, housing officers and town clerks - here is this delusion encapsulated:

...we invite local authorities to put in writing their overarching vision (emerging or finalised) for an area and how they are currently working across their programmes to deliver the wider ambitions of the local authority by creating great places

Here these grand organisations are asking for local councils to peer into the future's mists and craft a magical vision that "Future Place-Makers" can then deliver. We are reminded that planners, architects and government prefer the directed and ordered not the organic and creative. For all that such folk talk about Jane Jacobs or Saul Alinsky, planners and urban designers real love is Baron Haussman who destroyed thousands of homes to allow a straight road into Paris for the government's cannons and horsemen. For sure these days there's a nod to liberty and organic development through the canard of community consultation but governments with their planners and officials still believe they know best.

The problem is that places made by government - council estates, America's 'projects, the worst of France's banlieue and that hideous East European 'Stalinist baroque' - are failures because those planners, architects (like the dreadful Le Corbusier who wanted to knock down France's old towns and replace them with tower blocks) and government officials think they know better then real people what real people want. These are people who don't understand that things are where they are because that's where they are and that moving them somewhere else destroys them however lovingly you craft exciting designs.

The task of planners isn't to lead on place but rather to support the real shapers of places - entrepreneurs, artists, flaneurs, seekers for the new and different. Instead of drawing up visions filled with coloured arrows, creative quarters and anchor institutions, these future place makers should be more modest - present a space for the real creatives, the actual place shapers, to weave the magic once again. Government's job is not to make places but to help people who love where they live to shape those places.

...

Boundaries, pubs and Battersea - thoughts on defining place

A few years ago, I instituted an initiative aimed at ensuring that every community in Bradford undertook some form of local planning – this could take the form of neighbourhood action planning, parish plans or elements within wider masterplans or spatial strategies. In part, at least, I can lay claim to attempting to develop the idea of community involvement in service planning – dare I say it, the “Big Society”.

However, this introduction isn’t a precursor to an essay of self-justification but rather an opportunity to discuss again the issue of places and how we define them. Most important, the matter of boundaries. Partly, this is prompted by Battersea Councillor, James Cousins’ irritation (verging on anger) with ASDA for suggesting that his local store is – horror of horrors – in Clapham. James gives very good account of his case and (I suspect) has a rather better grasp of where Battersea becomes Clapham than does ASDA.

However, there are some interesting anomalies of place that can add to this confusion and not just the perfect example of nominal coterminosity – Penge and Anerley. And since we’re talking local knowledge here, I have concentrated on examples from my ward – the incomparable Bingley Rural. And several of the examples will feature pubs!

The Dog & Gun – as everyone knows – is in Oxenhope. Except that, until very recently, it wasn’t it was in Denholme and had always been in Denholme (we should note that the pub car park was in the Parish of Oxenhope whereas the pub itself was in the Town of Denholme). Today – following some jiggery-pokery with te boundary commission – the pub is in Oxenhope.

The Guide is at Hainworth, Keighley of course – that’s the community it serves (along with the clutches of stray bikers who wash up in its car park). Well no – The Guide’s in Cullingworth and always has been!

The Malt Shovel at Harden completes this trio of pubs. It’s not in Harden but in Wilsden (although the thoughful folk from Wilsden Parish Council have put the obligatory sandstone “Welcome to Wilsden” marker beyond the pub). Harden doesn’t start until you’ve cross the Harden Beck.

There are plenty of other examples – the White Horse at Well Heads isn’t in Thornton but in Denholme and the New Coley Garden Centre (see it’s not all pubs!) is in Cullingworth not Denholme. As you can see it isn’t at all clear – boundaries are (as I’ve said before) fuzzy, subject to change and without doubt open to dispute. And, as I’m sure you’ve all guessed, unpopular places get smaller while popular places get larger (it’s OK James I’m not suggesting this is the case with Battersea and Clapham).

In a discussion about Chapeltown in Leeds this trend was noticed – places like Potternewton and Chapel Allerton grow in size as places previously in Chapeltown are ‘liberated’ from that place’s bad image. Just as snootier residents of SE20 started calling it Anerley rather than Penge, the up-and-coming trendies moving into Chapeltown are renaming it Potternewton or Chapel Allerton. Unless, of course, we’re talking about reports of crime! In these cases any shooting within two miles takes place in Chapeltown!

All this really makes the point that places aren't static – boundaries can and do change. And, in the end it’s people rather than institutions that decide where the boundary lies. In Bradford – for the exercise described at the start – we mapped the location of people on the council’s neighbourhoods database who claimed to live in a given place (Wibsey, Queensbury, West Bowling, Heaton, etc) and drew boundaries based on these definitions. And yes there were some overlaps but most communities were clear and identifiable – certainly good enough to deliver the project.

But we decide not folk from elsewhere.

....