People’s Plans for Future Cities?

The Farrell Centre is scheduled to open this Spring in Newcastle (https://www.farrellcentre.org.uk). It is part of a general wave of initiatives seeking to promote the improvement of our cities (eg https://www.centreforcities.org ). A flavour of the Farrell Centre’s perspective was given at a forum late last year it organised on a ‘People’s Plan for Newcastle’. The image used to publicise the event (pictured above) did not exactly suggest that a radical challenge to business-as-usual was envisaged. But that is true of bodies such as the Centre for Cities where the dominant theme is how to stimulate more growth.

At the Farrell Centre event, there was a respectable turnout, though most of the audience seemed to be staff and students from the Newcastle University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, with no obviously ‘working class’ people present (unlike, say, a Newcastle United supporters’ meeting)

There was a Zoom presentation by two people from a group called ‘Just Space London’ about their “recovery” plan (https://justspacelondon.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/just-space-a4-community-led-london-plan.pdf ). The specific problems being experienced by Somali and Filipino migrants in London (whether they were legal or illegal was not made clear) took up most of one contribution here. It was not clear at all how action here would reduce the massively unsustainable ecological footprint of London (http://www.statsmapsnpix.com/2020/02/visualising-ecological-footprints.html ). Indeed, massive house building, as advocated in the presentation would, of course, make it worse, not least by destroying surviving green spaces. 

Then there was a talk by an artist who had got local people in a rundown neighbourhood in Middlesbrough to build a big wooden Trojan horse (don’t ask me why!). The council subsequently ordered on safety grounds that it be dismantled. This was presented as unwarranted interference by officialdom at the expense of ‘The People’, though it was painfully obvious to anyone who knows the area that elements in the said people would have competed to be first to set the horse on fire.

Overall, the meeting was awash with rhetoric about “community-led development”, “participation”, “engagement”, “empowerment”, “collaboration”, “influence-for-all”, “lived experiences”, “listening to voices not heard”, and so forth. Concrete analysis and specific policy proposals were in shorter supply. Indeed, the only one that stuck in my mind was the call by one of the speakers from London to build on back gardens, a plan that would devastate biodiversity, garden environments now being critical given the inhospitality of most farmland for wildlife. 

It struck me how vague or open to multiple interpretations such words and phrases as “empowerment” are, some far from sustainable. In most places, ‘communities’ are so badly divided that there is nothing to ‘lead development’ since there are incompatible interests and goals. ‘Just Space London’ believes that there should no votes but, instead, on-going debate to find consensus or, if not possible, the issue to hand should just be ‘parked’ on one side. Yet the consensus might be an agreed plan that is so watered down as to be almost unfit for any meaningful purpose. Moreover, not making a decision usually means continuation of a status quo, one that may well be perpetrating direct harm on many people as well as wildlife and environmental systems.

There are always going to be conflicting priorities. It is the purpose of politics to try and find a way through, including, yes, just voting one way or the other. The danger is that ‘People’s Plans’ (as with citizens’ assemblies and so forth) just lead to the formulation of long lists of desiderata (usually social entitlements) but devoid of proper consideration of their sustainability (cultural, economic or ecological) or of their compatibility with each other. What is needed is the development of criteria to judge which ones are valid and what should come first in terms of priorities. 

The only way forward is to start from the very basic ‘facts of life’. Whatever the ‘cause’ (better social care, reduced homelessness, an end to fuel poverty, a fairer deal for excluded minorities, development of the arts … ), it will be a lost cause without ecological sustainability. It must be priority number one. Otherwise, climate meltdown alone will, unchecked, wreck the best of plans (this possibility was simply ignored by the contributions I heard at the meeting). The key tool is that of ‘ecological footprinting’ (eg https://www.gdrc.org/uem/footprints/ ).

Sustainable adaptation to local weather patterns, topography, hydrology, flora and fauna is part of that process. So too are levels and forms of energy and raw material consumption in line with local and regional ‘carrying capacity’. For all the talk about decarbonisation and ‘net zero’, Newcastle is very far from a sustainable footing, as indeed are all cities. Ecological sustainability has to be challenge number one, the foundation of and thread linking all else. Yet the mantra of the vast majority of government ministers, local councillors and public officials around the world is “growth, growth, growth”. The presentations at the Farrell centre meeting simply ignored the need to abandon the goal of growth.

Or take ‘empowerment’. In a culture dominated by a very materialistic individualism and short-term horizons, giving more ‘power’ to people could lead to even greater despoliation and destruction. Residents on one street near mine, for example, held a street referendum in which they voted to demand that all trees be cut down in their street. Similarly, the biggest community meeting in my neighbourhood in recent years was one of 400 people who overwhelmingly voted against (a very necessary) red route bus route on the grounds that it would restrict private motoring. 

Many issues demand relevant experience, expertise and, sometimes, a willingness of sufficient people to commit sustained time and energy. Yet many community-based schemes (parks, libraries etc) struggle because they are lacking in the local community. The lesson from so-called ‘participatory’ budgeting, for instance, is that groups come along to push their particularist demands and, if satisfied, cease engagement. Even the best-managed and well-intentioned council consultations often attracted the participation of but a quite tiny minority of the local community

Then there is the problem of individuals claiming to be the voice of the community or some group therein but who are not anything of the kind. An example is the little clique of ‘pushy’ parents who come along to school meetings to demand things that actually do not command genuine general support. Amongst some minority groups, men claim to represent the community whilst excluding women. Even if a neighbourhood speaks with one democratic voice, there remain problems of developing a properly coordinated plan for a city as a whole. Thus an otherwise laudable low traffic neighbourhood plan may simply decant road vehicles onto neighbouring streets.

There is, then, still a critical role for ‘old-fashioned’ methods of political manifestos, public elections (ideally using PR), expert input and so forth. This is not to deny the benefits of involving more people in related processes. The point is to stress how ‘participation’ is a double-edged sword, one that might lead to backward steps. After all, over past decades referenda and plebiscites have routinely produced very negative outcomes. Switzerland provides a number of examples;  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45617662 and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57457384 as does the USA. Indeed we have to look no farther than the Brexit vote here in the UK!

Reject Bad plans

No plan formulation is likely to engage more than a minority of community members. To call it a “People’s Plan” can be an exercice in delusional thinking. Moreover, any decent plan will necessarily mean the rejection of bad plans. Many years ago, for example, I attended a talk by T. Dan Smith, Newcastle’s leading politician of the time. That night, he switched his better known vision of a new Newcastle from ‘Brasilia of the North’ to ‘Venice of the North’ (but with motorways, not canals). Both iterations were bad plans.

Much more recently, I attended a talk on ‘Newcastle 2065’. The central image used during the presentation depicted what looked like Qatar on Tyne. There was even an airport on top of the ‘Malmaison’ hotel. The plan was based on hyper business-as-usual, as if climate change and other forms of ecological meltdown were but minor and temporary hiccups that would not change nothing. Another bad plan!

It would be important in the development of any plan to address national constraints. Some dozen years ago, I was a co-founder of a local coalition, ‘Cities for People’, formed to oppose the council’s ‘One Core Strategy’ plan. I attended nearly every consultation meeting and I was, then, a formal ‘representor’ at the subsequent public inquiry. We were successful in protecting the land around Gosforth Nature Reserve from Persimmon. But, overall, we failed, the main reason being the National Planning Policy Framework. It drastically narrowed the options, basically leading to the developers getting most of what they wanted. 

The main outcome was car-dependent sprawl of executive housing, a plan that did little for those low down on the housing ladder and even less for overall sustainability in the city. It led to the biggest loss of green belt land in any city across the country, for example. Revealingly, the two top city planners subsequently left council employment for jobs with the private volume builders.

For People or more

A People’s Plan sounds, of course, as if it is for, er, people. But we share our part of the world, as everywhere, with other forms of life, both flora and fauna. Obviously, a red squirrel is rather unlikely to turn up at some consultation or other forum and voice its thoughts about the prospects for its species and the many others in the area. At that level, any plan is going to be made by people but it does not have to confine itself to anthropocentric frameworks.