What is town planning for? The Royal Town Planning Institute champions the ‘power of planning in creating prosperous places and vibrant communities’. The Town & Country Planning Association ‘works to challenge, inspire and support people to create healthy, sustainable and resilient places that are fair for everyone’. As Raymond Unwin wrote in the foreword to the Housing, Town Planning, Etc, Act of 1909: "Town Planning has a prosaic sound, but the words stand for a movement which has perhaps a more direct bearing on the life and happiness of great masses of the people than any other single movement of our time”.
Who is town planning for? How are we to reconcile these lofty ambitions with the fact that black and other minorities are at least twice as likely to be deprived of green space compared to a white person in the UK; with the fact the average amount of money accrued by owning property over the last decade is £150,000 for the average white family and £0 for the average black family; and with the fact that whilst 3% of White households live in overcrowded accommodation, that figure rises to 22% for Black households, 23% for Indian households and 35% for Pakistani and Bangladeshi households.
Does planning remain a progressive force for social justice or has it become a regressive tool for the preservation of the status quo?
Sam Stafford puts these questions to Danny Dorling (@dannydorling), Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography and Fellow of St Peter's College at Oxford University; Vicky Payne (@Victoria_Payne), planner and urbanist at URBED; and Ben Southwood (@bswud), Head of Housing, Transport & Urban Space at Policy Exchange.
Some accompanying reading.
Covid spread as overcrowding doubles among private renters in England.
'Capital cities: How the planning system creates housing shortages and drives wealth inequality'.
How London's property boom left Black Britons with nothing.
One in three adults in Britain 'do not have a safe or secure home'.
Resourcing Public Planning
https://www.rtpi.org.uk/policy/2019/november/resourcing-public-planning/
A housing design audit for England.
http://placealliance.org.uk/research/national-housing-audit/
The cost of the cuts: The impact on local government and poorer communities.
https://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/migrated/files/Summary-Final.pdf
All that is solid: How the great housing disaster defines our times and what we can do about it.
http://www.dannydorling.org/books/allthatissolid/
Deciphering the fall and rise in the net capital share.
https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/deciphering-the-fall-and-rise-in-the-net-capital-share/
Some accompanying listening.
Fixer Upper by Yard Act
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdJj3soqn-4
50 Shades of Planning
50 Shades of Planning is Sam Stafford’s attempt to explore the foibles of the English planning system and it's aim is to cover the breadth of the sector both in terms of topics of conversation and in terms of guests with different experiences and perspectives.
50 Shades episodes include 'Hitting The High Notes', which are a series of conversations with leading planning and property figures. The conversations take in the six milestone planning permissions or projects within a contributor’s career and for every project guests are invited to choose a piece of music that they were listening to at that time. Think Desert Island Discs, but for planners.
50 Shades episode also include the 'All Around the World' series, which is being led by friend of the podcast, Paul Smith.
Paul put it to Sam that debates about the planning system in England tend, for the most part, to focus solely on the planning system in England. Planners here very seldom look to other countries for inspiration and ideas. Paul wanted to remedy that and so in this series he chats with planning professionals and academics from a number of countries to find out what works well there, what works less well, and what can be learnt.
Sam is on Bluesky and Instagram, and his blogs can be found here (from where you can also sign up for his newsletter).
The 50 Shades platforms are expressions of Sam's personal opinions, which may or may not represent the opinions of his past, present or future employers.
50 Shades of Planning is by planners and for planners and so if you would like to use the podcast or the YouTube channel for sharing anything you think that the sector needs to be talking about then do please feel free to get in touch with Sam via [email protected].
Why Fifty Shades? Well, town and country planning is very much not a black and white endeavour. There are at least fifty shades in between....
