This episode is part of an international triumvirate, which has been put together with the help of old friend of the podcast, Ian Wray, and new friend of the podcast, Lucy Natarajan.
Ian, regular listeners will know, is a Professor at the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place at University of Liverpool.
Lucy is one of the editors of the Built Environment journal, a co-founder of Place Alliance, an Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes and an Associate Professor at UCL’s Bartlett School of Planning.
Ian and Lucy compiled the December 2022 edition of Built Environment and sought in so doing to explore ‘the power of plans’. This, they endeavoured to do, by way of a series of internationally commissioned case studies on grand plans that have been shown to work, asking how they worked and why. In this series Sam Stafford explores with Lucy and Ian three of those case studies.
In this episode, in a conversation recorded remotely at the end of November 2022, Sam and Lucy talk to Bob Yaro about New York, a city that has experienced rapid growth, rapid decline and an impressive economic turnaround. New York has long been planned on a city region scale, but the origin of it’s series of great plans lies in a small number of planning pioneers and philanthropists.
That economic turnaround has much to do, despite it not having a statutory function, with the Regional Planning Association, with which Bob is heavily involved and who’s role he describes as “advancing ideas whose time has not yet come".
Some accompanying reading.
Built Environment – The Power of Plans
https://www.alexandrinepress.co.uk/built-environment/power-plans
The Big Plans That Built New York City
Ian’s recommendation.
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro
Some accompanying listening.
Ian’s recommendation.
New York, New York by Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzCdxrfcAtc
Bob's recommendation
Take The A Train by Duke Ellington
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb2w2m1JmCY
Sam’s recommendation.
The Only Living Boy in New York by Everything But The Girl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgA6cpPNXEk
50 Shades T-Shirts!
If you have listened to Episode 45 of the 50 Shades of Planning Podcast you will have heard Clive Betts say that...
'In the Netherlands planning is seen as part of the solution. In the UK, too often, planning is seen as part of the problem'.
Sam said in reply that that would look good on a t-shirt and it does. Further details can be found here: http://samuelstafford.blogspot.com/2021/07/50-shades-of-planning-t-shirts.html
50 Shades of Planning
50 Shades of Planning was Sam Stafford’s attempt between April 2019 and October 2024 to explore the foibles of the English planning system and it's aim was 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.
Sam is on Bluesky (@samuelstafford.bsky.social) and Instagram (@samuel__stafford), and his blogs can be found here: http://samuelstafford.blogspot.com (from where you can also sign up for his newsletter).
The 50 Shades platforms were expressions of Sam's personal opinions, which may or may not represent the opinions of his past, present or future employers.
The 50 Shades of Planning Podcast and YouTube channels were produced in partnership with Cratus Group.
Why Fifty Shades? Well, planning is not a black and white endeavour. There are at least fifty shades in between....
