Update from Planners Network UK

Dear PNUK members,

I thought you might like a report back on the event in London recently concerning the Olympics and its planning. The event was really successful on a number of levels – we had about 40 people come on Thursday evening, and about 20 for the longer meeting on Friday. Many were local residents. Iain Sinclair gave a really wonderful and insightful talk about life in the East End, and he was followed by Bill Parry-Davies from OPEN Dalston about large development pressures and disastrous planning messes currently underway in Dalston and Shoreditch. If anyone is keen to be further educated on the potentially harmful effects for local people and environments of holding an Olympics event, then watch the film The Five Ring Circus – an excellent documentary on a series of disasters currently unfolding in Vancouver and its region. Highly recommended.

On Friday we explored a whole range of planning-related issues concerning Olympics developments, the process that has been undertaken to date, the extent to which local people have been able to find a way to have a voice in those processes, and the various challenges they have faced. PNUK members were able to give some feedback on more general aspects of the planning system, its various guises and the changes afoot. Games Monitor representatives felt this was helpful. At the end of Friday, we constructed a list of ideas that might be useful in continuing work in this area. This was simply a brainstorming, rather than a definitive strategy, but there is much that PNUK could do not just on this particular issue of the Olympics but more widely. Here’s a summary of things I thought had particular resonance for a network like PNUK (they aren’t my ideas, they came from a variety of participants):
remind planners (ourselves?) that they’re citizens too. Get planners walking in the neighbourhoods they plan for.
can anybody do something with maps/graphics to show what is coming for the East End if all development plans for towers go ahead, eg show (graphically) the 2012 skyline with its fringe of towers? See skyscrapercity.com
make available some guidance (brief) on how to go about fighting against bad development plans, ways to object and have a say, language to use within the ‘industry’ of development planning. Also, keep a website (pnuk?) up to date on the changing planning system, new threats and opportunities and information that would help local groups
Run a series of seminars on how to fight against bad development, activist-led seminars on how to get through the planning process – hold them on different sites, estates etc to inform people.
more clearly articulate what we are trying to do. PNUK to create a research project and develop an alternative for planning. Provide analysis/data/depth of argument that can give weight to local groups who are trying to develop alternatives for development.

Two additional things emerged:
1. Bill Parry-Davies and the OPEN Dalston/Shoreditch groups are looking for some help to develop alternative plans for their centres and additional specific sites. One of the central concerns we discussed at both events was the importance of having an alternative to present rather than just relying on objections/submissions. The latter is seen as a particularly futile and counter-productive activity and there is considerable interest in developing alternative ‘community’ plans (for want of a better word). If anyone can provide any help at all specifically to OPEN Dalston/OPEN Shoreditch, please be in contact with Bill – his email is: bpd@dowse.co.uk. The OPEN groups have websites, see: http://opendalston.blogspot.com/ and http://open-shoreditch.blogspot.com/
2. Games Monitor are interested in pursing some project work but of course can’t do it themselves because they lack institutional support, funding, access to networks etc. Here’s a way that PNUK members, particularly those based in Universities, might be productively involved. Julian Cheyne (of Games Monitor) and I are currently putting together some thoughts on what the project might look like but will be based around attempting to assess the impact of the Olympics developments, as well as developing alternative models of urban change for the East End.

Anyone interested in any of these, or with helpful comments, ideas, contacts, resources etc. do please get in touch with either me, or Bill Parry-Davies, or just write to the list and share ideas.

By the way, a full report of the London event is now on the website, which you can read at your leisure. You will also find there some other new bits – in particular some papers from the roundtable PNUK hosted at the Planning Research Conference held in Belfast earlier this year. We hope to continue hosting roundtables at conference events in the future as it proved a useful forum for discussion. Be in contact if you’re keen to participate or can organise one.

Libby



Dr Libby Porter
Lecturer in Spatial Planning
Department of Urban Studies
University of Glasgow
25 Bute Gardens
Glasgow G12 8RS
Phone: 0141 330 3664
Email: l.porter@lbss.gla.ac.uk

Interested in progressive planning? Check out Planners Network UK www.pnuk.org.uk

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