Spatial Planning and Territorial Governance
Introduction
This theme encompasses a range of policy-related work, linked to underlying ideas about the search for territorially-based policy and institutional ‘fixes’ to different planning problems at a variety of spatial scales. Much of the work under this theme is pursued under the aegis of the Centre for Urban Policy Studies (CUPS), a multi-disciplinary research centre originally founded in 1983 and spanning the disciplines of Geography and Planning. CUPS’s founding director, Brian Robson, became Emeritus Professor in 2005, and management of the centre is now undertaken jointly through Professor Cecilia Wong as Executive Director and Iain Deas as Associate Director, alongside Professor Robson as the other member of the Centre’s Executive management group.
The first of three research sub-themes centres on the evaluation of urban regeneration initiatives, continuing longstanding CUPS interest in this area. Research has included major government-commissioned evaluation of flagship regeneration programmes, such as the national evaluation of the New Deal for Communities initiative and the evaluation of the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal. CUPS research has also looked more broadly at the effectiveness of efforts to manage regeneration interventions across and within cities, for example through work on the accreditation of Local Strategic Partnerships and on the efficacy of Urban Regeneration Companies (both for DCLG). CUPS has, as part of its mission, the goal of engaging with policy practitioners, and to that end research activities within this sub-theme has included numerous evaluations of regeneration partnerships such as the EU URBAN-funded Moss Side and Hulme Partnership and the Old Trafford and Gorse Hill SRB Partnership.
A second sub-theme focuses on the development of quantitative indicators to measure the changing nature of urban areas. This involves research on how cities and their neighbourhoods work and change over time, and on how best that can be measured. Part of this involves established interest in developing quantitative indicators through which to measure the changing nature of urban areas. Examples include work on socio-economic circumstances in cities (through, for instance, the ODPM town and city indicators project and the NWDA single programming monitoring study); work on urban competitiveness (for ESRC, as part of the Cities programme); research on developing neighbourhood level data (for DCLG); work on deprivation measurement (for the Greater London Authority, the Welsh Assembly and other funders); the development of a baseline study for regeneration in South Manchester (for Manchester City Council); and investigation of the relationship between people- and place-based patterns of deprivation and the implications for policy initiatives (for the DCLG-funded evaluation of the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal). A more recent area of interest emerging as part of this sub-theme centres on the application of GIS techniques to urban planning and policy problems at the neighbourhood scale. Current research on utilising digital communications to enhance citizen participation and provide support systems for decision-making (for example, through the EU Intelcities project), is helping to take this theme forward.
The third sub-theme explores broader questions related to territorial governance and the role of the spatial planning system. This work has been strongly interdisciplinary in nature, marrying concerns in the past separated under the headings of ‘environmental’ and ‘urban’ planning research. Research in this area has focused on a variety of spatial scales although it has concentrated, in particular, on the potentials and problems associated with the creation of new territories of governance, policy approaches and institutional structures at the city-region scale. Examples include work on the politics of scale and the emergence of new regions, international comparative research on city-regions (the ESF CITTA programme), research (with the SURF Centre at Salford University ) to develop a framework for city-regional governance (for DCLG), and examining the political-managerial issues of evidence-based policy-making.
This sub-theme has also continued the longstanding interest in the changing shape of the planning system and its relationship to wider issues of territorial governance. This involves research assessing recent changes to and future prospect for the land-use planning system in Britain, including Spatial Plans in Practice (for DCLG), stakeholder and community involvement in regional planning (for the Town and Country Planning Association), developing the evidence base on the of the need for a national spatial planning framework (for the Royal Town Planning Institute), developing a monitoring system for complex spatial strategies (for DCLG); and research on ethnicity, race and planning.