Sustaining Engagement?

Community ‘engagement and empowerment’ are very hot contemporary topics for planning professionals, local governments and of course; local people. The vision is for a world where communities are placed at the forefront of the planning decision making process has come to light most recently through the provisions of the Localism Act in rUK and Community Empowerment Act in Scotland. The advent of these measures in popular politics has come in the wake of one of the worst world recessions and has consequently been articulated within a context where local authority budgets have been significantly atrophied. Questions are thus raised as to how the momentum of these reforms may be sustained.

The core concepts in the debate are not particularly novel. The notion of a communicative turn in planning theory was popularised by commentators such as John Forrester and Patsy Healey in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Early attempts at community engagement were a feature of the area renewal campaigns of the 1970’s in the UK as faith in the ability of the modernist and technocratic planning system of the immediate postwar years faded.

It was precisely through these campaigns, allied to what were at the time, comprehensively enabled and often politically heavyweight regional governments and development agencies, that a particular conception of engagement arose. This focused, on putting down roots within communities, connecting people into local government structures through measures such as setting up shop in the affected neighbourhoods and having a single ‘go to’ person within the authorities, able to take concerns between departments.

The era of state driven urban ‘renewal’ has long passed to be replaced with ‘community led regeneration’. Likewise, the focus of engagement has shifted toward the intensive event, as seen in the charrette, instead of the longer term prospect of these earlier measures. The seemingly intractable development problems within the City of Glasgow where I live and work shed much critical light on the achievements of redevelopment in creating sustainable new homes and jobs. However, if we focus on the processes of engagement within; can we see a positive direction in having the infrastructure for a continuous rather than an event based dialogue?

My voluntary work with communities highlights a great reserve of initiative and drive to bring about local change within planning and development issues. However, in an era of austerity and continued local government cutbacks, it must be recongised that communities cannot bring about these transformations on their own. Finding balance across these issues will be a key concern of my forthcoming research. While at first I imagined the project to be a very current one, I realise now that it will be necessary to learn from the past in placing current engagement practice within its historical context. 

Photo, “Design Charrette #FutureWall 37320” is copyright (c) 2014 Ted Eytan: https://www.flickr.com/photos/taedc/12456680724 and made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.