Does the Planning System in England Deliver a Sustainable and Resilient Built Environment? A Study of the Experience of Town Planners

Disablism, Planning, and the Built Environment

Environment and Planning C Government and Policy ◽

10.1068/c110213 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 213-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

R F Imrie ◽

P E Wells

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Built Environment ◽

Land Use Planning ◽

Local Authority ◽

Planning System ◽

Political Agenda ◽

The Political ◽

Disabled People ◽

The Uk

In the last decade access for disabled people to public buildings has become an important part of the political agenda. Yet, one of the main forms of discrimination which still persists against disabled people is an inaccessible built environment. In particular, statutory authorities have been slow to acknowledge the mobility and access needs of disabled people, and the legislative base to back up local authority policies remains largely ineffectual and weak. In this paper, the interrelationships between disability and the built environment are considered by focusing on the role of the UK land-use planning system in securing access provision for disabled people.

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Planning Adaptation: Accommodating Complexity in the Built Environment

Urban Planning ◽

10.17645/up.v7i1.4590 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 44-55

Author(s):

Kevin Muldoon-Smith ◽

Leo Moreton

Keyword(s):

Built Environment ◽

Complex Adaptive Systems ◽

Adaptive Systems ◽

Local Level ◽

Central Business District ◽

National Sample ◽

Rate Of Change ◽

Planning System ◽

Planning Practice ◽

Use Categories

Obsolescence and vacancy are part of the traditional building life cycle, as tenants leave properties and move to new ones. Flux, a period of uncertainty before the establishment of new direction, can be considered part of building DNA. What is new, due to structural disruptions in the way we work, is the rate and regularity of flux, reflected in obsolescence, vacancy, and impermanent use. Covid-19 has instantly accelerated this disruption. Retail failure has increased with even more consumers moving online. While employees have been working from home, rendering the traditional office building in the central business district, at least temporarily, obsolete. This article reflects on the situation by reporting findings from an 18-month research project into the practice of planning adaptation in the English built environment. Original findings based on interviews with a national sample of local authority planners, combined with an institutional analysis of planning practice since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, suggest that the discipline of planning in England is struggling with the reality of flux. There is a demand for planning to act faster, due to the speed of change in the built environment, and liberal political concerns with planning regulation. This is reflected in relaxations to permitted development rules and building use categories. However, participants also indicate that there is a concurrent need for the planning system to operate in a more measured way, to plan the nuanced complexity of a built environment no longer striated by singular use categories at the local level. This notion of flux suggests a process of perpetual change, turbulence, and volatility. However, our findings suggest that within this process, there is a temporal dialectic between an accelerating rate of change in the built environment and a concomitant need to plan in a careful way to accommodate adaptation. We situate these findings in a novel reading of the complex adaptive systems literature, arguing that planning practice needs to embrace uncertainty, rather than eradicate it, in order to enable built environment adaptation. These findings are significant because they offer a framework for understanding how successful building adaptation can be enabled in England, moving beyond the negativity associated with the adaptation of buildings in recent years. This is achieved by recognizing the complex interactions involved in the adaptation process between respective stakeholders and offering an insight into how respective scales of planning governance can coexist successfully.

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Negotiating a dominant heritage discourse. Sustainable urban planning in Cape Coast, Ghana

Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development ◽

10.1108/jchmsd-04-2014-0016 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 274-289 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Susanne Fredholm

Keyword(s):

Sustainable Development ◽

Built Environment ◽

Heritage Management ◽

Planning System ◽

Local Planning ◽

Cape Coast ◽

Content Type ◽

Global Discourse ◽

Heritage Discourse ◽

The Impact

Purpose – With specific focus on sustainable development of the built environment in Cape Coast, Ghana, the purpose of this paper is to examine practical and conceptual barriers for local planning authorities advancing international outreach programmes based on a global discourse on heritage and heritage management. Design/methodology/approach – A discourse analysis was conducted on documents and programmes produced by international organisations and local planning authorities since 2000. Further qualitative data collection methods included 25 semi-structured interviews, literature and media review and on-site observations. Findings – The study shows that the dominant global discourse on heritage management being interconnected with tourism development is adopted by local planning authorities. However, the requirements to advance initiated urban redevelopment projects are neither adapted to the economic realities nor institutional capabilities of the local planning system. Instead of adjusting specific Ghanaian notions of heritage or local forms of heritage organisations, negotiating the discourse is potentially a more sustainable approach. Practical implications – The findings reveal important implications necessary to address from sustainable development perspective. The study can help practitioners to develop strategies based on local African planning contexts rather than western discourses on best practice. Originality/value – This study discusses the impact of an Authorised Heritage Discourse on local planning of the built environment, and the need to rescale and broaden the scope of such discourses to other levels than the dominating national/global.

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Exploring the relationship between the urban built environment and elderly pedestrian mobility in South Asian cities

10.21203/rs.3.rs-848582/v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Debadutta Parida ◽

Rahaman Rubayet Khan ◽

Neethilavanya K

Keyword(s):

Built Environment ◽

South Asia ◽

Subjective Evaluation ◽

The Elderly ◽

Planning System ◽

Street Design ◽

Future Policy ◽

Secondary Information ◽

Elderly Mobility ◽

Policy And Planning

Abstract Cities in South Asia have traditionally been dominated by pedestrians for their daily trips. As the elderly population is increasing in the last two decades, the dynamics of designing appropriate walkways to serve elderly people are getting more attention from urban planning scholars and policymakers alike. However, few studies in planning in the context of southern cities have considered the significant issue of elderly mobility and walkability in cities in South Asia beyond the realm of large metropolitan cities. In this paper, we attempt to understand the challenges encountered by elderly pedestrians in existing street conditions and summarizes information that may be useful for enhancing elderly mobility. Using cases of Rourkela in India and Khulna city in Bangladesh, we have collected both primary and secondary information by conducting a structured questionnaire survey in both cities at a similar period. Further to this, we analyzed statistical models to understand relationships among built environment and mobility issues based on subjective evaluation (i.e., infrastructure, street design, lighting, overcrowding condition, and encroachment). Most of the elderly pedestrians surveyed in both cities demand improvement of micro-scale urban design features and planning guidelines that they assume are absent in the statutory planning documents. This study may be employed as a useful document for city-level planning taking into account elderly perception about the built environment and their mobility concerns in future policy and planning projects. Consequently, a more comprehensive study may be incorporated highlighting elderly pedestrian’s mobility within the formal/informal transportation planning system.

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