I have recently led two planning workshops that seek to illuminate the value of strategic planning for the West Midlands. This issue is close to my heart and is reflected in many of my blogs for the Birmingham Post. Yet as one colleague observed, it provides a conundrum. Although this elite group of professionals champion its value, how is it that it doesn't connect with the average person in the street or countryside of the West Midlands? This blog seeks to answer this and to make strategic planning more exciting and relevant. It also challenges the coalition government who effectively abolished strategic planning to reconsider the vacuum that currently exists and to move away from a fix at any one scale of planning.
So let's start with a story about a fire breathing dragon.
In a deprived part of Birmingham that had seen much decline over recent times lived an elderly gentleman who was much respected amongst the community. Every day he went for a walk around his neighbourhood, meeting and greeting those who were on the street. He cared passionately about his community and devoted his life to find answers to the urban blight, lack of investment and poor housing in the area.
One day the answer came to him in a dream; the gods who appeared to him told him that the answer to his community's problems was a fire breathing dragon. He was so excited he immediately went round to tell everyone one the good news. Because he was so respected the local community immediately celebrated that an answer to their misery had been found. Celebrations went on for several days.
Then a few days later as the man went on his daily walk a fire breathing dragon suddenly appeared. The man was shocked having never seen a dragon before and promptly fell down dead of a heart attack. The dragon then breathed fire and burnt the community to the ground killing all and sundry. Furthermore, due to its size and ferocity the dragon wreaked havoc on other parts of Birmingham and the surrounding area before it was destroyed by the military.
Nevertheless, the old man was right it did solve all their problems!
There is a reason for this story. It crudely illustrates the need for strategic planning. The failure of that community and the elderly man to undertake any strategic planning cost them their fictional lives and community.
So lets transport this story to the reality of strategic planning for the West Midlands. Rather than impose any single expert-led solutions we need to ask what kind of West Midlands we actually want and how we might actually achieve this. My research has shown most people have strong personal views and attachments to the places where they live, play and work. This is all well and good for the development of their local area and community plans that form just one piece in a planning jigsaw.
But the key issue is whether people can, or want to, identify and engage with the bigger jigsaw puzzle of the West Midlands within which their piece fits? Arguably it is at this scale that the fire breathing dragon might best be planned for. And it is through an assessment of the entire jigsaw that people might better understand the best way in which their own community piece might fit in or contribute.
I believe passionately that people can and should have a say in this. But in order to do this successfully, people need to understand the planning game within which the jigsaw is completed. Planning is, indeed, a game with different people and agencies all involved in trying to shape and influence places they want in a myriad of different ways. This process ultimately creates winners and losers.
However, I have observed that many losers feel alienated and excluded as they simply do not understand how to play the game; the rules of engagement and how to win and influence people and get their jigsaw pieces on the board of play.
Thus we see many people objecting to planning proposals when they see planning applications for major developments in their area. Sadly at this stage the decision has already been made as many planning applications are based on provisions in the different local plans and policies.
The game is heavily stacked towards those professionals and agencies who understand the rules, speak the jargon and can bring their potential fire breathing dragons to the table; strategic housing market assessments, duty to cooperate, viability, social capital, ecosystem services; all provide the vocabulary or weapon of choice for the professional but to most publics represent nothing but nightmares of incomprehensibility.
So we need to enable more people to play this complex 'board game ' with guiding rules where negotiations and cooperation can begin and where competing visions of different fire breathing dragons can be unpacked to form an exciting planning jigsaw of connections across different scales and sectors where the different needs of development, community and environment can be identified, assessed and traded off.
At present this is only done on an ad-hoc basis under the duty to co-operate with neighbouring authorities. There is a vacuum between these national and local levels of planning that needs to be filled.
But operating at this level clearly presents significant political dangers; who living in Bromsgrove or the Meriden gap, for example, wants a new town or to give up green belt for much needed housing in an adjacent area? Certainly, when viewed in a localism bubble , it is very difficult to provide any other answer than "NO we certainly don't" and to see solutions only within your own jigsaw piece rather than through the whole jigsaw of connected parts.
However, if more people were enabled to play and engage with the strategic game at the West Midlands scale as opposed to their pre-occupation with their own local problems we might turn up some interesting results and put the fire back into strategic planning.
