Summary of the impact

Research at Newcastle has made a significant contribution to the development of strategic and local planning practice in the UK and globally. It has also shaped concepts and expectations of spatial planning and place governance. Based on a concerted approach to the theorisation, analysis and transfer of ideas through teaching, research and engagement with practice, the role of collaborative planning as a key element of urban governance, to bring different interests and communities together, continues to influence debates about the nature of development processes and their future role in place-shaping.

Underpinning research

Research at Newcastle University on institutionalism, governance, public participation, and social inclusion led to the development of the idea of collaborative planning. As part of a wider movement for a communicative approach to understanding planning activity, this consolidated a shift in thinking from planning as largely a technical-rational process undertaken principally by an elite of professional planners, to a networked activity intended to resolve place-based challenges by integrating not only various actors in planning and the resources available in governmental organisations, but also incorporating local people as an equal partner in policy- and decision-making processes. Research in this vein was particularly evident at Newcastle University during the 1990s and 2000s. It involved a number of staff, particularly Patsy Healey (Professor, Emeritus Professor), but also Simin Davoudi (Research Associate, 1989-96; Professor, 2006-) and Geoff Vigar (Research Associate, 1995-8; 2000 — Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Professor).

In the 1990s, a number of in-depth empirical studies were undertaken of urban partnerships and land-use planning through which the detailed nature of the relational dynamics in governance practices for urban development were explored. For example, as part of the ESRC Research Project Urban Governance, Institutional Capacity and Regenerating City Centres, Healey led a team studying the Grainger Town Initiative, a partnership project to regenerate the C19th core of Newcastle City Centre (1). An ESRC-funded project Development Plans and the Regulatory Form of the Planning System (1995-1997) developed empirical work in a similar vein but linked an institutionalist focus more closely to the English statutory planning system. It explored the social relations of strategic spatial planning processes in England and identified the ways in which highly centralised and sectoral policy agendas and processes inhibited the achievement of innovation, inclusion and environmental sustainability. The subsequent book argued for a return to more proactive planning system centred on developing a shared local vision using the tools of forward plans. It also identified that pressure from other spheres, including a development industry eager for greater certainty in strategic planning, had sown the seeds of such a system (3). Such research fed into Healey's landmark book Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies (2), first published in 1997 (second edition 2006). Its aim was to promote new ways of managing collective concerns about the qualities of shared places and local environments. The book emphasised the multiple webs of relations through which both places and policies are `constructed' and urged greater recognition of the range and complexity of stakeholders and issues involved, and the need for planning practice to reflect on the power structures and relations at work within processes of spatial change. It promoted an ethic of inclusion and a commitment to participative processes, arguing that these practices enable policies and projects to be based on the best possible understanding of relevant material conditions, values and interests.

Research in the early 2000s contributed to the refinement of the theory of collaborative planning by focusing on specific conceptual and empirical aspects. For example, the EU FPV SINGOCOM project (Healey, Frank Moulaert 2002-08; Vigar) further developed the concept of institutional capacity (4) in planning and urban governance (5). Here, empirical work comparing urban regeneration projects in the UK with others in Europe highlighted the lack of local institutional capacity in English local government explained through the continuing centrism and highly sectoralised nature of the English polity.

Healey's 2007 book Urban Complexity and Spatial Strategy: Towards a Relational Planning for our Times (6) brings together aspects of this work, making further theoretical in-roads in part through the deployment of three international case studies funded by the Leverhulme Trust. It develops the themes of collaborative planning set out previously, with particular emphasis of how concepts from urban geography can be mobilised in thinking about development processes and how these affect the capacity to transform power relations and achieve shared objectives for qualities of place. It again highlighted the deficiencies of English local governance and planning practice although noted how through mobilising the power of collaborative networks planners could get things done and make places better. Thus, as in Healey's previous work, reflexive planners found hope and practical lessons as to how to mobilise planning systems to achieve a common good.

References to the research

Details of the impact

Newcastle University staff have a long track record in providing research insights on aspects of collaborative planning. The primary purpose of this research is as a mirror on society, allowing it to reflect on, and in time to reframe its thinking about, its practices. Its impact, then, is firstly when society reflects upon the research insights, secondly if this causes them to change their thinking about their practices, and thirdly if this ultimately leads to tangible changes of practice and thus planning outcomes.

Over many years, including during the 2008 - 2013 impact period, Newcastle staff (but particularly Healey) have ensured that the research insights have been diffused to a wide range of leading planners and politicians, as a first stage of impact. This has been effected by ensuring research outputs have been promoted to such people and from the standing afforded to Newcastle University research by the planning elite. For example, when receiving the RTPI's Gold Medal (its highest award for contributions to the profession, only awarded twice in the last 30 years and Healey the only ever female recipient) Healey used the opportunity to promote the research insights accumulated at Newcastle through her address. Healey was also the senior editor of the RTPI journal Planning Theory and Practice until 2009 and was associate editor of the RTPI Library Book Series from 2009-2013. The standing of the research is evidenced by the profession. For example, the Vice-Chair of the TCPA in 2011 referred to Healey, Davoudi, Hull and Vigar as `influential voices in planning' (IMP1); and the 2008 president of the RTPI describes the `major contribution' Healey made to linking academic planners and practitioners (IMP2).

Research insights have been considered by a wide range of people associated with planning, some of whom have gone on to promote ideas of collaborative planning in other parts of the world. Activities in this vein would include the mentoring of postgraduate students, and addresses at events such as Planning Summer Schools, RTPI events and lectures at Young Planners conferences.

Newcastle research insights and their discussion by planning elites have clearly progressed to make significant changes in thinking. Friedman (2008), identifies three shifts in planning and practices the first of which is "toward making planning more of a whole-society process rather than primarily a technical one (e.g., Healey, 2007, 280-282)" (p.254) (IMP3), and Albrechts (2009) claims that "there is ample evidence that the concepts developed, theorized and opened up to spatial planning by Healey do travel. They travel not only in academia but also in the world of practice" (p.145) (IMP4).

Promoting planning as a whole-society spatial activity as conceptualised by Healey is now commonplace among the leading planning practice organisations in the UK. For example, the TCPA's Chief Planner said "Collaborative Planning is a theory that has now become de rigeur practice" (IMP5). Similarly, ideas of collaborative planning have pervaded government thinking for the last decade, most recently evidenced by the chapter on this in the Conservative manifesto `Open Source Planning' (a precursor to the Localism Act) (IMP6).

The substantial revision of the English planning system in 2004 was informed by the Newcastle research of the mid/ late 1990s and early 2000s. The research had defined the need for a return to the visioning aspect of the system present in the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act and had pointed to its re-emergence in certain places. The 2004 Act created Local Development Frameworks (LDFs), which although introduced prior to the impact period, are highly significant as the plans created as a result continue today as the `core' spatial planning strategy for each local authority area and hence have significant impact in the 2008-2013 period. Very much in line with the concept of collaborative planning they aim to address social, environmental and economic issues as well as land-use issues per se, to be participative, and to integrate and help deliver other strategies and policies. During the period before the 2004 Act, Healey had an advisory role to ODPM as a member of the steering group for their scoping study on LDFs and was involved in associated discussions with the civil servants drawing up the legislation (IMP7). Of particular note was her influence on the requirement on planning authorities to seek consensus on essential issues early in the process of LDF preparation, by the comprehensive involvement of the fullest possible range of interested parties.

Not only is this principle of collaborative planning continuing in LDFs under the Coalition government, it is also evident in the planning approaches they have introduced. "Both through a "localism" agenda driven from constituency and local government roots, and from a "growth agenda with more business foundations, there is even now increased interest in drawing together sectors of resource investment at more local scales than the nation-state; an approach which would, as the Royal Town Planning Institute is arguing in its profession-based current research, enhance the effectiveness of spatial planning" (IMP7).

The concept of collaborative planning has also had global reach. Healey, Davoudi and Vigar were commissioned by UN Habitat to write a chapter for the UN Global Report on Human Settlements 2009 (IMP8). In this they were able to assert the themes of collaborative planning to UN Habitat audiences — elite policymakers in the global south — allowing them to reflect upon these ideas. The underpinning research is globally held in high esteem and has informed the work of many academics working to affect change in their local contexts (IMP3, IMP4). Most recently, a number of Healey's papers have been translated into Chinese. According to Professor Bing Zhang, Chief Planner at the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design (a scientific research institution under the Ministry of Construction of PR China), `Healey's research achievements on urban planning have had a sustained influence on planning theory and practice in China during the last two decades' (IMP9).

Sources to corroborate the impact

IMP1 Zetter, J (2011) "A presumption in favour of change" Town and Country Planning 80 (10): 438-441.

IMP2 O'Neill, J. (2009) Some Presidential Reflections on Patsy Healey, Planning Theory and Practice 10(1) p.146-147.

IMP3 Friedmann, J. (2008) "The Uses of Planning Theory"; Journal of Planning Education and Research 28 (2): 247-257.

IMP4 Allbrechts, L. (2009) From Strategic Spatial Plans to Spatial Strategies Planning Theory and Practice vol 10 (1) p. 142-145.

IMP5 Personal Communication, Chief Planner, Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA).

IMP6 Conservatives (2010) Open Source Planning Green Paper. Available at:
http://www.conservatives.com/~/media/Files/Green%20Papers/planning-green-paper.ashx

IMP7 Personal Communication, Head of Policy Practice and Research, Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) and Former Head of Development Plans, ODPM

IMP8 UN Habitat (2009) Planning Sustainable Cities. Global Report on Human Settlements 2009; London: Earthscan.

IMP9 Personal Communication from Chief Planner, China Academy of Urban Planning and Design (dated 2 September 2013).