Professor Sue Brownill

This paper reconsiders the roles of ‘counter-professionals’ (Goodman 1972) in urban social movements, focusing on the generation of students, activists and planners involved in the UK’s community action movement from the late-1960s. The paper therefore provides the first historical account of the ways community action stimulated the development of a distinctive counter-tradition of radical planning in the UK, inspiring experimentation with new, activist roles amongst a generation of young professionals who sought to support community-based movements seeking to challenge the post-war state, develop new models of participatory planning and lay the foundations for a more democratic society. Drawing on oral history interviews with key figures and archival materials from their personal records coupled with analysis of Community Action magazine (1972-90), we track how many of those involved developed careers ‘working the spaces of power’ in and against various state projects (Newman 2012).

The paper explores three key, interconnected dimensions of our participants’ experiences that we argue are central to counter-professional practice and the politics of radical planning: their relations with the state; their relations with community-based movements and organisations; and thirdly, the ways these relations shaped the political horizons of community action. Our empirical work concludes by accounting for the relative decline of community action in the 1980s. Through reconsideration of the UK context, the paper contributes to debates about the politics of radical planning and the roles of activist-professionals within urban social movements. It concludes with reflection on the seemingly constrained conditions of possibility for counter-professional practices today and the wider lessons of the community action moment for attempts to build collective alternatives, in, against and beyond the neoliberal state. By reconsidering the role of radical planners in community action in the UK we hope the paper can inspire further debate about the contributions future generations of counter-professionals might make to ongoing movements for urban justice, both in the UK and internationally.

Growing significance of neighbourhoods in different areas of urban planning, along with the increasing attention to the social dimension of sustainable communities and societies, emphasizes the need for conceptualizing socially sustainable neighbourhoods. This article first critically reflects on the concept of socially sustainable neighbourhoods in two areas of definition and operationalization. It then proposes a tripartite framework for measuring social sustainability of urban neighbourhoods which combines three elements of neighbourhood,
neighbouring, and neighbours. This framework is tested, examined, and discussed in the case of Bethnal Green, London. The findings are integrated into a Social Sustainability Enhancement Index which encompasses practical recommendations to promote social sustainability of Bethnal Green. The article concludes with highlighting research and policy implications of the proposed framework, and suggests some methodological improvements for the future research.

Cities are today undergoing major economic and spatial transformations in line with the requirements of global capital and neoliberalism. A main question to address in this scenario is: what is the scope for actions aiming to advance a more pro-poor agenda and curb the acute inequality found in the metropolises of the so-called developing countries? With that concern in mind, this paper examines the potentials and limitations of recent redevelopments in Rio de Janeiro to counteract durable inequality, as conceptualised by Charles Tilly. To do so we analysed secondary evidence and recent primary fieldwork drawing on 48 interviews with a range of stakeholders involved in the city’s preparations for the mega events, urban development and resistance to evictions, particularly in Vila Autódromo and Providência communities. Results show that there is room for progressive intervention and change at the local level if the underlying drivers of structural inequality are appropriately identified and systematically targeted by combined state and social movements’ political actions.  

The last 50 years have not only seen major changes in the forms and practices of participation but also in the ways in which it has been characterized and understood. Alongside the report of the Skeffington Committee on public participation in planning, 1969 saw the publication of Sherry Arnstein's 'ladder of participation' which famously typified participation from tokenism to citizen control. Since then the ladder has been replaced by the networks of collaborative planning and both have been challenged by the focus on planning's 'dark side' where participation is associated with coercive forms of governmentality and governance through community. This article discusses the evolution of these ideas, not to provide a historiography per se, but to highlight the themes, issues and contradictions they suggest lie behind participation. These include debates about the extent to which power can ever be devolved to the people; clashes between the different modes of governance inherent in planning (representative, legal/bureaucratic, participatory); the significance of action outside the formal participation apparatus (insurgent planning); and the ways in which the publics of planning have been made and remade within different planning regimes, often with profound implications for the inclusion and exclusion of different social groups and concerns. The article concludes that as a result public participation in planning can be seen as a shifting terrain of underlying tensions and contradictions, which presents both openings and closures for citizens seeking to influence the use and development of land.

East London’s former docklands have been at the centre of planning and regeneration debates for the past four decades. The setting up of the LDDC has been variously interpreted as ‘3-D Thatcherism’ in action, a symbol of the death of comprehensive planning and the replacement of a corporatist, Keynesian era of urban policy with a more neo-liberal approach. Moving away from simplistic and straightforward interpretations of the processes happening at this time, this paper uses new archival and interview material to re-examine the setting up of the LDDC and its early years, revealing a more complex and contradictory picture than existing accounts suggest. It focuses on three themes: changing forms of state intervention; the uncertain ‘break’ in the post-war consensus as evidenced by the changes in approaches to the regeneration of Docklands; and the unintended, disordered process of actual policy change. As such we aim to reveal  how shifting visions, modes of governance and practices can compete and co-exist in the midst of seemingly coherent ‘eras’, as Docklands as a place and as an approach to regeneration was constantly made and re-made – a process that continues to this day. 

This article considers how planning reforms are contributing to the dramatic fall in the provision of homes that are affordable for those on lower incomes.

The need to ensure a lasting legacy has become an increasing part of Olympic rhetoric. While there is a body of literature which characterises legacy as part of the ‘carnival mask’ of neo-liberal urbanisation and evidence of a globalised urban policy, this article asks the question what can thinking with assemblage offer to a critical understanding of mega-events? The article addresses this question and responds to calls for urban theory to ‘see from the South’, by exploring how legacy has been assembled in two Olympic cities focusing on the role of ‘spatial practices of assemblage’, including city development strategies and global policy mobility. Drawing on empirical work in London and Rio, the article reveals that thinking with assemblage can contribute to a nuanced, yet still critical, understanding of legacy as a contradictory and contested concept which is constantly being made and remade through the contingent practices of Olympic city building. It can also suggest how legacy can be conceived and realised in ways that allow for alternative legacies and forms of urbanisation to emerge but that its potential can only be realised in conjunction with other critical perspectives.

The concern to ensure public participation or community engagement within and in support of spatial planning has been an ongoing and widely aired topic since at least the 1960s. The basis and justification, however, for academics and policy-makers in agonizing over this issue and the practices of participation has been variously questioned. Similarly, exhortations to understand the motives and limitations of different interests and their positions or relative power have also been widely debated. Works looking at participation have also ranged widely and many have been critical of the merits or benefits of participation in planning and more broadly in local governance. This special issue of Planning Practice & Research aims both to engage with these debates and to reflect on the direction of travel of current research within the continuously evolving landscape of the theory and practice of participation.

This paper explores the relationship between the increasing emphasis on the integration of social, economic, democratic and environmental objectives within planning practice and the emergence of new forms of networked governance. Using a framework which stresses the hybridity and tensions that characterise current governance arrangements, the article investigates attempts to create `sustainable communities' in the Thames Gateway, England. The analysis reveals the tensions and contradictions arising from governing the Gateway, including those between the conflicting goals of economic competitiveness and social and environmental sustainability, between horizontal, networked governance and forms of and requirements for hierarchical direction and between a focus on delivery and participatory governance. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of the hybridity and complexity in governance forms for the search for sustainable communities and the forms of governance `fit for purpose' in their realisation.