Concise Guides to Planning – serie

What is green infrastructure? Why should we develop it? Who uses it? And what socio-economic and ecological value does it provide? This useful guide provides an essential introduction to green infrastructure for planners, landscape architects, engineers and environmentalists keen to understand how we can use landscape principles to deliver more sustainable urban planning.Using multiple examples from practice in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia, the book illustrates how good policy ideas and innovative planning practice can help create more sustainable and ecologically focused urban landscapes.

Why do we plan? Who decides how and where we plan and what we should value? How do theories and ideologies filter down into real policies and plans which affect our lives?Written in a deliberately practitioner-friendly manner, this useful guide answers these questions and reveals planning theories to be simply new ideas that can help one see the world differently. Thinking about them enables us to take a step back to appreciate the wider context. The guide discusses the value of planning, how rationales for planning have changed, and whether we have too much, too little, or just the wrong kind of planning.It then sets out 25 key concepts central to professional practice, ranging from participation and complexity to post-politics and state theory, from risk and resilience to governmentality, from assemblage to ecosystems and sustainability.

Neighbourhood Planning (NP), introduced by the Localism Act of 2011, is the right for communities to decide the future of the places where they live and work. This book examines the experience of neighbourhood planners, analysing what communities have achieved, how they have done so and what went well or badly. Comparing NP with other forms of community planning and highlighting the main lessons learned so far, it acts as a navigation tool for people already involved in neighbourhood planning, as well as those contemplating participation.

Why is it important to plan for the natural environment at a whole-landscape scale and to connect wildlife habitats together? Why do planners need to look beyond protecting particular species and their habitats? Why should planners help nature to recolonise towns and cities and how can they best do this?In seeking to answer such questions, this book provides a grounding for planners and professionals in related fields in the key concepts associated with biodiversity and the natural environment, and in how to apply them in practice. It looks at how natural environment policy has shifted from the protection of rare species and nature reserves to a more holistic approach, based on biodiversity.Beginning with a brief history of environmental movements, the guide then focuses on changing approaches to conserving the natural environment. It explains environmental sustainability approaches as well as techniques for planners, using ideas such as environmental capacity and natural capital and, more recently, ecosystem services and multi-functional solutions. It addresses issues of spatial scale, connectivity, and ecological networks, recognising that small nature reserves are vulnerable and lack resilience to change. Other key topics include rebuilding biodiversity through habitat creation, enhancement, and restoration, along with the ‘re-naturing’ of cities. The tools and policies are set out before identifying key lessons and implications for future policy development and planning practice.

Why do we decide that parts of our built environment are worth the special attention that heritage designation brings? How can the character of conservation areas and other historic places continue to evolve to provide new housing, release their economic potential and enhance communities? What are the principles to understand when judging the impact of new development or alterations to our significant heritage assets? And what about the future of conservation? In seeking to answer such questions, this book provides a grounding for planners and other related professionals in the key concepts associated with conservation and how to apply them in practice.It begins by setting out the values and principles that underpin the current conservation-planning systems, explaining their historic context and evolution and critically examining these systems and possible counter approaches. Illustrated by a wide range of examples of historic and modern buildings, conservation areas, world heritage sites, parks and gardens, it then focuses upon decision-making and the management of change. It discusses how the conservation of the historic environment has become increasingly linked to other social and economic policy objectives before identifying key lessons and implications for future policy development and planning practice.

Planning is central to ensuring children and young people live in safe, secure places, that they are included and can be active. There can be few aspects of planners’ work that do not directly impact on children, from designing city centres, to implementing policies that will minimise the environmental effects of industrial practices. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) requires planners to consider children in matters affecting them and affirms that they have the right to be heard on such matters, and there is a consensus that it is important to try and engage children and young people in the planning process. The main question is how?This book provides a range of international case studies illustrating good practice. It offers a variety of tools and techniques which have proved to be successful and discusses the work that needs to be done to enable planners to respond more effectively. It identifies key areas of concern generally with reference to the built environment and more precisely to planning theory and practice.

The ways in which urban areas have evolved over the past 100 years have deeply influenced the lives of the communities that live in them. Some influences have been positive and, in the UK, people are healthier and live longer than ever before. However, other influences have contributed to health inequalities and poorer well-being for some in society. Today many people suffer as a consequence of ‘lifestyle diseases’, such as those associated with growing obesity rates and harmful consumption of alcohol. The threat of these health issues is so acute that life expectancy of future generations may begin to decline.Healthy Cities? explores the ways in which the development of the built environment has contributed to health and well-being problems and how the physical design of the places we live in may support, or constrain, healthy lifestyle choices. It sets out how understanding these relationships more fully may lead to policy and practice that reduces health inequalities, increases well-being and allows people to live more flourishing, fulfilling lives. It examines the consequences of ‘car orientated’ design,  the ‘toxic’ High Street, and poor quality, cramped housing; and the importance of nature in cities, and of initiatives such as community gardening, healthy food programmes and Park Run. It questions whether Heritage is always conducive to well-being and offers lessons from holistic and innovative programmes from the UK, North America and Australia which have successfully improved community and individual health and well-being.

This book offers key concepts and practical guidance about the planner’s role in countering terrorist risk. Public safety and security has always been a fundamental premise of successful public spaces, and a material consideration in planning processes, but especially so since the events of 9/11 2001. Recent attacks in Berlin, Nice, Stockholm, London, Melbourne, Barcelona, New York and elsewhere using fast-moving vehicles in crowded places has led to a re-evaluation of security in many public locations. In these uncertain times, planners are increasingly being seen as key stakeholders in national security and counter-terrorism endeavours where the spatial configuration and aesthetic design of protective security interventions will have a crucial impact upon the vibrancy, resilience and safety of urban centres both now and in the future.Illustrated with historic and contemporary international case studies, this book discusses: the changing roles and responsibilities of planning; how security is increasingly becoming a statutory consideration in the planning process; the need for planners to engage with a range of non-traditional stakeholders such as the military, police and security services to facilitate better planning outcomes; the importance of planning in national and global politics; the ethics of planning decision-making and the importance of determining what is in the public interest; how to advance proportionate counter-terrorist security in plans that balance effectiveness with social and cultural factors; and the role of training, guidance, standards and regulation in enforcing or encouraging the fulfilment of planning requirements.

It is well known that we are living in a time of demographic shift to an ageing society, yet our responses to this are still uneven and often spring from dated assumptions and images of older people. The significance of place in all our lives, but particularly in the lives of older people, puts responsibility on planners and other place-makers to challenge ideas about later life by developing practices of involvement that put older people’s voices at the core of planning responses. This book introduces planners to dominant ideas about ageing and how these have influenced the responses of place-makers, considering how the demographic shift may be a catalyst for new thinking in place-making. It is not so much about planning for old people, but about how an ageing population changes all aspects of our lives.The book introduces useful concepts such as the 20-minute neighbourhood and the everyday-life framework; explains the age-friendly movement; and questions to what extent it helps cities respond to change. Comparing international case studies, it explores the critical role of housing and the possible use of land allocation to encourage developers to think about better and more housing options for later life. Other aspects covered include the importance of mobility and the role of good urban design; planning as part of preventative care; and bringing together green and ageing/disability agendas.

Real-estate development is a highly regulated, high-value industry: this book examines its efficiency, its role in shaping the built environment and its relationship with planning and planners. It considers issues such as the role of the government and property markets and whether it is valid to blame the planning systems for dysfunctional housing markets. It also provides a useful grounding in development companies’ decision-making and how the property-development process, financing and pricing systems operate in a market economy. It explains the UK’s Development Led system and Development Appraisals, before comparing various alternative international systems to see how they treat, or prioritise, real estate and development interests. It questions which policies might lead to high levels of speculative activity and if so, whether this is sustainable, in political, economic or environmental terms. It looks to the future to see whether the planning system can prevent future property bubbles and identifies key lessons and implications for planning and property markets.

This book focuses on the way in which urban planning and transport planning can work together to achieve sustainable accessibility. Sustainable accessibility has a focus on walking, cycling and public transport, achieved by planning urban areas so that a person’s daily activities are undertaken closer to home. It is also about reducing the need to travel by private car, especially for long distances. This approach is critically important in the context of the climate emergency we face. Illustrated by case studies from the UK, Australia and Sweden, this book shows how, and why, we can successfully plan for sustainable accessibility through urban development planning and transport planning practices. Examining three different spatial scales: Metropolitan, Town Centres, and Neighbourhoods, and employing a multi-dimensional perspective, sustainable accessibility is considered through the lens of different residents and their daily needs. There is a strong focus on their qualities of ‘place’ and on governance, considering who should take action, and how processes of implementation influence the effectiveness of design approaches. This innovative multi-dimensional perspective re-frames traditional approaches and offers the reader an appreciation of the bigger picture of what is needed to plan for sustainable accessibility, while at the same time outlining the specific details that are necessary for its implementation and introducing the application of accessibility thinking and associated tools.

Why should the public participate in planning? And who are the stakeholders who are required to participate in the planning process? This guide assesses public and stakeholder participation in the planning process, which is a statutory requirement across the entire scope and scale of planning activities in many global contexts. It provides a historical overview of participation and outlines how this has evolved over time. It then outlines a series of key issues for the contemporary planning professional in terms of their approach to public and stakeholder participation, particularly in light of alterations in landscapes of governance and recent social, political and technological developments. Illustrated with mostly UK and European case studies, but also drawing insights from further afield, the book also provides a framework for critiquing contemporary participation, including an assessment of the pitfalls, obstacles and unintended consequences of participation efforts. As such, it identifies key principles for participation and asks critical questions for its assessment.