Notes from a (Fourth) Roundtable Discussion at the London School of Economics: March 27th 2024
This roundtable involved some 18 invited participants coming from the London Assembly, London boroughs, central government, London HE institutions, consultants/independent researchers, civic/community organisations, Future of London and the RTPI [1].
Introduction
The purpose of the session, as explained by Ian Gordon (LSE London, co-convenor) was to flesh-out the most focused of the (four) lines of critical argument from the pair of autumn roundtables (and then the February seminar) about ways of making future versions of the London Plan more strategic[2]. This was to introduce a new “strategic options report” phase, presenting and then debating feasible/desirable ways forward – prior to the more detailed technical and drafting work required for the statutory Spatial Development Strategy. And with an expectation that the London Assembly would play a central role in these debates, and their projection across other London arenas.
If this were to occur (say) one third of the way through the process, this would allow both earlier/much wider debate about key policy and feasibility issues, before options were closed down. As well as linkage with lessons to be learned from analysis of Plan Monitoring Reports – in what should be a more continuing engagement with strategic planning issues[3].
Discussion proceeded in two stages: the first focused on the mainstream “spatial planning concerns” with population, housing, land use and infrastructure; and the second part with broader economic and environmental issues.
Spatial and Social Planning themes
Substantive discussion of the issues involved in taking this idea forward, and examples from mainstream planning that might be drawn on, was introduced by Andrew Jones (consultant, AE Atkins); and Michael Bach (London Forum of Civic/Amenity Societies) .
Andrew’s contribution drew on significant recent examples of local authorities developing a non-statutory/non-technical approach, exploring how their places work, key issues/uncertainties facing them, and options going forward. These ranged between corporate plans – with often quite general priority statements feeding down to local plan production, sometimes buttressed by stakeholder engagement and community statements – and others deploying stronger research bases to address challenges requiring some long term reinvention (e.g. Birmingham and Milton Keynes). In London some of these thought processes were starting to appear from organisations like Business London, outside the GLA box – with some encouragement from there, but not currently drawn into the planning process. As, someone else pointed out, Birmingham and Milton Keynes had the advantage over London of being statutory planning authorities.
Michael’s (complementary) contribution drew primarily from the experiences of two London-wide community-oriented groups (Just Space and the London Civic Forum) which had engaged very intensively in the plan-shaping/examining processes, during Mayoralty oriented to a value-driven City for Londoners. But found place-making/design-oriented concerns marginalised in relation to accessibility project related concerns and the “soundness” of the plan (in numerical terms?). He was sceptical about whether the GLA’s Planning for London more qualitative engagement programme during the (Covid-induced) hiatus between rounds of formal Plan preparation would substantially alter this – whether because of further national government pressure, or because a re-elected Mayor would see no reason for review.
In discussion various people commented on the impacts of the interruption of strategic planning processes (including basic data collection) because of the Mayor’s (unpublicised) decision not to attempt a Plan review during the shortened term resulting from the Covid-deferred 2020 Mayoral election. Remarkably, given the unsatisfactory verdict on the Plan produced in 2018, that seems to have attracted no critical attention in the general or specialist press. But it is a side-effect of the artificial four yearly cycle of London Plan-making that has developed because of the absolutely central position given to the Mayor. A knock-on effect as several people suggested is to make it harder to secure a restructuring of the normal processes that have evolved (since Ken Livingstone’s 2nd term) – underlining the critical role that the Assembly (and any external allies) would have to play in securing such a change, however necessary.
As was also said, these difficulties go back to the political design of the new GLA 25 years ago, with side-effects including a lack of continuity/institutional knowledge in Committee membership and support-staff. An Assembly member drew an analogy with the London Policing Board that the Mayor has set up, securing continuity beyond a single 4 year term (surely required as much to compensate for the discontinuity of a Mayoral system, in relation to the long term strategic planning function).
There was a good deal more discussion around these lines – but with substantial support for the view that a (strong) Assembly- initiated move for introduction of a strategic options stage – hopefully with backing from their London political counterparts – was the most promising route out of this impasse.
Business, Economic and Climate-related themes
In the second half of the round-table, the focus shifted to the potential for action in relation to the city’s business economy and services, with discussion introduced by Mark Kleinman (Kings College, London – and formerly of GLA); and Ada Lee ( of the Royal Town Planning Institute ).
Mark started from a focus on the Economic Development Strategy, as one of the suite that have been supposed to feed into the London Plan. Though, as he observed, it gets rapidly sucked into the spatial planning process, without an opportunity first to reflect on the bigger questions, notably about how much growth London should aspire to, in terms of benefits/disbenefits. Having a preliminary strategic options stage would be helpful from this perspective, and to reflect on the significance of a functional economic region stretching beyond any conceivable administrative version of “London” – including questions of planning for polycentricity and/or growth corridors.
In response to a question as to whether since the demise of the London Development Agency there had been a loss of interest in underlying economic processes, he suggested that the natural shift was the other way round. At the outset, when the turnaround from an overall contraction in London jobs to (encouraged by national policy) to net growth couldn’t be taken for granted, the emphasis had to be on numbers. But after that questions could be asked about kinds/qualities of jobs and whether they got people off unemployment – and maybe about their spatial location too.
Ada approached the topic from a different direction, starting from the broad issue of planning for climate justice, before discussing how this applied to the case of London, as a highly unequal city – rather than commenting directly on London planning issues and procedures.
Her line of argument involved 5 basic reasons why spatial planning was important for climate justice – with a set of implications that clearly resonated with giving priority to reviewing spatial options in relation to these, before embedding reactions in the technical detail of a comprehensive draft plan.
These reasons were in terms of:
- Diversity and equality: as established ethical concerns with heightened salience because climate change would both disproportionately affect the most vulnerable and add to the diversity of cities via population displacement;
- The central importance of real engagement: another established planning concern, requiring meaningful inputs from the most at-risk marginal communities, in planning for climate change;
- Attention to wider social cost-benefit criteria: for adaptation/mitigation measures, with a people-first approach;
- More adequate governance, resourcing and institutional capacity: as crucial limiting factors for key response fields including local service/infrastructure provision, normally marginalised behind provision for housing delivery and economic growth;
- Storytelling: with a need to develop/research compelling non-technocratic/ordinary language narratives to drive collective action.
A question was raised about planning in the face of higher levels of uncertainty, about the sources and actual appearance of shocks (even if it were evident who could be most at risk), leading to some discussion of lessons of Covid, treated as an exceptional crisis, with task forces mobilised on a temporary basis. And with very few long-term lessons learned in relation to planning/housing (in contrast to the HK 2003 SARS case) or to the economy. Normalcy was welcomed back, and substantial shifts in patterns of migration etc. effectively ignored – though this was in line with the Plan’s general repression of references to the particular role of international migrants.
By contrast, as an Assembly member observed, Covid had a substantial impact on people’s awareness of how the public realm impacted on their well-being – which was likely to be a key lens for the next Plan. Some of the reactions, in relation e.g. to 15 minute cities, arguably reflected some psychological trauma – but others (about impacts of PFRs on the quality of homes) were spot-on. And London Plans were leading the way on big environmental issues_ ahead of national government. But (it was said) they had failed to work from neighbourhoods (at the bottom end of the hierarchy) as the building blocks of the city. Providing leadership for local planning should be a key focus of the next Plan.
A positive Mayoral response to the Covid crisis was said to be the speedy establishment of a high level London Recovery Board, generating interesting research on how the regressive impacts were mediated through the housing system – which didn’t make it to the recovery structure, apparently because of some institutional resistance, or compartmentalisation. The subsequent Kerslake Review had, however, greatly enhanced collaboration in housing delivery.
What Can Be Done
Finally, attention turned to the question of how active debate about ,and ownership of, a more genuinely strategic version of London Planning could actually be enabled – given that so far the London press seems quite uninterested in planning, even though at the neighbourhood level many people are.
One answer was to be pro-active, getting analyses done (without waiting for the media), make it known, and put it out to the host of local groups (BIDS, youth boards etc.) where young people in particular so want to engage. And then escalate to more formal groups – businesses, citizens assemblies etc.
A second perspective, involved a more top-down approach, pitching for a potentially good TV series on (say) “Why London doesn’t work”, with strong themes and controversy making for good and relevant television.
Key to either of these – or the simple reliance on the open consultation phase of the London Plan-making process – however, is the question of how reactions by groups of individuals can be brought to bear on elements within am integrated Plan running to hundreds of pages.
This is one key reason for an introductory stage at which a much simplified, and clearly structured, version of key (strategic) elements in the proposed Plan, and credibly differentiated alternatives is given/exposed to focused attention, with the Assembly representing the London population in miniature serving as a public panel of reviewers. They could not (except in extremis) actually be decision-makers, but as the city’s other democratic representatives, alongside the Mayor scrutiny by the Assembly should provide an arena/occasion where the media will provide coverage. And pull in inputs from the range of Assembly committees spanning the fields that a Strategic Plan should integrate (including Housing, Environment, Economy/Culture/Skills and Transport as well as Planning/ Regeneration).
Assembly membership is limited (with just 25 AMs), however. And the point was made in discussion that this process could be greatly enhanced if fellow London representatives – MPs, party colleagues etc. were motivated to join in with this decision-shaping process (in the kind of city-wide solidarity that might perhaps be expected in other metros, but seems to have been lost in London). Whether there could be some collective engagement from the potentially strong London university community was also discussed, though it was noted both that there were currently no effective channels of communication, and that most institutions aspired to more global fields of influence.
Next Steps
Reactions and further ideas for developing this proposal for the next round of Plan-making/reviewing will be invited – and pursued with further interactions after at least the first round of forthcoming elections, for the GLA and then (potentially) national.
[1] Organised by LSE London, with collaboration from London Councils
[2] Reports on these events can be found in LSE London’s related blog series: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lselondon/roundtables-2023/.
[3] A pre-session version of this basic line of argument was presented as a blog in that series: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lselondon/why-it-would-be-a-much-better-idea-to-produce-and-debate-a-wide-ranging-london-strategic-options-review-before-committing-to-detailed-work-on-the-formal-spatial-development-plan/
