Town and Country Planning articles from October 2002

Town and Country Planning archives from October 2002

TCPA responds to the Draft London Plan.
October 1, 2002... The TCPA has responded to the London Mayor's `Draft London Plan' (the Draft Spatial Development Strategy for Greater London). In general, the TCPA pointed out that the draft plan demonstrates an emerging problem for effective regional...

No to RDA statutory consultee status.
October 1, 2002... Even though it was not directly consulted, the TCPA has responded to the limited consultation on the important issue of awarding statutory consultee status in the planning process to regional development agencies. The TCPA argued that the...

TCPA Policy Council meeting, 18 September 2002. (In Council).
October 1, 2002... Policy Council spent much of the meeting debating the TCPA's responses to the Department for Transport's Future Development of Air Transport in the UK consultation paper and to the London Mayor's Draft London Plan (sections of the response to...

Director's diary.
October 1, 2002... The complexities of planning for the Association's future began in earnest a short while ago with an away-day for staff, the Board of Trustees, and Policy Council members, held appropriately, and with great success, in Letchworth Garden City....

Welcoming the buscycle and the walking bus. (People & Ideas).
October 1, 2002... I live at one of the nodules of an interesting transport experiment. We're continually told that the complexity of the rural journey to work means that you will never lure commuters out of their cars, and that this inevitably results (for those...

Glimpse of the future on Euroland's border. (Planning World).
October 1, 2002... Newry isn't quite like anywhere else in the UK. For starters, it's our newest city, having won that honour, against epic competition, in March this year. But there's more: like Enniskillen and Londonderry--but they aren't really in the same...

Arid debates. (Trading Places).
October 1, 2002... In a previous T&CP article (1) I reviewed the issue of `food deserts' in British cities. At that time, the poor level of provision of everyday food shopping in many areas of social deprivation was becoming a major issue in Government thinking,...

Delivering through planning.
October 1, 2002... Speaking at the TCPA's Labour Party Conference fringe meeting at the end of September, Housing and Planning Minister Tony McNulty MP urged us to `keep the housing need issue at the top of the agenda. It won't stay there by itself.' His...

After the World Summit: avoiding taking too many steps backward is scant consolation for the Johannesburg Summit's failure to take much needed steps forward. Roger Levett looks at what those committed to sustainable development need to learn from the experience.
October 1, 2002... The Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development was always bound to be a gathering of residents of glass houses agreeing not to throw stones at each other. Who was going to rebuke anyone else for failing to implement Agenda 21 when...

Are planners the new Puritans? Russell Schiller warns planners against the dangers of failing to listen to what is being said by the public and of puritanically refusing to bend a little to the wind. (feature).
October 1, 2002... Puritans are people who have a clear idea of what is right, which they feel compelled to pursue irrespective of public opinion. Their approach is best expressed in the hymn we used to sing at school: I'll fear not what men say, I'll...

What future for the RTPI? (feature).
October 1, 2002... In the current debate within the RTPI about its future, it is worth judging any proposed changes by asking whether they will to help improve the way society makes arrangements for the future by planning and whether they will widen the discourse...

Planning reform--action after the Green Paper: David Lock examines the Government's intentions for reform of the planning system, outlined in the Deputy Prime Minister's statement Sustainable Communities--Delivering through Planning. (feature).
October 1, 2002... In December 2001 the Government issued its Green Paper Planning: Delivering a Fundamental Change. (1) This was quickly followed by so-called `daughter documents' trailing changes in Compulsory Purchase Order procedures, a proposed new system of...

Delivering through planning? The proposed changes will make it harder to recapture the lost sense of dynamism and delivery in planning.
October 1, 2002... When the Deputy Prime stood up in the House of Commons on 18 July to launch Sustainable Communities: Delivering through Planning, he fundamentally altered the nature of the debate on the future of the planning system. Up to that point, the...

Signalling a fresh start for planning? With the profile of housing and planning within government now at perhaps its highest level since the 1960s, but with the extent and depth of desire for change on the House of Commons backbenches uncertain, now is the time for the needs of good planning, rather than sectional interests, to be heard.
October 1, 2002... Ministers rarely return to roosts from which they have flown or have been removed. It was therefore something of a surprise to find that John Prescott was again responsible for planning. There must also have been concerns that the planning...

One step forward in the South East--but another back: Stephen Crow looks at the South East element of the Deputy Prime Minister's July statement on housing and planning and asks how we can possibly think about genuine meaningful regional spatial strategy if the definition of the region itself isn't right. (feature).
October 1, 2002... At the beginning of 2000, when the Deputy Prime Minister cut back on the housing targets that were recommended by the Panel conducting the Public Examination of Draft Regional Planning Guidance (RPG) for the South East of England, who could...

Growth area studies and North Sea fog: Peter Hall looks at the recently published Milton Keynes and South Midlands and London-Stansted-Cambridge sub-regional studies. (feature).
October 1, 2002... Quite often, if you fly out of Heathrow and the plane makes its big U-turn on to the Clacton sector towards Amsterdam and Scandinavia, you see a fascinating panorama of South East England: Ebenezer Howard's `Social City' is realised on the...

Portsmouth--on the waterfront: Dennis Hardy visits Portsmouth, a city in the throes of change as it attempts to compensate for the loss of traditional sources of employment by enlisting its maritime heritage to develop a new tourist economy. (Hardy Country).
October 1, 2002... Portsmouth sits squarely on the south coast, enjoying, as it has always done, the advantages of a natural harbour. It is the sea that drew a settlement there in the first place and which accounted for its primacy for centuries as the home of...

Urban showmanship and deeper regeneration: when culture meets urban regeneration, is its effect as significant as is sometimes claimed by the promoters of `flagship' cultural developments? Charles Landry asks the question and looks for answers. (feature).
October 1, 2002... Culture, cultural institutions, and the creative industries stand at a crossroads in contributing to the regeneration of cities: either we continue the architectural rat-race in our search for icon builders or hip design quarters to put our...

Modernising green belts--some recent contributions: Martin Elson examines three recent policy statements and reports on the modernisation of green belt policy and looks for common ground between and indicators for future policy development. (feature).
October 1, 2002... Green belts have been a permanent feature of the planning scene in England for around 50 years. They are destined to remain as a key technique of urban growth management. But will they in future be rather the same, or will they be significantly...

Europe's rural housing problems. (The Euro-Files).
October 1, 2002... Mark Shucksmith, Nick Gallent, and I have recently completed a study on rural housing pressure and policies in Western Europe. Originally intended as a review of different states' approaches to dealing with the consequences of housing pressure...