Simulations for Innovative Mechanisms for the Self-organizing City: Testing new tools for value capturing

Across Western Europe the activity of urban regeneration is now around 40 years old. From the vantage point of the present this history is best understood as one of experimentation and re-experimentation with a range of policy tools, agencies and spatial scales. To take the issue of scale as an example, the preferences of British policy makers in the 1970s for 'the local' were replaced by regions in the 1980s and early 1990s (having been earlier in vogue in the 1950s). This 'new regionalism' was followed by policy orientated towards 'cities', construed as metropolitan city-regions, in the later 1990s/early 2000s - itself redolent of analysis and policy stretching back to the 1930s. Most recently this has given way to a (new) 'new localism' post-2010 (for a historical review see, Lord and Tewdwr-Jones, 2013). Against this rapid cycling of preferences for the scale at which urban policy should be delivered we could produce a parallel history of the range of limited-life agencies created by the central state to deliver such policy (the Urban Development Corporations of the 1980s, the Regional Development Agencies of the late 1990s, the Urban Regeneration Companies of the mid-2000s being a very few indicative examples).

The overarching impression is a policy landscape characterised primarily by upheaval. Indeed the only commonality between periods is the central role played by national government as architect of the agencies themselves and the geographies to which they apply.

A genuine departure to this formula came with the Localism and Decentralism Act, 2011. Under this piece of legislation for the first time anywhere in the Western world individual citizens have been given the power to assemble into coalitions, determine the boundaries of their own neighbourhood and author a plan for that area. The resultant neighbourhood plan can cover many of the features that would historically have been the preserve of a professional planner at City Hall including, for example, the design characteristics of new development. More than this, the neighbourhood planning process can draw upon innovative funding models, some of which lie outside the traditional public or public-private financial arrangements that have been the norm in the past. Good examples in this respect include Community Land Trusts and the Community Right to Build initiative which allow private individuals to jointly acquire existing buildings identified as being of local significance or develop new ones.

The purpose of this research is twofold. Firstly it seeks to investigate this process of self-organised governance of urban policy using the explanatory framework provided by game theory; secondly it aims to contextualise findings from England within the wider setting offered by related approaches that have been pioneered in mainland Europe. Taking neighbourhood planning fora as the empirical subject for the domestic component of the research we will use a range of research methods rooted in game theory and experimental economics to explore urban planning policy designed and delivered in this self-organised manner. Fundamental questions to be addressed will include what conditions are necessary for coalitions to spontaneously form; what features promote coalition stability/instability, and; how might the use of collectivised financial instruments (such as a community land trust) encourage community-directed urban transformation. The results of this research on neighbourhood planning fora will then be added to the experience of similarly self-organised approaches to effecting urban transformation reported by partner universities in North West Europe. This international feature of the research is designed to encourage policy transfer and enhance the value of the work to policy makers.

-Who will benefit from the research?
Beyond the academy the research will be of benefit to, first, the worlds of policy and practice and, second, all communities who live with the effects of planning decisions.

Fundamentally the research seeks to provide much needed independent scrutiny of new, self-organised, ways of enacting planning practice taking root across some European countries. In the context of the UK there has been no formal review commissioned by government, or any other agency, on the English experiment with Neighbourhood Planning (the Celtic nations operate their own devolved planning systems). Consequently the research will be of great interest to central government, particularly the architects of the reform agenda at the Department for Communities and Local Government. Furthermore practical empirical results will also be of great value to local governments confronted with managing a process for which there is no precedent. Finally, the work will be of direct relevance to those communities that are currently creating, or contemplating embarking upon, the production of a neighbourhood plan.

To ensure that the impact of the research is genuinely felt across these non-academic groups each participating nation within the consortium has obtained the support of a "societal partner". In the case of the UK the support of the Royal Town Planning Institute has been secured (see letter of support). The Institute will provide an invaluable connection to the worlds of planning practice and will have a formal role within the project's governance through the establishment of a cross-national steering group.

-How will they benefit from the research?
One of the outcomes of the research will be empirical evidence on the progress of neighbourhood planning: the drivers of and barriers to autonomous self-organisation, how stable/sustainable neighbourhood planning fora are brought into existence and what kind of planning policy outcomes such fora have produced. The research will, therefore, provide direct evidence to central government on what the effects of planning reform have been. Similar evidence will be indispensible to local government. As it is local government that still retains formal legal responsibility for the production of much planning documentation (such as environmental impact assessments) ensuring that community preferences as set out in a neighbourhood plan are consonant with other elements of the local authority's planning documentation is an entirely new challenge. How local government engages with communities that have been empowered to create their own plans is a question that is only pertinent in the wake of the Localism and Decentralisation Act. Finally, communities themselves, both those that are currently authoring neighbourhood plans and those yet to embark on this process will benefit from evidence of how the process might work, or not work, in other contexts.

Because the field of beneficiaries is so wide a strategy has been developed to ensure the research is as widely communicated as possible (see Pathways to Impact attachment). First, the inclusion of a societal partner that has represented UK planning for a century will prove invaluable in creating a systematic connection to practitioners and policy makers in both central and local government. This will be supplemented by articles aimed specifically at these groups in professional journals (such as Town and Country Planning and Planning magazine).

Making a connection to communities themselves will partly be achieved by the conduct of the empirical element of the research itself. However guaranteeing impact is felt across all the communities that could be engaged in neighbourhood planning is inhibited by the fact that this is not a well-defined set. However the project's publication strategy that includes the dissemination of research findings through the popular press and social media will support this aspiration.