Introduction

This chapter situates neighbourhood planning within the context of the evolution of community-led planning, citizen engagement and the shifting scales of spatial planning at the national and international levels. It critically examines neighbourhood planning as a key element of the localism that has evolved in England since 2010, outlining the contradictory propositions and powers at its heart. The chapter is in three parts. The first explores international trends in planning policy and governance and ways of characterising and understanding these, arguing that we have to move away from dichotomies to look at the complexities of the social, spatial and political relations involved. The second section critically examines the localism and the neighbourhood planning initiatives of recent UK governments in the context of these debates, while the third section highlights the counter-narratives, tensions and challenges that are revealed and which are examined in later chapters in the book.

The turn to the local

Neighbourhood planning may appear to be a particularly English initiative but it can only be fully understood within the context of international trends in planning and governance. Ideals of decentralising power and changing the boundaries between the state and its citizens have increasingly found expression in a range of countries and initiatives. Indeed, as Yetano et al (2010, p 784) state: ‘nowadays it is difficult to find a government that is not claiming to be pursuing opportunities for citizen engagement’. Rose (1996, p 332) refers to this as the rise of ‘government through community’: a shift in the discourses, territory and practices of governing that appear to signal a move to a more participatory approach to decision-making and the devolution of power from central governments to what is variously termed the ‘community’, ‘locality’ or ‘neighbourhood’. As we shall see throughout this book, the reality is more complex.

This turn to the local is not confined to particular times or places, taking on different forms and labels in particular social and political contexts. In the UK, it can be traced to the Community Development Projects of the late 1960s (Loney, 1983; Gallent and Robinson, 2012) and through the communitarianism of New Labour (Imrie and Raco, 2003; Wallace, 2010).