Just Space is a network of action groups influencing plan making in London, to ensure public debate on crucial issues of social justice and on social, economic and environmental sustainability. Operating mainly through mutual support among member groups, we are active across all spatial scales of London – at neighbourhood, borough and London-wide strategic levels. What brought us together was a need to challenge the domination of the planning process by developers and public bodies, the latter often heavily influenced by property development interests. We see little to indicate that the planning system's formal commitment to community participation is more than lip service: the gap between policy and practice is immense where democratic engagement is concerned. Just Space is doing a bit to close that gap.

The influence of academic work on Just Space has been limited and indirect – via cooperation with researchers who have shared their learning environment. We would mention Arnstein (1969), Castells (1983), Healey (1992) and Mayer (2011) as influential gateways to research on participation processes in city planning. On the specific issues of London – and especially the polarisation, displacement and gentrification processes – we have drawn on Porter and Shaw (2008), Edwards (2010), Imrie et al (2009) and Aldridge et al (2013).

Just Space works by:

• • bringing together diverse participants representative of various interests and, through consensus forming, marrying expertise with direct experiences to formulate activities and collective views;

• • providing co-learning and sharing information and knowledge by briefing papers, meetings, seminars/workshops and conferences;

• • facilitating the voices of local communities/groups in public consultation, plan making and formal scrutiny opportunities provided by the statutory planning system;

• • building links with researchers and students in universities aiming to harness their skills and capacities to meet community needs.

As an illustration, for the 2010 London Plan Examination in Public (EiP), Just Space coordinated or facilitated an unprecedented 60 community organisations that appeared and gave evidence.

The UK's statutory system of land use planning (now renamed ‘spatial planning’) is almost the only field where procedures for public participation are embedded by law as compulsory elements of public decision making, and this has been the case for some decades.