People-Powered Planning: Planning from the bottom up in a top-down system

• Authors: Patrick Collins

Abstracts

EN

This paper is concerned with spatial policy in Ireland. It adopts an historical lens to help explain why Ireland currently finds itself at the bottom of the European league table with regard to local governance. After categorising the Irish political and planning system as highly centralised, bureaucratic and linear, the paper uses a case study of the Moycullen village plan to show an alternate path towards place development in Ireland. This case study sets out to contrast the desire of a people to collaborate in the authorship of their place with the top down nature of spatial planning in Ireland. By making clear the methods and results of the project, this paper highlights the latent demand that exists in a community that is subject to national planning system that reduces their ability to affect change. Through the use of some innovative approaches, this project has sought to fire the geographic imaginary of a people with respect to their place.

Keywords

EN

spatial planning; centralisation; collaboration; village planning; Ireland

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: European Spatial Research and Policy
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 28
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 227-250

Dates

published

2021

Contributors

author

Patrick Collins

• National University of Ireland, School of Geography and Archaeology, University Road, Galway, Ireland, H91 TK33

• https://orcid.org/0000000236138912

References

• ALBRECHTS, L. (2010), ‘More of the same is not enough! How could strategic spatial planning be instrumental in dealing with the challenges ahead?’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 37 (6), pp. 1115–1127. https://doi.org/10.1068/b36068
• ARNETT, J. J. (2002), ‘The psychology of globalization’, American Psychologist, 57 (10), p. 774. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.10.774
• BARRY, F. (2019), ‘Aggressive tax planning practices and inward-FDI implications for Ireland of the new US corporate tax regime’, The Economic and Social Review, 50 (2, Summer), pp. 325–340.
• BARTLEY, B. and TREADWELL SHINE, K. (2003), ‘Competitive city: governance and the changing dynamics of urban regeneration in Dublin’, The globalized city: economic restructuring and social polarization in European cities, pp. 146–166.
• BRADLEY, Q. (2015), ‘The political identities of neighbourhood planning in England’, Space and Polity, 19 (2), pp. 97–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2015.1046279
• BREATHNACH, P. (2010), ‘From spatial keynesianism to post‐fordist neoliberalism: emerging contradictions in the spatiality of the Irish State’, Antipode, 42 (5), pp. 1180–1199.
• BREATHNACH, P. (2013), ‘Regional governance and regional development: Implications of the Action Programme for Effective Local Government’, Administration, 61 (3), pp. 51–73.
• BREEN, R. L. (2006), ‘A practical guide to focus-group research’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 30 (3), pp. 463–475. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098260600927575
• BRENNER, N. (2006), ‘Global cities, glocal states: global city formation and state territorial restructuring in contemporary Europe’, [in:] BRENNER, N. and KEIL, R. (eds.), The Global Cities Reader, Oxford: Routledge.
• BUCHANAN, C. (1968), Regional Studies in Ireland, Dublin: An Foras Forbartha.
• BURGESS, P. (1993), ‘City planning and the planning of cities: the recent historiography’, Journal of Planning Literature, 7 (4), pp. 314–327. https://doi.org/10.1177/088541229300700402
• CAMERON, J. (2005), ‘Focusing on the focus group’, Qualitative research methods in human geography, 2 (8), pp. 116–132.
• Central Bank of Ireland (2020), Quarterly Report, https://www.centralbank.ie/docs/default-source/publications/quarterly-bulletins/qb-archive/2020/quarterly-bulletin---q2-2020.pdf
• COLLINS, N., CRADDEN, T. and BUTLER, P. (2007), Modernising Irish government: The politics of administrative reform, Gill & Macmillan Ltd.
• COLLINS, P. (2020), ‘Who makes the city? The evolution of Galway city’, Administration, 68 (2), pp. 59–78. https://doi.org/10.2478/admin-2020-0011
• Committee on the Price of Building Land (1973), Report to the Minister for Local Government, Dublin: Stationery Office.
• Department of the Environment (2018), The National Development Plan 2040, Dublin: Government of Ireland.
• FAINSTEIN, S. S. (2000), ‘New directions in planning theory’, Urban affairs review, 35 (4), pp. 451–478. https://doi.org/10.1177/107808740003500401
• FALUDI, A. (2010), Cohesion, coherence, cooperation: European spatial planning coming of age?, London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203842324
• FALUDI, A. (2015), ‘Place is a no man’s land’, Geographia Polonica, 88 (1), pp. 5–20. https://doi.org/10.7163/GPol.2015.1
• FERBER, U., JACKSON, J. B., PREUSS, T., VERBÜCHELN, M. and STARZEWSKA-SIKORSKA, A. (2013), ‘Drive Towards Circular Land Use Management’, [in:] PLANNING TIMES–You better Keep Planning or You get in Deep Water, for the Cities they are A-Changin’. Proceedings of 18th International Conference on Urban Planning, Regional Development and Information Society, pp. 267–273, CORP–Compentence Center of Urban and Regional Planning.
• FERRITER, D. (2020), ‘A return to Home Rule’, Keynote speech at Ireland’s Edge workshop, Ballina.
• FOGESLONG, R. (1986), Planning the Capitalist City; the colonial era to the 1920s, Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400854509
• FOX-ROGERS, L. and MURPHY, E. (2014), ‘Informal strategies of power in the local planning system’, Planning Theory, 13 (3), pp. 244–268. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095213492512
• FOX-ROGERS, L., MURPHY, E. and GRIST, B. (2011), ‘Legislative change in Ireland: A Marxist political economy critique of planning law’, Town Planning Review, 82 (6), pp. 639–668. https://doi.org/10.3828/tpr.2011.37
• GEPPERT, A. (2016), ‘Planning without a spatial development perspective? The French case’, [in:] KNAAP, G., NEDOVIC-BUDIC, Z. and CARBONELL, A. (eds.), Planning for states and nation states in the US and Europe, pp. 381–410, Massachusetts: Colombia University Press.
• GREGORY, D. (1994), Geographical imaginations, London: Blackwell.
• GRIST, B. (2016), ‘Irish National Spatial Planning’, [in:] KNAAP, G., NEDOVIC-BUDIC, Z. and CARBONELL, A. (eds.), Planning for states and nation states in the US and Europe, pp. 453–496, Massachusetts: Colombia University Press.
• HALL, P. (1998), Cities in Civilisation, New York: Pantheon Books.
• HALFACREE, K. (1997), ‘Contrasting roles for the post-productivist countryside, a postmodern perspective on counterurbanisation’, [in:] CLOKE, P. and LITTLE, J. (eds.), Contested Countryside Cultures, Otherness, Marginalization and Rurality, London: Routledge.
• HARVEY, D. (1989), ‘From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: the transformation in urban governance in late capitalism’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 71 (1), pp. 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.1989.11879583
• HEALEY, P. (1997), Collaborative planning: Shaping places in fragmented societies, Macmillan International Higher Education.
• HEALEY, P. (2004), ‘The treatment of space and place in the new Strategic Spatial Planning in Europe’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28, pp. 45–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-1317.2004.00502.x
• HEALEY, P. (ed.) (2006), Making strategic spatial plans, London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203451502
• HOLGERSEN, S. (2020), ‘On Spatial Planning and Marxism: looking back, going forward’, Antipode, 52 (3), pp. 800–824. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12614
• HOURIHAN, K. (1989), ‘Urban change in the Republic of Ireland: The search for policies’, Cities, 6 (3), pp. 209–226. https://doi.org/10.1016/0264-2751(89)90029-2
• KEEBLE, L. (1952), Principles and Practice in Town and Country Planning, London: Estates Gazette.
• KIRBY, P. (2017), ‘Cloughjordan ecovillage: modelling the transition to a low-carbon society’, In Transitioning to a Post-Carbon Society, pp. 183–205, London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95176-5_8
• KITCHIN, R., O’CALLAGHAN, C., BOYLE, M., GLEESON, J. and KEAVENEY, K. (2012), ‘Placing neoliberalism: the rise and fall of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger’, Environment and Planning A, 44 (6), pp. 1302–1326. https://doi.org/10.1068/a44349
• LAFFAN, B. (1996), ‘Ireland: A region without regions–the odd man out?’, [in:] HOOGHE, L. (ed.), Cohesion policy and European integration: building multi-level governance, pp. 320–341, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• LOGAN, J. and MOLOTCH, H. (1986), Urban Fortunes, Berkeley, University of California Press.
• LONG, H. and WOODS, M. (2011), ‘Rural restructuring under globalization in eastern coastal China: what can be learned from Wales?’, Journal of Rural and Community Development, 6 (1), pp. 70–94.
• LYNCH, C. (2008), Integrated Area Planning: A Collaborative Approach to Decision-making, Dublin: Oak Tree Press.
• MACFEELY, S. (2016), ‘Opportunism over strategy: a history of regional policy and spatial planning in Ireland’, International Planning Studies, 21 (4), pp. 377–402. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563475.2016.1162403
• MOLOTCH, H. (1976), ‘The city as a growth machine: Toward a political economy of place’, American journal of sociology, 82 (2), pp. 309–332. https://doi.org/10.1086/226311
• MOUFFE, C. (1993), The return of the political, London: Verso.
• MURRAY, M. (2010), Participatory Rural Planning: Exploring Evidence from Ireland, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
• MURPHY, M. (2019), More Power to You, FORSA Report, SIPTU Dublin.
• NEEDHAM, B. (2016), ‘The National Spatial Strategy for the Netherlands’, [in:] KNAAP, G., NEDOVIC-BUDIC, Z. and CARBONELL, A. (eds.), Planning for states and nation states in the US and Europe, pp. 297–232, Massachusetts: Colombia University Press.
• NOY, D. (2008), ‘Power mapping: enhancing sociological knowledge by developing generalizable analytical public tools’, The American Sociologist, 39 (1), pp. 3–18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-008-9030-5
• O’CALLAGHAN, C., KELLY, S., BOYLE, M. and KITCHIN, R. (2015), ‘Topologies and topographies of Ireland’s neoliberal crisis’, Space and Polity, 19 (1), pp. 31–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2014.991120
• PURCELL, M. (2007), ‘City‐regions, neoliberal globalization and democracy: a research agenda’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31 (1), pp. 197–206. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2007.00714.x
• RICHARDSON, T. and JENSEN, O. B. (2000), ‘Discourses of mobility and polycentric development: a contested view of European spatial planning’, European Planning Studies, 8 (4), pp. 503–520. https://doi.org/10.1080/713666421
• SAGER, T. (2009), ‘Planners’ role: Torn between dialogical ideals and neo-liberal realities’, European Planning Studies, 17 (1), pp. 65–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654310802513948
• SCOTT, A. J. (2006), ‘Creative cities: Conceptual issues and policy questions’, Journal of urban affairs, 28 (1), pp. 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0735-2166.2006.00256.x
• SCOTT, M. (2006), ‘Strategic spatial planning and contested ruralities: Insights from the Republic of Ireland’, European Planning Studies, 14 (6), pp. 811–829. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654310500496149
• SIEBER, R. (2006), ‘Public participation geographic information systems: A literature review and framework’, Annals of the association of American Geographers, 96 (3), pp. 491–507. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00702.x
• TOMANEY, J. and WARD, N. (2000), ‘England and the «new regionalism»’, Regional Studies, 34 (5), pp. 471–478. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343400050058710
• YIFTACHEL, O. (1998), ‘Planning and social control: Exploring the dark side’, Journal of Planning Literature, 12 (2), pp. 395–406. https://doi.org/10.1177/088541229801200401

Identifiers

DOI

10.18778/1231-1952.28.2.13

Biblioteka Nauki

2033949