The Bill will also require developers to provide Commencement Notices that explain what will be built and where to reduce uncertainty in the system for local authorities, and provide measures that encourage local authorities to agree local plans. The proposals to advance the digitisation of the planning system, plus new powers for local authorities to establish strategic plans and use Supplementary Plans will help introduce more rules-based decision-making into the system. Local communities will be consulted from the very beginning of the planning process. By harnessing the latest technology through online maps and data, the whole system will be made more accessible Maintaining opt outs and special designations where case-by-case decisions continue, such as conservation areas, national parks, and wildlife reserves to protect environmentally or architecturally precious land.

The urban form has shifted throughout history. This has been critical to its success. Today we are on the cusp of another transition, ushered in by new technologies and changing demographics, and accelerated by a devastating pandemic. Although these forces affect all geographies, the best chance of success and growth lies in what we define as The Next American City. In his speech on the economy on 30 June 2020, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, argued that “newt-counting delays” slowed down house building. He said that, in the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, we would “build better and build greener but we will also build faster”. We are now located in a new facility near Piccadilly Train Station that’s double the size of our current venue, and it’ll have a focus on creative fitness, strength and offering consistent wellbeing messages.” A major reason why the 2020 Planning White Paper Proposal failed to progress was due to concerns that local community input would be removed from the planning system. Community input is important but should ideally be frontloaded into the creation of the local plan, rather than in individual developments. Mary L. Lincoln et al., "A Symposium—The Markets of Some Great Cities," The Chautauquan 24 (December 1896): 332–335.

The Urban Reform Movement in the 19th century has led to positive changes in urban planning but also cemented the rigid social classes in American society. A large portion of the Urban Reform movement was led by Protestant reformers who instilled their own measures of moral purity such as temperance. However, the general living conditions of the urban poor did improve with the efforts of the Urban Reform Movement. A morally motivated reform movement has inherent issues, but the urban reform movement did allow for poor Americans to access services previously unavailable. These efforts were a combination of direct service and political activism. Political Activism for Legislative Change Theodore Morrow Spitzer and Hilary Baum, Public Markets and Community Revitalization (1995), p. 11. Charles J. Brand, "The Office of Markets of the United States Department of Agriculture," in King, ed., Reducing the Cost of Food Distribution, pp. 252–259. On USDA disapproval of Wiley's enforcement of the act, see Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., The Health of a Nation: Harvey W. Wiley and the Fight for Pure Food (1958). See James M. Mayo, The American Grocery Store: The Business Evolution of an Architectural Space (1993).

Progressive reformers also looked for ways in which public markets-old and new—might contribute to improved public hygiene and social conditions. In 1916 Donald Armstrong, speaking before the American Medical Association, argued that public markets were more efficient than "individualistic" food retailing establishments at maintaining public hygiene. By bringing producer and consumer together under one roof, said Armstrong, local government could not only effect economies of scale and eliminate the cost of delivery but also enhance the "directness and simplicity with which the sanitary control can be established." 45 Catherine Sutherland Yeah, I don’t mind having a try at answering some of those questions, Ezana. I mean, I think it’s very interesting these questions about peri-urban areas and edge of cities. So Durban is a fascinating city because 43% of our city is actually under dual governance, it’s governed by municipal administration and by traditional authority. So we have this work that we do on other forms of reform, urban coalitions around the spaces where you have, again, these very conflicted spaces, very contested about how this space is being formed. And in fact, in those areas, it’s literally like city building from below, where communities are building the city for themselves outside of these formal processes. And the same idea with sort of edge cities where you create a second city adjacent to the city, and how do you bring that into the sort of, I guess, urban reform coalition idea, if you’re working in the sort of city frame and you’ve now got this edge space? But I think what you’ve got to try and do is you’ve got to look at who all your actors are in that space. And perhaps that’s where as researchers, we’ve got to try and be smart and almost think of hooks that you can try and bring with the state or whoever is really governing in those spaces. You’ve got to find the key actors that are governing. And sometimes that’s out of the formal system and you’ve got to try and think about how you create these kind of hooks that start bringing people into a space where collectively you can start to recognise that even though it’s highly contested, and I can tell you in our Palmiet Catchment project, it can be highly contested when you’ve got formal residents with informal settlers. But what you do is you bring people in through this hook of what is really in a sense a common challenge that everyone’s trying to go forward. And that’s kind of what you and Diana have written about in urban reform coalitions is that you might be coming at it from different perspectives. It might be highly contested, but there’s something that links everybody together. And by understanding all those actors, when we started on this project, we first had to just try and map out who all the actors work and to find clever ways, and like Shalini said, you’ve got to have different strategies at different times to bring in different actors so that you actually bring them together and find some hook or some issue that’s going to link everybody that starts everyone engaging. And then through that you can you start finding smaller partnerships forming and then over time you can build it. And I know it sounds maybe too positive or too easy, but I really think this is how these things start, and we certainly see it in our city, where so many spaces are highly contested and and highly political that there is still this, I still believe in this idea that actually for all people, there’s this kind of goodwill or this good intention to live in a good society. And if you can find a hook, where you can start seeing other people’s positions and putting yourself in other people’s shoes, suddenly you start seeing your city differently and you start shifting your position. And I think as researchers or in academia we have, you know, that was part of that privileged power that I spoke about, that I think we can read that landscape and try and create these hooks that bring everyone in into the start up, at least of the coalition. It might collapse, but at least you’re starting. So that would be my response to both those questions. And sometimes we just have to try and you just have to start and it’s amazing what comes out of beginning together. Replacing negotiated ‘developer contributions’ towards local government with a flat levy on a development’s value for infrastructure and new social housing. England’s system is internationally unusual – most other countries do not have construction bans outside their biggest and most innovative cities, and instead have rules-based planning systems where applications that follow the local plan must be granted planning permission. Introducing these rules-based decision-making processes is the key goal of planning reform.

Urban Reforms - Key takeaways

A planning White Paper had been expected for some time; the long-awaited Planning for the Future white paper (PDF) was launched on 6 August 2020, with an accompanying press release. The press release sets out in the Government’s words what the changes will mean: Samul L. Rogers, Municipal Markets in Cities Having a Population of Over 30,000, Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census (1918), table 3. Movie Man Shoots Market Crowd and Causes Sensation," Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Intelligence, Nov. 10, 1917 (clipping), CMDP, box 1, RG 83, NA. However, landbanking is an artefact of the current planning system. As the planning system is so uncertain – as 10 per cent of applications developers make believing they will secure approval are rejected – developers need to hedge against this uncertainty by having a land market that has acquired more planning permissions than can be worked on at any one time. This can be seen in how England’s rate of self-built and self-commissioned homes is one of the lowest in the rich world – if planning was not a barrier but builders were refusing to build and landbanking, self-building would be common.

Devolution of power to local levels of government and the proliferation of NGOs does not necessarily guarantee the inclusion of disadvantaged groups – including residents of informal settlements, informal economy operators, refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs). But it does provide an opportunity for the emergence of pro-poor coalitions.

Second, the planning process for almost all of the remaining land is highly discretionary with nearly all significant decisions made case-by-case. The uncertainty this creates in the development process reduces the number of new homes and commercial buildings that are built, as it is possible to propose a new development that complies with the local plan and nevertheless have it rejected. Local plans in a flexible zoning system should continue to be politically-led by local authorities, and local authorities should retain discretion over development in sensitive locations such as Conservation Areas and National Parks.