Planning reform for fairer housing outcomes?
A new conceptual framework using transitions theory
Presentation to Australasian Housing Researchers Conference
18-20 February 2015, Hobart Tasmania
Peter Walsh
Swinburne Institute for Social Research
Swinburne University of Technology
Email: [email protected];
[email protected]
Ph: +61 (0)416005324
Background
• Persistent planning system problem – worsening
housing outcomes
• not just housing … whole planning system
Housing in Sydney nuts just now
• Complex politics - housing affordability rhetoric
• But > 8m people already own homes (“do the maths”) Eslake
Background
• Persistent planning system problem – worsening
housing outcomes
• not just housing … whole planning system
• Hard to have an impact
… the quandary of normative idealists
they know where they would like to go
but not how to get there (Flyvbjerg, 2002).
• Practitioners treading into the world of scholarship
• Sustainability transitions theory
• Aust scholars incl: Peter Newton, Rebekah Brown, Fjalar de
Haan, Carolyn Hendriks …
A. THEORY
“SUSTAINABILITY TRANSITIONS”
Eg Grin, Rotman et al (2010), Transitions to Sustainable Development
• “Current society far from sustainable” (Rotmans)
• Grand societal challenges: climate change, energy,
water, mobility, health ….. urban settlement?
• Beyond technology solutions now: social processes
• Can they be influenced?
• ST theory evolution
• Multi-disciplinary – mobilises lots of conceptual and
practical scholarship
• “nothing as practical as good theory” (Schott)
• IMPACT! IST2014
Transition studies “three pillars”
(Grin)
• Historical
transitions
• Complex
systems
• Reflexive
governance
o Contextual history
o Past/ongoing
transitions
o Niche activity &
landscape pressure
o emergence,
co-evolution
o role of “frontrunners”
“attractors”
o
o
o
o
social learning
structuration
stimulating agency
democracy
Important idea of co-evolution and networking
among the transitions scholars(hip)
Multi-Level &
Multi-Phase Perspective:
CHANGING BACKDROP
LOCKED IN
PROTECTED SPACE
Transition Arenas
projects where govt unable to drive change
Predevelopment-based:
Creating space
Problem structuring/envisioning
Experimentation
Tools/instruments
society
Regular policy arena
- Short term
- Peloton
- Incremental change
- Problem- and goal oriented
Transition arena
- Long term
- Frontrunners
- System-innovation
- Problem- and goal searching
Where is CSP exercise ??
Maybe a deliberate shadow process
B. THE RESEARCH
Conceptual
• Linking up planning theory & transitions theory
• Conceptual framework
• “planning system transition” (PST) framework
Empirical
1. Applying the PST framework to NSW reform project
• Comparative research: PST framework as a specification
2. Focus on a democracy application
• 3x delib panels plus 8x focus groups
3. Interviews (“epistemic” approach) - transferability
• About 30 higher level actors in NSW planning
“Turns” in Planning Theory (non-evolutionary)
Comprehensive planning
Rationalist/blueprint style
“leave it to the experts”
Urban regimes
Social protest
Interests and advocacy
Globalisation
Competition the answer
Clear rules
(managerialism)
Communication, discourse,
deliberation (Habermas,
Hajer, Healey, Innes, Dryzek,
et al)
How we might examine/understand/use ”webs of
relationships” operating at spatial level. Very
context specific. Institutions pivotal. A method or
process “turn” – other processes haven’t worked
(Fischer, Jessop, Healey, et al)
Using: Healey 2006
Step change to solve planning challenges:
… how people creatively relate
… not new plans or laws
Planning System Transition
Radically different
planning system
phases
helps sustainable
settlement
stabilisation
Planning System reconfiguration
Reform Action
space
predevelopment
tipping phase
New (“better”) lock-in
Worsening housing and
urban settlement probs
Time
Using Loorbach 2013
Planning System Transition (PST)
Framework
Space for ongoing
transition arenas,
breakthrough projects,
broadening,
deepening
over time
Focus on organised
system reform projects
3. Action
•
•
•
1. Intention
•
•
•
Inclusive progress
Productivity
Shifting systems
1
2. Understanding
•
•
Empirical
Conceptual
2
Agenda
Participation
Results orientation
3
Business as usual
1. INTENTION under PST
Question: If we are to carry out a major reform of our planning system on what intention
should it be founded?
Response: Achieving sustainable urban settlement.
Themes:
 Inclusive social progress
Attention to inclusive benefits, over exclusive.
 Improving city productivity
Wide interpretation of economic implications, rather
than property-centric.
 Shifting embedded governance
Intention is framed purposively and ambitiously to
inspire system shift, not just respond to interests.
2. UNDERSTANDING under PST
Question: If a planning system reform project is to achieve its transformative intention, how
might the challenge be understood?
Response: Engage with the full complexity of the system
reform challenge.
Explanations:
 The empirical problem: what’s
wrong now in planning
 The conceptual challenge:
planning reform as complex
societal change
 What types of changes needed to city spatial form to
achieve intention.
 Procedural (regulatory) reform has a place but
shouldn’t dominate the wider challenge.
 Transformative potential moreso in the reframing of
institutions (culture, structures and practices) than
new laws, plans or strategies..
3. ACTION under PST
Question: If a planning system reform project is to align with the stated intention and
understanding, how might action be framed?
Response: transition management concepts, as applied to
planning context, + design-in democratic procedures.
Themes
 Agenda
 New visions in the face of embedded system deficits.
 Translate these understandings to opportunities for
institutional action centred on agency.
 Participatory approaches





 Outputs/results
Arenas created to challenge dominant ideas.
Learning, new images, new networks emerge.
Design in participation by “frontrunners”
Design in democratic procedures
Less “one shot” structural change, more facilitating
new perspectives and agency.
 Reforms position for breakthrough projects to evolve
and upscale over time.
Preliminary Findings
Theory to practice
• Transition conceptions do transfer
to planning system reform domain
in Australian cities.
Practice to Theory
•
Complexity/abstraction a problem
for this audience.
•
Existing major examples of two
“Transition Arenas” in Sydney (by
another name)
• PST Framework useful for defining
critical junctures.
•
Special infrastructure projects may
have different regime impediments
than mainstream projects
• Take-off of further experiments
more dependent on energies
applied than lack of/or immature
conceptual tools/methods.
•
ST’s long time frames major turn-off
for politicians – careful language
•
Hardened practitioner acting as a
researcher (practice-science coproduction)
• Reasonable prospects
• ie perceived as “helpful” by abt 90%
(for group of elite interviewees).
Findings ….
• Transferability of ST theory
o Not wanting in conceptualisations
o PST framework coherence - works great for analysing “critical
junctures”
o Political cultural differences vs European settings
o Some probs with narrative power – complexity
o Abt practice examples for Transition Arenas etc… existing?
• On transition management vs democracy/power?
o TM, or similar, needed as a device to enable democracy
(newDemocracy Foundation)
• Practice / science co-production
o Worth the effort … (?)
PST Framework applied
• Part of the research the application of framework
to NSW Planning reform project
• Useful to analyse “critical junctures” (Capoccia, 2007)
Deliberative processes –
democracy at work?
• Innovative aspect to NSW reforms
• 3 x deliberative panels – random representative
selection
• 8 x shorter focus groups - ditto
• General approach to these (ref: Flyvbjerg)
• What’s happening now?
• Is it OK?
• What should be done?
• Findings
• Homo reciprocans not just homo economicus
• High level of repeatability/consistency
Interviews - conversational
• But quite structured: start with Flyvbjerg approach
• Great consistency of concern about the system, not much good news in
sight.
• Interesting the change in individual behaviour within interview
• Interest in Transition thinking – does it “seduce“?
• Mixed – hard topic for short interview
• People want to see it in practice but …
“… may not be an understanding of all the abstract concepts it does ring
true when you think of those at top of good practice”.
“Important and should be more widely communicated and taught.”
“Really onto something there”
“When can we start …”