Planning by proverb

18 Jul 2010, 19:08 Add Comment

Nobody seems to be sure whether "May you live in interesting times" is a genuine old Chinese proverb/curse, or something of more recent provenance.

Either way, these certainly are interesting times for planners, if by interesting you mean "will I have a job next week?" or "will there be a recognisable planning system next month?"

After a relatively long period of slow and incremental change for the planning system, the new Communities Minister, Eric Pickles, has put the proverbial cat amongst the equally proverbial pigeons (although the online Idiom Dictionary tells me that "cat amongst the pigeons" is an idiom rather than a proverb - curses!) by starting to implement the Conservative Party's manifesto and Policy Green Paper on Planning.

Normally manifestos are seen as the party political equivalent of a New Year's resolution (1. Must lose weight. 2. Must recycle more. 3. Must give up New Year's resolutions), being thought up in haste and often whilst intoxicated and then quietly forgotten. But Mr Pickles is confounding normal received wisdom by actually revoking regional spatial strategies, changing the status of back gardens from brownfield to greenfield and letting local communities decide how many houses they think should be built in their areas.

Actually, that last bit hasn't made the transition from theory to practice yet and there may be a slight delay in doing so. In fact, there is a danger that local communities will decide that, faced with a choice of building houses in back gardens (bad), on the local park (very bad), or in the Green Belt (double plus bad), house building will slow down (from the current less than dizzying levels) or halt completely.

In line with the proverb "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," the Government may decide to stick with local development frameworks and their supporting evidence bases, at least in the short term. This has the double benefit of the current Government being able to blame all the perceived "bad bits" of the LDF system on the last Government and also allowing the "best bits" to be claimed as the current Government's own thinking.

"Beggars shouldn't be choosers" and "Better late than never" were both claimed and possibly even written by John Heywood in the 16^th Century and are both apt in relation to the emergence of our new planning system. I'm not sure who will be the beggars or the choosers, but a simpler and more stream-lined system will certainly be welcomed in 2010 or 2011, as much as it would have been in 1980, 1990 or 2000.

Taking heed of a biblical proverb (Proverbs 17:28) "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace is counted wise; and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding," I shall comment no further on our beloved planning system, other than to leave you with a (genuine) Burmese Proverb:

"If you take big paces, you leave big spaces"

Hmmm, interesting.

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