Community Hubs

Today's Age has a good article about community involvement in developing a Community Hub in Callignee in Latrobe.  It's particularly interesting in that the local community were able to negotiate with Counil and the architects to get specific design elements to suit them.
The article is here:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/hub-set-to-bring-a-town-together-20100718-10g4m.html

Community Engagement in Planning

The PIA Social Planning Chapter and the Women’s Planning network jointly presented a seminar on “Community Engagement in Planning” in early June. Four speakers provided different perspectives on their engagement experiences:

• Jacqueline Robinson, the Director of Community Development at Village Well, spoke from the consultant’s perspective about the challenges of getting local communities and authorities involved in long-term community development projects, especially in getting long-term commitment and resources to intensive planning processes.

• Dr Clare Mouat, of the University of Melbourne, spoke from the academic perspective, and discussed the impact that new technologies are having on engagement practices.

• Brenda Gabe, a Community Advocate, has participated in many community engagement processes. She spoke about the time and effort it took to be involved in being consulted, and the need for the consulters to be transparent and honest about the influence that the community will have over the planning process.

• Kerry O’Neill, Project Director Long Term Planning at the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction Authority, spoke about engaging with communities that have been impacted by disaster. Kerry noted that in in these circumstances the agencies have to go above and beyond to help traumatised people participate in the process, and that the recovery of the community must be the over-riding concern for the agencies involved.

The aim of this seminar was to talk about examples of good practice and to get the planning profession thinking about what we need to do to improve our record in engaging with communities. All four speakers were eloquent in the need to improve our commitment to public participation in planning and were generous in sharing their stories and experiences.

The PIA Social Planning Chapter aims to improve the understanding and practice of consultation and engagement in planning. They have developed a Draft Public Participation national position statement, which is open for comment until the 30th July. The policy introduction makes this comment:

Opportunities to be consulted and to participate in planning processes are important parts of the broader democratic process. They are also components of due diligence in planning practice and are important safeguards for the planning authority and decision makers. Engagement through participation processes is a governance responsibility.

There are too many examples of planning applications creating a public outcry where local community members claim that they weren’t consulted about a proposal which they feel will negatively affect them; while the developers and planners stand around (hurt expressions on their faces) saying, “But it’s in the plan!”. There seems to be a general lack of understanding, on both sides, of the role that public participation should play in planning, and at what point in those processes that communities have the power to influence planning outcomes.

Community engagement is not just a feel-good thing, nor is a forced tack-on, or a burden on developers. It should be an integral part of the planning process. When done well, it can add considerably to the outcomes, producing plans and developments that align with community aspirations and values. The draft position statement notes that its over-arching principle is:

Public participation is based on the belief that those who are affected by a decision have a right to be involved in the decision-making process.

In other words, anyone who is affected by a planning proposal should have a right to be involved in deciding the outcome. The key question that many planners struggle to answer is when their involvement should occur – at the plan-making stage, the policy development stage, the development application stage, or throughout? The principles of public participation indicate that community participation should occur throughout the planning process.

Acronyms Galore

I have been collecting planning related acronyms for a while now. They fascinate me because they say so much about the way the various participants view each other. Anyway, here's a few of them:

Terms for objectors
LULU = Locally Unwanted Land Use
NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard
BANANA = Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything [or anyone]
CAVE people = Citizens Against Virtually Everything
NIMEY = Not in my election year (specific to politicians)
NIMTOO = Not in my term of office (specific to politicians)
NIMFOS = Not in my field of sight
NOPE = Not on planet earth
WIIFM What’s in it for me?

I want to come back to this at some stage because I often find that the LULU response is automatic when people are confronted with something that frightens them. It seems to me that planners make a mistake in arrogantly dismissing the LULU response - it's actually a valid reaction. It's how you deal with the reaction that really matters.

Plannerese
DBTD/DBTN: Two common vaccines used by planners to “fix” a project they don’t like. DBTD is technically Death By a Thousand Days and DBTN is Death By a Thousand Nicks [also known as the BED Principle—“Bleed ‘em Dry”]

Doczilla: Any technical report that should be caged rather than shelved.

DUDE: Developer Under Delusions of Entitlement

PowerPoint Poisoning: Nauseous state of mind and body induced by viewing “professional” presentations.

Sense of Immunity: Mistaken belief that land use regulation does not apply for a particular neighbourhood or site.

SLAPP: Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation

Gagplanistan: A place of massively meaningless planning.

These ones are equal parts cynical about the process and the participants!

Use of public spaces

I'm sitting in my 'office' watching the birds at the feeder in back yard. It fascinates me to see how they share the public space and resource of the bird feeder. Each bird species seems to have their own specified time to visit the feeder. When the native parrots arive (lorikeets and rosellas), all the introduced birds fly off, so they must recognise a hierarchy. One way or another, they all get their share of the bird seed.

It makes me think of the way we share public spaces in the urban environment. One of the key issues we have is that many people do not actually like to share public spaces with 'conflicting' groups. Young adults get the worst rap for this, in that they are unwanted in shared spaces by many. It's a real shame the way young people are treated as a 'problem' in Australian urban life, a group that needs to be controlled or moved on.

Frankston City Council has had a successful program of playing dodgy music at the Frankston Railway Station precinct to discourage young people from hanging around. I believe they started with classical music and then moved on to easy listening and country. Some retailers have started using loudspeakers that actually emit a high-pitched whine which is generally inaudible to adults but really irritating to younger people, with the aim of stopping them hanging around the public areas near their shops. I find this type of behaviour unbelievably offensive.

I wonder if any of these public space maangers have ever asked the question, "Why are they hanging around the station, and where will they go if they can't hang out there?". Truth is, train station precincts are a safe place for young people to be, with informal adult supervision and good lighting. If young people (mostly teenage boys) are forced out of this kind of precinct, they are going to end up in places which are much less safe. It's worth noting that young people are far more likely to be victims of crime in public spaces than older people. So shouldn't a key aim of managing public spaces be to provide youths with safe places to socialise?

In an ideal world we would be developing civic spaces where people from all age groups felt safe to socialise together. Many of the European piazzas are like that. Older people hang around all the time, at cafes and in park areas, and younger people are able to meet and socialise in safety.

It's a real shame that older people in Australia seem to insist on treating youths as a problem, rather than as a social group with a problem. All you hear about this group in the media is the drunken binging and wild parties, yet I have met some truly amazing young people who will contribute wonderful things to society as they mature, if only they are encouraged to believe that society wants their contribution.

Ingredients for successful community development

The VPELA Conference is on again soon. The theme is "People transforming Places"
http://vpela.org.au/events_upcoming.html. I'm going to be on a Panel on the 3rd September. The panel title is "Masterplanner or Masterchef? Recipes for successful communities."

After my first meeting with the other panellists it's clear that we all have widely divergent views on what the topic means, let alone how to run the Panel! So I wanted to put into words some of what I think are the key ingredients for a successful community.

To start with, I don't think pretty pictures or structure plans have any role in creating sucessful communities. Attractive, efficient suburbs, yes. Communities, no. Communities happen in spite of urban designers, not because of them.

The most vibrant, inclusive and tolerant communities are also the messiest. And that's four of my key ingredients right there.

Tolerance - one thing you lose when you're in a carefully segregated suburb designed by a corporate urban designer is any interaction with people who are different. By different, I mean the scary people - the weird little old lady, the young bloke with a disability who can't talk normally, the strange fat guy at the video store - all the people on the margins of society. If you never see these people, and never get used to the fact that they're just different, not wrong, you never learn to tolerate difference. It's actually scary to see the lack of tolerance for difference that has grown in our society in recent years. People who are afraid of difference, and who cannot tolerate it, further marginalise people who are already on the edge. And that is sad.

Accessibility - it's rare to see urban designers who design their suburbs specifically to suit people in wheelchairs. In fact, have you ever seen such a suburb? One of my best friends is in a wheelchair, and it's a real life lesson to travel around with her, to see how marginalised people with access difficulties are. The scary thing is that, as the baby boomers age, the number of people with access difficulties will increase exponentially. Designing for access really isn't that hard, and it makes a difference not just to people in wheelchairs but to everyone. Designing without thinking about access is just reinforcing existing barriers to participation in society.

Vibrancy and creativity - the happiest and strongest communities are those where art and culture are highly valued. They did it so right at Docklands when they required a proportion of all money spent in the district to be spent on public art. And the artworks on Eastlink are fantastic (except for the hotel). I will blog more on this topic later, because I firmly believe that art plays a key role in defining communities, both in terms of their sense of place and in terms of how people perceive the community.

Messiness - perfectly planned suburbs where people are effectively segregated by income level may work well in raising property values, but they are boring and have the effect of reinforcing negative cultural values. Communities should mix everyone in together. In any one street there should be flats and big houses and little houses and shops and so on. In any small neighbourhood there should be people of all ages and abilities and social profiles living close to one another. It's that kind of messiness that encourages tolerance and teaches the ability to get along with other people. Messy communities are much better able to deal with social issues and are much more likely to develop interesting and creative communities. Carlton and Brunswick, for example, have always been more interesting places than Carrum Downs or Werribee, and that has always been because they are messy places where the community comprises people from all walks of life. We should value that.

A lot of the commentary in the media today, and community reactions to local and world events, really seems to come from a fear of the other that has become entrenched since we all started 'nesting' in our beautifully planned subdivisions in the outer suburbs. I sometimes wonder if planners realise how these forms of urban design are having such a negative impact on our society. We really seem to be losing the resilience that naturally comes when you have to learn the social skills associated with dealing with a wide variety of people in everyday life. I particularly wonder where our loss of tolerance for people who are 'different' will end up.

Conferences and Forums

The PIA Social Planning Chapter Forum on the 23rd July was very sucessful, and we are now planning follow-up activities. It is a credit to the speakers, who shared their stories about undertaking social planning in disastery recovery contexts.

I also recently attended the IAP2 "Changing Climate, Changing Communities" Conference. This was another successful event, where a wide range of speakers talked about the issues around engaging with communities about climate change. One key thing I took away from the Conference was the need to make it real and personal. It's no good talking about scientific concepts which most people find quite abstract , like atmospheric carbon dioxide. Even talking about things like coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef doesn't necessarily bring it home. People need to hear the story about how climate change may affect them individually before they will really engage on the issue.

Is a fall in Property Values a Social Impact?
One of the key issues that upsets people when development proposals are made is the potential impact on property values. Regardless of the general rising trend in property values (in the long term of course, not recently), many people are convinced that a development proposal will ruin their property values and hence destroy their financial security. Why is this? And if it is a serious issue, why is it not a consideration in urban planning?

When planning new developments, particularly of infrastructure, the potential impact on property values is not considered to be a relevant planning consideration (in Australia anyway). There are a number of reasons for this, which include:
- The uncertainty of the exact impact – will the proposed development increase or decrease the other property’s value over time? What happens if it actually adds value to a property – should the landowner pay a betterment tax to the developer?
- If the development is of community infrastructure, then there is an argument that the broader social good is more important than the localised negative impact (more about this in another post sometime).

Property values are highly subjective. One man’s mansion is another man’s doghouse. People consider a wide range of issues when deciding how much they will pay for a particular property. The article below has some classic examples of the trade-offs people are prepared to make in home purpose decisions.

The Unfortunate Location – The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/garden/18houses.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=style

Generally there will always be people who are willing to buy a property in a poor location if there is a financial trade-off. This of course is the crux of the issue for someone who loses believes they have lost value on their home. However, if you were to look at the value of a property over an extended period, you would almost always find that the value had increased. As with almost any asset, it’s the point at which you buy and sell that makes the difference. Once a new infrastructure element is in place, and people have become habituated to it, it becomes part of the background and its negative impacts on property values decreases.

This of course is no consolation for someone who can demonstrate a loss in value. This has happened on a few projects I have worked on. In one case, a couple had their house on the market, and a purchaser had made a firm offer for the property. The following day the purchaser learned of the infrastructure proposal (which was actually going to be several kilometres away and barely visible from the property in question). They withdrew their offer. The following day they made a second offer which was a few tens of thousands less than the original offer. When I spoke with the vendors they were quite distraught over the whole incident. I personally would have told the potential purchasers that they were unethical ratbags and I wouldn’t sell them a lollipop, but the vendors had other reasons for needing to sell the property.

This impact on people’s perception of property values is usually most acutely felt at the planning stages. It comes about from the uncertainty caused by the proposal, when people can’t visualise what it will look like and what impact it will have on their daily lives. The general response is to assume the maximum negative impact. As I mentioned earlier, once the construction period is over and people can clearly see what the actual impact is – and see the benefits of the infrastructure – property values stabilise.

The impact on property values caused by some major development proposals is a significant social impact, even though it is generally short-lived. The emotional stress that some local communities experience is quite considerable. Individuals have reported significant physical and mental health impacts, marriage breakdowns, job losses and their children being affected (usually from being required to move).

For those of us who work in these kinds of planning studies, this means that managing expectations through the planning and construction phases of a project is vital to minimise the negative impacts for local communities.

What is social planning? Well it's not party planning! It's a specialty within urban planning. Social planners are focussed on the social elements of planning, just as transport planners focus on transport and statutory planners focus on the rules and regulations.

I've been a social planner for several years now. To me, understanding how development will affect individuals and society is the most important element of planning. It shouldn't be about maximising land value or economic outcomes, but about achieving our social aspirations.

I'm going to use this blog to express my ideas around social planning, link to useful information and in general work through my original question of what is social planning.