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Researching Urban Law
- Antonia Layard
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- Journal:
- German Law Journal / Volume 21 / Issue 7 / October 2020
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 19 October 2020, pp. 1446-1463
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This Article considers the development of urban law. It suggests that urban law is socio-legal in its exploration of law’s role in the production of the city and urban life, enabling the study of the city as a distinctive legal entity. Addressing the question “why urban law?,” this Article considers similar debates in geography and urban policy before developing three arguments for studying urban law: (i) urbanism is a vibrant field of scholarly research; (ii) socio-legal research can take an explicitly normative focus in pursuit of improving urban quality; and (iii) at a city scale we can investigate governance concepts of territory, sovereignty and jurisdiction. One of the difficulties with urban law is finding the right level of analysis, covering sufficient legal and empirical detail whilst also making the city legible at an urban scale. Although this tension produces imperfect compromises, accepting the limitations means that we can begin the shared task of developing an intellectual infrastructure, a grammar, for the study of urban law.
16 - Planning by numbers: affordable housing andviability in England
- Edited by Mike Raco, University College London, Federico Savini, Universiteit van Amsterdam
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- Planning and Knowledge
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- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 30 April 2022
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- 10 July 2019, pp 213-224
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Few modern planning practices illustrate the growingquantitative technocracy in the English planningsystem as clearly as viability assessments foraffordable housing. The numerical hegemony incalculating for planning gain in general, andaffordable housing in particular, is changing thenature of the decision being made. No longer doquestions about the site, the planning context andthe overall viability of the project prevail,instead, there is a singular calculation of whetherthere is sufficient profit in the development ornot. This is the decision-making lens of thedeveloper, using numbers that are neither neutralnor objective. In housebuilding as elsewhere,concerns about the apparently apolitical characterof technocratic modes of thought and action haveemerged as critical social questions.
In February 2017, an agreement was reached between theLabour run London Borough of Haringey and Far EastConsortium International (FEC), a Hong Kong baseddeveloper, for the redevelopment of Hornsey TownHall in Haringey, North London. The redevelopment isto restore the building and create a new artscentre, with community access and café/ restaurantsas well as improvements to the Town Hall Square withcontinued public use. To pay for this, theredevelopment is to include a boutique hotel(aparthotels) and luxury flats yet the redevelopmentof Hornsey Town Hall was not, initially, to includeany social or affordable housing as part of theproposed 146 home development. This was despite theLondon Borough of Haringey having a planning policythat targets 40 per cent affordable housing in newdevelopments (which would give at least 59 newaffordable homes) (Haringey, 2017b). Following therelease of the viability statement, and itsunredacting by campaigners thanks to faulty documentproduction, three councillors wrote an open letterto FEC (including the Chair of the Planning SubCommittee) stating that they ‘think it would becompletely unacceptable for the development not tohave any affordable housing and will not support theapplication unless this is addressed’ (Crouch EndLabour Party, 2017). Negotiations are on-going atthe time of writing (late 2017) and it seems that alittle affordable housing – perhaps 11 apartments –will be provided through the scheme (Haringey LBC,2017b).
Eleven - Localism, neighbourhood planning and community control: the MapLocal pilot
- Edited by Dave O'Brien, University of Edinburgh, Peter Matthews, University of Stirling
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- Book:
- After Urban Regeneration
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 01 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 November 2015, pp 165-180
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Introduction
In this chapter, we examine a contradiction in contemporary regeneration between a discourse of putting communities in control and creating policy instruments that disempower the poorest. Our focus is the Neighbourhood Plan, introduced as part of the Localism Act 2011, which epitomises this contradiction. The localism agenda apparently offers greater choice to communities, but, in practice, this new approach to the redevelopment of neighbourhoods requires expertise, organisational capacity and finance in a way that favours already well-resourced communities. Thus, the rhetoric of community empowerment within this new policy landscape has done little to overcome the mechanisms by which the middle classes have historically taken disproportionate benefit from public services (Matthews and Hastings, 2013).
MapLocal, the project described here, was an attempt to tip the scales back slightly by providing a tool for communities to begin the process of neighbourhood planning. The tool was limited to tackling the first stage of a plan-making process: gathering community intelligence about issues facing the neighbourhood and making suggestions for change. In doing so, we placed community knowledges at the forefront of a plan-making process, though with the important caveat that such knowledges and aspirations need to be analysed and mediated, both within a community and with expert knowledges from outside. This, arguably, requires a much greater degree of state involvement than is permitted within the current neoliberal discourse that dominates planning policy.
After assessing the potential that MapLocal offers to improve the neighbourhood planning process, we critically assess the issues with devolving decision-making to neighbourhoods. We conclude that neighbourhood planning does offer some real opportunities for developing democratic discourse at the neighbourhood scale. Nonetheless, this potential is unrealised and the policy offers a sop to middle-class NIMBYism while doing little to enable more deprived communities to shape changes and see improvements to the areas in which they live.
The ‘failure’ of community regeneration and the rise of localism
The New Labour period (1997–2010) saw a return to building in city centres at a scale not seen since the post-war reconstruction, characterised by shiny, high-density complexes of well-appointed, if rather small, apartments. Distinct from flagship projects in city cores, however, a plethora of policies were focused on community renewal, attempting to help struggling neighbourhoods via a combination of social, economic and infrastructure investments.
seven - “There is no local here, love”
- Edited by Dave O'Brien, University of Edinburgh, Peter Matthews, University of Stirling
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- Book:
- After Urban Regeneration
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- Bristol University Press
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- 01 September 2022
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- 11 November 2015, pp 95-110
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Introduction
“There is no local here, love.” These were the evocative words said by an elderly participant at an arts-led research intervention at Patchway Community Centre at a monthly, volunteer-facilitated older person's tea party. Responding to arts-led research methods (in this instance, storytelling), the participant was evoking an absence of ‘the local’ in her locality. Pointing out the lack of cafes, pubs, amenable parks or community centres that did not have to cover their costs (“it costs money to be local”), she explained how ‘the local’ needs physical space in order to exist.
While we might bristle at the singularity of the description of ‘the local’, in our research, we found participants referring to ‘the local’ over and over again. In this sense, the local, the keystone concept in the current policy landscape of localism, was confirmed when interrogated through arts-based methods. In addition, however, participants also stated repeatedly that feeling local, or recognition of the local, is dependent upon whether or not there are spaces in which to get together to ‘be’ local. Specifically, this research found that the local can be both present and absent, even though the assumption with the Localism Act 2011 and related policy initiatives is that there are ‘locals’ all across England.
Certainly, research is consistently illustrating that localism is geographically, socially and politically uneven (Featherstone et al, 2012; Clarke and Cochrane, 2013; see also Chapter Three, this volume). This chapter, however, goes further to illustrate that the very existence of ‘the local’ is also uneven. Being local is not a private activity; it is one that is performed in spaces that are, to some extent, public. In English culture, the pub is the iconic ‘local’, but local shops, parks, cafes or community centres are also thought of as providing a space for people to get together and ‘be’ local. Without space in which to meet, there is no local. There is a very real connection between both the built environment and community: we cannot disaggregate the two (see Chapters Two and Three, this volume).
Investigating the local in this way was possible through using artsbased research methodologies, and this chapter explores the potential of these techniques and approaches.
Law and localism: the case of multiple occupancy housing
- Antonia Layard
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- Journal:
- Legal Studies / Volume 32 / Issue 4 / December 2012
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 02 January 2018, pp. 551-576
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- December 2012
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This paper investigates how planning regulation constructs the local, encapsulating a locality and prioritising local decision making over regional and national scales. It draws on a case study of the regulation of multiple occupation to make three interrelated points. First, the analysis emphasises the plurality of ‘locals’ and the interrelationships between them. Secondly, the paper explains how the juridification of the local is required to make a locality legally visible. This operationalisation and construction of the local (legally, spatially and socially) must take place before the political logic of localism, the prioritisation of local decision making over other scales of governance, can take legal effect. Thirdly, the paper explains how, once the ‘local’ is legally constructed and can make decisions, this prioritisation of apparently neutral local expertise and knowledge can act to enclose the spatial and social with sometimes powerful exclusionary and regressive effects.