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Plenary Sessions
Plenary Sessions
At this year’s Planning Research Conference we want to generate opportunities for discussion and debate about some of the big issues facing the field of planning.
One way we’re trying to do this is through the roundtable sessions that are scheduled in two slots in the draft programme, on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. These sessions offer something different to traditional paper presentation sessions, creating space for interaction and exchange about a diverse range of issues. The line up of roundtables includes important contemporary challenges like the implications of Brexit for environmental governance in the UK and the Future of City Centres and enduring challenges like public participation and planning education. A Royal Town Planning Institute sponsored session on Wednesday will also explore the role of leadership in making planning fit to the face the future.
We also want to make sure the plenary sessions are an opportunity to exchange ideas about the conference theme of ‘alternative futures for planning’. Rather than having keynote ‘lectures’ we therefore decided to organize two panel discussions. These will have a similar format, with invited speakers offering some short and provocative introductory remarks before we open the floor for an extended Q&A.
Corinne Swain
The first panel will kick proceedings off on Tuesday morning with a discussion “In search of alternative urban futures”. Whilst it’s widely accepted that many of the most pressing challenges facing our societies, from climate change to housing crises and growing inequality, require new approaches to urban development, there seems to be little political belief that we can plan our way towards just and sustainable urban futures. We therefore need to debate the changes required to transform our cities and the role planning might play in making them happen.
We have two confirmed panellists for this session so far. Corinne Swain is a former Head of Planning at Arup, and now an Arup Fellow. She has served on several government committees and was a lead expert on the UK Government's Future of Cities Foresight project. Greg Fell, Sheffield’s Director of Public Health, will challenge planning to live up to its historic roots as a response to public health concerns and a means of tackling urban inequalities.
Laurie MacFarlane
Our second plenary panel, The Land Question Revisited: Rethinking how we invest in land and housing, will bring the conference to a close on Wednesday morning. In response to escalating house prices and a persistent failure to fund high-quality infrastructure, recent years have seen a marked return of political interest in land and how it is valued. In the UK, everyone from the free-market Adam Smith Institute to the housing charity Shelter has called for new approaches to capture and redistribute land value increases. This session will therefore consider how a renewed focus on the land question might create possibilities for a progressive rethinking of planning and public investment.
Our speakers for this session are Laurie MacFarlane who is a Research Associate at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Economics Editor at openDemocracy and one of the co-authors of the critically acclaimed book 'Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing', which was listed by the Financial Times as one of the best economics books of 2017. Laurie will be joined by Professor Antonia Layard from the University of Bristol Law School whose book Law, Place & Maps will be published by Glasshouse Press, Routledge in 2018. Antonia’s work critically explores how legal constructs of land and property shape our understandings of place and how rethinking them might open up new possibilities for planning and place-making.
We hope this exciting and diverse line up will offer everyone who attends a chance to discuss some of the most pressing contemporary issues facing the present and future of planning. Come prepared to get involved!
Welcome to the City of Steel!
Welcome to the City of Steel!
For many, the image of Sheffield is one of cutlery, steel production and subsequent deindustrialisation, all to the soundtrack of the Full Monty. Yet over 20 years since that film screened, Sheffield has undergone significant transformations. You are more likely to meet a university student or a digital creative than a steel worker, and the heart of Sheffield has undergone radical shifts. Such changes have required the input of planners, designers, and the people of Sheffield, and there is much for the urban scholar to learn from Sheffield. The Planning Research Conference which takes place from 3-5 September will showcase some of the planning history and highlight some of the current schemes in the city.
So what does Sheffield have to offer the keen planner or urban researcher? As with many cities in the north of England, Sheffield’s city centre has undergone significant transformation in the past 20 years – in less than 10 years, the population of the city centre has grown from 6,000 to 30,000. The opening reception of the conference takes place in one of the iconic buildings to have been constructed in this era – the Winter Garden. Yet, the city centre’s transition has not been entirely smooth. The Global Financial Crisis stalled development of a large retail and leisure scheme, requiring a more radical rethink about how development would proceed and what uses might be best. A new City Centre Plan sets out the latest vision.
The city’s industrial past has leant it a truly distinctive legacy of cutlery works, foundries, and factories, which survive in close proximity to the city centre. The approach towards these areas has varied over time and across the city. An early approach, which took hold in the late 1980s was to transform the unused spaces into a home for creative industries. A study tour will look directly at the city’s ‘Cultural Industries Quarter’ or CIQ, led by the former head of the CIQ Agency. One of the key challenges faced in this area is to balance the historic environment, and the development of a creative cluster, with distinct pressures to build student accommodation. Across the city centre, Kelham Island has had a different history, with the conversion of industrial buildings into flats taking place over a 30 year period, but much more rapidly accelerating in the past few years. Not only are apartments being built, but Kelham is becoming a destination in its own right, such that it was recently named in the UK’s top ten ‘hip neighbourhoods’ (for good and bad…) The conference dinner takes place in the heart of Kelham Island in the city’s industrial museum, whilst a study tour will look at some of the tensions in developing this area and the role of local residents to resolve these through a neighbourhood plan.
Yet, Sheffield is not just known for its post-industrial heritage or city centre. Through the 20th century, the City Council built large amounts of social housing, often drawing on the latest thoughts in architecture and design. From the Flower Estate of the first decades of the century, through to the Gleadless Valley Estate, attempts have been made to build high quality housing for the working people of Sheffield. The most famous of these, Park Hill, will be one stop on a study tour of housing in Sheffield, enabling delegates to see Sheffield beyond its centre. For those interested, a current photographic exhibition shows Park Hill and the adjoining Hyde Park in the 1960s and 1980s, perhaps dispelling some of the myths about the estate and life on there.
This only provides a snapshot of Sheffield, a city of nearly 600,000, a city of distinct neighbourhoods, a city with some persistent inequalities, and a city that is home to some 60,000 students - for a fuller view, see the State of Sheffield Report, produced by academics at the University of Sheffield. It’s a city where the keen planner can find much to enjoy and learn.
We really look forward to welcoming you to Sheffield!
Malcolm Tait
Professor Planning, University of Sheffield
Further details about the Planning Research Conference can be found here.
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