Professor Yvonne Rydin spoke at the recent Urban Retrofit Symposium in Glasgow, and long standing friend of SURF, writer and commentator on public policy & current affairs, Edward Harkins kindly agreed to review her most recent book, Planning Without Growth.
Professor Yvonne Rydin seeks a fundamental re-thinking and re-framing of the planning system that better fits it to a ‘post growth’ era. This is not an anti-growth stance. The argument is, however, that the current planning mindset at several levels is over-fixated on an assumed need to facilitate, maximise and promote growth. This growth is economic and mostly market-led development. This market-led development is in turn much based on property-led development, which will be familiar to SURF members and stakeholders. Increasingly this paradigm is now seen as problematic. An unquestioning pursuit of growth is criticised as giving insufficient regard to ecological and natural resources limitations, and to negative social externalities with worsening wealth and health inequalities.
Alternative models require an at least equal status for the emergent foundational economy alongside the maximising growth narrative. The foundational economy is an approach to socio-economic development that focuses on the provision of everyday universal basics like food, housing, health and transport, but within planetary limits. This foundational economy is closely linked to the potential of the third and civic sectors of society. Indeed, in setting out possible scenarios the book is a virtual mini grounding in a wide range of community development models and modes, including: producer cooperatives; housing associations and cooperatives; community land trusts; social enterprises etc. Alongside this is a delineation of alternative economics thinking: green or good growth; no-growth; de-growth; doughnut economics; inclusive growth; etc.
Another dimension explored is that of the potential collaborative scope at the local economy level between private sector small-or-micro businesses, and not-for-profit community organisations and enterprises. Here the author cites the language of exogenous, endogenous and non-endogenous growth as applied to local economic growth (LED). A telling phrase is internal hybridity. This phrase encapsulates the possible overlapping needs, even interdependence, between small local businesses and community or civic organisations and enterprises. Social capital is seen as of intrinsic value across the sectors at the local level.
After some international benchmarking on the lessons on social enterprise, Rydin cites the Preston model in Lancashire, England, and more generally, the community wealth building approach. Preston local authority decided, after inward investment seeking market-led regeneration failures, to utilise the community wealth building approach. This aims to retain more of the wealth created through commercial means within the local economy. The starting point at Preston was procurement by public sector anchor institutions such as the local authority, local health and education agencies etc. A key feature is the development of cooperative businesses to fill supply chain gaps. Conversely, another key focus is on the support of local private sector firms with an aspiration of developing new markets and customers across the local economy. Rydin notes that the local authority has not developed a conventional formalised coherent strategy, instead local actors are encouraged and persuaded to align themselves, and act with, the local economy in mind. The model has been described by others as a ‘hotchpotch’ of initiatives driven by a desire for proactive and positive change. The Preston model is currently the focus of much attention and interest from many quarters. The local authority is described, rightfully, as having provided leadership at Preston, but the approach raises interesting questions as to the role of a local authority, and planning, in the community wealth building approach.
The author cautions community organisations and enterprises to beware of the familiar top-down exhortations of public sector agencies elsewhere to grow their own organisation in scale and size, i.e. seek vertical growth. This scaling-up often becomes problematical, sometimes fatal. Poor governance and unintended negative social outcomes can result. Instead, the aim of public agencies should be to promote and facilitate out-scaling, not up-scaling. A myriad of replicated organisations and enterprises across communities, but still controlled within communities, is argued as more compatible with sustained community control and good governance. This out-scaling exhortation coheres well with contemporary narratives in other realms of community development and enterprise.
Rydin, however, is not naively assuming that community control always means good social outcomes, and argues the need for oversight and enforcement, the suggestion being that this would best be undertaken from a local authority base.
A highly readable book but the necessarily eclectic range makes it hard to do it justice in this short review. Close reading of the book content is recommended to fully grasp the nuances and balances in what may be a controversial arena for some readers. The use of the term ‘Planning’ in the book title is perhaps self-limiting its appeal? The opening chapter is clearly and coherently premised on planning, its strategy and decision-making, function and operation. It will, nevertheless, be just as useful to the non-planner and lay person as to planners. Much of the rest of the book might be seen as more of a primer for planners on existing models and modes of control and delivery, and the inspirational possibilities, that exist in the non-private sectors of the UK economy.
Planning Without Growth, by Professor Yvonne Rydin
Policy Press (Paperback)
ISBN 97 81447 369776
