The Craft of Collaborative Planning

People working together to shape creative and sustainable places

Jeff Bishop

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317556190
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Unlike books that focus solely on methods, The Craft of Collaborative Planning provides a detailed guide to designing and managing all aspects of the collaborative process, advocating for making collaborative work the norm.

Beginning with a discussion of the political and legal context of collaborative practice in UK land use planning systems, The Craft of Collaborative Planning tracks a path through the challenging task of process design and working with various groups and individuals. Taking into account the great need for coherent organizational approaches, Bishop outlines evaluation and learning from the collaborative process for the future.

Jeff Bishop brings to his writing an exemplary career focused on bringing various parties together to generate creative and widely supported plans and projects. With its focused discussion of UK engagement practices, and detailed outline for making a better collaborative process, The Craft of Collaborative Planning is an essential read for practitioners and decision-makers seeking to bring communities together with creative solutions to spatial planning, design, and development.

1

Introduction

The consultation and engagement bandwagon

Nowadays, it almost seems that if anything at all is to happen in the public domain – small or large, specific or general, affecting many or perhaps being almost invisible – it must be ‘consulted’ upon. The pressure to do so has been building for some time and many governments have almost competed to be in the driving seat of the consultation bandwagon. Many professions have also now come on board the bandwagon, if to different degrees (although some claim to have been in favour of consultation all along). And, of course, there is ‘the public’ or ‘the community’, some of whom have been clamouring for a greater voice in decision-making for years, while others still have no interest at all until something is proposed near them (if then). Finally, there is a semi-profession of consultation managers or facilitators now beginning to emerge, keen to see their area of work become the norm rather than the exception.

This burgeoning world of consultation (see later for other terms) has also happened alongside endless government reports, legislation, general guidance, academic evaluation, critiques and case studies and a huge variety of practical guidebooks. So what is missing that this book add s, or what gaps does it fill?

Five gaps to fill

The terms used to describe forms of consultation and collaborative working have been changing over the last 40 or 50 years. Although ‘participation’ was the most common term in the 1960s and 1970s (see Nicholson and Schreiner, 1973), it is now rare in the UK although still used elsewhere. ‘Consultation’ is still used, especially in government material, but everyday conversation has drifted onto ‘involvement’ and the latest term in the UK is ‘engagement’. This links to strands of work about ‘consensus building’ and ‘conflict resolution’ and other related strands about ‘collaborative working’, ‘dialogue’ and ‘deliberation’. These all form a spectrum or hierarchy (see Chapter 2), yet the differences between them are not easily explained, even if they are important and argued over endlessly, and not just by academics. That suggests a first gap to fill.

Including the term ‘collaborative planning’ in this book’s title was a key and conscious risk, mainly because it is poorly covered in the practical literature and far from being well developed in everyday practice. In addition, collaborative practice that is based mainly on intense, face-to-face work with relatively small, invited groups cannot legally be used in the UK as the sole way to advance or resolve a number of planning issues. The law in the UK requires at least some opportunity for involvement by all in many situations. At the same time, collaborative approaches have a strong academic pedigree, if more in the US than the UK (for example, Forester, 1999 and Healey, 1997). That is the second gap to fill (though from here on, other terms are used where appropriate, most commonly ‘engagement’).

This book is also needed because existing practical guidance is almost always focused on methods rather than overall processes. The diet, food and cooking analogy that runs through this book treats methods as ‘ingredients’, events as ‘recipes’ and overall processes as ‘menus’. In just the same way that one cannot create a successful menu or recipe with a random selection of even the best ingredients, so one cannot deliver a successful collaborative or engagement process just by picking a few clever methods. The worrying lack of practical guidance on overall processes suggests an urgent need to fill this third gap.

The next point is about moving from one-off initiatives into approaches that are genuinely regular and normal rather than the exception, i.e. mainstream. Without making engagement mainstream one is always reinventing wheels, starting from square one again, building capacity that then gets lost and needs to be rebuilt afresh. Though most emphasis in this area has rightly been on building capacity in the community, real progress will only come when whole organisations make collaborative working or engagement the default setting and build in procedures, relationships, skills and budgets to deliver this. There is very little academic or practical literature that focuses on organisational change for better collaborative working, so this is gap number four to be filled.

Finally, it has been this author’s privilege to work with a number of those who have been advancing practice on collaborative working, and all those other terms, in recent years and to work on projects showing how genuine progress can be made, as well as highlighting mistakes to avoid. As of now, there does not seem to be one source that brings all this experience together, hence gap number five to fill (or at least to begin to fill).

Why this title?

The words in the title of this book are ‘craft’, ‘collaborative’ and ‘planning’ and all are important.

The term ‘craft’ is used because this is mainly a book for practitioners and potential practitioners of collaborative planning (or consultation or… etc.). It will, however, also be valuable for those not leading or managing engagement processes but involved in some way. Even for professionals who never undertake such work themselves, it is important to at least know about collaborative working because eventual success depends as much on the knowledgeable support of all involved as on the skills of the deliverers.

The term ‘craft’ also suggests that collaborative working is not a science; ritually following the guidance is certainly no guarantee of success. But neither is it just an ‘art’, solely dependent on style, feelings and quality of relationships. ‘Craft’ is about blending care, rigour and clarity (science) with sensitivity to people (art). It might best be thought of as needing heart, head and hand:

• Heart because it is essential that those promoting and delivering it genuinely feel that all parties have a right to be involved and that the outcomes will be better if they do. If it is treated as just ‘a job’, people will pick this up almost subliminally and processes will fail.

• Head because there is a lot to understand, be aware of, be able to explain and deal with, plan for and deliver. In fact, it is the really hard and careful work behind the scenes that is most important in building success – one advocate says that 80 per cent of success is in the preparation.¹

• Hand because it does not succeed by what one thinks or writes. It succeeds because of a lot of very practical work and, in particular, the use of the demanding face-to-face skills of working with people.

The term ‘collaborative’ is extremely important because the outcomes of the majority of consultation work, and even engagement, are still largely determined by those who initiate any process rather than those involved in it. This is often described, and almost always pejoratively, as a top-down approach determined by the few in power (see Chapter 2). That may seem self-evident because most initiators are public authorities or private sector companies and the usual recipients are the community or the public. Working collaboratively is, by contrast, about all key parties having full and equal opportunities to contribute and be properly listened to, about all sets of values, aspirations and cultural ways of thinking and working being valued and about outcomes that are widely, ideally fully, supported. This is what enables solutions to emerge that can be well beyond those expected or laid down by the initiator. Collaborative working is not about the banal replacement of ‘top-down’ with ‘bottom-up’ or about ‘power to the people’ but about processes and outcomes that result in what are often termed win/win solutions, even if that is usually rather like absolute zero: A standard to approach but perhaps never to actually reach.

Most examples of collaborative planning focus on processes in which a small but wide-ranging group of representatives (stakeholders) come together on a number of occasions to enter a deliberative dialogue to generate a widely agreed solution or plan. This raises two important cautions.

The first caution has been mentioned already and is rather blunt: The statutory planning context in the UK requires opportunities for involvement to be offered to all, not just a small, probably selective (even self-selected), group. The second caution builds on this because, although this book stresses the considerable added value from making carefully managed, intense collaborative working the core of any engagement process, the inclusion of some wider consultative work is also appropriate because it provides a further level of democratic legitimacy. That then helps to achieve broader social change, higher general levels of awareness and understanding, improved capacity for all and progress towards what is sometimes called participative democracy. Collaborative planning alone is challenging enough, but designing processes that also include wide-ranging public consultation is even more so. But that is an unavoidable challenge; another reason why the term ‘engagement’ is used, not as a substitute for collaboration but to embrace more widely inclusive approaches.

In everyday life the term ‘planning’ is used to describe organising anything from a family holiday to a national programme for healthy living. This book’s main focus is unapologetically on planning in terms of the statutory, semi- or non-statutory processes of land use, town or spatial planning, so it is targeted at those who work or intend to work in that topic area. That therefore includes not just planners but also architects, engineers, project managers and others. As it happens, land use planning probably brings to the surface just about every issue or challenge generated by any other sort of ‘planning’ and seems to involve the largest numbers and widest range of people. So planning offers what is perhaps the toughest possible test of collaboration, certainly the most diverse.

Note also that the context and examples in this book are all from the United Kingdom, often just from England, because the detail of how engagement is commissioned, designed and delivered is inextricably linked to its social, cultural, economic, political and especially legal context. And that would apply in Australia, Argentina or Austria according to their own contexts.² Attempting to develop approaches that purport to be context-free would be a recipe for failure because any context is such a major factor in shaping good practice. Despite this, the basic principles, processes, methods and skills covered by this book almost certainly have some relevance to other countries and settings (for example, see Town and Country Planning Association, 2007).

This book’s content also has much of value for policy areas other than planning, such as renewable energy, environmental conservation, waste management and transport; indeed some examples in this book are from these areas. These are also areas where the UK planning system’s statutory requirement to consult very widely does not always apply, so solely collaborative approaches are possible.

Despite the practical focus, much of what is covered is rooted in theory or, more precisely theories (as there is as yet no single theory to cover everything in this book).

Content and coverage

Chapter 2 ‘Setting the Scene’ starts by questioning why one would use engagement processes at all, arguing that a key first step is to make a conscious choice that engagement is appropriate. The chapter then outlines some of the forms, levels, principles and potential benefits of engagement and, briefly, the legal context of its practice in UK land use and spatial planning. The final part offers a medley of illustrative examples of successful engagement, mainly as an introduction to the detail that follows.

Chapter 3 is entitled ‘Getting Ready’. Mistakes are commonly made by simply launching into a process before its managers are ready in terms of skills, experience, resources, basic information, time and so forth. Continuing the diet, food and cooking analogy, there is a need to check, very thoroughly, someone’s dietary requirements before beginning to suggest a diet. In other words, there are questions to ask before setting out; about past histories, the scope (or not) for change in response to any results, who takes key decisions and possible threats or opportunities. One element of this questioning is particularly important: Identifying all possible consultees, participants or stakeholders. Finally, before setting off, it is important to be clear about the objectives of any engagement; essential for carrying any process through but also essential in order to look back and evaluate once finished.

This now takes us to the three key central chapters.

The first of these – Chapter 4 ‘Design to Deliver’ – covers things as yet almost absent from the literature. Having gone through the getting ready stage, one can start to design an overall process, and ‘design’ is exactly the right word. The chapter outlines and explains all the main stages in preparing, agreeing and delivering a successful collaborative planning or engagement process. It also stresses the central importance of having such a clear overall process (‘menu’), i.e. a well-balanced combination of events or activities (‘recipes’).

The second key chapter – Chapter 5 ‘Delivering into Detail’ – moves on to some of the specific events (‘recipes’) and methods (‘ingredients’) that make up a good process. The word ‘some’ is used because there are so many basic options and a potentially infinite number of variations; in fact, almost any process should involve some variation of any standard model. The chapter moves from the design of events within a process to specific sessions within an event, each of these needing its own very specific ‘recipe’. That is then followed by a section on methods (‘ingredients’). The latter could take up a whole book so Appendix 5 refers readers to books that cover them better than is possible here.

Chapter 6 ‘Working with People’ cuts across what is in the two preceding chapters. Continuing the cooking analogy, it is about key ‘techniques’ (making a roux or folding rather than beating), all as absolutely key to success as menu preparation, recipe making and ingredient selection. As already suggested, the cold (‘heartless’) application of guidance will not on its own guarantee success. A large part of success, especially for more intense collaborative working, rests with the way in which all involved engage with each other at a personal level. This is often considered to be about facilitation in the sense of managing people during an event, but it is far more than that. Establishing positive relationships needs to infuse everything, from the first chat with a decision-maker, through the wording of an invitation to the phrasing used in a final report. However, this chapter comes with the warning that no book can ever teach someone to be a facilitator; that can only come through practical training and real life experience.

Chapter 7 ‘Evaluating and Reporting’ addresses two tasks for when an engagement process is complete. The first part is about evaluation, mainly once a process is complete but there is still much to be learned by undertaking some evaluation during a process. Evaluation can range from brief and informal to rigorous and independent, but some form of it is crucial. The second part addresses the preparation and circulation of some form of report or audit of the engagement activity. The more that legal status is given to engagement within the planning system (as seems to be happening), the more important such reports are becoming, and they and the processes they report therefore need to be proof against legal challenge. (And, of course, the alert reader will have picked up that any good report or audit is also in itself a form of evaluation, so these two parts could have been presented the other way round.)

Chapter 8 ‘Making it Mainstream’ moves to a different level. It is one that few readers are ever likely to be able to act upon on their own but it is extremely important. It can again be thought of in analogy terms as overall ‘cuisine’, i.e. a whole culture and way of cooking that is dist...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Setting the Scene
• 3 Getting Ready
• 4 Design to Deliver
• 5 Delivering into Detail
• 6 Working with People
• 7 Evaluating and Reporting
• 8 Making it Mainstream
• 9 Conclusions … or an Engagement Utopia?
• Appendix 1 Collaborative Working
• Appendix 2 The Legal and Quasi-Legal Context
• Appendix 3 Resourcing Engagement
• Appendix 4 Becoming a Practitioner
• Appendix 5 Further Reading
• Index