How can we make make sure the next wave of New Towns are flexible, adaptive, bottom-up and meet communities' changing needs?
We - @rtpiplanners.bsky.social - have just launched an Invitation to Tender for research answering these questions.
📣Budget is £35,000, deadline for proposals is 24 Feb📣.
"We are optimistic about the return of universal strategic planning, and believe it holds a lot of potential in delivering positive outcomes for communities."
Read Eddie Millar's assessment of recent #planningreforms:
www.rtpi.org.uk/blog/2025/ja...
RTPI Early Career Research Grants are funding three new projects in 2024-25.
Congratulations to
⭐ @hannah-grove.bsky.social
⭐ Dr Meadhbh Maguire
⭐ @morphetminor.bsky.social
Read more about the projects here:
www.rtpi.org.uk/news/2025/ja...
Nathaniel Lichfield Lecture on prefigurative planning. 6 February 2025, 5.30pm-8.30pm Hybrid/London, free for members Westminster Business School, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS
Join us in-person or online for the Nathaniel Lichfield Lecture on prefigurative planning next month.
The annual event is free for members and will run in a hybrid format. Book your place now:
www.rtpi.org.uk/events/2025/...
'Housing numbers are important, but we need to capture the imagination of the public and focus on delivering better places', writes Hal Mellen (Urban Designer, ADAM Architecture) in this guest blog
www.tcpa.org.uk/its-time-to-be-visionary-the-overarching-message-from-the-2024-tcpa-annual-conference/
"Back then people didn't have deal with NIMBY's". I hear that a lot.
The first ever National Grid involved negotiations with 222k landowners and tenants. The Central Electricity Board appointed thousands of officers to persuade. Astonishingly, only 600 cases (0.27%) needed compulsory purchase.
Over the past few decades, there has been a significant reduction in the scope of what the state believes it (and, as an extension of the state, planning) can achieve.
I was more focusing on the fact that govt uses planning (at a national level) to respond to market signals rather than directing growth to the places that are 'left behind' - which has knock on effects for communities, regional equality, opportunity etc.
We need well-funded local authorities, able to be proactive with planning powers to deliver critical infrastructure; stop private developers & land owners seizing publicly created value; & coordinate the delivery of housing + services + transport in places that serve communities.
Planning is being portrayed as an obstacle to meeting housing needs, but the reality is that good planning is our main solution when it comes to addressing the critical challenges we face; but we need the government to make this possible.
I describe it as a 'conflict' but in reality it's an issue that the govt is swerving (and I'm not being too critical here, just acknowledging it).
In theory it should be a key function of planning at national level, but in reality it comes second to focus on delivery of infra + housing.
New planning framework out today - excitingly with some changes from the version the Government was consulting on over the summer (🧵thread below).
This speaks to a conflict in planning's 'purpose' - should planning (for homes) follow demand, as the new standard method proposes, but which conflicts with reducing regional equality + promoting growth outside south east; or should planning not follow demand, and direct growth to regional hubs?
[NEW] How can metro mayors transform England’s towns and cities?
Our report sets out how mayors can play a leading role in the regeneration of disused, deprived and deindustrialised urban areas www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...
over 10,000 civil service jobs will be cut under ministers’ plans to find savings of 5% to their departments in the spending review
ministers are looking at rolling out voluntary redundancy programmes across a range of departments
scoop via @lucyfisher.bsky.social
www.ft.com/content/3da3...
These statistics are crucial to a proper understanding of the current housing debate and the case for social housing - the state is spending *more than ever* on housing but it's spending it on benefits not bricks and mortar.
Just, and I cannot stress this enough, build HS2 in full.
Labour betting heavily on strategic planning?
These changes from the government are def. welcome - just need to weather a period of appeals while LPAs get LPs in place.
I do think there needs to be conversations about an 'each council takes their share' approach to new homes, though. Hopefully, strategic planning will help.
Ah, thank you!
Forgive me but what do you mean by the "Peter Barber boom"?
Under supply is evidently something we need to tackle, but discussions around house prices must include increased access to mortgage credit, which has had huge implications for housing as an asset. Some good work on this by Josh Ryan-Collins + others.
I'm in the 'build more houses' camp. But it's still worth pointing out that real house prices peaked in 2007, which was also the time when household debt relative to income peaked. Supply is a problem, but it's access to credit and willingness to borrow that's bid up the value of the housing stock.
For the planning fans. The ‘modernising planning committees’ policy paper has been published:
www.gov.uk/government/p...
This is an interesting and significant contribution to the debate around high-rise housing:
www.high-rise-housing.co.uk/uploads/5/0/...
I'm certainly not saying we can get different outcomes without big changes.
I'm simply pointing out that zoning is not the only way to deliver urban density - there are tools that exist within the discretionary system that could be utilised, but they require political will to implement.
Acting as if discretionary and zoning systems must result in opposite outcomes is disingenuous and totally ignores the politics at play.
Sprawl is not an inevitable outcome of the discretionary system. There's no reason that Local Plans and design codes can't effectively 'zone' for density by designating higher storey development in certain areas. Similarly, zoning can be used to preserve sprawl if the politicians wish it, no?
Far smarter people than myself have done great work on discretionary vs. zoning, and ultimately both have their flaws and upsides - but it's about how they function. And right now the planning system needs support, not ripping up.
It's tempting to look at e.g. Japan and see how their planning/development system functions and think we can simply replicate that here - it's not quite that easy, for numerous reasons, and a poor imitation of Japan's system is probably worse than a functioning version of what we've got.