Cities Visioning For PLNG

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New Visions for Old Cities: The Role of

Visioning in Planning
Frank Gaffikin a; Ken Sterrett a

a
School of Environmental Planning, Queen's University. Belfast. Northern Ireland,
UK
Online Publication Date: 01 June 2006
To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/14649350600673070
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New Visions for Old Cities: The Role

of Visioning in Planning
FRANK GAFFIKIN & KEN STERRETT
School of Environmental Planning, Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
ABSTRACT Many plans and strategies these days are underpinned by visions. This article
examines the cultural and policy shift in planning in the UK toward more integrated and
participative practice, and the potential role of visioning in this new climate. Reviewing examples of
vision planning in the US, where the process has a longer lineage, it argues that these interventions
suffer from a lack of evaluation of the effects of visioning. Yet this visioning approach has been
adopted in certain cities and towns in Northern Ireland in recent years. This article assesses the
impact of this approach in a detailed case study and finds the impact to have been modest.
Keywords: Visioning; participation; spatial planning; integration and governance
Introduction and Methodology

This article explores the concept and practice of visioning, and its potential contribution to
a more participative and integrative planning. First, it explores the extent to which, within
a new context, visioning can be seen as an innovative form of planning; second, by
considering its application in North America, where it has its roots; third, by noting its
early manifestation in the UK; and finally, through a critical reflection on two case studies
in Northern Ireland. This exploration and critique will be structured around three key
questions.
Is visioning a fundamentally new form of planning, offering people more opportunity to
control and shape the future?
. Does visioning offer a new tool to support the shift towards spatial planning?
. Can it offer particular benefits for collaborative planning practice?
.
The over-arching research question is whether visioning represents a significant departure

from conventional planning, and, in so doing, offers a better prospect for a more
integrated and democratic form of development.
Several methods have been deployed in generating and assessing the data for the case
studies: involving, first, content analysis of a series of US vision plans; second, participant
observation, derived from the authors prominent involvement in the two case studies for
their duration, in conducting exhaustive consultation processes for the main statutory
plans in Northern Irelandthe Regional Development Strategy and the Belfast
Metropolitan Area Plan, and in related policy making with government; third, a set of
Correspondence Address: Dr Frank Gaffikin and Dr Ken Sterrett, School of Environmental Planning, Queens University
Belfast, Level 3, David Keir Building, Stranmillis Road, Belfast, BT9 5AG, Northern Ireland, UK. Email:
f.gaffikin@qub.ac.uk, k.sterrett@qub.ac.uk
1464-9357 Print/1470-000X On-line/06/020159-20 q 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14649350600673070
160
F. Gaffikin & K. Sterrett
focus group discussions with key stakeholders in Belfast about the planning experience over
the last decade; and finally, in-depth interviews with key participants from government and
community about their appraisal of visioning as a tool for more inclusive and integrated
development. In short, the material stems from the authors extensive and intensive
engagement at the heart of the regions planning process over a long period. Like all
methodology, this contains both merit and risk. While the plus side is the penetrative and
nuanced appreciation that attends the immersion of participant observation, the risk
relates to compromised objectivity. However, the latter potential has been mitigated by the
complementary methods adopted. Two cities have been selected as case studies to
interrogate the practice of vision planning in Northern Ireland. These illustrate that,
despite the different size, sectarian configuration and regional roles of both cities, the
experience was very similar, itself an interesting finding. Moreover, the two cases illustrate
the significant investment made in visioning in the region. Far from being some kind of
brief flirtation with faddish policy, the process was rolled out from Derry to Belfast to
Armagh to Craigavon, and overall amounted to a major policy intervention.
The Changing Context of Planning
Under the Local Government Act 2000, English local authorities are obliged to create
community strategies, rooted in long-term shared visions generated in partnership with
key stakeholders. This visionary approach accords not only with Labours quest for new
urban governance (Stewart, 2003), and with its strategy for sustainable communities
(ODPM, January 2005), but also with the emergent agenda around modernizing
planning, with its emphasis on a more integrated participatory practice. For instance, the
Royal Town Planning Institutes A New Vision for Planning (June 2001) advocates spatial
planning that goes beyond the narrow focus of land-use in the creation of sustainable
communities through integrative strategies and inclusive procedures. This more valuedriven and action-oriented model acknowledges the need for a more multi-disciplinary
perspective that comprehensively addresses the linked dimensions of the physical, social,
economic and environmental. Thus, it affirms that public policy in general has spatial
outcomes, and that planning involves a broad remit of creating place. Albrechts (2004)
locates this shift to spatial planning in terms of its greater capacity to address the
imperatives for sustainable forms of regeneration within a delivery framework based on
more open governance. Similarly, Healey (2004, p. 45) identifies the reasons as: . . . the
persistent problem of coordinating public policy in particular localities; the search for
ways of making urban regions more economically competitive by developing their
collective asset base. . . the potential to promote the objectives of sustainable
development . . . (and) redress the unequal distribution of access to opportunity across
urban regions.
Evidence of this agenda in recent English policy can be found in local development
frameworks (LDFs), designed to encourage local authorities to take a strategic, proactive
approach to development in ways that both reflect community aspiration and streamline
the planning process. Although stressing the need for flexibility and a focus on the
deliverable, one of the main principles is that there should be a clear and distinctive
vision. . . (that) should emphasize local distinctiveness . . . (ODPM, 2004, p. 8). Combined
with a front-loaded stakeholder involvement in the planning process, designed to achieve
widespread ownership and community buy-in (ODPM, 2004, p. 9), and a chain of
conformity with regional and national planning policy, the LDFs are intended to be
evidence-based and subject to robust regular evaluation to permit a dynamic response to
New Visions for Old Cities
161
changing local circumstance. In turn, this agenda connects with a wider discussion about
how to develop new governance that moves beyond departmental silos towards a more
collaborative and holistic practice (Leat et al., 2002; Stoker & Young, 1993; Sullivan &
Sketcher, 2002, p. 6).
Arguably, one of the imperatives for this shift derives from the formidable challenge
involved in contemporary urban regeneration (Russell, 2001). Far from being a relic of an
industrial age, the city is the habitat of the future, although its economic function and
spatial form will change (Gaffikin & Morrissey, 1999). In the mature economies, this
involves recasting the purpose of places once the site of smokestack industries and large
public agencies in an age when these are either in contraction or fragmentation. Future
urban prosperity, it is said, hinges more on the smart production, diffusion and adaptation
of knowledge (Castells, 1989). Yet, this concept of a new weightless economy (Leadbetter,
1999), characterized by the de-materialization of production and new forms of distribution
such as E-commerce, and led by new sectors such as bioengineering, nanotechnology,
robotics and informatics, is itself problematic. However, while some challenge the
undifferentiated meaning attached to the knowledge age, with its implied simplistic
dichotomy between the digital and material economy (Hirst, 2000), the qualitative change
occurring in economic, social and environmental contexts demands a step change in the
way planners conceive urban futures and their spatial form.
Faced with this scale and pace of transformation since the 1980s, the limits of
conventional planning have been debated for some time. For instance, over two decades
ago, Healey et al. (1982) noted the tendency to present planning as an a-political activity
legitimated by a culture of professionalization that circumscribed it largely within the
remit of technical experts operating a centralist decision-making system. Others have
commented on the inadequacies of a proceduralist planning approach, based on systems
analysis that moves from survey/data generation to forecasting to strategy to
implementation and evaluation (Murray & Greer, 2000). Still others have referred to the
tradition in planning of an attempted rational imposition of order on a heterogeneous,
random and fragmented urban arena (Boyer, 1986). Those who see in the contemporary
city-region the chaos and diversity best understood in terms of complexity theory and
non-linearity have disowned such reductionist and mechanistic approaches. Rather, they
advocate a creative and participatory approach that restores the role of agency and
locality, if only to stimulate an innovative repositioning of the post-industrial city
(Bertuglia et al., 1998).
Other critiques of conventional planning from the political left include:
.
Its over emphasis on the physical and spatial, with a tendency to add-on the economic,
social and environmental aspects, rather than seeing these multi-faceted dimensions in a
concerted way, particularly in respect of a sustainable outcome (Blowers, 1993).
. Its tendency to legitimate powerful economic forces such as the development industry
and related financial institutions despite its paternalist claims to mediate amongst
competing demands for land on behalf of a common good (Reade, 1987).
. Its related failure to compensate for the spatial inequalities and uneven development
engendered by the market (Gans, 1968).
Of course, particularly since the 1980s, the New Right has expressed reservations also
about the extent to which planning subverts market functioning, including its
bureaucratic delays and hidden redistributive goals (Atkinson & Moon, 1994). In general,
it was seen to offend against the Thatcher-Reagan agenda of deregulation and
privatization (Gaffikin & Morrissey, 1990; Thornley, 1991), although, interestingly, those
162
at the heart of real estate development could often recognize the benefits of planning in
redressing the externalities generated by the market (Ratcliffe & Stubbs, 1996).
Since the 1990s, greater recognition of social fragmentations deriving from new
lifestyle choices, environmental urgencies, the splintering of territorially-based relations,
greater ethnic and cultural diversities, and the problematic links between local and
global has encouraged some to promote planning by debate. This sees planning as a
process connected to wider governance imperatives of collaborative consensus-building
that would involve developing conversations between stakeholders from different
social worlds (Healey, 1997, p. 219). Such inclusionary argumentation, geared to disputeresolution rather than adversarial conflict, sees plan and policy making as interactive,
dialogical, democratically negotiative and future-oriented. Recognizing both the soft
infrastructures of decision making and power-brokering, for instance, routine
organizational forms and styles of discussion, and the hard infrastructure based around
more systemic attributes like formal laws and resource flows, advocates of this discursive
path to collaborative planning, stress the importance of trust, reflective honesty, and
openness in the exchanges. Clearly much of this agenda is relevant to reshaping
governance (Coaffee & Healey, 2004) and to the development of spatial planning. Given
this context of structural economic change, the push for more enterprising urban
governance, the critique of conventional planning in a more uncertain age, and an
emergent new planning culture, what contribution can visioning offer?
Visioning: a New Form of Planning?
Many commentators have lamented plannings loss of its visionary and utopian tradition
(Brooks, 1988). As expressed by one advocate (Isserman, 1985, p. 483): Planning
voluntarily is sacrificing its role as visionary and idealist and is abandoning the
responsibility to be a source of inspiration and ideas about what might be and what ought
to be. Others have referred to this challenge as the art of the long view in uncertain times
(Schwartz, 1996).
However, one problem here is the paucity of academic literature in which this planning
approach has been theorized and evaluated. As noted by Shipley & Newkirk (1999), the
increasingly promiscuous use of the term vision in planning has tended to devalue its
meaning. Elsewhere, Shipley (2000) traces the tradition of visionaries in planning
alongside the contemporary appropriation of the term visioning, and in a later
evaluation of municipal visioning, (Shipley et al., 2004) berates the lack of monitoring and
evaluation involved and the way visioning is often conflated with normal strategizing.
Further confusion arises out of the varied terms applied: visioning is often referred to as
envisioning in the US literature with no obvious semantic differentiation delineated.
Moreover, the standard definitional scope of both terms is expansive, ranging from: to
conceive or visualize, to have foresight or prescience, through to more pejorative
connotations of chimera, hallucination, delusion, and utopian.
Vision planning is premised on the idea that the best way to predict a more uncertain
future is to have the inventiveness and reflexivity to create it. In this understanding,
visioning is about thinking in the future tense, appreciating that in a period of rapid and
profound change it is less viable to deduce from the experienced present than to trace back
from an imagined future. In style, it favours intuitive risk-taking, improvization and
initiative over the bureaucratic and routine (Wacker et al., 2000). But what does visioning
actually mean? Extrapolating its rationale from our review of pre-eminent features of
vision plans, the following traits and claims of an ideal type visioning process emerge.
163
Faced with the complexity and uncertainty of contemporary social life, vision planning
does not disown the need for long-range plans. Indeed, since it seeks the most radical
portrait of a desired social destiny, it recognizes that a period like 20 years is necessary for
such transformation. But, it starts with the identification of three futures: the possible, the
probable and the preferable. The first, allowing for any contingency, places little faith in
public planning, but rather invests trust in the market as the most effective determinant.
The second adopts the panoply of techniques for forecasting and largely accommodates a
likely future, in other words, traditional planning. By contrast, vision planning claims to
be concerned with the third, with how to create a widely agreed view of where the city or
community wants to be in two decades or so hence, with in-built flexibility for regular
review and amendment. Instead of forecasting from the present, it suggests the need to
leap ahead, painting a vision on a blank canvas. Then backcasting from that picture of a
desired yet plausible future, it identifies specific targets that represent milestones to be
met at regular intervals in order to realize its fulfillment.
Rather than emphasizing land use and zoning, what some critics have seen as the
traditional comfort zone of planners, this thinking outside the box claims to dissolve old
silos of economics, education, housing, and so on, knitting them into an interwoven social
fabric. Rather than crisis management or adjusting to change, it is supposed to be about
making positive change happen. Insofar as traditional planning has been associated with a
reactive and regulatory development control model, vision planning prefers a proactive
development approach. Rather than simply engineering places, it is also concerned to
imagineer them. It is about establishing broad concept plans, rooted in shared values, and
then flexibly facilitating investment projects that comply with the overall vision, a process
that we would characterize as value-based opportunism.
Rather than devoting attention just to where people want to go, it is also concerned about
why they want to go there, inevitably prompting a more explicit discourse about values
and principles. Rather than being the preserve of a growth coalition of shakers and
movers, it seeks a dialogic process of inclusive engagement across all the diverse urban
stakeholders. Rather than simply proclaiming its added value and mutual benefit, it
strives to convince and bind rival constituencies from their early formative involvement
through to their collective commitment to delivery. Rather than having the planning
process colonized by any particular vested interest, it seeks the creative power generated
by a cross-fertilization of ideas and experience amongst diverse stakeholders.
As expressed by Klein et al. (1993, p. 10): Proponents of visioning believe that plans
that resonate with citizens deepest aspirations and values have the best chance of being
implemented.
The problem remains that the term vision can be applied loosely and conveniently to
legitimize plans as creative, innovative and consensual (Albery, 1992), at the same time
masking how some of this supposed new agenda in fact comprises old ideas, recast for the
contemporary urban arena. For instance, in Urban Revisions (Ferguson, 1994, p. ix), a report
from architects, designers and planners exploring innovative ideas for remaking the city,
the concept of vision is used to imply a radical departure from accepted thinking, thereby
empowering civic forces to visualize integrated development: . . .an urbanism predicated
upon a socially expansive definition of heterogeneity demographic, economic,
temporal, and physical. The concept of New Urbanism that emerged in the US in the
late 1980s around these ideas, embodied walkable neighbourhoods of mixed-use
development that could accommodate both diversified economic activity and residential
space for socially mixed communities. Combined with the imperative of smart growth
for well-designed densification, this approach promised the twin virtues of more urban
164
rejuvenation and less urban sprawl. But, in fact, this new urbanism largely involved
a rediscovery of an old compact urban form, thereby creating something of a back to the
future scenario.
The ambitious claims for vision planning raise some obvious doubts. For instance, some
sceptics challenge the prospect of achieving consensus in the contemporary city, an arena
marked not only by profound social and ethnic stratification, but also in the new economy
by accentuated labour market segmentation. Others might speculate that whatever
consensus can be forged is likely to be a bland lowest common denominator. After all, the
drive for a shared city vision is a hegemonic project (Jeffares, 2004), and in such projects
the role of nodal points in deliberative discourse is critical. Sometimes referred to as
signifiers, such central concepts can congregate diverse constituencies around a common
inclusive agenda. The problem can be that in an attempt to optimize consensus, these
terms, such as shared city, can be empty signifiers that, meaning different things to
different interests, can end up as meaningless (Torfing, 1999). In such circumstances,
attempts to activate collaborative practice around such visions will likely encounter the
deconstruction of these ambiguities and the dissembling of the shallow conviviality of the
consensus.
Vision Planning in North America
The imminence of the Third Millennium induced many US local administrations to prefix
their strategic plans with the idea of a 2020 vision, with no apparent visionary
component. A good example of this is the Cleveland Civic Vision 2000, a plan to guide the
citys development (Morrison & Bann, 1988). Its limited integrated approach is evident in
its split into two plans, one for Downtown, and the other largely for the neighborhoods.
Indicating a civic component, the latter report claims to be responding to citizen
recommendations, solicited at nearly 50 neighborhood meetings. Yet a trenchant criticism
of Cleveland planning charges that it is not inclusive of the poorest constituencies and
precludes values such as equity (Krumholz & Forester, 1990). Moreover, it remains
difficult to detect the vision, since the proposals tend to offer more of the same, albeit
with better design and co-ordination.
A variation of this approach in the US is where a series of development visions are
offered, amounting to little more than key options for debate. An example of this is the
2040 Plan proposed in Portland, Oregon in the early 1990s by the USs first elected regional
planning council known as Metro (Metro, 1994). In Canada the production of a vision for
Greater Vancouver in 1993 was followed in 1995 by CityPlan for Vancouver which offered
a long-term vision for the citys future and embodied a framework for prioritizing city
programmes and actions. Then, within this macro plan, a proactive engagement with local
communities was undertaken to allow them, with staff assistance, to devise customized
local area schemes that accorded with CityPlan (VPD, 1998).
A handbook to guide this type of community visioning has been produced by the
National Civic League, supported by the Ford Foundation (The National Civic League,
2000). Interestingly, the emphasis is on new thinking for community problem solving, a
process that has arguably been induced by the retreat of public dollars and government
interventions, compelling local communities to look to their own resourcefulness. In this
new world, regeneration is seen to be dependent on the mobilization of social capital, as
the springboard for creative and inclusive win-win solutions that can dispel the inertia of
cynicism and demoralization.
165
The Vision 2020 of the Atlanta region (Atlanta Regional Commission, 1995) is possibly
the best overall North American example of these vision planning efforts. Declaring that
destiny is less a matter of chance than of choice, this living report offers a communitybased, long-range strategy to bend the trends today to take us where we want to be in the
future (p. 2). Distinguished by a front-loaded investment in what was billed as a
comprehensive process of engagement, all the key stakeholders were invited to generate
a shared vision. Within this public outreach campaign, there were community forums, a
youth involvement programme and town hall meetings, all reinforced by billboards and
media coverage. Following the creation of this Vision, with support from the National
Civic League, a collaboration training exercise was conducted for 150 leaders, designed to
recruit and prepare a core set of well positioned individuals to buy in to the Vision and to
learn new forms of co-operative delivery. Then, 10 Initiating Committees were established,
each selecting about 100 people from diverse backgrounds to help them translate the
Vision into action plans around 10 key issues: economic development; human resources;
education; environment; governance; health; housing; diversity; public safety; and
transportation. Upon completion of this task, the Stakeholder Collaboratives were set
the task of examining baseline forecasts for jobs and population, and to explore over the
course of a year what actions should be undertaken to trend bend and thereby shape the
future as closely as possible to the shared Vision. Billed as the largest community
collaborative planning effort ever conducted (Atlanta Regional Commission, 1995, p. 12)
in the US, Atlantas Vision 2020 set about identifying champions for its 41 key proposals,
setting annual benchmarks, selecting demonstration projects, and building regional
linkages amongst the collaborative partnerships.
Although there is literature about the application of these approaches (for instance,
Landis, 1996), there remains a lack of robust evaluation of their impact. However, in the
case of Atlanta, there is a comprehensive critique (Helling, 1998), which questions the real
inclusive character of the visioning process, and identifies how its ambitious promise fell
short of the actual more modest delivery. In a similar vein, an appraisal of the practice of
collaborative visioning in Kentucky (McCann, 2001), notes the apparent paradox between
an increasingly privatized and market-driven planning agenda and a supposed
consensual process of public engagement. The argument here is that behind the rhetoric
of inclusion embraced by these visionary exercises lies the reality of debates circumscribed
by conventional development models operating in the interests of local elites. Thus, such
vision plans need to be understood in their socio-spatial context within a general wariness
about how such public-private planning initiatives can often mask an increasing
domination of public agendas by private interests.
Vision Planning in the UK
While many urban programmes in Britain are prefacing their strategies with the Vision,
this often means nothing more than a traditional mission statement, an example here
being the Liverpool City Challenge (1996/97). Similarly, the South Ayrshire Council
produced A Vision of 2020 (1996) as part of it local plan process. However, the vision was
largely in the form of the normal aims and objectives that would preface a strategic plan. In
fact, a serious visionary approach has been slower to take off in the UK. Yet, as Shipley &
Newkirk (1998, p. 411) note:
There is some irony in this because, unlike Canada and the United States,
where visioning does not seem to have been mandated, Britain has new
Regional Planning Guidelines (RPGs) that require that visions be prepared.
166
However, there are some early examples in Britain, for instance that of Glasgow. Its Vision
comprises a series of ambitions around the themes of living, working, learning, and
playing in the city. Working groups of influential and informed people in one of the
largest consultation exercises of its type ever undertaken in the city, operated over a sixmonth period to produce a set of comprehensive frameworks for marked improvements
(Monaghan, 1995, p. 1). These formed the basis of a draft Vision, which was then put out
for further public consultation before a final version was ratified. A flavour of the content
and style is captured in this declaration (Glasgow City Vision, Consultation Document,
1995, p. 5):
The aim of the City Vision is to assemble an agenda to create a high quality of
life in Glasgow by putting all of the talents of all of our citizens to use for the
citys good, and ensuring that they share in the benefits from their contribution.
A more general approval for visioning was evident in the government Urban Task Force,
established in England, that advocated a new vision for urban regeneration based on
design excellence, social well-being and environmental sustainability within a viable
economics (Urban Task Force, 1999). Identifying the urban as the key driver of wealth
creation, it suggested the need for each city to develop its own vision of a clear economic
niche, comprising clusters of high value growth industries. In this advice, it was
acknowledging that such a customized visioning process was preferable to the adoption of
a pre-set blueprint, cloned from some standard development model. Interestingly, this
major urban policy review included a request by the Task Force for cities to submit their
individual visions of their desired destiny in 20 30 years, with over 50 forwarding their
vision plan. One part of the UK, Northern Ireland, has been operating the vision approach
for some time.
Adapting from US Models: Vision Amid Division: The Case of Derry/Londonderry
and Belfast
In the mid-1990s, the new Permanent Secretary in the Department of the Environment (NI)
championed the concept of vision planning for the regions major cities and towns. His
inspiration for this priority came from the Downtown Area Plan for Denver (The Denver
Partnership Inc., Denver Planning Office, 1986), which declared in its preface, entitled
A Vision for the Future:
A city changes because of its dreams. Dreams give shape to plans, plans to
actions, action to results. We live our lives among the results, so wed best share
in the dreaming. (p.1)
Beyond its specific references to land use and zoning, the plan was mainly designed to
provide the framework, principles and values for the citys development over a 20-year
period. Recognizing that the vision will be realized as various public agencies,
developers, investors, and corporate and community leaders use the Plan to guide their
individual decisions (p.72), it attached particular importance to stimulating an on-going
civic discourse about the citys future:
This Plan presents a vision for Downtown Denvers next round of challenges in
city building. It begins a community dialogue about the nature of those
challenges and the actions we should take to meet them. It is not the end of
a process, but the beginning. (p.76)
167
For successful outcome, the Plan emphasized the need for public-private-voluntary
co-venture in delivery; concerted and imaginative communication with the public to
assure the widest civic engagement; the need to distinguish early priority projects that
could provide the best platform for the large-scale long-term change needed; and the
building of a coalition of a broad-based advocacy to raise the requisite political support
and capital to transform existing land use policy. Impressed by the foresight and ambition
behind this participative and value-driven approach, the DOE (NI) Permanent Secretary
first established the Vision Plan format in Derry, Northern Irelands second largest city.
Derry, or Londonderry, is not only Northern Irelands second city but is also the fourth
largest city in Ireland. Situated as the hub of the north-west, Derry has a population of just
over 100 000 (Derry City Council area). The city has a long history of sectarian division
dating back to the 17th century and the famous Siege of Derry. Unfortunately, the
contemporary city is deeply fractured along sectarian lines. This is expressed in a
residential geography which separates the two communities by the River Foyle. The west
side of the city, known as Cityside, is largely Catholic, with a small Protestant community
living close to the city centre. While the Waterside or east side of the city is relatively
mixed, it is also home for the citys Protestant working-class communities. The overall
Protestant population has declined during the period of the Troubles, with many moving
to surrounding smaller towns and villages eastwards. Thus, if anything, the sectarian
geography in the city has tended to accentuate in recent times, with the Protestants
looking to an eastern axis of Coleraine and Limavady, and Catholics looking to extend
links across the border to Letterkenny in Donegal.
Beginning in 1995, the process began with the establishment of a 23-member City
Partnership Board, comprising representation from business, trade unions, voluntary and
community organizations. Nearly half the Board was made up of local councillors, in
numbers that proportionately reflected their electoral share in the city. The Board
proceeded to sponsor a series of proactive engagements with residents in conferences,
workshops and a household questionnaire. Ultimately, out of a city of 100 000, 8000
citizens participated in some form, a process claimed by the Board as the most inclusive
civic initiative ever undertaken in the city. This intensive effort culminated in A Vision for
Our City (City Partnership Board, 1997), a draft consultative document outlining the
citizens aspirations for the city in the first quarter of the 21st century, based on the rubric
of a shared city, followed by a summary version mailed to every home. Subsequently,
five Issue Groups were established, and the 100 people involved spent nine months
converting the vision statement into specific proposals (City Partnership Board,
March 1999).
This extensive participative process meant that it took five years to reach the First Plan
for Progress (City Partnership Board, 2000), setting out an implementation agenda based
on the vision. Centred on themes of economy, environment, community, culture and
inclusion, this action plan identified practical steps to be taken over the next five-year
period. So, for instance, with respect to the economy, specific objectives were set under the
headings: a regional capital, investing in people, fostering enterprise and maximizing
investment. In turn, under each of these, a detailed programme was offered by way of:
what were going to do, main players, and what we aim to achieve. So, at this point,
very specific targets and timetables were set, such as 50% of local SMEs using
e-commerce and e-business by 2003 (City Partnership Board, 2000, p. 15), and rail links
from the city centre to air and sea ports by 2005 (p. 31). Addressing the sensitive issue of
inclusion in a divided city, it noted:
168

We can best share this city by making space in our minds and hearts for each
other, not only for those we perceive as kindred spirits but also for those who
hold different viewpoints. (p. 49)
One stark feature of the sectarian division is the fact that each community refers to the city
differently. Catholics tend to call it Derry, while Protestants use the term Londonderry.
Understanding that it was difficult to talk of a shared city with not even a shared name,
the Board invested considerable time to resolve this highly symbolic issue. Eventually, it
agreed that, short of some longer-term accommodation about a unified name, the Board
would refer to it as Derry/Londonderry because it welcomes the historic cultural value
attached to both names by our communities (City Partnership Board, 2000, p. 2).
Formally, the visioning process commanded the support of the local Council, the main
government departments, and local civic and business organizations. Given the authority
and resources of such champions, it was assumed that the vision agenda would be
adopted by all leading stakeholders and blended into their own corporate strategies. Yet,
in the period immediately following this attempted synergy, while there were a number of
initiatives undertaken that were consistent with the vision, the overwhelming evidence is
that these would likely have happened in any case. Summarizing the main independent
evaluation of the Derry Vision experience (Williamson Consulting, August, 2002), several
key features emerge. The venture was successful as a process that built networks,
improved relations, and opened up dialogue across diverse interests in the city.
Its extensive consultations evidenced its commitment to inclusion and gave crosscommunity ownership to its over-arching goal of a shared city working to common
purpose. Ranking high in its achievements was its capacity to engage local political rivals
while remaining itself above partisan politics, but the weakest component of its operation
lay in implementation. Although some of its action goals could be traced to delivered
projects, these were seldom attributed directly to the vision process. Thus its very success
in promoting its visibility served to raise citizen expectations, which ultimately were not
satisfied. So even though it was promised that the process would be on-going and that
the first action plan would be monitored and developed into subsequent five year plans,
the Board was dissolved in 2001 and the legacy of all its efforts began to fade quickly in the
citys governance.
Most recently, in 2003, a new focus was given to the areas development, under the
concept of Growing the North West. Once again, this entailed significant investment in
congregating many key stakeholders behind a common agenda to drive the city forward,
this time in a sub-regional context. Alongside this process, in which the authors were once
again involved, an Urban Regeneration Company was established to take forward key
aspects of the citys development. In its emerging agenda little trace of the visioning
process is prominent. Indeed, the most obvious repercussion is a view that the new
approach should adopt a more focused and robust business slant to ensure delivery on the
ground, compared to a long drawn-out visioning, rich in process but poor in practical
achievement. Evident from both these new initiatives is the weaker community
participation, suggesting that a key lesson drawn from the vision planning is the need
to prioritize a public-private partnership, in which decision-takers are better placed to
commit budgets, command development control, and thereby make things happen.
Belfasts visioning process started also in 1995 and operated for just over five years in a
city beset not only by universal processes of economic restructuring and traditional
decline, but also by the particular stresses of its acute political conflict. To set the city in
context, its population has declined from a peak of around 400 000 in the 1950s to a current
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275 000, and accounts now for 43 per cent of the metropolitan population. As a regional
employment centre, the city holds 60.6 per cent of the metropolitan areas 302 000 jobs,
which account for 47 per cent of all jobs in Northern Ireland (DETI Census of Employment
2001). From 10 per cent in 1996 to 5 per cent in 2003, claimant count unemployment has
halved in the city, which nevertheless still accounts for 62 per cent of unemployed
residents in the metropolitan area (NOMIS, 2003). Leading sectors in Belfast are
commerce, property and business services and public administration, each accounting for
close to 14 per cent of total city employment. While just under a quarter of its working age
population is qualified to degree standard, 27 per cent of working age residents have no
qualifications, a significant tail of under-achievement. This is related to the high share of
households on income support37 per cent compared to 27 per cent in the region as a
whole (Hutchins, 2004). Alongside these socio-economic patterns, although representing
around one-sixth of the regions population, Belfast accounted for 40 per cent of the
regions fatalities in the Troubles, mostly concentrated in the deeply contested spaces of
North and West of the city that have contained also the highest levels of unemployment
and deprivation.
Necessarily, its drive for regeneration has had to be twinned with an effort to redress the
polarization of its sectarian and cultural division. Similar to Derry, Belfast formed a
representative City Partnership Board, which over a period of nearly three years, engaged
in widespread consultation across the citys diverse constituencies, in a series of
workshops, forums and seminars. To frame this process, six core themes were examined:
Prosperous City, Learning City, City of Livable Communities, Healthy City, City of
Culture & Sport and the United City.
Unlike many policy and planning processes in the past, the exercise did not airbrush out
completely the thorny issue of division. As expressed in the preliminary vision statement,
the Board projected:
a city where people are valued more than the territory or the ideology that they
hold, and where nothing is more precious than life itself, a city determined to
move beyond the habit of hate to discover new ways of creatively living with
difference. (Belfast City Partnership Board, June 1998, p. 3)
In similar vein, the final plan (Belfast City Partnership Board, 1999, p. 1) spoke of how
Belfast will belong to all its people. Supporting and respecting each other, all will play their
part in the life of the city. Importantly, the Board identified a rubric to facilitate the
integration of all dimensions affecting prosperity, equity and quality. Guided by the core
messages from its consultations, it adopted the concept of a Mutual City, taken to be one that
encouraged links and collaboration amongst all sections and areas, while opening the city up
to the wider world. The adoption of this concept was not intended to disavow contestation.
Rather, it was suggested that such conflicts should not preclude solidarities, designed to
forge optimal added value for all city sectors and parts. An example of the importance
attached to connectedness lay in the Boards interweaving of learning, cultural, governance
and sustainability aspects to the objective of the prosperous city. Thus, it argued that:
A buoyant urban economy demanded both structural and cultural changes, establishing
a strategic framework for long-term integrated development, including the selection of a
new sectoral specialization and its clustering, together with the need to foster more risktaking and enterprise.
. There was the need to get beyond fragmented development whereby myriad urban
initiatives operated in isolation to a coherent strategy that deepened economic linkages.
.
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Moreover, since development was considered to be more than growth, there was a need to
link economic development explicitly to the targeting of social need and the integration
of disadvantaged groups into the new labour market.
. Building on its strengths, the city had to move away from dependence on low factor costs
in terms of labour and rental costs to high-value added, export-driven activity, rooted in
good research and development and the nurturing of human and social capital. This,
in turn, demanded not only an increasing alignment of education to enterprise, but also
the establishment of a whole new learning culture for a learning city.
.
Accordingly, as ideas about the future shape of Belfasts economy were emerging, they
were continually melded with ideas about how a new learning culture could be developed
to support such transformations. In turn, identification of the cultural industries as an
important sector for future growth was related to discussions about how the city could
develop its cultural and sporting assets. These quality of life issues were in turn connected
to the creation of a healthy city, and one that was protective of its natural environment. So
the process evolved, constantly refining through the different stages of public
engagement. Out of this first phase, a broad Vision Plan emerged (Belfast City Partnership
Board, 1999).
Its central purpose was not meant to be a grand strategic plan, agreed at every point
with government, the City Council and all the relevant authorities and interest groups...
(but rather the start of) the process of creating a dynamic new agenda to shape Belfasts
future (Belfast City Partnership Board, 1999, p. 3). Following its launch and distribution
to every city household, six Action Teams were formed, each tasked to convert one of the
six core themes into an Action Plan covering the next five years. Over 200 significantly
placed people from across all sectors were committed to this process for a six-month
period. Importantly, they were asked to identify specific actions that would contribute to
the delivery of the Vision, and which leading agencies and partners would be tasked to
deliver, over specified time periods. Each teams ideas were then collated into an Action
Plan. Similar to the Derry/Londonderry experience, by the time it got to this delivery
stage, there was already sign of disillusionment within the Board, driven by a
consultation fatigue and increasing scepticism about a clear end product. Attendance
started to fall, particularly among the politicians and private sector, and this curtailed the
productive exchanges at the meetings.
The Action Plan never got beyond draft stage (Belfast Partnership Board, 2001).
Containing a list of action points related to key objectives in the Vision, under
headings of what, why, how, who and when, the plan had the virtue of being
at least in part very specific and the problem of being almost totally powerless. Some
of the ambitions were ridiculously high, for instance, make Belfast world renowned
as the City of Festivals, and all by 2001. Others were arguably under-ambitious, for
instance, make Belfast a No Smoking City by 2025. However, an analysis of all
these ideas and targets now, four years later, indicates that none of them has been
adopted by the agencies identified and within the time scale projected.
All the citys leading agencies nominally endorsed the vision and agreed with its basic
premise that collaborative governance of the city rooted in a common vision provided the
most effective means for sustainable improvement. Yet the failure to translate it into action
demonstrated that this support was more rhetorical than substantial. In the final analysis,
they elected to preserve their own corporate autonomy and to pursue their own agendas,
showing by their practice that the creation of Belfast as a Mutual City faced formidable
resistance.
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Five years of intensive activity had comprised: monthly Board meetings; complementary committee meetings; major annual conferences, attracting up to 500 shakers and
movers in the city; a succession of seminars; a series of public lectures from leading
practitioners in planning and regeneration from England, Spain and the US; educational
visits to other cities like Barcelona; and action team sessions. Informing these discourses
were a set of on-going consultation exercises including focus group discussions, youth
forums leading to the formation of a parallel Youth Partnership Board, content analysis of
all of the main consultations conducted by other public agencies over a recent five-year
period, and a household questionnaire inviting public response to an outline vision. The
authors were involved intensively throughout these processes. Behind these public
sessions, one of the authors was involved also in a series of preparatory meetings with the
public officials driving the project. These meetings, in particular, offered an insight into the
realities of policy making, including the tactical moves to win the necessary alliances in
the city, the careful orchestration of events such as conferences to ensure outcomes were in
keeping with the projects overall agenda, the political calculus to achieve the optimum
cross-party support, and judgements about phasing and priority actions. Many key
features of the projects design and delivery that might have appeared to have been
organic or even spontaneous to those on the outside were, in fact, very carefully
considered and directed.
In total, the exercise represented a substantial investment of public money, volunteer
time and commitment by leading civil servants. This is not to suggest that all of this
activity was pursued efficiently. For instance, the postal questionnaire, despite yielding
just over 5000 responses, was statistically invalid since there were methodological flaws in
establishing a sample frame and in monitoring actual questionnaire delivery. Nevertheless, it was indisputably the most comprehensive public engagement in the city ever
held, professionally supported by much fanfare and multi-media publicity to ensure high
visibility. Yet, in the end, the same fate befell the Belfast venture as the Derry one.
Lessons from the Derry/Belfast Experience
Returning to the initial research questions, did the experiences in Derry and Belfast offer
people more opportunity to control and shape their future? Certainly, to judge by the
numbers of people involved and the proactive attempts to promote an inclusive process,
they could be deemed successful. And measured against mainstream statutory planning1
in Derry and Belfast, there is little doubt that the processes attracted a more diverse range
of interests than did say, the preparation of the Derry Area Plan or the Belfast Metropolitan
Area Plan. However, while there appeared to be a range of opportunities to be involved in
a planning process that held out the prospect of shaping the future of the two cities, the
participation often lacked genuine collaboration.
Although both Partnership Boards succeeded in drawing in some key stakeholders as
members, for the most part the visioning process did not drill down to the institutions
they represented. Similarly, the initiative was led by a senior civil servant, who was
regarded as unusually interventionist and risk-taking by many of his senior colleagues in
other departments. So, although other Permanent Secretaries turned up at the conferences
to give their apparent endorsement, for them, the visioning concept really did not register
on their radar screens. Again, it was a salutary illustration of the difference between the
public rhetoric of senior officials in favour of innovation and risk, and their tendency
subsequently to relapse into the routine of their statutory obligations and procedures.
Indeed, in the years since the demise of both Boards, the institutional amnesia about the
172
Vision Plans in the governance of both cities has been rapid. This is partly due to the way
that the pace of contemporary urban change lends urban policy an ever shorter life span.
However, it is partly attributable to the ahistorical tendency within government, whose
public officials regularly move on or out, leaving their replacements to keep reinventing
similar policies under new guises.
There is little evidence that either process delivered a coherent implementation strategy.
Again, it is worth making a comparison with mainstream development planning; a process
which is seen to have power over real development change. While much of this change is
increasingly challenged, nevertheless the system is perceived to have control over a very
tangible activity. A great deal of this can be attributed to the statutory basis of
development planning and to its largely single focus on land and physical development.
In this standard planning context, debates about the future of the city are debates about
real and often imminent development proposals. Principles and values and long-term
scenarios appear to provide only rhetorical justification for competing arguments. Thus,
a key lesson is that any visioning process needs to be connected to credible regulatory
power and appropriate resource flows.
The second research question considered whether visioning offered a new tool to
support the shift towards spatial planning. In Northern Ireland, there is some evidence
that strategic regional planning has tentatively grasped the new spatial planning
paradigm, although there is also evidence that this is not being played out through local
development planning. At a regional level, the senior civil servant who initiated the
visioning processes also set the brief for a strategic plan for Northern Ireland. Now
formally adopted as the Regional Development Strategy (RDS) for Northern Ireland, this
plan has been praised for being both visionary and integrative. The document itself makes
this claim: The RDS is an expression of the shared vision, values and principles identified
through the extensive consultation process, which obtained the views of all sections of the
community (DRD, 2002). Other commentators have noted also that the Regional
Development Strategy:
. . . deserves the praise it has been given outside Northern Ireland. It has
provided a strategic focus for infrastructure investment policy. It has given a
framework to localities to work out how to position themselves in a positive
way in a new shared and devolved political landscape. It has provided a
basis for some degree of transdepartmental integration at government level.
(Albrechts et al., 2003, p.126)
There is little doubt that the visioning exercises in Belfast and Derry and elsewhere have
raised the expectations of stakeholders about the potential of a new form of planning.
As facilitators in both processes, the authors noted evidence of this in the RDS consultation
workshops where participants were always keen to move beyond the traditional planning
agendas, which normally focused on land-use matters, to consider issues about the local
economy, socio-spatial inequalities and health and education provision. Significantly too,
discussion, although informed by databases and analyses, was also about the
opportunities for influencing the future rather than being shaped by the extrapolation
of past trends (Queens University Belfast et al., 1998).
However tentative this shift at regional level to embrace the concept of spatial planning,
there is little evidence that statutory local area planning has adopted a more visionary
approach. The draft Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan was published in November 2004 after
yet another extensive consultation exercise, which was conducted by the authors. Under
the Planning (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 2003, the Plan has to be in general
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conformity with the Regional Development Strategy. At one level, this will be measured
in terms of whether the Plan conforms to development targets such as the regional
housing allocation and meets the aim of increasing the proportion of new housing in
urban areas. However, at another, perhaps less tangible level, the Plan should take
forward and give local expression to the broad vision for the region. Many of those who
participated in the consultation process are profoundly disappointed with the published
draft Area Plan. In the words of one participant:
Development planning in Northern Ireland is still trapped in the regulatory
and technocratic mode of operation that was developed in the 1970s. The
promise held out by the Regional Development Strategy is not being translated
at the level of the Area Plan. We have been delivered a traditional land use plan
for Belfast. There is little or no vision and certainly no evidence of joined-up
thinking about how the city can be developed. (PLACE Workshop 2004)
The third question posed whether visioning as a process could offer particular benefits for
collaborative planning practice. In the mid-1990s in Northern Ireland, such an objective
seemed very timely. Following the paramilitary ceasefires, there was a wide sense of a
turning point, rooted in the hope of an evolving peace. The use of visioning at this
defining moment promised opportunities for creative engagement across the traditional
divide. In reality, there was very poor attendance and limited involvement from the
Unionist/Protestant councillors in both cities. One explanation that has been offered for
this apparent opt-out is that that side of the community feels stranded on the ebb tide of
political change. In this scenario, the future is a fearful place in which they have low
expectation. Therefore, a process designed to imagine the future is less appealing to them
than to their political opponents, who may feel more confident if not triumphalist about a
future that they believe to be on their side. Another explanation is that visions hold
greater religious and cultural connections with the Catholic tradition, and, by the same
token, are more alien to the more practical, Presbyterian mind-set. Whatever of these
perspectives, as expressed in an interview to the authors by a leading civil servant charged
with promoting the process, the actual contribution of vision planning to the nurturing of
a collaborative culture was negligible:
In both cities, it made no impact on the Protestant community and marginal
impact on the Catholic community. Leaders from both sides were prepared to
talk the language of a shared city. But, this was for the optics. In fact, the
integrity of their durable quarrel was not going to be set-aside for something
like the visioning.
This appraisal is understandable in the context of the uneasy transitional character of the
period, in which the acute violence of the conflict had abated, without a definitive peace
being installed. At such moments, protagonists in long wars may be less concerned about
alternative futures and more fixated on a contest over the conflict that has just past, and
how they can ensure that their version of the narrative prevails as historical orthodoxy.
Nevertheless, in the context of the emergent peace process, visioning in both cities
tapped into new energies about political potentials and civic collaborations. At the many
meetings and forums, safe space was provided for tentative dialogue among political and
community protagonists across the divide. However, the trust, honesty and openness,
referred to earlier as intrinsic to good collaborative planning, were in a state of fragile
genesis. Thus, at such a delicate early stage, attempts to build a consensual and
inclusionary framework for discourse on urban futures tended to lapse into lowest
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common denominators, superficial platitudes, referred to previously as empty signifiers.

Thus, in his critique of the Belfast experience, Neill (1999) insists that such an exercise
does not:
really promote a planning process based on the recognition of real conflicts and
trade offs. It rather risks substituting it with the raising of unrealistic
expectations that hard choices and compromises can be avoided as all is
dissolved and resolved into a pastel-coloured haze at the end of a 15 20 year
planning rainbow. (p. 278)
At the same time, it could be said that the Belfast process did challenge a city trapped so
much in the past to turn instead to the future. Its expressions of mutuality, however bland,
contributed to committing its contested leadership to a new regime in the citys
governance. Moreover, the visioning exercises in both cities represented an attempt to
move planning beyond issues of land use to a more integrated and comprehensive
reshaping of social space. In the late 1980s, a leading official in the Department of
Environment (NI) was still able to disavow such integration as plannings responsibility
(Wilson, May 1988): Our terms of reference are land use. There are social and economic
issues to be addressed but were concerned with the built environment.
However, collaborative planning as an alternative has at some stage to move from its
dialogues into decision and development. Unfortunately, the vision exercises in both cities
needed greater clarity in their terms of reference, in the statutory authority they
commanded, and in how they nested within the mainstream planning hierarchy. Without
these frameworks and related delivery mechanisms, the process was vulnerable to the
charge of being a talking shop.
Vision Planning: Anything to Offer?

Having explored the concept of vision planning, and cited some examples of its practice,
the overall question remains as to whether it represents a significant departure from
conventional planning, and, in so doing, offers a better prospect for a more integrated and
democratic form of development. With respect to this core research question, the evidence
presented above suggests the following scope for vision planning.
First, as a process, it can offer the opportunity to imagineer futures for places in ways
that facilitate innovative, creative and comprehensive perspectives beyond those of
traditional land-use and market-led planning. As such, it accords with the more integrated
and participative paradigm implicit in concepts of new governance and spatial planning.
Promoting a process that is more rounded and multi-dimensional has the potential to
connect people better to the politics of place. It is about the environment, but it is also
about the experience of living in that environment. In other words, it is about the quality
of life circumstances and the values held by different people in specific places (Vigar et al.,
2000, p. 289). In the authors view, contemporary planning practice excludes so many
because it does not appear to hold any direct relevance for their everyday lives or for the
place in which they live and work. Most people involved in planning consultation
exercises and in public inquiries have a narrow interest in land and building development.
Moreover, they normally fall into two camps: those who want to secure development
potential and those who are opposed to particular developments. Visioning offers an
opportunity to widen and deepen participation beyond this adversarial dialogue.
The authors experience, for example, of engaging with youth groups about the future of
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Belfast, provides evidence of an interest that is not apparent in mainstream planning

processes or indeed in local politics.
Second, frequent criticisms of conventional planning participation are its limited reach
in terms of involving the full diversity of publics, particularly the more excluded
populations like the inactive poor, and the superficial nature of its discourse. Vision
planning offers the potential for improving both the extensive and intensive dimensions of
collaboration. However, it is demanding in time and resources, thereby risking too much
emphasis on process and the expense of action and product. This danger of disconnecting
imagination from realization challenges the credibility of visioning, by itself, as an agent
of practical change. Evidence from the case studies presented here illustrates the modest
final impacts when the process becomes detached from real-world political-economy and
delivery mechanisms. This relates to the institutional context of planning. Currently, many
local communities in Northern Ireland are overwhelmed and somewhat confused by the
increasing number of plans and strategies emanating from various government
departments. Many of these have, or will have, spatial impacts, but others do not.
However, the move to spatial planning offers some opportunity to provide a significant
degree of co-ordinated thinking around space and place, and visioning can contribute to
this. A well-worked vision for a place can offer a broad foundation for the development of
the full range of plans and policies. Again though, all of this must be situated in the real
politics of governance and the market. As the case studies show, disconnected leadership
and a differentiated power environment will at best constrain, and at worst prevent, the
realization of a vision.
Third, achieving buy-in from significant public and private agencies is much more
problematic than most of the literature on collaborative vision planning suggests. In the UK
as a whole, the nature of contemporary urban governance is very fragmented, and the
related silo mentality induces each agency to protect the autonomy of its budget and
corporate strategy. Arguments about the value-added that attends collaborative synergies
readily receive rhetorical plaudits from all concerned. However, it is very difficult to
translate these into actual co-operative commitments, given that the primary metric on
which these public agencies are assessed is rooted in their own service targets. Similarly, in
the case of the private sector, it is not evident from the above case study that the powerful
feel motivated or obliged to play at a table where major development and plans are subject
to open dialogue and negotiation. Thus, the current turn to a more hard-nosed business
approach in Derry/Londonderry with the formation of an Urban Regeneration Company
indicates not only a desire for a little less conversation, and a little more action, but also for
a more restricted set of government and business stakeholders, who are thought to be able to
contribute resources and policy authority in a way that the community sector cannot.
Fourth, in both Vision Plans, the search for consensus among stakeholders was laudable,
particularly in the context of contested space, where conflict over territory and identity is
acute. In the case of Northern Ireland, inviting participants to think outside the habit of hate
and prejudice and in spatial scenarios that preclude deepening segregation and apartheid
generated some interesting ideas for inter-communal mutuality. But most of the
suggestions tended to be either at the very immediate level: instead of Derry or
Londonderry, let us refer to Derry and Londonderry; instead of rival school uniforms in
Belfast that mark out student religious identity, let us have one uniform for all Belfast
schools, etc., or pitched at the distant future in hazy bland empty signifiers. Missing from
the visionary discourse were suggestions for a transitional infrastructure for the practical
twinning of place-making and peace-building. Part of this deficit may be addressed
through the avoidance of wish-listing, and the conducting of the visionary engagement in
176
critical ways that confront participants with the real trade-offs that attend policy
prioritization and resource allocation. Particularly in contested spaces, the rhetorical
component of visioning has its place in congregating a set of rival constituencies around the
building of a consensual agenda. Ultimately, it has to move beyond rhetoric. Consequently,
there needs to be a teasing out of nebulous ambitions and an ongoing critical dialogue
between the processes of implementation and the values underpinning the vision.
In summary, while disputing inflated claims that vision planning represents a stepchange from traditional planning, as both theorists and practitioners of the process, the
authors retain a cautious interest in its potential. Three key levers are needed to unlock this
potential. First, the process needs the legitimacy that derives from the authority of key
stakeholders, including groups who are often marginalized in planning debates such as the
young, the elderly and ethnic minorities, together with the more politically powerful
groups such as developers, investors and public agencies. In short, there needs to be an
incentive framework, based on rewards and penalties that bind such partners into a process
that is itself operating within a clear delivery and planning system, with statutory authority.
If such an arrangement became obligatory for any key development proposal to be
validated at final public inquiry stage, a sustainable architecture for a credible collaborative
visionary planning could emerge. This suggests a second lever: strong leadership. The case
studies indicate that while strong leadership is important at the initiation stage, it is even
more critical at the delivery stage. Leadership in this context is not the authoritarian or
charismatic kind that sometimes characterizes politics or business, but rather collective
shared leadership that crosses boundaries and structures. In the two case studies, there was
at best a flawed operation of shared leadership, with both initiatives being driven by one
government department. While this department was necessary to the process, given its
appropriate responsibilities in planning and regeneration, it was insufficient. Yet, other
government departments and agencies were keen to protect their autonomy from
intrusions under the name of integrated planning. This implies the re-design of what
Healey calls the hard infrastructure of formal institutions of government (Healey, 1997)
into the new governance that is enabling, empowering and collaborative. Here the
impetus for a politics of inclusion meets the pressure for an economics that is exclusive and
competitive. Thus, in the agenda around the modernization of planning, there remains a
fundamental tension between the precept of equity, and its corollary of time-intensive
participation, and that of efficiency, with its emphasis on speedy decision making and
streamlining
Planning has always been deeply political, even in its technocratic years. But with the
paradigm shift to spatial planning generating a debate about the nature of planning and its
role in creating place, the political character of planning is likely to become more
transparent. Thereby, the emerging paradigm offers new possibilities for a more critical
appraisal of what constitutes genuine participation; one that seeks to be more inclusive
and more connected to the multi-dimensional experience of everyday life. In many
respects, vision planning can be a tool in this wider agenda around collaborative planning,
lending it a broader, more ambitious set of aspirations. Indeed, it is these broader, more
ambitious aspirations that appear to encourage people to believe that they can have
a significant role in shaping their own future.
Note
1. Orthodox development planning in Northern Ireland is largely modelled on the format and procedure of
planning in England and Wales. Significantly though, planning responsibilities are spread across three central
government departments. The Department of Regional Development has responsibility for regional planning
177
and development, while the Department of the Environment has charge of statutory development planning
and development control. The Department of Social Development is responsible for housing and urban
regeneration. It is also important to point out that the 26 District councils are afforded only a consultative role
in the planning processes.
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Planning Theory & Practice

New Visions for Old Cities: The Role of

Frank Gaffikin a; Ken Sterrett a

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

Planning Theory & Practice, Vol. 7, No. 2, 159178, June 2006

New Visions for Old Cities: The Role

Introduction and Methodology

The over-arching research question is whether visioning represents a significant departure

F. Gaffikin & K. Sterrett

New Visions for Old Cities

F. Gaffikin & K. Sterrett

New Visions for Old Cities

F. Gaffikin & K. Sterrett

New Visions for Old Cities

F. Gaffikin & K. Sterrett

New Visions for Old Cities

F. Gaffikin & K. Sterrett

New Visions for Old Cities

F. Gaffikin & K. Sterrett

New Visions for Old Cities

F. Gaffikin & K. Sterrett

New Visions for Old Cities

F. Gaffikin & K. Sterrett

common denominators, superficial platitudes, referred to previously as empty signifiers.

Vision Planning: Anything to Offer?

New Visions for Old Cities

Belfast, provides evidence of an interest that is not apparent in mainstream planning

F. Gaffikin & K. Sterrett

New Visions for Old Cities

F. Gaffikin & K. Sterrett

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