Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
preceding decade is the form that regional institutions should take.
78
A
recurrent concern over proposals to place regional bodies in a top-down
relationship with local government has been that the public, whose
place
loyalty is often strongest towards localities, counties and sub-regional
levels of consciousness
'
'
have tended to view administratively de
ned
regions as arti
cial political constructs rather than natural units of govern-
ment.
79
The implication is that people would be reluctant to accept the
legitimacy of regional governance in the same way that the authority of
local government and the state are broadly accepted.
80
Haughton and
Counsell suggest that, if this indifference is to be overcome, a programme
of regionalisation would need to
be directed to complex processes of place-
making in the sense of trying to develop a wider acknowledgement and
even ownership of particular de
'
by
those who would be subject to its authority.
81
However, I question whether
attempting to create a sense of attachment to regions where none exists or
de
nitions of what constitutes a region
'
ning bodies as political representatives of geographical areas to which
people feel no allegiance would provide an effective means of introducing
a regional layer to a system of ecological governance.
A preferable approach would be to create regional institutions that
function not as governors of localities, but as
'
decision recommending
institutions
. These would be responsible for determining, through
debate involving representatives of localities, what the regional position
on matters under consideration should be. Representatives of the
regional body would then take part as advocates of regionally agreed
positions in national strategic planning processes. Proponents of delib-
erative democracy see the creation of intermediate institutions of this
kind as a way of providing channels through which public opinion can
'
78
An account of the public
s rejection of proposals for an elected body for the North-East
which curtailed the administration
'
s further pursuit of its plans for introducing an
electoral dimension to regional governance can be found in A. Tickell, P. John and
S. Musson,
'
'
The North East Region Referendum Campaign of 2004: Issues and Turning
Points
'
(2005) 76 The Political Quarterly,488.SeealsoBakerandWong,
'
The Delusion
of Strategic Spatial Planning
'
,86
-
94; and Owens and Cowell,
'
Land and Limits
'
,2ndedn,
8.
79
Haughton and Counsell,
pp. 6
-
'
Regions, Spatial Strategies
'
, p. 7. See also Wheeler,
'
Regions,
Megaregions, and Sustainability
'
,867
-
8.
80
in H. Dimitriou and
R. Thompson (eds) Strategic Planning for Regional Development in the UK: A Review
of Principles and Practices (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 225.
81
Haughton and Counsell,
J. Glasson,
'
Regional Planning and Sustainability Assessment
'
'
Regions, Spatial Strategies
'
,p.7.
