Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
might simply be avoided if suitable alternatives are available. Alternatively,
discussion of development proposals with those affected by them would
allow for exploration of whether the potential for con
ict is such that these
should not be pursued or if the communities concerned would be willing
to accept the validity of proposals having re
ected on the public goods
which they are intended to vouchsafe.
102
An approach which sees citizens as a resource for problem solving rather
than as likely objectors is needed to avoid the problems that successive
governments have experienced as a result of attempts to use the planning
system as a top-down vehicle for delivering policy.
103
Such approaches
have often encountered dif
culties due to a failure to recognise that people
value places in quite different ways to the instrumental value that central
government attaches to them.
104
Top-down decision-making is also prone
to exacerbating whatever potential is present in a situation for opposition
by providing limited opportunity for public participation in advance of
particular development proposals being presented.
105
As Haggett notes,
public protest in such circumstances may stem as much from a lack of
meaningful involvement in the planning process and a resulting sense of
powerlessness in the face of decisions made at higher levels than from an
antipathy to the proposed development itself.
106
The response by the UK
s last Labour administration to problems
that it encountered with pursuing infrastructure projects was to attribute
these to the planning system and to impose an even-more centralised
framework for infrastructure planning under the Planning Act 2008.
107
In doing so, it failed to appreciate that policy statements are not holy writ,
and that treating them as such will almost inevitably result in situations
where the aspirations they contain come into con
'
ict with physical realities
102
Ibid
., 243.
103
Stallworthy,
'
Sustainability, Land Use
'
,p.311;Bulkeley,
'
Planning and Governance of
,p.287.
104
For example, Woolley,
Climate Change
'
icts
that have arisen between the valuation by governments of the marine environment for
its renewable energy generation potential and public values held in coastal places and
seascapes.
105
Woolley,
'
Trouble on the Horizon?
'
,228
-
30, gives examples of con
'
Trouble on the Horizon?
'
, 234
-
5.
106
C. Haggett,
in S. Davoudi,
J. Crawford and A. Mehmood (eds) Planning for Climate Change: Strategies for
Mitigation and Adaptation for Spatial Planners (London: Earthscan, 2009), p. 300.
107
Woolley,
'
Public Engagement in Planning for Renewable Energy
'
240. The approach to infrastructure planning
established under the Act has been adopted by the following coalition government with
some modi
cations. See Cowell,
'
Trouble on the Horizon?
'
, 235
-
'
The Greenest Government ever?
'
,37
-
9.
