In a recent paper* published as part of a special issue of the journal Planning Theory which we helped to guest edit, Ed Shepherd and I show why it is important for both theory and practice to recognise how ideology influences town planning.
Over recent decades, governments in many regions around the world have sought to simplify and speed up planning processes, arguing that land-use regulation imposes unnecessary constraints that prevent the free market from efficiently providing much needed development. The issue of housing supply has been at the centre of this politics of planning in England, with the planning system consistently blamed for failing to allocate sufficient land fast enough for new housebuilding to keep pace with demand. This has led to a seemingly endless cycle of planning reforms focused not on any positive contribution planners might make to tackling housing shortages, but instead on getting them out of the way.
Whilst such reforms are usually presented as pragmatic responses to policy failures (and can be effectively challenged on those grounds), they also draw much of their power from wider political thinking. In seeking to make prevailing understandings of planning fit with dominant neoliberal ideas about the proper role of the state and markets in society, they are always deeply ideological.
Recognising the importance of ideology can help us to critically interrogate how broader historical forces shape and limit our understanding of what planning is and, crucially, what it could be. Bringing ideology to the fore of analysis of planning raises significant theoretical challenges, however. It is never easy to ascertain how much power ideas have to mould history, the term ‘ideology’ carries a lot of baggage and often arouses suspicion, not least amongst planners who sometimes see it as a distraction from more immediate, practical questions.
Drawing on the work of the late Stuart Hall, we sought to trace how a flexible conservative political ideology has shaped recent planning reforms in England. Without losing sight of other economic, social and political factors that have shaped the contemporary conjuncture, we aimed to show the varied work that ideology does to hold together contradictory pressures, securing support for deregulatory planning reforms, even in the face of opposition from within the ruling Conservative party.
Our aim was not just to suggest ways of working through theoretical difficulties in the relationship between ideology and planning, however. Instead, following Hall we argue that theory is best understood as a ‘detour’ on the way to more important political questions about what should be done. In this way we try to use ‘conjunctural analysis’ as a tool to assess opportunities to challenge and reshape dominant ideas.
Highlighting growing challenges to neoliberal hegemony, we point to the fact that recent Conservative governments have reconsidered previously unthinkable policies such as council house building and land value capture as evidence that the intensification of the politics of ‘housing crisis’ may create opportunities to articulate alternative understandings of planning and its potential. It’s up to those who would like to see progressive change to seize the moment.
*Inch, A. and Shepherd, E. (2020) Thinking conjuncturally about ideology, housing and English planning, Planning Theory, 19 (1), 59-79.