Preface
Definition
used in this book
A Community Planning Eventis a carefully structured collaborative event at which all stakeholders, including the local community, work closely with independent specialists from all relevant disciplines to make plans for the future of that community or some aspects of it.
“Community involvement is an essential element in delivering sustainable development and creating sustainable and safe communities. In developing the vision for their areas, planning authorities should ensure that communities are able to contribute to ideas about how that vision can be achieved, have the opportunity to participate in the process of drawing up the vision, strategy and specific plan policies, and to be involved in development proposals.”
Planning Policy Statement No 1: Delivering Sustainable Development, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, UK, 2005
This book on how to organise Community Planning Events was first published in 1996. Titled ‘Action Planning’ it was based on a handbook on ‘urban design assistance teams’ produced in the United States but was adapted to include experience gained in Europe experimenting with a similar approach.
The first edition of this book boosted growing interest in collaborative urban design processes and in the development of ‘community planning’ – planning carried out with the active participation of end users.
There has been a huge growth in community planning activity internationally over the past decade. In some countries, like the UK, it has become an integral part of the planning process and new and improved approaches are continually emerging.
This revised and updated edition of the book, incorporating experience gained since the first edition – and retitled to reflect how the activity has become known – is therefore extremely timely. Combined with the website www.communityplanning.net, it will allow those organising events to benefit from up-to-date best practice and stimulate further innovation and improvement to the process.
English Partnerships, the UK’s national regeneration agency, has been at the forefront in promoting innovative methods for community engagement and professional working. We are delighted to have assisted with the production of the first two editions of this important publication.
Steve Carr
Director of Policy and Economics
English Partnerships
End product – sustainable communities
Two award winning major new UK developments shaped by Community Planning Events. Above: Upton, Northampton – a sustainable urban extension with 1,000 new homes masterplanned by The Prince’s Foundation using an Enquiry by Design.
Below: The Village at Caterham, Surrey – a mixed use neighbourhood with 366 new homes to a plan by John Thompson & Partners arising from a community planning weekend attended by 1,000 people.
(See page 100 for project details.)
