by Hannah Hickman
I teach a module on our postgraduate distance learning course – Planning and Urban Leadership – called “Managing Strategic Growth”. It is framed around encouraging students to think at scale, and critically evaluate the role of planners and planning in growth management, with a focus on population, household and economic growth and the resultant demand for more homes. At its heart it’s about just that, growth.
I inherited this module from an excellent former colleague, and over time I have re-oriented and shaped the module in response to some of the more recent developments in policy and practice. However, full disclosure, over the Summer I reflected that I hadn’t previously encouraged students to do enough critical engagement with the concept of growth. I’m not saying we didn’t do any but perhaps an acceptance of the growth orthodoxy in planning was subliminal, somehow inadvertently built-in to the module’s design.
What prompted this reflection? I’m not sure I can pinpoint a precise moment, but I was immediately irked by the repeated statements that emerged very quickly from the incoming Labour Government, that put planning and growth facilitation, particularly economic growth, front and centre of its reform agenda. This is just one example of many:
“The Government has made clear that sustained economic growth is the only route to improving the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people … Nowhere is decisive reform needed more urgently than in our planning system”[1].
Ascribing this role to planning is of course, neither new, nor a surprise. Many planning scholars have written engagingly about the growth fixation “inscribed in planning instruments” and “the often‐unquestioned growth bias in spatial planning that is institutionalized at all scales of land‐use planning”[2].
However, the disappointment I felt at the lack of wider narratives emerging from the new Government about both planning and growth, led me to both re-engage with some of the important existing scholarship in this area, but also to read some recent literature for the first time. In short, in preparing for this module, I went down an utterly engaging rabbit hole. Amongst other things:
- I read the excellent piece by Jin Zue on de-growth, challenging ‘smart-growth’ (the apparently false win-win scenario to support growth), and encouraging “subversion of planning’s commitment to growth … and resuscitation of utopianism” [3], anddipped into Savini’s volume on Cities beyond the market economy [4];
- I looked beyond planning, to see what scholars in politics and public policy have been saying. In short, questioning the economic growth paradigm is happening across disciplines[5];
- I listened to the economist, Kate Raworth, talk engagingly about her book ‘doughnut economics’, in which she questions whether governments “are right to think that the solution to their economic problems lies in more growth” [6]; and
- I explored the many and various ways of measuring growth that go beyond GDP, and here I would give a massive shout out to UCL’s citizen prosperity index [7].
I also did a very cursory piece of research to look at the national planning policy statements of the UK’s devolved nations, and I was surprised at what I found. Scotland’s National Planning Framework 4, makes 104 references to growth, although in many and varied ways, including ‘compact growth’,‘green growth, ‘greener growth’, and ‘inclusive growth’. Future Wales: The National Plan 2040, containsa whopping 296 references to growth, including ‘sustainable growth’, ‘inclusive growth’, ‘nationally important growth’, ‘clean growth’, ‘green growth’, and ‘inclusive growth’. The Strategic Planning Policy Statement for Northern Irelandhas 42 references to growth, but with an overwhelming focus on economic growth. The idea of growth – in all sorts of guises – is the undoubtedly orthodoxy in these statements, paralleling the English narrative.
So, what did I do when I climbed back out of the rabbit hole? Well, initially at least I’ve shared a few observations (for what they are worth!) with the Planning and Urban Leadership students and asked them to think about where they sit on the pro-growth, de-growth axis, and to reflect upon what role they think planning (and planners) should take in this.
But why have I decided to write about this here, albeit very briefly? There were two motivators. The first, was to highlight the value of ‘learning on the job’ (as well as the privilege of being able to do so) and the fundamental importance of ensuring that as educators we are striving, as far as is possible, to keep up-to-date (accepting – by the way – that this is almost impossible in such a fast moving area of policy and practice!). Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is the need to continue to encourage critical thinking in our students. In sharing my insights, I have not said that they should be anti-growth, or that there isn’t an inter-relationship between planning and growth that needs to be understood, but I have encouraged them not to accept things just as they are. This now feels like an omission in my previous teaching on this module.
Finally, and another shout-out, this time to the international student who spontaneously shared (today!) that their favourite part of the Managing Strategic Growth module so far had been the lecture and wider reading on ‘challenging the growth orthodoxy in planning’. That was enough to post-hoc justify the rabbit hole down which I went!
Featured image credit: https://www.growthforce.com/blog/5-stages-business-growth
[1] Ministry for Housing Communities and Local Government (2024). Proposed reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework and other changes to the planning system https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/proposed-reforms-to-the-national-planning-policy-framework-and-other-changes-to-the-planning-system
[2] Lamker, C. and Terfrüchte, T., (2024). Post-growth ambitions and growth-based realities in sustainable land-use planning. Urban Planning, 9, 1-16.
[3] Xue, J (2022). Urban planning and degrowth: a missing dialogue, Local Environment, 27 (4), 404-422.
[4] Savini, F., Ferreira, A. and von Schönfeld, K. eds., (2022). Post-growth planning: Cities beyond the market economy. Routledge.
[5] Warner, S., Newman, J., Diamond, P. and Richards, D., (2024). The challenge of devolved English governance and the rise of political spatial inequality. Parliamentary affairs, 77 (4) 735-764.
[6] Raworth, T. (2018). A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow. https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_raworth_a_healthy_economy_should_be_designed_to_thrive_not_grow/transcript?subtitle=en
[7] UCL Institute for Global Prosperity. (2024). The Citizen Prosperity Index. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/igp/research/citizen-prosperity-index