{"id":281,"date":"2020-01-28T12:23:24","date_gmt":"2020-01-28T12:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/?p=281"},"modified":"2020-01-28T12:23:28","modified_gmt":"2020-01-28T12:23:28","slug":"the-idea-of-citizen-participation-is-a-little-like-eating-spinach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/the-idea-of-citizen-participation-is-a-little-like-eating-spinach\/","title":{"rendered":"“The idea of citizen participation is a little like eating spinach…”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Katie McClymont<\/strong>, co-author of a recent comprehensive review of the evidence between community-led housing (CLH) and health, describes a stimulating stakeholder workshop session…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her famous\nand oft-quoted article, Sherry Arnstein describes community involvement thus: \u2018The\nidea of citizen participation is a little like eating spinach: no one is\nagainst it in principle because it is good for you\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 A similar comment could be made about\ncommunity-led housing (CLH).  Both its\nproponents, and government sources and commentators, view it as a solution to\nmany of the problems associated with the contemporary UK housing market and\nunhealthy and unhappy urban lifestyles more widely.  However, there is surprisingly little robust\nevidence used to back up many of these claims. Little is known definitively\nabout the benefits of community-led housing, despite the assertions made for it\nas a mode of development and living.  The\nreview which we have just undertaken, and the seminar on which this blog reports,\naims to take the first steps in remedying this lack of evidence, as well as\noutlining the directions in which we think future research agendas need to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before proceeding,\nhowever, a few steps of clarification are needed. Most readers may well be\nfamiliar with what is meant by the term \u2018community-led housing\u2019 but for those\nwho are not, a useful definition is provided in the CLH Toolkit<\/a>.  It stresses three aspects which are necessary\nfor any development to be defined as CLH: first \u2013 for there to be meaningful\nengagement throughout the process; second \u2013 for a local group to\nown\/manage\/steward the development; and third \u2013 that the benefits of\ndevelopment are asset-locked to that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were\ncommissioned by Power to\nChange<\/a> to undertake a comprehensive review of CLH and Health;  to investigate what evidence there is that CLH\ninfluences both the health of those involved in it and people in the wider\nneighbourhood.  The idea of linking\nplanning, development and built environment factors to health outcomes is not a\nnew one. Substantial research has demonstrated that the built environment has\nan important effect on people\u2019s wellbeing (see RTPI, 2014, PHE, 2017), and\nspecifically that housing plays a major role in this, with poor quality housing\nbeing linked to both mental and physical health problems (Toms, 2019). The aim\nof our review, expressed in the seminar and report, was to explore the specific\nrole that CLH does or could play in this agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We outlined four key strands from the literature where a\nlink between CLH and health outcomes can be found.  These are each addressed as statements: CLH supports healthy\naging, CLH promotes social inclusion, CLH may lead to improved physical health<\/em> <\/strong>and CLH can support people who are\ndisadvantaged or in need of additional support.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

During our\nseminar, each statement was discussed in a \u2018world caf\u00e9\u2019-style workshop, as\ndescribed below. The aim of the event was to ensure that the review was open to\nscrutiny and feedback from other experts, but also to begin dialogue about the\ngaps in existing evidence and ways of improving communication to enhance both\npractice and understanding. The 22 participants divided into four small groups,\nand each group discussed the findings from a strand for ten minutes with the\nhelp of a facilitator.  The facilitators\nthen rotated around the groups so that all participants had the opportunity to\nprovide input on each statement.  The\nparticipants came from a wide range of backgrounds: academics, community\nactivists, those involved already in CLH in various forms, planners and\npolicy-makers.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Participants took\nthe debate further by raising the question of how to involve the widest range\nof people in CLH, but how also to make this equitable and inclusive, rather\nthan intrusive or assuming that all have the same aspirations about where and\nhow they live. They considered how the process of being involved in\nestablishing, developing and building a CLH settlement could change the\nself-image of a community from being \u2018vulnerable\u2019 to \u2018empowered\u2019. However\ncaution was raised that CLH may further segregate marginalised groups if the\nhousing is not integrated within a wider neighbourhood too. Health was viewed\nas a useful lens by participants who were advocates for CLH \u2013 it was seen as\noffering the potential to quantify some of the positive outcomes of CLH in a\nway which would be understood in \u2018cost-benefit\u2019 analysis. The feeling was that\nthis event marked the start of a conversation \u2013 a very lively and engaging one\nwhich as chair and timekeeper I had to work hard to keep under control!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final report has now been published, and we hope it is useful to practitioners, funders and researchers.  We also hope it will be a first step in developing new research projects which begin to address the gaps which we have identified. Most of all, we hope that this work plays a small yet important part in changing policy and practice to bring about healthier, happy, more inclusive and more empowered communities through increased control of housing choices and benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To access the published report please see https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/research\/community-led-housing-health-comprehensive-literature-review\/<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katie McClymont, co-author of a recent comprehensive review of the evidence between community-led housing (CLH) and health, describes a stimulating stakeholder workshop session… In her famous and oft-quoted article, Sherry Arnstein describes community involvement thus: \u2018The idea of citizen participation is a little like eating spinach: no one is against it in principle because it … Continue reading ““The idea of citizen participation is a little like eating spinach…””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,6,25,24],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-citizen-participation","tag-community","tag-evidence-review","tag-housing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}