Data is critical in urban planning. But are we taking full advantage of it? How could a data informed and digitally enabled planning system benefit citizens, developers, local authorities and government? And what is Plantech?
These are important questions. Not only does data about the built environment help us understand how cities work, it provides insight into how cities are changing, and what we will need to meet these changes. This is critical in the development of local development plans. In England, the requirement for these is set in law. These plans set out a vision and a framework for the future development of the area. You can read more about local planning process here.
These are just a few of the issues raised at the London Property Alliance’s NextGen: Future of Planning Seminar.
Attendees were welcomed by Jack Brewster, Director of Development at Grosvenor GBI and WPA NextGen Steering Group member. This was then followed by a presentation by Stefan Webb, Director of Digitising Planning & Standards at Future Cities Catapult. Charlotte Orrell, Iceni Projects, then kicked off a panel discussion with:
- James Harris, Plantech Lead at Royal Town Planning Institute
- Peter Kemp, Planning Change Manager at the Greater London Authority
- Grace Manning-Marsh, Head of LandEnhance
- Michael Meadows, Head of Planning at British Land
Data and planning: The challenges
Stefan Webb discussed the user research conducted by the Future Cities Catapult. For anyone involved in urban planning, the challenges will be familiar and include:
- Poor design of the planning system – how do we make it easier?
- Clumsy, slow and analogue – Could Local Plans be more standardised? And given they can take years to agree, is there a way to speed up the process? Planning policy is difficult to negotiate – is it possible to make the many planning policy positions easier to navigate?
- Planning engagement can exclude many – those who might be time poor or find the process difficult to navigate.
- Data intelligence can be messy with too many documents and a lot of repetition. Is there a way to simplify it?
Alongside this is an ambition, to make the planning process more efficient, predictable, agile, transparent and holistic. And this is timely given the property sector is often regarded as being a ‘slow’ industry to adopt new technologies.
Plantech
Plantech as the application of digital tech to planning. Used well, it has the potential to unlock data in a way that significantly improves the planning process at all levels, and works better for citizens and community, and government and developers.
Case Studies
The London Development Database (LDD), a collaborative project between the Mayor and the London boroughs to monitor planning permissions, starts and completions across London. But there’s still more work to be done on mapping what’s being built now, timeframes for completion, planning application refusals and so on.
Mapping GM provides maps of social and physical infrastructure across Greater Manchester, as well as provides maps that focus on planning, housing, environmental, social, economic and demographic data.
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The need to good data underpins this – data that is accurate, timely, clearly defined and simple to understand.
And where Plantech can have the biggest impact may be how we engage with people and bring in local knowledge. There remains the question of how we best run public engagements. There’s a real need to better engage with communities, including those that might be hard to reach. This might be due to lack of time or lack of knowledge or difficulty in understanding the planning landscape. There’s also a real need to communicate when construction might be disruptive. For example, Broadgate in London is undergoing major redevelopment. There’s a Broadgate App that enables people to view, explore and comment on construction work and activity around the sites.
Digitally enabled planning systems are essential going forward – to ensure built environments work for everyone.
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