February 23, 2014

Opening Up Planning Awareness

On Monday evening, Creative Exchange and Engage Liverpool are holding an event to investigate improving the planning process, as part of Creative Exchange's Open Planning project.

Unfortunately I can't attend as I'll be running Maker Night here at DoES Liverpool, so hopefully this will let me provide some input by proxy.

Given that I walk round the city lots, and have an interest in how it evolves, I often stop to read the planning notices posted up on lampposts to see what is being proposed. That's how I spotted that we were set to lose the Banksy Rat (which sadly has gone, although we're three-and-a-half years down the line and the building is only just nearing completion now).

The problem with notices posted on lampposts is that you have to spot them. And stop long enough to read them. And if you want to know more you have to try to remember a code for the application and then remember to check on the council website when you get back to a computer. Plus you won't necessarily spot ones round the corner if that's not somewhere you regularly walk, and you can't keep an eye on other areas in the country. I still have a house in Cambridge, so it would be handy if I could maintain an awareness of what's going on around there.

All of this is stuff that the Internet should make much easier, and a couple of years ago it did. There was a lovely civic-minded website called Planning Alerts. It let me define an area around a postcode (so I looked within half-a-mile or so of my house in Cambridge, and across most of the city centre and Georgian Quarter here in Liverpool) and then whenever there was a new planning application in one of those areas I got an email that told me about it.

It was great, but sadly fell foul of the misguided belief that it was better for us citizens if third-parties were made to pay to licence the postcode database.

It seems that Openly Local has made attempts to provide the same functionality, although it's hard to find on their site - I had to resort to guessing URLs to try to find the page of planning applications in Liverpool, and it doesn't seem to have been updated for almost a year.

That's good, but seems rather coarse-grained. I'd get all of the planning applications for Liverpool, whereas I'd prefer to limit it to a smaller area. I'm interested in what happens in Everton or West Derby, for example, but not at the level of reading every planning application.

So, as a first step I'd like something that restores the level of functionality provided by Planning Alerts.

Beyond that it would be good if there was some way for people who were interested in a particular area or application to find each other and discuss proposals.

I know that sounds like I'm suggesting a discussion board, or forum, but I'm not.

Planning applications aren't something that I want to discuss frequently enough to visit a website dedicated just to that. The discussion needs to come to where I already hang out. In my case, that's Twitter, but for others it would be Facebook. Hashtags (on Twitter at least) are the way that people congregate around a given subject, so reuse those. Maybe spark up a new hashtag for each application, something like the first half of the postcode, plus a unique number, for example #L1_325 for the 325th application in central Liverpool; or #CB4_88 for the 88th application on the Cambridge business park.

The new-planning-alerts website could then aggregate and display the latest discussion on a page for the application, but would be pointing people to where the conversation was happening. Yes, you'd split debate across Twitter and Facebook, but you wouldn't have to police a discussion forum and it would widen participation as other Twitter followers would see the hashtags and maybe join in.

This is all hand-waving and ignoring the problem that many people aren't as engaged online or even have Internet access. Providing SMS alerts as well as the email alerts would widen the coverage, although not completely.

I have long wondered (though annoyingly never blogged about, despite regularly wanting to point to it!) whether a Neighbourhood Printer would help bridge that gap. The idea being to stick Internet-connected printers (just a laser-printer) into corner shops, etc., which would print-on-demand the recent planning alerts, useful notices from the council, and also blog posts from relevant local blogs. (Looking at some of the information on Openly Local it does feel a bit like it could be the Openly Local paper edition). Pair it with routes into learning about computers and the Internet for people who then realise there's something useful on the Internet, and repurpose some of the techniques from Walking Papers and you start to take the Internet out to areas where it doesn't normally reach. If anyone wants to fund me building a few to test things out, get in touch!

Finally, the focus on planning applications often leads to people trying to stop things happening, rather than encouraging them. How can we find ways to bring people together to discuss and organise ways to make their locality better? Projects like I Wish This Was and YIMBY are an interesting start. How do we get more of that?

Posted by Adrian at February 23, 2014 11:57 AM | TrackBack

This blog post is on the personal blog of Adrian McEwen. If you want to explore the site a bit further, it might be worth having a look at the most recent entries or look through the archives or categories over on the left.

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Comments

Many thanks for these excellent comments I will send it now to the people running the event and will take it with me to the meeting tomorrow!
Cheers!

Posted by: Gerry Proctor at February 23, 2014 08:30 PM

Adrain - I am part of the OPA team and Gerry Proctor directed me to your post, which is pitch perfect in terms of the Open Planning App project that we are developing. Your timing is great for the workshop taking place tomorrow evening and your comments will be taken on board. For all the reasons you noted that is why we are looking to role out the OPA pilot and how brilliant that Engage Liverpool and Liverpool City Counil are supporting and partnering with us.

Many thanks again,

Erin Walsh

Posted by: Erin Walsh at February 23, 2014 10:16 PM

Thanks both of you.

Glad the post was of use, and I look forward to hearing how the project develops!

Posted by: Adrian at February 24, 2014 12:47 PM

Interesting piece, you have suggested lots of the solutions we have been discussing on the subject.

Posted by: Lee at March 1, 2014 07:36 AM
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