Shared ownership, from our streets to our plates

Fan Sissoko - K1045278 - MA Design for Development

Shared ownership, from our streets to our plates. What are the implications of “localism” and community engagement on planning for resilience and self-sufficiency?

Sustainable Cities - SVM301

Module leader: Amanda Lewis

March 2011

2 Fan Sissoko - [email protected] - MA Design for Development

Sustainable Cities - SVM301 - “Shared ownership from our streets to our plates” 3

Contents

Introduction 4

I. Does local mean sustainable? 7

I.1. Compact cities, compact lifestyles, compact diets 7

I.2. Self-reliance and active citizenship 8

I.3. Assumptions of “localism” 9

II. Is “localism” achievable? 11

II.1. The neighbourhood: an ideal being challenged by a mobile reality 11

II.2. Is achieving civic engagement possible in a context of private ownership? 12

II.3. Which mindset for local resourcefulness? 13

III. In practice: planning as empowerment 15

III.1. Knowing where planning stops 15

III.2. Emergence and entrepreneurship 15

III.3. Shared ownership 17

Conclusion 19

References 20


Introduction

“It is no coincidence that Dickens never writes about agriculture and writes endlessly about food. He was a cockney, and London is the centre of the earth in rather the same sense that the belly is the centre of the body.”

George Orwell, quoted by Carolyn Steel (2008:53) summarises here one of the biggest problems posed by the dominance of urban settlements, which, in Europe, are inhabited by 80 percent of the population (Girardet 2008:6): cities consume but do not produce. Or in fact, they produce waste.

Places, where natural resources necessary to the functioning of cities are produced, and where the resulting waste is disposed of, are remote and invisible to city dwellers. This geographical distance seems to have inspired the belief that humanity somehow exists outside ‘the environment’, mostly considered as a limitless supply (Girardet 2008:236). But a contingency of factors such as global warming, exploding demographics and resource scarcity are urging us to reevaluate human progress and inspirations.

Definitions of sustainable development, whether anthropocentrically focused on intergenerational needs (WCED 1987) or celebrating the value of nature in itself (UNEP 2000), all acknowledge the fact that the planet is finite. “In short, we have no alternative but to question growth. The myth of growth has failed ... the fragile ecological systems on which we depend for survival. It has failed ... to provide economic stability and secure people’s livelihoods” (Jackson 2009:15).

Considering that “cities have become the principal engine of economic growth and the places where most of humanity dwells” (Newman & Jennings, 2008:2) “the challenge is [now] to create a new relationship between cities and nature” (Girardet 2008:17).

Many argue that developing cities as sustainable ecosystems, by moving from a global to a local production, supply and waste management system, is crucial (Barton, 2000; Newman & Jennings, 2008). This essay, inspired by Ecobuild seminars “Community led urban renaissance” and “ Whose community is it anyway?”, will focus on what this assumption implies at a community level. It will be illustrated throughout with the example of food production, distribution and consumption.


Chapter 1 will discuss why a transition towards more sustainable cities must be linked to the development of self-reliant neighbourhoods, the facilitation of local lifestyles, and consequently, the enhancement of local communities and local democracy.

However, this idea of community-led development of neighbourhoods makes several assumptions, which, as described in Chapter 2, are challenged by an increasingly mobile and fragmented reality. Place-based communities can no longer be taken for granted (Taylor 2000).

Moreover, an increase in private ownership of both urban areas (Minton 2009) and food supply systems (Steel 2008) gives rise to new power relationships, in which local communities have little influence. This contributes to abolishing city dwellers’ relationship to nature, as much as to encouraging passive consumptive behaviours.

If people have been “devested” from the responsibility to actively organise resilience (Johar 2011), how can governments best generate local public resourcefulness?

This question leads to practical considerations for urban planning, which will be explored in Chapter 3. How can a shared vision for sustainable cities be created? How can individuals be empowered and local social networks strengthened?



I. Does local mean sustainable?

I.1. Compact cities, compact lifestyles, compact diets

“If we were to take a page from nature’s book, we would try to adapt our appetites to where we live, getting our resources from as close by as possible” (Benyus 1997:276). This is exactly what large modern cities don’t do. In a world of “mobilisation” (Girardet 2008:10) driven by transport technology, cities are easily connected to natural resources on a global level. The ecological footprint of London, defined as the area required to supply it with natural resources and absorb its waste, is of nearly 300 times its actual surface (Girardet 2008:115).

This becomes particularly evident with food. “London pioneered the long-distance import of food, spices, tea, coffee and timber. It ‘grew’ a global hinterland.” (Girardet, 2008:112). And this global supply system has deep environmental implications, such as dependency on fossil fuels for global transportation and biodiversity loss resulting from monoculture and landscape alteration. “Around four barrels of the stuff go into feeding each of us in Britain every year ... We are effectively eating oil.” (Steel 2008:49).

The unsustainability of this system is partly based on the fact that its effectiveness is taken for granted. “The ability to preserve food, as well as transport it for long distances, has freed cities from the constraints of geography.” (Steel, 2008:7). A distanciation from food production leads to a distanciation from environmental impact, and encourages passive consumer behaviours.

Urban farming and local consumption initiatives are starting to address this issue, but for Steel (2008:319), food has to be central to any plan for sustainable urban development. “The British government recently announced plans for the construction of 10 new ‘eco-towns’ with the intention that they be ‘zero-carbon’, although quite how that is going to be achieved if the towns are plugged into the same food supply networks as the rest of us is anyone’s guess”. What Steel suggests is a more holistic approach to planning, that takes into account, not just the built environment, but every aspect of urban lifestyles.

One strategy to “transform cities into much less environmentally demanding and damaging places” is to view them as sustainable ecosystems, that is move from


a consumptive “linear metabolism”, dependent on external resources input and irresponsible for its waste outputs, to a “circular metabolism”, in which resources are produced, efficiently reused (Girardet 2008:125), and locally managed (Barton 2000).

“Focusing on local and bioregional production of food, water, and energy and recycling of wastes” (Newman & Jennings 2008:44) can hardly be achieved by focusing solely on physical features. “The interplay between people and infrastructure and the potential value of its transformative power” must be recognised (Barton 2000:99). Indeed, the concentration of people and the density of social networks in urban settlements represent a positive opportunity for “diversity, adaptiveness, interconnectedness, resilience, regenerative capacity and symbiosis” which characterise self-reliant ecosystems (Newman & Jennings 2008:93).

Therefore, a move from global dependency to local resilience requires more investment from local communities.

I.2. Self-reliance and active citizenship

As demonstrated by the Transition Towns movement, achieving a sustainable relationship between cities and nature by “localisation” - “shifting the focus of economic activity to local markets [and] local production” - requires a new type of local resourcefulness. This might be facilitated by “localism” - devolving decision making to communities and local government (Hopkins 2010).

The UN’s Sustainable Cities Programme and Localising Agenda 21 both acknowledge the need for a bottom-up approach, through participatory problem-solving and stakeholder involvement. “Decisions should be made at the lowest appropriate level, either by those directly affected or, on their behalf, by the authorities closest to them,” that is at the neighbourhood level (Barton 2000:7).

For people to participate actively, a vision for sustainable development has to encompass the values and interests of everyone, that is be “based on broad community ownership” (Newman & Jennings 2008:10). This implies strengthening local democracy, by empowering community groups, and recognising their potential to “facilitate the democratic processes of consultation between government institutions and citizens” (Gislchrisht 2000:158).

Although criticised for lacking focus on sustainability (Smith 2011), the Localism Bill proposed by the current British coalition government is meant to transfer planning decisions from central to local government and allow communities to have more say in neighbourhood plans (DCLG 2011). As this policy partly translates into public expenditure cuts, whether it will effectively undermine our behaviour


as consumers of the state and encourage active civic engagement is discutable (Cox 2010). Nonetheless, it seems to mark a shift in power relationships, which resonnates with the self-reliant eco-neighbourhood ideal.

Architect Indy Johar (2011), argues that fragmented urban development strategies have devested citizens of the public realm. He believes that a deeper systemic change is required: decentralisation and participative democracy must go beyond simply less bureaucracy in decision-making; it should practically support people to invest in their neighbourhoods.

I.3. Assumptions of “localism”

Indeed, if decentralisation is about disburdening the state from the provision of services, “we must ask what will motivate more people to want to take over services or assets rather than have the council deliver them?” (Sawford 2010).

Both the ideal of eco-neighbourhoods and the current British ‘localist’ agenda have gathered scepticism, partly because they seem to be driven by the assumption that people are not only willing, but also have the resources, to take on new responsibilities.

This firstly requires an emotional investment. However, as individuals are becoming increasingly mobile and lifestyles increasingly fragmented, the way people relate to places is changing, which questions the ideal of neighbourhood-based communities (Barton 2000:3).

Moreover, “it is assumed that the community can take on these responsibilities as if it were a single entity and speak with one voice” (Gilchrist 2000:152). This notion of shared interest can also represent a challenge, especially as outsourcing the provision of services to the private sector is a potential strategic response to Localism Bill cuts, which brings in another stakeholder.



II. Is “localism” achievable?

II.1. Neighbourhoods: an ideal challenged by a mobile reality

“If, five centuries ago, community in this country was generally public, compulsory and, above all, local, today community is becoming ... increasingly mobile, private, and voluntary” (Hemming 2011). The idea of neighbourhood as a place where community happens can no longer be taken for granted. This “is a direct reflection of lifestyles changes ... The local place community no longer provides the key social arena for most people” (Barton 2000:14).

This can hinder the potential for building resilience at the neighbourhood level, which, as mentionned in the first chapter, depends on strong community governance.

It is useful at this stage to look at definitions of community. Hamdi (2004) identifies four types of communities that transcend place: communities of interest, in which people cooperate to solve shared issues; communities of culture, about socially acquired values and beliefs; communities of practice, based on professional and entrepreneurial activities; and communities of resistance, mostly held “in the mind”, in response to external oppression. These are all “social networks based on chosen connections rather than residential proximity” (Gilchrist 2000:149).

Communities of place themselves are “networked rather than concentrated”, and subject to the “dynamic of time” (Hamdi 2004:70).

Understanding community as an evolving social process, rather than as an entity in itself, implies that the interests of people cannot be homogenised (Hamdi 2004:71). For writer Iain Sinclair (2011) community also has a poetic character to it, involving an emotional attachement and a living memory, that cannot be artificially designed. Moreover, as noted by Cox (2010), “some of the greatest difficulties in relation to local government restructuring ... have occurred when administrative boundaries have been ... incongruent with public perceptions of place and space.”

Another warning against placing too much emphasis on neighbourhoods is the risk of losing focus on a broader vision for sustainability. Hopkins (2010) argues that, while local empowerement is crucial, a strong national agenda for sustainability led by central governement is still needed. He also considers that “while localism is


a great first step”, it will only be “when the Big Society meets the Local Economy” that positive resilience can be achieved at the local level.

“No easy task in a globalised economy in which the food system is a highly consolidated, well-established, virtually autonomous network” (Steel 2008:290). This raises the question of ownership: community governance cannot only be about more autonomy from centralised government; corporate control must also be challenged.

II.2. Is achieving civic engagement possible in a context of private ownership?

If, as emphasised by Steel, food is a critical issue for sustainable development, then food systems should be reconsidered according to the principles of ‘localism’ and community governance discussed in Chapter 1. However, feeding cities is “a highly sophisticated process that relies on phenomenal levels of skill, coordination and energy” which explains why we are now completely depedent on large transnational corporations. Moreover, “industrialisation has made food production invisible” nurturing an almost “delusional” disconnection from its environmental impacts. While open-air markets used to be central to the social life of a city, our current food supply system, embodied by supermarkets, can be seen as a threat to civic engagement (Steel 2008). This view is supported by the New Economics Foundation (2010), which states that “by crushing smaller businesses and losing the local knowledge and relationships they embody, the supermarket ... cuts the threads that hold an engaged community together.”

By contrast, one could argue that supermakets “have a role to play in helping deprived communities to regenerate by reducing stigma, boosting community morale and bringing low-cost quality produce into the area” (Wind-Cowie 2010).

The same acknowledgment that corporations can be key economic partners for urban regeneration has pushed many local planning authorities to rely on private investment. “In practice, in the UK at least, most decisions have been effectively made by the development industry [and] defined, not by any understanding of ... the pedestrian realm - let alone community - but by market interests” (Barton, 2000:4). As noted by Minton this must be linked to a 2004 Act of Parliament which “altered the definition of public benefit, by placing far greater importance on the economic impact” (2009:22). It resulted in the development of private luxury estates, and ‘malls without walls’, bringing pockets of wealth into deprived areas, but failing to achieve genuine regeneration.


Treated “simply as a product to sell to consumers”, these privately owned ‘public’ spaces turned into ‘personality-free zones’, where an emphasis on cleanliness and safety justified authoritarian control, and undermined personal responsibility, emotional attachement, and the spontaneity inherent to city life. For Minton (2009), such developments “constitute a serious erosion of democracy” if only because they comply to a different set of rules than public spaces.

II.3. Which mindset for local resourcefulness?

In this context of increasing mobility and corporate ownership, what means do individuals possess to achieve, firstly ‘localism’, then ‘localisation’?

If creating “an enabling state” is about giving “communities the resources, support and tools they need to take control” (Reed 2011), then what practical solutions would help to counter the consumption-focused corporate takeover of public spaces?

Johar advocates a more integrated built environment practice, taking into account all stakeholders by accomodating urban strategy, local policy making and community governance. He believes that emerging trends of public microfinancing in the construction industry could foster this new relationship between citizens and the state (2010).

However, the fact that “deprived communities [might] have low expectations of their ability to effect change” (Gislchrisht 2000:158) must be taken into account. This view of ‘localism’ might result in an abandon of national standards for development, and therefore an increase in social inequity, by only benefiting “better off communities who are organised, have their own resources” (Colenutt 2011).

But is central government not already failing at being “the best guarantor of uniform provision of public services”? (Cox, 2010). A more optimistic approach, as expressed by Hackney Community Councillor Ian Rathboune (2011) would indeed suggest that “hopefully, thanks to cuts, things are going to be shaken,” as local councils will be forced to legitimise the impact of grassroots organisations. Social enterprise Mend also sees an opportunity for developers and planners to start treating “community as client instead of receiver” and understand that ‘consultation’ is not enough; people should be allowed to positively “stamp their identity on a place” by taking on “the role of designer” (Hartley, 2010).

Rather than how to empower communities, the question might then be “how do we empower government to not just understand, but also to support and strengthen social innovators?” (Bason, 2009).



III. In practice: planning as empowerment

III. 1. Knowing where planning stops

If ‘active citizenship’ is central to sustainable urban development, then should planners not focus on building social capital rather than building houses? As discussed in Chapter 2, ‘community’ happens in loose, overlapping and unpredictable networks which transcend locality. This makes the task of engineering community resilience through planning harder.

The “old-paradygm thinking based on ... differentiations between us [planners] and them [community]” and the resulting belief that development can be “provided for others who cannot provide for themselves” must be challenged to reflect this flexible reality. Planners must recognise the “intelligence of the informal city”, take the time to discover the social networks already in place, and build on them rather than ‘import’ solutions (Hamdi 2004).

This represents a move away from “classical planning, which is based on ideas of permanence and control” (Minton 2008:189) towards a softer, more flexible approach that values imagination and spontaneity. Indeed, “the resilience and creativity of well-connected communities depends both on chance and choice, otherwise the whole system freezes into rigidity and is incapable of adaptation or innovation” (Gilchrist, 2000:154).

This suggests that a ‘plan’ only becomes a ‘solution’ when people take ownership of it. Then “the question for planners is: how much structure do we design before the structure itself interrupts the natural process of emergence?” (Hamdi 2004:73)

III.2. Emergence and entrepreneurship

The purpose of planning might then be to create “opportunities for conversation” (Gilchrist, 2000:147) and informal encounters, not only because enhancing social capital is key to fostering wellbeing, but also to cultivate opportunities for active collaboration.

This is what research group Urban Catalyst seems to advocate, by developing strategies for temporary creative uses of vacant spaces to ‘reactivate’ local economies (Minton 2008:189).


This is also greatly illustrated by ‘The Big Lunch’, a yearly event encouraging residents to “suspend disbelief ” and bond with their neighbours by organising meals in their street. The vision was simple: “that, the day after, people would be able to walk down their street and know someone in most windows” (Bullock & Smit 2011). Small mechanisms to trigger connectivity are necessary for people to want to tackle the problems they are facing together.

In both examples, promoting ‘community’ is neither a shallow “nostalgic return to traditional” ideals (Britton 2011), nor about forcing consensus to justify local government’s accountability: it serves purposeful and positive action.

Encouraging and supporting entrepreneurship seems key for “‘community’ interactions previously based on grievance or complaint [to be] replaced with creative and meaningful engagement” (Britton 2011). Such a view suggests that planning is about developing the framework for people to become change agents, by becoming aware of their own transformative ability.

This seems to be the thinking behind the Big Design Challenge, developed for Dott Cornwall - a programme of social regeneration supported by Cornwall Council and the Design Council. The project works through an online forum, on which anyone in Cornwall can post a social issue for anyone else to generate potential solutions. After evaluation, people behind the most succesful ideas earn financial support and professional mentoring to implement their solution (BigDesignChallenge, 2011). This new approach to poblem-solving is not only based on the recognition that everyone is potentially an expert; it also demonstrates the value of partnership and collaboration for capacity building.

As expected, Steel (2008:307) sees the solution in food: if food “has always shaped the world”, if it has this “phenomenal power to transform not just landscapes, but political structures, public spaces, social relationships, cities” why not start there?

In fact, a ‘relocalisation’ of food production - community gardens - and supply - street markets - has been used as an effective strategy for economic (NEF 2006) and social regeneration (Rathbone 2011; Sustain 2011) and for valuing cultural diversity (Hopkins, 2000:203). What seems to be needed, however, is greater support. “Government should use its power to prevent monopolistic control of the food supply ... We need open lines of communication between consumers and producers ... The global food superhighway is exactly what we don’t need: a one-way system that delivers food as though the people at either end had no relationship with one another” (Steel, 2008:310).


III.3. Shared ownership

This suggests that, at the heart of the notion of ‘active citizenship’ is the idea of reclaiming systems - whether we speak about food or democracy - which people have lost connection with, by being relegated to the status of consumers. This requires a move from corporate or state control to shared ownership, whether it is done through local democracy or through entrepreneurial activities that emerge from real needs and without planning permission.

Shared ownership seems to be what Johar is hinting at when he pictures citizens as micro-investors in their neighbourhoods. Reclaiming the public realm is both about more control and more responsibility: “co-creation is not just co-design. It involves financing, ownership, governance issues” (Johar 2010).

For Minton, however, a softer approach is possible, and the design of physical spaces still has a role to play. If “personal responsibility grows when external controls ... diminish” then active citizenship might be facilitated by the creation of “loose space” where neither security nor shopping are points of focus, where it is possible to do nothing, where there is room for surprise, and where “‘open persons’ such as children and the elderly, who are more likely than busy shoppers to engage in unplanned social encounters” are welcome (Minton 2008).

London game designers Hide&Seek are currently exploring an interesting way of ‘unlocking’ our relationship with public spaces, close to what Minton is proposing here. Based on the recognition that “the idea that streets aren’t yours is a really isolating feeling”, they are looking for ways to take gaming into the social and public sphere, offering to use the city as a playground (Gormley 2009). Might this type of fluid approaches constitute the necessary step to reconnect people to their environment?



Conclusion

“We have learnt that development is ongoing, a process in which occasionally and from outside, some form of intervention is useful to open up opportunities, to facilitate access to resources, to act as a catalyst for change. There is no begninning and no end, no single measure of progress, no primacy given to any one set of values, at least not on paper. Human wellbeing is as important to economic growth as growth is important to wellbeing” (Hamdi 2004:15).

We have discussed various ways to plan for community resourcefulness, for a move towards local resilience and self-sufficiency. These approaches mostly stressed the importance of valuing flexibility and uncertainty. “Not knowing ... leaves space to think creatively ... it changes fundamentally power relationships because it invites questions, the answers to which are not already pre-set. In this sense, not knowing encourages the participation of others” (Hamdi 2004:39).

In this respect, planning seems to be about finding the balance between design and emergence, between structure and spontaneity. Enabling urban agriculture, facilitating urban conviviality, endorsing social playfulness; all seem to be attempting a move from a consumer-centred, to a human-centred, and to ultimately a “life-centred” (Thackara 2005) city.


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Shared ownership, from our streets to our plates