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Sharing Place: Think Pieces invite external contributors to explore the theme of sharing place from diverse perspectives, and offering a broad range of reflections, ideas and provocations.
In this edition of our Sharing Place: Think Pieces, journalist Peter Hetherington explores the link between democracy and place, and how political structures can influence how we shape our places.
Democracy Denied – and Places are the Loser
What’s the connection between architecture, planning, society and local democracy? Quite a lot you might say; a no-brainer. If people and communities are at the heart of – let’s say – place making and shaping, we should surely all be concerned – alarmed in my case – by the virtual collapse of the local state as councils across the political spectrum, literally, go bust – eight, including the largest of all, Birmingham, so far with 96% of England’s 317 councils projected to be at the point of financial collapse*.
If that’s one problem, in my mind one of the most pressing facing the newish Labour government, there’s another, profound issue: councils in England are getting larger – already they cover much bigger areas than counterparts in mainland Europe – as they’re forced to amalgamate, with the recent UK Budget foreshadowing even more mergers. Remember, in the early 1970s there were approaching 1,200 councils; there disappearance, with little or no public debate, has been dramatic.
Result: local democracy, once a bulwark for civilising the country, has collapsed beyond recognition and, with it, the loss of identity and attachment to places. People feel remote, powerless. And that’s not just my gripe. In October, the annual ‘Life in the UK Index’, from the think-tank and community champion Carnegie UK, reported that the…“lack of trust in politics and government is undermining collective wellbeing with three-quarters of people…feeling that they cannot influence decisions.”. It warned the government that its policy platform “lacked plans to restore faith in democracy”, when that omission should be the Labour government’s “mission of missions.”
To say the least, as someone who has written about local government for over 50 years – and, latterly, chaired the Town and Country Planning Association – I’m troubled by the ‘bigger is better’ obsession of successive governments. We’re now promised a White Paper – that’s a discussion document – on English devolution. That apparently will include “working with councils to move to simpler structures that make sense to their local area” with “efficiency savings” promised from reorganisation.
To label this contradictory is an understatement. Putting aside the fact that there’s little, or no evidence that such reorganisation leads to much-trumpeted efficiency – the relatively recent reorganisation of Cumbria into two, giant north-south linear authorities actually led to duplication! – the dubious government argument of “making sense to a local area” points in the opposite direction: even more remoteness.
Let’s be clear, then: any meaningful reform must surely point to the smaller, rather than the bigger: restoring truly local democracy by devolving power down to some of the country’s 10,000 town and parish councils. It needn’t be wholesale reform, driven from the top down, rather let’s talk of incremental change (in a country where asymmetry already characterises the map of local government) to towns where small councils already have the ambition to take on powers such as planning, parks, refuse collection, giving them the ability to shape and sustain communities and reintroduce pride of place, with community/neighbourhood renewal and planning high on the agenda.
I well recall that back in the early 1970s, an Anglo-Swedish architect occupied a redundant corner shop in the Byker district of Newcastle upon Tyne and invited locals to pop in for a chat about the redevelopment of the terraces sweeping down to the River Tyne. Ralph Erskine was much admired internationally for breaking the mould in housing design with ambitious developments to – it was felt at the time – enhance collective wellbeing.
As a young journalist on the local daily paper, tasked with reporting local government, I was struck by the ambition of a Conservative-run city council to by-pass its in-house architects – and, yes, councils did once have them! – and enlist the services of Erskine, whatever the cost.
Image credit: kaysgeog
Years on, of course, we can certainly question the outcome of that ambition; precious few locals, promised new homes to replace their demolished properties, in what was a ground-breaking project were given the opportunity to become tenants in what was to become the ‘Byker Wall’, and its surrounding housing. Still surviving, and now a listed structure, the Wall has marginally stood the test of time and is now home to countless nationalities.
True, there’s always a danger of romanticising the glory days of local power – and it wasn’t always used sensitively, or compassionately in communities – but I still look back, possibly with concrete-spattered specs rather than rose-tinted ones, to a time when local government was generally a force for good and voters felt at least some connection with their town hall.
And, so, to the importance of ‘place’. According to the Oxford dictionary, it’s… “a particular position, point, or area in space; a location” We randomly throw this noun around randomly. Thus, we’ve ‘place-based solutions’ – taken to mean policies tailor-made for individual locations – as well as a variety of positions in local councils under the vague heading ‘director of place’, which might embrace, say, planning and the local environment, no matter that it’s utterly meaningless to the average person (and me). There’s even a housing association, rebranded as a ‘housing group’, called ‘Places for People’ – which, you might say, is blindingly obvious for a housing provider anyway.
But wait. Let’s be charitable and agree that others use the noun with the best of intentions to underline the importance of community, locality and identity – and, moreover, a sense of loss when those essential foundations of belonging, of rootedness, are lost as institutions meant to serve, become so large, and distant, that they lose any connection with the people, and neighbourhoods they’re meant to serve. Time for a democratic re-set.
*The geography of local authority financial distress in England by Professor Andy Pike, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, Newcastle University; Jack Shaw, Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge. October, 2024
About the Author
Peter Hetherington, past chair of the TCPA, is former Regional Affairs Editor of The Guardian.
About the WEdesign 2024/25 Series: Sharing Place
WEdesign is The Glass-House’s annual series of free interactive public events, held online and in-person in cities across the UK, where we explore collaborative design in placemaking through discussion, debate and playful co-design activities.
Sharing Place brings people together to propose more equitable ways of sharing our places and spaces, as well as creating places to share experiences, skills and other things we value, through thoughtful placemaking.
Our online events create provocative spaces for conversation and are open to participants across the UK and further afield. Our Think Pieces bring together a series of blogs from a range of voices to explore the WEdesign series theme.
WEdesign in-person events are safe spaces for diverse audiences to come together to explore challenging issues and to work collaboratively to generate ideas and solutions, co-designing propositions for changes to culture, policy and practice through hands-on making activities, discussion and debate. These events are co-facilitated by students from our WEdesign Student Programme, in collaboration with our partner universities in cities across the UK.
WEdesign is supported by the Ove Arup Foundation.
Find out more and book a place at one of our WEdesign Sharing Place events here.
Visit our WEdesign page to find out more about the WEdesign Programme and how we work with partner universities, students and external contributors here.
