Local associations and participation in place: change and continuity in the relationship between state and civil society in twentieth-century Britain

Abstract

This paper uses a review of evidence relating to the history of local civic associations to address the temporally and geographically variable relationship between state and civil society. We focus particularly on the historical development of participative practices, thus also contributing to contemporary debate about the potentials of increased community involvement in place-making. The paper has three primary purposes. First, we assess the role that local associations have played in advancing planning and conservation agendas. Second, we discuss the differing modes of participation that are most visible in the work of local groups. Third, we use a focus on the discussions of participation that took place in the late 1960s, which raised explicit questions about the relations between local state and civil society, to explore a series of problematics relating to the promise and the practice of participation. We argue that in seeking to understand both the past and the present of local associational involvement in place-making and management it is important to recognize that local groups have variable professional and social resources that lead to differences in their ability to engage in local governance. We also argue that this sphere of voluntary activity exhibits continuities with longer term practice, rather than the paradigm shift that is sometimes described in accounts of the development of participation.

Keywords:

• state−civil society
• voluntary associations
• urban governance
• planning
• conservation
• localism

Acknowledgements

We thank the reviewers for helpful and constructive comments. The review has been conducted as part of a scoping study supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under the Connected Communities programme (AH/J012106/1).

Notes on contributors

Lucy Hewitt is a Fellow in Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on the modern urban history of Britain and France, in particular the development of professional planning and urban mapping techniques.

John Pendlebury is Professor of Urban Conservation and Head of School in the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape, Newcastle University, UK. He is the author of Conservation in the Age of Consensus (2009, Routledge). He has published extensively on how historic cities have been planned in the past and more contemporary empirical and conceptual work on the interface between cultural heritage policy and other policy processes.

Notes

1. The local associations which provide the focus for discussion in this paper exist across the UK. However, within the UK there are complex governance arrangements, made more so by the recent devolution of power to the Scottish Government and Welsh Assembly, meaning that some of the statutes and policies referred to are sometimes specifically English. Though discussions of localism have perhaps been most visible in England, where the Localism Act took effect in late 2011, there are comparable initiatives in other parts of the UK. In Scotland, for example, a programme of community asset transfer has been underway since 2009 with the explicit intention of developing an increase in civic pride and community empowerment through local participation in place.

2. See Cherry, The Evolution of British Town Planning; Cullingworth and Nadin, Town and Country Planning; Sandercock, “The Democratization of Planning.”

3. Cooke and Kothari, Participation: The New Tyranny?; Agger, “Towards Tailor-Made Participation.”

4. Brownill and Carpenter, “Participation and Planning.”

5. See Special Issue of Planning Perspectives on “Participation and the Modernization Process,” ed. Haumann.

6. Haumann, “Editorial.”

7. Clark, British Clubs and Societies.

8. The concept of Conservation Area Advisory Committees was introduced by the central government in 1968 in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government Circular 61/68. The intention was that local planning authorities should establish conservation area advisory committees, including persons not members of the authority, and refer to them for advice applications which would, in the opinion of the authority, affect the character or appearance of the conservation area. The work of these advisory committees need not be confined to questions arising on applications for planning permission or listed building consent. They could also play a useful part in the general care and maintenance of conservation areas and in making positive proposals for their enhancement.

9. For example, for American local associations see Duncan and Duncan, Landscapes of Privilege; for case studies of urban governance in Canada, France and India, see contributions to Morris and Trainor, Urban Governance.

10. Petts and Brooks, “Expert Conceptualisations of the Role of Lay Knowledge.”

11. See texts based around recent political administrations, for example: Allmendinger and Thomas, Urban Planning and the British New Right; Allmendinger, New Labour and Planning; Punter, Urban Design and the British Urban Renaissance; Thornley, Urban Planning Under Thatcherism. Other histories, however, often stress discontinuities and change (e.g. Taylor, Urban Planning Theory since 1945) or are focused on very particular periods (e.g. Hasegawa, Replanning the Blitzed City Centre). This is not to deny the scholarship and the contribution provided by any of these texts but that an emphasis on periodization, and discontinuities between periods, can underplay important continuities in planning and participation.

12. Jokilehto, A History of Architectural Conservation; Cherry, The Evolution of British Town Planning.

13. Levine, The Amateur and the Professional; Briggs, Victorian Cities; Anderson and Darling, “The Hill Sisters.”

14. Cities Committee, Report of a Conference of Civic Societies; Esher, “A New Plan.”

15. Hewitt, “Associational Culture and the Shaping of Place.”

16. The Civic Trust aimed both to support local civic societies and to act in its own right in lobbying over the quality of new buildings and public spaces and the conservation of historic environments.

17. Barker and Keating, “Public Spirits.”

18. Larkham, Conservation and the City.

19. See London Civic Forum, Review of the Role and Remit of London Civic Forum; Glasgow Civic Forum, Glasgow Civic Forum Remit.

20. Civic Voice has similar aims to the Civic Trust, although operates on a somewhat smaller scale.

21. Lowe, “Amenity and Equity,” 40.

22. See Civic Voice, “All Party Parliamentary Group for Civic Societies”; Scottish Civic Trust, “My Place Awards 2012.”

23. Barker and Keating, “Public Spirits”; Lowe, “Amenity and Equity.”

24. Barker and Keating, “Public Spirits,” 144.

25. See early commentary on progress under the 1909 Act; see Abercrombie, “The Town Planning Act,” 57; also Ward, Planning and Urban Change.

26. See Buder, Visionaries and Planners; Hall, Cities of Tomorrow.

27. Beaufoy, “Order Out of Chaos”; Hewitt, “Towards a Greater Urban Geography.”

28. Abercrombie and Abercrombie, Stratford-upon-Avon; Ford, Southampton: A Civic Survey.

29. Maxwell, “Censorship of Buildings in Cities.”

30. Stamp, Britain's Lost Cities.

31. Ibid., 167.

32. Abercrombie, “A Civic Society,” 80, 83.

33. Dawber, “The Inaugural Address,” 6.

34. Quoted by Burton, “A Cuckoo in the Nest,” 246.

35. Pendlebury, “The Modern Historic City,” 255.

36. Ward, Planning and Urban Change, 53; Cooper, Planners and Preservationists.

37. A list of “Buildings in Bristol of Architectural or Historic Interest Damaged or Destroyed by Enemy Action, 1940–42” was prepared under the auspices of the Council for the Preservation of Ancient Bristol and later published in the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, Vol. 65, 1944.

38. Jeremiah, A Full Life in the Country.

39. Spalding, Tunbridge Wells: A Report, 82.

40. See, for example, Larkham, “The Place of Urban Conservation”; Larkham and Lilley. Planning the ‘City of Tomorrow’.

41. Stamp, Britain's Lost Cities.

42. Hall, “The Politics of Collecting.”

43. Letter from George C. Williamson, founder of the Guildford Society, to Thackeray Turner, secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, 3rd October 1896. SPAB archives.

44. Esher, “A New Plan to Save Our Cities,” 118.

45. Such as Aldous, Battle for the Environment; Heighway, The Erosion of History; Coard and Coard, Vanishing Bath; Fergusson, The Sack of Bath; Aldous, Goodbye Britain?; Amery and Cruikshank, The Rape of Britain; Cormack, Heritage in Danger.

46. See, for example, Architectural Review, “Bath: City in Extremis”; Coard and Coard, Vanishing Bath; Fergusson, The Sack of Bath.

47. “A Chapel in Danger” (The Times, June 13, 1977).

48. Haywood, The Work of the Birmingham Civic Society; Hewitt, “Associational Culture and the Shaping of Place,” 601, 603.

49. Hewitt, “Towards a Greater Urban Geography.”

50. Abercrombie, “A Civic Society.”

51. Abercrombie, “A Civic Society,” 90.

52. Hewitt, “Associational Culture and the Shaping of Place,” 598–599; Lowe, “Amenity and Equity.”

53. Lowe, “Amenity and Equity,” 40.

54. Lowe and Goyder, Environmental Groups in Politics, 41.

55. National Council of Civic Trust Societies, The Relationship Between Civic Societies and Local Authorities, 12–13.

56. Lowe and Goyder, Environmental Groups in Politics.

57. See Lowe, “Amenity and Equity.”

58. Black, Redefining British Politics, 8–9.

59. Pendlebury, Conservation in the Age of Consensus, 64–67.

60. Committee on Public Participation in Planning, People and Planning, 3.

61. Lane, “Citizen Participation.”

62. Ibid.

63. Sandys was the founder of the Civic Trust whilst a Conservative government minister and was generally a well-known supporter of the civic and conservation movement.

64. Sandys, “Open Address to the York Conference of Amenity Societies.”

65. Ibid.

66. MacDermot, “The Planning Process.”

67. Jordan, Kimber, and Richardson, “Participation and Conservation.”

68. Law, “The Built Heritage Conservation Movement,” 385.

69. Lowe and Goyder, Environmental Groups in Politics.

70. Coxall, Pressure Groups in British Politics.

71. Jones, “Urban Regeneration's Poisoned Chalice,” 583. See also Campbell, “The Darker Side of Local Communities.”

72. Brownill and Carpenter, “Participation and Planning,” 420.

73. Ibid.

74. Lowe, “Amenity and Equity,” 42.

75. See Short, Fleming, and Witt, Housebuilding, Planning and Community Action. Similar concerns also emerged from a recent review of evidence relating to middle classes and public service provision. Hastings and Matthews point out that middle-class individuals are more likely to associate – join groups – in order to pursue their concerns, more likely to possess a range of knowledge and skills – ‘cultural capital’ – that enable them to negotiate with public authorities and policy processes more effectively, and, crucially, that this capital ‘corresponds with the value set of bureaucrats with power and influence’ leading to a circumstance in which ‘there is the potential for an alliance to develop between middle class service providers and users.’ Hastings and Matthews, Connectivity and Conflict.

76. Konishi, “Elite and pluralist power,” 17.

77. Morris and Trainor, Urban Governance.

78. Morris, “Governance,” 1–2.

79. Shapely, “Planning, Housing and Participation,” 77.

80. See Cummin, York 2000; Palliser, “Preserving Our Heritage”; John Pendlebury, Conservation in the Age of Consensus.