Open Source Planning
= Commentary on the Tory green paper on Open Source Planning.
By Simon Fairlie and Mike Hannis report on the Coalition government's changes to the planning system. Issue 9 of The Land
Discussion
"This is a surprisingly radical document, so we are giving over several pages to summarizing some relevant parts of it.
Open Source Planning is a fine example of Cameron’s brand of populist rhetoric, championing community empowerment and local control against “today’s central-regional diktats”. The Tories have borrowed the concept of “Open Source” from the software industry, “where it aims to make computer programming open to all in a highly flexible way”. The analogy hardly bears scrutiny, since the software industry deals with information, which is over-abundant and virtually limitless, whereas planning decides what we do with land, which is a very limited and highly contested resource. The phrase “Open Source” is also deliberately suggestive of transparent, collaborative decision-making between equals, rather than of the murky local networks of power and influence that the proposed changes may well reinforce.
“We will abolish the entire bureaucratic and undemocratic tier of regional planning, including the Regional
Spatial Strategies, the Regional Planning Bodies and national and regional building targets.” This is greatly to be
welcomed, as these bodies are quintessentially bureaucratic and undemocratic (whereas the Welsh Assembly
and the Scottish Government are surprisingly accessible)."
(http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/sites/default/files/Open%20Source%20Planning%20-%20Hannis%20and%20Fairlie.pdf)