Update January 2012

UCL continues its work with the Just Space Network and the following activities are under way.

1. A taught module for UCL Masters Students Community Participation in City Strategies led by Michael Edwards, Jennifer Robinson and Richard Lee. This benefits from a ‘dissemination’ grant from the UCL Public Engagement Unit which supported earlier work on the London Plan.

2. Preparations for some public seminars in collaboration with King’s, other London universities and the JS Network – about alternative strategies for London planning.  Details shortly.

3. With the (non-financial) support of DCLG, the Bartlett School of Planning is making contacts via the Just Space Network to help students who want to offer voluntary help and support to community groups in or near London on neighbourhood planning.  Interested students or recent graduates should contact Michael Edwards at the Bartlett. The Just Space Network Protocol on university/community cooperation is being used to guide this work.

9 June 2011 conference

Our two years of work supporting the Just Space Network and its member groups in pushing for changes to the London Plan is now drawing to a close – a close in which we
*   sum up what has been achieved (a lot in some ways:  it is a major landmark in popular participation in metropolitan plan-making)
*   consider strategies for the future
*   set a stronger course for the future of university / action-group collaboration.

To this end we held a conference on 9 June, led by community groups with some academics and students coming from across London to respond and to help think how research and teaching agendas can be changed.  More details and results are now at http://justspace2010.wordpress.com

The universities involved now include Birkbeck, King’s, Westminster… and a series of further initiatives are in the pipeline

• a new postgraduate module in UCL starting in January 2012
• a series of seminars starting October on alternatives for London
• a ‘protocol’ on how to get the best out of university/comunity cooperaton

More on all these initiatives here.

New course for next year

A proposal has been approved for a new masters-level module Community Participation in City Strategies to be offered in 2011/12, in the January term, based in UCL Geography, and with the input of Prof Jennifer Robinson, Michael Edwards (Bartlett) and Richard Lee (Just Space Network). Alongside it an application for 2 years of funding support (to resource the community group inputs) from UCL’s Teaching Innovation Fund failed so we are continuing to search for financial support to resource the community inputs properly.

Digesting / recording the EiP

After a very strenuous summer in which Just Space Network and its member organisations took part in many of the 30 days of hearings on the new Draft Replacement London Plan, we are now trying to crystallise our records and memories. Some UCL students are helping by generating texts from the audio record of proceedings and finally on 10 November we have some files to listen to… The story continues (to avoid duplication) on the Just Space Network web site. [ Switch to that here ]

Alternative scenarios

In May 2010 the GLA publishes a paper justifying its practices in not exploring radically different scenarios in its planning, or investigating radical alternatives. The paper is linked here.

UCL and community action groups work together

Students and staff at UCL in London have been collaborating with community and voluntary organisations in London on the development of critiques of, and alternatives to, the Draft Replacement London Plan, recently prepared by the new Mayor, Boris Johnson. This cooperation has been supported by a grant from UCL’s Public Engagement Unit and is reported in this web site – which in effect has been a working tool. The result of thecollaboration is submissions by the various groups—now 23—which have drawn to a greater or lesser degree on the UCL work and on discussions designed to improve the integration of the submissions.  The submissions themselves, which represent the views of the groups (not the views of UCL), were submitted to the Mayor in January and are collected on a separate web site http://justspace2010.wordpress.com

Deadline for responses approaching…

12 January is the last submision date for comments, objections, to the draft London Plan. The groups and individuals involved in the Just Space Network are finalising what they want to say – individually and jointly.  Drafts placed here (on the right) can be read and commented upon by others in the remaining days so please do send in your drafts (see contact page for email address). Please also read through what is here and make your comments, even if you have not taken much part in the preparatory research:  you may be able to help with clarity or with supporting evidence. [ There were 43 visits to this site on new year's day, after a very quiet week. ]

Critiques of the plan are developing…

A heavy period of Just Space meetings (organised with LVSC, FOE, PAL, GLA) and other events culminated in a dense and productive meeting at UCL on Thursday 3 December – detailed results in the minutes, here on the right.  Some very useful papers prepared for this meeting, comparing the old London Plan 2008 with the Draft Replacement London Plan 2009 are now available here (on the right) and others will follow.  There is a lot of consensus which will form the basis for a Just Space submission to the Mayor, alongside the specialist and targetted submissions of individual members and groups.

There was also a useful agreement on the need to develop very short and simple versions for wide distribution. Is anyone interested to help with this, especially with versions aimed at young people? Get in touch.

Critiques of the strategies building up…

The cooperation between UCL students and the community organisations in Just Space is generating critiques and commentaries about the draft plan, with – most recently – a summary and critique of the “Integrated Impact Assaessment” (IIA) just added to the array of documents  (see listing to the right).

Next Just Space event is a joint meeting with FOE on issues of community rights (Wednesday 25 Nov) and then in the following week the second meeting between the UCL team and the Just Space Network members (see ‘events’ list on the right.

[Image above is from studies of parts of London which play 'central' roles, by Mike Batty of UCL. http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/towncentres/cd/tcmap.htm ]

Progress 7 November

A very good meeting on 5 November brought a dozen representatives of groups and another 12 or so UCL postgraduates and staff together for three hours discusssion.  Some of the UCL team had been able to prepare summaries, or comment on Just Space (RL) summaries in time for the meeting.  Minutes are in preparation and a next meeting will be on Thursday 3 December.  This web site now has all the documents tabled on 5 November as ‘pages’ over on the right + minutes.