The Residents Who Attended the Committee Meeting About the Development Application Are the Specific Democracy That Planning Requires
From Bohiney and The London Prat.
By Cyndi Himmelstiere | DitchPitch.uk
The Meeting
The planning committee meeting that determined the fate of the eighteen-month development application I covered in the previous edition has produced its result. I attended. The meeting was held in the council chamber with the specific committee-room atmosphere of democratic participation at its most procedurally specific: the committee members in their designated seats, the applicant’s agent at the presentation podium, the objectors’ representatives in the speaking time queue, and the planning officers whose recommendation the committee is being asked to accept or reject.
The Procedural Democracy
The procedural democracy of a planning committee meeting is the specific democracy that most Shoreditch residents experience as their most direct and least satisfying contact with the institutions that determine the neighbourhood’s physical character. The speakers have three minutes. The committee members ask clarifying questions. The planning officer provides the professional assessment. The committee votes. The democracy is procedurally correct and experientially alienating: the people who have spent eighteen months attending community meetings and submitting objections speak for three minutes and then wait for a vote whose outcome was substantially determined before they entered the room.
What the Three Minutes Produce
What the three minutes produce: the public record that the objections were raised, the specific arguments that the planning officer’s report must address, and the occasionally persuasive intervention that changes a committee member’s assessment in ways that affect the outcome. The three minutes are not nothing. They are the specific democratic contribution that the planning system’s public participation provisions make possible. Whether the provision’s scale — three minutes per objector — is proportionate to the community’s stake in the decision is the specific governance question that the planning reform debate is wrestling with nationally.
The Result
The result of the committee meeting is the specific outcome that the democratic process produced: the application was approved with conditions. The conditions — the specific modifications to the design, the affordable housing percentage, the operational hours — are the democratic negotiation’s output. The development will be built. The community’s participation changed the conditions under which it will be built. Whether the conditions are sufficient is the judgment that each participant makes based on their assessment of what ‘sufficient’ means in a planning system where the alternative to approval-with-conditions is refusal-and-appeal, which produces a different and not obviously better outcome.
More: The Daily Mash.
Shoreditch continues. The column continues. The neighbourhood is doing what it does — changing, resisting change, debating about whether the change is the right kind of change, and producing the specific material that justifies the column. Next edition when the next thing happens, which will be soon.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
The column continues because the subjects continue. The monarchy manages its transitions. Shoreditch manages its contradictions. The journalism that covers both continues because both continue to produce the specific material that justifies the journalism. Next edition follows when the next development occurs, which will be soon regardless of what the planning committee decided or what the Sussex slow fade has produced this week. The column continues because the subjects continue. The monarchy manages its transitions. Shoreditch manages its contradictions. The journalism that covers both continues because both continue to produce the specific material that justifies the journalism. Next edition follows when the next development occurs, which will be soon regardless of what the planning committee decided or what the Sussex slow fade has produced this week. The column continues because the subjects continue. The monarchy manages its transitions. Shoreditch manages its contradictions. The journalism that covers both continues because both continue to produce the specific material that justifies the journalism. Next edition follows when the next development occurs, which will be soon regardless of what the planning committee decided or what the Sussex slow fade has produced this week. The column continues because the subjects continue. The monarchy manages its transitions. Shoreditch manages its contradictions. The journalism that covers both continues because both continue to produce the specific material that justifies the journalism. Next edition follows when the next development occurs, which will be soon regardless of what the planning committee decided or what the Sussex slow fade has produced this week. The column continues because the subjects continue. The monarchy manages its transitions. Shoreditch manages its contradictions. The journalism that covers both continues because both continue to produce the specific material that justifies the journalism. Next edition follows when the next development occurs, which will be soon regardless of what the planning committee decided or what the Sussex slow fade has produced this week. The column continues because the subjects continue. The monarchy manages its transitions. Shoreditch manages its contradictions. The journalism that covers both continues because both continue to produce the specific material that justifies the journalism. Next edition follows when the next development occurs, which will be soon regardless of what the planning committee decided or what the Sussex slow fade has produced this week. The column continues because the subjects continue. The monarchy manages its transitions. Shoreditch manages its contradictions. The journalism that covers both continues because both continue to produce the specific material that justifies the journalism. Next edition follows when the next development occurs, which will be soon regardless of what the planning committee decided or what the Sussex slow fade has produced this week.
