Speech to Anglia Ruskin University: Many thanks for inviting me to join you here today. It’s a great pleasure for me to add my warm welcome to Anglia Ruskin University and to Chelmsford as this is where I studied as an undergraduate and where I have made my home for the last twenty or so years. And so I’m delighted that the research conference has, for me, come home this year.
Indeed it was a lecturer here at ARU who was responsible for bringing me to Chelmsford in the first place. After some pretty hairy ‘A’ level results I had the choice of going to a couple of planning schools, but chose Chelmsford after a phone call with a welcoming and enthusiastic planning lecturer who has gone onto to be a key influence and inspiration in my life.
I was one of the lucky ones. I knew that I wanted to be a town planner; I knew that I wanted to study planning. My interest began at an early age when I was a little girl. My family lived in Scotland, in a small village about an hour or so north of Glasgow. We lived next door to the local doctor who lived in a big house with a large garden.
One day playing in the garden on the other side of the hedge, things began to happen, builders arrived and stakes were knocked into the ground. I watched rather nosily through the hedge as the building took shape, transfixed by this thing emerging up from the ground…someone had made something, someone had created this, and this would be someone’s home. I was completely hooked; I wanted to know who decided whether this new house could be built? Who decided that it was ok? How did you make that judgement?
And this early fascination has never left me.
I firmly believe that we can nurture interest in planning from an early age.
In common with many of you, I have been to schools career evenings and of course quickly found out that the kids were interested in three things; the qualifications needed to become a planner, how interesting the job is, you know what a typical day might be and how much they would paid. My answer was always the same, the qualities needed are common sense and nosiness…there is no such thing as a typical day…and whilst more is always welcome, the money’s ok.
One of the things I’m hoping to develop this year is a project based initiative to take into schools, at primary as well as secondary level. And it would be great to link up with the planning schools to develop something on this. By working with schools, we might capture that fascination that I’m sure young children have, to increase awareness about planning and to ensure that planning as a discipline is visible, rather than invisible, in schools. This is one of the ways that we can nurture the planners and researchers of the future.
Let me talk for a few moments about the Royal Town Planning Institute. I know many of you are RTPI members and some of you are very active. But for those of you who are not so familiar with the RTPI, the organisation was founded in 1914, and so we are soon to celebrate our centenary. We are a charity which surprises some people and we exist to advance the science and art of planning for the public benefit.
Amongst other things, we promote good planning, develop and shape policy, maintain and raise standards in the planning profession and train the planners of the future.
We have nearly 23,000 members from the public, private, voluntary and academic sectors. No one sector is more important than the other; in fact it is this mixing of planners from different sectors that for me makes the RTPI what it is.
I believe the role of the professional institute is vital. It is vital not only for the public to know that high standards of professionalism are set, but also as a learned society. And this is one reason why education and research are so important.
The RTPI is a member of the College of Learned Societies in the Academy of Social Sciences. This represents both researchers and practitioners committed to knowledge development and transfer.
Although the RTPI as a charity with relatively limited financial and staff resources, is unable to fund as much research as some of us would like, as a professional institute we can enable research, we can partner, we can influence, we can support, we can disseminate and we can suggest.
At the moment the RTPI is involved in a number of key projects; some of which will be profiled here during the conference. These include the future of the planning academy and GIS skills in planning departments.
For those of you who aren’t members, then you will expect me to take this opportunity to urge you to become members. We also have a number of overseas members so just because you do not live in the UK, please do still consider joining.
And what can we offer you? There are many benefits to members, but I think you’ll be particularly interested in our networks. These are primarily electronic forums, free to join to everyone at the moment and present a great opportunity to link with other professionals and people working in the field, to share experiences, to ask for help and to network. Some of our networks are topic based such as design, housing, transport; others are group based such as young planners.
The network I suspect you will be most interested in though is the Planning and Research Network: PERN. This network has a dissemination and communication role and currently has about 120 members with a regular email bulletin about research going out to nearly 200 people. You can join PERN by visiting the RTPI website. It’s very easy. It would be wonderful if we could welcome more members.
The RTPI also has two publications of interest; it has the RTPI Library series and the Journal of Planning Theory and Practice.
The Library Series examines all aspects of spatial planning theory and practice from a comparative and international perspective.
Planning Theory & Practice is a research journal which provides a focus for the development of theory and practice in spatial planning and encourages the development of a spatial dimension in other areas of public policy.
We also have annual planning awards including three awards in the education category; the award for excellence in planning education which was last won by Cardiff University, an award for outstanding student achievement in planning education won by Kathryn Gilchrist of Herriot-Watt University and an employer/practitioner award for commitment to lifelong learning and professional development had two winners; the Planning Inspectorate and Mid Sussex District Council.
There is also the biennial George Peplar International Award open to anyone under the age of 30 who would like to undertake a short period of study on a particular aspect of spatial planning. It is open to candidates living in the UK who wish to visit another country and to overseas candidates wishing to spend some time in the UK. The closing date for this year’s award is 26 April so get your skates on.
Ladies and Gentlemen
The title of this talk is the conundrum of connection. I hope by what I have already said about the offer on the table from the Institute that the connections between the academic community, the practitioner community and a professional institute are obvious.
Whilst the activities and interests of the academic and practitioner communities may at first appear different, I don’t think that’s the case.
There are some key areas of interest to both researchers and practitioners; knowledge transfer between practitioners and researchers springs to mind. Everywhere I go, the question which crops up time and time again is whether planners are up to the job. Whether we have the requisite skills and expertise. This training, this education is vital. Increasingly the world of policy planning, which incidentally is still being done too often in isolation, requires three things; evidence, evidence and more evidence. Innovation and evidence-based collaboration is key. And once we have the evidence, we develop the vision and implement it, and that in itself is hard to do, we move onto measuring impact. This is an area which will grow and grow.
So whilst the connection between our different sectors, our component parts should be obvious to many of us here today, this connection does present a conundrum; practitioners think they are at the coal face, know what their clients or the community wants and gets on with the job; academics are oft regarded as people once removed from reality with their heads in the clouds and their nose in a book. The Institute is sometimes regarded with a disdain; it’s not a trade union, it does not lobby or campaign, no one is quite sure of its role.
And yet each sector has a distinct role, has a distinctive voice and a distinctive part to play. For many years I have wondered about the triangle of academia, practice and institute and how they are connected and how best each part might support the others’ endeavours. I do regard the connection as being of mutual benefit; the practitioners can support the academic community and vice versa. I have already outlined where the RTPI might fit in and how it can provide a useful link and a different, but collective voice.
And as we face challenges of the economic situation we’re in, climate change, poverty, inequality, urbanisation, the value of planning and its potential is enormous. Whilst each sector might have different aims and objectives, by acting together we can perhaps find solutions more quickly, solutions which make more sense and which make a difference. We only have to look at the programme of this research conference to see the breadth and depth of ideas and thought. It’s wonderful.
One practical implication of collaboration would be to explore how we might address the image of planning and the public perception of planning which is something which has dogged us through the ages.
There is no doubt that people have a raw interest in their locality, their doorstep – just think of how people galvanise and come together when there is a proposal or scheme they don’t want in their area. Interest, passion and drive are therefore alive and well. But can we harness this interest and connect it with the big picture stuff: strategic planning, and turn it into a positive?
It does concern me that these days everyone is so busy, we all have lots to do and we all have bits of our job that we love and bits that we could do without. Yet having the time to think, to learn and to reflect should not be a luxury; it is a vital part of our development.
There is no substitute for learning. No doubt I will be a more able President at the end of this year than I am now at the beginning. But learning is not always linear: although I might learn how to get from A to B more efficiently and more effectively, I also need to reflect on how that happens. The importance of being a reflective practitioner is something that is central to the RTPI.
For you, this may be too simplistic, you will know about learning after all many of you are teachers and students, but for the majority in work I sometimes wonder whether we have lost the ability and indeed the will to think, to learn and to reflect. Because it is these three things which will make us better practitioners whatever sector we are in.
So we must connect. The RTPI welcomes you. It needs you; it needs you to help to nurture the next generation of professionals, it needs you to provide the support and network that only a university can garner, it needs you to encourage students to become involved with the RTPI perhaps through a young planners network, or the regions, the RTPI needs you to be a familiar face to those graduates who are entering the world of planning or going on to be teachers and researchers themselves. The RTPI needs you to push the boundaries with new ideas to challenge practice, but also needs evidence to do the job properly. Our academic communities are an important link between those first steps to practice and becoming a professional.
I am here today because the lecturers here had strong links with the RTPI. That tradition is still healthy. A student vacancy on the regional committee arose and one of my lecturers suggested that I might like to go along. As students do I hesitated and asked where the committee meeting was and how I would get there, but the lecturer would not take no for an answer offering me a lift to the meeting. I couldn’t have imagined where that first meeting would take me or that some time later I would be representing the RTPI as its President. In fact there are many times when I still think that can’t be me. Perhaps I’ll get used to it by the end of the year! But it just goes to show what lecturers, what teachers can do and we all have a responsibility to nurture, to encourage and indeed to cajole.
And this support does not end with the end of a course or graduation. All this time later and here I am back at my own university and in fact I have never left. Over the years I have been lucky enough to return as a guest speaker, a part-time lecturer; I am one of those peculiar beings that is part practitioner and part teacher. The passion that I have for teaching has lead me to become an associate lecturer for the Open University and I do what I do now because of a small group of academics who nurtured and encouraged me and they remain to this day an inspiration.
In these particularly turbulent times, there is a need for stability, a need for solutions and a need for security and comfort. The universities can be the familiar face that links us together. Your role is as important now as it has always been.
I have talked about the academic community’s opportunity and influence and how it is intrinsically linked with practice and the RTPI. It is also vital to have connections with other disciplines.
From the Institute’s very humble beginnings when a group of architects, surveyors, engineers and lawyers came together to form the new profession of town planning, Thomas Adams, our first President, recognised there was a need for ideas and imagination to fuse with more technical competencies and that by bringing together all these different skills, better solutions would be found.
Sir Wilfred Burns, President in 1967 urged us to constantly look forward into the field of professional cooperation saying this would often need patience and goodwill. This year I particularly hope to build on our existing relationships with our colleagues in our sister professions, making sure that we work closely with RICS, RIBA, ICE, CIH and others. One of the ways I’m hoping to do this is by seeking sponsorship for a series of interprofessional roundtables known as the goodwill series. I aim to start with one on inclusive design and accessibility with other suitable topics, and I’m open to suggestions, on planning for the upturn and health.
And now reflecting on the title of this talk, the conundrum of connection, I posed a riddle. I am reminded of my old school motto ‘knowledge is the key to understanding’. Perhaps by recognising the unique qualities we all bring and by working collaboratively and by being resilient in tough times we can win through and be all the richer by staying connected. Thank you.
