Until Planners are Kings

In The Republic, Plato proposed an ideal state ruled by philosopher kings. Banned from owning property and accruing wealth, so free from conflicts of interest; trained in philosophy, so able to determine the truth in all matters; they would govern wisely.

He contrasted this with Athenian democracy, in which the masses were easily misled by talented orators trained by sophists – those skilled in making clever and compelling, but insincere and false, arguments.

Central to Plato’s argument is his idea of ‘truth’ – that there is a ‘true’ form for all things, whether something tangible like a table or contestable like justice. Through the philosophical method we can get closer to the truth. Today we might recognise this idea in the popular understanding of the scientific method. There is an objective nature to be found through testing hypotheses against evidence.

Is there a true, or ideal, form of urban and rural development?

Imagine, for a moment that there were. Who would we want in charge of seeking that truth, and governing on the basis of their ruminations?

I will take a quick aside to say that, on another day, you won’t find me to be the greatest fan of planners. (Nor am I really proposing elite rule.) The underfunded English planning system can be sclerotic, capricious, boneheaded. In my view it clearly fails to achieve forms that resemble ‘true’ sustainable development.

I have been the director of a Community Land Trust confronted with these issues in an application. I support hundreds of others to try and get things done. Homes built. Workspace built. Energy systems built. The cost and uncertainty of our planning system are major barriers.

But I don’t believe, as some seem to, that this is a reason to do away with planners. If anything, I want more planners. Better trained planners.

Because everybody else seems mired in sophistry.

NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) abound with insincere arguments to stop development. Well organised opponents will quickly assembly a checklist of familiar arguments. They may be framed as only being against a particular planning application – “I don’t oppose development in principle, but…”. In effect their arguments tend to leave no room for any development at all.

For example: this will increase traffic; it will increase pollution during construction and afterwards. If these are valid, then no development should take place at all. Or, it should go ahead but with a far more muscular role for the state in planning and implementing ‘infrastructure first’ – investment in bus and cycle routes, and not just in the new development but to reduce car dependency and traffic across the wider local area. But that would result in another NIMBY campaign.

Another cry is that a greenfield site is a loss to nature, and a flood risk. Cue a photo of some puddles during particularly wet weather. But well designed development can increase the value of a site for nature, particularly if it has formerly been used for intensive pesticide-soaked agriculture. It can also reduce flood risk by introducing sustainable drainage features, again particularly compared to compacted and eroded agricultural land.

These arguments can be put as part of a sophisticated critique of a broken planning system. One that delivers infrastructure last, or not at all, for example. But more often they are sophistry. A tottering pile of reasons to say no, without further thought.

YIMBYs (Yes In My Back Yard) like to point out these flaws in NIMBY arguments, but are just as capable of mounting insincere and false arguments. The key for YIMBYs is to disregard every consideration except one or two that motivate them – usually the need to build homes, or infrastructure.

An example that I’ve written about before is building new homes near train stations in the green belt. If you spend even a cursory evening looking at the evidence of transport patterns in these locations it becomes clear that the train stations are a red herring. Unless very well planned in sizeable settlements with substantial investment in wider transport infrastructure, development near green belt train stations will be every bit as unsustainable as development in the middle of nowhere. This is because only a tiny minority of journeys will be between the homes and the city terminus the the train station runs to. Most trips in similar settlements are local, and done by car.

Another is to show photos of unattractive land in the green belt and suggest it’s not very green at all. Here, the term ‘green belt’ doesn’t really help because its purpose isn’t to protect ‘green and pleasant land’ but to prevent sprawl. It’s irrelevant if the land is brownfield. Indeed, brownfield land is often among the most biodiverse habitats – wildflowers and insects thrive in the poor soil, insects and birds love unkempt scrub.

The recent example that got me thinking about this blog was a set of photos of small car tyre shops and scruffy light industry in Peckham. Surely this could be redeveloped for better use, the YIMBY suggested? There is huge potential to build homes but it is being stifled. But London doesn’t just need homes, it also needs jobs. It needs a labour market catering for a broad base of skills and interests, well distributed across the city. There are still 155,000 Londoners working in manufacturing and primary industries, on heavy and light industrial sites large and small scattered across the region. Many of the 435,000 jobs in wholesale, transport and storage will also be based on similar sites or depend upon depots and warehouses and workshops on them. Sectors like construction depend upon the proximity of builders’ yards (and their decline is one factor in rising material costs in the capital). Even sectors like finance, legal services and science benefit from the proximity of services like lift repairs that are usually based on industrial sites. Without planning protection, allowing ‘market signals’ to convert other land uses to residential will further hollow out and distort London’s economy.

The problem with these arguments, NIMBY and YIMBY, is that they fail to engage with the full range of issues posed by land development. Whether this is through insincerity or ignorance or disinterest, the result is the same.

If you disregard issues such as embodied carbon you can merrily argue for as much construction as you like. If you ignore the equalities impacts of particular forms of development you can promote regeneration that maximises unit numbers. If you bury your head in the sand over the need for new homes you can cling to pollution as a trump card.

These arguments can be well made. There are no end of elegant, educated articles, reports and Twitter threads in this vein. But they are all too often a myopic line of argument disengaged from the complexity of the world they wish to protect or change.

There is nothing wrong, unphilosophical, about putting forward a line of argument. The Socratic method begins with it. But giving no thought to counterarguments; having no regard for those others put forward; not revising your views and continuing to trot out the same propaganda; is sophistry.

Planners, uniquely, try to grapple with and reconcile everything. They have to try to produce Local Plans and policies and determine applications balancing the full gamut of considerations involved in sustainable development – social, economic and environmental. How do you square meeting housing need with employment needs, and the climate emergency, and community services, and biodiversity, and the town centre’s livehood, and pride in place, and more and more besides?

At times I have felt tempted – with a nod to Chalmers – to call it the Hard Problem of Planning. I fear these are irreconcilable, the answer unknowable. But at least planners make an effort to do so, in search of the truth.

We might argue with the quality of their work. We might dispute the planning system’s ability to shape good outcomes. But we can’t dispute the aspiration.

Until planners are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of planning, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils.