Politicians and Planning
I spent today at the first Scottish Conference of the Politicians in Planning Network of the Royal Town Planning Institute. It’s good to meet others and spend time thinking about our roles in delivering places for the future. It’s too easy to get bogged down in the day to day detail and the local situation.
I attended three sessions within the day.
A session on climate change reminded us of how crucial this issue is. To meet the 80% cut in greenhouse gases target by 2050 we need real action NOW. But the changes needed are difficult. Now I read the Economist and New Scientist as well as newspapers. There being 936 peer reviewed articles attributing climate change as predominately man made versus ZERO against this. But in the general media, 53% articles say that the changes are not predominately man made. How can we expect people to change behaviour when many people, including some councillor colleagues still dent it is something we are responsible for and can do something about.
A second session gave a good example of how a model of the types of changes we need to make is feeding into the Glasgow City-Region Structure Plan. See details of the Greenhouse Gas Inventory Project (GRIP) here.
And finally, with all the changes shortly to arrive in the planning system with the new National Planning Framework, new City Region Plans and Local Development plans, requirements on developers to consult pre-application for major developments etc, it was good to hear from a private sector planning advisor on how the developers are reacting.
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