W1A-003 Belfast planning-0.txt
Informing Consultation and Placation
While aspects of the Department's approach could put it on the bottom two rungs of the ladder, the author contends it sits more comfortably on the next three rungs of Arnstein's Ladder; they are considered collectively as the "degrees of tokenism" i.e., Informing, Consultation and Placation. The Department would see itself as informing and consulting. The very fact that the Department grant-aided CTA to carry out a consultation exercise is evidence of some degree of initiative. Certainly it would consider that it does inform the citizen of his/her right to participate, but the author contends that this in the case of the BUAP 2001 was carried out very closely within the confines of the legislation, for example the time to respond at each stage of the process was kept to strictly.

Placation is perhaps the most accurate rung of the ladder on which the DoE's approach to consultation would sit. On this rung the planners seek advice from the citizens. Arnstein however makes the crucial point that how this advice is communicated and subsequently understood by the planners depends on the technical assistance available and the degree of organisation within the community to press for action. However assuming that the best expertise and technical assistance was available and community development was of an advanced level, this would still have its limitations. The community is still in a position where it is reacting in the best way it can to the plan but not actually creating it.

The top three rungs of the ladder, certainly were not achieved in the community's response to the BUAP 2001. It is not certain that the DoE would even attempt to go this far up the ladder of participation. Curiously enough "partnerships" are an approach being put forward by the DoE currently in a bid to tackle inner city regeneration. It is an idea, similar to the inner city initiatives, borrowed from America. The Department defines partnerships as public and private interests coming together to tackle projects. What this very often turns out to be in practice is the Department of the Environment working with private developers and local councils. However it is contended by the author that although local councillors are democratically elected their diminished powers and the political conflict in Northern Ireland make the public perceive their councillors mainly as party politicians and not the providers of specific public services. Most people vote for different shades of nationalism or loyalism. So called "bread and butter issues" rarely feature prominently in the politics of Northern Ireland despite the dreadful economic situation. Because of these realities it is questionable just how representative these partnerships really are.

In Britain on the other hand one of the fundamental barriers which the idea of public participation runs up against is its possible impact on the revered system of democratically elected local politicians backed up by their professional advisors. There is a very definite point beyond which it is deemed dangerous or unwise to allow public participation to stray. This is highlighted in many studies where a threat to the power of elected councillors is not welcomed. This is even the case with those who tend to support a more open participatory democracy type view on the issue. It seems the 'holy cow' of the democratic system must not be tampered with and public participation is only useful in that it may help keep local councillors informed about grassroots feelings within their constituencies and thereby aid in the flow of information, dialogue, debate, etc. without the danger of threatening the system itself. It can help as a lubricant to the system allowing those dissatisfied an opportunity to voice their opposition in a contained and controlled manner. This all depends however upon the degree to which the citizen can trust the local authority or the Council to represent their views accurately. In the Northern Ireland situation, it is clear that powers were taken from councillors because they abused them and discriminated against certain sections of the population.

CTA to an extent acted essentially as a medium, pulling together views from all parts of the city; however it is non-political and its philosophy is one of working with groups rather than for them. To take a simple example of this, two surveys recently carried out by CTA in the Lower Ravenhill Road and the Lower Ormeau Road areas not only recruited, trained and paid people from the area to carry out interviews but also involved them in the drafting of questionnaires and forming a advisory group to consider any problems which might arise during the survey and report writing stages of the project. Also during the response to the BUAP 2001 CTA involved the groups at all stages of the process unlike other planning consultants who go away and come back later with the proofs of evidence. Sometimes this is exactly what their clients want. However the concerns of community groups are very often more complex than for example a private developer's case which may be simply "I want that piece of land to develop houses to make a profit". The issues community groups are concerned with will often touch on policy, for example the amount of open space provision per head of population, the type of open space, where it is located, how the public gets to it and who can use it.
FREIRE Conquest
Moving onto Freire's more structural analysis of power, while conquest may seem an extreme position, certainly in a broad political sense it is clear that some political parties and their supporters in Northern Ireland, most notably Sinn Fein, believe that the British continue to occupy six out of the nine counties of Ulster as an imperial colony. Shades of different political parties will manifest themselves in the attitudes of community groups, but often not in an overtly party political fashion.

Divide and Rule

The Divide and Rule perspective is perhaps more easily identified with parts of the community on both sides of the political divide. The political differences in Northern Ireland leave it wide open for this type of approach. Belfast is carved up into black spots, "West" Belfast is an entity in itself conjuring up to many a deprived, violent, nationalist area, (though part of it is loyalist) a breeding ground for terrorists and so on. Inner North Belfast is known in the press as "murder triangle". Virtually the whole city is divided up along sectarian lines with the exception of some middle class suburban areas.

Despite this, the process of bringing together both sides of the community in the response to the Belfast Urban Area Plan 2001 was largely successful. It was perhaps the sense of the small citizen against the might of the state that held them together. The centralisation of the DoE as the decision-making body also brought unity to disparate communities. If planning was administered by local councils it would be much more open to manipulation and decisions could possibly be made according to party politics rather than planning arguments. It was also the strategic nature of the plan that made it easier to agree to lend support to different viewpoints. Land use zonings were confined to the periphery.

However in the process of drawing up the Belfast Urban Area Plan 2001 there was a very clear case of Freire's divide and rule approach regarding a specific road proposal. This was because the consequences of this particular proposal could be easily imagined at a local level. The DoE proposed to widen the Lower Ormeau Road, which would have affected a working-class Catholic community. A clear alternative to this road proposal was to widen the Lower Ravenhill Road, which ran parallel to the Lower Ormeau and it was a predominantly working-class Protestant community. Both sides of the community had come together to jointly oppose any road-widening which they both saw as a traffic measure designed to get rich people from the suburbs into work and home again a few minutes earlier each day. The DoE, wittingly or unwittingly, informed the Lower Ravenhill community that the Lower Ormeau community had suggested widening the Ravenhill Road. Both communities saw this as an attempt to buy off their mutual support in their opposition to the road-widening.

It was not anticipated by the DoE that both groups would have had any links or lines of effective communication, much less an agreed position on the road proposal issue. This particular attempt at divide and rule fell foul of good community development in both areas as a result of the BUAP consultation exercise. It is not difficult to imagine how easily the authorities could subtly and successfully manipulate certain situations in order to force groups apart to then allow government itself to step in, in the guise of mediator between two combatants.

Cultural Invasion

Cultural Invasion persisted throughout the consultation procedure in the BUAP 2001 in terms of professional culture versus lay person's culture. CTA initially attempted to persuade the DoE to look at alternative methods of consultation, to bring the debate to a common denominator which everyone understood. However the consultation proceeded in the conventional manner. What CTA was forced to do was meet the DoE on its own terms and adopt an advocacy approach. The community involvement still went through a professional medium, i.e., CTA, so ultimately Citizen Power or Cultural Synthesis by definition could not be achieved. The Inquiry was filled with legal professionals representing clients, who in many cases seemed to behave more like actors displaying mock dismay and outrage at evidence presented by the people. At times it was more like a Royal Shakespeare Company performance. Consultants from "across the water" all male and grey-suited wielded mobile phones and created around themselves an aura of self importance and intimidated groups, many of whom had just come from poorly equipped, fusty community centres.

There was also a notable difference in for example how the Planning Appeals Commissioners reacted to different objectors. The degree of 'respect' and tolerance shown to particular eminent QC's when representing a case for private developers to have housing zonings altered was noteworthy. It would not be unfair to say that on occasion the PAC's tolerance seemed to have its roots in fear of rebuke should they intervene rather than a belief that the points being made were valuable or even valid. By contrast on a few occasions the PAC's attitude to some objectors lacking the high profile legal back up was consciously or unconsciously quite dismissive and rather patronising.

The suits, the language, the ambience when examined clinically is really rather primitive. It is there to maintain differentials between the professional and the lay person. It parallels the structures and regalia adopted by many hierarchical tribal societies. If a medium which everyone understands can be used, why not use it?
Co-operation, Unity for Liberation, Organisation and Cultural Synthesis
This points towards Freire's dialogical theory of action, made up of four elements, co-operation, unity for liberation, organisation and cultural synthesis. The diverse groups which came together to respond to the BUAP 2001 did have the vision that through uniting they were more likely to gain strength against the might of the government. In that sense, they recognised that two separate cultures shared a common "oppressor" Ð a centralised government body making decisions about their environment. However, the particular situation of Northern Ireland is more complicated because of the political situation. The government from one perspective is the oppressor and from another perspective one community is the oppressor of the other and vice versa.

The cultural synthesis perspective, with the idea of the leader responding to the people's demands and not imposing her or his culture, while maintaining a view of the broader structural problems, would be a difficult situation to achieve. The two communities often identify totally diverse problems and correspondingly have very different demands, often directly in conflict with the other community.
