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Review of Scotland's Cities - The Analysis

8 SHAPING THE FUTURE - DELIVERING CHANGE

8.1 THE MEANS TO CHANGE: UNDERSTANDING, GOVERNANCE, REGULATION, FUNDING AND DELIVERY

The preceding chapters of this review have first set out general arguments as to why progress in the cities matters for the future of Scotland and, more generally, why a better understanding of the geography of what we do is needed. In the introduction it was suggested that recent developments had brought us, if in rather ad hoc fashion, much closer to a system of territorial management. We also in the introduction indicated the range of approaches and techniques, or policy instruments, which the Executive could deploy to achieve such change.

This chapter, informed by the patterns, processes and policy impacts analysed in previous chapters, now sets out the key components of better 'territorial management' in relation to Scotland's cities, in particular the business of developing plans, financing programmes and delivering change at local scales in ways which serve national objectives.

• The chapter starts with the process for improving and aligning Executive and city level visions for change. That process, as well as the delivery of change itself, will be facilitated by having appropriate structures of government and governance.
• Vision and good governance structures and systems may raise the demands for city change, but they will not by themselves secure it. Effective city change also requires financial support, and without refashioning this document as a review of local government finance we touch upon important funding issues for the cities.
• Regulation systems, in this case land-use planning, are also key shapers of policy outcomes. Earlier in the review we have argued the importance of rehabilitating planning, to improve urbanism in Scotland. This chapter looks at both the need for different kinds of spatial planning for different levels and time periods and of the need to link spatial land-use plans with the Community Planning process and sectoral plans.
• Relevant visions, resources and plans are all required, but so are effective delivery vehicles. This chapter concludes by reviewing the scope for revitalising some of the delivery vehicles currently used in our cities, and considers whether we can learn from experience elsewhere in the UK.

This chapter now examines these issues in turn.

8.2 GENERATING AND DELIVERING A SHARED 'VISION' FOR OUR CITIES

One of the most commonly held beliefs of those involved in the review (and which is supported by reference to cities throughout the world) is that a strong, widely supported and understood 'vision' for the future is a pre-requisite for a successful city.

Unless key stakeholders have a commonly held understanding of what they wish their city to become, then it is impossible to plan the necessary action, to make the best first moves towards the future. The cities which have come to be widely regarded as the success stories of the 1990's, places as diverse as Barcelona, Lille and Sydney, typically had strong civic leadership, a strong vision of what they wanted to achieve and the capacity to move from vision to reality. Scotland's cities have, from time to time, displayed some, even all, of these characteristics. However, this Review has left us with a sense that Scottish cities, though making many important forward steps, are not being driven forward by clear visions shared by all key stakeholders and by well articulated delivery plans. In fairness, the cities said much the same about the Executive. It is in this sense, that improved city vision and delivery by all stakeholders will be essential to a better Scotland, that the review examines possible routes to improving vision, planning, delivery and governance.

The review has also made it clear that 'visions' and plans for our core cities cannot be produced in isolation from their surrounding hinterlands. The review has already highlighted the importance of economic, social and environmental interactions between the cities and their city-regions and it is clear that the future of a city cannot be planned effectively without considering symbiotic relationships with the surrounding region.

The review team found that a variety of forward looking 'vision' statements existed - for the core cities (e.g. the Glasgow Alliance strategy), or some of their constituent parts, or several different local projects, or one particular sector/service (e.g. economic development). However, a comprehensive, overarching 'vision' for each city and its surrounding region was absent. And the majority of the visions that did exist lacked ambition, bite and a sense of priority. Many were also concerned that a suitable forum for generating a vision in an inclusive and holistic way did not exist - both structure plans and community plans were criticised for lacking comprehensiveness and ambition.

For example, both Edinburgh and Inverness face considerable challenges in making choices about how to focus and manage their future development. But many felt that a 'vision', and a forum for formulating and debating a vision for the Edinburgh and Inverness city-region, were perceived to be lacking (although it should be stressed that a similar point was made in all of the cities to varying degrees).

It is clear from the empirical evidence gathered during the course of the review that Edinburgh is the growth success story of Scotland in recent decades. In response, the Lothian business sector has called for the City to "raise its sights" and to begin to plan for a city of 600,000 people; but at the same time others in the city are arguing that Edinburgh "is full up". Serious questions are beginning to be posed about whether, and if so how, Edinburgh can continue to accommodate growth and tackle the symptoms of 'overheating' - traffic congestion, labour shortages, booming house prices.

To its credit the City Council is beginning to respond to the challenge and to try to engage local stakeholders in a debate about the city's future. But the review team heard many expressions of concern that a forum to take forward the debate at a regional level was not readily available. The current draft of the community plan does contain aspirational objectives for the city, but it does not consider their spatial implications and covers only the core city. The current draft of the Lothian Structure Plan is founded upon existing population projections and does not consider alternative, higher growth scenarios. This debate is of crucial national significance. If the Edinburgh city-region is to be a key growth pole for Scotland then a failure to arrive at a clear local vision for the way forward could simply frustrate the national interest. Such an approach differs significantly from the approach adopted over the last few years by Cambridge City Council, which undertook widespread consultation on a series of alternative 'futures' for the city, ultimately leading to widespread support for the approach to development adopted.

In quite different circumstances, Inverness also finds itself faced with serious choices about its future. Following the granting of city status, the capital of the Highlands now finds itself trying to reconcile a desire to become a 'real' city (with the resultant challenges associated with an expanding population and infrastructure) and a desire to remain a 'provincial' capital (with what many perceive to be a more friendly, 'comfortable' feel). Inverness has responded by taking the first steps towards creating a City Partnership, and bid (albeit unsuccessfully) to become European Capital of Culture in 2008. However, once again, the review team was struck by the divergence of opinion on the way forward and the absence of a forum for focusing the debate locally.

Highland Council faces the difficult task of balancing development between the city and more peripheral areas and has been pursuing a policy of diverting development away from Inverness. If the capital of the Highlands is to become a 'fully fledged' city in its own right then in the near future, the council may have to find a forum to tackle head on whether future investment in the development of Inverness should continue to be a relatively lower priority than support for fragile or remote communities.

Perhaps the most comprehensive example of where a participative visioning exercise has been undertaken to date in Scotland's cities is the Aberdeen futures exercise undertaken by the Aberdeen Community Planning Partnership (see Box below). However, although Aberdeen futures sought to involve neighbouring Aberdeenshire Council, and to introduce a regional dimension wherever possible, the plan is still primarily city focused. It has also yet to be dovetailed with the regional structure plan to translate the aspirations for the city into a spatial development framework.

A major limitation of much current forward thinking is the Local Authority focus. The preparation of an inclusive, forward looking vision and strategy for the individual city-regions is vital if each is to tackle the key challenges facing them in a comprehensive and informed way, whether in terms of housing and service provision, employment and economic development, social and cultural development, or sustainable development. The strategy needs to make clear who will take the lead in tackling key issues and thereby enable each city to tackle issues that transcend organisational boundaries. Such a vision should also help to focus and direct the response of key agencies on priority projects (such as the regeneration of the Clyde Waterfront in and around Glasgow).

This may also have implications for the development planning process. Despite efforts by the local authorities concerned, structure plans have a mixed record of generating debate about alternative future development scenarios. The house-builders excepted, the private sector have proved difficult to engage in the development planning process. There may be a case, within the evolving planning framework, to have a structured city-region foresight exercise at the heart of the early stages of structure (and community) planning.

The production and delivery of a vision for the city-region is also inextricably linked to the planning and governance arrangements that exist in our city-regions.

Planning and Governance Arrangements

This section considers the existing planning and governance arrangements in place in our cities and city-regions. As well as describing existing arrangements and recent progress, it highlights a range of concerns that were raised by review consultees and considers the main challenges facing future governance systems.

In recent decades there have been important innovations in the governance arrangements surrounding the design and delivery of 'urban' and 'neighbourhood' policies in Scotland. The growing importance that the Executive has attached to giving communities a voice and involvement in regeneration is reflected in programmes such as 'communities that work', locality budgeting, and increased spending on Social Inclusion Partnerships, as well as the evolution of Scottish Homes into Communities Scotland and the community ownership emphasis of housing policies. At a city-wide level partnership arrangements and collaborative action have been encouraged through Community Planning and a range of initiatives to address 'cross-cutting' issues. The recently introduced Local Government in Scotland Bill includes a commitment for local authorities to consult and co-operate with community bodies in taking forward Community Planning.

There have also been changes, not simply in governance arrangements, but in government organisation. First, in the mid-1990's, the regional level of government within Scotland was removed and, with Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen respectively at the core of Strathclyde, Lothian, Tayside and Grampian regions, this had major implications for the government of metropolitan/city-region areas within Scotland. Secondly, the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 created a Scotland-wide level of government between local authorities and Westminster. One challenge for city policy is therefore to create effective governance arrangements at a regional level to fill the gap in the formal government hierarchy between Scottish policies and more local action.

Review consultees were clear that there was little space to re-introduce a formal level of government between local authorities and the Executive and that they did not wish to see a return to a formal level of regional government so soon after the upheaval of the 1996 re-organisation. And they were, with only a few exceptions, disinclined to see an imminent redrawing of municipal boundaries. On the other hand, consultees were equally clear that it is dangerous to ignore the extent to which 'functional' cities spill over well beyond the boundaries of the 'core' city authorities and the vital role of effective regional governance arrangements.

One way to deal with such spill overs might be to centralise control for the main issues involved to the Scottish Executive and its agencies - but this would imply a sharp centralisation of policy and delivery and would lose much of the sensitivity to local circumstances which characterises effective delivery. As such, it was not considered an effective way of managing the implementation of policies and services by those involved in the review.

Instead, improved governance arrangements between local authorities, public agencies and the Executive are required to expose and manage the links that 'functional' cities make across local authority areas, and to plan strategic investment in infrastructure and services effectively. The Executive must find new ways to interact with functionally related groups of authorities at a city-region level and the authorities must, in turn, find effective ways to co-operate and collaborate with each other and with other public, private and voluntary sector partners.

At the same time, many consultees felt that though partnership working was now the norm, not all of the work was effective and that not all of the right partnerships had been made - some partnerships, perhaps formed in haste, and with no clear current purpose, should be terminated.

8.2.1 Why City-Region Governance Matters

Regional governance arrangements, and their associated plans and partnerships, are vitally important if Scotland's city-regions are to fulfil their role as the foci of Scottish economy and society - and if they are to do so in an economically competitive, socially just and environmentally sustainable way.

The review has highlighted both the complexity of economic and social interactions that occur at a city-region level and the complexity of existing planning and partnership arrangements that try to plan for and manage them. The review has also highlighted concerns and some confusion about the operation of existing planning and partnership arrangements, the leadership and co-ordinating role of civic leaders at a regional level, and the efficacy of existing systems for monitoring the performance of our city-regions.

Planning, partnership, leadership and monitoring are, of course, all important at both a city/local authority level and at a sub-local authority/community level (see for example "Better Communities in Scotland: Closing the Gap" ⁷⁴). The development of effective relationships between the core cities and their surrounding regions are similarly important for a range of bodies - individuals, businesses, local authorities, public agencies - for a whole host of different reasons - economic, social, environmental, fiscal, administrative.

For example, housing and labour markets spill over municipal boundaries and mean that local authorities must co-operate with each other, and with other, often regional, public agencies, on the most effective ways in which to support, encourage and develop them (for example by supplying sufficient land for housing or transport infrastructure). This means that it is particularly vital that effective administrative arrangements for planning and partnership exist at a city-region level to ensure that a shared vision for the city-region is created and that strategic decisions, affecting the realisation of the vision, are tackled in a coherent, informed manner.

In recent years there has also been much emphasis on the need to link cross-sectoral programmes to deliver complex policy goals, such as the regeneration of rundown communities. But government policies and public sector activities are segmented not simply by sector but also by level of action. For example, some policies relate to individuals (e.g. universal tax and benefit policies), others are directed at particular classes of individuals or neighbourhood, others are directed at the municipal level, while yet others operate more widely. Coherent, informed action for any particular place, whether single neighbourhood or city-region, therefore requires the integration of decision making and planning across all of these spatial levels, to deliver economic, social and environmental goals and objectives in a sustainable manner ( see Chapter 7).

In addition, city-region interactions are important due to patterns of service provision and local taxation. Residents of suburban authorities and of 'core' cities have daily activity patterns that involve crossing municipal boundaries as they pursue work, schooling, leisure and other activities. The majority of these cross boundary activities will involve the use of public infrastructure, amenities and services, some of which may be provided from local taxes - but which meet metropolitan needs and demands. City-region governance therefore has a fiscal dimension.

The successful management of these issues on a regional basis presents a number of challenges to our cities, as discussed below.

8.2.2 Existing Governance Arrangements - Progress and Problems

A 'plethora' of plans

From even the briefest investigation into existing planning and partnership arrangements it is clear that a plethora of plans, produced by a variety of partnerships and authorities, exist covering a range of spatial scales and topics within each city-region. At a regional level, land-use (structure) plans, waste and police service plans are among those required by statute. Others, such as health and tourism strategies, are produced regionally and although not required by statute are mandatory and must be produced to comply with funding or operational requirements. At a unitary, local authority level a further series of plans (land-use (local), education, housing, childcare) are required by statute or mandate, while at a more local level a range of plans for different purposes and geographical areas, including social inclusion partnerships, development areas and neighbourhoods, also exist, some on a mandatory basis. Community Planning is increasingly providing an over-arching framework for the rationalisation and better connection of these plans, partnerships and other initiatives.

Table 8.1 below sets out the existing partnerships, by topic, which the City of Edinburgh Council is engaged in (information supplied by the City Council). These include all types of partnership, which operate at a range of geographical scales from the regional to the community, some of which cover specific subjects and some of which represent specific user/interest groups. Partnerships operating across local authority boundaries are highlighted in bold. Although the table cannot be 100% comprehensive it does give a reasonable indication of the range of partnerships operating at council level and the challenge of ensuring that each makes a distinctive contribution to the development of the city and its region.

TABLE 8.1: Partnership Working in Edinburgh

Following Scottish local government re-organisation in 1996, the existing governance framework lacks a formal metropolitan focused, multi-municipal level of government. Re-organisation broke-up the large regional authorities that planned for, funded and provided services on a pan-regional level and, except in the case of Inverness, separated the core cities from their surrounding hinterlands. In the absence of a regional authority to directly co-ordinate action on strategic, cross-boundary issues, governance arrangements have had to adapt in a variety of ways to take account of cross-boundary spill overs and synergies. For different services and functions, planning and partnership arrangements vary in their nature and in the geographical scale covered.

Existing regional partnership arrangements can be divided into three broad categories:

Statutory partnerships - statutory partnerships have been established for some issues at a regional level to comply with legislative requirements for authorities and their partners to come together to plan for the provision of services or facilities across geographical boundaries. Joint boards for police and fire authorities, joint-structure plans and Strathclyde Passenger Transport Authority are examples of where this happens at a functional level. The legislative backing for statutory partnerships generally ensures that partners are committed to implementing and resourcing the plans and proposals that are produced. However, such partnerships often face considerable difficulties balancing the different needs, hopes and ambitions of their constituent authorities/areas. Another danger is that statutory partnerships can often suffer from 'silo' mentalities and struggle to proactively link effectively with other relevant plans and partnerships.

Non-statutory or Voluntary partnerships - in other instances local authorities and other agencies have come together voluntarily to form partnerships to plan and provide for services or infrastructure across their city-region. Executive agencies have also encouraged partnerships and Communities Scotland has a strong reputation for promoting and supporting partnerships at different geographic scales: within communities, at the city level and across housing market areas. Voluntary transport partnerships are one example where authorities voluntarily come together to plan strategically and to try to resolve discrepancies between their unitary plans and/or tackle areas of dispute. Informal partnerships can help to foster mutual understanding of the needs and ambitions of their constituent communities, and to promote co-operation on the development or financing of infrastructure and services. However, they have little power to resolve disputes between different areas or agencies, and some review consultees questioned the true commitment of authorities and agencies to fulfilling the ambitions of some partnerships (for example transport or economic development partnerships).

'Informal' networking arrangements - across the five cities a number of other partnerships exist that might best be described as informal networks, designed to encourage collaboration between the different authorities/agencies in the region on particular functions, and/or to facilitate the cross-fertilisation of ideas about solutions to particular problems. Examples include the occasional informal conferences of local authority leaders in the city-regions and informal liaison between neighbouring community planning partnerships. Most act merely as a forum for information exchange and do not adopt a formal 'planning' role. They help to foster understanding and encourage collaboration between partners but often lack the 'legitimacy' or the formal delivery mechanisms to ensure the implementation of agreed strategies and plans.

Table 8.2 below provides more detail on some of the main 'regional' plans produced in the Lothians. These cover a range of geographical areas and subjects, have varying status and are prepared by a range of different bodies.

TABLE 8.2: Main Regional Plans/Strategies Centred on Edinburgh

Review consultees were clear that for each plan to add value to the development and delivery of their particular service/area, each must have a clearly defined role and purpose and must take account of related plans. In addition, for the range of plans together to provide a coherent framework for the strategic development of a region and its constituent parts, it is clear that key stakeholders (local authorities, public agencies, and the private and voluntary sectors) must have a clear understanding of how the different plans interact and influence one another.

While some consultees reported no concerns with either the existing plans or their inter-relationships, it was clear that many individuals and agencies had considerable difficulty making sense of the full array of plans and their interaction with each other.

The Scottish Executive is promoting Community Planning as the over-arching framework to connect together agencies, partnerships and plans, and is legislating to place the Community Planning process on a statutory footing. In time, this should help rationalise and make sense of the disparate relationships, and improve the overall transparency of local and regional governance arrangements, but there is still some way to go, particularly at the city-region level.

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