Experimentation is central to innovation, and to update the planning system, planners, developers, architects, citizens and all those who touch the planning system need to think of different ways of working, writes Stefan Webb, head of projects at Future Cities Catapult.
The only way to understand the possible future of planning is to temporarily forget how things are done today and design, prototype and validate new approaches.
But this can be difficult. Planning is a semi-judicial process meaning that any change in how it is conducted will require, at some point, a change in legislation. This is made more difficult with planning cutting across many professions with well-established norms, rules and practices, and planners managing unrelenting caseloads.
Part of our ambition with our Future of Planning programme is to create the critical space to experiment; allowing those involved in the planning system to think how it could be done differently. And that’s why we’ve invested £200,000 in our Open Call, which is designing, prototyping and validating better ways of data-driven and digitally enabled planning.
Evidence shows that when you give those involved in the system time to think about improvements, they have plenty of ideas.
At present, city planners have limited data on infrastructure capacities, and infrastructure developers have limited insight – outside of local plans – into the likely location and trajectory of development.
This led Future Cities Catapult and the Greater Manchester Infrastructure Advisory Group (a subgroup of their Local Enterprise Partnership) to explore how Greater Manchester’s Open Data Infrastructure Map could be used to support strategic planning.
To understand how the map could be used to support planners, infrastructure providers and developers, we conducted a quick and simple piece of user research, unearthing nearly 30 ideas to build on the map’s data to create a new product. This included using the map as a way for developers to gain a quicker and more accurate understanding of the infrastructure needed for a development; tracking the cumulative impact on the infrastructure of smaller sites; and creating a spatial rating system to understand the capacity and connectivity of infrastructure.
Of the three concepts, we developed a proof of concept for the one that focused on how to plan growth, called GrowthPlanner. We recognised that all city planners seek to answer the question: “where will development not be constrained by electricity, water and transport networks?” All infrastructure companies need to know: “what new development is going to happen, where and when?” So, by combining data held by public and private infrastructure providers and linking it with data from planners on the development pipeline, GrowthPlanner highlights where, for example, existing electricity, telecommunications and water networks have sufficient capacity to support future growth.
There are two innovations underpinning GrowthPlanner. First is the infrastructure rating methodology, giving a 1-5 score and represented by heat maps, enabling users to understand how much capacity or connectivity is available to support growth and where networks are under pressure. These rating scores are processed over time in response to planned new development, and the user can see how capacity might reduce with each new proposal.
Second is a digital tool, providing a shared portal through which planners and utilities can view and share spatial opportunities for future development. The idea of this is to facilitate intelligence sharing and promote more effective collaboration.
A working prototype using data shared by the infrastructure companies has been developed, and the aim is to develop a fully working web-based tool that will be sufficiently robust to inform Local Plans. The hope is that GrowthPlanner can eventually be developed into a generic commercial product for use in cities across the UK and beyond.
This project proved how we can use data-driven and digitally-enabled tools to plan more efficiently, more collaboratively and more accurately. By taking a step back and applying creative thinking to a complex problem, we produced a project that highlights the many opportunities for innovation through the better use of data and digital in the planning process.
The success of GrowthPlanner led to Future Cities Catapult setting up the Future of Planning programme – a project focusing primarily on how we plan, rather than what we plan for.
We recognise that collaboration is key, so we’re working with actors from across the sector to develop the roadmap for a more data-driven and digitally-enabled planning system fit for the 21st Century.
