Good day my good friend.

England? In another men’s football final? Can someone check what they are doing at CERN, as I think that their experiments are messing with the space-time continuum? That, or Gareth Southgate has learned how to bent the world to his will.

Mobility Camp is back, and the number one transport unconference is heading to York on Friday 20th September. Book your tickets now! 📆

I have co-authored a book on Mobility-as-a-Service, which is a comprehensive guide on this important new transport service. It is available from the Institution of Engineering and Technology and now Amazon. 📕

📄 Blow up the Planning System

Policy making is often about the art of the compromise. Where the impacts of a major policy change are mitigated, often in a manner that means that the winners win a little less than they would before. For the most part, it works reasonably well. But on some occasions it can lead to situations where everyone loses, and the consequences are significant.

Planning is one such example. At the core is a tension impossible to resolve. More housing is needed to tackle issues of housing affordability. But putting them in the wrong places and without facilities can embed unsustainable behaviours. And people really don’t like green belt being built on. But this does not mean that compromise cannot be found.

Sadly, the British planning system is not set up like this. In my own experience of it, it is a system that is set up with conflict at its heart, and somehow manages to frustrate everyone. Communities don’t feel like they are being listened to, developers find it hard to get permission, and planners are stuck in the middle of it all trying to make it work.

I have worked on every side of the system, from providing evidence in support of developments, to campaigning against them. And I laughed at the Chancellors planned speech on Monday about grand plans to unlock development. Because I have heard this before. This leads me to probably one of my most controversial views.

The currently planning system needs to be blown up and completely rebuilt from the ground up.

I say this as someone who knows the hard job that planners have. Balancing directly opposing objectives, on a tight timescale, under a lot of pressure, and with fewer staff. And there is good work done by a lot of people to make the system work. But lets be honest here, the system does not work.

At the core of this is to focus effort on generating consensus within local areas about the kinds of development that need to happen, what is needed for that development to happen, what are the consequences if that development does not go ahead, and what that means for the type of place that people want their area to be.

Things like target housing numbers are good in that it focuses effort on a pertinent question. Namely that of what are the consequences of houses being unaffordable? But they are a blunt instrument. Just commanding local planning authorities to build a certain amount of houses leads to housing estates next to motorway junctions that are really poorly planned. But hey, the housing quota has been met.

What would a new system look like? If I was to try to paint a picture of it, it would be similar to what neighbourhood planning is, but with a far greater degree of weight put on it. Something along the lines of local communities being tasked with finding sites for a set amount of new homes, in accordance with general sustainability principles (e.g. brownfield first). But maybe with a few tweaks, namely:

• Larger sites and even new towns have outline planning permission (subject to conditions) when they are included in the plan by default, for a maximum of 5 years after which they must reapply;
• Alignment of local plans with infrastructure development plans for major services and infrastructure at a local level, minimising the development of different infrastructures on different timescales (e.g. no holding up housing because the electricity network cannot cope with the demand)
• Required infrastructure delivered in advance of site development – admittedly this one will be very tricky, but infrastructure in advance of the site being developed is necessary to deliver behaviour change

This probably sounds idealistic, and it probably is on reflection. But maybe that is what is needed. The planning system currently isn’t working. Maybe, rather than tweaking around the edges, we should do something more radical.

👩‍🎓 From academia

The clever clogs at our universities have published the following excellent research. Where you are unable to access the research, email the author – they may give you a copy of the research paper for free.

Investigating the potential of crowdsourced street-level imagery in understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics of cities: A case study of walkability in Inner London

TL:DR – Researchers come up with new typology that explains the impacts of the seasons on streets.

A global south perspective on the interplay between innovation policy mix and technological innovation systems dynamics: The case of Dhaka City’s road passenger transport system

TL:DR – Innovation policies tend to provoke gradual and not radical change.

Impact of an eHighway on the directly emitted greenhouse gases by road freight transport

TL:DR – You know those pictures of German trucks wired up to overhead wires? Well, from those trials, it turns out wiring up just 5% of miles can deliver carbon savings of up to 17%.

Quantifying impacts of sustainable transport interventions in Scotland: A system dynamics approach

TL:DR – Carbon reduction impacts of different policy interventions in Scotland are estimated using system dynamics.

✊ Amazing people doing amazing things

A shout out to someone doing something amazing for charity today. To good friend, all-around awesome person, and fellow Mobility Camp organiser Amber Kenyon, who on the day of this newsletter going out is doing a charity ride in memory of her colleague Paul Roberts. You should donate to her and her colleagues doing this great ride in aid of the MND Association.

📺 On the (You)Tube

This is a great video from Strong Towns on how the way we build cities can make us lonely. Plenty for us transport planners to think about.

🖼 Graphic Design

The Population Density of India (Source: Visual Capitalist)

Maps of population density are always interesting, and this one of India is no exception.

📚 Random Things

These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope that you enjoy them.

• “Tariffs Don’t Protect Jobs. Don’t Be Fooled.” (Naked Capitalism)
• How Starbucks caffeinates local economies (The Economist)
• How to Decide if Your Country Is Rich (Econlife)
• How to move a smart home (The Verge)
• Who’s responsible for our accountability problem? (Undercover Economist)

📰 The bottom of the news

There is a city builder game out there where your task is to covert a bustling downtown into car parking spaces. Yes, really.

👍 Your feedback is essential

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