Demons of Urban Reform: Early European Witch Trials and Criminal Justice, 1430-1530 (Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic)

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Planning reform will not directly affect levelling up. Although demand for new homes is growing in some places, such as Leeds and Manchester, housing pressures in areas in need of levelling up are not yet as acute as those in London and the rest of the South East. Planning reform should result in more being built in these places over the medium-long term and is crucial if they are to avoid London’s mistakes and unaffordable housing market, but this would be a response to economic growth rather than a driver of it. While trying to reform public markets, USDA investigators studied traffic congestion around markets, such as that on Chicago's South Water Street, shown in 1915. (83-G-3716) Planning reform will improve affordability, but how much depends on the details of the reforms. Hilber and Vermuelen estimated that house prices in 2008 in the South East of England would be 25 per cent lower if the land supply was as flexible as that as the North East of England, which is still highly restrictive by international standards. If England had a planning system that was more typical of other countries such as a zoning system, we could broadly expect house prices to move closer to the average for rich countries. Only three advanced economies – Australia, Norway, and Spain – have seen faster house price growth than the UK since 1980.

The brand new restaurant space splits into two areas, with a relaxed bar area looking out on the street outside.

Catherine Sutherland Yes, I think I mean, when I think of the other two presentations today, I think they were raising some of these critical issues about how do you build these cross-sectoral strategies. And I think that, again, this importance of co-production comes to the fore because we often think of trying to build these strategies from the outset. So how do we do this? But so often in these processes, in urban reform conditions, and I thought that was really so interesting when we looked at the work on the masterplan in Delhi, is that what you see is that the kind of strategies evolve out of you engaging with the particular focus that you have. So in engaging with that masterplan, a whole lot of strategies and we heard those lovely ideas of the fact sheets that were used in different ways by different groups, so that’s how knowledge was used, is that I guess you’ve got to have some idea of your strategy, but your strategy is almost to uphold what the kind of vision or principle of an urban reform coalition is. And then when you start to engage with the work and you start to co-produce knowledge with a wide range of actors who all in a sense going or should be aiming in the same direction, then your opportunities for strategy start to emerge. So I think I would say that you’ve got to have some idea of the overall strategy and vision, and that’s really about keeping the actor network together. But as you co-produce knowledge, then what happens is in this engagement with each other, you find that there is mapping that emerged out of our work, that that was something that the community and the state needed. And so we went down that road. So often you’ve got to be able to be open enough to create strategies and processes that do become cross-sectoral by engaging with all of those actors in the space. So it’s a little bit different to the way in which we’re used to working where we have a strategy and we go and do it. These strategies are actually often emergent. I’m not sure if that’s correct, but that’s how I would kind of see it. The runaway success of Six By Nico is continuing, with the popular affordable restaurant about to open its second restaurant in Manchester. Although several factors – many context-specific – contribute to the emergence and success of coalitions, we can highlight four conditions needed to build an inclusive urban reform coalition: devolution, working with organised communities, catalyst organisations and conscious framing. Devolution, decentralisation and local democratisation Catherine Sutherland Yeah, I don’t mind having a try at answering some of those questions, Ezana. I mean, I think it’s very interesting these questions about peri-urban areas and edge of cities. So Durban is a fascinating city because 43% of our city is actually under dual governance, it’s governed by municipal administration and by traditional authority. So we have this work that we do on other forms of reform, urban coalitions around the spaces where you have, again, these very conflicted spaces, very contested about how this space is being formed. And in fact, in those areas, it’s literally like city building from below, where communities are building the city for themselves outside of these formal processes. And the same idea with sort of edge cities where you create a second city adjacent to the city, and how do you bring that into the sort of, I guess, urban reform coalition idea, if you’re working in the sort of city frame and you’ve now got this edge space? But I think what you’ve got to try and do is you’ve got to look at who all your actors are in that space. And perhaps that’s where as researchers, we’ve got to try and be smart and almost think of hooks that you can try and bring with the state or whoever is really governing in those spaces. You’ve got to find the key actors that are governing. And sometimes that’s out of the formal system and you’ve got to try and think about how you create these kind of hooks that start bringing people into a space where collectively you can start to recognise that even though it’s highly contested, and I can tell you in our Palmiet Catchment project, it can be highly contested when you’ve got formal residents with informal settlers. But what you do is you bring people in through this hook of what is really in a sense a common challenge that everyone’s trying to go forward. And that’s kind of what you and Diana have written about in urban reform coalitions is that you might be coming at it from different perspectives. It might be highly contested, but there’s something that links everybody together. And by understanding all those actors, when we started on this project, we first had to just try and map out who all the actors work and to find clever ways, and like Shalini said, you’ve got to have different strategies at different times to bring in different actors so that you actually bring them together and find some hook or some issue that’s going to link everybody that starts everyone engaging. And then through that you can you start finding smaller partnerships forming and then over time you can build it. And I know it sounds maybe too positive or too easy, but I really think this is how these things start, and we certainly see it in our city, where so many spaces are highly contested and and highly political that there is still this, I still believe in this idea that actually for all people, there’s this kind of goodwill or this good intention to live in a good society. And if you can find a hook, where you can start seeing other people’s positions and putting yourself in other people’s shoes, suddenly you start seeing your city differently and you start shifting your position. And I think as researchers or in academia we have, you know, that was part of that privileged power that I spoke about, that I think we can read that landscape and try and create these hooks that bring everyone in into the start up, at least of the coalition. It might collapse, but at least you’re starting. So that would be my response to both those questions. And sometimes we just have to try and you just have to start and it’s amazing what comes out of beginning together. Some zoning systems in other parts of the world, such as Ireland and New York City, result in similar outcomes to the English planning system. These are inflexible zoning systems with either “single-use” zones that heavily restrict how land can be used, or retain discretionary review of permits. It is crucial that England avoid these outcomes by creating a flexible zoning system.

There have already been several waves of changes to rules on change of use and permitted development rights (PDRs) during the Covid-19 pandemic, with more planning policy changes to come.

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During COVID, we offered online services that have proven extremely popular; such as online exercise plans and videos,” explains Dean. The Government announcement on 16 December 2020 attracted much comment, just as the proposed changes had in their earlier stages.