‘People’s Plans’ will produce the first sustained history of community-led planning (CLP) in the UK documenting the diverse and previously hidden ways in which people have come together to care for the future of their local environments and exploring what their efforts mean for contemporary approaches to planning and participatory place-making.
2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Skeffington Report which established public involvement in town planning, one of the first public services to embrace participation. Existing scholarship has tended to focus on how citizens have influenced the official processes this established. Alongside this formal system, however, runs a rich history of informal CLP, which has not been subject to systematic or sustained research. Given the contemporary significance of community action around urban and environmental issues this gap severely limits the capacity to learn from the past about the role of citizens in planning.
