8 - Twenty-first-century planning work and workplaces

Summary

Introduction

In this chapter, we revisit some of the themes in Part I of the book, notably Chapter 4. We draw on empirical data from the WITPI project to highlight the varying organisational cultures in planning and why this might matter to the experiences of being a planner and to what gets done in the name of planning work. We revisit ideas of managerialism, work extension and intensification, bureaucratisation and ideas of acting space linking back to older discussions in planning on ideas of street- level bureaucracy and discretion. We conclude by reflecting briefly on what this means for planning as a profession.

Organisational culture

In academic writing there is a tendency towards a singular description of planning and, indeed, planners. Little attention is also given to the different spaces in which planning is actually practised and how this might make a difference to how issues are considered and thus how outcomes might be affected (Beauregard, 2015). Here we argue that where planning is practised matters, as does the culture on show in planning offices and organisational settings, revealed through the material things that are and are not present in them as well as the interactions observed in planning offices through our ethnographic work.

Settings

Organisations choose to site themselves in particular locations and buildings for myriad reasons. But such choices are revealing in terms of what organisations value and the image and affordances they want to provide for. For a couple of decades, the geography literature has drawn our attention to the atmospherics of particular places, spaces and buildings, and ‘the ultimate social and political ends to which such atmospherics contribute’ (Hill and Martin, 2017: 417). The four buildings in which planning work was conducted in our ethnographic work illustrate a range of different atmospheres (see Table 8.1 and Schoneboom et al [2023] for more details).

Being located in a modern bland office building in a city- edge campus business park, ‘Southwell’ did not fit the image and historical precedent of a traditional northern English town hall, of the type which are typically located very visibly in town and city centres. This visibility and location make such buildings a locus of civic pride and an accessible destination in which to perform various civic functions.