The British Isles are passing through a significant period of local government modernisation and public service reform. In each of the relevant jurisdictions there are evolving interpretations of how this transformation occurs, and the constitution of ‘community planning’. Nevertheless, all these definitions of "community planning" share a set of common principles revolving around the concepts of Participation, Planning and Partnerships. Additionally, the emerging legislation (Local Government Bill, 2013) in Northern Ireland will place a statutory duty on all new local authorities (‘Distinct Council’) to facilitate a process of community planning to prepare ‘community plans’ for promoting the social, economic and environmental well-being of their area through identifying long-term objectives for achieving sustainable development. These developments are not exclusive to the United Kingdom, with other countries like Portugal and Italy going through a shift of the local and regional policy landscape, towards a stronger participation of the local communities and residents in the planning and delivery of public services, as well as in the development of spatial plans. This change has consequences for the Planning practice, on one side, and for the local communities themselves, in the other. Planners will need new skills and competencies in order to effectively engage with local communities, while the latter must also be provided with new capacities and skills to improve the quality and objectivity of their participation. The Universities of Ulster (NI) and Aveiro (PT), the Politecnico di Milano (IT) and Community Places (NI) are the proponents of this project, aiming to tackle these needs through an integrated approach that prepares current and upcoming Planning practitioners and simultaneously local communities. The partners in each country will be responsible for the local organisation and development of two main types of activities. On the first type, project partners will involve local communities and staff from the local authorities in a series of workshops to discuss and share experiences and ideas about Community Participation in Planning This will constitute the base work for a second series of workshops and taskforce meetings with the objective of developing a local model for Community Participation in Planning. On the second type, the Higher Education partners will design and test new teaching modules of Community Participation in Planning. These activities will also be informed by the ongoing developments taking place the first type of activity, in order to infuse the teaching with the knowledge and experience collected there. The curricula and teaching materials developed here will be available after the project is finished to allow other organisations to adopt or adapt them to their own teaching or training activities. Activities of Blended Mobility will bring together members of the local communities (including both adult and young people), staff from local authorities involved and Higher Education students from all of the participating countries to receive further training for capacity building, network and share the progress done at each country. The learning and experiences developed over the project will be reflected on a publication titled "Community Participation in Planning: Learning and Skills Framework". This will be a policy document with guidelines on the processes, resources, skills and methodologies applied to realise the link between Community Participation and the diverse dimensions of Planning. By the end of the project, it is expected that: - participants from each of the local communities (Belfast, Aveiro and Milan) will have new skills and capacities to engage in processes of community participation in the planning and delivery of public services, as well as in spatial planning; - Staff from local authorities will have an upgraded set of skills and methodologies to be able to better communicate and engage local communities in processes of community participation; - Higher Education students involved in the project will have new skills, capacities and access to methodologies which will allow them to answer the challenges posed to the Planning practice. The project aims to have an impact on both the curriculum of Planning degrees and the practice of Community Participation in Planning at all geographic levels. More specifically, it is ambitioned that further Higher Education organisations in the U.K., Italy, Portugal and other E.U. countries will adopt or adapt some of the new teaching modules developed over the project. It is equally ambitioned that local and regional statutory organisations, in the same range of countries, will take interest in the practices and framework of Community Participation in Planning developed over the project, and consider their adoption and development in their regions/municipalities.
Community Participation in Planning (CPiP) was a two year collaborative project involving Ulster University (UK), Community Places (UK), the University of Aveiro (Portugal) and the Politecnico di Milano (Italy), to explore how communities, in the broadest sense of the word (e.g. 'interest', 'place', 'practice', and 'learning'), can be more meaningfully involved in local area planning (physical development) and community planning (public service delivery). CPiP was funded through the European Union’s (EU) Erasmus+ programme, supporting education and training activities in order to foster quality improvements and innovation across a range of sectors. Background/Context: The last few decades have witnessed a significant period of local government modernisation and public sector reform across Europe. Countries like the UK, Portugal and Italy have been grappling with ways to engage local communities in planning processes that shape spatial visions and the delivery of public services in urban places. Bound up in these changes is the acknowledgement that citizen participation is fundamental to democratic governance. This change has consequences for current planning practices/processes, on one side, and for local communities and stakeholders, on the other. The diverse range of state and non-state actors need appropriate skills and competencies in order to effectively participate, collaborate and co-design interventions to improve social, environmental and economic well-being outcomes in places and enhance people's quality of life. These changes demand stronger participation of local communities, young people and other stakeholders in the deliberative processes for planning public services and place-making functions. Project Objectives and Outcomes: Community Participation in Planning (CPiP) was particularly interested in exploring the concept, application and teaching of participation and engagement in contemporary planning processes. At the core of the project was to understand how different ‘communities’ participate in ‘planning processes’ that shape how places evolve and how public services are designed and delivered. Working with European partners and communities in each partner’s local geography, the CPiP project objectives were to: - Develop a shared understanding of participation operating in different planning systems across the partnering European countries. - Explore how communities of interest, place, practice, and learning can be more meaningfully involved in planning processes e.g. local area (spatial) planning and community (or integrated public service) planning. - Co-design and test different ways of empowering stakeholders to shape local services and place-making functions, through learning during the project, in order to deliver better outcomes. - Share ideas and exchange good practice and learning amongst the range of participants involved in the project – and to share this learning with others. - Enhance the quality and relevance of the learning offered in higher education modules by informing curriculum development and innovative approaches on engagement in planning processes. The project outputs involved generating: - A Learning Report and an accompanying Participatory Skills Framework, available on the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform and on CPiP’s website, which shares the learning captured from the project, and offers insights into new ways for approaching participation/engagement, and, finally, the Skills Framework which provides a valuable open resource as a toolkit for practitioners, communities and students. - New and/or redesigned teaching modules by the academic partners of CPiP to advance curriculum development, and explore teaching approaches to enrich the learning about community participation taught on planning related programmes/courses. When possible, the details of these modules will be made available on the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform and on CPiP’s website. - New learning and teaching materials, aligned to the above modules, to enhance the student experience and those communities engaging in local projects linked to CPiP. The project outcomes were to: - Enhance the capacity and skills of planning practitioners to develop and maintain participation - Develop the skills of ‘communities’ to engage in participation processes around place-shaping - Advance greater interaction and learning between planning practitioners and ‘communities’