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Neighbourhoods, communities and the local scale

This chapter looks at international debates on participation and the widening of democratic engagement in the context of initiatives in the English planning system. It discusses the devolution of neighbourhood planning powers to local communities from 2011 and draws parallels with traditions of citizens' control and direct action in land-use planning. The chapter also asks whether neighbourhood planning can be said to devolve some kind of ‘power to the people’. In doing so, it argues for an understanding of participation not as a process of inclusion, but as a political practice founded on the inevitability of antagonism and conflict. The chapter begins by exploring the theory and practice of participation in planning and its relation to community action. It then introduces neighbourhood planning within the context of community opposition to development and considers the emergence at the local scale of new collective identities structured around participation as a democratic political practice.