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In this paper I explore how the culture of land-use planning in Scotland has been targeted as an object of modernising reform, exploring how ‘culture change’ initiatives played a prominent role in stabilising a new settlement around ‘open for business’ planning between 2006 and 2012, containing potential tensions between diverse goals to make planning more efficient, inclusive and integrative. This highlights the potentially significant role of governance cultures in containing tensions and securing consent to processes of state restructuring. I therefore argue that greater empirical attentiveness to the cultural micro-politics of state restructuring can improve understanding of complex, contemporary dynamics of change, and the contested role of the neoliberal hegemonic project in reshaping urban governance. I conclude by arguing that the continued power of neoliberal critiques of the inefficiency of land-use planning indicate a need to acknowledge and engage contemporary cultural battles over the purposes of planning and urban governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper draws on recent theorising on policy mobility and post-politics to investigate the planning of a New Urbanist settlement, Tornagrain, near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, and designed by Andres Duany. It details Duany's role as an influential ‘persuasive guru’ of New Urbanism and his signatory charrette as a participatory method for engaging local citizens into the New Urbanist model of place-making. Nonetheless, the Tornagrain case raises non-trivial questions about this model, not least the faith being placed in a globally mobile policy evangelist becoming, in effect, a doctrinal conduit for convening local democracy. The paper then contributes to recent debate on post-political planning, particularly in terms of how latent expressions of dissent in local planning processes often appear to be deamplified through endeavours to forge a post-political consensus, in part to masquerade rent hikes and profiteering on behalf of powerful landowners, glitzy architects, consultants and other associates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From 2001, the construction of flats and high-density developments increased in England and the building of houses declined. Does this indicate a change in taste or is it a result of government planning policies? In this paper, an analysis is made of the long-term effects of the policy of constraint which has existed for the past 50 years but the increase in density is identified as occurring primarily after new, revised, planning guidance was issued in England in 2000 which discouraged low-density development. To substantiate this, it is pointed out that the change which occurred in England did not occur in Scotland where guidance was not changed to encourage high-density residential development. The conclusion that the change is the result of planning policies and not of a change in taste is confirmed by surveys of the occupants of new high-rise developments in Leeds. The new flat-dwellers were predominantly young and childless and expressed the intention, in the near future, when they could, of moving out of the city centre and into houses. From recent changes in guidance by the new coalition government, it is expected that the construction of flats in England will fall back to earlier levels over the next few years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The findings of the Barker review, which examined the reasons for the undersupply of UK housing, have important implications for the devolved constituents of the UK, including Scotland. This paper traces the emergence of the brownfield regeneration policy agenda across the UK and examines how the Barker review connects with this brownfield policy focus. The paper compares housing and brownfield policies and practices in England and Scotland, places them in an international context and elicits wider lessons for devolved governance in relation to housing policy, in terms of 'centrist-local' tensions. Estimates based on published data suggest that Barker's emphasis on increased housing supply cannot easily be reconciled with the current emphasis on brownfield development and is likely to require a return to greenfield development in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]