Open AccessPeople-Powered Planning: Planning from the bottom up in a top-down system
Author(s) -
Patrick Collins
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
european spatial research and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.323
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1896-1525
pISSN - 1231-1952
DOI - 10.18778/1231-1952.28.2.13
Subject(s) - league table , bureaucracy , spatial planning , irish , corporate governance , politics , plan (archaeology) , subject (documents) , top down and bottom up design , sociology , political science , public administration , environmental planning , management , economics , geography , computer science , law , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology , software engineering , classical economics , library science
This paper is concerned with spatial policy in Ireland. It adopts an historical lens to help explain why Ireland currently finds itself at the bottom of the European league table with regard to local governance. After categorising the Irish political and planning system as highly centralised, bureaucratic and linear, the paper uses a case study of the Moycullen village plan to show an alternate path towards place development in Ireland. This case study sets out to contrast the desire of a people to collaborate in the authorship of their place with the top down nature of spatial planning in Ireland. By making clear the methods and results of the project, this paper highlights the latent demand that exists in a community that is subject to national planning system that reduces their ability to affect change. Through the use of some innovative approaches, this project has sought to fire the geographic imaginary of a people with respect to their place.