Planning and Infrastructure in England

At the heart of the CLUES project are the numerous urban initatives occuring that are creating a new urban energy system. While some of these are focussed on demand management, many do involve new urban infrastructure. In the light of this, a conference run at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL last Friday on Infrastructure Development and Planning was very interesting. This highlighted the new regime that has emerged over the last decade and that is being reinforced by the current Coalition Government. Under this approach, planning is centrally about initiating new infrastructure patterns to guide and service new urban development. It also has to mesh with a local government focus on identifying current plans for infrastructure investment from the public and private sectors and matching this against future needs, with a concrete plan (the Infrastructure Delivery Plan) to fill the resulting gap. This regime works most easily where large chunks of infrastructure (a new public transport line) or aggregate infrastructure investment plans (from the health sector) can be identified. How tihs will work when faced with numerous, decentralised initiatives in energy generation and distribution is a moot point. This is an issue we will be looking out for when we conduct our local case studies.

Yvonne Rydin