Speaker
Description
This paper discusses the approaches, challenges and suggestions built environment practitioners have regarding the implementation of place-based policies. Place-based policies have been thought of and implemented in the past two decades in diverse disciplinary fields. Economic development and urban economics have been at the forefront of this discussion and approach, focusing on impact and effectiveness and addressing matters of employment and concentration of poverty among others. Urban planning has also applied place-based approaches in the last two decades, yet they have been incorporated into policy only in the past 10 years. Part of the issue with these frameworks lies in the lack of clarity and understanding of the concept of place (and its intrinsic relationship with people) and how to apply it to planning practices. Furthermore, regardless of place-based approaches being embedded in policies and even when the concept of place and the role of people are clear, their implementation remains challenging.
In the State of New South Wales (NSW) in Australia, Transport for NSW and the Government Architect of the NSW Government have collaborated to develop the NSW Movement and Place Framework launched in 2017. It integrates transport (movement) and land-use (place) planning alongside urban design into a place-based policy. Places and people are at the core of the framework embedded in a vision-driven and evidence-based collaborative process. Since its inception, this policy has been integrated into different guidelines and strategies, and it has been adopted by several government agencies and expanded into private industry. However, this policy’s implementation has proven to be challenging, with more traditional (non-integrative) approaches being adopted instead.
Using a case study approach focusing on the NSW Movement and Place Framework, this paper answers three main questions: 1) how do practitioners envision they would implement this place-based policy; 2) what do they envision are the main challenges in implementing this policy; and 3) what would they recommend the policy-maker to achieve a successful implementation of the policy. Qualitative data was collected during the NSW Movement and Place face-to-face workshops that took place between November 2022 and June 2024. Participating practitioners provided their insights via post-course surveys that included qualitative open-ended questions focusing on the three themes mentioned above. The data collected was engaged through qualitative thematic coding analysis. Participants included experts in the fields of transport planning, urban planning, traffic engineers, and urban designers, among others, with varying years of professional experience and from both the public and private sectors.
Findings show that despite practitioners envision collaborating and implementing the framework in their everyday job and projects there are several challenges to be faced. These relate to stakeholder and community engagement, funding and political barriers, resistance to change and needed cultural shifts, and competing values and perspectives. To overcome these, practitioners highlight the need for organizational change, with training and education as paramount for this to happen. Changes to institutional structures, knowledge sharing and more meaningful stakeholder collaboration were also discussed as paramount to achieving a successful implementation of the NSW Movement and Place policy.
| Keywords | place-based policies; policy implementation; place; professional practice and institutions |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
