News from Somewhere?

Abstract

Mid December. It is mild and wet in Bristol, UK and has been for a while. I say this as I have noticed that collectively noting differences in the weather has been part of many virtual meetings in the last couple of years. Small talk maybe, but acknowledging the differences in contexts, even those just a few miles apart, is important. It shapes our understanding of issues and environments, and moreover, what is possible or desirable. Do you already live in a “20-minute neighbourhood” (Town and Country Planning Association, 2021), or does the suggestion seem improbable or even unpleasant? The boundaries of the possible look different depending on where you are standing (or sitting) right now. The value of contextual understanding in planning is not new (Healey, 2017) but something of increased importance in times dubbed “post-truth”, wherein “echo chambers” can exclude an acceptance of perspectives beyond those of likeminded individuals (Nguyen, 2019). More than just in an overtly political or social sense, however, our surroundings and experiences matter. The use of specific, individual stories of experience in teaching practitioners is something that Forester (2021) has noted in a recent editorial, and the global range of images from 4–9 June 2020 displayed in the Interface “The Places We Live” (Porter, 2020) visually presents this more powerfully than can be put into words. Such work does a lot to promote deeper understandings and the importance of place distinctiveness in countervailence to universalising forces or dominant (mis)understandings The importance of this has resonated with two different experiences I have had in recent weeks. The first was while teaching with first year undergraduate planning students. In a co-taught introductory module, our aim is to get them to think more about the groups, communities and places that planners work with. One activity for this is to follow a guided walk around an inner-city Bristol neighbourhood which comprises high ethnic diversity, social housing, main roads, small Victorian terraces, and areas of recent and rapid gentrification. The aim is not so much for them to get acquainted with this area as to see how and if their perspectives diverge from those of their classmates, and what this can reveal about their understandings of place. They are sent out in small groups, then we discuss their reflections in the session in the following week. Two particular responses stand out from this year’s cohort. One student, not originally from Bristol, said that he found the area out of his usual reckoning because, despite there being many open retail units, there was nothing he’d have described as “a normal shop”. He said that he realised he meant a newsagent (he was wanting to buy a bar of chocolate), and that, through reflection, his definition of this as ‘normal’ said more about his own experience and expectations than the “abnormality” of the area. However, his honesty in retelling this anecdote is revealing in terms of assumptions and how experiences and upbringing shape expectations. From a very different perspective, the second response reveals the same thing. Several students commented on the high levels of fly tipping visible in the neighbourhood, of abandoned fridges in particular. A student who has lived in this area all his life said that he did not really notice the fridges because the area is so friendly to live in. Unlike the disorientation of the first student, whose previous experiences rendered the area as “not normal”, the second student’s comments hint at the acceptance of a negative environment because of its “normality” from his perspective. Lived experience directly informs our judgements on the quality of places, which in turn shapes outcomes and possibilities.