Communicative planning potentials of housing estate development process in England: a case study from Dickens Heath New Settlement

In the 21st century, societies are increasingly multi-sided with secular interests, making urban issues complex, dynamic and unable to be solved by a single institution. In this context, communicative planning propagates that the pathway to finding sustainable solutions for complex social problems would come from stakeholder participation and the identification of shared interests among such secular interests (consensus building). Rooted to Habermasian communicative rationality, communicative planning argues, stakeholder participation can ponder not only the scientific knowledge but also emotive and moral knowledge of lay actors such as local communities to inform planning better. In this respect, the paper explores the extent to which communicative planning works for the housing estate delivery process in England. With key pieces of planning legislation, mandating community engagement in all forms of physical development, England is considered one of the highest forms of legal backing for communicative planning. Meanwhile, housing provision is one of the complex and critical planning concerns of all cities. Dickens Heath New Settlement (DHNS) - a large scale housing estate development in the West Midlands of England, has been selected as the case study here to investigate this communicative planning potential in the context of housing estate development. Following qualitative methods, data were collected through sixty in-depth interviews with DHNS residents, community groups, master planners and local authority planners, and documentary evidence such as the DHNS master plan and local planning documents. The findings highlighted that communicative planning had a negligible effect at the conceptual planning stage of DHNS, but accrued relatively positive outcomes at the mature design, development and management phases of the estate development. These are valuable insights for housing development practice, communicative planning theory and practice, and reflect on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 - sustainable cities and communities in the context of England.