Suchergebnisse

The use of neighbourhood plans by town and parish councils in rural England varies significantly, so Louise Cashmore and Katharine Foot carried out research in Northamptonshire to find what influences take-up Neighbourhood planning was introduced in England by the Localism Act 2011, and offered a new opportunity for communities to develop policies that, following approval in a referendum, come into force as part of a local plan. In rural areas, it is town and parish councils that exercise neighbourhood planning rights; in rural Northamptonshire, however, only 25% of such councils had officially engaged with neighbourhood planning at the time we conducted our research last year. Northamptonshire is a county of average geographical size, and its two-tier governance structure allowed for comparisons to be made between communities in different local authority areas. Using the Rural Urban Classification produced by the government (https://bit.ly/29ONpO9), 268 Northamptonshire towns and parishes were identified as being "rural". A questionnaire was sent to 267 town and parish councils, and 57 replied. Of these, 49% had had experience of the neighbourhood planning process, while 51% had not.

Emphasising implicit assumptions behind our ways of seeing 'slums', this essay calls for a radical understanding of 'ordinary neighbourhoods'. Borrowing from Robinson's 'ordinary cities' concept, it conceptualises 'ordinariness' as a way of rejecting the 'absolute otherness' of slums, stressing heterogeneity within and between neighbourhoods as well as the significance of comparative empirical research. Beyond the need for alternative, less stigmatised terms, the article urges for a new territorial ethics, a radical deconstruction and de-mystification of the 'slum'. Such conceptualisation should make aware of the term 'slum' as a non-physical, spatially detached social construct that discredits marginalised people and diverts attention away from precarious living conditions and possible ways of improving them.