Assignment Brief

SPATIAL PLANNING STRATEGIES 2025

What is a spatial planning report?

Planners across the world, whether working in private practice, local, regional and national government, or development corporations, all have to produce spatial plans. Spatial plans are the long-term high-level vision for an urban area which are used to inform decisions about development planning. While the precise relationship varies around the world between the extent and level of legislative power given to a spatial plan, in all contexts they provide a key visual and textual statement which helps planners make decisions on where, what and how to grant planning permission in their towns, cities and regions.

Spatial planning is distinct from land-use planning in that it seeks to not only guide spatial development but affect socio-economic and environmental outcomes, recognising that in so many outcomes such as health, wealth and mobility, space matters. Space, no longer seen in a Euclidian sense – bounded up with hard edges, is seen today by social scientists as something that is porous, with ambiguous and contested boundaries. This is why spatial planning is not about applying a physical fixed plan for the future, but by guiding and shaping long term development through a series of flexible principles, understanding the competing demands on cities from often contradictory pressures.

If you are interested in understanding the philosophy of space, have a read of seminal Geographer Doreen Massey’s work For Space (2005). https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/for-space/book227109 which you can access in the University Library.

A spatial planning report then is usually a large document which is used to communicate the long-term vision for an urban area. To make the case for change however, the report requires layers of justification – a bit like making a logical argument about why you want to do something. One of the founders of modern town planning in the twentieth century, Patrick Geddes, used the phrase ‘survey, analysis, plan’ to describe the systematic method of understanding space, analysing the evidence, and planning accordingly. While 100 years has passed since then, with many revolutions in planning theory, the core idea prevails and can be seen in the basic structure of a spatial plan.

Here are some examples of current Spatial Plans in the public domain. You can see that there is no “one way” to structure a plan, and the plans cover different scales – but they all have the components of ‘survey, analysis, plan’.:

Southside Regeneration Framework (Glasgow): https://glasgow.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=60392&p=0

Granton Waterfront: https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/27146/granton-waterfront-development-framework

London Plan: https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/the_london_plan_2021.pdf

West Dunbartonshire Council: https://wdcweb.blob.core.windows.net/wdc-public-live-media/4319308/wdc_ldp2_2020_web-26.pdf

The challenge!

Create a vision for the Govan-Partick site up to the year 2045 (20 years). You have been given the existing Govan-Partick regeneration framework. You are to imagine that you have been asked by Glasgow City Council to completely redraft this in light of the NPF4.

Your vision must directly respond to one of the three spatial elements of the NPF4 (see table below). You will make this decision after the sessions with Kevin Murray. The other two elements will be secondary but still important.

These elements are:

A Sustainable Place

A Liveable Place

A Productive Place

What does a spatial planning report contain?

How you structure your planning report is entirely up to you to decide. How do you think the argument should be communicated?

However, a workable convincing report should contain:

An executive summary at the beginning of the report. This is a 1-page report summary which communicates the core ideas of the report.

An analysis of the existing site which should focus on metrics you wish to change. This should include geographical, historical, physical and socio-economic data:

Geographical information: where is the site located in relation to the surrounding city? You can also include main transport and access connections to and from the site in this section.

Historical information on how the site has developed over time if this is helpful in understanding the present situation or perhaps to use inspiration for future redevelopment. This will usually comprise old maps and photographs.

Physical information on how the site currently is, otherwise known as a site analysis. This usually includes maps showing morphology, land-use, accessibility, and possibly existing social and cultural assets, depending on if you deem them necessarily to include for your plan. This section should also include photographs of the existing state of the area.

Socio-economic data. This usually includes indicators on inequality, health, education, jobs, income, demographics – but which of these you choose depends again on how useful it will be to your final argument.

An appraisal of different options you have considered and/or scenarios. Planning is about thinking through different ideas. You may not like the first one, or you might suggest different options to a community or to stakeholders for them to choose. Perhaps in your groups you disagreed about the final option. In this report then, you should include at least one other plan you had considered (ideally 2 to 3). For each one, you can also build scenarios, which are descriptions of what might happen to the urban area if you did nothing, or adopted one of your chosen options. This can be a convincing way to justify the final option you have chosen.

Vision, aims and objectives.

Vision: Here you should summarise in a few words what exactly your plan’s vision is.

The aims should then follow from that and there’s usually between 3 to 8 of these. The aims are then benchmarked by a series of objectives to evaluate if your aims will have been met. So, for example if an “Aim” is “To enhance cycling provision for the neighbourhood”, your objective could be “To have delivered 2km of bike lane”, or “to have increased cycling at least 1 day per week by 10%”.

Demonstrate where your vision aligns with existing policies. This includes policy statements in the National Planning Framework, policies in the Local Development Plan for the city, and/or site-specific policies relevant to adjacent sites, particularly if there is an area of intense regeneration nearby.

IMPORTANT: As your vision is hypothetical, you are not bound by proposed approved developments, but we expect you to show how your site may or may not deviate from policy guidance from the NPF and LDP.

Your spatial plan. Here is where you communicate your spatial plan at the highest-level. This should be in a map format.

Plan sub-sections. You should also include sub-sections focusing on main layers of urban space with a map for each one. This typically includes: greenspace, connections, social infrastructure or anything else you wish to highlight.

A series of local policies, programmes of work or initiatives. Either in a separate section, or to support your sub-sections (again, its up to you), a description of local planning policies which provide the details of what will happen in your site. You might wish to focus on a focused programme of transformation, or you may wish to set up initiative such as a Business Improvement District of Community Gardening Programme.

Neighbourhood focus. You might wish to focus on one or two particular neighbourhoods and go into more detail showing a model of how it will look, the type of architecture, landscaping and land-use.

Phasing plans. You must provide detailed phasing plan including when the different parts of the project will begin and conclude.

A risk register. You must show how you will identify and mitigate risks to the project. This may involve a brief plan for a community engagement initiative.

Preparing the report

As a group, decide soon to divide the work up. This can be done via sections of the report, people’s inherent strengths such as data or policy analysis, or by different periods between now and the deadline.

Set up a place to share files. MS Teams would be a good place for this.

Take weekly notes on your progress and track who has contributed what. You can designate someone to be the note-taker in exchange for slightly less work on the report substance.

Do your research. You can find information needed for the site in the public domain however I have started you off with some links on Moodle.

You can find examples of previous group reports on Moodle which were awarded high Bs and As.

Report rules

This year for the first time, the report will be created on ARCGIS Storymap, an interactive online document. There is a wide degree of flexibility in how to create this and we are open to you doing things differently. The marking criteria is on Moodle.

Turnitin is disabled.

Please use pictures, images, drawings, maps and examples existing projects to help illustrate your report and communicate your ideas.

The word count is 12,000 words inclusive of 10 percent either side excluding references.