In ever-polarising societies, efforts at land use mediation and agreement between contesting parties are needed more than ever. There is increased scrutiny on roles, responsibilities and representation with pressure to find agreed solutions to social, economic and environmental problems at a range of scales. In this paper, we critically review literatures on policy mediation via the co-construction of knowledge. We then examine a case study from Wales where policy experts were brought together in a hybrid forum to explore ways community assets might be passed on to groups to control them directly. Stakeholders knew at the start of the policy engagement process that they must arrive at a mutually satisfactory outcome. But who steers the solution narrative and how can participants in the process best ensure that the sharing of evidence leads to political traction? Through contemporaneous notes, qualitative interviews, the project’s reports and other documents, we offer intellectual, methodological and policy contributions on mediation and agreement breakdown. We find that some participants from more formal institutional settings are actually unable to ‘leave their expertise at the door’ as recommended. Instead, notions of representation loom large. Some participants with different professional expertises retained a strong desire to control solution narratives. While entirely logical and understandable for these particular stakeholders, arriving at an efficient and equitable solution for all parties was ultimately compromised because of the key issues of roles, responsibilities and representation that we highlight. We conclude with policy implications for contested land use decision-making.

This paper highlights socio-environmental inequalities as consequences of urban regeneration projects in post-industrial sites within suburbs. Transforming inner-city industrial sites such as those in Fishponds, Bristol discussed in this paper, remains challenging for urban planning and for local authorities such as Bristol City Council (BCC). These sites on the one hand provide opportunities for regeneration and housing, yet on the other hand their historical detachment from surrounding neighbourhoods can persist if redevelopment sidelines local perspectives on what constitutes a sustainable neighbourhood. If such detachment, both physically and mentally, between existing communities and industrial sites is not explored properly, it can result in less meaningful engagement during consultation process and further inequalities that can be simply framed as consequences of regeneration projects.

The paper highlights the role of creative methods for capturing diverse experiences, memories and relations shaped by the industrial sites in the neighbourhood. Exploring the place and mapping relations with local community including Fishponds Planning Community Group (FPCG) during two workshops shows multiple narratives of place and the risk of reducing them through consultation process. Multivocal Fishponds include a series of co-produced narratives of Fishponds highlighting communities’ multiple and contradictory priorities. Such approach upskills local communities to gain a wider understanding of their places and needs, to engage meaningfully with planners and developers in future, when regeneration schemes reach planning application stage. It also contributes to much needed justice framework in regeneration projects to tackle longstanding socio-ecological inequalities and planning approaches that at best take a provisional approach rather than transforming places, including their narratives and aesthetics with the local communities.

What conditions need to be in place for spatial planning and public health to integrate effectively? This paper argues that planning scholarship has prioritised how integration should work, without first ascertaining whether the foundational conditions for integration exist. Inspired by a growing body of research and best practice on integrating the two disciplines, the 4 E's Evaluative Framework was developed in response to a critical gap. Existing analytical tools carry assumptions about institutional capacity and governance maturity that reflect the established systems in which they were developed, rendering them poorly suited to contexts where integration is emergent rather than embedded.

The 4 E's Evaluative Framework, comprising Equity, Embeddedness, Enabling Environment, and Evidence, represents an original methodological and theoretical contribution to this problem. Grounded in critical realism and systems thinking, the framework is designed to assess the structural and governance conditions that enable or constrain planning-health integration, before evaluating how effectively it operates. Drawing on regional planning policy and comparative local council practice in Northern Ireland, the framework maps the current state of planning-health integration and identifies structural gaps across both scales.

Northern Ireland provides an illuminating case, a devolved, post-conflict jurisdiction where planning and public health operate within parallel traditions, health considerations appear inconsistently across Local Development Plans, and governance fragmentation shapes what integration is structurally possible. The paper proposes emergent governance contexts as a distinct analytical category within planning theory, with implications for how the field conceptualises the relationship between institutional structure, knowledge production, and health-equitable outcomes.

The research explores the relationship between the discipline of spatial planning and wider public policymaking in Ireland across spatial scales, and specifically in this paper, the realities of how planning legislation is conceived, shaped and governed.

The legislative and policy framework for spatial planning in Ireland has recently been reviewed and is subject to change. These changes suggest a shift towards the primary function of planning being concerned with process, and one that is increasingly administrative, technical, and legal in nature. Arguably an emphasis on processes may be to the detriment of the wider, normative, intended policy outcomes which we seek to achieve and which are more closely aligned with the concept of spatial planning.

The literature describes the policy tools of spatial planning as under researched and lacking conceptual clarity. This research seeks to explore recent changes to planning legislation through the lens of procedural and substantive policy tools to understand better the relationship between the function of spatial planning and wider public policymaking in Ireland.

The research uses content analysis to analyse the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Planning and Development Bill 2023 and aims to draw conclusions as to the perceived function of the legislation viewed through the lens of policy tools, which will contribute to the conceptualisation of planning policy tools; the understanding of interaction of procedural and substantive policy tools; and the relationship between the planning system and wider, normative intended public policy outcomes.