This paper explores the experience of local planning authorities in the north-west of England in bidding for and delivering place-based regeneration projects through the Levelling Up Fund (LUF) and subsequent grant funding initiatives. The LUF was awarded by the UK Government to local authorities on a competitive basis between 2021 and 2023, and while the national political and funding landscape has evolved since, the experience continues to impact upon local planning and regeneration practice. The research process included an initial roundtable event with local authority officers from across north-west England, followed by three in-depth case studies of LUF projects comprising site visits and interviews with officers from Manchester City Council, Wigan Council, and Lancaster City Council. Initial findings underline the inherent pressures of bidding for and delivering on competitive regeneration funding, not least mobilising resources, and reconciling proposals with existing local policy priorities and at times fluid national bidding parameters. The evidence also suggests that despite this, the re-emergence of more distinctly place-based regeneration programmes is rebuilding and reworking some of the local authority regeneration capacity and skills which had been diminished over nearly two decades of austerity. This includes the knowledge needed by contemporary planning and regeneration practitioners to navigate the entrepreneurial governance landscape through which place-based regeneration is being funded and steered by UK Government.

This paper examines how planning law and governance arrangements shape the spatial and social outcomes of urban transformation in Türkiye through the case of the Göztepe Risky Area in Bağcılar, Istanbul. Since the enactment of Law No. 6306 on the Transformation of Areas Under Disaster Risk, urban restructuring has increasingly been organised through legal categories such as risky buildings, risky areas, and reserve building areas. While these instruments have enabled stronger intervention in vulnerable urban areas, more importantly they have reorganised the scale, authority, and territorial logic through which planning decisions are produced and translated into statutory plans and implementation frameworks.

Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative, document-based case-study approach, combining the analysis of statutory and policy frameworks with the examination of planning and implementation documents prepared for the Göztepe Risky Area. The paper argues that parcel-based and structure-led redevelopment tends to produce fragmented spatial outcomes, including density increase, pressure on infrastructure, and limited capacity to provide public open space and social facilities in an integrated manner. By contrast, area-based and neighbourhood-scale planning offers a more comprehensive framework for coordinating implementation phasing, urban design, infrastructure provision, and the spatial organisation of public amenities.

The paper further argues that the social outcomes of area-based transformation should not be understood only through the conventional language of in-situ transformation. They should also be evaluated in relation to the forms of social restructuring generated by redevelopment itself. These include the risk of capital-led exclusion, differentiated capacities of existing residents to remain in or return to the transformed area, the demands of adapting to denser and more regulated collective housing environments, and the gradual weakening of close-knit neighbourhood relations as everyday social contact becomes less immediate and more formalised. In this sense, the paper conceptualises the ethics of scale as a planning problem, showing that the scale of intervention shapes not only urban form but also the conditions of collective urban life, socio-spatial justice, and the legitimacy of planning practice.

The paper contributes to debates on planning law, ethics, and governance by demonstrating that a just transformation process requires not only statutory authority and coordinated implementation, but also critical attention to how new spatial and institutional arrangements reorganise everyday life, neighbourhood relations, and the distribution of urban value.

What responsibilities does planning have when the sites it regulates are also places of historical trauma? Across Ireland, former sites of institutional confinement and abuse, including Mother and Baby Homes, Industrial Schools and Magdalene Laundries, are increasingly subject to redevelopment, regeneration and adaptive reuse. While significant attention has been paid to questions of historical accountability, memorialisation and survivor recognition, the role of planning in shaping the future of these sites remains under-examined. This research argues that planning is not a neutral regulatory process but an active participant in determining how difficult histories are remembered, contested and transformed. The research presents a conceptual framework organised around three interconnected themes: system, conflict and possibility. The first examines the planning system, including policy, governance and legislative frameworks, and their capacity to respond to sites associated with historical harm. The second explores conflicts that emerge between development pressures, heritage considerations, survivor perspectives and public memory. The third considers ethical and inclusive planning approaches that support recognition, participation and restorative outcomes. Situated within debates on planning ethics, collective memory and transitional justice, the research seeks to expand understandings of planning's role in post-institutional landscapes. In doing so, it contributes to emerging discussions on how planning theory and practice can engage with contested heritage and difficult pasts. The research argues that former sites of institutional abuse present an important opportunity to reconsider the responsibilities of planning in contexts where questions of memory, justice and redevelopment intersect.