'Community' is a widely used concept within planning, yet the meaning of this word is often unclear and can shift depending on context. This paper presents interim findings from an ongoing RTPI-funded research project exploring how ‘community’ is understood and worked with across different areas of planning practice, and how this shapes both processes and outcomes.

The research draws on the PORTAL framework, developed through earlier work on community-led housing, which understands community as a multi-dimensional spectrum, including physical, organisational, relational, transformational, aspirational and liminal aspects. This project focuses on translating that framework into use within planning, working alongside planners, built environment professionals and community participants to explore how it holds up in practice and where it could prove especially useful.

The paper reports on a series of interviews and a participatory workshop where PORTAL was applied to real planning scenarios. Early findings suggest that the framework helps to make different understandings of community more visible across various planning activities and processes, offering a shared language that can support conversations between professional roles and with communities. It also highlights aspects of community that are present in lived experience but less easily captured within formal processes, prompting reflection on how these might be more fully acknowledged in practice.

Building on this, the research is developing a modular toolkit to support use in practice, combining diagnostics, prompts, facilitation approaches and practical guidance. The next phase will test these tools within live planning contexts in the South West.