While the professional standing of planning is commonly justified by advancing the 'public interest’, public confidence is being eroded by ever increasing threats and demands such as climate change, energy, housing crisis, political and economic instability. As a future-oriented discipline and practice, planning has the capacity, at least the remit, to coordinate a more desired future and the new Planning and Development Act 2024 in Ireland aims to reposition the role of planning in leading Ireland to a stable, resilient sustainable future. New measures aim to enhance clarity, improve consistency, and increase confidence in the planning system. It’s seen as a move to a “plan-led” as opposed to ‘development enablement’ (Lennon & Waldron, 2019) approach to planning. It includes new statutory timelines for decisions, new tools and a shift from a six year to a ten-year local authority plan for long-term, strategic sustainable development. However, considering the number and complexity of transitions required to achieve sustainable development these measures cannot, on their own, achieve national and European sustainable development policy objectives. Each of these transitions and pathways to achieve them, is associated with different interests, specific actors, imply a variety of cultural and political commitments; sustainability transitions happen in place. This paper therefore argues that with these new legislative requirements, it is now time to progress the mantra of, for the ‘public interest’ to ‘for the public with the public’.

Originating from research conducted during an Horizon Europe Project, FLIARA, this paper aims to combine findings from its participatory futures foresight work with theories from sustainability transitions (MLP framework) to develop a framework for planning practice that can enable true public participation and deliver ‘actionable knowledge’ (Hölscher, 2023) that can facilitate sustainable niche innovations to emerge, take hold and lead to transformative change. As the research was related to gender, rural based and employed a rural typology, the paper also adds to knowledge on the gender and spatial dimensions of sustainability transitions.

References:

Hölscher, K., Wittmayer, J.M., Olfert, A., Hirschnitz-Garbers, M., Walther, J. and Schiller, G. (2023) ‘Creating actionable knowledge one step at a time: An analytical framework for tracing systems and agency in niche innovation pathways’, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 46, 100682. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2022.11.007

Lennon, M., & Waldron, R. (2019) Overview of the Irish planning system. European planning studies De-democratising the Irish planning system, European Planning Studies, 27(8), pp. 1607–1625.