The Place Principle and Place-based Policy
In Scotland, as in many other countries, inequalities continue to exist within and between towns and cities despite many years of initiatives to address these issues. And also in common with other countries Scotland has seen ‘a return to place’ in its approach to policy development. In May 2019 the Scottish Government with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) adopted its ‘Place Principle’ as the basis for its approach to revised planning arrangements and to support public service reform. Developed collaboratively with a range of organisations the principle is intended to overcome organizational and sectoral boundaries to encourage better collaboration and community involvement based on a clear vision of place, in the belief that shared understanding of place will bring improved outcomes for people and communities.
As used by the Scottish Government the place principle emphasizes that:
- Place is where people, location and resources combine to create a sense of identity and purpose and is at the heart of addressing the needs and realizing the full potential of communities.
- Places are shaped by the way resources, services and assets are directed and used by the people who live in and invest in them.
- A more joined-up, collaborative and participative approach to services, land and buildings across all sectors within a place enables better outcomes for everyone and increased opportunities for people and communities to shape their own lives.
The principle requires that:
- all those responsible for providing services and looking after assets in a place need to work and plan together, and within local communities, to improve the lives of people, support inclusive and sustainable economic growth and create more successful places.
This very clear commitment to place and to a place-based approach at both central and local government levels prompts questions about the scope of place-based policies which the principle might embrace and how this differs from other policy approaches. This essay explores these issues further. The discussion should be seen against a background where, firstly other writing about place-based policy suggests that there can be a lack of clarity about what constitutes place-based policy, and second that it is not always evident that the claims for place-based policy can be substantiated and have led to a significant change in the actual policies adopted for the improvement of places.
So what is place-based policy?
Essentially a place-based policy is one which addresses a set of problems that are specific to a location or community. A place-based approach will focus on local needs, local solutions, and the unique attributes of a place. and can be contrasted with ‘people-based’ policies and non-specific general policy. ‘People-based’ policies are targeted directly at individuals as distinct from neighbourhoods, towns or cities whilst general or strategic policies are applied across all regions without prioritizing specific places or individuals.
These different categories of policy can be used in conjunction with each other. For example, policies to tackle poverty issues in a local area may span specific place-based programmes such as providing increased access to educational provision, individual-based policies to improve take-up of a range of benefits to which individuals may be entitled, and strategic policies on such issues as taxation, business support, transportation or infrastructure development available in all to provide incentives for increased economic activity.
Place-based policies have been adopted to tackle a range of policy issues including efforts to build neighbourhood cohesion, to improve facilities and community assets, to enhance the built environment and economic opportunities in an area, to develop governance and operational structures to centre on area perspectives and to find innovative service structures and operational approaches to integrate or co-locate services in specific areas.
Place-based policy can take various forms including bringing the community voice into the formulation and prioritization of proposed government actions, co-ordination of centrally funded programmes and even to local control over the expenditure of pooled funds. In Scotland’s case, the place principle was used to emphasize the importance of a wide range of provisions in the Community Empowerment Act of 2015, and in the adoption of a revised national planning system introduced in 2019.
Rationale for place-based policy
Place-based policy has the Its attraction for policymakers is that it sounds tangible, immediate and local. It is also an idea that an individual or a community can identify with – a place to live, a place of work, and a place to care about and protect. The downside is the risk that the place-based approach is poorly specified, poorly evidenced and hard to evaluate. Place-based policies have the potential to support community empowerment but they need to be linked to wider investment and poverty reduction strategies if they are to be fully effective.
There are several rationales which are driving the renewed emphasis on place and place-based policies. These may be seen as economic, political and civic.
Economic fortunes for people are often tied to where they live. Encouraging relocation to more prosperous areas is of limited impact because of the costs and uncertainties of relocating, and also to social and family ties. Policies which aim to improve the economies of specific areas offer an alternative approach to help resolve the marked inequalities in economic performance between and within cities, towns, and rural areas.
Commonly such policies rest on so-called agglomeration economics, based on the belief that bringing firms into close proximity leads to efficiencies from innovation and from providing a wider skill mix for workers. Place-based economic policies such as enterprise zones, improved infrastructure and communications and the location of universities and knowledge hubs and clusters are often associated with attempts to bring innovative companies and skilled jobs to areas where such opportunities are scarce often following the decline of a previous industrial base.
Political rationales stem from pressures for the devolution of decision-making away from centralized, one-size-fits-all approaches to more local contexts which recognize the particular needs and heritage of place, with the possibility of increased community input to priority setting and resource allocation.
Civic rationales rest of the demand for higher quality, more responsive and joined-up service provision both for the more efficient use of resources and community assets, but also to facilitate easy access for individuals to appropriate services.
Is the promise of place-based policies being realized?
It seems the jury is still out on this question. There is a growing research literature covering a variety of forms of place-based policies, but results are inconsistent and often inconclusive. There are continuing debates about the identification and measurement of appropriate indicators of outcomes and effectiveness. and with their
For instance in the US studies of major area-based economic interventions the research on place-based policies indicates that some types of well-designed policies can be effective, while other policies do not appear to be. Policies that subsidize businesses based solely on their location are hard to defend based on the research record. Place-based policies for business support used in targeted discretionary ways seem to work better than policies that subsidize businesses solely on their location. Place-based policies that generate public goods such as infrastructure and knowledge, for example through universities, appear beneficial. However, even among the more effective policies, exactly what makes them work remains unclear without further evaluation.
Review of the impact of major place-based area re-generation initiatives in the UK generally conclude that whilst there is some evidence of benefits experienced by people and communities living within those places, there is an overall lack of substantive evaluation evidence capturing the impact of these approaches on the life outcomes of individuals, families and communities. It is argued that these approaches have had limited overall impact given that local authorities and their community planning partners are still today considering how they can implement place-based working, some of which is taking place in areas that have already received significant investment . As one review states ‘it can be inferred that the investment already made in places has often failed to address in a sustainable way the root causes of the issues facing people, families and communities living in those areas.’
The delivery of place-based policies is inevitably complex. It may be that addressing this complexity may divert attention from analysis of the adequacy of levels of service provision and resources in the area, and the making of realistic assessments of community capacity to support and sustain continuing innovation and community development. It seems the challenge for place-based policy makers and local authorities and their community delivery partners remains very much about how they tackle the root causes of inequality and poor outcomes in their most disadvantaged places by working more effectively together, and with communities, to jointly plan, resource and deliver services in these places whilst also ensuring that those communities are well connected to wider socio-economic networks.