Managing stakeholders by orchestrating space: delivering wind power in Wales through spatial plannin

1
Managing stakeholders by orchestrating
spacedelivering wind power in Wales through
spatial planning

• Richard Cowell
• G.I.N. Conference, Cardiff, July 2006

2
Discourses of the planning problem

• streamlining national direction reduced
  scope for local opposition
• greater community involvement local
  empowerment

3
Detailed empirical investigation

• Spatial orchestration, in the sense of
• framing opportunity structures for influence
  across and between arenas of planning, and
• how acceptable locations are constructed, and
  support for them maintained

4
Wind energy in Wales

• Rapid development in the 1990s
• Growing conflict
• Planning is the problem

5
800MW target plus seven Strategic Search Areas

• Stakeholder collaboration
• Technical rationality
• Political authority
• Negotiated flexibility

6
Power as translation

• Responses to the draft guidance much public and
  community group opposition, but qualified support
  from other sectors
• WAGs responses to the responses accommodating
  some industry demands for flexibility, but doing
  more to accommodate demands from planning
  authorities for tighter spatial control
• Actual decisions about plan policies and
  projects

7
(No Transcript)
8
Some conclusions

• Spatial planning facilitating larger developments
• Limitations of collaborative decision-making
  processes and influence of representative
  democracy
• Connecting institutional design to contextual
  conditions, political geography and the objects
  of policy