Integrated evaluation of regeneration plans

This is the third in a sequence of three papers by Dalia Lichfield on the challenge of integrated planning for urban regeneration. Having discussed the issue of compartmentalised planning for urban regeneration and the importance of integrated planning and collaborative implementation, the author introduced Dynamic Planning, a method of integrated planning. At the heart of it is the involvement of both ‘active’ and ‘recipient’ stakeholders in gaining a holistic understanding of those processes of urban and regional change that, through interaction between various factors, cause current or future problems, and considering which of the root causes could be modified or eliminated. This third paper is concerned with the way in which regeneration plans should be assessed and evaluated prior to approval and implementation (‘ex ante evaluation’). It opens with a discussion of the purpose of evaluation and the dilemmas involved. If planning aims to maximise net benefits to the public, it ought to ensure that it is truly feasible, to compare future processes of change under scenarios of acceptance and of rejection of the plan, and it has to evaluate the outcome — in the context of diverse value systems. The paper briefly reviews the systemic and practical difficulties of formal evaluation, which lead to a compartmentalised view of particular components of plans. Formal evaluation of planning proposals suffers also from the presence of diverse types of ‘impact assessment’ required by government, using diverse approaches and terminologies, which are difficult to integrate in their current form. By contrast, evaluation based on understanding an anticipated process of change with its chains of diverse effects and likely impacts on people would be more integrative and meaningful. If this mindset affected the many interim decisions during preparation of a plan, a better plan would emerge in the first place. The paper then introduces Community Impact Analysis and Evaluation — a rigorous, integrated and transparent method, displaying results that can be easily grasped by lay people. Devised by the late Prof. Nathaniel Lichfield, it incorporates monetised, otherwise quantified, and unquantified impacts within a framework whose common denominator is not money, but people experiencing benefit or disadvantage as a result of the plan, and the intensity of their experience.