Working in the public interest? Spatial planning and the future of public service professional labour

这项研究提出了英国第一个主要调查私营公司越来越多地参与到以前由地方政府进行的专业空间规划工作中。在战后时期，有关城市发展的决定被认为是合理的，因为国家雇佣的规划师服务于统一的公共利益。作为在政府中工作的政治中立的官僚，他们站在特殊利益之上，为共同利益服务。尽管这种“公共利益”的理由长期以来一直受到挑战，但它对专业实践仍然很重要。然而，在过去的20年里，组织改革（由于紧缩而加强）已经看到一些国家的规划职能下放到地方社区，而市场的作用随着私营部门越来越多地提供规划服务而扩大。近一半的英国特许规划师现在为私营公司工作，政府寻求扩大私营部门的参与。尽管如此，关于私有化对专业性的影响以及如何在规划中理解公共利益的研究却很少。为了填补这一空白，我们将重点关注3个关键领域：1。私营机构参与规划工作的程度和性质；2. 2 .这种参与对规划师理解其专业角色的影响。这种参与对传统的“公共利益”规划活动的理由的影响。该项目将使用：-档案工作来追踪如何在规划中理解“公共利益”；与皇家城市规划学院共同制作的焦点小组，对英国公共和私营部门在规划方面的新组织安排进行了最新的介绍。在规划专业人士之间开展反思性讨论，探讨这些新的组织安排如何改变了他们对专业精神及其在确保公众利益方面的作用的理解和实践——对私营部门专业人士工作的背景进行深入的案例研究，以探索“专业精神”和“公众利益”的概念是如何通过各种专业人士的日常实践和互动来定义和实现的。参与地方规划的政治家和公民。它将回答五个研究问题：1。战后，公共和私营部门在实现公共利益规划目标方面的角色发生了怎样的变化？2. 现在规划是通过哪些公共/私人组织形式实现的？3. 在不同环境下工作的专业规划师如何适应不断变化的组织安排，他们做什么“专业”工作，他们如何定义和理解他们的职业身份？4. 不同的组织结构对规划有争议的公共利益目的的定义和实现的方式有什么影响，特别是与地方、民主和地方政治的复杂性有关？5. 如何重新构想“公共服务”专业劳动力，以更好地实现公共利益目标，并挑战对公共服务可以和应该合法提供什么的主流理解？作为首个关于私有化如何影响英国规划的实证研究，该项目将在知识方面做出几项开创性贡献。它将为学者们提供一个创新的框架，以理解这些深刻的变化如何重塑“专业人士”的含义，以及“公共利益”决策的本质。最后，它将引发关于专业人士如何在未来更好地实现公共利益的辩论；突出了公共部门工作商业化的潜力和危险。

This study proposes the first major investigation in the UK into the increasing involvement of private companies in carrying out professional spatial planning work formerly conducted by local government. In the postwar era, decisions about urban development were justified with the idea that state-employed planners served a unified public interest. As politically-neutral bureaucrats working in government, they stood above particular interests to serve a common good. Although this 'public interest' justification has long been challenged it remains important for professional practice. However, over the last 20 years organisational reforms (intensified by austerity) have seen some planning functions of the state devolved to local communities, while the role of the market has been expanded with the private sector increasingly delivering planning services. Nearly half of all UK Chartered Planners now work for private firms and the Government seeks to extend private sector involvement. Despite this, there has been little research on the effects of privatisation on professionalism and how the public interest is understood in planning. To fill this gap, we will focus on 3 key areas: 1. The extent and nature of private sector involvement in planning; 2. The implications of this involvement for planners' understanding of their professional role, 3. The consequences of this involvement for traditional justifications of planning activities as in the 'public interest'. The project will use: -archival work to trace how 'the public interest' is understood in planning: undertaking a history of the concept in relation to changing public/private arrangements for service delivery -focus groups, co-produced with the Royal Town Planning Institute, to provide an up-to-date account of the new public and private organisational arrangements for planning in the UK -biographical interviews, to develop reflective discussion among planning professionals on the way that these new organisational arrangements have changed their understanding and practice relating to professionalism and its role in securing the public interest -in-depth case studies of the contexts in which private sector professionals work to explore how ideas of 'professionalism' and the 'public interest' are defined and realised through the day-to-day practices and interactions of various professionals, politicians and citizens involved in local planning. It will answer five research questions: 1. How have the roles of the public and private sectors in delivering public interest planning goals changed over the post-war period? 2. Through what public/private organisational forms is planning now delivered? 3. How have professional planners working in diverse settings adjusted to changing organisational arrangements, what 'professional' work do they do, and how do they define and understand their professional identity? 4. What effects do different organisational configurations have on the ways that planning's contested public interest purposes are defined and realised, particularly in relation to the complexities of place, democracy, and local politics? 5. How can 'public service' professional labour be reimagined as a means of better realising public interest goals, and challenging dominant understandings of what public services can and should legitimately deliver? As the first empirical study of how privatisation is influencing UK planning, the project will make several ground-breaking contributions to knowledge. It will provide academics with an innovative framework for understanding how these profound changes are reshaping what it means to be a 'professional', and the nature of decision-making in the 'public interest'. Finally, it will generate debate about how professionals might better realise the public interest in the future; highlighting the potentials but also the dangers of the commercialisation of public sector work.