The Local Area Planning Guidelines & Manual are a good reason for not doing an LAP

If ever there was instrument to slow down the planning process, and add cost and bureaucracy its the LAP process as now described in the Guidelines and Manual published by the Dept. of Environment. However the Draft Guidelines fail to ask the most important question. Is doing an LAP the best way of solving problems and resolving issues? Big problems lie in the multi-disciplinary approach advocated. It is an approach that serves the professions and process, but not people and towns. Achieving all this professional representation, changes the conversation. We start talking about road capacities, geometries and traffic models. We focus on SUDs, drainage and water treatment. We focus on Energy Standards, contemporary architecture of our time, and landmark structures.... and loose focus on town planning. Have any of the LAPs set out in the Draft Manual actually worked? Kilkenny, Liberties, Robinstown, Mountjoy? Why are they regarded as good examples if they have not resolved the issues faced? If planning is to be truly evidence based, it should go far beyond basic demographics and land capacity zoning requirements. Evidence means we should learn from past failures. Failures that are dominated by traffic-engineering, and bad architecture that planners continually have to face. We should be learning from Christopher Alexander’s pattern language – an open-source code. An approach that allows plans to evolve over time, with a multitude of design inputs, and not just one comprehensive ‘vision’. This I believe is the great strength of planners. It is scandalous how planners have been relegated to the role of Project Manager in this LAP Draft. We are urban problem solvers, not project managers. Planning risks finding itself labelled as the profession that makes things difficult and complicated, wedded to process for process’s sake. We have already seen the RIAI President’s agenda that architecture should assume the lead role in plan-making. Its an approach that the Draft Guidelines and Manual does not discourage. Why don’t we have a planning-led discussion about how we can do things incrementally and sustainably? The Draft LAP Guidelines are on public display until 27th July.