The Skeffington Committee was appointed in 1968 to look at ways of involving the wider public in the formative stages of local development plans. It was the first concerted effort to encourage a systematic approach to resident participation in planning and the decision-making process; in contrast to the entirely top down process created by the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. The origins of the Skeffington Report lay in the 1965 publication by the Planning Advisory Group of The Future of Development Plans; which recommended changes to the planning system to include much greater public participation. It called for all plans to be publicly debated in full; with the opportunity for representations to be made throughout the entire preparation process. There was also a growing realisation of the impact of the American planning experience and a growth of interest in the concept of participatory democracy as opposed to representative democracy. However; the immediate impact of the Skeffington Committee was limited. It was criticised as being too ambiguous and as encouraging nothing more than greater publicity and as lsquo;educatingrsquo; residents from the planners perspective. lsquo;Participationrsquo; was inadequately defined and the Report was seen to simply promote a more efficient system by convincing people of the virtues of planning. Local authorities used and undermined the idea of participation to simply speed up the planning process by giving their decisions a seal of legitimacy. Technocrats and local authorities simply subverted the ambiguities of the Report for their own purposes.Yet this is to underestimate the long term impact of the underlying principles first expressed in the Skeffington Report. It has been a long and tortuous process and in many respects it remains a difficult ideal to implement in an entirely satisfactory and systematic way. Nevertheless; the concept of participation established by the Report has continued to be a central consideration in planning.
2013-06-17 2013-06-17File Name: B00E3Y56V2
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Unanswered questionsBy SonomagirlSinging opera and writing about it are two different skills. I dont doubt that Barbara Hendricks has the former; but feel that her writing about it lacks energy. She has recounted the major steps in her musical career in chronological order; pausing from time to make to make observations about the civil rights movement which happened concurrently; but this seems to be a very bland recount. I found myself wanting to hear more about why singing was so important to her; how it inspired her to live her life; why and to what extent she was politicised by her experiences of the civil rights movement... and so on. Reading this left me with questions unanswered. I think there may be a deeper Barbara Hendricks story still waiting to be told; perhaps by someone who has made a career of biographical writing.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. This is a wonderful story of an artist as well as a tour ...By American in ParisThis is a wonderful story of an artist as well as a tour through some of the most turbulent years of the United States. It is a book that is hard to put down. If you are a singer; it shows you a path of integrity and intelligence and reminds you that a missed note is not the end of the world. A refugee without hope is "the end of the world". You will love it.2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. A wonderful and moving book in the beginningBy PaulMDA wonderful and moving book in the beginning; it got bogged down towards the end with all the descriptions of Ms. Hendricks relief work. I found myself skimming the last few chapters.