In the public interest? Planning in the Peak District National Park

Abstract

The recent history of the public interest is one of misappropriation. Practitioners have been found to value the concept but have struggled to articulate how it guides day-to-day planning practice.

Tourism Governance in Komodo National Park, Indonesia: Blessing or Curse?

“…The main task of the Komodo National Park Office (BTNK), as well as national parks in other countries, is to arrange to zone for the sake of biodiversity sustainability (Mules, 2015;Maidment, 2016;Cotoi, 2017;Fredman & Wikstorm, 2018). BTNK is also authorized to regulate all activities of local communities in the area, including tourism activities that are now being carried out by the community.…”

Whose interest finally counts? The statutory production of urban space at the fringes of Dhaka, Bangladesh

“…Historically, the “public interest” has been providing necessary and often unquestioned justification to any public decisions. This general acceptance comes from the tendency to see public as homogeneous and thus to overlook the diversity and multiplicity that in fact constitute our society (Maidment, 2016), the general belief that rationally (and also scientifically ) framed public decisions reflect the interests of the public (Flyvbjerg, 1998), and the common practice of equating public and the state (Purcell, 2016). Given that the State is considered to be able to protect the public interest and that planning primarily refers to the activities of the state, planning decisions have had an easy public acceptance.…”

“…Others continue to search for ways to rehabilitate the concept based on the belief that the public interest remains an effective normative guideline to incorporate the interests of multiple public in common dialogue and thus to determine the nature of planning and its purpose (Campbell and Marshall, 2002; Chettiparamb, 2015; Tait, 2016). A part special issue of the Planning Theory has reviewed the concept of public interest and discussed different and opposing views to the process of this rehabilitation (Maidment, 2016; Mattila, 2016; Purcell, 2016; Tait, 2016).…”

“…This expands the domain of “the public” making visible the importance of scale and scope of public in the consideration of public interest. Investigating planning in the Peak District National Park, Maidment (2016) has presented the challenges to articulate contesting values that represent the public at different scales (e.g. local vs national, economic vs environmental, between generations, etc.).…”

On issues of plurality and practice in considering planning’s public interest

“…Indeed, as the public interest is conventionally considered the raison d’être legitimising planning activity, it would be difficult for things to be otherwise. Against this backdrop, the recent appearance of numerous papers in this journal overtly seeking to reconsider what the public interest might entail suggests to me that we once gain find ourselves in a waxing phase on this central topic to our discipline (Maidment, 2016; Mattila, 2016; Moroni, 2019; Tait, 2016). It is into this discussion that my article was inserted (Lennon, 2017).…”