Planning for Housing in Rural England: Discursive Power and Spatial Exclusion

Planning for housing in rural England: discursive power and spatial exclusion.

Abstract

This paper examines the discursive construction and application of concepts of sustainable communities in relation to planning for housing in rural England, highlighting the role of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) and the (now abolished) regional planning bodies. The paper draws on Lukes’ ‘third dimension’ of power (language use) and Bourdieu’s concept of ‘symbolic violence’. It suggests that an “unholy alliance” (Hall et al., 1973) of rural elites and urban interests have wielded discursive power to define ‘sustainability’ on their own terms, which exacerbates the unaffordability of rural housing, leading to social injustice and spatial exclusion.

Introduction

There is a well established undersupply of housing in the UK, which has been found by the economist Kate Barker to lead to high house prices and damage to the UK economy (Barker, 2004). The gap between supply and demand is often at its greatest in rural areas, resulting in a well established affordability gap in such areas. The Government’s Affordable Rural Housing Commission (ARHC) andCommission for Rural Communities(CRC) identified significantly higher “affordability ratios” (the ratio between average incomes and average house prices) in rural areas than in urban areas(CRC, 2007b; CRC, 2008; ARHC, 2006). Bramley and Watkins (2009) have questioned this disparity but the majority of researchers acknowledge an issue with housing supply in rural England, though most focus on affordable rather than market housing as the real problem area. This paper presents evidence that in those rural areas the aim of increasing the supply of housing, whether market or affordable, is being frustrated, maintaining a pattern identified by Peter Hall et al. in 1973. The paper argues that the “Containment of Urban England” (Hall et al., 1973)has continued unabated since Hall’s work.

Drawing on empirical research, the paper analyses discursive “constructions” of sustainability in relation to rural communities and identifies a number of arenas in which those discourses are negotiated. The paper concludes that at every level of planning/housing policy, whether national, regional or local, there is a direct conflict between the operationalisation of discourses of sustainability and any attempt to increase the supply of housing in rural areas. The paper focuses on discourse because we believe that “Our being in the world is inseparable from our perception of it” (Haugaard, 2002, p181).

The paper further suggests that anti-development interests in rural areas are using discursive power to render rural housebuilding inherently “unsustainable” in the eyes of policy makers and wider society. The theories of Stephen Lukes and Pierre Bourdieu are used to explain how this power is exercised.

A theoretical framework

There are many theorists who seek to cast light on the exercise of power – to understand the mechanics by which the dominant can exercise their will. In terms of analysing the use of language to exercise power, Foucault is perhaps pre-eminent,but for our purposes in this paper we draw particularly on the work of Stephen Lukes and Pierre Bourdieu. Foucault and Bourdieu have many affinities (see Harker et al., 1990, pp199-200)but also some crucial areas of disagreement, including most notably Bourdieu’s adherence to class-based theory which makes his ideas more suitable for our analysis.

Lukes, in his 1974 book “Power: A Radical View”, identified power operating in three “dimensions”. The one-dimensional view of power, according to Lukes, was based on decision making, with those who prevail in decision making identified as the powerful. The two-dimensional view of power was based on the process of decision making itself, looking at how the less powerful are excluded from meaningful decision making. The three-dimensional view of power sought to explore non-visible conflict. Lukes believed that power could be exercised to prevent people from having grievances “by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things” (Lukes, 2005, p28): because they can see no alternative, or they see it as natural and unchangeable. So Lukes argued that the powerful shape preferences as well as respond to them.

This paper focuses on this latter process, described as “the most effective and insidious use of power” (Lukes, 2005, p27). For a broad investigation of the exercise of power in the field of rural housing in all three dimensions, see Sturzaker (2010). This third dimension of power, hidden as it is, is difficult to explore. One way of conceptualising its operation lies in Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field and capital.

Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ invokes a process of socialisation whereby the dominant modes of thought and experience inherent in the life-world are internalised by individuals, especially in their early years but also through their continuing experiences and social interactions. It is "an acquired system of generative schemes objectively adjusted to the particular conditions in which it is constituted”(Bourdieu, 1977, p95). Moreover, habitus is not only embodied but is situated in relation to a ‘field’ or social space such as education, academia, music, art or housing(Bourdieu, 2005), in which interactions, transactions and struggles occur. Bourdieu argues that practice (or behaviour) is not wholly consciously organised and orchestrated: on the contrary, most behaviour is "necessary improvisation" informed by "a feel for the game" (practical sense). Such practice is not without purpose, for actors have goals and interests (to gain economic capital, social capital, cultural capital and symbolic capital and to transmit these inter-generationally) and pursue strategies, even though these are not wholly conscious. Actors thus know instinctively – without knowing they know – the right thing to do, so long as their habitus and the field remain adapted to one another. Accordingly, Lukes understood habitus as “the embodied dispositions which yield ‘practical sense’ and organize actors’ visions of the world below the level of consciousness in a way that is resistant to articulation, critical reflection and conscious manipulation” (Lukes, 2005). Housing is one such field which Bourdieu analysed, showing how the French housing market is bureaucratically constructed and controlled in such a way that those with better constituted habitus and greater economic and cultural capital are able to enforce their interests through symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 2005, p92).

Bourdieu’s concepts of‘capital’ and ‘symbolic violence’ are similarly relevant to understanding the exercise of power in relation to housing in rural England. As noted above, Bourdieu regards capital as both the means and the object of struggle, and his definition of capital is very wide, going beyond economic capital to include cultural capital (defined as culturally-valued taste and consumption patterns), social capital (various kinds of valued relationships with significant others) and symbolic capital (cultural capital which is further elevated through social recognition to confer prestige, legitimacy and value).Some see symbolic capital as “world constructing through the capacity to make certain interpretations of the world count” (Haugaard, 2002, p227).Crucially, Bourdieu argues that forms of symbolic capital tend to deny and suppress their instrumentalism and self-interest by presenting themselves as disinterested and of intrinsic worth, a theme we explore below in relation to urban containment in England. This misrecognition is a type of ‘symbolic violence’ (Moore, 2008, p104).

Symbolic violence is particularly interesting in relation to Lukes’ third face of power. This is defined by Bourdieu as “the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity” (Bourdieu, 1992, p167). This does not usually imply physical violence but rather refers to domination of more subtle forms. Thus,

agents are subjected to forms of violence (treated as inferior, denied resources, limited in their social mobility and aspirations), but they do not perceive it that way; rather their situation seems to them to be ‘the natural order of things’”(Webb et al., 2002, p25).

So, in gender domination:

“women misrecognised the symbolic violence to which they were subjected as something that was natural, simply ‘the way of the world’. Consequently they were complicit in the production of those things (bodily performances, for instance) which worked to reinscribe their domination” (ibid.).

Hence habitus relates to power, “leading those subject to it to see their condition as ‘natural’ and even to value it, and to fail to recognize the sources of their desires and beliefs” (Lukes, 2005, p13). So “the dominated apply categories constructed from the point of view of the dominant to the relations of domination, thus making them appear as natural” (Bourdieu, 2001 (1998), p35).

Bourdieu argues, and illustrates in his work, how the power of the dominant class succeeds in defining, through symbolic violence, what counts as legitimate knowledge, what social relations are valuable, and what symbols confer prestige and social honour. These symbols are socially constructed to suit the interests of the dominant class. For example, in education the power of the dominant class defines the curriculum and what constitutes success, and those who acquire through socialisation within families a cultural capital which conforms with this will appear more gifted, while others will not (Lee, 1989). Moreover they will appear to be ‘naturally’ gifted, so concealing the power relations underlying the outcome (Bourdieu, 1973). ‘Misrecognition’, as Bourdieu puts it, is thus at the heart of the exercise of the third face of power. As Lukes argues, Bourdieu’s work is illustrative of “aspects of power as domination that we have sought to emphasize: above all, the ways in which its effectiveness is enhanced by being disguised or rendered invisible by ‘naturalization’, where what is conventional and position- or class-based appears to the actors as natural and objective, and by ‘misrecognition’ of its sources and modes of operation” (Lukes, 2005, p141)[1].

Empirical methodology

This paper draws on a wider research project undertaken between 2005 and 2008 looking at the planning system and (affordable) housing delivery in rural areas, which incorporated: textual analysis of policy documents produced by the national Government, regional planning bodies and local authorities; and interview data.

Five local authorities in different regions of England were studied in depth during 2007 and 2008. The case study local authorities, illustrated in Figure 1, were: Alnwick District (North East region), South Hams District (South West region), Harrogate Borough(Yorkshire and Humberside region), Stratford-on-Avon District (West Midlands Region) and Wealden District (South East Region). These case study areas are different in nature, but they share a common characteristic – they face high levels of demand and need for housing, both market and affordable. They can therefore be seen as ideal areas to study for those interested in conflicts around housing provision, being largely “peri-urban”, in functional if not morphological terms, areas which it has been argued are particularly susceptible to such conflict (Murdoch et al., 2003).

Figure 1 – The case study local authorities

All but one are within the “most rural” Rural-80 classification of local authorities (DEFRA, 2006), though all are within easy reach of major urban areas, so subject to commuting pressure, yet all also subject to pressure from retirees and second home owners.

The high levels of demand and need for housing has led to some innovative practice, with at least four of the five being highlighted as best practice examplars in various studies (for example South Hams and Wealden in the ARHC report). However, the research concluded that despite being lauded in this way, delivery of (affordable) housing in all five local authorities continued to be disappointing.

31 Interviews were carried out with local authority planning and housing officers, registered social landlords (RSLs), parish councils, rural housing enablers (RHEs), and other parties involved in (affordable) housing delivery where relevant. These interviewees were chosen (a) on the basis of a literature review and local information that they were the key to delivering affordable housing at the local level; (b) because, their opinions on rural development issues are less often heard than those of CPRE.

Discourse analysis is a vibrant analytical field in its own right, and it is possible to undertake very detailed analysis on relatively small pieces of “text”. Text in these terms can mean a written text, or interview transcriptions, or any other manifestation of discourse(Fairclough, 2003). We are not linguists, nor experts in discourse analysis, so we have chosen to analyse texts at a fairly basic level – the policy documents and interview transcripts identified in the study have been analysed to identify what seem to us to be particularly strong examples of language use to construct particular meanings. We are following the route taken by others, including Hastings, who has attempted to “use a focus on language to show how the (policy) orthodoxies have become established and accepted” (Hastings, 2000, p136), in order to establish how “[t]he incumbents of political power can orchestrate political and social change through directing linguistic change”(Hastings, 1999b, p11).

The discursive construction of sustainability

Since its inception in the 1940s, the planning system in England has prioritised urban containment, initially to prevent ‘urban sprawl’ and to protect farmland, and this continues to be justified today by the pursuit of ‘sustainable communities’, and by a belief (of urban interests) that this might facilitate an urban renaissance. Each of these justifications has been revealed by Murdoch and Lowe (2003) to originate and to have been promoted by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE). In this context it is worth reminding ourselves of Peter Hall’s analysis of who has gained and who has lost from such policies. The major gainers, Hall et al. (1973) identified as wealthy, middle-class, ex-urbanite country dwellers and the owners of land designated for development. The principal losers his team identified were non-home-owners in rural England (including future generations) and people forced to live at ever higher densities in urban areas despite the widespread aspiration to rural, or at least suburban, living. Summarising, they concluded that the effects had been regressive in that “it is the most fortunate who have gained the benefits from the operation of the system, whilst the less fortunate have gained very little”(Hall et al., 1973).

For our analysis it is necessary to identify a dominant group, whom might be exercising power. We follow the analysis of Hall, as developed in Shucksmith (1990a,b) and Sturzaker (2010), and focus on those who might “win” from a policy of restraint in rural housebuilding – principally urban local authorities (who thereby retain population and hence a council tax base) and those who own houses in the countryside already. Shucksmith (1990a,b) argued that such groups constitute classes in a Weberian sense, in that property owners in rural areas have the ability to generate income not only through employment but also through the accumulative potential of property ownership and the associated relations of exploitation. Others have also viewed planning as involving different actors and groups of actors “competing” to achieve their aims – with those who succeed being best able to use the planning system to their gain (Vigar et al., 2000; Bramley et al., 2004). Those who “lose” from this policy include those who are prevented from accessing housing in the countryside through unaffordability and/or forced to live at ever increasing densities in urban areas.

The CPRE, as its raison d’être, has always sought to prevent house building in rural areas, deploying a range of symbolic concepts to pursue this objective, including “urban sprawl”, “concreting over the countryside” and “light pollution” among others. Through analysis of documentary evidence and interviews with former and current CPRE staff, Murdoch and Lowe (2003) revealed the various ways in which CPRE has managed to set the agenda for rural planning since the 1940s, when they promoted the idea of a rural/urban divide and the desirability of separation of nature and society, as exemplified in green belts and urban containment policies. During the 1980s, they altered their tactics away from a preservationist argument to take advantage of a growing environmental awareness. Thus they sought to “ecologise” their arguments by arguing an environmental case for containment, essentially through the exercise of discursive power over the concepts of sustainability and sustainable communities.

Woods (2005) noted that a pro-development discourse in the countryside by 2005 was only promoted by industry groups like the Home Builders Federation, of whom the public are naturally sceptical,althoughsubsequent challenges to the dominant discourse have come fromthe Commission for Rural Communities (CRC), the ARHC (2006), the Matthew Taylor review (2008) and a new Rural Coalition (2009) which surprisingly includes the CPRE. These are discussed further below.

The concept of sustainability had gained currency in the work of the Brundtland Commission, which proposed a notion of sustainable development with social justice at its core, comprising three elements: (1) inter-generational equity; (2) intra-generational equity; and (3) avoiding uncompensated trans-national spillovers. In practice, however, sustainability has become understood overwhelmingly in narrower environmental terms, with little attention given to the social justice values at its heart, reflecting the capture of this concept by powerful environmental and other interests. In line with their ‘ecologising’ tactical shift, CPRE staff explained to Murdoch and Lowe (2003) how they had deployed the argument that building in rural areas was incompatible with sustainable development, since inadequate public transport in rural areas would require residents to use cars, with environmentally damaging CO2 emissions. Key arenas in which they were able to promote this discourse included the Rogers Commission (of which CPRE Director, Tony Burton, was Deputy Chair), the Urban White Paper, the Sustainable Communities White Paper, the drafting of PPG3, regional spatial strategies (RSSs) and local development frameworks (LDFs) – see below for an illustration of the role of these various documents. One CPRE staff member told Murdoch and Lowe that the Urban White Paper was the key arena for ensuring anti-development policies were implemented in rural areas(Murdoch and Lowe, 2003).