Editorial

Citation

Parker, C., Roberts, G. and Byrom, J. (2010), "Editorial", Journal of Place Management and Development, Vol. 3 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jpmd.2010.35503baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Place Management and Development, Volume 3, Issue 2

One of the Editors of the journal was attending a prize-giving event recently along with a number of distinguished professors from various UK Business Schools. There was a panel discussion on the “state” of research and, in particular, emerging research from early career researchers. The debate was very lively, but the consensus was that business research can often be “theory-poor” and, where researchers did develop theory, the audience for their work was usually other academics working in their field, and that the knowledge that was developed was not transferred very effectively into “the real world”. An alternative perspective was given, where practitioners gathered what knowledge they could from other sources, such as the trade press, practitioner conferences and “best practice”. This approach was criticised, for the poor quality, empirical robustness and general lack of transferability/generalisability of this type of information. As a member of the audience, this debate, whilst interesting, not only did not offer any solution as to how better theory could be developed and how this could be transferred more effectively into practice but, even more importantly, it also ignored the reality that there are millions of people employed in businesses around the world, that seem to be operating quite effectively, even if they are oblivious to the academic literature on the subject.

So, this got us thinking about theory development in our own journal, and whether or not it is meeting the needs of not only the academics in the area but also how useful it is to practitioners. By examining the download figures of the journal articles we have published, case-studies focussing on particular locations are the most popular with academics and, by looking at the usage of the journal from the practitioner members, i.e. the members of the Institute of Place Management, for which this journal is the body’s official publication, we have to conclude that, due to the limited number of downloads, we are not achieving are aim of bringing research findings to practitioners. For this reason, the papers we have chosen for this issue, we hope will be more “accessible” to our practitioner readers. That is not to say that we have not included research papers. But where we have, we think that the writing style and the ability to put the findings into practice are a key strength of the papers.

In the first paper, Alix Slater and Hee Jung Koo examines the concept of the “Third Place”, in other words, a location that is not home or work. In Alix’s study, she focuses on two art centres in London, Tate Modern and the Southbank Centre. Whilst the management of these individual attractions is perhaps more straightforward than the management and development of a place (such as the community-led regeneration of the whole South Bank area), Alix’s paper demonstrates that there is a lot to learn from a deeper understanding of how people consume and interact with the places they go to visit, pass through, “hang-out” or “to read, escape and rejuvenate”. By taking an interpretive phenomenological approach, the data (i.e. the quotes from the respondents) is allowed to “talk for itself”. Anyone managing any sort of place that is publically accessible can incorporate aspects of “sociability” into their design and management. This is a finding that is also echoed in Patricia Simões Aelbrecht’s paper “Rethinking urban design for a changing public life”. Again, she uses a methodology that captures place users’ behaviour as “closely” as possible – participant observation. By spending six months, standing at 24 various locations in a Portuguese neighbourhood she looked at how strangers and other groups interacted with each other. Her findings are very interesting – people often choose places to linger and interact that have not been designed for such a purpose and ignore the ones that have. Her paper is full of photos that illustrate the type of locations that attract interactions. Whilst planners and place managers try to “manage” behaviour of place-users, it seems like this often does not work. In Manchester, there is a covered walk-way linking the main city centre shopping mall with two large department stores. It is quite narrow, and often full of people congregating and talking, friends that have just bumped into each other, or chosen it as a meeting place as it is contained. This means walking through the tunnel is often quite difficult. But Patricia’s paper reminds us that planned structures can have unplanned uses, and it is this constant reinvention of props and places that underpins socialisation in a location, leading us back to Alix’s concept of sociability in third spaces. Again Patricia’s paper is chosen as it has some practical findings, whilst being informed by a theoretical framework.

Our third paper is rather different from the first two in that it does not use or test a conceptual or theoretical framework. It is a narrative of the development of a successful place, Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia. Nevertheless, it is a good illustration of some of the concepts raised in the earlier two papers – about the planned and unplanned aspects of what make a place “work” from a social perspective. Written by Kate Brennan, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Federation Square Pty Ltd, she documents its development, from the conflicting views about its design and purpose to its international position now as one of the world’s most successful public squares. The strong partnership approach to its development, management and ongoing vision is obviously a critical success factor. This approach to partnership is very different to the type of partnership outlined in our fourth paper, by Alan Farrier, Rowena Davis, Lynn Froggett and Konstantina Poursanidou. In their paper, they examine a “shotgun partnership” – one multi-agency partnership in a community regeneration programme, focussing upon young people and their relationship with their environment. Their case-study analysis challenges “the prevalent idealised views of partnership as a policy tool”. It is also challenges the prevalence of learning from “best practice”. From reading their paper those considering forming partnerships (or those that are “forced” into it) can learn a lot.

Finally, we end with another example of poor practice […] but that sentence is a complete understatement as this time the implications are far more serious than merely not meeting a project’s objectives or not making the best use of public money. In Keteh Amba’s paper, her review of the master planning and subsequent development of Abuja in Nigeria that took place without public engagement or consultation, resulted in the violation of human rights of hundreds of thousands of Nigerian citizens. In order to build a city that was “not a city for the poor”, over 800,000 people have been forcibly evicted, in some cases “using tear gas, beatings and other methods of violence”. In many cases, those evicted were not even given time to retrieve their possessions from their properties. Keteh’s argument is to involve the public in the planning process, something we take for granted, or even as rhetoric, in more developed countries. The very existence of this journal, and the papers it has included over the past eight issues demonstrates the reality of public participation is often very different to the rhetoric. Nevertheless, Keteh’s paper is a humble reminder of the difference between the consequences of the lack of public engagement in the planning process, around the world.

So, returning to our original aim of putting together an issue of the journal that includes theoretical development, but tries to influence practice and engage practitioners, we hope we have succeeded. The next three months worth of download statistics will tell us just how well we have done!

Cathy Parker, Gareth Roberts, John Byrom