Community Engaged Planning Research Cluster

A platform for research collaborations and knowledge exchange, exploring the ethics and methods for co-producing research with communities.

Overview

This cluster provides a platform for research collaborations and knowledge exchange with communities with the aim of having positive impact. It also provides a support environment for researchers and community groups to develop best practices for collaboration.

We explore the ethics and methods for co-producing research with communities, as well as for teaching with and about communities. This includes developing communities of practice on how to collaborate ethically with community groups, discuss and resolve problems related to community engagement in a research and university context, and involving communities in the learning experience, as well as teaching about community engagement.

We work on the following topics:

Communities and policy
Co-producing evidence with communities with the aim of having policy impact.
Supporting community engagement with the development of a new London Plan.

Communities and housing
Community contestation to regeneration, community-led initiatives, community management/ownership of housing, and alternative forms of affordable housing provision.

Communities and local economies
Giving voice to the impacts of markets, workspaces, and industrial spaces on communities.

Communities and social infrastructure
Community owned or managed assets, contestation to the loss of community spaces, networks of care.

Communities and infrastructure
Co-designing infrastructures which include the communities affected: water, sanitation, energy, food and transport.

Communities and ecologies
Co-designing ways in which communities can create ecologies that are beneficial for people, biota, and address climate change.

Histories of community action
Archival work, documenting grassroots community action and activism.

Dynamics of community engagement and action
Reflecting on how community engagement and action is supported by or creates different types of social dynamics between institutions and people.

People

Dr Pablo Sendra, The Bartlett School of Planning
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Dr Tse-Hui Teh, The Bartlett School of Planning
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Ben Hughes, The Bartlett School of Planning
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Marilia Kastrouni, The Bartlett School of Planning
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Outputs

We host an annual meeting on Planning Research in Partnership with Communities, which brings together researchers, communities, as well as other stakeholders involved in community engagement in planning.

We have completed several projects in partnership with communities across London, within the UK and internationally. Our projects focus on having an impact on communities, their neighbourhoods, and the policies that might affect them.

Our projects have led to Open Access publications that focus on bringing benefits to communities. These include the UCL Press books Co-Designing Infrastructures (co-authored by Tse-Hui Teh), Community-Led Regeneration (Pablo Sendra and Daniel Fitzpatrick), or the paper The Ethics of Co-Design (Pablo Sendra). Pablo Sendra is co-editor of the UCL Press series Engaging Communities in City Making.

Related links

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Photo by Pablo Sendra