ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the significance of institutions in making places better: how do different institutional configurations affect what is possible or what is achieved in places, and how do we analyse them? Institutionalist approaches to studying politics and public policy remerged in the 1980s. An institutionalist approach to planning research thus enabled both formal and informal rules and practices to be considered. Institutional design will have a different focus than in places where local government is relatively emasculated, one actor among many. The chapter looks at a specific example of institutional design for very local plan-making, neighbourhood planning, in the English context. The demotion of local government's role in shaping local planning agendas and processes also renders some of the planning literature on collaboration and participation – with its assumption of a 'planner' at the heart of the process – only tangentially useful.
