ABSTRACT
This chapter explores three ways in which neighbourhood planning can be understood as performative - political, practical and presentational - to provide further detail on the microdynamics, processes and tactics by which the content of neighbourhood plans is shaped (Parker and Street, 2015; Wills, 2016; Parker, 2017). Politically, the chapter reinforces concerns about the boundedness of neighbourhood planning to pre-existing political structures, thereby reducing their potential to deliver genuine local autonomy. Practically, it highlights differences in perspective between an LPA’s emphasis on getting things completed and a community’s emphasis on the potential outcomes for the community, reducing the potential for neighbourhood plans to resolve conflict. Presentationally, the chapter highlights the need to consider both documentary and interpersonal factors in the context of multiple audiences to maximise receptivity to neighbourhood concerns, revisiting the vexed relationship between a neighbourhood plan and the planning process. The chapter concludes by emphasising that how a neighbourhood plan is done, as much as what a neighbourhood plan says, can be crucial in maximising the chances of achieving community objectives, and by signposting the implications of this for place relations, the legitimacy of neighbourhood planning and the prospects for neighbourhood planning.
