Jon Parker is an elected council member and fellow of CIHT, visiting research fellow at UWE, director of transport planning for ITP and director of the UK transport advisory group for Royal HaskoningDHV.

Artists and transport planners can collaborate in an innovative way to envision future towns. My experience of this approach to vision-led planning, alongside the Royal College of Art and the towns of Lyme Regis, Haltwhistle and Biggleswade, is represented in my Top 20 do’s and don’ts:

1. Do – be aware that the planning system isn’t creating the sustainable transport outcomes we desire. Planning and transport aren’t as aligned as they should be. There is a gap between the policy and practice.
2. Do – plan first and foremost for people, and their housing and sustainable transport infrastructure needs.
3. Don’t – assume that car use is inevitable.
4. Don’t - forget demand for travel is derived from planning.
5. Do – be aware of planners’ critical role in delivering net-zero.
6. Don’t – feel alone. 87% of respondents to a CIHT survey in 2022 believe there are problems with delivering sustainable development and securing sustainable transport.
7. Do – encourage a shared vision from local stakeholders, neighbouring communities and master-planners.
8. Do – bear in mind that the practice of Predict & Provide highway infrastructure planning is a root cause for inducing more traffic and it runs contrary to the aims of national and local sustainable development policy.
9. Do - apply a creative set of tools for community placemaking and transport planning that will help communities and planners imagine their future towns together.
10. Don’t – forget to include philosophy and emotions in the methodology.  You can’t plan a place without understanding the wider needs, desires and interests of those that will use it.
11. Do – ask questions in the community such as ‘what do you value’, ‘what do you love’ and ‘what worries you?’ and listen to the answers. Use social media and other tools to expand your reach beyond the local leaders and those with resources.
12. Do – ask people in the community about the places they enjoy visiting and why. Help the community imagine those things in their own locality. Augmented reality tools make it easier for people to re-imagine an area.
13. Do – embrace other skills, for example consider asking community artists to illustrate what communities have expressed in words. Images act as ‘thought containers’ that reflect a possible future back to the community and allow a richer conversation about that future.
14. Do - be inclusive. Future visions should be accessible for all.
15. Do – share illustrations widely within the community.  People tend to grasp pictures more than they do plans.
16. Do - use knowledge wisely to help explain the benefits of sustainable placemaking as well as the costs of current behaviour.
17. Do – contextualise data locally and use artistry to visualise environmental impacts in meaningful ways.
18. Do – have an open mind. Non-traditional approaches remove barriers and change mindsets.
19. Don’t – feel under pressure to apply everything at once. It’s scalable.
20. Do - above all else - listen, learn, imagine and change.

In conversation with Pamela Cahill.

Jon Parker’s do’s and don’ts have been adapted from his presentation ‘What happens when artists meet transport planners and engineers’ hosted by CIHT East Midlands on 29 June 2022. The webinar can be accessed by CIHT members here.

Read Our Future Towns report on the partnering of transport planners and engineers with the Royal College of Art in the towns of Lyme Regis, Haltwhistle and Biggleswade.