What do they know? The power and potential of story in planning

Interest in the relationship between storytelling and planning has grown in recent years, drawing on scholarship from across the social sciences and humanities to respond to questions and debates about the nature and purpose of planning. It has been suggested that, at the least, story offers planners an important tool to assist them in the difficult business of working for more equitable futures, whilst others have gone further, suggesting that story could represent a route to making planning more inclusive and democratic, perhaps even being a mode for doing planning. This thesis represents a contribution to these debates, by way of a participatory engagement with a group of residents working towards a better future for their community, a working class neighbourhood in Sheffield, United Kingdom. In the context of a nationally funded community development initiative, the research has involved three years of working alongside residents on a variety of planning and community development projects. All of these have an implicit role for story and storytelling, whilst others have explicitly tried to intervene in putting these to work. Through the course of outlining and analysing this work and its implications, and situating this within wider debates and contexts, the thesis makes a contribution to our understanding of how story figures in making change in community contexts and of what it means for non-professionals to engage in planning activity. Ultimately, it suggests that if story is to realise its democratic and inclusionary promise a re-politicised understanding is needed of both story and planning in community contexts.