Conflict and Compromise in the Built Environment: Housebuilding in Central Berkshire

This paper examines the interaction of different agents involved with the production, consumption and control of new private housing. The context is central Berkshire, an area of high economic and residential growth. Continued housing growth and urban expansion runs counter to dominant local opinion, which is reflected by the activity of many community groups in the planning sphere. Typologies are offered of speculative house-builders and local community groups, based partly on their relationship with the planning system. The role of the local state (planning system) is then considered, particularly the position and responses of elected representatives, who made mediate competing growth and anti-growth pressures through the planning process. Planning gain is suggested as an important device in legitimizing the position of the local planning system in the face of central state and house-builder pressure.