A digital future for spatial planning

Internationally renowned town planner and urban designer Dr Wei Yang, along with Professor of Planning Michael Batty from The Bartlett Centre for Spatial Analysis, co-founded the Digital Task Force for Planning in 2021 to address the climate crisis and other Grand Challenges facing our society.

The Task Force consolidates cross-disciplinary research and tools that can be applied in spatial planning, identifying research gaps, and developing practical solutions. It also aims to function as an incubator of digital planning innovation and help promote capacity building through training and knowledge sharing.    

In 2022, Dr Yang and Professor Batty set out a comprehensive blueprint for improvement in their report, ‘A Digital Future For Planning: Spatial Planning Reimagined’. They also outlined multiple systemic failings of the UK planning process – a system that has largely remained unaltered since the 1940s.  

New ways to use data and technology  

By integrating data and digital technology, the Task Force has created a new methodology that provides decision makers and stakeholders with a better understanding of the interactions between people, economy, society, the built and the natural environments. 

The methodology can be visualised as two interrelated loops. The Evidence Analytics Loop provides systematic approaches to the gathering and processing of multidisciplinary data and evidence. Outputs are then integrated into the Decision-Making Loop, allowing planners, governments and communities to shape evidence-based policies and regulations which are accountable to the public. 

The loops define cycles that enable the planner to iterate and explore ideas while also engaging in plan-making in real time. This methodology can be applied universally to planning tasks either nationally or locally, in any sector, at any scale.  

View the full methodology

The race to net zero

“The IPCC identified spatial planning as one of the key mechanisms to tackle climate change. 59% of the carbon reduction needed will come from human societal and behavioural changes. So if we only think about the physical objects without thinking about human beings, we’ll miss the biggest trick,” explains Dr Yang. 

Despite clear repeated recommendations from every IPCC Assessment Report since 2014 and the UK Government’s 2020 white paper, ‘Planning For the Future’, there’s still an absence of national cross-departmental consideration of how planning processes could be redesigned to deliver net zero goals in the UK.  

With the impending overshoot of 1.5°C global warming expected to potentially trigger multiple climate tipping points, the responsibility of spatial planners in helping to reduce further carbon emissions is upheld by the Task Force.  

“I often describe the Task Force as a ‘digital National Trust’ – it promotes valuable knowledge sharing as assets for public good. Our research outcomes are made open source worldwide,” says Dr Yang. 

“It’s based on the notion that in this world we live in, everything is connected to everything else. The impact of the planning process is no more or less than all of us being involved in our environment,” says Prof Batty.